Me: "Hold on, I want to give you this CD to remember me by."
Mordus: "Won't the memories be enough?"
Hmmm. This boy raised a good point. We had a memorable time together and I've looked back on it fondly a lot lately since most of my recent memories with boys are not so good. I think of him when I watch Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ("boy Haylee, you sure know how to pick out a good couples movie") or whenever someone mentions the Cape Fear 7's tournament (where we met).
But I don't have anything I can hold in my hands and close my eyes and sigh and let the mental images of us together take over my brain for a few seconds. And that's probably a good thing. He was hard enough to let go when I left, because his armor never tarnished for me since our time together was so brief. Plus he was just sweet. It didn't seem real at the time, even though I was more present in the moment with him than I ever had been with anyone else, no doubt because we knew the moment wouldn't last long at all. Having tangible evidence of the experience would confirm its realness for me I think, but why justify it when the memories should be enough?
Perhaps the bigger question is why I wanted him to remember me. I know that my main "love language" is gifts (the others being acts of service, words of affirmation, physical touch and quality time), so it was a token of affection. But I think deeper than that, and darker, I wanted to ingratiate myself in this boy's mind, and he isn't the only one. Artists and writers produce works to leave behind, maybe to validate themselves as worthy of being remembered. All artists are insecure about their art at times and I am no different. The songs I've written about boys are more about me than them if that makes any sense. Even when I thought I loved someone and had their best interests in mind, my motives were still somewhat selfish. Maybe I'm being too self-critical, I have a tendency to do that, but STILL. Ultimately I feel I wanted him to remember me because I knew I wouldn't forget him.
Anyhow, I do have some mementos that comfort me in this way: the afghan my great-grandmother Irene crocheted for me. My dad's old baseball glove I used in Little League that I still have. The Florida Cup trophy we won in 2002 reminds me of the glory days in college. All my old journals help me remember who I was and how far I've come and give me a glimpse into the workings of my twisted mind on a certain date. My rugby ball reminds me of my wonderful teammates in Raleigh.
Memories are good, but I don't want to live them again. I want to make new ones. But I'll wrap myself in my afghan and feel safe and loved just like when Grandmother was here, and be thankful that I have pleasant things to look back on. And if I ever finish one of the four or five songs I started to write about Mordus, I'll have that too.
Friday, 31 October 2008
Thursday, 23 October 2008
WORLD SERIES!!
Okay, so I'm stoked because I just got back from watching the Phillies beat the bandwagon-Rays with my old college coaches (who're both from Philadelphia).
But I'm sad too: the World Series is the most intense sporting event imaginable (HEY - for you morons who say that baseball is "boring", you've failed to consider the fact that they're playing chess at 90 mph), but it marks the true end of summer. Baseball is so pure and beautiful in the hearts of Americans (who don't suck) because it reminds them of childhood and freshly-cut grass and playing catch in the yard with your dad and hot dogs and peanuts and lemonade and skinned knees. SIGH!
I just love baseball so much. When it goes, my heart grows cold like the rest of the winter world. Part of me hibernates until spring training. My Seasonal Affective Disorder has less to do with a lack of sunlight than it does a lack of baseball.
So I will relish this series! I am rooting for the Phillies because of my devotion to Kerri O'Malley and Gage Miller AND because I am a National League girl. HEY, I said I love purity, and the designated hitter is about as pure as a frat boy. The winter has its football and basketball, but baseball owns my heart, so excuse me if I'm blue until late February when pitchers and catchers report in the Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues.
But I HAVE THE WORLD SERIES RIGHT NOW!!!! And this moment is my life, so I will thank God for every pitch of my favorite game until the final out and wait as patiently as a child on a roadtrip for next year.
But I'm sad too: the World Series is the most intense sporting event imaginable (HEY - for you morons who say that baseball is "boring", you've failed to consider the fact that they're playing chess at 90 mph), but it marks the true end of summer. Baseball is so pure and beautiful in the hearts of Americans (who don't suck) because it reminds them of childhood and freshly-cut grass and playing catch in the yard with your dad and hot dogs and peanuts and lemonade and skinned knees. SIGH!
I just love baseball so much. When it goes, my heart grows cold like the rest of the winter world. Part of me hibernates until spring training. My Seasonal Affective Disorder has less to do with a lack of sunlight than it does a lack of baseball.
So I will relish this series! I am rooting for the Phillies because of my devotion to Kerri O'Malley and Gage Miller AND because I am a National League girl. HEY, I said I love purity, and the designated hitter is about as pure as a frat boy. The winter has its football and basketball, but baseball owns my heart, so excuse me if I'm blue until late February when pitchers and catchers report in the Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues.
But I HAVE THE WORLD SERIES RIGHT NOW!!!! And this moment is my life, so I will thank God for every pitch of my favorite game until the final out and wait as patiently as a child on a roadtrip for next year.
