butterfly boucher — soul back
she is so good! played all the instruments on this record, incredible voice, great songs. been a fan ever since I saw her open for the barenaked ladies in like 2003 or 2004, playing alone on a huge arena stage with just her guitar. music I've returned to at least every few months ever since. and all of her albums are great! including her more recent band, elle macho.
get you some butterfly!!!!
the japanese house — lilo
Formerly of Roadkill Ghost Choir, whose last album False Youth Etcetera became one of my favorites just after they stopped being a band. But several members have formed a new band, Lo Talker, and their new album is out! I think these folks write some of my favorite lyrics in a long time, mysterious and relatable and singable. Buy it if you can!
every time I tell someone I love the (old) Barenaked Ladies, they look at me like they've never listened to a full album. damb shame
one of the bands that helped me understand my depression:
The hearts you choose to break
Like cars dumped in the lake
The laugh lines on your face
The life I won't embrace
I live with it every day
Even though we moved away
Our yesterdays are on a loop;
A marathon of heartbreaking moments
I live with it every day
For every step I have to pay
The only thing that they can't take:
The guilt that spirals in my wake
shrug!
followed immediately by this great singalong? getouttaheeeeaaaaaaaa
not pictured: I've been trying to do a simple work task for over an hour and instead wound up taking this test after doing ten other things
good news: I'm pursuing treatment for adhd as we speak
I’ve had such a hard time concentrating all day. And there are a number of things going on in my head contributing that, but one of them is a kind of artistic restlessness, some of my oldest conflicts around doing what I’m supposed to versus doing what I feel I’m really best at, most interested in, or which feel like more valuable uses of my limited time on earth than simply maintaining myself. I see that picture of Prince and Wendy of The Revolution, and I feel a cosmic, insatiable despair of jealousy — I wanted a life that looked like that, but I was so repressed and controlled for so long that I didn’t even know what I wanted. It’s terrible, and so common.
And yet I can’t despair. Both because my sense of obligation has grown, but also because I think I physically can’t. This is the weirdest effect of being on antidepressants (which, again, I am SO glad to be taking) plus also probably being completely unable to reckon with a full, numbing, impossible year of doing nothing but sit inside, worry, and seek stationary occupation… but I feel the desire to, like, kind of lose my cool… and I just can’t. There’s something between me and the feeling. It’s manifesting depressively, in just not finding anything interesting or appealing except for the most mind-numbing escapist forms of play, but not as full-on sadness or whatever else.
My problem is, as it has always been, feeling in my heart that I have never fully lived as myself. Whoever that might have been.
And I kept thinking of Otto Rank’s book Art and Artist, maybe I’d read more of that, how long had it been? Restlessly, I unpacked lots of my books, found it, unpacked more, and then finally decided to read a bit. According to the bookmark — which at the time I was using a piece of parchment that I also took notes on, tri-folding and jotting down thoughts — I was last reading this in January 2015. You put down a book and pick it up six years later. I was talking with Celeste at the Heirloom brunch bar about The Familiar, rain, the goddess, and art. It was such a beautiful stretch of time, in its own way, going most weekends to sit for a morning, have a nice breakfast and coffee, catch up a bit with a fascinating friend, and read. Now we aren’t friends, for no reason but going separate ways; I stopped eating there as often anyway, the vibe changed gradually, and now it’s an impossible thing to even consider going to sit at a bustling restaurant for an hour. One of the fundamental pleasures of my simple, constrained life, inaccessible for over a year. One of many. It feels wrong to complain, so many have it worse, we’ve all gone through it, but my fuck, it’s just been stupid and it’s only getting harder to reckon with as time goes on.
So anyway here’s Otto Rank, I’m at the final chapter, I’d set it aside for no reason but distraction, and the chapter is called “The Artist’s Fight with Art.” I skim the preceding few pages, and here’s someone who really wrote very clearly and helpfully about what it’s like to be driven to make art, what happens when you don’t or can’t, what happens when you do, and how to think about your relationship to your art and the world. Almost no one I know can think of themselves as an artist; not without the intermediaries of irony and commerce. I don’t anymore, though I used to.
And yet nobody’s heard of Rank. I hadn’t, before I came across this book on a whim, and was surprisingly moved and, I think, helped by it. I don’t think I’d be as healthy as I am today (in some ways) without having read and reflected on Art and Artist.
But right now, tonight, all I can think is what a shame it is that our existence has to be so hard; that some of us have to struggle mightily simply to coexist with ourselves; and that collectively we have, I think, found a great deal of wisdom about how to go about that terrible task, and yet hardly any of it is widely available, let alone taught to us when we need it most. All the growth of my adult life has been fought for, against myself, my family, and my culture, inch by reluctant inch. I’ve worked so much harder than I should have had to, just to be okay with myself. I’m mostly okay with myself these days!
But some days, like today, I feel like I’m going to burst just from… a profound lack of satisfaction/meaning/pleasure/purpose. (if the red hot chili peppers were existentialists.) If I can’t perform my job tasks for a few hours, my sense of myself and my progress crumples. The world will move on without me, leaving me again. I won’t let that happen! But not because of anything other than grim refusal and medicinal buoyancy.
Things aren’t bad. I’m just roiling in suspended animation, trying to bend my brain in a direction it won’t go today; it will comply tomorrow, or the next day, and in the meantime I’ll just hold on and do what I can. It’s just excruciating to have the artistic disposition which is capable of bringing new things into the world repeatedly, all day long every day, and to tie the dog to a tree for too many days in a row. Dog wants to run. Dog wants to wear sequined shirts on stage and feel self-assured. Dog knows it will never be, that the window has passed, in every possible way. Dog attempts to reconcile with self for the ten thousandth day. Dog needs to break the rules some days to feel minor illusion of control. Dog feels the wolf it will never be, in its blood and in its toes. Dog would like to go to a bar and belt songs and let loose. Dog wants a TREAT dog DAMNIT
wow I sure am feeling chaotic and contrary today! feeling very pent up and like I'd rather be running around and yelling than sitting still at the computer, again, doing cognitively-demanding work, unable to to even contemplate going anywhere or doing something more interesting
Says Jorge Luis Borges, "I should say [...] that I want to stop waking up every morning, finding: Well, here I am, I have to go back to Borges.
"There's a word in Spanish... instead of saying 'to wake up,' you say recordarse, that is, to record yourself, to remember yourself... Every morning I get that feeling because I am more or less nonexistent. Then when I wake up, I always feel I'm being let down. Because, well, here I am. Here's the same old stupid game going on. I have to be somebody. I have to be exactly that somebody.
BEEP BORP OH WELL
if only!
