Day 12: Just be yourself
I had a really good day. Getting back into my routine felt stabilizing, and the balance I got of chores/caring for plants/home improvements with keeping on with singing lessons and writing while figuring out Pro Tools felt like a reflection of the feeling of today ā that great songs come from really looking at, and being with, your own life. Great songs donāt come from having egotistically āinterestingā days. My thoughts circulated a lot around social media and wondering why I feel itās so important to my personal life when it causes me debilitating envy daily. Not being on social media has made it so that I look at my hands and my bedroom side table and my plants rather than other peopleās pixelated hands and bedrooms and plants. Looking at everything from a distance has really worn me out.
The one episode of Sex and the City I deigned myself to watch has Charlotte going to acupuncture because sheās heard it can help fertility issues. When protestors outside a window disturb Charlotte from finding her ācenterā and she goes to complain to the doctor, the doctor marches her back to the acupuncture room, lays her on the table, and says, āCharlotte, the city will never quiet down. Youāre going to have to learn to block out that New York noise and listen only to yourself.ā Damn, that was a line directly to me. This city is challenging me brutally to know how to quietly and firmly access my center. All day, I was getting caught up in voices in my head, reasons why I canāt be more self-expressive, why I CANāT just be myself. A good portion of today was me having thoughts, then realizing I was victimizing myself, and trying to remind myself that I choose what I do and what I donāt do. No one else. After having a pretty emotionally volatile dream last night about a family member where I was shouting obscenities about them while they were in the room, the difficult fact presented itself that Iām becoming bitter. Now that Iāve identified bitterness as a side-effect of positive self-work, itās becoming clearer to me how hard Iām going to have to practice listening to my inner voice because itās super quiet still.
Over lunch, I read from a new Mary Oliver collection a friend got me as a birthday gift. The first poem is her āWild Geeseā which I will post directly after this. The lines that particularly got me were āWhoever you are, no matter how lonely, / the world offers itself to your imagination, / calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting ā / over and over announcing your place / in the family of things.ā The cosmic sign of geese didnāt escape me, as I was just reminiscing in an Artistās Way exercise that my childhood favorite movie was Fly Away Home (still is). The poem made me think about how much freedom we actually have. Society wants us to believe we arenāt free, that we have to follow codes and ways of doing things. But the truth is, that we are totally free to think and to do whatever we want. Then I thought how often I just totally shut my mind off. Itās like, when I stop doing something, I shut off my brain, almost like a TV break, like a āIāve worked hard at this other thing, now I can stop thinking.ā Like I canāt wait to not have anything to DO. But what if I never got tired of being intrigued, I thought? Tonight when watering my plants, I looked up at the sky and saw a planeās fuselage trail faithfully trailing it, and it occurred to me how incredible it is that Iām a person on a planet in a universe. Heretofore, I would have perceived that statement as an overly sappy sentiment of āLife is just so amazingā that someone was using as an attempt to make them feel better about a life they secretly thought was shitty. But, actually, it fucking is unbelievable. Life.
These thoughts ā the realization that no one else sees what I see or experiences it the way I do āmade me feel that what I had to say was important and that I should enjoy saying it. This sentiment guided me to hairspray the shit out of my shaggy mullet, pop on some heels with a Led Zeppelin tee and booty shorts, and sing some Gaga. Then I got to work.
I finished my Udemy Pro Tools First course this morning and was messing around with recording and editing a guitar track this afternoon. This led me into pondering instrumental and tone for a song Iāve had the lyrics to since last week ā the one that utilizes Danny Boy as a line and a melodic inspiration. For the first time since receiving it as a gift, I pulled down my mountain dulcimer and began picking out the melody to Danny Boy. That came naturally to me Ā (trust that, I kept thinking!) Thoughts were percolating and I got a vision for what the song should sound like. This is a first because I never have a sense of what the song should sound like until it sounds like it. I have been thinking about the importance of continuously singing melodies to myself and thinking about music during all of the moments when I technically donāt have to ādo anything.ā
It is alarming to realize how empty my brain and life have often been out of fear ā fear of feeling, fear of rejection, fear of hating myself for a thought that I had. My motherās way of filling her mind with treasure has been to routinely memorize scripture verses. I think I will direct myself to filling my brain with the treasures and troves of daily visions, poetry, and music. There is so much.
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