Monday, 20 October 2008
Dance With Me
I went to :08 several Thursdays ago and it reminded me of college when I used to dance there with my guy friends from the rugby team, like Pikachu, John Marvel, Diesel, and so forth. I loved it! They all made sure to dip me at least once because that's my faaaaavorite thing and I insisted on it. My favorite partner was Christian, an Australian #8 who said things to me like, "You're such a champion! You just get better with age!" He twirled me around like it was second nature to him - so much fun! He was a great dancer because he didn't take himself seriously at all and he clearly enjoyed himself.
Here's the best thing about dancing: it's 100% acceptable and expected to 100% submit to where the man decides to lead you, and that's the only way to do it properly. I loved in The Bell Jar where she gets kind of drunk and this "woman-hater" wants to dance with her and she says she doesn't know how, so he just throws her arms around him and says "pretend that you are drowning". It's not exactly like that, but to really dance with a man, a woman has to do the same thing Ted Williams said you had to do to hit .400 - "you gotta stay loose". Now "loose" has its unseemly connotation and all, but you just gotta relaaaax.
That said, let me emphasize that I am talking about ballroom-style dancing to old standards sung by Nat or Frank, not using music as an excuse to dry-hump in public. Just wanted to make that clear.
Here's the hardest thing about dancing to a slow song with someone you really dig: getting through the whole song without kissing! It's neat when the song is over and you stop moving and you're looking up at him and he's looking down at you and you both know you want to swap spit but inevitably the next song is obnoxious and ruins the mood. But you both still know. And OHHHH, having your cheek against his cheek and feeling your hand in his hand. So rare. That completely does it for me.
I've been listening to "Slow Dancing In a Burning Room" off of John Mayer's Continuum album, and OH it's so sexy! I hope my next romantic experience involves dancing to that song, or at least having it played in the background. Haha, I would say that, considering the fact that the song is about the last stage of a relationship before a break-up.
Here's the best thing about dancing: it's 100% acceptable and expected to 100% submit to where the man decides to lead you, and that's the only way to do it properly. I loved in The Bell Jar where she gets kind of drunk and this "woman-hater" wants to dance with her and she says she doesn't know how, so he just throws her arms around him and says "pretend that you are drowning". It's not exactly like that, but to really dance with a man, a woman has to do the same thing Ted Williams said you had to do to hit .400 - "you gotta stay loose". Now "loose" has its unseemly connotation and all, but you just gotta relaaaax.
That said, let me emphasize that I am talking about ballroom-style dancing to old standards sung by Nat or Frank, not using music as an excuse to dry-hump in public. Just wanted to make that clear.
Here's the hardest thing about dancing to a slow song with someone you really dig: getting through the whole song without kissing! It's neat when the song is over and you stop moving and you're looking up at him and he's looking down at you and you both know you want to swap spit but inevitably the next song is obnoxious and ruins the mood. But you both still know. And OHHHH, having your cheek against his cheek and feeling your hand in his hand. So rare. That completely does it for me.
I've been listening to "Slow Dancing In a Burning Room" off of John Mayer's Continuum album, and OH it's so sexy! I hope my next romantic experience involves dancing to that song, or at least having it played in the background. Haha, I would say that, considering the fact that the song is about the last stage of a relationship before a break-up.
Friday, 17 October 2008
Comfort Food
Aaaahhhhhh. We all have our choice.
For some, it is mac and cheese. When it's made just right, with the noodles all plump and covered with a layer of almost burnt cheese on top at a church potluck, I could go for that.
For others, it's chicken pot pie. Now I gotta tell ya, I had some homemade CPP at my old coach's house and his wife Miss Stevie, an authentic British lass served it up, OH MY GOSH, I had some for lunch the next day.
For others still, it's cake. Gross.
But my FAVORITE comfort food EVER will always be ramen noodles. Yeah yeah, say what you will, $.17 a pack, but WHATEVER! It's good and consistent and warm and quick. I like to dress it up: a little chopped celery and onion, lots of black pepper (to counteract the ridiculous amount of sodium in the flavor packet), maybe some fresh cilantro if I have it (haven't for a while since the little plant I got at Ward's died. oh well).
OH how I love ramen noodles! I like to pronounce it "ray-men". There's all sorts of flavors out now but I like the classic chicken variety. I'm eating some right now, in fact! Got home from a hard night at work (playing music at my weekly gig at Calico jack's, ohhh such a strain!) and watching the Red Sox WIN WIN WIN Game 5 by scoring 8 runs in the last three innings (!!!!!). It seemed the perfect way to cap a perfectly exciting baseball game.
And watch STAR WARS!!!!! For whatever reason I was in the mood for Episode IV, maybe because I'm new to refereeing and feel like young Skywalker:
"But I was going to Toshi Station to get some power converters!" -Luke
Eh, I'm not as much a whiner, but he's my role model just the same.
