There's a popular theory going around about love languages. You can feel loved by physical touch, gifts, words of affirmation, acts of devotion or quality time, or, as for most people, a combination of all five. But me? Of course, I have a weirdly specific and cumbersome love language all my own.
In any picture of me as a kid, you'll see me either looking disdainfully down the camera into your soul, or with headphones on, earbuds in, and a smile in my eyes. It's not so much about drowning out the world around me, but more about cultivating taste and living my life with my own soundtrack shadowing my steps. I would carry around two books of CDs (what are those? o.O) and batteries for my Walkman. I would search for days and days, only knowing a few choice lyrics or chord progressions in thrift and CD stores with my parents, asking the cashier with no shame to play me a few tracks from an album that I thought had what I was looking for, and then beg my parents to buy it regardless. I was a collector of sound.
I'm not sure how or why music grabbed me the way it did. With my parents, there was a good chance I would love reading, writing, cooking, video games, or cars with equal ferocious intensity as I do music, but as it stands, music was my first love. My first memory ever, is of Toddler Tess sitting in front of a subwoofer swaying and clapping her hands while the grown ups played grown up games in the background.
As I grew, so did the technology and the hunger for more. I went from a Walkman to an iPod, from the knowledge of the cashier, to the knowledge of the world wide web. And even still, my sound collecting grows. My appreciation for all types of music has grown. My understanding of layering and complexity within these things I love has grown.
It stands to reason then, that music is my love language.
I fell in love with Tarzan over a thousand miles away; his personality and character were major pluses, but if I'm honest, his music knowledge was the first thing that made my heart flutter. It's enticing, exciting, after walking around for decades speaking a language and finally finding someone who speaks the same. Plus, he makes music, creating new things that never existed before he put them together. If that's not a panty dropper I don't know what is....Just to reinterate, because I feel like I'm going in weird ex-girlfriend territory here, he and I ain't together anymore - this is just a crazy tangent...uh...
I digress.
Camp Lo's "Luchini" is my zenith. From the first time I heard it as a kid, I felt this incredible feeling like I could do anything, I could be anything. It's not about the lyrics (which took me years to even sort of understand) but the feel. "Luchini" is the feeling of falling in love and speeding down a highway towards a sunset with wind in your hair. "Luchini" is the feeling of finding a perfect pair of jeans for that perfect shirt you found a few weeks ago. "Luchini" is a raise at work, or better yet, getting to leave early. It's golden and pristine, it's giddy and chill. It is what it is.
I haven't been feeling real Luchini lately. That's not to say I've been super depressed or anxious, but I just feel like I'm existing and not really living. I've been feeling like who I am isn't enough for my damn self and that something was inherently wrong with my overall hopeful outlook on the world. I've been feeling like my history, as noted in the previous blog, made me some sort of damaged goods. And then I went on iTunes and found Teedra Moses put out a new album (listen to it) with a song that samples what?
You guessed it.
Hearing "Luchini" with a new twist makes me happy. It reminds me that, just as music can grow and become new, so can I. Just as my music knowledge expands, so does my musical love language and understanding of myself. What it takes to make me happy now, is the same thing it took to make me happy then, and instead of being so hard on myself for that perceived inability to mature, I can instead be happy with my simplicity. I'm still the girl with the headphones. I'm still the girl with the open heart. As hard as it is to remain, I am still me.
Proof, I suppose, that some things, no matter how much time passes, remain cool. :)
-Tess
Friday, August 14, 2015
Monday, August 3, 2015
Wu-Tang Forever
This one could go a couple of ways.
On the one hand, I can talk about how I was fucking a divorcing man for a few months, mostly out of loneliness and spite. And how, over time, I convinced myself that me not wanting more was some sort of flaw within myself, even though in all honesty, he wasn't a good enough friend to consider upgrading him to something more...
On the other I can talk about these nostalgic and rueful feelings I've been having lately that make me wonder about the whole "it's yours" thing...As always, let's go with the more complex, yeah?
I have a longing to belong with someone, or rather to somebody that I can't explain. I noticed it after Tarzan and I broke up, that I felt this sort of empty, aching thing that seemed to follow behind me like a Charlie Brown cloud. Nobody else noticed it. I was fine; still funny, still smiling, still functioning. And I suppose I was, but, as I'm sure I've said a few times now, I was just edging the inevitable break down.
As of late, I feel the chokehold of that empty, aching thing, coming in waves; some days I breathe fine and enjoy every moment, and others I feel lost, like I'm missing something or something is missing me. The empty, aching thing is also a nagging, persistent thing, as sometimes, even when it's the furthest thing from my mind, it sneaks me and tries to tackle me down. And all the time, I manage to pull myself away from it, get some perspective and keep it moving.
The last few weeks though have been a bit harder to climb out of. You see, I found a box of old journals and poems written by yours truly. I was always charming and crass, and sweet and funny. I read my life as if it were someone else's story, someone's else's life playing out and it made me painfully aware of one consistent pattern.
I was always in love.
Or at the very least, trying my damndest to be.
