At yoga last night, I experienced that sensation of ‘living in the now’ that my yoga teacher always mentions. Considering I am a think-a-holic, it’s always hard for me to let my brain become empty in these situations – but I found that when I let this process happen, it’s incredible! It made me feel like my head was a hot air balloon which floated pleasantly up into a starry sky. If possible – it felt like my eyes were taking photos of every moment of my life. My brain was no longer filled with smog and misinformation and digital gunk.
I am realizing more and more how much I enjoy this yoga bliss feeling – not to mention the fact that yoga makes me feel like I have brand new hips! Anyway – I digress. If you haven’t tried yoga, DO IT SOON! I’ve been trying a bunch of different types – vinyasa, yin (rag doll yoga which makes your body feel extra relaxed and fabulous), and even hot yoga (just don’t get to the class late and end up right next to the heat fan. Ack!). It really makes you feel like you are living in your own body, as opposed to just using your body for day-to-day tasks.
A quote that my teacher read last night really resonated with me, so I decided to share it with you folks! It’s really resonating with me, particularly in regards to my high expectations/battle against perfectionism. It’s from an awesome book called Meditations from the Mat, and it features really cool quotes from a variety of speakers – musicians, US navy seals, and regular yogis! Heck, I think there’s even a quote from Lynyrd Skynyrd in there (haha).
This quote is from Dan Capel, US Navy Seal:
‘Do right, fear no man.’
“All of the translations of the Yoga Sutras I come across link brahmacarya, or moderation, with courage. The connection makes sense when we consider the state of intemperance. Nothing is more debilitating than the dread associated with immoderation in any area of our lives. The state of active addition is accompanied by an sense of impending doom. Even in less extreme situations, that fear is profoundly destructive to our belief in ourselves.
At the core of intemperance in any form is the mistaken belief that we are not OK as we are. Convinced we are imperfect, we carry real pain. The cause of our suffering, however, is not our imperfection but our mistaken belief in our imperfection. Acting under the erroneous assumption that we are imperfect, we reach outside of ourselves to create balance, to end our suffering. Naturally this is unsuccessful, so we redouble our efforts and demand even more. All our effort, all our striving, merely worsens our situation and deepens our conviction that we are somehow flawed. Caught up in this cycle of chronic suffering and misguided attempts to relieve our pain, we spend our days out of balance and in conflict with ourselves.
The solution is twofold. To being with, we have to stop whatever it is we are doing that creates imbalance. When you are stuck in a hole, stop digging. The second step is to examine the beliefs that drive us to intemperance in the first place. Brahmacarya concerns the first step, summoning the courage to step away from the downward spiral. We discover that there is a power in ‘non-doing’. As we practice moderation, a wind begins to fill our sails. We find that the ever-present anxiety that accompanies immoderation evaporates. We realize that our fear, which grew out of a specific behaviour, had contaminated every aspect of our lives.
As we finally walk away from the food, the sex, the alcohol, the debt, the fill-in-the-blank, we leave our fear behind as well. Suddenly, we can meet peoples’ eyes again. We are no longer making up excuses for our reality. The colours of our lives become brighter and bolder. We find that when we do right, we fear no man.”
I feel that recently I have lost myself a bit – perhaps even bit by bit – and so far this summer I am feeling my way back to my authentic self.
I realize that I used to blog a lot more, and you might think that with such an introspective undertaking as self discovery, I would turn to this outlet more. I certainly thought so.
But the truth is that in the past two months – ever since school ended, I have been struggling. The end of my school year was probably the closest I’ve ever come to having a mental breakdown. I was putting an immense amount of pressure on myself emotionally and mentally to succeed and make it into a program I wanted to get into. The mistake I made was making it my everything. It didn’t help that my heart had seen much better days. People say you should throw yourself into something else after a relationship ends, but in doing so, I feel I went too far and nearly imploded.
Now I finally have some time to evaluate whether that self-loathing and pressure and stress were really worth it. I still want that dream – but it’s not what defines me. I have other skills and talents too! I felt like I was being externally controlled – and putting so much into what other people wanted and expected of me/constantly comparing my skills to those of the people around me.
Thankfully, being home I feel so lucky to be able to ground myself in the person I am, and the people I care about. I’ve reminded myself of unconditional love – for myself and for others. I’ve reminded myself it’s okay to make mistakes.
And, I’ve been entirely fed up with the social game, mainly social networking, because for me it’s too much watching and not enough doing.
Anyone who knows me personally would tell you that I love social networking – or at least I used to. I’ve always thought I am a highly social person. I just love the way people are, you know?
I love to watch people smile, or laugh. I love the dimensions of a person, and when you’re able to glimpse a different, totally unexpected side of a person you thought you knew inside and out, isn’t that amazing?
For example – when I dance around the kitchen with my father, I see the boy he used to be. The smile lightens his face like a sunbeam and we are back in time together, when people still used to jive this way. Maybe this is why I’m collecting old photographs these days – I want those moments back. I want that kind of living.
Anyway, I digress – for me, facebook is just enabling me to relive in a negative way, so I am trying to spend less time on it. I also realize that I often posted multiple things in a day because I wanted a reaction, and I started to rely too much on that kind of response. It certainly has been my crutch when I’ve been lonely – the only reason I posted so much was because I had so many thoughts, songs, ideas, or lyrics I wanted to share with someone – anyone -but it felt like I didn’t have someone to share them with.
(Many of my friends were in relationships at the time, so I think I got tired of third-wheeling sometimes. It can be hard to find moments alone with someone who is in love, you know? Not that I don’t love love. In fact, I’m quite the opposite – I fall in love with love. I pine for an antique kind of romance, with dancing and poetry and lace, but it’s hard for me to say whether or not I’ve ever been truly in love. I’ve had varieties and mismatches and I don’t regret them. I don’t curse them. They just weren’t right. And it’s been important for me to differentiate that just because they didn’t work out, it is not because there was something really wrong with me).
