Jackson's Writing

A collection of things that I've felt I've finished. There is no coherent theme, standard of quality, or order. A mix of poems, essays, and vignettes.

[hypestcypress-blog]

Waiting Room

When I first started writing, I was resistant to the page. I did not want to defile it. The paper is holy, and each word must be chosen with extreme prejudice. I don’t want to come off pretentious or stupid or like someone other than myself. Maybe I am too cautious. Maybe I restrain myself too much.

I think, if I want to write at all, I should be a tentative writer. I want to be proud of my work. I want it to sing to me. I want to read a paragraph and know that work has gone into the placement and the degree of specificity of each word. Each word has a role, a rhythm, a note to hit. Every word has another waiting to take its place. The writer’s job is to pick and choose the right word from among the word’s brothers. Writer’s call upon words, and bring them out of little waiting rooms behind the paper, and arrange them on the page.

For example, in the previous sentence, I could have said “place” instead of “arrange.” These differences (choices, deviations, variations) may be subtle (small, insignificant, unimportant) or grand (devastating, big, worlds apart) but ultimately shape the mood of the work. The author is always examining the waiting rooms in which synonyms are gathered together. The words sit there together, waiting to join the choir.

Imagine a navy blue hat. In describing such a hat, an author has to choose the right words. The author could just say blue, or they could say indigo or cyan or azure or baby blue or celeste or aquamarine or turquoise or navy blue or however many other variations of the color blue there are. Synonyms crowd the waiting room. But the hat is only one type of blue. The author must choose, and they choose navy blue. Writing then becomes a process of choosing that specific word from among its peers and plucking it from the waiting room while the rest of the blues look on. Imagine a school of fish watching their classmate being pulled from the fish tank by the omnipotent hand of the author.

The author takes “navy blue” and places it between “a” and “hat” on the page. “A” gets chosen from its waiting room often. It waits with “of” and “the” and “so” and “if” and all the other necessary stilts on which our language stands. Those words bear the weight of writing and allow the other words to stand on their shoulders. In the chorus of writing, they are the bass that keeps everything together, so consistent you hardly hear it underneath the melody of nouns and verbs unless you are looking for it.

“Imagine a navy blue hat.” Maybe “hat” was harder to choose. The author could have said “cap” or “beanie” or “baseball hat” or “lid” or “fedora.” But just “hat” was selected. It is important not to overwrite. “Hat” is hastily scrawled on the page. Then there is a general commotion. The author tries out different words, changes the order, and deletes whole ideas.

But in the end, the author hopefully has created a new blend of words. The words should sing a new song, chosen for their specific combination of notes and rhythm to work together. Each word from its own waiting room comes to work together on the page. And when the author is done, all they can hope for is that the words sing.

[hypestcypress-blog]

Why I Cried When I heard B Flat Add 9 Over D

Because it is the first chord in Purple Rain, and it was the last song of the night, and I was at a Prince tribute show, and the band had already come back after an encore, and that song was the last question mark in the air, and I should say symbol formerly-known-as-question-mark, and Purple Rain was the obvious closer.

Because being the obvious closer didn’t make it any less cheesy, and it wasn’t any less beautiful, and it’s what he would have wanted, and the band had repeated that Prince loved us all night, and I finally felt it, and I hadn’t felt loved all month.

Because that night in the Sydney Opera House, Prince’s sister and his old band mates were on a world tour, and they were going around the world, and they were doing their best to recreate someone we all shared, and Prince had died two years ago.

Because that chord isn’t really in other songs that I can think of, and it hangs in the air, and it sets the tone for the coming song, and it felt like the whole concert hall breathed in, and later I struggle to make it sound right on the guitar, and the real version sounds so dazed, and I’ve been feeling so emotionally drained, and there is refuge in connecting your problems to others, and the chord is resigned, and you can only hold in your tears so long.

Because there is a quote from Beloved, and it is “anything coming back to life hurts,” and it felt like that which I cherished was dying, and Prince was already gone, and all I had was an idea of what he was like, and all I had was revival, and remembering is reliving, and it hurts that it is gone, and to die is to never come back.

