I might be blogging...

Can snacking on Twitter change how you think?

I have decided that opening Twitter and peeking at the stream is like going to the cupboard for just a little snack… when I’m not exactly starving or anything — at all — but still, just a little nibble of something tasty and fun would be nice as a break… wonder what Mom has in the cupboard?

Ideas as food… words as food… information as food.

During Father’s Day lunch today, we got to talking a bit about careers, passions, mastery, life goals, etc. — some of that intense father-children stuff that tends to come up at milestone points in life. I have always had a notoriously difficult time explaining in clear words exactly what it is that I want to “do” during my life, what I want.

But one of the things I AM absolutely sure that I want to achieve in my life, is a feeling of satiation, like that at the end of an excellent, hearty, well-balanced meal. I want to feel that I have really, really CHEWED on something substantial… or multiple things… have really really gnawed at it, delved into it, wrestled with it, and have come out the other side — hopefully, ideally, also leaving something behind in return, making some kind of ultimate contribution to the overall flow.

When I say “something,” I particularly mean ideas, and the words that express them — for these are, for me, my most essential, satiating, favorite foods of all. And it really is the food-and-digestion-like chewing and processing sensation that resonates most viscerally, when I think about this (versus “merely” acquisition or application of knowledge).

I have joked, in the past, that I am like an aging mainframe computer in an increasingly distributed world. Overall, for instance, I still tend to gravitate a bit more to the weight and processed density of books and magazine articles, over rapid-fire Tweets and short-form blog posts.

My mainframe-like tendencies might be a weakness today — or maybe not (I am still pondering this question, will come back to it later) — but what I am definitely sure of is that I simply enjoy the sensation of sitting down and really wrestling with a lot of things “in-house,” so to speak, internally — not just outsourcing and sound-byting and being “in the flow,” “in the conversation,” etc. (These are not mutually exclusive, of course.)

I wonder if my mind is malleable enough to actually change what I enjoy most and feel that I am best at (most likely, these very preferences and feelings are merely a product of my various experiences and exposure to date)… I wonder if I can/could actually train myself to “think” in a much more short-form, outsourced, collaborative, distributed way, and could perhaps even come to find that just as enjoyable and satiating…? I have not (yet, at least) decided that I want to do this, but I am very curious about what is possible.

On never letting go

I don’t “let go.” Ever, really.

A lot of people make a big fuss trying to figure out how to “move on” from things, “get over things” etc. etc. etc.

I have come to realize, over time, that I just don’t DO this, when it comes to personal relationships, at least — to friendships, dating, whatever. People whom I appreciate, have appreciated, I always will, I think — until/unless they do something to make me distinctly NOT appreciate them anymore, or to make them into essentially a different person in my eyes, which very luckily for me, has not yet happened to me and hopefully never will.

And I don’t think this is a bad thing. In fact, I think it’s a distinctly good thing. I think it’s fantastic that I can still conjure up the likely response of my long-ago college boyfriend, for instance, to a conversation I might be having today (we often used to debate science vs. art, non-fiction vs. fiction,  black and white vs. “the grey”, concrete vs. abstract, etc. etc.) — spending time with him gave me a new window on the world that I could carrry on with me, and have done so. Same goes for numerous other friends and others whom I have lost touch with over time but who challenged me, touched me, inspired me while we shared time together.

The people I have spent real time with in my life make up a huge part of who I am, and that’s true for everyone, I think… which is why I am definitely NOT one of those people who “wants to know nothing” about the past relationships of someone I am dating, who wants to pretend that they never existed. To the absolute contrary, I tend to be  curious about them and utterly non-jealous (unless there are still open past love accounts, which is a different situation, obviously) — because if they really meant something, then they helped to make and shape the person I am spending time with now, and will always be part of that person.

Someone else has said this already, better than I could, and I couldn’t agree more with his view — I’m essentially just restating it, really.

“We ALL have baggage.  Baggage helps us travel.  We take it with us to prepare ourselves for our trips, to hold on to valuable keepsakes that meant something to us.  You’d be crazy not to take baggage with you on a trip.  You shouldn’t let it weigh you down, but don’t pretend you don’t have or need it, either.”