Sometimes I wonder if it’s been my goal all along – to hurt myself by reminding myself of my failures, and then etching them into my current existence. They say if you don’t forget a mistake, you’ll never make it again.
Somehow I don’t agree, but I’m punishing myself anyway.
I’ve realized that my mind is a peculiar place to hang out because for the past while, I’ve been playing the victim in my own life. I’ve blamed myself for the way things in my past have worked out (or not). I’ve been extremely guilty and worried about the uncertainty that awaits me, and the concrete-ness of my memories. And I am wary as to how my perception likes to distort the impact these memories have on me.
To clarify – I just really haven’t been the best version of myself. Hell, I went through a really long period of self-loathing, but I’m coming out of the darkness at my own pace.
I am not the prettiest, nor the smartest. I am not the most talented. I am not the most interesting, nor the kindest person.
But I have something – I think we all do – that is unique to share with this world. I won’t compare myself anymore, because this journey that I’m on is all mine.
I made a list of the things that matter to me, and it looked like this:
I’ve been doing lots of yoga recently, and realizing how wonderful it feels to actually feel your body. The part at the end of class always fills me with new ideas. My teacher talked about ‘letting our thoughts drain out’, and my brain was something like this:
will life always be this way
will life always be this
will life always be
I’ve also been art-journaling extensively, and doing lots of reading and songwriting. I’m really trying to evaluate who I am still – because life has made me a chameleon haha. I am so eager to please others. I am so willing to incorporate their worries and joys and doubts and uncertainties and wants and needs and desires. Sometimes I need to refocus on my own!
So, I’ll leave you with these thoughts and some photos from my art therapy/journaling experiments:
It’s possible to lose yourself, but it’s possible to find yourself again.
I’m learning that there’s nothing wrong with living and loving whole-heartedly – with letting someone in.
I’m just waiting for the person who will appreciate me the way that I am.
I have been going through a rather lovely poetry phase.
Some of you might know this, though I’m guessing the majority of you don’t, but I used to be quite the poetry nerd when I was in high school. It’s already been exposed that I’m a former english major. The truth is I miss it quite a bit (but shhh, don’t tell music that I said so!).
Anyway, I hope to post more a bit later about my recent life and how I’ve been spending my time. For now I’ll leave you with a couple keywords and the only sestina I’ve ever written!
recently:
cleanse
glitter
art
lattes, job applications (bleh – don’t even get me started)
moonlight, dance parties, wine, fruit beer, gay bar, shiny shoes
lustful looks, sleeping dogs
creaking house
sunshine smiles
moonlight ramblers (trial sestina)
Moonlight ramblers roll through our city,
searching the night for eyes they will remember,
inside nameless bars with lights on loud.
They know their chase is fruitless again,
for they find only faded masks of regret
under the streetlight chandelier hues.
One is a painter, a master of hues,
lover of all ladies from city to city.
He leaves all like a shadow, lacking regret.
Still, he is the dream his lovers remember,
losing his eyes in the cloudy night again.
When will he dare to be loud?
Staring up at the stars and finding them loud,
he wishes to paint their heavenly hues.
And seeing he is alone once again,
he lusts for a shiny, unknown city,
the body of a woman he won’t remember.
Yet, in the morning, he thinks of Alice and aches with unfamiliar regret.
It was a summer love she would grow to regret.
‘I love you’ when spoken is louder than loud
in a romance that even fragments could remember.
They painted their bodies golden summer hues,
spending their afternoons in the sunshine of city,
their nights showing bones again and again.
Again, she would write ‘the end’ again,
to make sure her dreamer would rue and regret
the day he left her in a crumbling city
with lights down low and thoughts up loud.
This afternoon is stained with rainy, ruddy hues,
so grey the clouds might remember.
Still the ramblers move, desirous to remember
and forget all their memories in moonlight again.
They rhyme and reason in shady hues
and come to lose their minds in such games of regret.
Whenever people tell me they like my style, I’m flattered, and it usually sets my thinking to when I first started dressing ‘strangely’. It was in grade ten, and I’d found a lovely pair of overalls at the local Salvation Army Thrift Store. I cut my long, un-layered hair to a pixie cut, perhaps in an attempt to directly contrast with the sweater vests and blouses that came before. At that time, it was as if I was making a choice to finally be myself, instead of projecting this ‘hardworking prep’ image out into the universe.
It was time to stop being a robot, and stop being consumed by work. (I remember how miserable parts of grade nine felt for me).
However, since that time, my stylistic choices have stopped being so conscious. I used to experiment with myself and see if I could stand wearing such clashing things together. I was testing my limits.
Ultimately, I think I realized that anything can go together if you want it to – the difference is having the conviction in your choice (well, this all sounds rather serious haha). Who am I to judge whether two patterns belong together?
Hey, as long as they’re happy together, man!
I think happiness should dictate the majority of our choices – as long as your happiness doesn’t come from making someone else unhappy. That’s just kind of mean, bro.
Having recently discovered I’m a workaholic once again (bleh, maybe I just never stopped?), part of me thinks it’s time for a similar revolution. Anyway, back to the point…
When I receive such a compliment, I wonder if people are ever intrigued by my style. I often feel like one of two things:
a) the subject of Fleetwood Mac’s song, ‘Rhiannon’ – some dark, transient, enigmatic, mysterious woman, who is like a cat in the dark, and then she is the darkness.
Wouldn’t you love to love her?
or b) the subject of Leonard Cohen’s song, ‘Suzanne’
Now Suzanne takes your hand, and she leads you to the river. She is wearing rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters. And the sun pours down like honey on our lady of the harbour, and she shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers…
Do you ever wonder whether you fascinate anybody?