Because that song is a blanket I wrapped around you in my memory.

Because my mom gave me an edible, and I haven’t been able to sleep all month.

Because you wait and wait to hear something, and when that song came on I knew it was the last song, and I knew I had caused you sorrow, and pain, and I wouldn’t see you laugh anymore, and the thought of that broke my heart, and the tears felt like a sheet of rain, and it was like a cloud burst behind my eyes, and it had been brewing all day.

Because honestly the band wasn’t that good, and they were good musicians, and they were friends of Prince’s, and family, and still Prince shined through all of them, and the depth of that song reached out, and it touched me, and I knew that I wouldn’t make it long without crying, and none of these people can dance or sing or play guitar like he could.

Because it felt like nothing was harder than telling honey that times were changing, and seeing them hurt, and being the one hurting them, and not knowing how to stop hurting them without hurting yourself, and what hurts so bad is that the past is gone, and that the option to revive it is fading, and also that Prince is still dead.

Because there is a line in Purple Rain, and someone in the band sang it, and I could hear it before it happened, and that line is maybe the most passionate or tortured line in the song, and each syllable punches me in the stomach, and the whole second verse builds to it, and you believe it when you hear it, and “it’s such a shame our friendship had to end.”

Because sometimes it feels like that which means most is leaving, and it’s like a ship drifting to sea, and you pushed it away, and then you grab at it, and it slips through your fingers, and you can’t grasp it anymore, and if you try then you will fall in, and from underwater you will see the dock where it was once harbored, and you will feel your chest tighten, and you will struggle for a deep breath, and instead, your lungs will fill with purple rain, and you drown.

Because it was a rain that is not thunderstorm dramatic, and it is not hail, and it is not thick mist, and it is not any other type of rain than rain that sits in the air, and it just floats down from heaven, and you feel Prince’s presence in the moment he created for you, and you forget the band, and you close your eyes, and the tears keep coming, and the song is ending, and you feel the rain, and you feel your moms rubbing your back, and you feel so tired, and you feel so sad, and you feel yourself losing her.

[hypestcypress-blog]

Tangential Flippancy

I wonder if you really live with the ease that comes with you everywhere. I am jealous of your flippancy. I fear often I wrap myself in thought.

After the party, we walked home in the rain. There were eight of us, walking in pairs, all enveloped in conversations. Our bright raincoats shimmered under the streetlights. The rain and cold punished me. We shivered but talked excitedly towards the snack-topia that awaited us all in your room. I felt honored that you had invited me to come along with your friends to your post-party ritual: gorging yourselves on dollar store snacks. In the downpour, you told me about your dad, and I told you about my girlfriend and then I checked my watch. Our pace matched the tempo of our conversation and we discussed a million different things, but never came to a conclusion on any of them. We kept jutting off before coming to a consensus. I think we both believed that conversation was the currency of the world and the more we talked with the people around us, the richer the world would be.

Your problems seemed so huge to me, yet you flaunted your firm grasp on life. Your way of dealing with everything convinced me that there was nothing you couldn’t handle. It didn’t matter where or how or who you were born, you could always work hard enough to achieve your own goals. I yearned to be more goal-oriented. I guess, to put it more accurately, I yearned to be successfully goal oriented. I had plenty of goals already that I let complacently slide to the back burner of my life.

In your room, I realized your apparent ease was an act. It came about as you became overwhelmed and panicky. One of your friends patted your back while you did breathing exercises. As a defense mechanism for your immense familial problems, I think you found comfort in a tangential personality. I had had a little to drink that night so I let that thought go. The idea of you as strong, independent, go-getter was much more satisfying to my view of the world. Selfish.

