(no subject)
I want to take a break from my normal nonsense and try to break from my "automatic writing" style. I hope it'll make sense. And I hope I can remember those simple capitalization and punctuation rules.
I'm one of those sappy people who can get reduced to tears quite often. In the early years of adolescence it was mostly of the "I'm going crazy" variety. Nowadays its more of the "moved to tears" type, much preferable.
The most recent experience was this morning in my car, driving to work. I was concluding my first listen of the excellent box set of Shirley Collins entitled Within Sound, listening to the end of the final disc. I've been unknowingly searching for Shirley's music all my life, although I didn't realize it until this past summer when I heard her voice for the first time. Her singing career spanned from the mid-50s until the dawn of the 80s, with a breathy high delivery that felt as otherworldly as her source material, mostly old folk songs from her native southern England. She reveals in the attractive booklet that accompanies the box that she withdrew from singing once her husband (Ashley Hutchings, formerly of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span among others) left her & she found herself singing at a performance in front of the lady he ran off with. She claims that she lost her voice at that point and couldn't recapture it. Over the past 20 years she kept some very modest jobs for someone of her stature, including one tenure as a clerk at the British Museum's bookshop (which I find lovely for so many reasons).
But the last song on the box is a song from 2002, a solitary offering of her voice after 1981, which she produced for inclusion into the set. Its (presumably) another old traditional song that she has chosen to sing, much in line with everything else she's ever done, but the voice is clearly a 67-year-old one. Its at least a full octave (if not two) below everything else preceding it, although the tune is still lovely as ever. Hearing this woman who is moving along with the course of time, closing old doors and opening new ones, looking back over this box compiling her rich legacy of song and deciding to overlook her demons and give us one last glimpse of her talents, on such a beautifully simple melody no less, caused me to lose my composure so much that I missed a standard turn as I neared my facility.
I had similar feelings last month when I watched 49up, the latest installment of the Up Series [disclaimer: spoilers contained in that link but if you don't intend to ever watch it I hope you'll find it as captivating as I do]. I've already written enough about the Up Series in previous entries, but one of the many appeals the series has is that you step into these twelve lives and truly see how they're approaching life. Which I suppose all of the best documentaries do, but the fundamental difference here is that every 7 years, you see them again and you hear them answer the same questions they answered 7 years ago. And while you might not think that a 49-year-old will be too terribly different than a 42-year-old, you might be a bit surprised when you compare their thoughts to when they were 35. And so on. Part of the magic of the series is that it causes you to look inside yourself and wonder how your life would have been had you been a participant in this series. What would happen to you if you found a tape of someone asking you a bunch of questions at age 7, about your future hopes of life, love, etc.? Despite a consistency of good grades throughout my scholarly life (disregarding some weedout calculus and physics courses at my alma mater), I have never really been a precocious child and I doubt anything said would have been well thought out much less executed in later life.
But this particularly hits home on me today for 2 big reasons. As I type this, I am now officially in the last week of my 20s. This is something that can reduce some people to tears, and I did mention my predisposed sappiness, but I usually don't cry for my own sake. To be honest, I rather enjoy the thought of growing old, at least when I avoid the inevitabilities that I know I must one day face (deaths of my loves, families, and friends mainly). I was just mentioning this to S last night, since we've spent a good part of the week attempting (without terribly much success) to take a picture of A-chan suitable enough for passport purposes. When S finally captured one yesterday morning, I told her that we'll probably have a much easier time 10 years from now when its time for another one. She replied "Oh gosh, do you realize we'll be 40 years old then?" I replied, "Won't it be great? I'd love to see us at 75, looking back over everything that we've done."
I wouldn't have really thought that way 10 years ago. I didn't really think about anything in those days, measuring my life not so much by milestones met but rather looking at the paper and hoping somebody cool would play Atlanta next month. I remember the day/night I turned 20. Atlanta was under an unusual ice watch and we got pelted with ice and snow (in that unique Atlanta sense which means we got about 1.5"). My cousin had come into town for the weekend the day before, but he left in order to keep from being stranded, although he did take me to Oxford Comics before he left where I bought my first comics by Chris Ware and Joe Matt. My closest friend at the time then came over to my dorm to pick me up and take me to her place, where her neighbor and my friend H showed up later on. We drank margaritas and listened to Blondie before they gave me some presents (including the Velvet Underground box set), and then we all walked over to the Point to see Yo La Tengo, my favorite band who just happened to be playing in town that night (my other favorite band at that time, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, had actually played the night before). At the show's conclusion, we carefully sludged through the ice and snow before making it back to my friend's place, where I crashed on her couch at 4am. In 1996, I think that was as good as my life got.
