Well, another song has come into being by my hands.
And I like this one, too.
No, it is not so love-overflowing and happy and hopeful as the first, but it is still honest, and, while it hurts some, it is releasing…, cathartic, in a way…, and it offers hope.
Tomorrow morning, I will do my first of two workouts for the day, then I will start work on yet another song as part of my homework (due at 4:30pm tomorrow), then do another workout for lunch, and be delighted in the accomplishment of my one-year relationship – the only anniversary I’ve ever had – with the gym.
I am excited for tomorrow, and I am grateful for today.
God, help me to be true to myself and thereby share and create true love in the World.
Neither of us is looking to date (or anything of the sort with) the other – we genuinely just want friendship through language sharing, as we each improve our own abilities in the other’s native tongue.
In a way, we hardly know one another.
Yet, we chat (via messages that are mostly text and sometimes voice) and send one another photos and videos and updates basically every day… yeah, every day, I think…, so it feels like we are closer than we are.
We are honest and open with one another… in a way, it is an extremely low-risk situation for us both, you could say… I wouldn’t say yet that we are friends, but I no longer describe him as ‘my conversation exchange partner’, but as ‘my buddy’…, because he really is a buddy to me, and I hope I am to him.
We know about highs and lows in love and heartbreak for one another; we talk about finances and healthcare systems and death – so much death right now in his part of the world, but we never seem to dwell longer than is respectful; we get nerdy about grammar and explanations of turns of phrase; we share about work (we have very different jobs yet similar setups); I sent him my song before I shared it with almost anyone else (Since he isn’t great with English, he said, he could be a good testing ground for sharing it…, which he said after encouraging me through my nerves of wanting to make the instrument side of things go well, but being worried at my skill level…)…, and he knew what and whom it was about, without a doubt (It was not about him, of course, but someone in my life here.).
(“Comunque si. Sei cotta!😂,” he said after reading the lyrics. Anyway, yes. You are cooked. (A phrase which here means, “Out of your wits in a crush on this guy”) 😛
And, what’s extra fun is that our time difference and lifestyles actually line up perfectly that when I’m getting up and going to bed happen to be perfect times for him to be messing around, messaging me… so we have two good chunks of time every day to be in communication with one another.
And it really is fun… honest and fun.
I think meeting this buddy of mine has been one of the most valuable parts of this year so far.
I lay in bed, exhausted, for an extra hour and a half, after already having woken up almost two hours later than usual (!) (and I went to bed earlier than most nights); danced around my living room to the test recording of my song, to grow accustomed to it before recording it properly; stood in my open doorway, enjoying the weather, and watching people pass without even noticing me; I walked in the sun and shade on my own; I heard French(!) from some neighbors; I practiced, finalized, and recorded my song (only a video and simple audio version [versus with a good microphone, as for a CD or something], but still a finalized one!); played it for my mom (she almost teared up a bit, and really complimented it with her words along the way and afterward); painted a whole painting (from a fun and loosely-guided tutorial) on the porch, with my mom painting alongside me for a good while; I made another mala; I ate a lot of home-cooked food; I shared my song online (eek!), carefully excluding certain relevant individuals from seeing the post (okay, well, it was really just one person, but that’s beside the point); I listened to a lot of music from musicals that I hadn’t known until this weekend (Hadestown [stellar music!], 36 Questions, Heathers, Co-Op, and one whose name I am not currently recalling [only got one song so far from it and Co-Op and Heathers, but I’m liking them all so far!]); and I started to figure out the chords to a set of songs I want to learn to play on guitar.
Suffice it to say, today was a good day… emotions are very real and honest, yet very light… it is a beautiful feeling.
So, yeah… this was one of the best standard Sundays of my life… and I also stuck to my regular goal of having Sundays include painting, without even originally realizing that I was planning this particular paining event for Sunday.
With that, I go to sleep, exhausted on the other end of the day, and deeply satiated… for now. 😛
It appears by, well, all accounts, that I have just written a song.
I started at about 7 PM, and finished the initial complete draft around 8:30 PM tonight.
I then cleaned up all of my materials from my task of the day, brought them upstairs where they belong, showered and started preparing myself for bed, and then pulled out my notebook and laptop so that I could type up the lyrics and put them together, organized and in an easily rearranged format.
I then did some slight rearranging, and phrase editing, and am now ready to go to sleep with a deep sense of satisfaction both in my accomplishment and in the awesomeness of the song itself.
I can hardly wait to record it and get some instrumentation figured out for it(!).