You, nor your friends, didn’t mind talking about poop, or sex or anything like that. As we hoarded around the post-party snack filled Tupperware’s, one of your friends unashamedly soaked her infected toenail in another Tupperware, identical to the ones we were eating out of. I tried not to look at that. I felt, sitting around that circle, the only one with my shoes still on, that I was let into a secret group. This was some hallowed ground of friendship that I was not supposed to access. My friends would be standing and talking about sports, or academics, or politics. It’s unlikely we would sit cross-legged, or debate intimacies, or casually soak our fungal toenail infections. After allowing myself some breadsticks, I rose to leave the holy circle I had somehow trespassed. Wary.

I was standing by the door, with my jacket back on, when one of your friends casually asked me if I was submissive or dominating. In bed. She had been previously discussing an online test which revealed which she was and what percentage of her personality it made up. She inquired after me. You and your friends did not acknowledge that the question was a potential invasion of privacy at all. You did not care about the normality of not asking people their sexual preferences in normal conversation. You all could talk about farts and boogers and their raunchiest stories in front of customers to your late night snack circle. You all wanted to be the nonchalant group that seemed like you just didn’t care. So you just were. Envy.

I upturned my palms and raised my eyebrows and shoulders.“I guess I’m a Dom.”

“Yeah but like what percent?”

“I don’t know, maybe like fifty. The percents thing doesn’t make sense to me.”

I shied away from seeming too intense about something I knew little about. I seemed to have spoken with just the right air of causality and the girls were all satisfied with my admission. The conversational juggernauts launched right back into the discussion of boys, snacks, and pipe dreams. I checked my watch, made my goodbyes, and edged out of the room. I was full of the bread and cheese so graciously offered. I felt warm as I shut the door quietly behind me, sealing your conversation into the room.

I walked back to my room with my hands in my pockets and thought about your problems. You seem well suited to fight them, probably because of the air of flippancy that you shroud yourself in. I felt assured that deep down, no matter what the conversation was, there was a piece of your problems pulling at you. It didn’t matter how many tangents you explored. I drifted to thinking about my own problems, and pulled your shroud of tangential flippancy around myself. It was still raining after all, and I had to keep warm.

[hypestcypress-blog]

Layers of Emotion in Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Your Type”

“Your Type” by Carly Rae Jepsen is the best song on the album Emotion. I will preface this by saying I don’t listen to much pop, but across all music genres, I can’t think of a more gripping song about unrequited love. To start, let us assert that the title of the album, Emotion, is bold. How can Carly summarize or capture something so vast in 15 songs? So, she focuses mostly on love and its different forms. Emotion explores many different shades of love from exciting new crushes (“I Really Like You”), the comfort of a loved one after a long day (“Favorite Color”), fleeting moments of cherished intimacy (“Let’s Get Lost”), to unrequited love (“All That,” “Your Type”). The album explores many relationships and gets gritty with the messiness of love. “Your Type” however, is in my opinion, the emotional summit of Emotion. First, we must consider its placement on the album. The first three songs on the album, “Run Away With Me,” “Emotion,” and “I Really Like You” establish an upbeat, catchy pop standard. Those first three songs are great songs to drive or dance to; Jepsen expertly balances defiance, romance, and rebellion. The next two songs take a turn for the more emotional. “Gimmie Love” is about not receiving the love the speaker feels they need. But where “Gimmie Love” eventually picks up, “All That” stays meditative. In “All That,” the song builds to an emotional climax where Jepsen feels that she’s not “All That.” After painting love as a picture of excitement and happiness, Jepsen details the more intricate interior of intimacy. The next two songs, “Boy Problems” and “Making the Most of the Night” both come on strong as rebellious dance anthems. The beauty of the first seven songs on Emotion is that Jepsen pulls the listener in slightly different directions with each song. Then comes “Your Type,” and she smashes it all down. The force behind the song elevates its message above the previous seven versions of love. “Your Type” feels like finally, this isn’t the team of pop songwriters, but Carly being Carly. And when that happens, she reaches into the depths of unrequited love and pulls out a message of raw, defiant love in 3 and a half minutes.

