I
don’t usually listen to purely instrumental music because I find lyrics more
relatable. But at the same time, I can see why instrumental might be even more
relatable because instead of including a storyline that might be specific, it
encompasses a mood that can be tailored to even more situations.
Friday, July 22, 2016
From June
When
my aunt Mary was in her early twenties, she wrote this description of her
parents in a journal: “Kiki and Harold: A mass of confused frustration, or a
kind of breakfast-out bargain kids who love to get up early! Their house is
full of their kids, dogs, and their guests for wok or spaghetti dinners. Their
house has so much flea market stuff, but they know that you can always add
another addition to their mass of
life.”
I’ve never heard a truer description of my grandparents. Kiki, Harold, and Mary were a trifecta of my young life, of my whole childhood. And now all three of them are dead.
I never met a person who disliked Kiki, but she was always my inner litmus test. If anybody didn’t like her, I knew I couldn’t like them.
When thinking of my grandma, I think of her love of African and Native American art. I think of the way she made jewelry and collected thousands of beads. I think of how she was the first woman in her family to go to college—and then went on to be a part of the school board, to become an art teacher, and to start her own business with her husband. I think of her Yiddish profanity, including an expression that literally translates to “Go shit in the ocean,” and an ancient curse of “May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits!” I think of how she built an enormous house out of wood and stone while pregnant. And I think of her as a violin virtuoso, and the day when, at 90 years old, she picked up a violin for the first time in decades and realized to her dismay that she could not play anymore.
Kiki’s dementia was especially difficult for her because she was used to being the family matriarch. She was used to always being in charge, and her whole life was defined by giving care to others. So when she was in the position of needing care, it distressed her. After Harold passed on in September, she started saying she wanted to go home. Even when she was at her house, she’d tug on the doorknob and start crying, begging her children to take her home. This was heartbreaking, and my husband had an astute insight about it. He thinks that even though her senility prevented her from processing Harold’s death, she understood something was missing. And so with her husband gone, it didn’t feel like home anymore.
Even in severe dementia, her will was astounding. In the hospice, she managed to live for over two weeks with no food or liquids. Most people can only live that way a few days.
Today, shortly before she passed away, her five surviving children gathered together at a beach by the hospice. They wrote her name in huge letters in the sand with a big heart and all danced around her name, shouting it into the sky and yelling, “You’re free!” When they returned to her room, she was still. She’d passed right as they were “releasing” her.
My aunts and uncles are going to donate her brain to the medical community in order to contribute to dementia research, and to learn more about the type she had. It makes perfect, harmonious sense that they would perform a spiritual ritual while also contributing to science. And I know that’s exactly what Kiki would want, because it means she can help people even in death.
Harold, Kiki, and Mary: you are my blood, my trio, my history. And for the rest of my life, you’ll show up in my Technicolor dreams.
I’ve never heard a truer description of my grandparents. Kiki, Harold, and Mary were a trifecta of my young life, of my whole childhood. And now all three of them are dead.
I never met a person who disliked Kiki, but she was always my inner litmus test. If anybody didn’t like her, I knew I couldn’t like them.
When thinking of my grandma, I think of her love of African and Native American art. I think of the way she made jewelry and collected thousands of beads. I think of how she was the first woman in her family to go to college—and then went on to be a part of the school board, to become an art teacher, and to start her own business with her husband. I think of her Yiddish profanity, including an expression that literally translates to “Go shit in the ocean,” and an ancient curse of “May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits!” I think of how she built an enormous house out of wood and stone while pregnant. And I think of her as a violin virtuoso, and the day when, at 90 years old, she picked up a violin for the first time in decades and realized to her dismay that she could not play anymore.
Kiki’s dementia was especially difficult for her because she was used to being the family matriarch. She was used to always being in charge, and her whole life was defined by giving care to others. So when she was in the position of needing care, it distressed her. After Harold passed on in September, she started saying she wanted to go home. Even when she was at her house, she’d tug on the doorknob and start crying, begging her children to take her home. This was heartbreaking, and my husband had an astute insight about it. He thinks that even though her senility prevented her from processing Harold’s death, she understood something was missing. And so with her husband gone, it didn’t feel like home anymore.
Even in severe dementia, her will was astounding. In the hospice, she managed to live for over two weeks with no food or liquids. Most people can only live that way a few days.
Today, shortly before she passed away, her five surviving children gathered together at a beach by the hospice. They wrote her name in huge letters in the sand with a big heart and all danced around her name, shouting it into the sky and yelling, “You’re free!” When they returned to her room, she was still. She’d passed right as they were “releasing” her.
My aunts and uncles are going to donate her brain to the medical community in order to contribute to dementia research, and to learn more about the type she had. It makes perfect, harmonious sense that they would perform a spiritual ritual while also contributing to science. And I know that’s exactly what Kiki would want, because it means she can help people even in death.
Harold, Kiki, and Mary: you are my blood, my trio, my history. And for the rest of my life, you’ll show up in my Technicolor dreams.
Remixing
Surgeons,
tailors, deejays, filmmakers, writers, and painters
all do the same thing
which is editing
Nip-tucking sentences
Operating on colors
Making musical patchwork
And remixing bodies
Fixing, making
Cutting and conjoining
all the different worlds
into one.
all do the same thing
which is editing
Nip-tucking sentences
Operating on colors
Making musical patchwork
And remixing bodies
Fixing, making
Cutting and conjoining
all the different worlds
into one.
