This week was absolute carnage but I don't want to be a one track pony who only complains about the same thing just because thought loops are my special party trick. So in other news, my friend teases me about only liking what they call "Duran Duran" music. You know the kind I mean. Heavy on the synths and nostalgic vibe of a world dreaming of romance and a life without Reaganomics. So I told my other friend this who is also the sister of the other friend who is also a bit of a dark horse with spiral tendencies and now we giggle trying to find the most Duran Duran style music we can.
And because this week was carnage in a month of mayhem in a year of spiral, I will not be going to my favorite place to dance to Duran Duran music because I'm no good around people right now but will share some that we've loved recently.
Nation of Language - Wounds of Love
This is so Roxy Music coded I can't stand it in the best way.
Sculpture Club - Just One More
Dripping with romance and nostalgia and existential malaise, I love it.
Up before the sun, that's my new normal. I well remember the many slides into sunrise from the other side. For so long, I've longed to turn The Devil upright into The Lovers. No one said in order to step into the light, I'd have to sever The Darkness. Walk away from the pit that holds all the zings. I can do it with a broken heart has never hit harder these days. Receiving acknowledgment and appreciation for my skills and achievements is so foreign, I don't believe it and definitely don't put my trust in it but something surprising is happening. In choosing me, this me, not the conjoined me.... my public life is undergoing some sort of renaissance. Yesterday, I was flooded with appreciative recognition. My friend said, are you able to hold your own head up right? Actually yes. No more feigned humility or deprecation beyond the joke "I don't know that I'm wise... even a broken clock is right twice a day".
Earned after years and years and years of the upside down, pulling myself upright, soul muscles straining and bleeding... twisting the inverse through tenacity, intuition and some days sheer will.... I am wise. And learning every day that my own instincts and perspectives are not only en pointe but also help those around me to ascend into the light with me. There's joy and power in that even while I carry my own storms and darkness within. So maybe I am still conjoined but this time balance might just be the twinkling light I see sometimes in the distance. Along with a healthy dose of fuck off if you don't understand the magic I weave. I can't have it all but actually? Realizing that I wouldn't want to.
The compass is pointing west more and more and Glitterfox is the soundtrack.
Four posts in a month (plus two drafts)??? What year is it... 2012??
But... but... this song is a must hear. It's wormed itself into my ears and soft crevasses with delicate nostalgic chords and riffs. I think you'll agree.... it's a yearner but also so sly synthy, smirk tickling, heartsy poptastic. I'm such a sucker for songs with peak pining whimsy. That easily belong in the past while careening into the future.
<3 <3 <3
Lathe of Heaven - Aurora
Oh and this one by Mareux has been making the rounds too when I bring my head out of my own doom spells long enough to remember that dancing cures all ills and evils. Listen, I'm trying ohh-kaaay.
Do you remember when you would find a song or a band? Back in the day, are we even saying that these days? Without digressing too much into nostalgia, which apparently is yet another marker of The Aged, back in the day, I would find music through people in real life by word of mouth or by situations.
In this era of isolation and remote work... that's a bit harder. Let's not even mention dating.
There's no point to this post. Truly. For now, I find myself living life because life has claimed me. No deep existential crises today. Not to worry though, Life is still wreaking havoc but the upsets are practical, not existential, which has rarely been this blog's brief.
My actual work life is an insane turmoil at the moment but that's not very romantic. So let's move on (delirium acknowledged). I'm just a person who is healing from the loss of the love of their life and a lot of trauma, loves music, deep thoughts and deep emotions, naughty and spicy quality undercurrents, hates fascism in all its forms, avoids shallow connections, likes cats, is wary of dogs, HSP, INFP mostly (though I like crowds when it means a concert or dancing), loves being at home, loves making a garden, loves cuddles, loves days when we don't shower and we revel in our lazy togetherness.
Yeah... okay.... I could go on but I get it... I'm writing a recipe for a dating app or a dating interview or a birthday candle wish, which I hate. I'm not that person... the one who jumps into a situation ready to trust and happy to have my expectations ruined. I will run them through their paces after everything I've been through and that's not for everyone.
No. Sadly, I'm a traumatized analytical romantic demi/pansexual with PTSD and certain anatomical preferences who actually needs to connect with you first. But, okay. I know myself better now than I ever have before. So much better that I'm typing this out fully aware that I'll publish it rather than keeping it in some journal. This is a beautiful testimony to these years of this blog and my weird experiences with social media! Exposure therapy actually works ... I'm laughing at the irony...
So... in terms of dating... is it weird if I just say The Cure Lovesong and Depeche Mode Strangelove in my bio? I mean... it's just the beginning so where's the limit?