I think we all do wonder this sometimes – though I can hardly say so with much certainty.
Is wondering about something like this just feeding your own vanity?
Along with all of this, I wonder, ‘Could I be someone’s Suzanne?’
Would it be fun? Would it be hard work being that enigmatic? Or would it simply take no work at all because it would come naturally?
I wonder – would you get a sense of power, knowing you could entrance someone?
It seems to me that it would require you to be aloof or nonchalant.
Coy.
I’m rambling (as per usual haha). I think I am so fascinated by enigmatic people because I know that I myself am not so hard to figure out. But every once in a while, I encounter people who throw me off – and thus, my english-major-brain kicks in. Suddenly I’m analyzing life like it’s already happened, and all this is is a piece of literature in an anthology.
What do a person’s actions mean in a given context?
We are into overanalysis, essentially.
Then there’s that peculiar feeling of foreshadowing in your own life – do you ever feel like you’re being toyed with, or question the motives of someone’s actions?
From this it sounds like I’m a highly suspicious person. That’s not really the case. Sometimes I just get too caught up in what I think everything means.
Oh, silly me – there are plenty of meaningless things out there!
But I don’t think my curiosity is necessarily a fault – in fact, the day that I stop being curious about myself, my behaviour, and the world around me, I’ll know that I’m doing something wrong.
That being said – I do get bored with myself on occasion. That’s just a sign that I need to get colour.
Now you know what goes on in my brain – a constant circle of questions and curiosities.
The following is a playlist that a friend of mine and I compiled on a recent trip to Vancouver.
Rain is a weather mood that’s always fascinated me. Whether I’m walking in it, driving through it, dancing in it, on a bus during a rain shower, or simply watching it start from faraway clouds (which is pretty darn cool – living on the prairies makes this extra visible!), I love to associate music with rain.
Personally, rainy times are ones of increased contemplation, and resulting clarity. That’s why I always love it when it rains – not only for the smell of a world that is in a state of growth, but also because the rain cleanses me of some of my negative thoughts. If you find me post-rain, I will feel a sense of resolution in regards to problems that I’ve faced recently.
So, without further ado, here’s our playlist on rain! I’ll try not to interject too much (though I must warn you, I am wont to do so!).
1) The Tourist – Radiohead
– This was playing as I drove to the airport in Edmonton before my trip to Vancouver. I’ve been rediscovering Radiohead lately, and also thinking a lot about endings.
2) Parasol – The Sea and Cake
– This is more of a rain-watching song. My friend showed me this band a year or two ago, and I fell in love with this track.
3) Know the Way (intro) – Grimes
– Aside from the obvious relation to water in this track (listen to the beginning haha), I find Grimes’ voice so lovely and haunting. This one reminds me of blooming flowers in my neighbourhood.
4) Superstar – Sonic Youth
– This is a Sonic Youth cover of a song originally done by The Carpenters. It’s definitely a spookier take on the song. I first heard this song in the film ‘Juno’. I’ve definitely been caught driving around to this song in the rain on several occasions. If my life were a movie, it would soundtrack a particularly sad rainy moment, I think.
5) Past and Pending – The Shins
– I love The Shins, though I must confess that I can’t always understand what they’re saying/singing (listen to New Slang, and you’ll understand haha). This song is a lovely rainy driving song – particularly for post-rain. I like listening to this song in moments of post-rain clarity.
6) England – The National
– If I’m being honest, the entirety of ‘High Violet’ – an album by one of my favourite bands, The National, could be on here. But beware – it’s an extremely sad/sorrowful collection of music. This song makes me want to visit England really badly. The line, ‘You must be somewhere in London/You must be loving your life in the rain’ always gets me.
I like to listen to this one when rain is just beginning. Could be the piano beginning of this track and the build, but it’s just so beautiful to me. It doesn’t help that lead singer Matt Berninger’s voice is so rich and sad simultaneously.
‘Put an ocean and a river between everything, yourself, and home’
This song also reminds me of some of the lower points of this year away from home when I really had to dig in and cope with grief and depression with the help of my friends, and myself.
7) Mood Indigo – Frank Sinatra
– For all of those really blue rainy times. This is possibly my favourite jazz standard. I’ve always been in love with Frank Sinatra, but his lovely voice coupled with the strings/muted trumpet/instrumentation (super general term, I know) on this track brings that love to a whole new level!
8) I am trying to break your heart – Wilco
– I love this song, despite how sad it is to listen to sometimes. And things do get pretty crazy at the end. The beginning of this track just reminds me of the feeling I have when I really want it to rain sometimes. I almost can’t stand the waiting. I find that it also applies to personal issues too – sometimes it’s just easier if something big happens so that you can stop worrying about whether you’re overthinking situations. The build is lovely (imo).
The piano reminds me of raindrops at one point.
9) Kathy’s Song – Simon and Garfunkel
– One of my absolute favourites by S + G. Turn the lights off wherever you are when it’s raining sometime. I’ve pulled my car over to recline the seat and listen to this one in the middle of rain before. This song reminds me of what drizzling rain on window panes looks like.
10) I Got a Woman – Nicolas Jaar
– If you’ve been searching for a song to drive around like a boss to – whether there’s rain involved or not – this is a pretty good candidate (imo).
11) The Village – New Order
– Really good for a post-rain frolic!
12) Racing Like a Pro – The National
– Again with The National. I just love this one.
13) All My Stars Aligned – St. Vincent
– The piano part alone makes me think of rain.
14) Congratulations – MGMT
– I know lots of people were displeased with this follow-up MGMT album. However, I really enjoy this track. I think it would appear at the end of a movie when the credits roll.
15) The Boy Done Wrong Again – Belle and Sebastian
– I really like Belle and Sebastian. Definitely a melancholic rainy feeling.
