I’ve written the fragments out until they’ve become no more whole than before.
I’m feeling lost and uncertain. I need time and space, but then I don’t know what to do with it when I have it.
Stagnation is closing in, and the walls are too thick for me to scrape a hole through with my fingernails and crawl out into the open.
I used to write poems about bloody rooms, girls scratching at their walls until their fingernails bleed, leaving streaks and imprints, dripping, red and caked caked brown. My image life full of blood, but not true violence. Not a lashing out, an intentional hurting and cruelty, but visceral and veins. Lips bitten torn and other unintentionally self inflicted wounds.
I’m writing about two kinds of miscarriages in “Evelyn and May” : one intentional, and ( one unintentional. Of blood pooling out from wombs, and flowing along inner thighs. Love and loss encapsulated in a function of the body. May induces her loss because she knows she cannot have what it is she wants, and Evelyn chooses one loss and has another occur (sympathy miscarriage?).
I am unhappy with their story, I don’t know where it’s going, I don’t know if I like what I’m writing, and I haven’t touched the play since I was in the Magdalen islands. Somethings’s hitting too close to the bone. A vicarious autobiography that is factually untrue, but emotionally and subconsciously true?
I don’t know how all of the pieces fit together. I don’t know what I’m really trying to reveal, and I feel as though I’m at a point of tipping over into revelation that will either f push this play forward, or kill it completely.
T
I am not a writer. Most times I’m not even a person, or a woman, or a thing, or a creature. I fall into times of non-existence. I’m self absorbed and unsatisfied. I’m lonely and uninvolved and bitter. I don’t love anyone and will not let them love me. I’m desperate, and hate my desperation.
But I don’t feel sorry for myself. I never have. It’s just that I don’t understand. I really, really don’t understand, and it feels like everyone else does.
I don’t feel like myself, outside.
Exteriority and terror conflated.
I compromise myself in everything that I do.
I don’t want to be any part of this world.
I’m confused and unhappy and sick.
I can’t create beautiful things because destructions abilities have so much more force behind them. Beauty is alone and torn at all of the important seams. My stitch ripper is effective, but my finely threaded needle shakes in my hands, and my stitches are not strong enough to stay planted where I sew them.
My offerings will never be enough, and my blessings are burdened.
Why is everything so sad? I don’t know how to experience the world without a double glazed filter of grief. Does it ever change? Will I ever smile truly, proud of the moment I find myself in? Shoulders back and delighted, laughter flowing past my heart?
I don’t know how to feel all of this. I don’t know why I’m expected to, why I have, why the struggle is full of so much struggle. Why life is such a fight, when I’m not meant to be a fighter.
I don’t know how to stop editing myself. My tongue is numb and I can’t say anything that reverberates beyond my hollow mouth. I am not an appropriate being. My sanity, my freedom. Whose life am I living?
How much grieving can be done in saying goodbye to the girl and young woman that I never was, and never will be able to be?
Why am I alone in the face of so much darkness and despair? I have no touch of reassurance. I’m troubled and unconsoled.
Why do I even try for words? Why do I even try to reach out, forcing my inky blueprint into the organized and delicate lives of others who have no need of inkstained fingers and lips. My hands are not enough to hold anything. My backbone is fine cartilage, flexible and unstable. My heart flutters wildly, as strange and untranslatable as the speech I’ve never learned to speak. I can’t even walk properly, my feet won’t touch the ground, I can’t feel myself on the ground, just skimming, slipping over. A drift with no commitment.
What am I even looking for?
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Sunday, July 27, 2008
...
Yes. I am listening to Terami Hirsch's "Memory Picture" and crying into my cup of tea at 1:50 in the morning. Alone in my apartment.I only wanted a cup of tea, but all the boxes of chamomile and sleepytime and mint were empty, so I'm drinking decaf green tea peach, which I don't even like, but I needed to hold my favorite red mug full of warm herbal tea.My hair falls over my face as I lean over, curtaining the cup as my my nose nearly drips, and my eyes almost do too. This is who I am. i guess. This is me at my most basic. Bone achingly sad, in that almost indefinable grieving melancholy sort of way, with a clarity of life threaded through. I am not exciting. I am not energetic. i am delicate and broken and unknowing. beauty overwhelms me. The apartment is so quiet.
I feel disappeared. I feel as thin paper walls. Pages strewn with words, rubbed until the paper is clear, but all unread.
"But was this the face you loved?
Were these her hands?
Oh, I hardly recognize myself
I wanted this moment in my hand
I wanted to touch you
To feel you breathe
I wanted to hold you
So you wouldn't fall alone"
-Terami Hirsch, "Memory Picture"
I feel disappeared. I feel as thin paper walls. Pages strewn with words, rubbed until the paper is clear, but all unread.
"But was this the face you loved?
Were these her hands?
Oh, I hardly recognize myself
I wanted this moment in my hand
I wanted to touch you
To feel you breathe
I wanted to hold you
So you wouldn't fall alone"
-Terami Hirsch, "Memory Picture"
Thoughts at a party
I went to a party
and I was alone
parties make me cry
and nobody likes the girl who cries at parties
I'm not very good at karaoke
and I have emotional breakdowns when I can't do something perfectly
I lay on the trampoline all by myself
and looked up at the sky and the edges of the willow tree
I could hear everyone singing inside
and did not know who I was for a minute
The compost has brought in fruit flies
which hovered around the food, half drowning themselves in salad dressing
my home became not my home, my living room overtaken by strangers
who don't notice when i leave for an hour to read my book in the park
I only three sentences, all of which I had read before
since I was too busy thinking of my social ineptitude
the sky is difficult to live up to
and I feel as though I have to clear my blood
regenerate my entire body
each time I am surrounded by so many loud people I do not know
why am I so delicate
why are my limits so close to the bone compared to others
The city frightens me
there are so many people I'll never exist for
I lose myself in everyone else's mothertongue
my own being so untranslatable
I am told to make my own family
orphan in this world that I am
but my nerves stop at the tips of my fingers
and will not reach any further
out of myself
even out of this skin I am still inside sinews and muscles
bones structured to be upright
joins inflexible, unoffering
there is no perfection in what I am
and my imperfections are not beautiful
they are torn seams and ripped moments
askew and faltering along impeccably badly
I have been through so many deaths
and these ashes have so few sparks left
in these night all the birds have gone to sleep
in their unreachable nests, tending to tender eggs
all my skin is bruised
and no one bothers to bring me a new compress to reduce the swelling
no one sits by my side as I slip away feverishly
or sweat in broken dreams and splintered memories
sewing oneself back together is a solitary business
and the salt of the sea is always staining the hem of my skirt
my fingers are needled pricked with no callouses made
each stab is a new drop of my heart dripping into careless air
too much of my own caked blood on my wedding dress
I will never wear it by his side
All of the fabric piled around me
he will not sift through to find the simple gauze of my voice
my heart chambered and hollowed
spaces he doesn't want to fill
why was I chosen to be broken?
and I was alone
parties make me cry
and nobody likes the girl who cries at parties
I'm not very good at karaoke
and I have emotional breakdowns when I can't do something perfectly
I lay on the trampoline all by myself
and looked up at the sky and the edges of the willow tree
I could hear everyone singing inside
and did not know who I was for a minute
The compost has brought in fruit flies
which hovered around the food, half drowning themselves in salad dressing
my home became not my home, my living room overtaken by strangers
who don't notice when i leave for an hour to read my book in the park
I only three sentences, all of which I had read before
since I was too busy thinking of my social ineptitude
the sky is difficult to live up to
and I feel as though I have to clear my blood
regenerate my entire body
each time I am surrounded by so many loud people I do not know
why am I so delicate
why are my limits so close to the bone compared to others
The city frightens me
there are so many people I'll never exist for
I lose myself in everyone else's mothertongue
my own being so untranslatable
I am told to make my own family
orphan in this world that I am
but my nerves stop at the tips of my fingers
and will not reach any further
out of myself
even out of this skin I am still inside sinews and muscles
bones structured to be upright
joins inflexible, unoffering
there is no perfection in what I am
and my imperfections are not beautiful
they are torn seams and ripped moments
askew and faltering along impeccably badly
I have been through so many deaths
and these ashes have so few sparks left
in these night all the birds have gone to sleep
in their unreachable nests, tending to tender eggs
all my skin is bruised
and no one bothers to bring me a new compress to reduce the swelling
no one sits by my side as I slip away feverishly
or sweat in broken dreams and splintered memories
sewing oneself back together is a solitary business
and the salt of the sea is always staining the hem of my skirt
my fingers are needled pricked with no callouses made
each stab is a new drop of my heart dripping into careless air
too much of my own caked blood on my wedding dress
I will never wear it by his side
All of the fabric piled around me
he will not sift through to find the simple gauze of my voice
my heart chambered and hollowed
spaces he doesn't want to fill
why was I chosen to be broken?
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Two words.
Tactile. Fragily. Fragily Tactile. Tactile and fragile. The tactility of fragility. I'm obsessed with palms and hands when I write. Holding, cradling, touching. The hands being the most obvious and seemingly first point of so many physical contacts. Which isn't true, of course, which is why seeming. Our feet, our mouths, all portions of our skin are constantly coming into contact with so many things. I am fascinated by the tactile, and I am fascinated by the fragile. So many people seem overcome with breaking the fragile, but I want to let it be and feel it bloom wise and bold. What is bold and fragile?
(Zoe Keating's "Sun Will Set" is, at this moment, the aural equivalent of these two words. Tactile and fragile.).
When put together, there is such a gentle strength to these words. My hands are alight with fragility. I am burdened and blessed with a lack of touch. It makes me sad.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
Time. Art.
I find the ticking of clocks comforting. It means I'm still alive and following each second.Each moment of time is happening, and I'm there in it.
I am a vulnerability.
I do not value art over experience. Over existence. Art is a profound part of existence, but it is a part that arises from life. Art is life, but life is not just art.
I do not create to prove my existence, to situate it. My being is already proven, in steps and standstills, gestures, voices, and heartbeats. I create to live my life more fully. To sink deeply into and delineate my experiences. The experiential is where the passion and power lie. The heart and bones and blood and mind. The senses reaching out and drawing in, synapses snapping and pumping invitations of knowledge through and to the mind. Rational captures imagination, twists into something vibrant and strange.
I go back to pencil and paper, a sound of sliding rather than the clacking or clatter of keys. My hands forming the words themselves, appearing, to fill space and leave the mysterious of fervor and forever in imperfect spaces.
The craft, art, does not come before the heart. It is a manifestation of it, a tool, a medium of communication, of exultation and woe. A space to be safe in an otherworld home when this world is too bitter and vicious. A vessel to be held in, or to hold in palms up and cupped in offering to yourself, to your lover, your loved ones, to the word. Water pooling to be poured.
It is not good enough now to fit a form, to place yourself into the hands of established meaning and structure. Our bodies are not aligned in the same ways, and our thoughts, given space, are so much more than we have let them be. We don't need to deliver anything. We don't need to finish anything.
I have not but my hands, my feet, my body, my lungs, my voice, my mind, my breath, my tongu an unending list. I will not shift my forminto a preconceived (such a shell of a word, a cage, predetermined, too) immutable shape. I will work without the constraining luxury of empty rules.
In Diane Ackerman's Book " A natural history of the senses", she speaks of a composer ( Villa Lobos, I think, could be wrong), who would sketch the outlinrd of a mountain range, from a different vantage point each day. He would take this drawing of ups and downs, lines cy=urving and sharp, rising to blend, and sit at the piano, composing along with, against this image, music structured, following, this image. These lines.
