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Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Feb 1, 2015
Nov 30, 2014
Oct 6, 2014
Sep 20, 2014
Sep 11, 2014
Aug 23, 2014
Jun 21, 2014
Feb 27, 2014
just to be asked...
sitting in my kitchen, annie lennox on the little boombox we keep on the counter by the window. everyone else is asleep. and my mind turns to a few nights ago when a man sat in the chair next to where i'm sitting now and asked me about my mother. this song was playing and i relayed the story of when i visited my mother for the first time in Tennessee. it was just after her 55th birthday and the chemo had really started to kick in. one evening, my stepfather made good on their deal to buzz her head once the drugs made her hair begin to fall out. they walked into the kitchen together and he sat her down on a stool, wrapped a white sheet around her thin shoulders just like a barber, and turned on his clippers. i walked away. i hid in the guest room. i told myself that, as an artist at least, i should witness this. i told myself that, as a woman, i should witness this pain, know this horror and keep the record. i walked down the hallway and crossed the living room. i stood for a few long, horrible seconds in the entry way to the kitchen. i saw my mother's head bent over like a school boy's, head shorn and bowed obediently. i can't tell you what happened in my heart then. i can't tell you. english doesn't have the words...
when she came out of the kitchen, she went straight to her bedroom and put on a men's white button-down shirt. then she went to the bathroom and put on dramatic eye make-up and lipstick. Yummy Plummy by maybelliene. her favorite. when she walked in to the living room and sat next to me on the couch and sighed, i said, "mama, you look like annie lennox!" she smiled wide and i wanted to cry but i smiled wide right back. i smiled wide and wanted her to just go on feeling beautiful and bold. i didn't want any standard to dissuade her- she WAS beautiful and for once in her life i wanted her to not argue with it. not even in the hands of cancer and the horror that it offers.
i told this story to a man in my kitchen the other evening and he might actually be the only man i've ever known to sit and listen to these things. this is an important happening. it flips my ideas all around. so few people have let me speak to them about my mother's death. even fewer have initiated that discussion. how can i explain how necessary it is to speak about this horror? i can't shake a person's shoulders hard enough. i can't cry loud enough. i can't scream and kick and beg enough. there is no language for it. there is only the moment that sweeps in so unexpectedly... an annie lennox song playing in the background, wine in the glass, an open ear, an open heart, a willingness to let another human being know they aren't sitting at the table alone, and that there are enough scars between the two of us to be able to look at each other squarely when she sings, "this kind of trouble's only just begun."
and then a breath...
and then she sings...
"i tell myself too many times 'why don't you ever learn to keep your big mouth shut?'"...
and my entire being shakes.
goddamn... the secrets i keep.
i feel so embarrassed sometimes. and so often, i wonder if i've said something wrong... done something wrong... maybe was just BORN wrong... inefficient or defective... made for a different world...
and i know none of that's true. it's the old training kicking in. the training which has me rushing to smile wide and proud and warm in those difficult moments... in those moments when i KNOW that's what the Other needs to see...
to be asked about her...
just to be asked is a tremendous thing.
and when she sings, "i don't think you know what i feel. i don't think you know what i feel. i don't think you know what i fear. you don't know what i fear."
i'm tired of having so many opportunities to say the same thing.
to be asked is a tremendous thing.
.
when she came out of the kitchen, she went straight to her bedroom and put on a men's white button-down shirt. then she went to the bathroom and put on dramatic eye make-up and lipstick. Yummy Plummy by maybelliene. her favorite. when she walked in to the living room and sat next to me on the couch and sighed, i said, "mama, you look like annie lennox!" she smiled wide and i wanted to cry but i smiled wide right back. i smiled wide and wanted her to just go on feeling beautiful and bold. i didn't want any standard to dissuade her- she WAS beautiful and for once in her life i wanted her to not argue with it. not even in the hands of cancer and the horror that it offers.
i told this story to a man in my kitchen the other evening and he might actually be the only man i've ever known to sit and listen to these things. this is an important happening. it flips my ideas all around. so few people have let me speak to them about my mother's death. even fewer have initiated that discussion. how can i explain how necessary it is to speak about this horror? i can't shake a person's shoulders hard enough. i can't cry loud enough. i can't scream and kick and beg enough. there is no language for it. there is only the moment that sweeps in so unexpectedly... an annie lennox song playing in the background, wine in the glass, an open ear, an open heart, a willingness to let another human being know they aren't sitting at the table alone, and that there are enough scars between the two of us to be able to look at each other squarely when she sings, "this kind of trouble's only just begun."
and then a breath...
and then she sings...