16) Blackbird – The Beatles
– More of a hopeful rainy song. It’s pretty magical if you’re listening to this and it starts to rain. At least I thought so!
17) (I Can’t Seem To) Make You Mine – The Clientele
– I’ve always really loved this track. It’s post-rain for me, though I think it’s lovely during the rain too!
18) Postcards from Far Away – Coldplay
– Lovely instrumental that really helps me think when it’s rainy out.
19) We Move Lightly – Dustin O’Halloran
– I had the pleasure of meeting Dustin O’Halloran when he opened up for a k.d. lang concert I attended in grade ten. I am in love with his music, and have learned some of his songs on piano. This track just gets me though – what a lovely build with the strings!
20) The Weight – The Band
– This song just reminds me of coming home so much. It would also be at the end of a movie. Maybe you’ve just arrived somewhere after being particularly lost (that happens to me all the time). It’s a feeling of hope and resolution. Things are going to be okay.
That’s all for now, folks! Hope you’ve enjoyed some of this rainy music!
This morning, I woke up and I thought about romance.
This is what romance looks like to me. I am partly a hopeless romantic. I’m a dreamer, so I know that my expectations of love and romance aren’t really realistic.
But it doesn’t stop this song from playing in my head when I think about love:
Call me sappy. Call me a fool – goodness knows there’s a nagging voice inside my head that knows, without doubt, that it’s not always like this in love. But it’s fun to dream, and it gives me something to sing along to and feel hopeful about.
People think that when you’re single, you’re anti-love. That’s not really the truth, I find. I think that more of your love just transfers to the other people in your life. For example, I feel extremely excited to see my family this summer. I also recently visited a friend in Vancouver for her birthday. I’ve known her since she was born, and I really loved getting to spend some girl time with her!
And mainly, what I’ve been trying to work on is really finding some love, or at least some acceptance for myself, which is perhaps the most difficult for yours truly. I don’t know how this has come about, but I’m very willing to put myself second to other people. Some call it ‘selflessness’, but sometimes it just feels so unhealthy. Looking back, it feels dangerous to be immediately willing to integrate someone into my life completely.
I feel as though I’ve said this before, but when I care about someone, I care completely.
It’s a strong emotion to handle sometimes.
Anyway, I digress! Back to my ramblings… (though romance does tie in here somewhere, I swear…)
There are often two or three main ideas that occupy my brain: love, philosophy, and human nature.
And in the case of today’s trains of thought, it was some combination of all three.
Having moved away from home for school this past year, I feel that I have undergone several changes, and now that I have been blessed with some free time (hurray for welcoming back my own sanity!), I’ve been able to process these changes in my character and decide whether I like them.
For example, I recently found that I meet all of the descriptions of a classic-case workaholic – bleh. I’ve always been known by my friends as a bit of a worry-wart, but it’s never been this bad before. I think it was because I resolved to ‘throw myself into my work’ during the final kick of this semester, and I didn’t know how to stop doing so. I got carried away.
I’ve always worked hard. I think people impose a certain degree of intellect upon me, when really I just work ridiculously hard and refuse to cut myself any slack. I won’t quit (oh boy, do I think about it sometimes), and I don’t always allow myself to fail (which is unhealthy, by the way), so it’s not unsurprising that I’ve finally reached the workaholic mark.
I often describe myself as an ‘old soul’. The truth is I just feel so old in comparison to other people. I don’t mean maturity levels – I can be an extreme goofball, given the right situation. I just mean that I find myself circling the inner chambers of my brain all too often. I haven’t lived long enough to regret things as much as I do.
All of this thinking has put me in need of a chiropractor.
Yesterday, as the airplane I was on readied itself for departure, I strayed to one of my mind’s favourite topics these days – adulthood.
Duh duh duh.
I always feel like I’m on one side of a large canyon, shouting at something that’s not there when I think of adulthood. Is it just an illusion I’ve been told I’ll attain one day?
I never really know when you’re supposed to start ‘being an adult’. I mean, I’m of the age when I can drink legally, smoke legally, drive – but there are plenty of people who are of age to do so, and they don’t really act ‘adult’, do they?
Since this definition remains unclear to me, I decided to think of how I would describe this shift into another state of being, and here’s what I came up with:
There are many times when I’ve woke up and looked in the mirror over the past eight months, and thought: I don’t really like the person I am becoming.
And it always takes a while to convince myself that this feeling is fleeting, but maybe this convincing is what adulthood is.
Maybe adulthood is the process of looking in the mirror and understanding that not everyone is going to like you.
This has been quite the idea to stomach for me. I’ve lived my whole life up until this point being well-liked.
You could even describe the 19+ years of my existence in this sentence:
‘Kate’s nice.’
You can sub in ‘compassionate’ or ‘kind’ if you want to, but nice is usually the main descriptor of my character, and it’s not that I dislike it. It’s just that I wonder if it’s actually who I am.
I think deep-down we all like to be well-liked – to have the support of our peers instills us with confidence. And in my opinion, I just like being nice to people, even if it means that I am left as a pushover.
But am I too willing to bend? To compromise?
Goodness knows I could stand to be more assertive. I could stand to let my anger show every once in a while, but this would mean coming to terms with what I mentioned earlier – understanding that not everyone’s going to like you.
The thoughts that circle like buzzing flies in my head these days are sometimes about how I feel like no one really knows me. I don’t even know me fully (haha), but instead we have a shallow understanding of the person I am, based solely on the things I do.
Before I get too off topic here, I’ll refocus: I guess what I’m trying to say is that hearing yourself described in different ways, with different adjectives – that’s what growing up is to me. The lens that people are evaluating you through isn’t coloured just by the opinions of your close friends or family anymore, but by the opinions of people you work and interact with.
And lately, adulthood for me (if we can even say that I’ve neared it) has been a montage of me dealing with some pretty childish emotions – aka jealousy, self-pity- and trying to harness them in a constructive way.