I wish to live so organically, and create by what we live, what we see, and what we make of it. Not to have to tell a story by structure, upholding past visions of philosophy and struggle. It is not a brutal abandonment of form, but a restructuring through out deeply subjective selves.
"Soft gentle rebel, let the sun pierce the moments of spring"-Hawksley Workman.
I fight too hard, we fight forward too quickly and strongly, and misinterpret what it means to live our own worlds, to live outside the violent damands of this harsh and hardening society. Gentleness is not weakness, the sharp edges can be cooled and made smooth by rustling leaves. My body can heal if I let it breathe, and my emotions can thrive if I don't press too hard at them.
Trauma needs to be held gently and lovingly in our hands ( and we are all traumatized in this world). A kind touch that skin can settle into with a blessing.
I am a vulnerability.
I do not value art over experience. Over existence. Art is a profound part of existence, but it is a part that arises from life. Art is life, but life is not just art.
I do not create to prove my existence, to situate it. My being is already proven, in steps and standstills, gestures, voices, and heartbeats. I create to live my life more fully. To sink deeply into and delineate my experiences. The experiential is where the passion and power lie. The heart and bones and blood and mind. The senses reaching out and drawing in, synapses snapping and pumping invitations of knowledge through and to the mind. Rational captures imagination, twists into something vibrant and strange.
I go back to pencil and paper, a sound of sliding rather than the clacking or clatter of keys. My hands forming the words themselves, appearing, to fill space and leave the mysterious of fervor and forever in imperfect spaces.
The craft, art, does not come before the heart. It is a manifestation of it, a tool, a medium of communication, of exultation and woe. A space to be safe in an otherworld home when this world is too bitter and vicious. A vessel to be held in, or to hold in palms up and cupped in offering to yourself, to your lover, your loved ones, to the word. Water pooling to be poured.
It is not good enough now to fit a form, to place yourself into the hands of established meaning and structure. Our bodies are not aligned in the same ways, and our thoughts, given space, are so much more than we have let them be. We don't need to deliver anything. We don't need to finish anything.
I have not but my hands, my feet, my body, my lungs, my voice, my mind, my breath, my tongu an unending list. I will not shift my forminto a preconceived (such a shell of a word, a cage, predetermined, too) immutable shape. I will work without the constraining luxury of empty rules.
In Diane Ackerman's Book " A natural history of the senses", she speaks of a composer ( Villa Lobos, I think, could be wrong), who would sketch the outlinrd of a mountain range, from a different vantage point each day. He would take this drawing of ups and downs, lines cy=urving and sharp, rising to blend, and sit at the piano, composing along with, against this image, music structured, following, this image. These lines.
I wish to live so organically, and create by what we live, what we see, and what we make of it. Not to have to tell a story by structure, upholding past visions of philosophy and struggle. It is not a brutal abandonment of form, but a restructuring through out deeply subjective selves.
"Soft gentle rebel, let the sun pierce the moments of spring"-Hawksley Workman.
I fight too hard, we fight forward too quickly and strongly, and misinterpret what it means to live our own worlds, to live outside the violent damands of this harsh and hardening society. Gentleness is not weakness, the sharp edges can be cooled and made smooth by rustling leaves. My body can heal if I let it breathe, and my emotions can thrive if I don't press too hard at them.
Trauma needs to be held gently and lovingly in our hands ( and we are all traumatized in this world). A kind touch that skin can settle into with a blessing.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
ow. Yeah, that's pretty much it.
Too much heartburn to write. As a 26th birthday gift, I would love to not have an ulcer. That would be lovely. The whole stomach is destroying itself from the inside thing is not so much fun. It's distracting. I can think of prettier things to suffer from. Ennui. Nobody says "Oh, I just suffer from the ennui" anymore ( so much classier if you add "the" in front of it). Although, i suppose that ennui is just inherently boring, given what it is, so maybe it's not prettier. Though, other than perhaps an attending sallowness, someone suffering from ennui would look prettier than someone suffering from an ulcer. Less of the whole doubled over in pain, shallow breathing aspects. Anyways. No writing due to pain.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Songs
I get stuck on certain songs. Sometimes, I can’t even listen to an artist’s whole album because I’m so absolutely in love with just one song. Today was a music day. I probably listened to about six hours of music. When I can't do anything else, I can still listen to music. It keeps me whole. Brings me back to earth, back to myself when I'm fearful and panicking.These are the songs that have enraptured and captured me today ( and mostly for the last few days.:
“Memory Picture”-Terami Hirsch
“I cut six inches off my hair so I won’t feel pretty, and I walk in public where I won’t drown. Make it stop”…she’s so lyrically simple yet defined in this song, accompanied by chord progressions that just catch in my chest. Such a sad sad song that feels like home to me. A punch to the gut kind of song, brutally gentle. I love emotionally confessional songs, intimate and hands held open, bare and vulnerable, a life explored and shared.
“Sweet Chariot”-Charlotte Martin
Ms Martin is my most recent musical true love. While I’ve been listening to Ms Hirsch for about 7 or 8 years, I just started listening to C.M. about a month or two ago. This song, again, is quite a simple chord progression, all piano and voice, uninterrupted, and close. Songs like this keep me sane, keep me feeling as though I am a human being. That emotions exists and flow through us, and that sadness and working through deep grief is such a part of life. The production is immaculate, sounds like being in a small room with a large wall window looking out onto a field or a forest, with a piano against one wall, with this song being played. Another very intimate sounding song. Present and alive, not just a recording. Living music.
“What we want”-Brittain Ashford
This one is just. This one is my heart. Short and sweet and sorrowful. Such a small song, “ and how were we to know we’d spend the rest of our lives trying to forget what made us who we are”, and such description, heartfelt cleverness. A love song that is an offering, again, another song that feels like palms stretched widely out, heart in hands, still beating vividly. “ I found you washing windows on some 32nd floor and I was pushing World Books door to door, and haven’t you ever wanted to know everything, and that’s exactly what it is I am offering you”-she writes such a story in three tiny verses, as though they are the most important musings ever. And this strong as warm voice over tinny, thin, and inviting instruments. So homemade and lovely. I can’t get over this song.
“Sea of Possibility”-Noe Venable
Dreams of the end, and new beginnings. “ With you I want to taste this freedom, with you remember life’s divinity, without you this love I take with me into the sea of possibility".Awake at night, the moon shining in. She makes clichéd poetic images completely new again with whistling and piano and marimba or something, and sort of beat boxing, into a sweet and slightly despondent but not too despairful and through to hopeful again. This song is the sea.
“Kimberly”-Patti Smith
An outside song, environment, storms and shatterings, kind of a companion piece to the imagery in the Noe Venable song. “the sea rushes up my knees like blame and I feel like just some misplaced Joan of Arc” is quite possibly one of my favorite lyrics ever. I’ve been listening to this song for about ten years, and I continuously forget what it is, that in the melodic and instrumental repetition are these stunning words, still so alive, more than thirty years after being recorded. Instants captured in art, and returned to life through the act of listening. A handing off of history, of experience, into a new form, someone else’s imaginative experience. Art is such an extraordinary and strange thing. Familiar and yet completely distant and unknown.
“Summer in the City”-Regina Spektor
It’s the first line, “Summer in the city means cleavage, cleavage, cleavage” that draws me in smiling, and the witticisms continue, but it’s also such a sad, sad song, and these two things working so brazenly with and against each other just creates magic. Quiet plinky piano and pauses, then full chords and her voice. Passionate and detached at once, little story and noticings bunched…”and it’s summer in the city and you’re long gone from this city, and I start to miss you baby sometimes”, the choir or something comes in. A perfect ending song to a perfect album, “Begin to Hope”. It kind of makes me want to puke it’s such an amazing song.
“Got a Suitcase Got Regrets”-Tom Mcrae
It’s the chorus. When the piano comes in, heavy and quiet. The whole arrangement to this song is stunning, different sounds meandering in and out, repeating, then disappearing. “But all I know is, I’m not ready yet, for the light to dim, got a suitcase, got regrets, but I’m hopeful yet, and I’ll raise this glass of wine and I’ll say your name”, piano, cello, not particularly the best lyrics ever, but they get to me. I get them. In fact, this isn’t a great song in any way, but sometimes, those are the best ones. Yeah, it’s the chorus. “So wake up pretty girl, see the hope in small things, disappointment can wear you thin…”.
“Recessional”-Vienna Teng
“It’s so beautiful here, she says. This moment now, this moment now…” starts the most heartstopping song. Literally, Vienna Teng is all about the spaces between notes, and the sweetness that lingers in and after each small moment of sound. Lyrically, I can’t even begin, so many images following each other, the separation of words echoing the music. Definitely a late at night, alone and longing song. She’s not afraid to play with single notes, not afraid to let suspension take over, then falling into water piano flows. Reflective and bittersweet. It’s almost a poetic novel. “who are you taking coffee no sugar, who are you echoing street signs, who are you the stranger in the shell of a lover, dark curtains drawn by the passage of time”. Lost and found.
“Another Song About the Darkness”-Lauren Hoffman
Another comfortable, recognizable home song. “And you’re almost dead, you’re almost dead…and I wish I could hang out up in the sky and be the light to shine you home, so I write another song about the darkness and how you’re not alone”. Nothing special electronics and synths, almost trip-hoppy but saved from that in simplicity. This is just a me song, something that I recognize myself in way too much, from both points of view in the song. It’s a warm blanket song. Like the green blanket at my apartment.
“Redeemed”-Charlotte Martin
“Every tree has got her root, every girl forbidden fruit and got her demons…one to three the flashback to get me on the one two four the threat of the memory. Where is the end for me to reach, where is the moral I’ll ever teach myself, in all the black in all the grief, I am redeemed”. I can’t really say anything about this song. It just perfectly encapsulates where I am, what I feel like most of the time, how I get through the day. Redeemed is such a big word, such a loaded word, and she somehow manages to bring it down to a bone deep level that makes sense. This song inhabits my days and mind. The drums and piano that come right after the chorus, and the piano all through the second verse. In and out of restraint and passion near the end, so amazing.
“Various Stages”-Great Lake Swimmers
“ I have seen you in various stages of dress. I have seen you through various states of madness”, all sung in a strong yet tremulous voice, with the most beautiful soft banjo playing. It’s a forest song, a field song all about outside, yet so close to the inside. My bones feel both heavier and lighter with this waltz. So beautiful, and quiet, and bold, gentle and reckless. I’ve been listening to so many pianos lately, and this was the song that brought stringed instruments back to me, balancing.
“Diagram of Love”-Terami Hirsch
My day doesn’t feel complete until I’ve listened to this song. Heartbeats and pianos. “This is not our failure. They speak in wordless tongues. Their hearts explore each void, looking for a diagram of love. This is not our failure, this is our compromise. The disintegration of hearts uncared for…”. This song is an encapsulation of all of Terami Hirsch’s music, how electronic music can sound organic and whole, mixing with a piano and voice. “There is no perfect formation, there has never been enough. There are only passing pleasures that we beautify to make a diagram of love”. I love the repetition an d reinvention, word like “formation” and “diagram”, making sciencely terms organic and down to earth, about the everyday.
“Human Remains”- Tom Mcrae
I lost my first copy of the album this is off of, “Just Like Blood”. I still have the case, just no cd. So I bought it again a few days ago, because I absolutely had to hear it. It was the only thing I wanted to listen to. “Our history is just in our blood, and history like love, is never enough”. The arrangement just manages to be complex yet intensely simple simultaneously. Much like his lyrics. “This is not enough for me, this is not enough for any of us to be.”.