Has anyone else noticed that cremation is the burial method of choice in the Star Wars trilogy?
Jedi Mind Tricks are so cool. Obi-wan's all cutting that smash-nose guy's arm off and looks around like "who else wants some of my light saber skills?"
ANYWAY, why do people eat comfort food? Why is it comforting to eat something that makes you feel like crap an hour later? We tend to go after this stuff in the winter months, and I understand the "waaa I'm cold" factor, but HMMMM, allow me to stretch to make a connection.
We all have a void to fill, right? In my humble opinion, I think God made a God-shaped hole in all of us and we attempt to fill it with all sorts of shiny things: pancakes, Sam Adams, credit cards, or in my case, boys. We never get satisfied because we're trying to fill it with junk instead of what it was meant to be filled with. See, I'm a line-walker. I like talking to cute boys, admiring my own reflection in their eyes and all, talk a good game, and then when it comes down to it, I always go home alone because I KNOW it isn't worth it. Ohhh but I teeeeeter on that line, and sometimes I actually consider doing something stupid (a kiss is stupid enough to stir things up), but remember how not worth it it would be. But man, when a kid gives me his attention and laughs at my ridiculous negative-game charm, I get my ego stroked. I'm not gonna lie, it's that simple.
Does this mean I'm seeking the male version of ramen noodles? "Good and consistent and warm and quick" that I can "dress up"? Uuuhhhhh... Well, I dunno if I want something I could get a dozen a dollar for. Then again that pretty much describes the boys I generally hit on. But I obviously don't want to eat ramen noodles everyday for the rest of my life!
I dunno, who cares? I'm tempted to draw a metaphor back to relationship crap because I'm a living organism like everything else crawling on this planet and I have a biological imperative like everyone else and my programming leads me to connect that with monogamy. Whatever. As weird as I am, I'm still a human being.
I want a light saber.
For some, it is mac and cheese. When it's made just right, with the noodles all plump and covered with a layer of almost burnt cheese on top at a church potluck, I could go for that.
For others, it's chicken pot pie. Now I gotta tell ya, I had some homemade CPP at my old coach's house and his wife Miss Stevie, an authentic British lass served it up, OH MY GOSH, I had some for lunch the next day.
For others still, it's cake. Gross.
But my FAVORITE comfort food EVER will always be ramen noodles. Yeah yeah, say what you will, $.17 a pack, but WHATEVER! It's good and consistent and warm and quick. I like to dress it up: a little chopped celery and onion, lots of black pepper (to counteract the ridiculous amount of sodium in the flavor packet), maybe some fresh cilantro if I have it (haven't for a while since the little plant I got at Ward's died. oh well).
OH how I love ramen noodles! I like to pronounce it "ray-men". There's all sorts of flavors out now but I like the classic chicken variety. I'm eating some right now, in fact! Got home from a hard night at work (playing music at my weekly gig at Calico jack's, ohhh such a strain!) and watching the Red Sox WIN WIN WIN Game 5 by scoring 8 runs in the last three innings (!!!!!). It seemed the perfect way to cap a perfectly exciting baseball game.
And watch STAR WARS!!!!! For whatever reason I was in the mood for Episode IV, maybe because I'm new to refereeing and feel like young Skywalker:
"But I was going to Toshi Station to get some power converters!" -Luke
Eh, I'm not as much a whiner, but he's my role model just the same.
Has anyone else noticed that cremation is the burial method of choice in the Star Wars trilogy?
Jedi Mind Tricks are so cool. Obi-wan's all cutting that smash-nose guy's arm off and looks around like "who else wants some of my light saber skills?"
ANYWAY, why do people eat comfort food? Why is it comforting to eat something that makes you feel like crap an hour later? We tend to go after this stuff in the winter months, and I understand the "waaa I'm cold" factor, but HMMMM, allow me to stretch to make a connection.
We all have a void to fill, right? In my humble opinion, I think God made a God-shaped hole in all of us and we attempt to fill it with all sorts of shiny things: pancakes, Sam Adams, credit cards, or in my case, boys. We never get satisfied because we're trying to fill it with junk instead of what it was meant to be filled with. See, I'm a line-walker. I like talking to cute boys, admiring my own reflection in their eyes and all, talk a good game, and then when it comes down to it, I always go home alone because I KNOW it isn't worth it. Ohhh but I teeeeeter on that line, and sometimes I actually consider doing something stupid (a kiss is stupid enough to stir things up), but remember how not worth it it would be. But man, when a kid gives me his attention and laughs at my ridiculous negative-game charm, I get my ego stroked. I'm not gonna lie, it's that simple.