(I’m a dork, I know – always have been and always will be, and gladly so!)
I want to get to sleep as fast as possible now, so that I can wake up sooner to work on it in the morning.
Woohoo. Haha
This has really been a fun miniature adventure today and tonight… I kept wanting to write a song this week or next, and I couldn’t seem to get the right style or topic – I kept straying from the focus every time I started to write, and then didn’t like it… until a friend (? We’ll call him that, anyway.) shared a song that he had written…
When I heard the first line, I felt struggle and pain being released… by the second line, I was almost certain I knew the origins of the song, the cause for the emotions expressed within it through its music and words… and it was, somehow, so relatable, although I had never been in the same situation… it was also so vulnerable…, which made it all the more powerful.
Thinking about the song today, I thought, Man, those are Real, meaning the emotions in there…
And it struck me: What would happen if I did that, went ahead and wrote about the heavy, loud emotions going on inside of me right now?
It might be embarrassing…, but it would be honest and to the heart…, which, I think, is a huge part of what makes my friend’s song so amazing – you can feel it, deep inside.
So, let’s get deep and put it onto paper, I guess…
I pondered on it as I walked for a while, listening to musical songs, and then, upon returning home and preparing to start work on a new mala (meditation and prayer beads), I was suddenly feeling a need to write down this idea calling out to me from inside my head – I am real emotions, hear me roar and write me down poetry style(!), it was saying to me.
Let’s talk for a minute about how we live into the future…
You know, on any given weekend, Sunday is kind of the sucky day of the weekend, because we are acutely aware of having to go back to business Monday morning… and then, if we have a vacation coming up, we’re overjoyed and excited all the time, all throughout the day, even if it is Monday morning, and we have work to do…, because our vacation is soon(!)… The boring meeting right now has no power over our cruise that starts Saturday morning…
In that sense, we live into our future, right?
Right.
So, for me, I need to be around people – I need to have my solo time, but I also need to be with people, really be with them… a friend(?) recently mentioned the term “ambivert” to me, and I like it… it very well describes my situation with all of this being extroverted and introverted…, which people almost never seem to understand, by the way…
Anyway, I need people in my life.
For the past two weeks, I have been living with very few people in my daily life… it was enough to get me by last week and the start of this week, but then the working from home this week has crushed all interactions with people in my daily life now…
However, I had work to get me through the week, e-mails to exchange, interactions (though cyber) guaranteed to be had throughout the day…
But tomorrow is Saturday… I have no work, no e-mails, no semblance of human interaction…
And I am miserable… I almost – scratch the almost, I feel like weeping, I am filled with such an experience of stress and of being unloved…
There is that beautiful quote of, “I have called you by name; you are mine,” and, though it is used initially as defining a part of the relationship between God and humanity, I feel it applies to how we interact with all things and beings in our life… when I have called you by name, given you a name of my own, I have given you a place in my heart, and you are dear to me – in some way or other, you are mine.
When people interact with me, call me by name, I often am filled with the love that is present in our relationship, whatever that relationship may be… essentially, when people interact so directly with me, I feel and experience their love for me.
In contrast, when people do not interact with me directly…, I sometimes lose sight of that love…, I sometimes begin to convince myself that the love has faded, and that I am left to myself, to be loved by no one else…
And the experience of that always sucks.
Just saying, it does.
And I know that my love is enough, and I know that the pieces of God that reside within me are enough to sustain me and fill me in every way…
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck to feel unloved by the rest of the world.
I know I will be okay… I will be far more than okay…
I’m just letting myself experience this overwhelming feeling of sick right now, so that, in acknowledging it, in allowing the intense, hiding yet ebbing emotions to express, I am able to let it all go, to release it all in a cathartic convulsing of body and searing tears…
It is already late tonight, but I know that I will go to bed in an intentionally much improved state…, and I will get out of bed in the morning and take care of myself – I will play music and make art and work my body as hard as it needs to release anything else that might remain in the morning… if I cannot focus my love on others, perhaps there is something missing in my love for myself, something on which I would do well to improve… I am worth loving, and I know that and experience that with my whole being… even when I stray to wonder at its being true…
Nonetheless, I will take care of myself… I will do what I wish others would do to show their love for me, because I love me, and I am worth being loved (and even lavished), and being all alone for so long and for so much foreseeable future is scary right now…
But perhaps it is this problem exactly that has me in this situation… perhaps I need to grow more comfortable with providing all the love on my own, so that I become fully clear and comfortable in the fact that I do not need the others’ love – I merely want it.