“Streetlight”-Tom Mcrae
I may as well list the entire “Just Like blood" album.I haven’t really listened to Tom Mcrae in about two or three years, but his debut album is one of the most emotionally stunning works I’ve ever heard. It’s up there with Tori Amos’s “Boys for Pele”. Yet it’s also one of the most intimate singer-songwritery albums, which is what I love. The ability for an musician to make intense music and still have it sound and feel like you’re reading your favorite novel, or listening to someone across the table tell an impossibly philosophical and beautiful story. That’s how all of these songs tie together. They all have that feeling, that they are with you, not beyond and out of reach.
“Memory Picture”-Terami Hirsch
“I cut six inches off my hair so I won’t feel pretty, and I walk in public where I won’t drown. Make it stop”…she’s so lyrically simple yet defined in this song, accompanied by chord progressions that just catch in my chest. Such a sad sad song that feels like home to me. A punch to the gut kind of song, brutally gentle. I love emotionally confessional songs, intimate and hands held open, bare and vulnerable, a life explored and shared.
“Sweet Chariot”-Charlotte Martin
Ms Martin is my most recent musical true love. While I’ve been listening to Ms Hirsch for about 7 or 8 years, I just started listening to C.M. about a month or two ago. This song, again, is quite a simple chord progression, all piano and voice, uninterrupted, and close. Songs like this keep me sane, keep me feeling as though I am a human being. That emotions exists and flow through us, and that sadness and working through deep grief is such a part of life. The production is immaculate, sounds like being in a small room with a large wall window looking out onto a field or a forest, with a piano against one wall, with this song being played. Another very intimate sounding song. Present and alive, not just a recording. Living music.
“What we want”-Brittain Ashford
This one is just. This one is my heart. Short and sweet and sorrowful. Such a small song, “ and how were we to know we’d spend the rest of our lives trying to forget what made us who we are”, and such description, heartfelt cleverness. A love song that is an offering, again, another song that feels like palms stretched widely out, heart in hands, still beating vividly. “ I found you washing windows on some 32nd floor and I was pushing World Books door to door, and haven’t you ever wanted to know everything, and that’s exactly what it is I am offering you”-she writes such a story in three tiny verses, as though they are the most important musings ever. And this strong as warm voice over tinny, thin, and inviting instruments. So homemade and lovely. I can’t get over this song.
“Sea of Possibility”-Noe Venable
Dreams of the end, and new beginnings. “ With you I want to taste this freedom, with you remember life’s divinity, without you this love I take with me into the sea of possibility".Awake at night, the moon shining in. She makes clichéd poetic images completely new again with whistling and piano and marimba or something, and sort of beat boxing, into a sweet and slightly despondent but not too despairful and through to hopeful again. This song is the sea.
“Kimberly”-Patti Smith
An outside song, environment, storms and shatterings, kind of a companion piece to the imagery in the Noe Venable song. “the sea rushes up my knees like blame and I feel like just some misplaced Joan of Arc” is quite possibly one of my favorite lyrics ever. I’ve been listening to this song for about ten years, and I continuously forget what it is, that in the melodic and instrumental repetition are these stunning words, still so alive, more than thirty years after being recorded. Instants captured in art, and returned to life through the act of listening. A handing off of history, of experience, into a new form, someone else’s imaginative experience. Art is such an extraordinary and strange thing. Familiar and yet completely distant and unknown.
“Summer in the City”-Regina Spektor
It’s the first line, “Summer in the city means cleavage, cleavage, cleavage” that draws me in smiling, and the witticisms continue, but it’s also such a sad, sad song, and these two things working so brazenly with and against each other just creates magic. Quiet plinky piano and pauses, then full chords and her voice. Passionate and detached at once, little story and noticings bunched…”and it’s summer in the city and you’re long gone from this city, and I start to miss you baby sometimes”, the choir or something comes in. A perfect ending song to a perfect album, “Begin to Hope”. It kind of makes me want to puke it’s such an amazing song.
“Got a Suitcase Got Regrets”-Tom Mcrae
It’s the chorus. When the piano comes in, heavy and quiet. The whole arrangement to this song is stunning, different sounds meandering in and out, repeating, then disappearing. “But all I know is, I’m not ready yet, for the light to dim, got a suitcase, got regrets, but I’m hopeful yet, and I’ll raise this glass of wine and I’ll say your name”, piano, cello, not particularly the best lyrics ever, but they get to me. I get them. In fact, this isn’t a great song in any way, but sometimes, those are the best ones. Yeah, it’s the chorus. “So wake up pretty girl, see the hope in small things, disappointment can wear you thin…”.
“Recessional”-Vienna Teng
“It’s so beautiful here, she says. This moment now, this moment now…” starts the most heartstopping song. Literally, Vienna Teng is all about the spaces between notes, and the sweetness that lingers in and after each small moment of sound. Lyrically, I can’t even begin, so many images following each other, the separation of words echoing the music. Definitely a late at night, alone and longing song. She’s not afraid to play with single notes, not afraid to let suspension take over, then falling into water piano flows. Reflective and bittersweet. It’s almost a poetic novel. “who are you taking coffee no sugar, who are you echoing street signs, who are you the stranger in the shell of a lover, dark curtains drawn by the passage of time”. Lost and found.
“Another Song About the Darkness”-Lauren Hoffman
Another comfortable, recognizable home song. “And you’re almost dead, you’re almost dead…and I wish I could hang out up in the sky and be the light to shine you home, so I write another song about the darkness and how you’re not alone”. Nothing special electronics and synths, almost trip-hoppy but saved from that in simplicity. This is just a me song, something that I recognize myself in way too much, from both points of view in the song. It’s a warm blanket song. Like the green blanket at my apartment.
“Redeemed”-Charlotte Martin
“Every tree has got her root, every girl forbidden fruit and got her demons…one to three the flashback to get me on the one two four the threat of the memory. Where is the end for me to reach, where is the moral I’ll ever teach myself, in all the black in all the grief, I am redeemed”. I can’t really say anything about this song. It just perfectly encapsulates where I am, what I feel like most of the time, how I get through the day. Redeemed is such a big word, such a loaded word, and she somehow manages to bring it down to a bone deep level that makes sense. This song inhabits my days and mind. The drums and piano that come right after the chorus, and the piano all through the second verse. In and out of restraint and passion near the end, so amazing.
“Various Stages”-Great Lake Swimmers
“ I have seen you in various stages of dress. I have seen you through various states of madness”, all sung in a strong yet tremulous voice, with the most beautiful soft banjo playing. It’s a forest song, a field song all about outside, yet so close to the inside. My bones feel both heavier and lighter with this waltz. So beautiful, and quiet, and bold, gentle and reckless. I’ve been listening to so many pianos lately, and this was the song that brought stringed instruments back to me, balancing.
“Diagram of Love”-Terami Hirsch
My day doesn’t feel complete until I’ve listened to this song. Heartbeats and pianos. “This is not our failure. They speak in wordless tongues. Their hearts explore each void, looking for a diagram of love. This is not our failure, this is our compromise. The disintegration of hearts uncared for…”. This song is an encapsulation of all of Terami Hirsch’s music, how electronic music can sound organic and whole, mixing with a piano and voice. “There is no perfect formation, there has never been enough. There are only passing pleasures that we beautify to make a diagram of love”. I love the repetition an d reinvention, word like “formation” and “diagram”, making sciencely terms organic and down to earth, about the everyday.
“Human Remains”- Tom Mcrae
I lost my first copy of the album this is off of, “Just Like Blood”. I still have the case, just no cd. So I bought it again a few days ago, because I absolutely had to hear it. It was the only thing I wanted to listen to. “Our history is just in our blood, and history like love, is never enough”. The arrangement just manages to be complex yet intensely simple simultaneously. Much like his lyrics. “This is not enough for me, this is not enough for any of us to be.”.
“Streetlight”-Tom Mcrae
I may as well list the entire “Just Like blood" album.I haven’t really listened to Tom Mcrae in about two or three years, but his debut album is one of the most emotionally stunning works I’ve ever heard. It’s up there with Tori Amos’s “Boys for Pele”. Yet it’s also one of the most intimate singer-songwritery albums, which is what I love. The ability for an musician to make intense music and still have it sound and feel like you’re reading your favorite novel, or listening to someone across the table tell an impossibly philosophical and beautiful story. That’s how all of these songs tie together. They all have that feeling, that they are with you, not beyond and out of reach.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Love or a lack of.
I don’t feel loved here in my parents’ home. I feel fragmented and harassed and under constant attack. Little attacks, but I’m always on edge, waiting to be told that I did something wrong, that I have to do something that I don’t want to do. My life is made up of little moments of dread. I expect the worst. Always. How can it be love, if I’m stifled and broken and failing and falling apart?
I don’t know how to give love other people, and I’m afraid to love other people, because I have such a skewed sense of what it means to love and be loved. Love seems to be an obligation, something I have to work desperately hard to earn, something that is always in the periphery, just out of my ability to see clearly or grasp adequately. Yes, love has always been something I’ve had to earn, not something I’ve been given freely. I had to do right, I had to be perfect, I had to make sure the other person was entirely happy, entirely pleased in every aspect of their life that I could affect before I could even think of being loved. And I think that by love I mean even the mere acknowledgement that I existed.
I just feel that everything I have is something I’m now in the process of paying back. For example, I feel as though I owe my parents thousands and thousands of dollars for all of the money they spent in raising me. I feel as though I am a bad person because I don’t have money to give them. At the same time, I have this acidic anger lodged in my stomach that just wants to lash out and scream at them for being horrible people and doing everything wrong in raising me. And this makes me feel even worst, because it all then becomes double guilt. Like I was a very expensive mistake who doesn’t deserve anything that she has, and never will.
These thoughts make my heart hurt. Literally, I get chest pains that ache up through my left chest, shoulder, and neck when I think about these things.
So, I’m 25, financially in debt about $5000, and believe that I owe my parents extraordinary amounts of money, so I’m emotionally in debt about $100,000, which I’ve been paying for the last 20-odd years in guilt, depression, existential crises, tears, headaches, stomach, and muscles pain.
And this is such a hard place to be, taking responsibility for myself, for my emotions and behaviours, without blaming. I feel like I’m blaming my parents for ruining my life, and then I feel guilty and sick about that , like I’m a horrible person for even considering that they could have had any kind of impact on the person that I grew into, which makes everything just topple over that much further.
The thing is, my parents have, unintentionally, made me into themselves, and neither of them can see this. Neither of them can recognize that all of my fears, pains, and breakdowns are pieces of themselves that I am showing to them. That I have picked up and grown into. They think that what I am, what I have become over the years has to do with me and my experiences solely. They are too afraid to see just how fucked up and unhappy they are.
I think that, from the moment I was born, I’ve been trying to make my parents happy. Desperately trying, and nothing, ever, nothing I could do took away the pain and suffering, the deep unhappiness that welled from inside of each of them and flowed and pooled, caking over all of our lives. And I internalized the fact that I couldn’t make them happy, which meant that I could never do anything right. I was in, and continue to be in, a completely no-win situation. My parents are not happy people, and it’s not my fault. But I believe that it is. Each of those times when I did something, who knows what, thousands of attempts at making them happy, or in other words, trying to get their love, I was fundamentally rejected. I experienced small trauma after small trauma, which embedded themselves in my emotional core, in my intellectual mind, in my survival instincts. I am a failure because I failed to be lovable. If my parents couldn’t even purely love me, than obviously there was something inherently wrong with me.
