A Little Death

“Love does not move us to laughter at the deepest point in its journey, the pinnacle of its flight: at its deepest and highest, it wrenches from us cries and moans, expressions of pain, however jubilant, which when you think about it is not strange at all because birth is a painful joy. A little death is what the French call the climax of the embrace, which joins us as it breaks us apart and finds us as it loses us, is our beginning as it is our end. A little death they call it, but it must be great, tremendous, to give birth to us as it kills us.”

- Eduardo Galeano, The Book of Embraces

Winter has come upon us once more and in one single night an entire year will die, only to be remembered in our disappointments and our resolutions to do better than an entire year’s worth of struggle. Winter will be the death of us all, the seasonal chance to recede into our psychological caves and hibernate our hopes until spring beckons us to be ourselves again. What strange patterns we fall back onto once the days are stripped of their sun. What strange thoughts we turn to when the nights are darkest and our beds the coldest. One day, we will strain to remember the smell of warm rain and green growth. Instead, we’ll be left with the clear headed scent of snow and the irrational desire to scream obscenities at the cold as it bites you at every opportunity. Winter – nature’s homespun slap in the face to those who forgot its bitter smile in the past.

All my Little Words

While perusing my normal circuit of blogs, I came across the following music video.

Oddly enamored, I listened and watched it a handful of times before I decided to see the real version of the song. And I was slightly disappointed.

You may asky why is it that I find a strange british boy ( Tom Milsom ) singing to a gameboy version better than this already decent song (All my Little Words, by Magnetic Feilds)? The accent, for one. And then something a bit more meaningful. I looked through my itunes and general music preferences and found similar cases. I think that it’s because when songs are sung, I don’t listen to single parts of the composition. It’s not solely the lyrics or uniquely the melody or harmonies that make up a song. It’s all of those and then some. So when another musician does their own rendition, they bring their own something to the mix. Not the most ground breaking revelation, or really even a reveltion at all, but perhaps a gleaning insight into why I love music and its transmutable muse.

So now, after a few hours of delving into the world of prepubescent looking british boys on youtube (conawillvlog, hexachordal, and the like) I have enough fodder to write a blog about the ridiculous shit people do in their spare (or not so spare) time, myself included. Perhaps for another time.

A Strange Holiday

“All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my mother.”

- Abraham Lincoln

Mother’s day is an odd holiday where children suddenly remember that they should be nice and considerate to the woman who carried them in her womb for nine months, went through extensive labor to birth them, followed by X amount of years of raising them. How do we repay her? We buy her flowers and cards, take her out to dinner, dress in our best clothes and make sure to air out all the manners she taught us oh so long ago. It is a sad thing that we must have a holiday to remind us to be kind to our mothers. I’m not saying we should get rid of the holiday. If that happened there’s a chance we might never be nice to our mothers again. I’m only saying that the evolution of this strange holiday is something to be contemplated upon.

A New Summer, A New Blog

“Summer is the time when one sheds one’s tensions with one’s clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all’s right with the world.”

Ada Louise Huxtable

The intoxicating euphoria of summer is upon us all. The promise of freedom still ringing in our ears, we lose no time in doing nothing and rush forth to forget all that we’ve learned in the cold months past. In the begning, all is good and no one will tell us differently. Of course, we are sadly mistaken. Time is relative, the seasons a social construction, vacation an abstract idea that few can truly appreciate, and summer comes with its own pitfalls and travesties – more perhaps, than other seasons because we fool ourselves into thinking there is no time better than summer.

But while it lasts, while our delusions still linger with us, while we have not lost all to the cynicism of old age, let us raise glasses of  cold sweet tea to a season that fools us into lowering our guards for longer than a moment. Thank god for a culture based enough on agriculture to warrant an antiquated vacation, for the delusion of summer’s freedom, and the youth to both appreciate and take for granted how lucky we truly are. Here’s to summer and all of it’s heartache.