tuneresponding five

[Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Kiss Kiss and Warrior

Crystal Castles, Year of Silence ]

There might be something to the idea that a sense of style or good taste is derived from what we lack. Basically, everything that exemplifies artistry is everything we are not, is everything we aspire to be. I idolize swagger. I wish I could say that my actions always appear cool and confident and that I always appear to know what I am doing. This is not the case. Every now and again, a kind of assurance seizes me and I feel briefly invincible; I experience a temporary sense of exceptional capability. Sometimes I could chalk it up to alcohol or caffeine (The night where I go out with friends, and I at least perceive that I am saying just what I want to, just as concisely as I want to, and that I reach out to just the people that I want to, presenting myself exactly as I want to). These times are the exception, not the rule though.

I experience a satisfying calm tempered with a restless envy whenever I encounter art that exudes a tantalizing swagger and cool exuberance. Mainly I think of those songs with impenetrable rhythm and a wall of esteem. Pictures come to mind as well, usually of hopeless and beautiful youth, eyes far away like martyr statues, lithe forms, darkly magnetic charisma, aching, striking images, with pretences of intimacy. These perceptions of art bring me fevered fantasies, they make me want an unattainable probably destructive persona. I think of feeling more comfortable in my skin, having a muscular lithe physique, a mysterious countenance, having the ability to effortlessly draw in whoever I please. I think of being the object of admiration, of being that art that makes people invest so much of their thoughts and dreams in me, as they agonize over the details of my presence. I imagine being a social nexus in a situation, people revolving around me in a darkly lit room or maybe huddling with dreamy yearning young artists on distant beaches, in a life of endless joy rides and motels along interstates. Avarice is definitely an element of my obsession with swagger.

I know that I can get wrapped up in wishing that I was different, in wanting what I can’t have and I know that this results in not appreciating what I have. My body and my identity are all that I have, so I should respect and appreciate them as my anchors to this world. I certainly feel more comfortable with myself than I have in the past, especially in my Dark Ages, the high school years (I can say this half- melodramatically and half-laughingly). I certainly revel in the crystalline, epic, and esthetic composure of my idols and my preferred art because I held onto these images in those unfulfilled times. When I wanted to recklessly proclaim who I was but did not have the potency, I had songs and images to turn to, in a dreamy and yearning state, those things I looked at from obscurity.

tuneresponding four

[“And my life is coming but I don’t know when”
“Wasted hours before we knew
Where to go and what to do
Wasted hours that you made new
And turned into a life that we can live.”
-Arcade Fire, Empty Room and Wasted Hours

“Too much time spent on nothing,
waiting for a moment to arrive”
–Fever Ray, When I Grow Up

“We want to make this life into a living”
–Plants and Animals, A L’Oree Des Bois]

There were songs that I did not want to listen to until I felt that my future was more certain and that I had a path to a reasonable career, I was scared to think that I was going nowhere and that I was squandering my time, expending so much effort and wearing myself down without actually moving forward at all.

When I don’t accept my time, when I feel that I am in a temporary phase, I don’t make the best of my time, I don’t feel like I am growing, it’s like the five minutes of uneasy rest before an impending alarm. There is a folly in telling myself that I will be who I want to be when a current phase wanes.

But then there is the whole concept of wisdom stemming from suffering, deprivation making you realize a need when it's finally quelled. Sometimes you need to waste your life to make your life. I can think of my own years of awkwardness and misplacement before there was a certain exultation of finally knowing the way to my social niche.

tuneresponding three

[“And here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you will know. God bless you, please, Mrs. Robinson, Heaven holds a place for those who pray.” – Simon and Garfunkel, Mrs. Robinson]

A kind of domestic joy from faith is familiar to me. I have experienced and have observed family members experience a conflict between the expectations and dogma surrounding life and the material circumstances and pressures within it. You feel like there are things that would be called sins weighing on you, feeling that you have wronged someone or that you have bad habits that always are gnawing at you, and then you hide in your personal space. You cook, you clean up your room, you read in the corner, you’re doing something so you don’t feel what is surrounding you. Maybe the tempering factor that came later for me was the exploration of the circumstances and the causality of guilt.

The personal solace of faith was epitomized by my great aunt. I think of rosaries, of sticks of gums, of a keyboard in a pink room, of jokebooks, and the large green car. She had a very traditional conception of Catholicism and her religious life was extremely tangible. Not to say that dogma is typically accompanied by misplaced indignation and judgement but my aunt was surprising with her lack of condemnation and her gentle nature. She was jolly and had the warmest sense of humour and a resilience. Her grand love that was so freely dispersed to us all showed the benevolence inherent in any conception of humanity and divinity. I always remember how she could not believe in perdition. She reasoned that her conception of God, being one overwhelming with love, would never separate the creation so beloved from all else, would never punish or allow eternal harm. This rejection of a terrible oblivion would chafe the convictions of many believers but her conception of love trumped this. I always remember this vast love.

tuneresponding two

["never leave me, walk close beside me,
your hand, my hand, fits so easy

no tomorrow, let us stop here,
we did some great things or didn't we."
-Fever Ray, Dry and Dusty]

a feeling that envelops me so completely in an instant, his body close against mine, contours matched in the most comfortable of postures, an afternoon i would waste away in repose, it would be enough to just stay wrapped around each other in sheets

it's complete inertia, a sensual stasis, a consuming stillness, the essence of intimacy, and it's what would fill me with despair if I was apart

when there is this sentiment, this perpetual presence, it makes me never want to change again, to never move past this, i just want to disappear into him, into our weekend life

tuneresponding one

["say, can I make a bad mistake?
say what it is I want to say to you,
say what,
can I make a bad mistake?
say what it is I want to say to you,
say what..." -Panda Bear, Alsatian Darn]

on the cusp of thinking about choices ahead, where to go, what to do with my life, how to live my life, who to get close to, who to find, and then there is the liberating fear of knowing the wrong choice can be made,

like a kind of perpetual worry that things will fall into entropy that is tempered by knowing that you can grow and change with errors and that there is always somewhere to go next