This Douglas Coupland quote is one that I’ve always related to when I think about the daunting idea of growing up/being an adult:
“I didn’t realize then that so much of being adult is reconciling ourselves with the awkwardness and strangeness of our own feelings. Youth is the time of life lived for some imaginary audience”
Maybe in adulthood we realize that that imaginary audience isn’t really watching anymore. There’s a level of recklessness and freedom that comes with that realization, and I’ve experienced both of those this year.
I guess all of this is just a complex way of wondering how people will minimize your behaviour down into a couple key characteristics. What speaks most loudly about my character?
I guess I’ll never know.
In a cab, I tell my friend, ‘People think they know me, but they don’t.’
Now, along with adulthood, I got to thinking about love and heartbreak, and oddly enough – something that was mentioned in my first year philosophy class, as well as in a philosophy of sexuality course I took last year around this time.
Generally, it went something like this:
People are obsessed with weighing themselves down – with burdening themselves with friends or possessions or worry. My prof even said that the way that Facebook enables documenting, and reconnecting with friends that you ‘maybe would’ve never talked to again in your life‘ is evidence of this ‘weighing down’. Maybe it’s how we see ourselves as real?
It kind of makes sense. I think there are definitely some examples in society of how weight translates to value.
Now, here’s where my ideas of yesterday come in:
If we can agree at least a bit with this weighing down idea, I would say that we are guilty of doing so with our heart. There’s a desire to belong to someone – which sometimes means giving your heart away – that is coupled in contradiction with the desire to still be in possession of your own heart.
So, here’s the line that I thought was profound (but hey, it was on an airplane, so who really knows):
Maybe what we need to learn is that you’re not supposed to be in possession of your whole heart, but love as though you still have all of it anyway.
If you live with your heart open and on your sleeve (as I do), little pieces of your heart are given away or lost like pieces of sea glass in the sand. Everyone is obsessed with getting them back, when the truth is we shouldn’t worry about having them anymore.
It sounds sad, but I think it’s part of it.
And maybe, if you’ve done this all correctly, and you’re on your death bed somewhere, you can measure the little bits you’ve given away by the number of people who are standing there around you saying their goodbyes.
Because if you worry so much about trying to keep your whole heart, you are the only person who will be there at the end.
This is all a little radical to contemplate, I guess.
‘You mean you want me to just let my heart go?’.
I don’t think it’s particularly easy, but people say the best things in life aren’t easy, right?
I just think we get so caught up in the control of it all – with needing to keep pieces of our heart when they could be out in the universe as evidence of times when someone else made us happy in their own unique way.
And this is why the whole concept of ‘baggage’ exists – we’re carrying parts of our heart that were altered by past love around, and they don’t fit with the other ones anymore. We’re forcing them to fit or act like they used to, and only finding hurt when we realize they don’t belong together.
Some people might say this whole idea is stupid and weird – to actually allow yourself to be okay with losing parts of your heart. I mean, your heart will always belong to you, but if you allow yourself to be open – to let your heart change as it will when it comes in contact with new love – then you won’t be burdened anymore. It’s likely you’ll be less miserable than before.
In philosophy, my prof said we try so hard to hold onto our selfhood. It was then that I started to relate to more Eastern philosophies where the self is seen as a constantly flowing river of ideas and changes. The only constant is change. I feel like some of those ideas can be applied to my whole heart-losing scenario.
To say it’s not fair to lose your heart – well, that’s still coming from a point of view that’s obsessed with keeping all of it.
To me, it’s just another painful and beautiful process.
I realized the other day that for a blog that claims to be ‘finding beauty in the ordinary’, I haven’t really done much of that so far. Perhaps that was a bit of a flawed mission statement after all. But I thought I would take this time to celebrate the beautiful things in my life…
1) Being twitterpated
This doesn’t apply directly to my own life, but I’ve definitely noticed that love is in the air!
I awakened one morning and had this thought (which I later shared with a close friend!):
Love is like a garden. It can be overgrown and all consuming. It is unquestionably beautiful. And when you see two people getting to know each other (what a lovely process!), the flowers in this garden bloom.
And just because I’m not currently growing a garden, it doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate seeing such things grow.
It probably doesn’t help that I’m about to watch ‘You’ve Got Mail’ home alone this Saturday evening. What can I say – I have rom com fever!
All things aside, and as much as I am often the third wheel on such situations, it really is a lovely thing to see people who are close to me so happy!
*here’s the origin of ‘being twitterpated’ for those of you who had Bambi-deprived childhoods!
2) Good music!
As a music student, I am constantly surrounded by music. Maybe ‘bombarded by’ is a better phrase haha. It can often be an assault on the ears – and yes, it’s very overwhelming, but also FANTASTIC! What I can enjoy about the start of this summer is being able to listen to music for fun – I’ve recently discovered this foreign concept known as ‘free time’, and I greatly approve!
One of my favourite things to do is listen to music while putting on ‘rainy mood’ website, and either just thinking or reading/doing free writes. Excuse the sad music – The National’s ‘High Violet‘ never ceases to make me so so sad with it’s beauty!
Alright, this is the last time I indulge in my former scholarly writing (or at least the last time for now haha)!
This last one was an analysis of Douglas Coupland’s Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. I distinctly remember not being super over the moon about reading this whole book during the course – it’s constructed like a textbook, which has its advantages and disadvantages – but when I look back on it, I really enjoyed some of the quotes in it. And even the phrase ‘tales for an accelerated culture‘ strikes me as cool. I can definitely relate.
Here’s a favourite quote from the book:
Ethnomagnetism: (page 26)
The tendency of young people to live in emotionally demonstrative, more unrestrained ethnic neighborhoods: “You wouldn’t understand it there, mother — they hug where I live now.”