Does this mean I'm seeking the male version of ramen noodles? "Good and consistent and warm and quick" that I can "dress up"? Uuuhhhhh... Well, I dunno if I want something I could get a dozen a dollar for. Then again that pretty much describes the boys I generally hit on. But I obviously don't want to eat ramen noodles everyday for the rest of my life!
I dunno, who cares? I'm tempted to draw a metaphor back to relationship crap because I'm a living organism like everything else crawling on this planet and I have a biological imperative like everyone else and my programming leads me to connect that with monogamy. Whatever. As weird as I am, I'm still a human being.
I want a light saber.
Wednesday, 8 October 2008
Wednesday, 1 October 2008
Moments
To continue my theme of "a song is just itself", so also is a moment:
moment
noun
1. a particular point in time; "the moment he arrived the party began"
2. an indefinitely short time; "wait just a moment"; "in a mo"; "it only takes a minute"; "in just a bit"
A moment is like a song, because it isn't meant to last forever, but it lingers long after the final chords fade.
Moments become memories. We become attached to these memories and want more, more MORE so we seek more moments through which we can attain more memories. We get greedy about our moments.
Oh but Haylee, what about being in the moment itself?? When THIS MOMENT is HERE AND NOW?? The here and now is where we all should be, all the time. If we did that, we wouldn't have need for the word "moment" at all.
When's the last time you recognized "a moment" in THAT moment? "By the time I recognize this moment, this moment will be gone." I'm so caught up in it it's nearly impossible to be objective and view myself in a detached way. But if I did that, the spell would be broken. But ohhhh to breathe in and out and just reflect on the nowness of the time and space in which you stand is pure bliss sometimes. To honestly say, "there's no place else I'd rather be" is bliss.
But then it's Over. Done. "A moment is all you can ever expect of perfection." -Fight Club
Case in point: When the Gators score a big touchdown and the crowd jumps up and cheers in unison! You can't get that back, it'll never be exactly the same again. Different receiver, different part of the end zone, different crowd, different opponent, different weather, different game, etc.
Or, closer to my heart, a romantic one. Sigh! (After years of denial I've come to the conclusion that I'm just this side of being a hopeless romantic) I had a very nice moment with a boy recently and I can tell you, it's very tempting to be greedy about obtaining another moment with him, to attempt to force it to linger on, to stretch the moment... to make it something it was never meant to be! My time with this young man was surprisingly pleasant. And I address him as such because I actually respect him. I didn't expect to respect him (he's good-looking - I always assume the cute ones are slutbags), but he earned it. But it wasn't necessarily romantic, it was just me and him, surrounded by other people, but it was special, because that sort of pure, unassuming connection is very rare. BUT, for me to project some huge expectation because of this pleasant moment would be unfair to both of us. I HATE being disappointed, so why set myself up for it by expecting something out of a moment, which, by definition, is never going to happen again - it was perfect...in that moment. And of course, in moments following this one, I said or did something weird/stupid to defeat myself for having another one with him anyway, so I'm just gonna be happy for the one moment I got and treat it like what it is: a solitary occurrence that will with 98% certainty will never ever happen again, ever, everrrr. The longer I live, the more I realize how good I am at being single. When it seems like everyone else is in a rush to "fall in love" and lose themselves in somebody else, I'm pretty much content by myself with my couch, a guitar, and a baseball game. Haha, that is if your idea of being "good at being single" is having negative game with the fellas - NO ONE can wreck a promising opportunity or conversation like me. I'm the most self-cockblocking person on the planet. But hey! Maybe that's just to make sure no one bothers me when I'm at home on my couch playing my guitar while watching a baseball game! Because that is my idea of Bliss.
C.S. Lewis said (in Mere Christianity), "We must get over wanting to be needed: in some goodish people, specially women, that is the hardest of all temptations to resist." I need to get over that, because I want that - I want someone to wake up and think about me, to need to see me, to need to hold my hand, to need me in all the ways I need them. I've never, ever, everrrr experienced that before. Ever. So I was riding my bike home last night and tossing this around, as objectively as possible, and I found that I've been trying to fill my void with a relationship, or a song I'm writing, or freaking facebook (which I quit by the way, ugh, it started to weird me out in a Matrix kind of way), and it was just so obvious that I need to be filling my moments with God. Those are eternal moments. He's the only thing that's perfect, he's the only thing that lasts. God needs me to need Him; he created me to need him. And I do.
He gives us these "moments" - glimpses of heaven. Now I love my heavenly, mountain top moments, don't get me wrong, but I wouldn't be able to recognize them when I'm up there if I didn't have the valley to compare it to. No one likes valleys, but I just tread through one, which I think will make the view from the peak look even better. Then again, any moment can feel like the summit if we just breathe and reflect and be grateful to have the self-awareness to recognize how special life is.
