More cathartic philosophical music: It's not meant to be a strain.

Bjork has the special distinction of speaking to me intimately through the intense emotional power of her music (especially live, Jesus). The powerfully emotional, raw and soaring way she sings has a lot to do with the impact the pathos of her music has on me.

This particular one has spoken to me since I first heard it on Vespertine in high school. It describes how unsettling and stressful it is to feel like you need to complete your day with as much care as you can, to accomplish every little thing from finishing your work to drinking enough water and sleeping a full 8 hours. It used to make me cry in painful but thankful catharsis because it was what I wished I could achieve - that acceptance that I CAN'T have the perfect day, because I'm not perfect and the world and other people aren't going to gracefully fit in with my goals for the day, or for my LIFE. But now I can identify with that internal tension/grief AND accept that unfortunate truth. It's how the world is and that's okay because I can still strive to make it through the day, and not think less of myself if I don't achieve every little thing I want to. Now it's empowering.

And another song off the album with a similar sentiment:


I had the same reaction: crying and wishing I could believe the encouraging words she directs at the listener who's crumbling under the weight of her own life and expectations for herself. And now I can listen to the comfort, cry or smile, and be comforted and empowered by the message.

So thanks, Bjork. In every way, you are one of the most beautiful women in the world, as far as I'm concerned. I love you and I wish I could let you know.

More on "The Cave"

I've already shared this song and some of my thoughts on it before. I can also play it better now that I've been playing it longer than 3 days (like when I recorded my version of it), so I ought to re-record it. But anyway, I've added something to my understanding of it through talking about Plato in that there Ethics class I'm taking ("If there is no god, all is permitted").

I think the song is meant to be, or is at least often taken, as a way of describing hiding away as a reaction to life kicking your ass. It's about wanting to give up and hide away from life, and the need to somehow get out of the Cave to become strong and actually LIVE. And it adds the sentiment that we don't necessarily have to do this all on our own...the people we love can't PULL us out of the Cave, but they can hold our hands or offer a shoulder to lean on as we stumble out.

In the other sense of the Cave I'm now considering...when we're in that state of pain and self-delusion we CAN'T see the forms - not the Platonic ones, but "forms" in the sense of REALITY. Reality includes the world and people around us, what happens to us, what's best for us, what we really want, who we really are, and the more philosophical stuff too in terms of what we believe and how we see the world. So self-delusion can come about in response to depression and anxiety and self-hatred or disillusionment with the world - all things that can send us down into that Cave. It can manifest as feeling that we're worthless, hideous, whatever...that everyone is out to get us...that there's no hope and nothing good will ever happen to us...that we're powerless to improve our lives or the lives of the people we love...that we will suffer and be stuck in the same rut all our lives...all that good stuff. And seeing the world through that lens makes us turn the delusions about ourselves into reality; we tend to become the version of ourselves that we see, even when it's a deluded and fucked-up vision of ourselves.

So to see the world and be ourselves again, we have to get strong and get out of that Cave – once again, sometimes with help from others, if we're stuck in far enough and if we have people around us who know it and care enough to help. We have to get out and get our heads on a little straighter in order to see truth again, both “objective” (what we SEE as objective, that is...whether there IS objective truth is another story) as well as our own subjective “truth” such as how we generally see the world and ourselves, regardless of how others see it/us.

I'm not de-legitimizing what we see when we're in the cave as FALSE, that they're just silly lies we tell ourselves and delusions that we should just get over. It's true to us in the moment, which is itself true...as someone who thinks it's very important to live in the moment and give it its due, I can accept that what we feel so intimately, even when we're fucked up and seeing things in a wonky way, IS basically true, even if it's only true TO US for a short time. But that truth doesn't reflect who we usually are and what we see and believe when we're in control and strong. We can only really be ourselves and live in our real world when we escape the Cave. But we kind of have to live in there from time to time...especially when our world and we ourselves make life really fucking hard for us, purposefully or inadvertantly.

So there's some brainfood for ya. Musical brainfood, even.

Past creativity re-evaluated.

Before I get ready to share my take on where my identity and life has taken me with the the internets (but moreso the people I care about who'd actually read this), I'd like to share something that approaches it, just like the music post I just put up.