There are also other interesting definitions from the book – check out this link for more (if you’re interested)
Anyway, in this paper, I was also trying to incorporate some of the ideas being discussed in my Philosophy of Sexuality class – in particular, the revelation of the Sacred (as defined by George Bataille).
This partly involved me walking around carrying a book that looked like this:
and garnering lots of weird looks in coffee shops, some of which were hopeful ones from sleazy men who perhaps thought be a bit sex obsessed.
Anyway – I digress. Here’s the paper. Whoo!
“Among the Garbage and the Flowers”:
Trash, Togetherness, and Redefining the Sacred in Coupland’s Generation X
Consumerist societies, built upon the constant production of excess, advocate the disposal of objects that have lost their utility or edge. In short, consumerism’s fear of the mundane turns the world into a world of objects, and this process is inherently violent in that it reduces existence to surfaces of a whole. Also, in advocating for the disposal of what is “out”, meaningful moments are trashed. Douglas Coupland’s Generation X portrays the lives of Andy, Dag, and Claire, misguided adults striving to escape their objectified world in the hopes of finding meaning, and “try[ing] to read the letter[s] inside” (59) their souls. On the surface, Coupland’s work dispels notions of an unreligious generation, but more importantly, it shows how the sacred must be redefined for generation x, and how this redefinition includes not only “constructing stories out of the garbage pile…[the] world…resides” (Tate 4) upon, but also understanding that sacred moments, mainly those of togetherness, can be found in the mundane “trash” of everyday life.
Underlying the sacred moments for Andy is an important sense of togetherness, an organic spontaneity, and vague echoes of the violence underlying consumerism. Coupland’s definition of the sacred is shown through four of Andy’s revelatory moments: cooking bacon with his family, lighting candles at Christmas, an unplanned nap, and most significantly, the creation of an “instant family” (179) at the end of the book. As these vignettes move away from consumerist influences, they become more resounding for both Andy and the reader. Before examining Andy specifically, it is important to note how Dag, Andy, and Claire collectively strive to attain the sacred.
Their attempt borrows from George Bataille’s conceptions regarding the sacred in his book EROTISM: Death and Sensuality, in which he firstly acknowledges that “[b]y work a man orders the world of things and brings himself down to the level of a thing among things” (157), thus objectifying and reducing people to surfaces, as well as denying the “real nature” of the entity in question. In transgressing a taboo to achieve the sacred, Bataille intends for an individual to reach “inner experience”, a point where one is “beyond objective awareness” instead experiencing a neutrality and loss of self, so that they are one with the experience, and one with the sacred. Similarly, Andy, Dag and Claire transgress a less obvious taboo, one of denying the consumerist lifestyle, by “[living] small lives on the periphery” (11) and embracing their generation’s “junk inheritance”. At first, the trash revealed through their transgression signals a possibility for what Julia Kristeva, in William Little’s The Waste Fix, describes as adegeneration into “social disorder or chaos” (104), but the same trash ultimately holds a sacred potential. By sorting through the rejected, Andy, Dag, and Claire search for the sacred, which is like a meal “squandered extravagantly” on feast day (Bataille 68), and from this comparison to squandering, consumerism can be said to be a perpetual feast day. In this way, threads of the sacred are excessively frittered away, and this is seen in Andy’s “take-away” moment of cooking bacon.
At first, Andy’s “take-away” moment seems too shallow to be significant. Simply frying a batch of bacon with family seems like no extraordinary occurrence. However, by remembering and taking away this normal moment, Andy is embracing the mundane. Upon further inspection, such a moment is rare in that consumerism labours to constantly replace one experience with a better one, leaving family time squandered and tragically impermanent. Andy claims that he “[feels] homesick for the event while it [is] happening” (95), showing an awareness of time’s passing that is also evident in his experience with candles. Andy reflects on the scarcity of family togetherness: “I knew even then that this was the only such morning our family would ever be given- a morning where we would all be normal and kind to each other…without strings attached” (95). In the core of the moment, he is aware of not only the distance that his family will invariably revert to, but also the fabricated nature of the moment. The echo of consumerist violence takes shape in the “little pinpricks of hot bacon grease” (95) splattering Andy’s forearms, which seem a worthy price for an instant of harmony. In this instant of harmony, Andy loses his individual self, and sees himself as part of the momentary, full family. The significance of this entire moment is that it demonstrates the emergence of Andy’s desire for togetherness, as well as the fact that the sacred, while being “something both awe inspiring and appalling” (Little 8), is encapsulated in those limited seconds where individuals come together before shooting back to individual fast-tracks of acquisition.
This constant acquisition is never fully removed from Coupland’s characters’ significant moments because “[d]ivesting oneself of belongings still signifies a relationship with the world of objects” (Tate 92), and thus, the rat race of consumerism. Echoing the last prefabricated moment, Andy buys massive quantities of candles, claiming that in a crisis “the first thing people go for are candles” (142), demonstrating his connection to consumerist knowledge despite attempts to diminish it. Fleetingly, upon witnessing Andy’s display of candles, “the eyes of [his] family burn…with the possibilities of existence in their time” (146), and the candles make Andy and his family lose themselves in the “dazzling fleeting empire” (146) of illumination. However, soon, perhaps due to the amount of planning that Andy does, the moment is over. Andy’s planning disrupts the organic processes that bring about sacred experience, and it appears that the more a moment is planned, the more easily it is snuffed out. Earlier mention of Andy’s desire to “set [his] parents’ house on fire just to get them out of their rut” (85) expresses a dangerous undertone in an otherwise scared moment. The feeling that this moment is over before it begins, like “any small moments of intense, flaring beauty [which are] utterly forgotten [and] dissolved by time” (147), only implies that this moment is already on the way to the collective consumerist trashcan in place of the HD version.