Their love was always tempered with sadness. Myself as child interpreted that as being my fault. I was always too aware, but didn’t know how to interpret what I was experiencing.
I’m listening to one of my favorite songs, “Streetlight” by Tom Mcrae, and the lyric that always hits me is “and every night I breathe her in, feel her sink into my skin, still I feel I am envious and obvious and desperate for your love, I am shattered by and criticized and still I crave your touch”. Which pretty much sums up my life. I scramble and struggle to fit pieces of myself back together, to hold delicate fragments together with any kind of glue or masking tape or blood that I can find, but that all of this work is completely undone by my need to be loved, and my inevitable failure at it.
So no wonder I feel this almost unidentifiable nausea/sadness/heartburn/utter exhaustion/failure when I think of love. That is what love is to me, that is what I’ve learned it to be. No wonder I have so much difficulty in being a friend, no wonder I find it impossible to be in a relationship. It hurts less to not let anything in rather than be faced with failure again. And the anxiety… infant fear of parents not caring enough to protect me, childhood experience of emotionally and physically being rejected by my parents.
Being shown that there is something wrong with you is a very different experience than having it implied. When I was 9, my exhausted parents decided that I was an unreasonable and emotionally uncontrollable child, and after seeking help from one ( one! Only one! My mother, who is the queen of third and forth medical opinions!) psychiatrist had me locked away on the psych ward of childrens hospital for 6 weeks. I was pathologized, rejected, medicalized, and treated cruelly and coldly by my parents and a number of health care workers who were supposed to be healing and helping emotionally damaged children. My parents abandoned me, and told me it was my own fault. That’s the love I know. Blame and abandonment, baked with a lovely sugary icing of guilt. Sure makes me want to go out and find more of it. At least my fear of abandonment is justified. I guess.
Untangling all of these things is such a process of repetition. Repetition has such a negative connotation, but sometimes, it is this act which brings a certain sense of clarity, especially emotional clarity, that is hard to discern elsewise ( elsewise being the non-existent replacement word, interchangeable word, for otherwise.). What else is writing, but finding different evocative ways of saying the same things over and over?
I don’t know how to give love other people, and I’m afraid to love other people, because I have such a skewed sense of what it means to love and be loved. Love seems to be an obligation, something I have to work desperately hard to earn, something that is always in the periphery, just out of my ability to see clearly or grasp adequately. Yes, love has always been something I’ve had to earn, not something I’ve been given freely. I had to do right, I had to be perfect, I had to make sure the other person was entirely happy, entirely pleased in every aspect of their life that I could affect before I could even think of being loved. And I think that by love I mean even the mere acknowledgement that I existed.
I just feel that everything I have is something I’m now in the process of paying back. For example, I feel as though I owe my parents thousands and thousands of dollars for all of the money they spent in raising me. I feel as though I am a bad person because I don’t have money to give them. At the same time, I have this acidic anger lodged in my stomach that just wants to lash out and scream at them for being horrible people and doing everything wrong in raising me. And this makes me feel even worst, because it all then becomes double guilt. Like I was a very expensive mistake who doesn’t deserve anything that she has, and never will.
These thoughts make my heart hurt. Literally, I get chest pains that ache up through my left chest, shoulder, and neck when I think about these things.
So, I’m 25, financially in debt about $5000, and believe that I owe my parents extraordinary amounts of money, so I’m emotionally in debt about $100,000, which I’ve been paying for the last 20-odd years in guilt, depression, existential crises, tears, headaches, stomach, and muscles pain.
And this is such a hard place to be, taking responsibility for myself, for my emotions and behaviours, without blaming. I feel like I’m blaming my parents for ruining my life, and then I feel guilty and sick about that , like I’m a horrible person for even considering that they could have had any kind of impact on the person that I grew into, which makes everything just topple over that much further.
The thing is, my parents have, unintentionally, made me into themselves, and neither of them can see this. Neither of them can recognize that all of my fears, pains, and breakdowns are pieces of themselves that I am showing to them. That I have picked up and grown into. They think that what I am, what I have become over the years has to do with me and my experiences solely. They are too afraid to see just how fucked up and unhappy they are.
I think that, from the moment I was born, I’ve been trying to make my parents happy. Desperately trying, and nothing, ever, nothing I could do took away the pain and suffering, the deep unhappiness that welled from inside of each of them and flowed and pooled, caking over all of our lives. And I internalized the fact that I couldn’t make them happy, which meant that I could never do anything right. I was in, and continue to be in, a completely no-win situation. My parents are not happy people, and it’s not my fault. But I believe that it is. Each of those times when I did something, who knows what, thousands of attempts at making them happy, or in other words, trying to get their love, I was fundamentally rejected. I experienced small trauma after small trauma, which embedded themselves in my emotional core, in my intellectual mind, in my survival instincts. I am a failure because I failed to be lovable. If my parents couldn’t even purely love me, than obviously there was something inherently wrong with me.
Their love was always tempered with sadness. Myself as child interpreted that as being my fault. I was always too aware, but didn’t know how to interpret what I was experiencing.
I’m listening to one of my favorite songs, “Streetlight” by Tom Mcrae, and the lyric that always hits me is “and every night I breathe her in, feel her sink into my skin, still I feel I am envious and obvious and desperate for your love, I am shattered by and criticized and still I crave your touch”. Which pretty much sums up my life. I scramble and struggle to fit pieces of myself back together, to hold delicate fragments together with any kind of glue or masking tape or blood that I can find, but that all of this work is completely undone by my need to be loved, and my inevitable failure at it.
So no wonder I feel this almost unidentifiable nausea/sadness/heartburn/utter exhaustion/failure when I think of love. That is what love is to me, that is what I’ve learned it to be. No wonder I have so much difficulty in being a friend, no wonder I find it impossible to be in a relationship. It hurts less to not let anything in rather than be faced with failure again. And the anxiety… infant fear of parents not caring enough to protect me, childhood experience of emotionally and physically being rejected by my parents.
Being shown that there is something wrong with you is a very different experience than having it implied. When I was 9, my exhausted parents decided that I was an unreasonable and emotionally uncontrollable child, and after seeking help from one ( one! Only one! My mother, who is the queen of third and forth medical opinions!) psychiatrist had me locked away on the psych ward of childrens hospital for 6 weeks. I was pathologized, rejected, medicalized, and treated cruelly and coldly by my parents and a number of health care workers who were supposed to be healing and helping emotionally damaged children. My parents abandoned me, and told me it was my own fault. That’s the love I know. Blame and abandonment, baked with a lovely sugary icing of guilt. Sure makes me want to go out and find more of it. At least my fear of abandonment is justified. I guess.
Untangling all of these things is such a process of repetition. Repetition has such a negative connotation, but sometimes, it is this act which brings a certain sense of clarity, especially emotional clarity, that is hard to discern elsewise ( elsewise being the non-existent replacement word, interchangeable word, for otherwise.). What else is writing, but finding different evocative ways of saying the same things over and over?
Monday, July 14, 2008
Just to say
That I am blessed to be surrounded by astounding and extraordinary people. Artists. Friends. Who write, and read, and talk about writing and reading what we write. And cry. And dance. And drink. And console me when my body malfunctions and my brain stops working. If you're reading this, you probably know who you are. Because you read this a lot. And I mention you a lot. And I love you a lot.
Ps. Everytime someone says " I love you" to me it's a struggle not to burst into tears. Knowledge. Is this sad? I don't mean pathetic. It just happens. It's overwhelming, and part of me doesn't believe it, and part of me believes it too much, and I think we categorize love too much, and have become so enamoured and obsessed with the one true love thing that we can't experience the romance and love of everyday things and all relationships, not just "romantic ones" ( which are also ridiculously important in their own right).
Ps. Everytime someone says " I love you" to me it's a struggle not to burst into tears. Knowledge. Is this sad? I don't mean pathetic. It just happens. It's overwhelming, and part of me doesn't believe it, and part of me believes it too much, and I think we categorize love too much, and have become so enamoured and obsessed with the one true love thing that we can't experience the romance and love of everyday things and all relationships, not just "romantic ones" ( which are also ridiculously important in their own right).
Poem for miss j
Joann asked me to write a song about/for her. I can't remember which. Always turns into both, anyways. So I sat down at the piano and wrote a song. Hopefully it will cheer her up, not make her feel sad. It's not really a sad song. But maybe it's more of a poem. Who knows...
There's no need to stutter again
or hide what you've been looking for
on the edge, ribbons and dresses,
a vixen, a wisher, a planet
stones crumble up against your feet
hear the contours turn on your tongue
seven leaves slip through the tea
a future of blooms and words undone
Leave your corset untied and
let the laces drag on the ground
behind you
followed by birds
magpies toughen the hem of your skirt
it's fine to be in tatters
leaves spaces for a heart to mend it's edges
photograph a figure not slighted
your toes turn away from the lens
in the distance
into the night
you gather the embers
and throw them to the trees
Burning up
the roots you were granted
holding the ashes aloud
you clear yourself of him
and begin
you keep the moon
in the planes of your bones
listen hard.
There's no need to stutter again
or hide what you've been looking for
on the edge, ribbons and dresses,
a vixen, a wisher, a planet
stones crumble up against your feet
hear the contours turn on your tongue
seven leaves slip through the tea
a future of blooms and words undone
Leave your corset untied and
let the laces drag on the ground
behind you
followed by birds
magpies toughen the hem of your skirt
it's fine to be in tatters
leaves spaces for a heart to mend it's edges
photograph a figure not slighted
your toes turn away from the lens
in the distance
into the night
you gather the embers
and throw them to the trees
Burning up
the roots you were granted
holding the ashes aloud
you clear yourself of him
and begin
you keep the moon
in the planes of your bones
listen hard.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Just a poem
Distance is in our blood tonight
Capture three drops and squeeze it
Between thin glass slides
To see the spaces
Past microscopic
And into the trails of seashore
Ribbons again
Not an emptiness of time
Vacated and hollowed of air
Palm prints on all the sugar canisters
Lines nearly followable, just
A second too fine for proof
Don’t worry
I’ll deny that I know more
Than one taste
My sweetness isn’t coveted
Until I select the granules
To be distributed through
Ancient wires
Back from their rusting days
Of use
And selected with a clean breath
Alleviating perfect
Until she rises to the top
Of the allocated pile
Her tongue twists to the left,
Unsure of how to form unfinished words
Her mouth follows pace by pace
I open my palms to read their etchings,
Cool bowls of drinking water cup open
To the floor
Splashing on fading tiles
Diagrams of lifeless love
Bleeding their inkiness into the foldings
Between.
Particles find their way in.
Rub the back of my right hand along my mouth
Leaving a lipstick story to be read
By bold passerby
Who stop to stare
And take themselves holy
With a streak of red
Dyed in now to
Flaming
Lips run aimlessly bright
Sea wed
Wreathes from her arms
An underwater marriage
Floats lightly to stream
And hands with cluttered skin
Can be entwined with fine weeds
Bones to dry
Are left behind
To shiver themselves
Into sand.
*point of interest-as I was writing the last stanza I had completely forgotten I'd used sea imagery earlier. Nice subconscious circling back. I love it when that happens....*
Capture three drops and squeeze it
Between thin glass slides
To see the spaces
Past microscopic
And into the trails of seashore
Ribbons again
Not an emptiness of time
Vacated and hollowed of air
Palm prints on all the sugar canisters
Lines nearly followable, just
A second too fine for proof
Don’t worry
I’ll deny that I know more
Than one taste
My sweetness isn’t coveted
Until I select the granules
To be distributed through
Ancient wires
Back from their rusting days
Of use
And selected with a clean breath
Alleviating perfect
Until she rises to the top
Of the allocated pile
Her tongue twists to the left,
Unsure of how to form unfinished words
Her mouth follows pace by pace
I open my palms to read their etchings,
Cool bowls of drinking water cup open
To the floor
Splashing on fading tiles
Diagrams of lifeless love
Bleeding their inkiness into the foldings
Between.