For me there isn't a limit so besides my match, who is my match? You get what I'm saying right? The inferred sarcasm and resignation? The ridiculous pretend game je ne sais quois of even posting this but here we fucking are. I already know who knows me to my core and who can handle me but I guess we exist in a circus of our own fucking making.
That's not wholly true. There are others. Like my dearest friend who speaks to my emotional core, the one who I actually let see my soft underbelly. The one I send gentle and tearful voice notes to. The one I'm most scared to lose. Even in this relationship, there runs an undercurrent of pain. One that resembles a Bjork side eye... soft and undefinable.. but also wholly understood. The strange gripping and releasing as we allow each other to breathe and be. She is so soft and strong and yet I find myself too sharp for her.
This is so true for my relationships.
A new friend said in our daily video chat, "it's a new day" and I responded with "a new day is just another way of saying we exist and so do the horrors." She didn't get it or laugh but the other new friend kind of did and we giggled over the Icelandic history of necropants....
I need someone who gets it and laughs and says more in the way of the perfect song. I miss these dark songs with my entire being. Also, the dagger, the side eye, the cynical acidic velvet tongue, the sarcasm and the gentle.
Depeche Mode - Strangelove
Will you take the pain I will give to you
Again and again and will you return it
...... I also miss dry sarcastic humor laced with deep emotional unspoken understanding. The one I miss connecting with. The heartbreak I keep trying to heal.
But also, the hidden messages and jokes I plant everywhere. C'mon this is funny! Maybe not the consumer mainstream haha kind of funny but the intellectual wry dry witty recognition of the too smart in a too dumb world. Call me crazy, you wouldn't be the first.
Butthole Surfers - Pepper
They were all in love with dying
They were doing it in Texas
They were drinking from a fountain
That was pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain
I don't mind the sun sometimes
The images it shows
I can taste you on my lips
And smell you in my clothes
Cinnamon and sugary
And softly spoken lies
You never know just how you look through other people's eyes
Ah the decadence of self indulgence... but this isn't chocolate boxes and roses... no it's more ragged and scummy than that. Oh well, I live in an estuary brackish with both the old programming and the new.
Only way through is through the storm, right? But there is something just over there, yonder and I can breathe more easily some days. Some days there's so much space that I vacillate between feeling the vast chasm, clawing and clamoring to fill it. Others, just reveling in the delicate elixir that is freedom of movement. Or so I remind myself to do on the days when the old programming wins. But today is not that day. Today is a middle of the sidewalk, sit your ass down and just nod kind of a day feeling the eddies of warm and cold waters - so like the gulf of our youth.
In the estuary, the old - salty and indulgent to the nth and the new? It's clean and equally indulgent but this time? Right side up and Wolf Alice is seeing me through.
A Perfect Circle - 3 Libras
Wolf Alice - The Last Man on Earth
Cate Le Bon - Remembering Me
Wolf Alice - How Can I Make It Ok?
Wolf Alice - The Sofa
I hope I can accept the wild thing in me
Hope no body comes to tame her
And she can be free
I'll be fine, I'll be ok
I feel kind of lucky right now and I'm not ashamed to say
So much has come up this week, so many messages and dreams. A dream with Him, filled with closeness and tornadoes and then someone new in sunshine. Strange synchronicities. Songs met with shivers.
My therapist and I run circles around this. Anger. So much anger.
She tells me He is Me. That all the love I feel for him is really all the love I need to feel for myself. That He doesn't love me the way I love Him.
I try to believe her.
But at my core, still... when I hear Lovesong... it's Him.
It was a secret for so long. This undercurrent beneath my life. I didn't understand that he became an archetype for my own love and devotion. It's so much easier to project that onto Him instead of recognizing my own holes.
Ok, fine, I honor that. But still, I remember the moment I first heard this song at sixteen years old, alone in my grandparents' home, watching the music video for the first time and hearing my future. I knew in my heart, in my being, that my person would understand why this song was so important.
And he did. Letting that go is both surgical and impossible. No contact, fine. Energetically? He is still there. My therapist's ire.
Letting go of an archetype and recognizing it was never about them but rather me searching for me ... it's definitely not as fun or romantic as an undying love for someone who desires you equally. But it's real and it lets me release myself from blame and place responsibility where it originated. A step towards reclaiming Me from Him. Separating the person from the archetype. My therapist reminds me that I am not a cruel person. This is a foreign idea for me. She tells me who I am and I am so perplexed by her idea of me. Because in my own eyes, on a bad day.... it's ... not ... good.
But here's the thing. We have Cancer Ascendants and conjunct Capricorn moons in the same fucking degree. We will always know how the other feels. Always. Even when we lie, even when we pretend. We will always be able to see through to the root. And I get it. I really really fucking do. My twin moon. You chose stability and lightheartedness and I chose freedom and intensity. But the root of us is the same darling.
