Posts in category "Thoughts"

Accepting My Baggage

Sometimes, I won­der what my life would be like if I did­n’t have so much bag­gage. How my rela­tion­ships would be dif­fer­ent. Which ones would have worked, and which ones would­n’t have changed at all.

Love, in all it’s mul­ti-faceted won­der, lev­els, and types, is nev­er a sure thing for me. I may feel it, but feel that it’s fleet­ing and con­di­tion­al at the same time. Other peo­ple have the lux­u­ry of tak­ing love for grant­ed. They assume they’re loved. How com­fort­ing it must be. For me, it’s always been a strug­gle for sta­bil­i­ty. “We won’t love you if you don’t do well on this test. We won’t love you if you don’t prac­tice piano. We won’t love you if you don’t fin­ish your din­ner. No one’s going to love you if you always stay this skin­ny.”

It feels like I haven’t sur­vived my child­hood yet. And I arrive at this fact so many times when try­ing to fig­ure out the source of my issues that it’s start­ing to sound like an excuse. Therapy has helped iden­ti­fy my issues, but it’s still tak­ing work on my part to resolve them, along with patience on the parts of oth­ers. I’m begin­ning to ques­tion why peo­ple would accept and love me. I guess it’s worth it to some, but things would be so much eas­i­er if they did­n’t have to deal with my inse­cu­ri­ties.

Pain Is Better Than Emptiness

I’ve come to real­ize that I cling to pain and yearn­ing because they give me inspi­ra­tion. They may not be the sole source, but cer­tain­ly a great deal. I always lis­ten to Leonard Cohen and Elliot Smith dur­ing such moods, as they have the abil­i­ty to inten­si­fy and deep­en the sad­ness.

I can tell it’s some­thing of a destruc­tive habit. It’s almost like I sub­con­scious­ly choose to dwell on things that have been resolved for the sake of some­thing to write about.

It makes me think of the last lines from King Missile’s song Ed:

“Yes, this is the answer. This is the end­ing. I shall keep on run­ning, because a body in motion tends to stay emo­tion­al, and it’s bet­ter to feel. Pain is bet­ter than empti­ness, empti­ness is bet­ter than noth­ing, and noth­ing is bet­ter than this.”

Is this how I feel alive, a way of bring­ing sig­nif­i­cance to my life? Or is this the way I tru­ly feel, and I’m sim­ply a slow heal­er, and too much of a thinker?

Or per­haps the bet­ter ques­tion is this: does hap­pi­ness inspire me just as much?

Musical Context

Every song is a time stamp. A place in life, marked by the exact moment that it’s first heard. In this moment, your sur­round­ings, cir­cum­stances, and emo­tions all become attached.

There’s a song for every­thing, from a sin­gle moment — like los­ing your vir­gin­i­ty — to an entire year — like your last one in high school. Perhaps my child­hood is such a blur because I nev­er start­ed lis­ten­ing to music until I was about 14; there was no anchor for my mind to asso­ciate with my expe­ri­ences.

In prepa­ra­tion for my house­warm­ing par­ty, Trolley and I decid­ed on a set of music to be played dur­ing the fes­tiv­i­ties. It was my idea to split the songs into two cat­e­gories, day and night, to take us from the after­noon to the evening. We sat at his com­put­er, and as we went through the list, I told him how to cat­e­go­rize each song. It seemed like such an arbi­trary act to him, but for me, there was a dis­tin­guish­ing tone to each song that made it appro­pri­ate for a cer­tain time of day.

Two exam­ples:

The quin­tes­sen­tial night, Bring Me the Disco King, by David Bowie, (fea­tur­ing Maynard James Keenan & John Frusciante).

And the quin­tes­sen­tial day, Another Sunny Day by Belle & Sebastian.

I won­der if I’m the only who can hear it, because of my expe­ri­ences and when I heard these songs first, or whether the order of cer­tain notes express a cer­tain con­no­ta­tion of sun and moon.

Accepting a song from some­one, as opposed to find­ing some­thing your­self, always puts the song in the musi­cal con­text of that per­son.

The con­no­ta­tion then comes from this per­son­’s expe­ri­ences, your rela­tion­ship with them, or both. You hear the song through their ears. It changes the notes, the chords, the core sound of what you’re lis­ten­ing to. From some­one like Darren, a song is total­ly dif­fer­ent than from Julie.

Music is thus anoth­er form of mem­o­ry.

To Write And To Remember

I admit that I not only save oth­er peo­ple’s posts, but entire blogs.

Sometimes, there are entries I like to read over again. Other times, I just like to be remind­ed of how right I was. But more often than not, it’s the ephemer­al nature of blogs in gen­er­al, com­bined with the fick­le nature of ado­les­cent writ­ers still try­ing to “define them­selves” on a free medi­um, that gives me the itch to save. So many writ­ers I used to fol­low have changed domain names, start­ed pro­tect­ing their entries, or delet­ed their blogs.

Some things are garbage and should be for­got­ten or thrown away — but some things deserve to be kept too. Word-for-word, exact­ly the way it was spo­ken, because that’s the way it was expressed.

Fortunately, or unfor­tu­nate­ly, depend­ing on your point-of-view, our words do last. Just because they aren’t there any­more, does­n’t mean they were nev­er spo­ken.

There are con­se­quences to the things we write, whether we want them or not.

Love Bias

Sometimes, she reach­es down and grabs a hand­ful of my der­rière. I laugh a ner­vous laugh, and she chides me.

It’s a reflex. None of my girl­friends have been so zeal­ous in their pinch­ing, or rev­eled in such an act. My laugh is one of sur­prise, and a good one at that.

This is what upsets her. But how should I react oth­er­wise? I hard­ly con­sid­er this thin-framed body, a frail com­par­i­son to the phys­i­cal con­ven­tions of a man, as being sex­u­al or attrac­tive.

This is why I think she loves me.

Otherwise, she’d see me as the rest of the world sees me.