Because this moment, right now, this moment is your life.
moment
noun
1. a particular point in time; "the moment he arrived the party began"
2. an indefinitely short time; "wait just a moment"; "in a mo"; "it only takes a minute"; "in just a bit"
A moment is like a song, because it isn't meant to last forever, but it lingers long after the final chords fade.
Moments become memories. We become attached to these memories and want more, more MORE so we seek more moments through which we can attain more memories. We get greedy about our moments.
Oh but Haylee, what about being in the moment itself?? When THIS MOMENT is HERE AND NOW?? The here and now is where we all should be, all the time. If we did that, we wouldn't have need for the word "moment" at all.
When's the last time you recognized "a moment" in THAT moment? "By the time I recognize this moment, this moment will be gone." I'm so caught up in it it's nearly impossible to be objective and view myself in a detached way. But if I did that, the spell would be broken. But ohhhh to breathe in and out and just reflect on the nowness of the time and space in which you stand is pure bliss sometimes. To honestly say, "there's no place else I'd rather be" is bliss.
But then it's Over. Done. "A moment is all you can ever expect of perfection." -Fight Club
Case in point: When the Gators score a big touchdown and the crowd jumps up and cheers in unison! You can't get that back, it'll never be exactly the same again. Different receiver, different part of the end zone, different crowd, different opponent, different weather, different game, etc.
Or, closer to my heart, a romantic one. Sigh! (After years of denial I've come to the conclusion that I'm just this side of being a hopeless romantic) I had a very nice moment with a boy recently and I can tell you, it's very tempting to be greedy about obtaining another moment with him, to attempt to force it to linger on, to stretch the moment... to make it something it was never meant to be! My time with this young man was surprisingly pleasant. And I address him as such because I actually respect him. I didn't expect to respect him (he's good-looking - I always assume the cute ones are slutbags), but he earned it. But it wasn't necessarily romantic, it was just me and him, surrounded by other people, but it was special, because that sort of pure, unassuming connection is very rare. BUT, for me to project some huge expectation because of this pleasant moment would be unfair to both of us. I HATE being disappointed, so why set myself up for it by expecting something out of a moment, which, by definition, is never going to happen again - it was perfect...in that moment. And of course, in moments following this one, I said or did something weird/stupid to defeat myself for having another one with him anyway, so I'm just gonna be happy for the one moment I got and treat it like what it is: a solitary occurrence that will with 98% certainty will never ever happen again, ever, everrrr. The longer I live, the more I realize how good I am at being single. When it seems like everyone else is in a rush to "fall in love" and lose themselves in somebody else, I'm pretty much content by myself with my couch, a guitar, and a baseball game. Haha, that is if your idea of being "good at being single" is having negative game with the fellas - NO ONE can wreck a promising opportunity or conversation like me. I'm the most self-cockblocking person on the planet. But hey! Maybe that's just to make sure no one bothers me when I'm at home on my couch playing my guitar while watching a baseball game! Because that is my idea of Bliss.
C.S. Lewis said (in Mere Christianity), "We must get over wanting to be needed: in some goodish people, specially women, that is the hardest of all temptations to resist." I need to get over that, because I want that - I want someone to wake up and think about me, to need to see me, to need to hold my hand, to need me in all the ways I need them. I've never, ever, everrrr experienced that before. Ever. So I was riding my bike home last night and tossing this around, as objectively as possible, and I found that I've been trying to fill my void with a relationship, or a song I'm writing, or freaking facebook (which I quit by the way, ugh, it started to weird me out in a Matrix kind of way), and it was just so obvious that I need to be filling my moments with God. Those are eternal moments. He's the only thing that's perfect, he's the only thing that lasts. God needs me to need Him; he created me to need him. And I do.
He gives us these "moments" - glimpses of heaven. Now I love my heavenly, mountain top moments, don't get me wrong, but I wouldn't be able to recognize them when I'm up there if I didn't have the valley to compare it to. No one likes valleys, but I just tread through one, which I think will make the view from the peak look even better. Then again, any moment can feel like the summit if we just breathe and reflect and be grateful to have the self-awareness to recognize how special life is.
Because this moment, right now, this moment is your life.
Tuesday, 30 September 2008
What People Don't Get
I'm a songwriter. It's what I do. I have to. It's not a "hey, that sounds like a neat job!" thing. It's a, "If I didn't, I wouldn't know who I am" thing.
So anyhow, here's what people don't get:
MY SONGS ARE NOT ME. I AM NOT ANY ONE SONG (except maybe Optimism). IT'S NOT ALL NECESSARILY FACT. (it's called artistic license).
See, a song is just itself. Yes, it came from the writer, and maybe the writer can say "this sums me up", but once you release it, it doesn't belong to you anymore. Yes, I own it, I make money from it, but that's not what I mean. I mean you give it away to every ear who hears it, and it becomes theirs too. The only way to keep a song, to make it be completely You, is to never play it for anyone else.