A notion less likely to be trashed for Andy is one of love found through his friendship with Dag and Claire. Early in the novel, Andy admits that he’s “never been in love and that’s a problem” (47), especially since he reports having tried to fall in love with Claire. In an instant of spontaneous napping after telling bedtime stories, in which the threesome lose themselves in slumber, Andy sees that love can transcend both the self and material gestures often associated with loving someone: “These creatures…in this room with me- these are the creatures I love and who love me. Together I feel like we are a strange and forbidden garden…If I could have it thus, I would like this moment to continue forever” (130). Afterwards, his desire to keep the moment is reminiscent of the desire to acquire and possess that fuels the vehicle of consumerism, and is thus blatantly violent and selfish. However, while Andy’s desire is selfish, this moment signals a move away from consumerism, for while the others were attached, if not ruled, by consumerism and the presence of fabricated objects, this one lacks a bought gesture and is therefore more sacred to Andy. The moment is neither glamorous, nor new and shiny – it just is.
The napping moment of togetherness leads into the sacred finale for Andy. From the last moment, it is clear that “group relationships [are] taken very seriously” (Miller 4) as individuals in generation x attempt to find cohesion and unconditional love. Andy is no exception, and he describes how much he wants “a great big dopey, happy-looking pelican…[to] offer [him] the gift of a small silvery fish” (173), which is a metaphor for being offered love with no expectation of earning it. This is counter to both the consumerist notion that one must work to earn privileges, and the commodification of love into a realm ruled by objects, like one hundred roses bought habitually for $9.95 (80). Andy describes the gathering of a group of strangers to watch first a burning of crops, and then the descent of a white egret as “a restful, unifying experience” (177), and Coupland’s use of the collective “we” in this section shows how Andy starts to identify with a group as opposed to on the outskirts. Once Andy is cut, he is embraced by a group of mentally retarded teens, and is “[hit] gently with an optimistic and healing staccato caress” (178-179) similar to that of a child comforting an injured doll. In one sense, he is being embraced by the profane or undervalued portion of society (in the form of the mentally retarded teens) to reveal the sacred. As he is “dog-piled by an instant family, in their adoring, healing, uncritical embrace” (179), physical violence is revealed, and while Andy feels crushed, he gives his selfhood over to the moment, and finds the “crush of love…unlike anything” (179) he has ever experienced.
The reader is unaware how long this embrace lasts, but clearly this is the transformative moment for Andy, free from the rampant objectification of the world. Through Coupland’s quest to “[seek] a new sacred vocabulary constructed from the detritus of an obsessively materialist culture” (Tate 133-134), he shows that the sacred for generation x is not entirely unreligious and involves bringing together the individuals that consumerism labours to fragment. Coupland’s characters transgress to obtain the moments that consumerism squanders and throws away, wherein the sacred is revealed in moments of togetherness, however brief. Though Andy is not able to rid himself of the objectification entirely, even pausing to kiss his front door on occasion (Coupland 152), he exhibits the primary concern of generation x, mainly that the generation does not ask “what must I do to be saved, but what must I do to be loved” (Miller 10) regardless of consumer wealth. James Annesley says in Blank Fictions that “individuals can escape from [the] mundanity” (119) of consumerism, which is evident in Coupland’s narrative. However, Andy’s sacred moments of cooking bacon, lighting candles, napping, and being embraced by strangers, show how Coupland encourages his characters and readers to shed their consumer skins. In doing so, they can return to relationships and moments of objectless unity, often called the mundane “trash” of consumerism, in order to reveal the most sacred moments of all.
I recently discovered I am still capable of writing a good paper – success! It’s pretty obvious to me that I’ve let some of my formal writing skills deteriorate because I’m focused on music music music all the time, so I was happy to find that I still can work my way through an essay!
I really enjoyed writing this paper on one of my favourite artists, Joni Mitchell. Her album, Blue, continues to be one of my all-time favourite albums. The honesty of Mitchell’s lyrics – her inherent ability to communicate the human experience – has always fascinated me. She is often self-deprecating – so yes, I can relate haha – and if you have me on facebook, I’m probably quoting her lyrics in my status. Sorry if that’s annoying!
In this paper, I was discussing how the dawning of the singer-songwriter genre opened up a level of vulnerability in music that previously had been shut out. In a wonderful book, written by Michelle Mercer, which talks in depth about Blue, it is mentioned that Joni played the songs from this album in front of a group of her songwriter friends – including Neil Young and Kris Kristofferson- and Kris exclaimed, ‘Jesus, Joni. Keep some of that to yourself.’ It is this level of personal exposure – laying your bones bare – that I think is special in her music, along with her inventive tunings and natural musical sensibility.
So, here’s how the paper went down. It’s not my best, but it’s not half bad either!
Cheers,
K.
‘Splitting open the self’: The role of the singer-songwriter genre and Joni Mitchell’s Blue in creating intimacy in music
The singer-songwriter genre, started in the late 1960s as a branch off the typical folk song blueprint, uncovered a part of the music industry that had previously only been hinted at – that of using music to “turn inward to communicate very personal experiences and feelings” (Charlton, 2011, p. 140), about an individual artist’s own life and relationships. Songwriters of this period were also notable for the way they “returned poetry to its roots” by emulating troubadours, “[who] sang their verses as tuneful metaphysical conceits” (Mercer, 2009, p. 92), and applying this style to modern songwriting. Branching off the styles of such artists as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, these artists were “defined less by political songwriting” (Mercer, 2009, p. 36), than by a “splitting open of self” (Mercer, 2009, p. 23) in their music. A main proponent of this movement was Canadian singer-songwriter, Joni Mitchell. Fueled by an “unaffected impulse to express” (Adria, 1990, p. 66), through the use of poetic lyrics and sparse arrangements, Joni Mitchell’s album, Blue (Reprise, 1971) shows how this genre enacted a shift from music as entertainment to music as a form of honest self-expression, and a means of catharsis.