Particles find their way in.
Rub the back of my right hand along my mouth
Leaving a lipstick story to be read
By bold passerby
Who stop to stare
And take themselves holy
With a streak of red
Dyed in now to
Flaming
Lips run aimlessly bright
Sea wed
Wreathes from her arms
An underwater marriage
Floats lightly to stream
And hands with cluttered skin
Can be entwined with fine weeds
Bones to dry
Are left behind
To shiver themselves
Into sand.
*point of interest-as I was writing the last stanza I had completely forgotten I'd used sea imagery earlier. Nice subconscious circling back. I love it when that happens....*
breathe. again, please.
The only part of studio work that I miss, this moment now, is the breathing. Any number of us, lying around the room, breathing, eyes closed, giving over to the breath. Doing nothing but breathing. Not working hard to meditate, not trying to be anything, other than a room full of people breathing. Breathing alone is so different, there isn’t that deep sense of importance and connection that occurs when a significant group of people are breathing with themselves with others.
Such a space in a room, the blur of energy and life slowing and widened. It becomes as if even our bones are full of air.
I don’t want to back into the studio to create, to produce something, I want to go and find a quietness with others that I can’t find on my own since my silences are different, and become a new, brightly skewered thing in presence. The grace and importance of one simple gesture repeated, focused on, becoming nothing more than what it is, yet infinitely becoming more than what it is.I want that level of focus, that point of respect for the body, in its space, in its time, coming down to the point of truly listening to the mumbling and burbling thoughts that sprint through veins and push them selves skyward through skin.
There is also the sanctity of a studio space, of a space reserve for time out of time, other realities and could bes. I just want my arms to be arms again, recognized as such, as much as they could be. No more distance from my body because I can’t be bothered to breathe and fall into the motions.
I do miss being in creative spaces with other creative people, in the stages of pre-creating, or rather, within the stages of self-reflection, of aware and unaware kinaesthetic awareness. The point at which kinaesthetic awareness truly becomes about responding to the energy, to the movements, to the lifeblood of all the other people in the room, being in a momentous and complete relationship with someone you wouldn’t otherwise have any words to share with, just by breathing and listening with your body. And responding. Accepting and responding. I miss that.
I don’t miss the pressure to be creative, to have creatively driven away from me by the rules of learning, by the rules of the theatre, by other people’s rules cry out so loud that I couldn’t determine my own rules anymore.
But I such miss the company. That underlying thread of connection that webs through the room, unnoticed but a part of everything. That is what I miss. The depts. Of connection that occur in exploratory creative times and moments. Not the creating of things. What we make ourselves, of ourselves is what is beautiful.
Such a space in a room, the blur of energy and life slowing and widened. It becomes as if even our bones are full of air.
I don’t want to back into the studio to create, to produce something, I want to go and find a quietness with others that I can’t find on my own since my silences are different, and become a new, brightly skewered thing in presence. The grace and importance of one simple gesture repeated, focused on, becoming nothing more than what it is, yet infinitely becoming more than what it is.I want that level of focus, that point of respect for the body, in its space, in its time, coming down to the point of truly listening to the mumbling and burbling thoughts that sprint through veins and push them selves skyward through skin.
There is also the sanctity of a studio space, of a space reserve for time out of time, other realities and could bes. I just want my arms to be arms again, recognized as such, as much as they could be. No more distance from my body because I can’t be bothered to breathe and fall into the motions.
I do miss being in creative spaces with other creative people, in the stages of pre-creating, or rather, within the stages of self-reflection, of aware and unaware kinaesthetic awareness. The point at which kinaesthetic awareness truly becomes about responding to the energy, to the movements, to the lifeblood of all the other people in the room, being in a momentous and complete relationship with someone you wouldn’t otherwise have any words to share with, just by breathing and listening with your body. And responding. Accepting and responding. I miss that.
I don’t miss the pressure to be creative, to have creatively driven away from me by the rules of learning, by the rules of the theatre, by other people’s rules cry out so loud that I couldn’t determine my own rules anymore.
But I such miss the company. That underlying thread of connection that webs through the room, unnoticed but a part of everything. That is what I miss. The depts. Of connection that occur in exploratory creative times and moments. Not the creating of things. What we make ourselves, of ourselves is what is beautiful.
Empathy
I read a book. It was called “Empathy”. It was written by Sarah Schulman. “You are suffering from empathy” one character says to the other at one point. The disease of caring. More than one meaning. Empathy isn’t valued as highly as it should be, the encouragement to become thick skinned narcissists is a strong draw. To function adequately in a world where the best ideas and minds are primarily used in situations and actions that create mass amounts of pain for mass amounts of people, to have empathy is in fact to suffer. To give yourself over, pass yourself along to others, hands open, palms wide, is asking for pain. But offering kindness shouldn’t be viewed as a request for pain.
You suffer from an illness, it afflicts you and affects your body, your perception of the world. Empathy, caring for others, becomes something bad, something to avoid, something that only brings wrongness. The act of empathizing is often solely associated with being with someone in their pain. As if you can’t be with someone in their joy, calm, contentment.
At many glances, through windows, heart, life is, and can be suffering, so much. If the word is suffering, is painful and awful, then to empathize at all, with anything, with anyone, with any situation, is necessarily suffering.
But I have to hopefully disagree, and say that there is empathy beyond sadness.We just don’t recognize that shared beauty is an experience of empathy. Yes, some might view my ongoing bouts of empathy as unfortunate and unnecessary. I say they keep me sane and whole, while boundaries and barriers of ice are shocks that don’t need to be so sharp.
Anyways, “Empathy” by Sarah Schulman was a great book to read, a surprise book, because I didn’t actually think I’d be able able to make it through it-I’ve been having trouble with the book reading lately. Headaches and can’t focus, no interest. So, to find a book that is poetic and realistic, more than a little gut wrenching, and yet inherently easily readable is an astounding thing. It’s a novel, but not. It’s a love story, and a lost story. It’s important and lovely. And there are some good essays and prefaces in it, too.
You suffer from an illness, it afflicts you and affects your body, your perception of the world. Empathy, caring for others, becomes something bad, something to avoid, something that only brings wrongness. The act of empathizing is often solely associated with being with someone in their pain. As if you can’t be with someone in their joy, calm, contentment.
At many glances, through windows, heart, life is, and can be suffering, so much. If the word is suffering, is painful and awful, then to empathize at all, with anything, with anyone, with any situation, is necessarily suffering.
But I have to hopefully disagree, and say that there is empathy beyond sadness.We just don’t recognize that shared beauty is an experience of empathy. Yes, some might view my ongoing bouts of empathy as unfortunate and unnecessary. I say they keep me sane and whole, while boundaries and barriers of ice are shocks that don’t need to be so sharp.
Anyways, “Empathy” by Sarah Schulman was a great book to read, a surprise book, because I didn’t actually think I’d be able able to make it through it-I’ve been having trouble with the book reading lately. Headaches and can’t focus, no interest. So, to find a book that is poetic and realistic, more than a little gut wrenching, and yet inherently easily readable is an astounding thing. It’s a novel, but not. It’s a love story, and a lost story. It’s important and lovely. And there are some good essays and prefaces in it, too.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
time
It is very difficult to slow down time. To increase the counts between heartbeats. So many seem to constantly be seeking ways to quicken the pace, to get life to open up under the strain of the pressure of speed. I just want to be able to sit and listen to a whole piece of music, instead of listening to half a song haphazardly and unfocused before moving on to a new song. I can’t hold on to anything. Not in a grabby way, but things seem to slip through before I even have an impulse to reach for them.I want to be able to see time stream by like finely breezed fog ribbons.
I feel like I’m jumping from point to point, rather than taking steps. I walk toe to heel, not heel to toe. I make more of an imprint when I walk heel to toe, and the sound of my footsteps are louder. Which I always thought was embarrassing and inconspicuous. Keeping myself off balance was safer.
Now, I want the patience to recognize a full foot on the ground. I want my mind to be clear for one minute, for the headache fog to lift and allow me just a thought that is clarity.
This requires me to slow down time. It’s possible. Put the clock away and turn off the alarm. An extension of minutes. It’s all about breathing.
I feel like I’m jumping from point to point, rather than taking steps. I walk toe to heel, not heel to toe. I make more of an imprint when I walk heel to toe, and the sound of my footsteps are louder. Which I always thought was embarrassing and inconspicuous. Keeping myself off balance was safer.
Now, I want the patience to recognize a full foot on the ground. I want my mind to be clear for one minute, for the headache fog to lift and allow me just a thought that is clarity.
This requires me to slow down time. It’s possible. Put the clock away and turn off the alarm. An extension of minutes. It’s all about breathing.
Sometimes, I just don't like making eye contact. And a piano.
I sit down at the piano. I’ve never been one much good at lessons, at the learning of things, at giving myself time to learn things. If my eyes to my brain to my hands can’t immediately interpret and do whatever it is they’re supposed to be doing, then I won’t do it. The lazy approach, maybe, the distracted way, the inability to fully concentrate aspect.
When I sit down at the piano, it’s almost too much. At least ten things could be happening at once. That’s too much, too much is expected from the piano, from piano music, the history of the instrument, and those who have played it before me.
The first instrument we all learn is our voices, and it’s also the first to frighten us away from using it.
I took recorder lessons when I was five. On a one note instrument, expectations are different. Simpler, which doesn’t mean less, but there is almost a purer sense of focus, it’s more direct and less splintered out into portions.
I played the flute, an extension of recorder woodwind thing.
I played the violin, and was awful at it. Should’ve played the cello.
Tried the guitar. I can’t play bar chords. My hands are too small, and my wrists won’t reach quite that way. Never really made sense to me, either.
Took piano lessons, loosely termed, for about five years. Serious and not serious. I like to play, I just don’t like to read music and practice practice play. I’m not so good at the repitition. I tend to zone out and lose track of what I’m doing. And I’m a perfectionist, so it’s stressful to try to play something perfectly.
The piano is an instrument with way too much history and magnificence surrounding it. The symphonies and concertos and whatever pieces that have been written on and for them. Ten notes at once. Ten! That’s a lot of harmonizing.
I should start writing songs on the glockenspiel or something. Would it let me be ok with the fact that I will never be a glockenspiel virtuoso, or when I sit down, little glockenspiel mallet in hand, will I wither at my complete lack of originality and inability to be the best and most respected glockenspiel player in the world. Who is also the most amazing piano virtuoso ever. Who is also the most amazing singer ever. Who is also the most extraordinary accordion player ever.
Why is it never enough? I don’t even want to be a virtuoso. I don’t want to dedicate the time, and I know I don’t have it in me, I just want the words. I just want the recognition of being good at something, instead of being half-hearted at way too many things. I am not actually full of this drive, I want to be happy just sitting there a glockenspiel in front of me, little mallet in hand, happily making up three note songs about trees and the shapes of leaves and our lips of imperfection. Yeah. Lips of imperfection, no idea where that one came from, but it demanded to be said.