The ethics of size
When
someone looks at a massive work of human effort, like architecture or a giant
mural, they feel a sense of awe because it reminds them of their own smallness
in proportion to the world. But what they’re looking at isn’t natural expanse;
it’s human bigness. Maybe it’s not a reminder of our insignificance, but the
opposite. We wonder if we also contain multitudes, or if we’ll always be
microscopic compared to the
neighboring giants.
I voiced this to Mike and he sees it differently. He thinks that when we look at human creations, we’re affected more by physical scale than by thoughts of psychological size/effort. He then showed me a game he’s been playing called Katamari Forever, in which the player starts out tiny and steadily grows bigger as they roll up their surroundings into a giant ball that eventually becomes a sacrifice to a god and is made into a star. When they’re smaller, they’re dominated by their surroundings and are easy prey. But then as they grow and start to absorb people, and then trees and buildings and eventually sea monsters and floating islands and planets, everything starts to look more abstract to the point where individuals don’t even register anymore. And then you’re reminded of your smallness again when you present the ball of everything to the deity, and he accepts or rejects it seemingly on a whim.
I’d like to believe that people, and living beings in general, interact on a more profound level than predator vs. prey, and that we can resist the urge to crush or absorb others once we reach enormity. And that it takes something other than intimidation to remind us of compassion. I like that game, but it seems to reduce consciousness to those binary terms, and I’m not sure I identify with that.
I voiced this to Mike and he sees it differently. He thinks that when we look at human creations, we’re affected more by physical scale than by thoughts of psychological size/effort. He then showed me a game he’s been playing called Katamari Forever, in which the player starts out tiny and steadily grows bigger as they roll up their surroundings into a giant ball that eventually becomes a sacrifice to a god and is made into a star. When they’re smaller, they’re dominated by their surroundings and are easy prey. But then as they grow and start to absorb people, and then trees and buildings and eventually sea monsters and floating islands and planets, everything starts to look more abstract to the point where individuals don’t even register anymore. And then you’re reminded of your smallness again when you present the ball of everything to the deity, and he accepts or rejects it seemingly on a whim.
I’d like to believe that people, and living beings in general, interact on a more profound level than predator vs. prey, and that we can resist the urge to crush or absorb others once we reach enormity. And that it takes something other than intimidation to remind us of compassion. I like that game, but it seems to reduce consciousness to those binary terms, and I’m not sure I identify with that.
Evil objects
I
dreamed there was an object that embodied all the evil in the world, and that
it kept being passed from person to person and was sometimes inherited through
families. It changed form once you either recognized or tried to destroy it. It
couldn't be destroyed completely, but could be rendered temporarily powerless
and could be contained.
First it was a teddy bear belonging to a little girl. The stuffed animal roused suspicion because it would suddenly have an angry expression on its face, or it would be hanging from a lamp and nobody had set it up that way, or the family would start getting threatening phone calls with no return number.
When they discovered it was the teddy bear, it morphed into a baby bunny that was so cute that nobody wanted to kill it. But someone threw a rock at it and then it turned into a telescope. If you looked into the telescope, it would show you a vision of how you would die. The trick was to avoid the temptation of looking, no matter how curious you were, and then you would win.
After it was a telescope, it transformed into a beautiful, enormous painting that almost covered a whole wall. That painting had to be slashed to ribbons. If anyone photographed or tried to replicate it, it would keep its power even if slashed up. That was a challenge for people because it was so gorgeous. But the family stabbed the painting and the canvas turned completely black.
Then it turned into a collection of clothing. That was more difficult because it had separated into multiple objects, but each had less power separately than they would together. So the family bagged them all up, stored them in the attic, and forbade anyone from ever putting on those clothes or opening the bags.
Then I woke up and was disappointed; I wanted to see how it would progress. I am probably going to look with suspicion at every inanimate object for the next 24 hours or so.
First it was a teddy bear belonging to a little girl. The stuffed animal roused suspicion because it would suddenly have an angry expression on its face, or it would be hanging from a lamp and nobody had set it up that way, or the family would start getting threatening phone calls with no return number.
When they discovered it was the teddy bear, it morphed into a baby bunny that was so cute that nobody wanted to kill it. But someone threw a rock at it and then it turned into a telescope. If you looked into the telescope, it would show you a vision of how you would die. The trick was to avoid the temptation of looking, no matter how curious you were, and then you would win.
After it was a telescope, it transformed into a beautiful, enormous painting that almost covered a whole wall. That painting had to be slashed to ribbons. If anyone photographed or tried to replicate it, it would keep its power even if slashed up. That was a challenge for people because it was so gorgeous. But the family stabbed the painting and the canvas turned completely black.
Then it turned into a collection of clothing. That was more difficult because it had separated into multiple objects, but each had less power separately than they would together. So the family bagged them all up, stored them in the attic, and forbade anyone from ever putting on those clothes or opening the bags.
Then I woke up and was disappointed; I wanted to see how it would progress. I am probably going to look with suspicion at every inanimate object for the next 24 hours or so.
GIF universe theory
The collapsing
universe theory, which states that the universe collapses and recreates itself
again and again, basically would confirm my suspicion that we're all living in
a giant gif.
Dream ideas
Last night I
dreamed about a class that was given a writing assignment involving notebooks
which were partially, sparsely filled in. Every ten pages or so, they included
a page which featured a doodle or an entry from a fictional character or a note
written by one of that character's friends. The entries were cryptic enough
that they could be interpreted in multiple ways, and never revealed the identity. The job of the writer was to flesh out that character
by using those entries as writing prompts; deciding what they meant and who the
person was, and creating a fictional story (or multiple stories) around them.
They were supposed to write in first person, taking on their identity.
I think that would actually be a cool project and those notebooks should exist in real life.
I think that would actually be a cool project and those notebooks should exist in real life.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)