Since about age 15, when my creative faculties were petering out and I desperately feared that I was losing it forever (which apparently meant that I was becoming something empty and not myself and I didn't deserve to live. I was really cute at that age), I had the attitude that nothing I created was of worth. Every image I drew was convoluted, attempts to make reality and failing, or copying masters without inserting anything deeper from my mind. Art, which should be for expressing that which you can't do in conversation, expressed nothing within me. Not even writing, which is the easier form because it's closer to expressing yourself in words to a friend.

Trivially, this meant I looked at my old art and writing, and the stuff I was writing then, and wanted to destroy it all. I was desperately ashamed of everything I made because they were talentless crap - less trivially, because they were devoid of substance, if not content. Luckily my mother - though it annoyed me to no end at the time - forced me to keep things, if nothing else than just for her.

This feeling extended itself in such a way that exacerbated my dying creative exercise. It got to the point that immediately after creating something, or in the process of doing it, or even before I BEGAN, I made myself certain it wasn't worth my time and I should give up before making a fool of myself. So I have a lot of incomplete stuff and just plain scratched-out beginnings on dirty paper full of eraser marks. There are a few exceptions but even those I avoided re-reading or looking at. This was easily applied to music as well, because I only did covers (as now) and felt like it was foolish to just try to mimic other people's art because I could add nothing, and I was incapable of increasing my skill, or having any in the first place. I loathed the people who insisted otherwise, like the people who insisted I once had and STILL had great skill as a writer and artist.

The funny thing is that this lasted as far as...well, a few months ago, even after my depression healed significantly. I think it's because, even as I was recovering in this sense, I still struggled very hard to express myself, in words but mostly beyond them. I tried to force myself, to do things like free-form writing which people told me was the best way to become a practicing writer again - as a great writer said, "A writer is a person for whom writing is excessively difficult". But nothing worked. And I used the fact that I was so embedded in being functional and a whole person with other aspects of my life as an excuse for not being creative: I had relationships, work, motivation to succeed, desire for a future and the ability to enjoy myself in the midst of stress. I don't see this as an "excuse" anymore.

But now, even though I still play covers of songs - though now I know how significant the addition of my own voice is, a voice I can now use with pride - even though I barely draw, even though I've only written two or three new bits of expressive fiction and non-fiction, I know it's coming back. I have enough space and introspective desire to be an artist capable of expressing myself in plain words and in the transcendent ways art allows one to express the life and views that make up a full person who knows herself.

And an interesting development in this came in reading some old stories and poems and essays I wrote when I was 15. I was on the plane and in for a laugh - which is usually my reaction to my foolish old work. But I was also wondering if there was substance then, despite the walls that locked me in from even my own feelings, and despite the self-loathing limitations I imposed. And I was shocked to find it in EVERY bit of work I read. And in the artwork I found in my notebook from a year ago. These stories and poems I dismissed as flippant now speak to me in ways that I never imagined. They show me not only that I was a full person then, as much as I hid it away and refused to let it shine, but that that person persists to this day, and has made me what I am now. I am not a new person, a new adult. I am Felice. I am what Felice always was, and the potential she had within her. It's the most beautiful thing I have ever experienced.

So I'll post a few of these interesting findings for a while as I gather myself enough to express myself in ways that don't involve screaming The Beatles on the ukulele. BEWARE.

Music returns to Felice.

It has been a long, long time since I felt capable of creativity. Part of this was due to feeling lost in work and depression that forced me to hate everything I was capable of creating, before it was finished or even before I began. I put down the ukulele and guitar that I once comforted myself with. Words lost their meaning, images could convey only boredom, self-loathing, and superficial exercises.

As I've grown inexplicably quickly in the past few months, this has taken a turn around. Music in particular seems to be coming back to me in beautiful ways. I listen to it. I sing - I sing with pride and volume for the first time in my life since perhaps the age of five. I play. I play for friends, on camera, for the internet, and in the streets. And it is making me feel strong and more myself, as are many things in my life. I see no signs of this stopping anytime soon.

Here is a taste of this trend. Most of these are in my street-performing persona, Charlo. But they include a grain of myself within this alternate visage. "Happy-Go-Lucky Me" is, oddly enough, the one that actually encapsulates me in a moment. Even in this one.

http://www.youtube.com/user/akanerico?feature=mhee [hyperlinking isn't working at the moment...]

I would be honored if you would watch some of these. They convey who I am right now better than anything else at the moment.