I sort of realized this just now from an earlier act of bravery. I played this sweet song for some people at Cafe Gardens Sunday afternoon and they seemed all touched by it (oh my gosh it's beautiful), and I told them "I just realized that I'd never played that song in public before, so y'all are the first ever to hear it!" and they thought that was cute.
SO AT THAT MOMENT, THE SONG WAS NO LONGER IN MY POSSESSION. Humanity owns it, basically I guess.
I keep hearing this word "courage", as in, "Haylee, it takes a lot of courage to go out there and play your own songs, or to even open up your voice and hands to people." Uh, okay. It just seems like that's what I'm supposed to do. If you do something well, like perform surgery, fix a car, teach kids math, play rugby, YOU DO IT. Why is it so courageous to perform the role you naturally fill?
So there you go along, doing what what you do, and hey! the world is full of people all around you! Hi there, People! So you interact and make friends and so forth, but we all also have jobs to contribute to this greater whole we call "society", of which we are all a member, right? Cause if each person didn't do their job, it wouldn't work, right? Each of us holds up our end.
My end is the music one. All of our roles perform a function for everybody else. I like my thing that I do because it helps people feel. My best buddy Allison told me once, about which song I don't recall, "Hales, the lyrics of that song just lift out of my bones the feeling I'd never be able to say out loud."
Wow. Holy crap, I did that? I was just talking to myself at the time! I wrote that song about ME, and about THAT KID, and at the fresh time I wrote it, I felt it all the way every time I played it. So years pass, other stuff happens with other kids, and the songs still apply. THAT'S WHEN YOU KNOW THE SONG/BIRD HAS LEFT ITS MAMA'S NEST and flies around by itself singing to anyone but no one in particular, just to get out what's been trapped inside itself.
Other people take ownership of your song. It's called "interpretation". I've been told that my older, less mature songs (haha written about a very immature subject) are too specific, that writing a song should be mechanized and generalized enough so more people will buy into that because that's how you make money at songwriting! PUUUUUUUKKE! HUUUUWAAAAAHHH! COUGH COUGH COUGH. But somehow, they reach other people who say to me, "that song sums up my entire love life". Wow.
Listen man, I do it because I have to. I once asked my favorite artist of all-time, Audrey Owens, former roommate and best bud since freshman year at Jennings ground floor, why she did her art stuff. (she did drawings of lizards, birds, taught me how to put a collage together, built furniture with her dad, I mean if you can imagine some sort of far out way to spend an afternoon creating something she did it). She kind of laughed and sort of pondered the question, and said, "I do it because it pleases me, I guess. It's a really selfish thing for me, I just do it because I like doing it."
Wow.
That was a turning point for me. Someone else did her thing because she WANTED to do it, while I did what I did because I HAD to do it. WOW, it never occurred to me that I could LIKE doing it. Maybe because the stuff I wrote songs about was painful to me. I wrote songs to release pain about these feelings in my bones I couldn't get out of my mouth, just like Allison said.
So when you are good at something, and you like doing it, you're more inclined to share it. So I give it away to other people, but I don't expect everyone to be "pleased" by it. If I'm pleased, that's all there is to it. Because I know that God is pleased because THIS IS WHAT HE CREATED ME TO DO. And I'm only being true to it. And he's sent people who like what I do to reinforce this fact.
I've been in and out of love with making music soooo many times. But I guess I was ready now. Wow. I just realized the last big thing I wrote songs about was the first time I'd ever been completely open to feeling love. And ooooh I felt it, all the way. And it was great, it's been great, and will continue to be great for me, because I'm experiencing a side of love I hadn't ever seen before. My songs would be boring if I kept viewing the muse from the same old angle over and over again. And I wrote a lot of songs about it. And I think Carlie Simon was right when she said "You're so vain/you probably think this song is about you". And yeah, from a certain point of view, it is. But, I WROTE IT FOR ME. M.E. Haylee Ugh Slaughter. It was a selfish act, something I had to do for myself. It just so happens the songs are pretty dad gum good and other people like them a lot. And I keep on writing, but it's evolving, and different feelings emerge now when I play them, just like songs I wrote six years ago have turned the tables on me. I am now the jerk, the You the Singer sings to, the beguiling a-hole who carelessly broke a heart. And that's fine. I learned something. I wrote something.
BUT THOSE SONGS ARE NOT ME. And they are not about that kid anymore. Because since other people have heard them, they are about a number of people. I played "The One Comes of Age" at my BFF Dennis' Good-Luck-At-Tulane-Law-School party, and Chad & his bf laughed when I sang the line "the one you thought was smart but couldn't comprehend your famous monologues" (because Chad will go off on a tangent sometimes and his boy is all, um yeah left field). (the chorus is: "I want the One who'll take me to the sea and swim out as far as he can with me/I want the One who'll take me to the edge" So when I finished the song, Chad just said "Wow" and something about never being happier that he knows me than he did right then. I almost fell over. My highly personal song, which I wrote as generally as possible so it could be appreciated by as many people as possible (see, I still know how to craft sometimes), knocked him over.