You love that song by The Magnetic Fields: I Wish I Had an Evil Twin. Maybe you met them? Maybe you are them and I am them and we are we?
Today, I was reminded of how other I can be. How my tastes and references and words and way of moving through life are so seemingly different. Is that true or did I somehow wander again into a foreign land? I don't think I'm that weird but then again, the mentally ill think everyone else is insane. Who's to say who is and isn't...
It's disheartening though to feel always on the outside, on the fringe. I long for someone to speak MY language for a change rather than constantly changing the way I relate to the world in an effort to be understood. There have only been a few in my life that came close, maybe just one really and even that turned out to be an illusion. Even though I've always loved the line from a forgotten niche indie film, "Illusion must be the scent of something real coming close." It's okay, you probably haven't seen it.
Don't mind me, I'm just feeling some kind of way today and whinging into the void is better than any number of old coping mechanisms I used to employ. It's a made up problem anyway, in a world filled with made up problems.
Here are some new releases from this spring that I really really like.
There's a special place in Dante's inferno reserved for the lesbians who thrive on the internet's misfeasance. And in this circle, reserved for just a special few, are the rest of us who discover the woman they've been in some sort of undefined situationship with having ongoing flirtations with another. It is in this circle you discover you are just a pawn in their fucked up broken toying seduction. It really sucks. Even more so when you discover there's a harem of back ups. And you my dear are just a back up of a back up of a back up.
The rawness of internet receipts must be steak tartare in the Devil's mouth. I hate that my prescience gives way to killer sleuth instincts. I'd rather live in my delusional la vie en rose.
It's not the time... what is time? It's the emotional investment. The effort. The connection. The highs brought so low.
And the really funny part? I wouldn't have even minded if she said "hey I think you're really [_____] but I'm interested in this other woman and I'd like to see where it goes". Cool, thank you for the honesty.
It's the suggestive duplicity, manipulation, bread crumbing, selfies, late night videos and flirtations that send me into Volcanic Defcon 1. How she used me, my emotional labor, my words, my intelligence for months all to inspire her poems for this other woman. You fucking used me as a muse, you shallow piece of shit. You lied and you fucked with my feelings. You showed lack of integrity and respect for another human being. I know this place; I've been here before. Where is my writer's credit???
Playing a game where you weren't given the rules and they have the playbook and cheat codes. I despise these games. Never found them fun. There are so many consensual games you can play with someone without causing emotional or psychological harm.
At least these days my guillotine game is strong. Revocation without explanation is a breath of fresh air.
Some of them left no trace at all
Some left her black and blue
She come alive when she dying
She come alive when she on her last legs
She damned if she will
She damned if she won't
Some of them left in one piece
And some she damn near broke
And I am no stranger to the strange and all his ways
What could be stranger than to be stuck outside your cage?
Her.... the One I attached myself to. The One I desired beyond all others. The One who beguiled me with long stares and intensity. The One who awoke in me something I knew existed but had never fully experienced. Her beautiful body. Her beautiful voice. Her moods.
Her.
Her.
Her.
I've never grieved Her. I transferred all of my love and devotion to Him. And did it so without hesitation. Because why wouldn't I? I adored Her. I loved Her. I wanted to marry myself to Her, body mind and soul. What wouldn't I do for Her? Everything. I would give anything to and for Her.
Even if She was a He. Even if She loved another. Even if she married another. I would always, always, always be devoted to Her. That is what I promised in my heart when I proposed. When I tied myself to Her.
And when I couldn't have Her.... what did my body mind and soul mean anymore? Nothing. Nothing mattered anymore... I could satiate my body with whomever. Destroy it even. Because without Her, life became a long night of hedonistic self destructive limbo. Very much Florence and the Machine Cosmic Love. I was in the dark and searching desperately for reunion. I convinced myself for years that if I was "fine" then She / He would realize the mistake and right the wrong. Come back to me, save me even.
I convinced myself for years that if I pursued the males of the world that I would be desirable enough. If I made enough money. If I was cute enough. Crafty enough. Goth enough. Sane enough. Together enough. Well versed in music enough. Intense enough but not too much.
When He severed Her breasts, I fucking cried. I cried for ages. I mourned for years.
When She aligned with another woman mere days after the big fight and lied to me that she loved her, got a tattoo with her name on her body, asked me for opinions on engagement rings, I convinced myself I deserved it. It must be my fault because I was so unlovable. I marked my body in sacrifice in the presence of the woman who told me. When she laid with me and told me what the other one tasted like as pillow talk, I deserved it. Because I wasn't good enough. When I begged for reprieve, even said "You've got to let me get over you" and she didn't listen, I believed it was because she loved me. Got a job at my place of employment and said to me it was so She could be near me but lied to everyone else.... Loved me in the way only a decrepit demon like me deserved. Danced with the new one and mouthed this James song is for you. The James Song. How fucking dare you. How cruel.