"i tell myself too many times 'why don't you ever learn to keep your big mouth shut?'"...
and my entire being shakes.
goddamn... the secrets i keep.
i feel so embarrassed sometimes. and so often, i wonder if i've said something wrong... done something wrong... maybe was just BORN wrong... inefficient or defective... made for a different world...
and i know none of that's true. it's the old training kicking in. the training which has me rushing to smile wide and proud and warm in those difficult moments... in those moments when i KNOW that's what the Other needs to see...
to be asked about her...
just to be asked is a tremendous thing.
and when she sings, "i don't think you know what i feel. i don't think you know what i feel. i don't think you know what i fear. you don't know what i fear."
i'm tired of having so many opportunities to say the same thing.
to be asked is a tremendous thing.
.
Feb 5, 2014
Dec 1, 2013
Oct 21, 2013
Jun 6, 2013
May 6, 2013
Apr 25, 2013
"...this machine will not communicate these thoughts and the strain i am under..."
.
the tightening in my chest. the ache that finds my angles, all my spectacular corners, so pink, so unexpectedly soft. in my private moments i like to give these spaces a name and i name them Ugly. i name them Inept. i name them Not Good Enough.
my friend wants to slap my face for speaking this way and so i cough up all my vain confessions. i pour the vodka in to the empty pocket where my heartache has bored a hole. i look at my face in the mirror and try to see yours.
i look at my face and wish i was looking at yours.
and maybe i'm not trying to build anything lasting, after all? maybe it's just all this hunger we've been taught to hold, taught to cultivate, when really my exaltation is as dependent upon my destruction as it is these rare moments of pleasure in which my spirit soars, in which my spirit is reborn...
in so much spit! in so much sweat! and the man screams "immerse your soul in love!" if this is not religion, i do not know what is. if this is not religion, let all religions fall.
.
the tightening in my chest. the ache that finds my angles, all my spectacular corners, so pink, so unexpectedly soft. in my private moments i like to give these spaces a name and i name them Ugly. i name them Inept. i name them Not Good Enough.
my friend wants to slap my face for speaking this way and so i cough up all my vain confessions. i pour the vodka in to the empty pocket where my heartache has bored a hole. i look at my face in the mirror and try to see yours.
i look at my face and wish i was looking at yours.
and maybe i'm not trying to build anything lasting, after all? maybe it's just all this hunger we've been taught to hold, taught to cultivate, when really my exaltation is as dependent upon my destruction as it is these rare moments of pleasure in which my spirit soars, in which my spirit is reborn...
in so much spit! in so much sweat! and the man screams "immerse your soul in love!" if this is not religion, i do not know what is. if this is not religion, let all religions fall.
.
Apr 14, 2013
Apr 12, 2013
Mar 27, 2013
this love
when i think of what came before
nothing seems real.
i stretch my legs in front of me
and i try to see my legs as a i once did:
my appendages as Infant, as child-like
rather than womanly
i stretch my legs in front of me and think of my childhood
my Child-Self.
i try to identify.
i feel a kinship but not a symbiosis.
my Self is not mirrored back.
i think of my child-self and know that i have grown
i think of your eyes
how they reach
how they exceed.
they exceed the best of me.
i will never be as beautiful as you.
i will never be
as smart.
look in to me.
watch me stretch my legs.
put your hands on me
like a willing tithe
like a seashell
the rolling ocean, welcoming
all we cannot utter.
bang your conscience against me
like an otter does
the captured shell against the rock
and speak to me as a prophet might
if my legs were stretched wide enough.
.
Mar 21, 2013
Mar 6, 2013
Dec 27, 2012
girl, your voice breaks my heart...