In 2006, I look back on that night fondly and its almost uncanny how many influences were introduced to me on that day, all of which put me onto pathways that eventually got me to where I am today. But my life's about a lot more than music and comics and alcohol these days (although I still try to give each of them their due, and to those of you who don't know me I'm really not a lush like I might appear to be on these pages). I did a lot of small things over the past 10 years that I had never done before. I participated in a school organization (the wonderful WREK 91.1FM) and met a bunch of great people, I graduated college, I landed a real job, I moved away from home, I started to travel. Then smack in the middle of my 20s I fell in love, and my life seemingly started over. I got married, introduced myself to a culture almost completely removed from my own, got political, and got curious about where we stand in the world today and how it got to be this way. I must say the latter was spurred on after I visited The British Museum in 2003, and I briefly toyed with the thought "What if Shirley Collins was the lady who sold me my book there?" although I know that's terribly unlikely.
And then came the event that occurred at about 10am one year ago today. I was at work doing whatever it was that I was doing that morning, when I got a call in the office. It was from S, who told me flat out, "I'm pregnant." Her doctor wanted to see her that afternoon, which was why she was giving me the news over the phone. She laughs now because of the silence she heard over the phone, apparently not hearing my jaw as it crashed on my desk. We were planning it, make no mistake, but it was nonetheless a stunning moment to hear that the plan had reached success. And now here we are today, with a 4-month-old who just had her second round of immunizations yesterday and is set to receive her American and Japanese passports in a matter of weeks. Even before the Shirley Collins moment in the car, I was a bit introspective. One year ago today, I made that same car ride into work, but I was a different person then. One year ago today, I changed into a new being yet again.
One thing S confided to me some time back was a difficulty she had with speech. Not long after we were going out, we ran into a friend of mine and the friend asked me what I had been up to. I replied "Nothing much", and S got internally upset over this. Didn't I think that our new relationship amounted to something?, she thought. It took her a little while to learn that "Nothing much" or some such variant was a typical American response to a question like that.
But I still say it all the time, and quite often when writing emails to people or talking on the phone I really can't think of anything out of the ordinary that has occurred recently. But the truth is that things are always occurring. The "nothing much" of today would have been utterly unrecognizable 10 years ago, just as I imagine the "nothing much" of 2016 would be headspinning to me right now. Its the beauty of growing and learning and reacting to life. I think of where I'll be 10, 20, 50 years from now, and it fills me with wonder. I think of looking back on this post, assuming I'll have that ability, and reading these thoughts as if it were my own installment on the Up series. And I hope I'll be able to approach it as gracefully as Shirley Collins, a different person but one who can look back and recognize what made me what I am regardless.
That honestly was a little like "automatic writing" to be honest, since I didn't really plan what I was going to say, but I hope it came across a little better than my usual style. Nonetheless, don't worry, I'll be back with more of that beloved "I did this, and then I did that" format in the near future I'm sure...
I'm one of those sappy people who can get reduced to tears quite often. In the early years of adolescence it was mostly of the "I'm going crazy" variety. Nowadays its more of the "moved to tears" type, much preferable.
The most recent experience was this morning in my car, driving to work. I was concluding my first listen of the excellent box set of Shirley Collins entitled Within Sound, listening to the end of the final disc. I've been unknowingly searching for Shirley's music all my life, although I didn't realize it until this past summer when I heard her voice for the first time. Her singing career spanned from the mid-50s until the dawn of the 80s, with a breathy high delivery that felt as otherworldly as her source material, mostly old folk songs from her native southern England. She reveals in the attractive booklet that accompanies the box that she withdrew from singing once her husband (Ashley Hutchings, formerly of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span among others) left her & she found herself singing at a performance in front of the lady he ran off with. She claims that she lost her voice at that point and couldn't recapture it. Over the past 20 years she kept some very modest jobs for someone of her stature, including one tenure as a clerk at the British Museum's bookshop (which I find lovely for so many reasons).
But the last song on the box is a song from 2002, a solitary offering of her voice after 1981, which she produced for inclusion into the set. Its (presumably) another old traditional song that she has chosen to sing, much in line with everything else she's ever done, but the voice is clearly a 67-year-old one. Its at least a full octave (if not two) below everything else preceding it, although the tune is still lovely as ever. Hearing this woman who is moving along with the course of time, closing old doors and opening new ones, looking back over this box compiling her rich legacy of song and deciding to overlook her demons and give us one last glimpse of her talents, on such a beautifully simple melody no less, caused me to lose my composure so much that I missed a standard turn as I neared my facility.
I had similar feelings last month when I watched 49up, the latest installment of the Up Series [disclaimer: spoilers contained in that link but if you don't intend to ever watch it I hope you'll find it as captivating as I do]. I've already written enough about the Up Series in previous entries, but one of the many appeals the series has is that you step into these twelve lives and truly see how they're approaching life. Which I suppose all of the best documentaries do, but the fundamental difference here is that every 7 years, you see them again and you hear them answer the same questions they answered 7 years ago. And while you might not think that a 49-year-old will be too terribly different than a 42-year-old, you might be a bit surprised when you compare their thoughts to when they were 35. And so on. Part of the magic of the series is that it causes you to look inside yourself and wonder how your life would have been had you been a participant in this series. What would happen to you if you found a tape of someone asking you a bunch of questions at age 7, about your future hopes of life, love, etc.? Despite a consistency of good grades throughout my scholarly life (disregarding some weedout calculus and physics courses at my alma mater), I have never really been a precocious child and I doubt anything said would have been well thought out much less executed in later life.