As I was thinking in a dreamed conversation just today, do you really want to be with someone who needs you?… Would you really choose that over being with someone who wants to be with you?
I have said it before, and it still holds true entirely, I want to be with someone – in all my relationships, really – who doesn’t need me, but who wants to be with me nonetheless… who wants not to be without me, and so chooses to be with me.
It is in times of these feelings of isolation that I wonder where the people in my life stand on this spectrum, to what degrees they want me in their lives…
I have yet to find the far edge of the spectrum of wanting me…, but perhaps it will come some day… soon…
Anyway, I’m off to clean up and get ready for bed, now that I’ve finished this whole cry fest… who would have thought that Friday night and an entirely open weekend ahead could be so upsetting??
Haha
Anyway, this was how I spent my evening: eating fancy stew straight from the pot, while watching the first half of one of my favorite films, which was just recently gifted to me for my birthday, all while detachedly wondering about something that won’t seem to leave me alone lately… (I mean, what are you gonna do, right?… it’s like when a song gets stuck in my head… just let it ride, and it eventually will be replaced by something [hopefully] better, you know?)
These dreams feel so real, so vivid… I can almost smell in them… and yet, they are so good, I wake up from them with a seeping feeling of sadness at the loss of them – when I awaken, they end, and I return to a lesser world than the loveliness that was my world five minutes ago.
The tips of my fingers still tingle, and the sides of my arms, too, from the touch of hands and arms in loving embraces.. I can feel the residual pressure on my chest, and the hands in my back… such embraces are filled through and through with satisfying, tactile love…
And, though they are not real in terms of taking place physically, they are exactly what I most need and want, and my mind allows them to be real, so far as my brain is concerned… we already know that watching something being done activated the same parts of the brain as actually doing that something… my mind knows I want this physical expression of love in my life right now, especially considering my current experience of physical isolation, and so it helps to take care of me, to give me what I most want and need… to love me…
And so, tonight again, I suspect, I shall have some more such dreams, and I will encourage myself to be glad of it – it is a beautiful blessing for my mind and brain to take care of me, and I want to respect their efforts with appreciation and gratitude, and to let go easily of my letdown upon waking and discovering that my world has suddenly transformed from exactly what I wanted…
But then…, what I want truly is possible…, so perhaps, one day, it will be my physical reality, and not just in my head anymore.
Now… that would be amazing…
Fingers crossed(!!!).
*Bonus points for knowing the song and singing along!!
Office talk between a heterosexual male and myself:
…“it has a sexy 32-year-old Antonio Banderas…”
“Ooh!… Just my type.”
And, what’s really great here is that we both were entirely joking, but also totally meant it – he that the sexy man made it worth seeing the film, and I that the same 32-year-old A. Banderas was just my kind of interest. 😛
There is so much to appreciate in that man, especially when younger,… he was beautiful and healthy, handsome, he could act, AND he sang… beautifully… just uh(!) to my gut, he was so lovely and worth appreciating and sharing… all thumbs up(!).
I have been playing music this weekend… and particularly to share with others…
When I put up the first song, my cousin sent the video to me almost immediately, asking if this had not been a goal of mine…
I was, at first, a bit confused, until she specified, saying that she believed I had mentioned a desire to share music publicly with people… yes, that has been a somewhat longtime wish for me, and a more recent determination (that has been very slow-moving, but moving).
The whole reason I wanted to be able to play guitar was to be able to be spending time with people, and sing songs together, thanks to my hands on the guitar… I never had specifically high hopes or goals of being an expert player – I just wanted to be able to make music communally and to share songs I love with people I love.
Now, I find myself interested in improving my performance skills, but it is not out of the same drive as the original reason for wanting to learn – it is merely for my own enjoyment.
As far as the original desire goes, I guess I am at that point already – that is, I can play casually plenty of songs and sing along with them…, but when do I actually share them with others in any way?
I am by no means a top musician or singer, but I love music and singing, and I love sharing them both with others…
Sure, the ideal scenario is something much like a campfire surrounded by many people I love dearly…, but two main parts of it all are my having the confidence to perform/play and my actually sharing with others.
This past week, I have been experiencing lots of feelings of loneliness… not overwhelming, help me, please! feelings, – they’ve all been quite manageable, and I have managed them mostly beautifully (yeah, I made some stumbles, but they’ve happened and I have let them go, so we need not dwell on those anymore) – but loneliness, nonetheless.
Whenever I feel lonely, I find myself wanting to turn, if not to people – meaning the people are unavailable – to music… music can express whatever I am feeling, usually, and then music can help me move into a different state of emotions, simply by my selecting the song and allowing myself to embrace it.