At first it was only an itch, something that rubbed me a little awkwardly that I could brush off. But as my scratchy, large print looped into elegant mature cursive, as my vocabulary started containing less OMGs and more Bismillahs, that one thing never changed. There was always some boy. Always some girl. And the insane thing is, I don't remember them, but I remember always wanting them.
At the time, this person was the love of my life! I couldn't breathe without them! This was my true love, for real for real this time! And yet, when one ended, another began just as quickly, just as shallowly. So many names, and misadventures lost to time and memory. So many people I neglected to think of as complex and whole people, just as ideas or items to possess...
But the thing is, I'm still that same girl in a way. I'm still searching for someone to love who'll love me back. Most days I'm ambivalent about that basic truth of myself, but others I feel so beaten by it.
I feel like, if it's my nature to love and to be loved and I'm without that basic (or at least in my mind, basic) need, then...what now? Moreover, isn't it sort of pathetic that that's all I really want out of life, to be able to look at someone sincerely and tell them "It's yours?"
I had that once. Of the scores of times, I only meant it once. And though it was a painful thing when it ended, it was a period where my growth as a person seemed to skyrocket. I was blooming. I was animated. I had plans and dedication to them. I had purpose in a way that I hadn't had before. And that makes me feel sad; why does someone else coming into my life give it purpose? Why can't I do that for myself, or why even when I do it for myself does it seem so hollow?
Do I still want the things I want? With my whole heart, I do. But at the same time, a pattern is a pattern because we don't change it. Is it a pattern I change, or a pattern that changes me? I don't want to be hardened and sad, or callous and jaded, I always want to be the crass, charming, funny and sweet girl I've always been, but as time goes on, and I keep getting beat about the face with this one major (in my eyes, anyway) flaw in my character, I can feel myself sort of slipping away.
I don't know what to do you guys.
So I'll just leave it where it is for now.
On the one hand, I can talk about how I was fucking a divorcing man for a few months, mostly out of loneliness and spite. And how, over time, I convinced myself that me not wanting more was some sort of flaw within myself, even though in all honesty, he wasn't a good enough friend to consider upgrading him to something more...
On the other I can talk about these nostalgic and rueful feelings I've been having lately that make me wonder about the whole "it's yours" thing...As always, let's go with the more complex, yeah?
I have a longing to belong with someone, or rather to somebody that I can't explain. I noticed it after Tarzan and I broke up, that I felt this sort of empty, aching thing that seemed to follow behind me like a Charlie Brown cloud. Nobody else noticed it. I was fine; still funny, still smiling, still functioning. And I suppose I was, but, as I'm sure I've said a few times now, I was just edging the inevitable break down.
As of late, I feel the chokehold of that empty, aching thing, coming in waves; some days I breathe fine and enjoy every moment, and others I feel lost, like I'm missing something or something is missing me. The empty, aching thing is also a nagging, persistent thing, as sometimes, even when it's the furthest thing from my mind, it sneaks me and tries to tackle me down. And all the time, I manage to pull myself away from it, get some perspective and keep it moving.
The last few weeks though have been a bit harder to climb out of. You see, I found a box of old journals and poems written by yours truly. I was always charming and crass, and sweet and funny. I read my life as if it were someone else's story, someone's else's life playing out and it made me painfully aware of one consistent pattern.
I was always in love.
Or at the very least, trying my damndest to be.
At first it was only an itch, something that rubbed me a little awkwardly that I could brush off. But as my scratchy, large print looped into elegant mature cursive, as my vocabulary started containing less OMGs and more Bismillahs, that one thing never changed. There was always some boy. Always some girl. And the insane thing is, I don't remember them, but I remember always wanting them.
At the time, this person was the love of my life! I couldn't breathe without them! This was my true love, for real for real this time! And yet, when one ended, another began just as quickly, just as shallowly. So many names, and misadventures lost to time and memory. So many people I neglected to think of as complex and whole people, just as ideas or items to possess...
But the thing is, I'm still that same girl in a way. I'm still searching for someone to love who'll love me back. Most days I'm ambivalent about that basic truth of myself, but others I feel so beaten by it.
I feel like, if it's my nature to love and to be loved and I'm without that basic (or at least in my mind, basic) need, then...what now? Moreover, isn't it sort of pathetic that that's all I really want out of life, to be able to look at someone sincerely and tell them "It's yours?"
I had that once. Of the scores of times, I only meant it once. And though it was a painful thing when it ended, it was a period where my growth as a person seemed to skyrocket. I was blooming. I was animated. I had plans and dedication to them. I had purpose in a way that I hadn't had before. And that makes me feel sad; why does someone else coming into my life give it purpose? Why can't I do that for myself, or why even when I do it for myself does it seem so hollow?
Do I still want the things I want? With my whole heart, I do. But at the same time, a pattern is a pattern because we don't change it. Is it a pattern I change, or a pattern that changes me? I don't want to be hardened and sad, or callous and jaded, I always want to be the crass, charming, funny and sweet girl I've always been, but as time goes on, and I keep getting beat about the face with this one major (in my eyes, anyway) flaw in my character, I can feel myself sort of slipping away.
I don't know what to do you guys.
So I'll just leave it where it is for now.
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