It’s interesting though, because when I imagine myself having achieved this astounding level of success, the daydream isn’t about the creation and presentation of something extraordinary. And it’s not just about hollow recognition, either. It’s about existing in this state of meaningful beingness, and knowing I can do something. And it’s about the people I am surrounded by, and talk to, and have relationships with. I daydream about the people I could meet, these amorphous, foggy shapes that I can’t fill in, not knowing who they are or what they do or what they have to say. Only that they do something important. And I do something important. And we are all important together. Not overimportant, or full of ourselves, though. Just doing things that do something. Something.
I just can’t stand face to face, and look eye to eye, because I feel like I’m not doing good enough. Not not being good enough, but not doing good enough. This world of drive, of ambition, of accomplishment, of product, these are the only things that can be actively, or rather, easily, shared in a minute of fast and disinterested conversation. You can’t pass along the essence of a moment of silence, or introspection, or distilled happiness from stillness in a few moments of bar chatter or party talk.
And I’m all about the introspection and the essences. That’s why I’m an introvert. It even says that I like “introspection and the essences of things” in various breakdowns of my personality type. I’m an introvert. I love talking to people, but not too many. It’s difficult for me to meet new people-not the act, but the experience. I can’t sum myself up in simple gestures and speech. I always feel like I have nothing to sell in the shopping mall of being well-socialized.
Socializing is a little bit like playing the piano, I guess. When it’s kept simple and without unreasonable expectations, it’s fun and interesting and lovely. When it’s trying to be all fancy harmonics and witty conversationalist, just so much yuck. So much yuck. I like to be the girl at the party who tags along with all her nifty friends, and can kind of hide, until something not too scary or overwhelming interests her. Or better yet, just bring a small party to my house, and make sure I know at least half of the people who are there. So, if ten people show up, and I know 5 of them, chances are that, by the end of the night, I may have actually spoken to at least 2 new people. And probably only if they speak to me first. Shyness and introversion cross over into each other’s court, unknown queen. They’re different, but I have both.
I just don’t like feeling defective about my temperament and behaviour. Which I do, when I compare myself to my extroverted and well spoken friends. Which is almost everyone I know. I’ve managed to surround myself with the most outgoing, well socialized, amiable people ever. How did I manage this? A case of I attract what I want to be? Which is fine. As long as you don’t tell me I’m boring, or predictable, or uninteresting, or unsuccessful, or ridiculous, or cumbersome, or anything else that falls into any of those categories because I don’t behave the same way you do, and say no to going out places, and don’t want to live a chatty, wild, adventurous life of more of everything. That’s just not me. It’s not boring to me. I just hate that snarky, judgmental, glassy look that people give me when I don’t live up to their expectations of funness and excitement. The dismissal. I don’t need to be dismissed by anyone, I already started ignoring myself a long, long time ago. I really don’t need help.
And I realize that this is not most people I know personally, and am close to. It’s more of a grand social scheme to make me, and every other shy person in the world, feel bad about ourselves, and insignificant. And I don’t like that. At all.
Hmmm….that was all a bit angry and ranting-like. Good.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Sort of Apocalyptic poem #1
I’m talking myself around. In circles. Not around to any one particular place or point of voice. I’m restless and unproductive. Not that I’m necessarily a big fan of productivity, but I like to be able to write at least at little bit each day, at least a blog entry or something. But here, even though my brain knows I’m not right back where I was, sitting here, at this computer, in this house, everything just lodges, and gets stuck in a stupor of blah. The only word I want to type, the only word I even want to say is blah. It’s not even malaise or ennui, it’s just pure blah.
Numb blah. I sound like a really exciting person with a really exciting life when I say that.
I’m just having this pull towards wanting to create/not wanting to great. All of my energies all tangled up into expectation again, with this whole school thing. Yes, the school thing. What am I doing?
I feel like I’m making a huge mistake, I feel like I’m not doing enough, I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. Which I don’t. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m so afraid to be in debt.
I’m listening to Charlotte Martin’s “Veins”.
So, the debt thing. My brain makes this connection, seriously, this is how I think: school=debt=no money=having to work a crappy job=not able to work crappy job=being unemployed=not having anywhere to live/having to live back at my parents house=being sick all the time…and actually, I’m not entirely sure about the logical thought pattern continued, but somehow, it ends up with me either dying of some horrible disease, the end of the world, being violently murdered in my sleep, or being singed and painfully disintegrated by nuclear weapons in an apocalyptic third world war. Not to mention plain old heartbreak.
Negative thought patterns?Hmmm…
Seriously, does everybody think like this? It’s pretty unconducive to living a day to day life, so I have to assume that I’m of a relatively small minority of those with constant crazy brain.
And school. The only kind of school or material that I feel I should be studying is basic survivalist methods. The “how to live in the woods with only a knife and a well memorized encyclopedia of all of the non-poisonous edible plants of North America” kind of survival. Oh yeah, and maybe some self defense too. I can’t justify being a scholar, being a teacher, being a lawyer, I can sort of justify being a nurse, or a midwife, or a doctor, because those things have an immediate, emergency related impact. But anything else. Useless waste of time that I should be using to get prepared.
Crazy brain, I know. It’s embarrassing.
Who else wakes up in the morning and wonders if they should dress for wilderness survival, just in case. Who has this fear based sense of living where getting and being prepared for, literally, the worst that could possibly happen, is the only possible way to be.
I get that other people have anxiety. But it seems to be contained within the mundane. Not that the fear is any less, not that the feeling are any less, whether it’s worry about a paper, or a date, but answering each possibility with “ well, it doesn’t matter if I do that anyways because the world is just going to end horribly”, is just a little dramatic. Gets a little bit annoying.
Makes me sound really crazy. So I wrote a poem. Because it’s ok to be crazy if you’re a poet. It’s all in the name of art. I can be a winely lush then, too, and it’s all ok. Except for the liver. My poor over used, prescription chemically abused liver. Come on, liver, regenerate!
Sort of Apocalyptic poem #1
Caught by the wing
Pulled from the tree
To my nesting spot
Upended roots
Can I kill this bird
With a rock
Though the air
To the ground
And over the fire
No matches, no matches
My hands burning thin
Wearing my clothes
For seventeen days
Jeans dirt thick
Shoes speaking endeavored steps
Mouth to the ground
Listening for shoots
What’s ruined is left behind
Shoulders tensed to the wind
Bring ashes, bringing ashes swinging
No trees
To run to now
Rocks dropped on bones
Smashed the stones to dust
And the only repairs will be
Volcanic ones
A moment with my hands
Deep in the dirt
No breathing
No stillness in the sun
We only drink from the rain
And left all thoughts of mercy
In the pockets we sewed up
And left in shifting closets
A simple folding door
Unhinged
All veins have been suspended
And pipelines burst
As we have spread ourselves along
A wonder,
Which ground you are in
And whether you’re solid still
I’m barely here, for long.
Numb blah. I sound like a really exciting person with a really exciting life when I say that.
I’m just having this pull towards wanting to create/not wanting to great. All of my energies all tangled up into expectation again, with this whole school thing. Yes, the school thing. What am I doing?
I feel like I’m making a huge mistake, I feel like I’m not doing enough, I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. Which I don’t. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m so afraid to be in debt.
I’m listening to Charlotte Martin’s “Veins”.
So, the debt thing. My brain makes this connection, seriously, this is how I think: school=debt=no money=having to work a crappy job=not able to work crappy job=being unemployed=not having anywhere to live/having to live back at my parents house=being sick all the time…and actually, I’m not entirely sure about the logical thought pattern continued, but somehow, it ends up with me either dying of some horrible disease, the end of the world, being violently murdered in my sleep, or being singed and painfully disintegrated by nuclear weapons in an apocalyptic third world war. Not to mention plain old heartbreak.
Negative thought patterns?Hmmm…
Seriously, does everybody think like this? It’s pretty unconducive to living a day to day life, so I have to assume that I’m of a relatively small minority of those with constant crazy brain.
And school. The only kind of school or material that I feel I should be studying is basic survivalist methods. The “how to live in the woods with only a knife and a well memorized encyclopedia of all of the non-poisonous edible plants of North America” kind of survival. Oh yeah, and maybe some self defense too. I can’t justify being a scholar, being a teacher, being a lawyer, I can sort of justify being a nurse, or a midwife, or a doctor, because those things have an immediate, emergency related impact. But anything else. Useless waste of time that I should be using to get prepared.
Crazy brain, I know. It’s embarrassing.
Who else wakes up in the morning and wonders if they should dress for wilderness survival, just in case. Who has this fear based sense of living where getting and being prepared for, literally, the worst that could possibly happen, is the only possible way to be.
I get that other people have anxiety. But it seems to be contained within the mundane. Not that the fear is any less, not that the feeling are any less, whether it’s worry about a paper, or a date, but answering each possibility with “ well, it doesn’t matter if I do that anyways because the world is just going to end horribly”, is just a little dramatic. Gets a little bit annoying.
Makes me sound really crazy. So I wrote a poem. Because it’s ok to be crazy if you’re a poet. It’s all in the name of art. I can be a winely lush then, too, and it’s all ok. Except for the liver. My poor over used, prescription chemically abused liver. Come on, liver, regenerate!
Sort of Apocalyptic poem #1
Caught by the wing
Pulled from the tree
To my nesting spot
Upended roots
Can I kill this bird
With a rock
Though the air
To the ground
And over the fire
No matches, no matches
My hands burning thin
Wearing my clothes
For seventeen days
Jeans dirt thick
Shoes speaking endeavored steps
Mouth to the ground
Listening for shoots
What’s ruined is left behind
Shoulders tensed to the wind
Bring ashes, bringing ashes swinging
No trees
To run to now
Rocks dropped on bones
Smashed the stones to dust
And the only repairs will be
Volcanic ones
A moment with my hands
Deep in the dirt
No breathing
No stillness in the sun
We only drink from the rain
And left all thoughts of mercy
In the pockets we sewed up
And left in shifting closets
A simple folding door
Unhinged
All veins have been suspended
And pipelines burst
As we have spread ourselves along
A wonder,
Which ground you are in
And whether you’re solid still
I’m barely here, for long.
Monday, July 07, 2008
9 years on and a song that's not about that big term...
So, this one is a song that I've revisited after about 9 or 10 years. I recorded an earlier version on a cd I made at home when I was 17 ( it's the second to last track on the cd, those of you who want a melody and sound reference point. Adriana-you may be the only person who has this cd.). I think I may have also performed it at the grade 12 fashion show at my high school.... I wore a pretty dress and a fluffy pink sweater, and had a real live piano, no crappy keyboard. But, actually, I may have played another song.
Anyways. I was writing this morning, inspired by one of Adriana's blog posts ( isn't it nice to have points of artistic inspiration that come from a known source, rather than a merely distant one?), a poem called "Redeemed". Now, I'll take a wild guess, and say this is attached, emotionally and thematically to Charlotte Martin's "Redeemed", which I too have been listening to obsessively and devotedly for the past while.
You'd never know that this one concept, this word is what triggered a re-write after ten years, additions of complexities and switches in meanings. I'm fascinated by the word "redeemed", in the non sin related, non consumer related sense, but I've always had trouble coming to grips with, and finding my way about the term and act of redemption. It's interesting how to forms of the same meaning, the same themes affect me so differently.
I think it's that I associated redemption with being a big scary biblical term, whereas redeemed seems smaller and has possibilities outside of Judeo-christian thought patterns and processes. It feels more organic. I don't know, really, I don't.
However, none of this is actually noticeable in the song.