Now let’s get into the song. It starts the way many Emotion songs do. Jepsen often utilizes simple synths as the base layer of the song and builds the beat around them until she delivers a hook. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus variation, fin. A throbbing synth bass picks up just before Jepsen’s voice delivers the first line from high above. “I used to be in love with you,” sets the tone for the first verse. Right away, we know this will be a song about difficulties of intimacy. Over the next four lines, Jepsen sets the scene of her mangled love; “You used to be the first thing on my mind / I know I’m just a friend to you / but I will never get to call you mine.” Her voice in these opening lines is tender, potentially damaged. This song is a lot about being damaged by love, and still going back for more. It is about hope, it is about resilience. These first lines portray dualities of strength and vulnerability, comfort and loss, and goodwill and lack of intimacy. The second lines states that the object of the song, the “you,” used to be the “first” thing on Jepsen’s mind. This superlative indicates that her affection is in the past. However, the song starts with these thoughts hinting at something on the horizon in the future. Stay with me guys, this is where it gets good. “I know I’m just a friend to you” establishes the imbalance of speaker’s relationship with the object of her love while hinting at her yearning for something more. She reveals that in the next line, “but I will never get to call you mine.” It seems clear she’s yearning for romantic possession of the object of her love.

Jepsen delivers these first four lines in a slow tender voice, as if she were writing them out. The next set of lines comes in a hurry, as if she has set her diary’s pen down and is simply running through the intricacies of her thought as fast as they appear to her mind’s eye. “But I still love you, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I love you, I didn’t mean to say what I said / I miss you, I mean it, I try not feel it, but I can’t get you out of my head.” With these lines, Jepsen resurrects the unrequited love the opening lines placed in the past. The lines dart around, delivered in a breathless murmur, bordering on panic. Where Jepsen previously let love be one thing in other songs, it is now a melting pot of yearning and commitment. She can’t ignore her feelings, yet she must fight to subdue them. Just as there is an imbalance in the object’s relationship with Jepsen (him wanting friendship: her wanting more), Jepsen has an imbalance within herself (her wanting to respect the object: her unable to get them out of her head). These lines are filled with regret, shame, and most all, yearning. Saying sorry twice in a row indicates that the first time, she is sorry for still being in love, the second sorry indicates she is sorry (potentially to herself) for repressing those feelings. An apology for apologizing. The “I’m sorry’s”’ are sandwiched by two “I love you’s” which is another example of the theme of dualities. On the one hand, she is imagining apologizing for revealing her feelings. In the next line, in which the order of “I love you” and “I’m sorry” is reversed, she is imagining saying that she is sorry but she loves them. As if she won’t hide her feelings. This is the beautiful conflict of “Your Type.” She resurrects her love, dragging it out of the past with all its imperfections. The other important things this second set of lines does is establish that she is trying not to feel her love, as if it is not something she is dragging out of the past, but rather something that she can’t control, like a wave coming to envelop her. The next lines are where the theme of defiance comes into play. “But I want you to miss me / when I’m not around you.” Here she delivers more intentionally, declaring her feelings. The building of the song continues, and the chorus and her tidal wave of emotion on the horizon, swells. The last line before the chorus picks up speed as she declares, “I know that you’re in town, now won’t you come around to the spot that we met.” This line brings the relationship into the present. By saying she wants to meet where they first met, Jepsen ties the love in the present to her affection in the past. By saying “now,” she confirms that she wants the love, experiencing a moment of clarity which opposes her former confliction.