I spent years avoiding emotional intimacy. Years pursuing shallow and disgusting connections to abhor my own body. Because if I could lose the love of my life, what salvation remained for me? Let me prostitute myself in the name of lost love. Let me prove to you how much I love you, I will even lie with men again to prove it. Because as He said, He was never a woman always a man. Let me lose my own life even because what does it matter? She / He doesn't love me. Nothing matters.
Not a waste. I have thought that before. I am healing from this.
Rather a reminder of how powerful my love and devotion really are. Body, Mind and Soul. I will give it all but let's embrace discernment this time. Because when I meet HER this time, I will be able to say with my whole heart that I choose you. And I choose you because I've met my own Darkness and seen the Void. I've come out the other side and know myself fully in both Light and Shadow. My body bears the scars but my heart is pure and clear.
He still lives in the world but I don't know Him. I don't want to know Him because the one I wanted has died. And the way I was treated proves that was never actually love. Love doesn't feel like that. Whatever that was, it wasn't love. It was something twisted and unkind. Love feels uplifting and good and brings you to a place of light and wholeness. I felt like shit for years in His eyes.
I never grieved Her but she died a long time ago. When something fully dies, we need to mourn it but we don't resurrect it and we don't linger at the graveside. I've never been much a fan of graves. I think it's better to let things burn into the wind. Let it carry those ashes onward and away.
This one gets no songs because I spent years attaching music to Her / Him and releasing those from my library and mind is liberation.
But actually, it does get a song. A song for me. One that raises my vibration in such a happy lovely way so let's lead with that. I am so happy these days because my life is my own and whatever I choose to do it is because I want to. Because I choose my life every day and the other ones have no influence on it anymore. My beautiful friends, my beautiful choices....ALL MINE. And all the lovely ones that live inside me in various states of healing, the unloved, abused, lonely ones, they have a Home inside me and their voices matter. I will listen and take care of them forever, body mind and soul.
How do I even put into words what is happening? It's an awakening but that sounds so fucking trite.
I spent years, LITERALLY YEARS, trying to fit into a model that would please him and subsequently anyone. Begging for attention and validation. See Me. Love Me.
Fuck that.
AND FUCK HIM.
I will never allow anyone to tell me again who I am and what I'm worth.
There's so so so much more to say but the feeling is fucking freedom.
The music, THE FUCKING MUSIC, it's such a loud cacophony that reverberates in my entire body.
I AM ME AND I AM ALIVE. AND I DON'T CARE WHAT ANYONE THINKS ABOUT ME ANYMORE.
They can all fucking choke. I am here to celebrate joy, connection, belonging and the beauty of being alive.
I know, love and feel myself fully. I am gay. I knew it at four years of age. I will never let anyone tell me who I am ever again.
I audibly gasped when I realized you sorry sack of shit vampire sucked me of my ideas, energy and wonderfulness to make your sad life better. The joy tap has been turned off and I will never do your labor again. Good luck with the wife who never apologizes.
Oh James, you broke me. I thought I knew you well.
Laugh at the wonder of it all. Laugh so loud you break your fall and you hear the gathering sounds. Leave your bones, leave your skin. Leave your past, leave your craft. Leave your suffering heart. Come, dip on in.
It's the artists, the musicians, the visionaries, the weirdos, the deep thinkers and feelers who draw down the moon and bring in the light. This song is bringing me back online after a prolonged downward spiral.
Little indie band of whom I know nothing about from Portland Oregon that I randomly heard on this Friday night when I wasn't actively seeking. Or maybe I was and we found each other. Collided more like because this is the literal mood. Breakdown or breakthrough? I don't know, whatever this is, it's not yet done birthing itself but this song is helping and tonight, my friends, that's all I want.
The irony of the desert's tragedy is that it supposes it needs to be made whole with rain. Yes, the monsoon brings life to the otherwise seemingly desolate landscape. Flowers flourish, lakes pool and the wildlife embraces it all. But in that watery union the desert loses its quiet windy beauty and whispering dune mysteries. The desert experiences oasis for a time but it doesn't need it. It has learned to thrive without the rain. Maybe the desert thrives on romantic desolate arid beauty but has evolved in strange wondrous ways to desire flippant and willful rain.
This is such a twisted albeit simplistic metaphor for our human obsession with contrarian love. Maybe the desert and the rain are better as they are. Maybe they enjoy being their own separate worlds, even "happily" in their own prisons, quietly desperately desiring union. You tell me. I think you're a liar, the saddest most tragic kind. The one that doesn't realize they've lied to themselves until it's beyond midnight.
Embedded: Everything But The Girl - Missing /// Gigi Perez - Glue
The Todd Terry Remix is my beyond favorite and no one can tell me differently.