So, here's quick and quiet song #5
Cm-A flat
The sense she depended upon
but knew would never come
as she pasted petals into her book
and closed the shelves
The sound of some clearer voice
she waited for nine years to hear
and time and time and time
waits up
To put it in fierce terms
she would stand rigth straight for hours
moving only her joints
but her bones wouldn't follow
E flat-Cm-Fm-A flat-Cm
Standing in that green dress
she roots down into a tree
and is left ( calm?) ( stranded?) (unknown word...)
Cm-A flat
Isabella light sleeper
all our gifts run dry
who'dve though we'd be sitting here
no hillsides and no distillations
in our palm lines
they hold themselves
so strangely in my body
the placement of words
along limbs and exhalation
E flat-Cm-Fm-A flat-Cm
Transitions between form and tense
lie different on more places
than the tongue
E flat-A flat
I can't bring her back
I won't bring her back
Cm-A flat-E flat -Cm-A flat
To this failure
of broken and stuttering time
without.
Anyways. I was writing this morning, inspired by one of Adriana's blog posts ( isn't it nice to have points of artistic inspiration that come from a known source, rather than a merely distant one?), a poem called "Redeemed". Now, I'll take a wild guess, and say this is attached, emotionally and thematically to Charlotte Martin's "Redeemed", which I too have been listening to obsessively and devotedly for the past while.
You'd never know that this one concept, this word is what triggered a re-write after ten years, additions of complexities and switches in meanings. I'm fascinated by the word "redeemed", in the non sin related, non consumer related sense, but I've always had trouble coming to grips with, and finding my way about the term and act of redemption. It's interesting how to forms of the same meaning, the same themes affect me so differently.
I think it's that I associated redemption with being a big scary biblical term, whereas redeemed seems smaller and has possibilities outside of Judeo-christian thought patterns and processes. It feels more organic. I don't know, really, I don't.
However, none of this is actually noticeable in the song.
So, here's quick and quiet song #5
Cm-A flat
The sense she depended upon
but knew would never come
as she pasted petals into her book
and closed the shelves
The sound of some clearer voice
she waited for nine years to hear
and time and time and time
waits up
To put it in fierce terms
she would stand rigth straight for hours
moving only her joints
but her bones wouldn't follow
E flat-Cm-Fm-A flat-Cm
Standing in that green dress
she roots down into a tree
and is left ( calm?) ( stranded?) (unknown word...)
Cm-A flat
Isabella light sleeper
all our gifts run dry
who'dve though we'd be sitting here
no hillsides and no distillations
in our palm lines
they hold themselves
so strangely in my body
the placement of words
along limbs and exhalation
E flat-Cm-Fm-A flat-Cm
Transitions between form and tense
lie different on more places
than the tongue
E flat-A flat
I can't bring her back
I won't bring her back
Cm-A flat-E flat -Cm-A flat
To this failure
of broken and stuttering time
without.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
tv? Really? Hmmm...maybe a book will make me sound smart.
I have tendencies of being prolific and then being quiet. Break the spell and I'm even unproductive. That's not new. So instead of writing, I'm watching episodes of Wonderfalls. Great procrastination fodder. Truly. I was going to write about an extraordinary book I just read, "Empathy" by Sarah Schulman, which is about, yeah who would've guessed, empathy or the lack of. But, I'm not in the mood to get all essay-ee I'm still too tired. Vaguely blurry and almost hallucinatory. That's right, I'm not hallucinating, I'm being hallucinated. That's how all weirdy exhausted I am. And twitchy eye is still there too. Less, but still making itself known. I need tylenol.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
sleep
I am so tired. So so tired. That's really all I can say. So tired that my left eye is twitching, and my equilibrium is off. I feel like I'm falling over whenever I'm standing up, and my brain is in a complete fog. Sleeping not so well lately. Too much waking up all through the night, alarms in the morning, schedules and stress...insomnia is not good for me...wrecks my body...so I'll sleep all day tomorrow and hope all is better
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
The "how come every melody I write sounds the same" song
I have problems with melody. It's such a scary thing, trying to write a meolody, and I think the music part of my brains shuts down when I attempt to write melody, because I put so much expectation on it to be catchy and interesting, and melodic. And like everything else, when I get to that stressed ou tplace of unreasonable expectation, the creativity shuts down.
So I just write, and sing, and write some more, and sit at the piano, and write and sing. And if it's crap, it's crap. And if it sounds exactly the same as the last song I wrote, then I need to find some small change to make it sound at least a little different. And if it sounds like some song that's already been written, well, every melody possible has probably almost been written, so the pressure of extreme originality needs to be placed to the side. I make myself sit there until I have something, even if it is a rough poem and a couple of chord changes that I like.
My word starting point came from an e-mail I received this morning from Lucia, and an astounding blog entry that Adriana wrote today. So, I'm in this song, and they are too. Conclusion I've come to: people don't write enough songs involving relationships other than their primary relationship ones, and there is so much possibility in every kind of relationship, and in every person. Although, that is just a sweeping comment based on popular music, more than anything else...all sorts of writers write about all sorts of things...
D-F#m-G-D
She wrote a letter
all typed out lightly
grainy print from the memories
that we ache to lose
Bm-A-G-D
Swept from her bed
a wild pool of spring
spitting up roses
full out to form
F#m-A-C-A
Follow me a swallow
willow tree burns by the hill
paling structures intertwine
F#m-Bm-D-C
referenced by fear
D-F#m-G-D
Bring her back
from her closed islands
our strength twists
smoother to the joint
Bm-A-G-D
We've become
no further than this
our hands quite thin
our wrists imprinted
F#-A-C-A
and wading into water's
been true
our stories call to themselves
Bm-D-C-G
from the spinnings of shore
So I just write, and sing, and write some more, and sit at the piano, and write and sing. And if it's crap, it's crap. And if it sounds exactly the same as the last song I wrote, then I need to find some small change to make it sound at least a little different. And if it sounds like some song that's already been written, well, every melody possible has probably almost been written, so the pressure of extreme originality needs to be placed to the side. I make myself sit there until I have something, even if it is a rough poem and a couple of chord changes that I like.
My word starting point came from an e-mail I received this morning from Lucia, and an astounding blog entry that Adriana wrote today. So, I'm in this song, and they are too. Conclusion I've come to: people don't write enough songs involving relationships other than their primary relationship ones, and there is so much possibility in every kind of relationship, and in every person. Although, that is just a sweeping comment based on popular music, more than anything else...all sorts of writers write about all sorts of things...
D-F#m-G-D
She wrote a letter
all typed out lightly
grainy print from the memories
that we ache to lose
Bm-A-G-D
Swept from her bed
a wild pool of spring
spitting up roses
full out to form
F#m-A-C-A
Follow me a swallow
willow tree burns by the hill
paling structures intertwine
F#m-Bm-D-C
referenced by fear
D-F#m-G-D
Bring her back
from her closed islands
our strength twists
smoother to the joint
Bm-A-G-D
We've become
no further than this
our hands quite thin
our wrists imprinted
F#-A-C-A
and wading into water's
been true
our stories call to themselves
Bm-D-C-G
from the spinnings of shore
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
A list, a first try at compilation of musical memory thoughts
I wrote this for my Last.fm journal, but it's worth a cross post, I think.
A list for myself, I have tendencies towards forgetfullness. I imagine that if something I listens to stays around long enough, then it becomes something to me. No explanations, just notations back to the brain and heart. No order but the one I remembered in. Importants. If I had to summarize my life in music. With many memory blockages and mishaps, probably.
Over the Rhine-Drunkard's Prayer
Tori Amos-Boys for Pele
Noe Venable-The World is Bound by Secret Knots
Charlotte Martin-Veins/Stromata/On Your Shore
Terami Hirsch-A Broke Machine/To the Bone/Entropy 29
Tom McRae-Tom Mcrae
Hawksley Workman-Treeful of Starling/Last Night we Were/Between the Beautifuls/My Little Toothless Beauties
The Dresden Dolls-Dresen dolls/Yes, Virginia
Queen Adreena-Taxidermy/The Butcher and the Butterfly
David Gray-A Century Ends
Joanna Newsom-Ys/Milk-Eyed Mender
The Chameleons-Script of the Bridge/Strange Times
Jennifer Terran-Full Moon in Three/The Musician
Me'Shell NdegéOcello-Bitter
Lhasa de Sela -THe Living Road/La Llorona
Regina Spektor-Begin to Hope
PJ Harvey-White Chalk/Uh Huh Her/To Bring you my Love/Rid of Me
Sigur Rós-Takk
Veda Hille-Spine
Hem-Rabbit Songs
Beirut-Flying Club Cup
Zoë Keating-One Cello x 16: Natoma
Kate Bush-Hounds of Love
Nick Cave-The Boatman's Call
Sarah Slean-Night Bugs/Day One
Arcade Fire-FUneral/Neon Bible
Nina Simone
Bruce Springsteen-Born to Run
A list for myself, I have tendencies towards forgetfullness. I imagine that if something I listens to stays around long enough, then it becomes something to me. No explanations, just notations back to the brain and heart. No order but the one I remembered in. Importants. If I had to summarize my life in music. With many memory blockages and mishaps, probably.
Over the Rhine-Drunkard's Prayer
Tori Amos-Boys for Pele
Noe Venable-The World is Bound by Secret Knots
Charlotte Martin-Veins/Stromata/On Your Shore
Terami Hirsch-A Broke Machine/To the Bone/Entropy 29
Tom McRae-Tom Mcrae
Hawksley Workman-Treeful of Starling/Last Night we Were/Between the Beautifuls/My Little Toothless Beauties
The Dresden Dolls-Dresen dolls/Yes, Virginia
Queen Adreena-Taxidermy/The Butcher and the Butterfly
David Gray-A Century Ends
Joanna Newsom-Ys/Milk-Eyed Mender
The Chameleons-Script of the Bridge/Strange Times
Jennifer Terran-Full Moon in Three/The Musician
Me'Shell NdegéOcello-Bitter
Lhasa de Sela -THe Living Road/La Llorona
Regina Spektor-Begin to Hope
PJ Harvey-White Chalk/Uh Huh Her/To Bring you my Love/Rid of Me
Sigur Rós-Takk
Veda Hille-Spine
Hem-Rabbit Songs
Beirut-Flying Club Cup
Zoë Keating-One Cello x 16: Natoma
Kate Bush-Hounds of Love
Nick Cave-The Boatman's Call
Sarah Slean-Night Bugs/Day One
Arcade Fire-FUneral/Neon Bible
Nina Simone
Bruce Springsteen-Born to Run
Hopefulness, of a slightly estranged sort
I am a little lost to the sensation of balanced ground right now. I just moved back in with my parents for a month, after house sitting, and in two days I house sit again, with a lovely garden, but many many plants to water. And a cat to be fed.
One day with my parents and I am already just barely tip toeing the sanity and healthy existence line. So much anger, so much unhappiness, so little awareness of each other’s space, of what each of us could be possibly feeling. I’m not much in the mood for being trampled upon these days, this previously quick withering spine of mine seems to be steeling itself quite brazenly. So, being within physical proximity of the people responsible for so many of my traumas, albeit of the less blustery emotional kind, and unnoticeable to those who don’t know what to look for, it’s just too much.
I’ve had two days of no writing. I’m listening to Sigur Ros to repair the damage. If I had to pick one band/musician that epitomizes damage repair, or maybe even things like the delicate repair of the spines of old books, whether with fancy tools, or a bit of a scotch tape salvage operation, it’s Sigur Ros. I’ve never been a very hopeful person, but their music is a beginning lesson in hopefulness, and it makes me kind of pukey. In a good “I don’t really understand what I’m feeling, but I’m just happy to be feeling anything at all” kind of sea sickness way.