And it is a beautiful song. :) And I honestly wrote it for other people, not just for myself. I THANK GOD for the experiences, even the ones when you publicly humiliate the One you found to love because he's just like you and he ends up rejecting you, hating your guts, sending vitriolic emails, telling everyone you're insane and a bad rugby player and intimidating his friends not to associate with you, BECAUSE THESE EXPERIENCES HAVE BROUGHT ME CLOSER TO GOD.
CLOSER TO LOVE. Because I have seen 1 Corinthians 13 with my own eyes. I know how to agape. I heard from a really neat boy I met this past weekend that love is cool, but being IN love is complete and utter B.S. He felt very strongly about this. But I said hey man, the Greeks had FOUR WORDS TO DESCRIBE LOVE, and our culture has boiled it down to one four-letter word that has this HUGE meaning - the Bible said GOD IS LOVE, and what the heck is bigger than GOD HIMSELF? Jeez. So I told him, the highest form of love is AGAPE, brotherly love, as in wishing someone well, even if they hate you, even if you've never met them and they live on the other side of the world, YOU AGAPE/LOVE THAT PERSON AND HOPE GOOD THINGS FOR THEM. BECAUSE THAT IS HOW GOD LOVES US. So that is anything but B.S. And he had to agree.
So I've been kicking around these four basic motivations we all have thing that I heard about from Kerri O'Malley, my college rugby coach/current coach of the Gainesville Hogs. She said we all do everything we do for one or more of the following: POWER, FUN, FREEDOM, OR LOVE.
I've seen my rugby career follow this pattern. Now, I see my evolution as a songwriter go this way as well.
So anyhow, here's what people don't get:
MY SONGS ARE NOT ME. I AM NOT ANY ONE SONG (except maybe Optimism). IT'S NOT ALL NECESSARILY FACT. (it's called artistic license).
See, a song is just itself. Yes, it came from the writer, and maybe the writer can say "this sums me up", but once you release it, it doesn't belong to you anymore. Yes, I own it, I make money from it, but that's not what I mean. I mean you give it away to every ear who hears it, and it becomes theirs too. The only way to keep a song, to make it be completely You, is to never play it for anyone else.
I sort of realized this just now from an earlier act of bravery. I played this sweet song for some people at Cafe Gardens Sunday afternoon and they seemed all touched by it (oh my gosh it's beautiful), and I told them "I just realized that I'd never played that song in public before, so y'all are the first ever to hear it!" and they thought that was cute.
SO AT THAT MOMENT, THE SONG WAS NO LONGER IN MY POSSESSION. Humanity owns it, basically I guess.
I keep hearing this word "courage", as in, "Haylee, it takes a lot of courage to go out there and play your own songs, or to even open up your voice and hands to people." Uh, okay. It just seems like that's what I'm supposed to do. If you do something well, like perform surgery, fix a car, teach kids math, play rugby, YOU DO IT. Why is it so courageous to perform the role you naturally fill?
So there you go along, doing what what you do, and hey! the world is full of people all around you! Hi there, People! So you interact and make friends and so forth, but we all also have jobs to contribute to this greater whole we call "society", of which we are all a member, right? Cause if each person didn't do their job, it wouldn't work, right? Each of us holds up our end.
My end is the music one. All of our roles perform a function for everybody else. I like my thing that I do because it helps people feel. My best buddy Allison told me once, about which song I don't recall, "Hales, the lyrics of that song just lift out of my bones the feeling I'd never be able to say out loud."
Wow. Holy crap, I did that? I was just talking to myself at the time! I wrote that song about ME, and about THAT KID, and at the fresh time I wrote it, I felt it all the way every time I played it. So years pass, other stuff happens with other kids, and the songs still apply. THAT'S WHEN YOU KNOW THE SONG/BIRD HAS LEFT ITS MAMA'S NEST and flies around by itself singing to anyone but no one in particular, just to get out what's been trapped inside itself.
Other people take ownership of your song. It's called "interpretation". I've been told that my older, less mature songs (haha written about a very immature subject) are too specific, that writing a song should be mechanized and generalized enough so more people will buy into that because that's how you make money at songwriting! PUUUUUUUKKE! HUUUUWAAAAAHHH! COUGH COUGH COUGH. But somehow, they reach other people who say to me, "that song sums up my entire love life". Wow.
