(no subject)
Can you imagine a place where you can just be yourself and not perform for someone? Like, you can let your hair down, breathe easy, and, whoa, someone seemed to like that version of me for some reason! I want a place like that. I want social media to work like that.
But the problem is what comes next. Whoa, someone seemed to like that version of me for some reason! ... so I will always be that person. When I'm not that person, I'll try very hard to imitate that person. That person, at least, is liked.
Self-doubt and self-loathing is real when I'm myself. Self-doubt and self-loathing leads me to be other people because who could like me?
Of course there are the folks who like me for my looks. They think I'm cute. What comes out of my mouth or what goes on in my brain they don't care about. But over time? They might start listening. The value of listening increases in a linear fashion as the value for lub-dub physical attraction decreases. Then it's just a matter of "what do we talk about". This, I think, must be all relationships.
I listen to all these love songs and think about the love lives of the singers. I've been thinking a lot about how different our ideas of love are but we use the same word. Like, sure, there are the parameters of the feeling, but how does love play out as a script in these cases? Very differently for different folks.
Maybe love is two people with the same fantasy enacting it together.
But, like, not to say a cliche but, what are the odds? Is this why love songs exist? Why love in the movies and TV stops at the final kiss when the guy gets the girl? Love is too diverse, so everyone has to perform a script, and we are the stage of humanity where we are still trying to figure out which script gets the Oscar. What should be encoded in our cultural memories?
I made David this love song playlist because what the fuck was I thinking. But I've been listening to it and all I can think about is the polysemy of love. Maybe the core feeling with most cases of (initial) love is heart palpitations. What other things cause heart palpitations? Stress. Anxiety. Smoking cigarettes, apparently. Who's to say these other things aren't love? Who's to say smoking cigarettes isn't love? Physical affects are such bullshit. They tell us too little. They tell me, hey, when you listen to this song you are either in love or very anxious. "Why not both" everyone chimes in. Shut up, all of you brainwashed romantics.
Who was it, Walter Ong? Who said that romance was created in the West and spread out from like England or someplace? I just went to Google to see if I could find the person who made this claim. I tried Walter Ong and CS Lewis-- I know it's someone like that, whatever the category you just invented is to put these two people together. I couldn't find who made the claim. Google gave me a bunch of hits for Don Draper, though. And I'm reminded that I haven't watched Mad Men and am scared of watching it alone for some reason. I hear it's a very masc show, whatever that means. I pretend like I know the show because it's 2021 and straight people love that reference. I can get references. But what do I know? Do I know the antecedent of the reference or just the metonymy of word for reference?
I'm listening to Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love", which has this cute part where she howls like a hound. I thought maybe she knows what's up, but some times these lyrics are so confusing. Take my shoes off and throw them in the lake and I'll be two steps on the water. Is this a metonymy of shoe for feet, with some kind of active zone of shoes on water?
I keep on listening to this album and all I think is "what do these songs have to do with each other" and I remember, oh yeah, it's love-ish. Or sad? What do I even listen to. God. A lot of Superdrag and Aimee Mann. What would I listen to single? It's an interesting question. I think it says a lot about my passivity in relationships. <-- this is one of my many flaws of existence that need to be "fixed" whatever that means. And fixing it will undoubtedly create a new me. Who will want to be with that new me?
I have no way of knowing if David ever listened to this playlist (I wrote mixtape and realized how old I am). Like, even if he did, there's no way he would know what my thoughts were in organizing it. Why do we do this to people? We give them guessing games as if they're supposed to be some kind of present. The reward is the parts of us that we're trying to hide? It's silly. This whole thing is silly. And yet. Or Nevertheless. Or whatever that "I know very well. Nevertheless" quote is.
I feel nothing right now, and yet, nevertheless, I can imagine his smell next to me as he's asleep. But, like, how absurd is that fantasy--like why would he be asleep before me, first off, and like, where is this memory? And why is e tanner than he is in my memory? Like is the he that he is even what I want? What's the next day like after this fantasy? Where am I in a month? How in the world can people come to the decision of being together. Yet again, I realize how fucking absurd the "let's jump forward 30 years with our family" kind of move can be, especially this early on in whatever that kind of weird relationship was.
