Word of the Week - 61

Word of the Week:  MIXTAPE

Not sure what they call them anymore since we, meaning they, don't use cassettes.  I still prefer CD to digital and I still have mixtapes from decades ago and they haven't (or hadn't) lost their shape or sound.  I also continue to believe that a mixtape is an accurate representation of (a) the moment, (b) a very finite number of our favorite songs or (c) our ability to use other people's words to deliver our message.   For my (b), the problem if there was one would be how to keep it from being Van Morrison-heavy.

Here are two non-Morrison samples from my potential (b) mixtape:


To be known, is there any part of life less easily conquered?  First to be known to ourselves, not confused nor self-deceiving, then to find the means of communicating that, either by living it, writing it, speaking it, acting it out in pantomime, to significant others.  Our human ability to misconstrue is without limit, as though existence were a cinema noir classic in which we each play a protagonist of limited vision who only dreams of the big score.  Yes, I have recently been watching and thinking about noir.  I can tell you this, the cartel always wins.

With the discovery of Pinterest, I found knitting artists who produce non-matching socks by the pair.  They are jewels for the feet, rare and beautiful and, it seems, frequently made from last small bits of yarn leftover from other projects.  I know I am one of those pair, not one row like another, disparate parts scattered all over the landscape.  I believe most of us are.  Our songs will be as divergent as our thoughts and favorite foods.  A mixtape can be the microcosm, the linear presentation of peaks and valleys, a map of preferences in a way the brain can process it, us as a medley of our greatest hits which we feel no compulsion to explain.

Source unknown.

It might have to be a video mixtape, what with Lou Reed and all.

Two mixtapes, one video, one audio.  For now.

Singing love songs to the self

Apologies for the ad...they were everywhere.  Listening to Eva Cassidy, with goosebumps, reminded me of a Ry Cooder album called Chicken Skin Music.  Eva, here, = chicken skin.  We'll save Ry Cooder for another day, though his soundtrack for The Long Riders tempted me.



What has been tugging at me is the bafflement of being in a relationship with self, for that is what it is, what we're asked to do.  If only one voice spoke in our heads, if there were only one clear path, one strong, reliable premise.  I do not find that to be the case.  We have dual citizenship, conflicting allegiance, to our separate parts.  What if we sang love songs, read love poems,  to ourselves, brought the disparate sides together with affection?  Who might we become? 

Though not born under the sign of Libra, its influence is strong (and belief in astrology is not a prerequisite to continue here); I seek balance.  It is not a state reached without consideration; it is not always reachable. Who and how we are, to and with ourselves, mirror our external lives, or, more likely,  they are mirrored within, based on how we go through the wider world.

The notion of a love song - for that is what Fields of Gold seems to be - narrowed to exclude any other and instead explore how faithful we may be to ourselves is not something I sought.  It was just, suddenly, there.  I have been working for years to stop seeing myself as a suspicious character, one of the usual suspects when something is amiss.  I work to stop taking myself into the interrogation room, probing motives and explanations, sowing doubt. 

It feels as though I reach my goals slowly, but to what can I reasonably compare my pace?  That I am Ferdinand the Bull in a land founded on the Puritan Ethic has become clear.  That I and my mind wander in several directions at once is no longer shocking news.  Coming to accept life as a more fluid substance than once thought takes getting used to.  Whether or not other - perhaps all - lives have this in common seems possible, though others appear to resist the ebb and flow with more determination than I.  From moment to moment, I now do my best to surrender to a current distantly outside my control.  I don't swim especially well and I suspect that's not the lesson.

"I never made promises lightly
And there have been some that I've broken
But I swear in the days still left
We will walk in fields of gold"

I have not always kept the promises I made to myself; not through indifference, not through cruelty, but because keeping them was simply not possible with the tools I possessed.  I believe that each day, each moment, we have the chance to start fresh, to reevaluate and regroup. It is startling, yet not impossible, to think of myself with a happy ending.  Not the classic movie final shot.  Maybe I'm Claude Raines AND Humphrey Bogart, walking companionably, arm in arm, into the Moroccan night.