Listen man, I do it because I have to. I once asked my favorite artist of all-time, Audrey Owens, former roommate and best bud since freshman year at Jennings ground floor, why she did her art stuff. (she did drawings of lizards, birds, taught me how to put a collage together, built furniture with her dad, I mean if you can imagine some sort of far out way to spend an afternoon creating something she did it). She kind of laughed and sort of pondered the question, and said, "I do it because it pleases me, I guess. It's a really selfish thing for me, I just do it because I like doing it."
Wow.
That was a turning point for me. Someone else did her thing because she WANTED to do it, while I did what I did because I HAD to do it. WOW, it never occurred to me that I could LIKE doing it. Maybe because the stuff I wrote songs about was painful to me. I wrote songs to release pain about these feelings in my bones I couldn't get out of my mouth, just like Allison said.
So when you are good at something, and you like doing it, you're more inclined to share it. So I give it away to other people, but I don't expect everyone to be "pleased" by it. If I'm pleased, that's all there is to it. Because I know that God is pleased because THIS IS WHAT HE CREATED ME TO DO. And I'm only being true to it. And he's sent people who like what I do to reinforce this fact.
I've been in and out of love with making music soooo many times. But I guess I was ready now. Wow. I just realized the last big thing I wrote songs about was the first time I'd ever been completely open to feeling love. And ooooh I felt it, all the way. And it was great, it's been great, and will continue to be great for me, because I'm experiencing a side of love I hadn't ever seen before. My songs would be boring if I kept viewing the muse from the same old angle over and over again. And I wrote a lot of songs about it. And I think Carlie Simon was right when she said "You're so vain/you probably think this song is about you". And yeah, from a certain point of view, it is. But, I WROTE IT FOR ME. M.E. Haylee Ugh Slaughter. It was a selfish act, something I had to do for myself. It just so happens the songs are pretty dad gum good and other people like them a lot. And I keep on writing, but it's evolving, and different feelings emerge now when I play them, just like songs I wrote six years ago have turned the tables on me. I am now the jerk, the You the Singer sings to, the beguiling a-hole who carelessly broke a heart. And that's fine. I learned something. I wrote something.
BUT THOSE SONGS ARE NOT ME. And they are not about that kid anymore. Because since other people have heard them, they are about a number of people. I played "The One Comes of Age" at my BFF Dennis' Good-Luck-At-Tulane-Law-School party, and Chad & his bf laughed when I sang the line "the one you thought was smart but couldn't comprehend your famous monologues" (because Chad will go off on a tangent sometimes and his boy is all, um yeah left field). (the chorus is: "I want the One who'll take me to the sea and swim out as far as he can with me/I want the One who'll take me to the edge" So when I finished the song, Chad just said "Wow" and something about never being happier that he knows me than he did right then. I almost fell over. My highly personal song, which I wrote as generally as possible so it could be appreciated by as many people as possible (see, I still know how to craft sometimes), knocked him over.
And it is a beautiful song. :) And I honestly wrote it for other people, not just for myself. I THANK GOD for the experiences, even the ones when you publicly humiliate the One you found to love because he's just like you and he ends up rejecting you, hating your guts, sending vitriolic emails, telling everyone you're insane and a bad rugby player and intimidating his friends not to associate with you, BECAUSE THESE EXPERIENCES HAVE BROUGHT ME CLOSER TO GOD.
CLOSER TO LOVE. Because I have seen 1 Corinthians 13 with my own eyes. I know how to agape. I heard from a really neat boy I met this past weekend that love is cool, but being IN love is complete and utter B.S. He felt very strongly about this. But I said hey man, the Greeks had FOUR WORDS TO DESCRIBE LOVE, and our culture has boiled it down to one four-letter word that has this HUGE meaning - the Bible said GOD IS LOVE, and what the heck is bigger than GOD HIMSELF? Jeez. So I told him, the highest form of love is AGAPE, brotherly love, as in wishing someone well, even if they hate you, even if you've never met them and they live on the other side of the world, YOU AGAPE/LOVE THAT PERSON AND HOPE GOOD THINGS FOR THEM. BECAUSE THAT IS HOW GOD LOVES US. So that is anything but B.S. And he had to agree.
So I've been kicking around these four basic motivations we all have thing that I heard about from Kerri O'Malley, my college rugby coach/current coach of the Gainesville Hogs. She said we all do everything we do for one or more of the following: POWER, FUN, FREEDOM, OR LOVE.
I've seen my rugby career follow this pattern. Now, I see my evolution as a songwriter go this way as well.
Saturday, 27 September 2008
Binary
I’ve never really wanted to be a satellite, a supernova, or the worst, the sun of someone’s solar system; a distant, consistent repetition, never getting closer, an inevitable black hole, or never seeing my reflection off his atmosphere for my own heat, respectively. No, my ideal celestial situation would be as exactly one half of a binary star system, with each as brilliant as the other. Not shadowing or obscuring, but enhancing each other’s brightness, intensifying our collective power to shine our light that much further across the galaxy for gazing eyes to wish upon.
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