I fantasize in stagnant scenes and think if I would just hit fast forward on those parts, I'd get somewhere I need to be. If I could keep my fantasy in that fast-forward need-to-be world, I think the now would be much easier.
But the problem is what comes next. Whoa, someone seemed to like that version of me for some reason! ... so I will always be that person. When I'm not that person, I'll try very hard to imitate that person. That person, at least, is liked.
Self-doubt and self-loathing is real when I'm myself. Self-doubt and self-loathing leads me to be other people because who could like me?
Of course there are the folks who like me for my looks. They think I'm cute. What comes out of my mouth or what goes on in my brain they don't care about. But over time? They might start listening. The value of listening increases in a linear fashion as the value for lub-dub physical attraction decreases. Then it's just a matter of "what do we talk about". This, I think, must be all relationships.
I listen to all these love songs and think about the love lives of the singers. I've been thinking a lot about how different our ideas of love are but we use the same word. Like, sure, there are the parameters of the feeling, but how does love play out as a script in these cases? Very differently for different folks.
Maybe love is two people with the same fantasy enacting it together.
But, like, not to say a cliche but, what are the odds? Is this why love songs exist? Why love in the movies and TV stops at the final kiss when the guy gets the girl? Love is too diverse, so everyone has to perform a script, and we are the stage of humanity where we are still trying to figure out which script gets the Oscar. What should be encoded in our cultural memories?
I made David this love song playlist because what the fuck was I thinking. But I've been listening to it and all I can think about is the polysemy of love. Maybe the core feeling with most cases of (initial) love is heart palpitations. What other things cause heart palpitations? Stress. Anxiety. Smoking cigarettes, apparently. Who's to say these other things aren't love? Who's to say smoking cigarettes isn't love? Physical affects are such bullshit. They tell us too little. They tell me, hey, when you listen to this song you are either in love or very anxious. "Why not both" everyone chimes in. Shut up, all of you brainwashed romantics.
Who was it, Walter Ong? Who said that romance was created in the West and spread out from like England or someplace? I just went to Google to see if I could find the person who made this claim. I tried Walter Ong and CS Lewis-- I know it's someone like that, whatever the category you just invented is to put these two people together. I couldn't find who made the claim. Google gave me a bunch of hits for Don Draper, though. And I'm reminded that I haven't watched Mad Men and am scared of watching it alone for some reason. I hear it's a very masc show, whatever that means. I pretend like I know the show because it's 2021 and straight people love that reference. I can get references. But what do I know? Do I know the antecedent of the reference or just the metonymy of word for reference?
I'm listening to Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love", which has this cute part where she howls like a hound. I thought maybe she knows what's up, but some times these lyrics are so confusing. Take my shoes off and throw them in the lake and I'll be two steps on the water. Is this a metonymy of shoe for feet, with some kind of active zone of shoes on water?
I keep on listening to this album and all I think is "what do these songs have to do with each other" and I remember, oh yeah, it's love-ish. Or sad? What do I even listen to. God. A lot of Superdrag and Aimee Mann. What would I listen to single? It's an interesting question. I think it says a lot about my passivity in relationships. <-- this is one of my many flaws of existence that need to be "fixed" whatever that means. And fixing it will undoubtedly create a new me. Who will want to be with that new me?
I have no way of knowing if David ever listened to this playlist (I wrote mixtape and realized how old I am). Like, even if he did, there's no way he would know what my thoughts were in organizing it. Why do we do this to people? We give them guessing games as if they're supposed to be some kind of present. The reward is the parts of us that we're trying to hide? It's silly. This whole thing is silly. And yet. Or Nevertheless. Or whatever that "I know very well. Nevertheless" quote is.
I feel nothing right now, and yet, nevertheless, I can imagine his smell next to me as he's asleep. But, like, how absurd is that fantasy--like why would he be asleep before me, first off, and like, where is this memory? And why is e tanner than he is in my memory? Like is the he that he is even what I want? What's the next day like after this fantasy? Where am I in a month? How in the world can people come to the decision of being together. Yet again, I realize how fucking absurd the "let's jump forward 30 years with our family" kind of move can be, especially this early on in whatever that kind of weird relationship was.
I fantasize in stagnant scenes and think if I would just hit fast forward on those parts, I'd get somewhere I need to be. If I could keep my fantasy in that fast-forward need-to-be world, I think the now would be much easier.