I listen to Terami Hirsch to be comforted and less lonely, to Charlotte Martin when I need to feel sad or full of strength, to PJ Harvey when I need to be angry and righteous, to Sigur Ros when I need to learn how to be hopeful.
Is hope the opposite of fear? When I’m afraid I ‘m in a place that is distinctly grey and walled in, fear to me is the absence of future, and hope is future based. Most of my moods are sullen and shaken ones, moments before I fall asleep when I worry if this will be the last time I every get to sleep peacefully, if the world will be ruined and I will be shattered when I wake up. I fear going to sleep because I fear what will be when I wake up. I fear boredom because it means I am wasting my life. I fear speaking because I am afraid of looking silly and foolish, unintelligent and uninformed. I fear starting anything because I will never be able to finish it. I fear pain. I fear being a useless human being. I fear meaninglessness. I fear intimacy because I fear rejection. I fear making the wrong choices. I fear being alone for the rest of my life. I fear isolation. I fear war and violence and torture. I fear that I and the people I love will never be happy. I fear confrontation. I fear making eye contact with people. I fear speaking my true thoughts aloud. I fear letting myself be beautiful because if I’m beautiful, then people will no longer reject me for being ugly, and will instead reject me for who I am. I fear disappointing people. I fear being loved because I’m not sure if I know how to love in return. I fear feeling things. I fear being numb, because I have been.
My brain stem is in constant hyperdrive, and I know it’s survival mechanisms based upon a seemingly irrational fear of imminent death that drives these thoughts. I know what is chemically happening in my body to make me feel afraid, and how this muscle tension and panic causes me to form such wild and frustrating thoughts, which in turn create more bodily anxiety. I understand the science of it, even though I explain it badly. But it’s frustrating that I can’t pinpoint the exact reasons why I react so strongly in ways that other people don’t. Why fear has taken so much root, why my tree is a massive mess of twistiness and strange pain.
Even though I have not experienced what most people classify to be major traumatic events, my body and brain react to almost every experience as life-threatening and logical brain shutdown worthy. It’s not that I’m not capable of logic and reason, it’s just that when I’m expected to perform, or prove that I’m fully capable, I go into survival mode, and the entirely logical part of my brain tunes out, leaving me a babbling mess of foggy feeling attacked. Any kind of criticism, even potential, leaves me shaking, as though I’m having my ego and true self pulled apart into unrecognizable and unworthy fragments right in front of me. So, it’s easier to believe that I’m stupid than to subject myself to such intense seeming scrutiny, even if that’s not what’s actually happening.
At points in my life I’ve seriously considered that being alone in a small house in the far off woods would be the best thing possible for me, the only way for me to go on living. Sometimes I think that that’s the only way I could cope, to shut myself off from any kind of interaction other than with art or music or books. Every conversation I have with anyone is strewn with unintended verbal insults or minute physical rejections. I read body language, facial expressions, and vocal intonations too well, and I take everything as rejection or criticism. What happened to me? I know that everyone doesn’t go through life experiencing being dragged apart and bones picked clean and cracked by everyone she looks in the eye, or shares a word with. Intimacy is agony because it doesn’t exist for me. A horrible statement, I know, and one that isn’t completely true, but in my bitter and weakened places it’s where I go. I don’t trust anybody not to hurt me, and I don’t like feeling so alone and defensive. I hate that I can’t let people in, and that I keep a relatively thick piece of sheet metal between myself and even my closest of friends.
I hate that I feel as though I don’t have the right to speak. I hate being so melodramatic. I hate that other people aren’t so melodramatic, because we should all be able to let go and let it out all together, and then it wouldn’t be such a vulnerable and scary thing. I hate being vulnerable, and I hate that I work so hard not to be vulnerable, because I respect and cherish vulnerability so much. I hate being a doormat. I hate that I don’t understand myself. Sometimes I hate my parents for failing to be strong enough to accept that they had a part in how fearful and fucked up and broken I am. Sometimes I hate my friends for not wanting to listen to me scream and cry and babble and lash out at the world. Sometimes I hate myself for not speaking up when I have the chance. I hate the world for not wanting to hear those of us who are in pain, and how emotional pain is belittled and pushed aside.
I hate being broken and fragmented and poetic and so thin skinned with such a barren multi-chambered heart.
And I hate feeling guilty. For living, breathing, existing, speaking, taking up space, for feeling hateful. For being brought up to believe that I ruined my parents life, beliefs given to me underneath sweet word of affection. I wasn’t born feeling unworthy, somewhere along the way I picked it up.
Now I’m angry and vicious, with a belly full of burning loathing that I just want to forgive and forget. I just feel so guilty harboring so much anger towards my mother, when I can see how much pain she’s in. How upset I get when she talks about the cruel ways her own mother treated her that she doesn’t realize she’s actually inflicting upon her own daughter. How she can’t see her own cruelty because she sees herself as such a victim, such a wonderful, loving, kind person, when she really is constantly lashing out at everyone around her, and overwhelming me, pushing all of her ideas and fears on me.
So little of this is my own. I learned how to hate myself from keen experts who have no idea of how negatively powerful they are. Now, it’s so hard to separate these webs of harshnessess from my own strong and kind self. And I feel like a truly horrible person for even perceiving and articulating these long aching joints of cruelty passed generationally. So, how do I become myself without causing them pain?
I separate.
One day with my parents and I am already just barely tip toeing the sanity and healthy existence line. So much anger, so much unhappiness, so little awareness of each other’s space, of what each of us could be possibly feeling. I’m not much in the mood for being trampled upon these days, this previously quick withering spine of mine seems to be steeling itself quite brazenly. So, being within physical proximity of the people responsible for so many of my traumas, albeit of the less blustery emotional kind, and unnoticeable to those who don’t know what to look for, it’s just too much.
I’ve had two days of no writing. I’m listening to Sigur Ros to repair the damage. If I had to pick one band/musician that epitomizes damage repair, or maybe even things like the delicate repair of the spines of old books, whether with fancy tools, or a bit of a scotch tape salvage operation, it’s Sigur Ros. I’ve never been a very hopeful person, but their music is a beginning lesson in hopefulness, and it makes me kind of pukey. In a good “I don’t really understand what I’m feeling, but I’m just happy to be feeling anything at all” kind of sea sickness way.
I listen to Terami Hirsch to be comforted and less lonely, to Charlotte Martin when I need to feel sad or full of strength, to PJ Harvey when I need to be angry and righteous, to Sigur Ros when I need to learn how to be hopeful.
Is hope the opposite of fear? When I’m afraid I ‘m in a place that is distinctly grey and walled in, fear to me is the absence of future, and hope is future based. Most of my moods are sullen and shaken ones, moments before I fall asleep when I worry if this will be the last time I every get to sleep peacefully, if the world will be ruined and I will be shattered when I wake up. I fear going to sleep because I fear what will be when I wake up. I fear boredom because it means I am wasting my life. I fear speaking because I am afraid of looking silly and foolish, unintelligent and uninformed. I fear starting anything because I will never be able to finish it. I fear pain. I fear being a useless human being. I fear meaninglessness. I fear intimacy because I fear rejection. I fear making the wrong choices. I fear being alone for the rest of my life. I fear isolation. I fear war and violence and torture. I fear that I and the people I love will never be happy. I fear confrontation. I fear making eye contact with people. I fear speaking my true thoughts aloud. I fear letting myself be beautiful because if I’m beautiful, then people will no longer reject me for being ugly, and will instead reject me for who I am. I fear disappointing people. I fear being loved because I’m not sure if I know how to love in return. I fear feeling things. I fear being numb, because I have been.
My brain stem is in constant hyperdrive, and I know it’s survival mechanisms based upon a seemingly irrational fear of imminent death that drives these thoughts. I know what is chemically happening in my body to make me feel afraid, and how this muscle tension and panic causes me to form such wild and frustrating thoughts, which in turn create more bodily anxiety. I understand the science of it, even though I explain it badly. But it’s frustrating that I can’t pinpoint the exact reasons why I react so strongly in ways that other people don’t. Why fear has taken so much root, why my tree is a massive mess of twistiness and strange pain.
Even though I have not experienced what most people classify to be major traumatic events, my body and brain react to almost every experience as life-threatening and logical brain shutdown worthy. It’s not that I’m not capable of logic and reason, it’s just that when I’m expected to perform, or prove that I’m fully capable, I go into survival mode, and the entirely logical part of my brain tunes out, leaving me a babbling mess of foggy feeling attacked. Any kind of criticism, even potential, leaves me shaking, as though I’m having my ego and true self pulled apart into unrecognizable and unworthy fragments right in front of me. So, it’s easier to believe that I’m stupid than to subject myself to such intense seeming scrutiny, even if that’s not what’s actually happening.
At points in my life I’ve seriously considered that being alone in a small house in the far off woods would be the best thing possible for me, the only way for me to go on living. Sometimes I think that that’s the only way I could cope, to shut myself off from any kind of interaction other than with art or music or books. Every conversation I have with anyone is strewn with unintended verbal insults or minute physical rejections. I read body language, facial expressions, and vocal intonations too well, and I take everything as rejection or criticism. What happened to me? I know that everyone doesn’t go through life experiencing being dragged apart and bones picked clean and cracked by everyone she looks in the eye, or shares a word with. Intimacy is agony because it doesn’t exist for me. A horrible statement, I know, and one that isn’t completely true, but in my bitter and weakened places it’s where I go. I don’t trust anybody not to hurt me, and I don’t like feeling so alone and defensive. I hate that I can’t let people in, and that I keep a relatively thick piece of sheet metal between myself and even my closest of friends.
I hate that I feel as though I don’t have the right to speak. I hate being so melodramatic. I hate that other people aren’t so melodramatic, because we should all be able to let go and let it out all together, and then it wouldn’t be such a vulnerable and scary thing. I hate being vulnerable, and I hate that I work so hard not to be vulnerable, because I respect and cherish vulnerability so much. I hate being a doormat. I hate that I don’t understand myself. Sometimes I hate my parents for failing to be strong enough to accept that they had a part in how fearful and fucked up and broken I am. Sometimes I hate my friends for not wanting to listen to me scream and cry and babble and lash out at the world. Sometimes I hate myself for not speaking up when I have the chance. I hate the world for not wanting to hear those of us who are in pain, and how emotional pain is belittled and pushed aside.
I hate being broken and fragmented and poetic and so thin skinned with such a barren multi-chambered heart.
And I hate feeling guilty. For living, breathing, existing, speaking, taking up space, for feeling hateful. For being brought up to believe that I ruined my parents life, beliefs given to me underneath sweet word of affection. I wasn’t born feeling unworthy, somewhere along the way I picked it up.
Now I’m angry and vicious, with a belly full of burning loathing that I just want to forgive and forget. I just feel so guilty harboring so much anger towards my mother, when I can see how much pain she’s in. How upset I get when she talks about the cruel ways her own mother treated her that she doesn’t realize she’s actually inflicting upon her own daughter. How she can’t see her own cruelty because she sees herself as such a victim, such a wonderful, loving, kind person, when she really is constantly lashing out at everyone around her, and overwhelming me, pushing all of her ideas and fears on me.
So little of this is my own. I learned how to hate myself from keen experts who have no idea of how negatively powerful they are. Now, it’s so hard to separate these webs of harshnessess from my own strong and kind self. And I feel like a truly horrible person for even perceiving and articulating these long aching joints of cruelty passed generationally. So, how do I become myself without causing them pain?
I separate.
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