But this particularly hits home on me today for 2 big reasons. As I type this, I am now officially in the last week of my 20s. This is something that can reduce some people to tears, and I did mention my predisposed sappiness, but I usually don't cry for my own sake. To be honest, I rather enjoy the thought of growing old, at least when I avoid the inevitabilities that I know I must one day face (deaths of my loves, families, and friends mainly). I was just mentioning this to S last night, since we've spent a good part of the week attempting (without terribly much success) to take a picture of A-chan suitable enough for passport purposes. When S finally captured one yesterday morning, I told her that we'll probably have a much easier time 10 years from now when its time for another one. She replied "Oh gosh, do you realize we'll be 40 years old then?" I replied, "Won't it be great? I'd love to see us at 75, looking back over everything that we've done."
I wouldn't have really thought that way 10 years ago. I didn't really think about anything in those days, measuring my life not so much by milestones met but rather looking at the paper and hoping somebody cool would play Atlanta next month. I remember the day/night I turned 20. Atlanta was under an unusual ice watch and we got pelted with ice and snow (in that unique Atlanta sense which means we got about 1.5"). My cousin had come into town for the weekend the day before, but he left in order to keep from being stranded, although he did take me to Oxford Comics before he left where I bought my first comics by Chris Ware and Joe Matt. My closest friend at the time then came over to my dorm to pick me up and take me to her place, where her neighbor and my friend H showed up later on. We drank margaritas and listened to Blondie before they gave me some presents (including the Velvet Underground box set), and then we all walked over to the Point to see Yo La Tengo, my favorite band who just happened to be playing in town that night (my other favorite band at that time, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, had actually played the night before). At the show's conclusion, we carefully sludged through the ice and snow before making it back to my friend's place, where I crashed on her couch at 4am. In 1996, I think that was as good as my life got.
In 2006, I look back on that night fondly and its almost uncanny how many influences were introduced to me on that day, all of which put me onto pathways that eventually got me to where I am today. But my life's about a lot more than music and comics and alcohol these days (although I still try to give each of them their due, and to those of you who don't know me I'm really not a lush like I might appear to be on these pages). I did a lot of small things over the past 10 years that I had never done before. I participated in a school organization (the wonderful WREK 91.1FM) and met a bunch of great people, I graduated college, I landed a real job, I moved away from home, I started to travel. Then smack in the middle of my 20s I fell in love, and my life seemingly started over. I got married, introduced myself to a culture almost completely removed from my own, got political, and got curious about where we stand in the world today and how it got to be this way. I must say the latter was spurred on after I visited The British Museum in 2003, and I briefly toyed with the thought "What if Shirley Collins was the lady who sold me my book there?" although I know that's terribly unlikely.
And then came the event that occurred at about 10am one year ago today. I was at work doing whatever it was that I was doing that morning, when I got a call in the office. It was from S, who told me flat out, "I'm pregnant." Her doctor wanted to see her that afternoon, which was why she was giving me the news over the phone. She laughs now because of the silence she heard over the phone, apparently not hearing my jaw as it crashed on my desk. We were planning it, make no mistake, but it was nonetheless a stunning moment to hear that the plan had reached success. And now here we are today, with a 4-month-old who just had her second round of immunizations yesterday and is set to receive her American and Japanese passports in a matter of weeks. Even before the Shirley Collins moment in the car, I was a bit introspective. One year ago today, I made that same car ride into work, but I was a different person then. One year ago today, I changed into a new being yet again.
One thing S confided to me some time back was a difficulty she had with speech. Not long after we were going out, we ran into a friend of mine and the friend asked me what I had been up to. I replied "Nothing much", and S got internally upset over this. Didn't I think that our new relationship amounted to something?, she thought. It took her a little while to learn that "Nothing much" or some such variant was a typical American response to a question like that.
But I still say it all the time, and quite often when writing emails to people or talking on the phone I really can't think of anything out of the ordinary that has occurred recently. But the truth is that things are always occurring. The "nothing much" of today would have been utterly unrecognizable 10 years ago, just as I imagine the "nothing much" of 2016 would be headspinning to me right now. Its the beauty of growing and learning and reacting to life. I think of where I'll be 10, 20, 50 years from now, and it fills me with wonder. I think of looking back on this post, assuming I'll have that ability, and reading these thoughts as if it were my own installment on the Up series. And I hope I'll be able to approach it as gracefully as Shirley Collins, a different person but one who can look back and recognize what made me what I am regardless.
That honestly was a little like "automatic writing" to be honest, since I didn't really plan what I was going to say, but I hope it came across a little better than my usual style. Nonetheless, don't worry, I'll be back with more of that beloved "I did this, and then I did that" format in the near future I'm sure...