.
the desperation is overwhelming. i know it inside and out. how many years? even as a young girl? how many silly evenings did i spend wishing on the first star for a way out? and now, with no parents to run from, i still identify with this eagerness. i spent too many years inside such hunger.
but now i live in a city. i know how to wait tables. there's nothing to run from these days. i can write poems in the evenings and dream in my lonely hours of hands in my hair, a man that might understand me or, at least, a song like this. i can read whatever terrible philosophy finds me. i can curl up beneath a blanket i made with my own two hands. just me and my crochet hook and a bit of yarn, just like my mama, just like my daddy. where the fuck did those two go? oh yeah, one died and the other decided it wasn't worth the trouble. life. and so i listen to this song and ache. people i haven't seen in a decade leave messages on my phone and my eyes sting with tears. but that was a different life. i'm not that little girl anymore. i'm not a little girl at all. i'm 32 years old. i'm grown. i've been thrown against the wall and come face to face with some shit that was way before its' due. and i'm not mad about it, just please attempt some understanding... i can't be younger than i am. i can't be 32 in certain ways. in certain ways, i'm so much older than that. how old were you when your mother died? did you have a stable job? did you have a spouse? did you lose a spouse? did you have children? were they grown? were they in college? see, when i was in college i was taking care of my dad. he's a quadriplegic. i would go to class and then race home to cook dinner, do the laundry and be a confidant. on the weekends, sometimes, i'd paint pictures that were sold in a gallery in san francisco. people only saw the paintings. they didn't see what went on behind them. i wasn't a good enough artist at that point. i didn't know how to make it apparent. i didn't want to. i've spent alot of years feeling very alone and very ashamed.
but not anymore. and no matter. it's just that i love this song. and while it plays i crave the same shit she sings of... that goddamn ache, that reprieve. just put your hands in my hair, kiss me hard and make me feel like none of this matters, that i am somewhere else...
....
at intervals, i feel like one big gaping wound....
or one big block of ice.
does it matter which? i still need your mouth. i still need your hands. i am still a human being, equipped with all the tawdry longings and secrets that most possess, and i still want a strong arm around my shoulder.
i play the old tunes that our parents put on the stereo when we were children. my heart aches something awful. not for what might have been but for what is. and in spite of how i feel tonight, i love us kids with such ferocity. they don't see it but we have been made so much more beautiful because of what we've come through, dear brother and sister. the task is for us to see it. and then, to believe it.
;)
.
the desperation is overwhelming. i know it inside and out. how many years? even as a young girl? how many silly evenings did i spend wishing on the first star for a way out? and now, with no parents to run from, i still identify with this eagerness. i spent too many years inside such hunger.
but now i live in a city. i know how to wait tables. there's nothing to run from these days. i can write poems in the evenings and dream in my lonely hours of hands in my hair, a man that might understand me or, at least, a song like this. i can read whatever terrible philosophy finds me. i can curl up beneath a blanket i made with my own two hands. just me and my crochet hook and a bit of yarn, just like my mama, just like my daddy. where the fuck did those two go? oh yeah, one died and the other decided it wasn't worth the trouble. life. and so i listen to this song and ache. people i haven't seen in a decade leave messages on my phone and my eyes sting with tears. but that was a different life. i'm not that little girl anymore. i'm not a little girl at all. i'm 32 years old. i'm grown. i've been thrown against the wall and come face to face with some shit that was way before its' due. and i'm not mad about it, just please attempt some understanding... i can't be younger than i am. i can't be 32 in certain ways. in certain ways, i'm so much older than that. how old were you when your mother died? did you have a stable job? did you have a spouse? did you lose a spouse? did you have children? were they grown? were they in college? see, when i was in college i was taking care of my dad. he's a quadriplegic. i would go to class and then race home to cook dinner, do the laundry and be a confidant. on the weekends, sometimes, i'd paint pictures that were sold in a gallery in san francisco. people only saw the paintings. they didn't see what went on behind them. i wasn't a good enough artist at that point. i didn't know how to make it apparent. i didn't want to. i've spent alot of years feeling very alone and very ashamed.
but not anymore. and no matter. it's just that i love this song. and while it plays i crave the same shit she sings of... that goddamn ache, that reprieve. just put your hands in my hair, kiss me hard and make me feel like none of this matters, that i am somewhere else...
....
at intervals, i feel like one big gaping wound....
or one big block of ice.
does it matter which? i still need your mouth. i still need your hands. i am still a human being, equipped with all the tawdry longings and secrets that most possess, and i still want a strong arm around my shoulder.
i play the old tunes that our parents put on the stereo when we were children. my heart aches something awful. not for what might have been but for what is. and in spite of how i feel tonight, i love us kids with such ferocity. they don't see it but we have been made so much more beautiful because of what we've come through, dear brother and sister. the task is for us to see it. and then, to believe it.
;)
.
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