Before getting into the chorus, let us establish that Carly’s strength is in writing hooks. Most lay people know her as the singer of “Call Me Maybe” and “I Really Like You,” songs largely known for their surface level emotional content and catchy hooks. On “Your Type,” she delivers on the hook with full force while maintaining emotional depth. What makes it so effective is another duality. Rather than the convoluted emotions she was digging through in the opening verse, Jepsen digs to the bottom of her love to find truth. She sings that truth with all that she has, and the chorus hits like a brick wall. In a song that was largely stasis for the first verse, the chorus feels like movement. The beat cuts out as she says the final word of the first verse, “met” and a single drum fill descends in pitch before Jepsen plunges into the chorus. It the emotional equivalent of finally jumping off a diving board into the pool of her past love.  “I’m not the type of girl for you, / I’m not going to pretend, / I’m the type of girl you’d call more than a friend.” Jepsen’s delivery here is a proclamation, she belts it over the beat. The beat in the first chorus is a drum and snare marching along with the throbbing bass and the riveting synth. At the end of that first line is the declarative “hey!” which seems to state, here I am, bearing my truth, and I don’t always feel proud, but I do have hope. In terms of lyrical analysis, she sings three truths in the first half of the chorus. The first is that she acknowledges she might not be the ideal partner for the person she loves. She is not their type. Next, she declares that she won’t pretend, meaning her intention is not emotionally waffle in the chorus the way she did in the opening verse. The line may also be analyzed with the addition of the following line, “I’m the type of girl you’d call more than friend.” The potential combination of this line is another duality. It could mean that one of the truth she discovers is that she is not a realistic romantic partner because of the imbalance of affection in their relationship. It could also mean that she will not pretend that they wouldn’t be a good couple, precisely because she would not pretend. Instead, she would wear her truth like a badge of honor, as she does in the chorus.

The chorus continues. “And I’d break all the rules for you, / break my heart and start again, / I’m not the type of girl you’d call more than a friend.” As she finishes that last line her voice falls away in sorry acceptance. In what might be the most glaring example of dualities in the song, the first time through the chorus she says that she is the type of girl that would be more than a friend and the second time, the more emotional time around, she claims she is not. This is indicative of her conflict. The idea of the chorus being a pool or a wave continues as Jepsen utilizes the verb “break.” She would break all the rules for her love, implying that the person she loves is the most important aspect of her life. She then claims that she would also break her heart, just for the chance to be with them. The emotion behind this line, the layer of emotion underneath her love, is not quite desperation and more resilience and being true to herself. It would be desperate to hope to convince the object of her love to be with her. Instead, the tone is more about making peace with herself and knowing that she will love despite not receiving love back. This is what breaks her heart, this is how she starts again, picking up the pieces of herself to give love. This is the central theme of the song. Beneath the layer of love and affection, is the layer of what Jepsen must do to access those emotions. Loving this person, while acknowledging that it can’t work, is an act of resilience, hope, and harm all at once.

Before you know it, the chorus ends suddenly, and its echo hangs in the momentary silence. Jepsen starts the second verse by adding a third character. “I bet she acts so perfectly / You probably eat up every word she says.” The introduction of the romantic interest’s romantic interest is not sourly jealous, but more reserved. Jepsen certainly wishes she were perfect in the eye of her love, and she yearns for it, but she does not hate the person in her place. The line in which she describes the other woman is perfect implies that it is not the love interest that sees the third character as perfect, but Jepsen herself; for anyone that can hold the eye of her love (whom she has idealized) must be in some ways perfect. After those two lines, the beat comes back in. The song starts building towards the chorus again. Jepsen croons, “And if you ever think of me, / I bet I’m just a flicker in your head.” She gives herself zero credit with the “if,” as if it’s a possibility that she does not even exist to her love. And even if she does, she is only a “flicker.” A flicker is certainly a small vulnerable thing. The flame of the love’s thought could go out at any time and Jepsen would be forgotten. But it is still fire. It still hints at something larger to come. And every forest fire, and Jepsen’s struggling love, in which everything breaks, is torn down, and subsequently rebuilt in the memory of the past, starts as just a flicker. On the surface layer of the song, there is not much hope, only an unrequited love. But underneath a few layers, Jepsen’s hope lies in the fact that she knows she will not give up on love, even at the cost of the destruction of all the rules and the breaking of her own heart.