As a songwriter and musician, Joni Mitchell, born Roberta Joan Anderson on November 7th, 1943 (Adria, 1990, p. 66), has tried almost every genre available, and “demonstrates a visual imagination…and an ability to attain a deep and personal lyric” (“Joni Mitchell”, 2011) that is unrivaled. In fact, since the beginning of her career in the 1960s, she has produced fifteen original albums, released concert albums, and collaborated with such great musicians as Charles Mingus (Whitesell, 2008, p. 3). Yet, there is something transcendent about her work on Blue (Reprise, 1971).
In interviews, Joni herself describes Blue as “partly a diary” (Mercer, 2009, p. 22), as well as “her best [album] because it reveals her emotions nakedly” (Adria, 2011, p. 66) for the listener to both judge and enjoy. Joni’s lyrics are almost literary, often employing the use of literary devices like metaphor and simile. For example, in the title track off the album, Mitchell “portray[s] a contemporary human relationship in terms of romanticized seafaring imagery” (Whitesell, 2008, p. 49), comparing herself to a ship that has “been to sea before”, needing to be anchored before it drifts away.
In contrast, the song “All I Want” on Blue can be seen as an “exuberant, high-strung search for something” (Mercer, 2009, p. 23), which displays Joni’s ability to depict a range of common human emotions with great poetic impact. She begins frantically, for the character is “on a lonely road”, and they are “traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling, and even the simple repetition of this last word creates a feeling of tension for the listener. The revelation of “dawning self-knowledge” (Mercer, 2009, p. 25), and “lyrical admissions that love can be tainted” (Mercer, 2009, p. 24) in “All I Want” are instantly relatable for a listener. Joni, along with other songwriters, unites the role of poetry, mainly to “twist and turn public language to reveal interior truths” (Mercer, 2009, p. 94), with the ‘separate’ role of songs, which reveal more universal truths, by turning the mirror of music inwards. In revealing the depths and fluctuations of the human experience, Joni’s lyrics, though not always consciously lyrical, unite listeners through the revelation of many interior truths.
This unity is evident based on the popularity of the song “River”, because it depicts a character who is “selfish and sad”, and ironically miserable at Christmas, which is considered the happiest time of year. This return to interiority , showing a self-loathing and misery juxtaposed with the joy of the holidays, demonstrates how songwriting from this time allowed a deconstruction of self, in stark contrast to the self-aggrandizing popular songs that came before.
Along with lyrics, songwriters further create a feeling of intimacy through the use of sparse instrumentation and arrangements, which showcase a raw vocal quality. Joni Mitchell’s Blue was recorded in an insular way, with the studio doors locked, since Joni was in a very fragile mental state. Her usage of “spare and simple arrangements [and] melodies”, often played in inventive open tunings, helps to communicate the emotional trauma Mitchell faced at the time, including feelings of loneliness as a result of failed relationships, hypersensitivity, and disturbing dreams about people in poverty (Mercer, 2009, p. 120-121). A prime example of these stripped arrangements is on the track “My Old Man”, where Mitchell plays the piano “sensitively and without artifice” (Adria, 2009, p. 69), which sets a melancholic tone and evokes empathy for the character of the song. Similarly, the simplicity of the ragged plucked guitar on “A Case of You” helps to showcase the fragile lament of a woman in love. Even on the closing track of the album, “The Last Time I Saw Richard”, Joni “does not shy away from vocal cracks or impurities” (Whitesell, 2008, p. 62) as she navigates her upper register. An example of Joni’s vocal quality can be heard at 2:31, when she asks, ‘when you gonna get yourself back on your feet’, with her voice piercing the consciousness of the listener.
Joni has said that her music “is not designed to grab instantly [and is instead] designed to last for a lifetime, to hold up like a fine cloth” (Whitesell, 2008, p. 6), and the resilience of Blue as an album is unquestionable. Artistically, Joni’s Blue has been quoted as an influence for musicians such as Madonna, Led Zeppelin, and Annie Lennox (Mercer, 2009, p. 114). Commercially, Blue “has sold 1.3 million copies in the United States” (Adria, 1990, p. 69), demonstrating how the honesty of the music found in the singer-songwriter genre remains popular with an audience spanning several generations. Listeners gravitate towards something that resonates with them – something they can hold onto – and the vignettes of heartbreak, longing, joy, lust, and depression on Blue give listeners ample opportunities to connect with Joni Mitchell on a personal and universal level. Blue, along with other albums from the singer-songwriter genre, “bring[s] a little more detail to pop lyrics [and] pair[s] [them] with more specific character and metaphors”, in an attempt to “grow up the American pop song” (Mercer, 2009, p. 96-97) into an artistic statement.
Breaking free from the conservative constraints of popular music, in which certain topics were censored or not discussed, singer-songwriters shifted the external focus of music to a process of self-inquiry. With Joni Mitchell’s Blue (Reprise, 1971), and with other albums from the songwriter period, listeners can “[ride the] cresting and falling waves to something like catharsis” (Mercer, 2009, p. 120), though the same cannot always be said for the songwriters themselves. Even though Joni Mitchell calls “the period of Blue’s recording…the unhappiest one of her life” (Mercer, 2009, p. 120), the process of baring and recording fragments of her soul forced Mitchell to face these emotions and search for personal clarity. This signals that as musicians and artists, individuals can feel free to see making music as a way to learn about one’s self, rather than a purely externally focused process. As Joni Mitchell’s songwriting demonstrates, it is possible to “[construct] art from such emotional turmoil” (Mercer, 2009, p. 115), and in doing so, this art can continue to enthrall listeners, and provide valuable opportunities for society to be united through a collective vulnerability.
among the garbage and flowers 