This past week, what I have probably wanted more than almost anything else has been someone to play music for me and to sing to me… I once shared online that I want a baritone to serenade me in my life, and a fabulous, incredibly sweet distant friend of mine saw the post, and promptly sent me two videos of him sitting around on a night shift at work, singing… just for me, in his baritone of a voice.
It warmed my heart so dearly, I think I shall remember it always.
Fast-forward to now, and I am approximately eight days into wanting just that in my life… but, under the circumstances, the only person at my disposal has been, well, myself…
And so, I started to play some ukulele (because I really need to change the guitar strings, and I only have strings for the two classical guitars that aren’t here right now [that’s another story for another day])…, but I quickly realized that it just wasn’t the same… my actively playing is not the same as being sung to… but, what if I recorded it?… then I could sit and listen to it afterward… for as long as I wish…
Recalling my wish to share music with others, evaluating that it would be a good way for me to make sure it is worth hearing more than once, and determining that it would be possible, I determined to make a recording to share with all my extended friends online… and all posterity… 😛
As I go to bed this Sunday night, I have listened multiple times to both of my songs that I shared this weekend, and I have loved them dearly… if anyone is able to enjoy them as I have, I am thrilled… and, even if no one has, I still am thrilled – I was confident enough to share them, I wanted to share them, I did share them, and I listened to and enjoyed them thoroughly… just lovely.
Yet another case of my kakizome coming to fruition in my life… self-trust/self-confidence and heart were definitely present in these small yet momentous tasks of the weekend.
Good job, Banana.
Now, bedtime, since you supposedly have to do this whole work thing in only a matter of hours… we’ll see how that all goes… 😛
It is funny, the things that get us, that get to us… I have been mostly totally fine with all of the splatters of chaos going on in the world around me these past weeks (the past one especially), and my life has been rather normal-ish… I have been bummed for many a people who have had work closed (and, therefore, no pay) or canceled (performers who, of course, now will not be paid for unperformed shows), but that is it… I have been bummed about it.
Today, as I read the lovely e-mail from Houston Grand Opera, stating clearly and beautifully that they are cancelling their remaining shows, both paid and free to the public, of the season (four altogether, with many performances of each) and that they are still paying 50% to all workers and performers who were hired to work on the shows, and, if we would like, we could ‘click here’ to donate our ticket prices to help them do this (instead of being refunded or having it apply to next season or something), I found myself full on crying… tears overflowing, body shaking slightly, a feeling of failed, helpless distress filling me…
Perhaps it was the first thing that 100% affected me directly, and not merely indirectly…, and perhaps it was that they were doing it all so kindly, handling it so well for the performers and workers they knew would be out of income probably entirely until the public returns to a life that includes theatres and performances and people…, whatever the case, it helped me to experience all the feelings I had been avoiding inside myself about all of this… I am terrified for my friends, these people I love, who work in these industries that have closed, and I am distraught for my performer friends, the people who light up my life for me with their every moment of work – their entire job serves the higher good in my life, lifts my spirits, heals my soul… how can I tell them that everything will be okay, when it very possibly will be quite terrible for them for a while?
I cannot…, but I can love them and value them nonetheless for all that they do, for all that they are, both in the world as a whole and in my life specifically…
I don’t know how I would be in life without them and all that they do and are committed to doing…, perhaps that is why it is so hard for me to know and accept the current absolute halt of their work… they mean more to me and my life than they ever could know or understand.
And I believe they might be feeling entirely useless and stupid and helpless right now…, I want the to know that they are not – they are as amazing as ever, and will be even more so amazing when we move forward through all of this, and they stick to doing what they do so spectacularly, both for themselves and for the world around them.
::big siiiigggghhhhh…
Second thing:
I discovered today that one of my absolute favorite places to sing is in a parking garage… I have turned unconsciously to singing this past week, and unabashedly so.
Walking through the parking garage today, I couldn’t help but marvel at how spectacular my voice sounded, reverberating so majestically around the concrete and air that surrounded me… it was beautiful.
And I am not exactly a fancy or trained singer or anything – very much an average, so far as people who understand and play at least some music go.
It was just so amazing a space for singing, it made my own singing sound worthy of being on a soundtrack…
Crazy, right?
Anyway, I look forward to gathering with friends for music dates in the future, in which we feel not so unlike drug dealers, when we meet up in various parking garages at all hours, like it is totally normal. 😛
hannah ananas 