From here, the song consists of material from the pre-chorus. Jepsen runs through the “I love you’s” and the “I’m sorry’s” before going into the chorus with the same wrecking ball force as before. The emotional content of this has all been discussed. Its repetition is merely adhering to a form for pop songs which furthers Jepsen’s conflict. However, the chorus doesn’t end suddenly like before. Jepsen continues into a slight variation. The beat stays as radiant as ever as she proclaims, “I’ll! Make! Time for you!” four times. Twice in the forefront of the experience and twice as echo’s in the background with a slight melodic variation. This part is haunting. Jepsen’s delivery verges on raspy, as if she’s been crying. If her verses were sniffles and whimpers, the chorus and the “I’ll make time for you” is a sob and a death rattle. It is her final manifesto, after digging and digging through her emotions. It is the action that her love requires. The delivery of these lines seems to say Here I am, I’m not sorry I love you, I’m sorry you don’t love me, and despite all my confliction before I can synthesize my love into one message, five words: I’ll make time for you. “Your Type” is a song of love despite. Despite the other woman, despite her best instincts, despite the imbalance of affection in the relationship, Jepsen loves. And gives what she considers her most valuable gift, her time. It is a tragic demise of a heroine, true to her emotions, which are her fatal burden in the end.

After all her conviction in delivering “I’ll make time for you” twice, the song quickly dips back into, “I love you, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I love you, I didn’t mean to say what I said / I miss you, I mean it, I try not feel it, but I can’t get you out of my head.” As this happens, the beat drops out except for a single synth line, tracking just the chord changes. And then the song appears to end, on a moment of conflict. Those lines, placed after her resolute declaration of giving time, indicates the difficulty of her decision. She decides to commit herself to a life of unrequited love. Then after those lines of confusion, the music entirely stops. No matter where you are listening to the song, whether in concert, on the way to work, or a party, those seconds of silence are sacred. To the attentive listener, that momentary quiet makes what comes next all the more holy. She makes her decision, goes back on it, and then uses the silence to represent her making the decision for sure this time. The unrequited love is what she wants if that is the way she can be true to herself. So she sings it with all her power.

She declares this truth with the third chorus and second set of “I’ll make time for you.” She is sure of her decision. This is where the song is the most powerful. After repeating the line four times (with four echoes repeating it back), the song ends suddenly. There is no fade out of the triumphant message. There is no victory parade for the sacrifice she makes. She is only martyr for herself. The song does not say how the recipient of her love even receives if it, if they do at all. It just ends, leaving the traces of the chorus playing in the mind of the listener.

In conclusion, “Your Type” is a song about unrequited love, the layers of emotions that paint it, and the importance of dualities. It is about diving into your soul, and swimming to the bottom of it to drag back up a nugget of truth. Jepsen’s emotional labor is inherent in the craftiness of the lyrics, and the passion in their delivery. There is no happily ever after, either. There is only the truth, underneath layers and layers of emotions, buried in the past. It is unforgivable that the very shallow “I Really Like You” was the single for the album. “Your Type” much more indicative of Jepsen’s power, and the emotional depth of the album. I hope you enjoyed reading this. If you got this far, I’m glad, but your time may have been better spent just listening to the song over and over again. And finally, it’s hard to pick a favorite on Emotion, and I’ve had many favorites since I’ve known it, but “Your Type” sits above the rest, resilient in its unwavering truth.

[hypestcypress-blog]

Maps

On a map there is reduction. Lives squeezed into inch or pixel scales. Squalor and splendor become lines with street names. Purely functional.

On a map the block ends. It is a distance until the next one. Your irrelevant avenue is too long, My essential street is cut short.

On the street, there is an infinite dimension. There is a breeze. My map doesn’t tell me how it felt When the moon reached over the cypress blocks away While I stood outside happy donuts Sucking sugar off my fingers Drunk Talking to the Noe Valley chefs Stopping at the church & 24th to smoke While they ride their mountain bikes Home to the mission

[hypestcypress-blog]

The Pleiades

The pleiades reached out to me above the trees above the sea. the sun’s light lit the moon lit the waves wrinkled sheets just breeze to me. under the covers on the roof fleece dreams. atop the barn do sheep freeze? the best thing all day was the breeze, from over the sea pouring over me. it made me sniffle more salt more sea the sea breeze flows through me.