Where am I from?

I posted this to Twitter earlier today because it was on my mind:

I have no geographic home. Everywhere I go, I feel like at least part of me “belongs,” is “from,” elsewhere. Interesting, odd sensation.

I have spent my life in many different places… and I don’t know where my geographic home is. I don’t think I have one.

EACH of the places I have lived evokes the “me” of a very particular era… when I am in Santa Barbara, where I grew up, I feel a bit like a child again, sometimes feel myself even reverting to old childhood roles and emotions, funnily. Old habits die hard, I guess. Same goes for the places where I spent most of my childhood family vacations, and for old high school haunts.

Cambridge and New York City are a bit more “up to date” in terms of the “me” that they evoke, I think… I’ve pretty much spent the last 10 years (!) of my life splitting time between those two places — including having twice dated long-distance between the two… so I know every bus and train and plane route between them all too well. They are definitely the primary “homes” for my adult self, I suppose, in many ways. Much of who I am today, I have become in one of those two places.

The thing is, though, when I am in one of those two cities, I still usually describe myself as “from California,” I grin from ear to ear when I see someone bumming around in flip-flops in late fall (surely a southern Californian!), and I tend to gravitate toward people who radiate the kind of fundamental chill vibe and attitude toward life that I grew up around in Santa Barbara. Those people feel like home to me, in many ways, and make me happy. During my first year of college, I used to sometimes actually make a point of walking behind my roommates to Sunday brunch because they were just walking so absurdly fast for a sunny, breezy weekend morning— I simply refused to endorse it (eventually I did though, and ended up speeding up myself — in more than one sense of that term, over time, I think).

When I am visiting Santa Barbara, I feel like I should “go back” to somewhere else, am just visiting for a while… but when I am elsewhere, I still feel like I am somehow “from” Santa Barbara, or at least from California… Am I though? Where AM I actually “from”? Does that even have any meaning whatsoever, in a geographic sense, for me, given my actual lived life?

My friends are literally all over the country, even the world… a handful here, a handful there, but no greatest concentration in ANY one place at all. This is great for weekend couch-surfing, but not so great for having any clue about where I “belong.” (My family is mostly west coast but in multiple cities.)

Not to mention, of course, that I spend most of my actual time in the cyber-world these days — email, phone calls, text messaging, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc… for which physical location is completely irrelevant unless, I suppose, a cable line goes down.

I suppose I might in fact feel most at home overall within a few organizations/institutions and their webs of alumni — especially the university I went to for college and grad school, and my post-college employer. These have been some of the main constants in my life, probably. Webs. Networks. Distributed. Not physical… or rather, with only token flagship physical locations.

I do think that if I have kids someday, which I do want to, I’ll want to stay put in one place if possible for at least some period of time, for their sake… Maybe then, when I put down my own roots, create a family, maybe even invest in some real estate at some point, should I ever grow quite up that much, maybe then for the first time I will feel like I actually have a physical, geographic Home. We shall see.

In the meantime, home for me is people — the people I share my life with. The people with whom I share precious, irreplaceable memories, the people who understand me and whom I understand, the people whose thoughts, companionship, trust, and love I treasure deeply, and for whom I will travel any distance to be there, in person, whenever needed.

Life as choreography... work in progress

I find myself in a strange, slightly turbulent mood today — feeling nostalgic, sad, happy, excited, all at once… about school being almost over, a whole new phase of life ahead.

Words I’ve always liked, from Robert Coles: (professor of a popular course on the “literature of social reflection,” among many other things)

“In this life we prepare for things, for moments and events and situations. We worry about things, think about injustices, read what Tolstoy has to say. Then, all of a sudden, the issue is not whether we agree with what we have heard and read and studied. The issue is us and what we have become.”

In a world of so much information, and so many ways of getting it, and so many people one can connect with, there are such a vast number of “intake” choices to be made, large and small… who to spend time with, know, connect with, follow… what to read, watch, listen to, do… in short, as Robert Coles emphasizes — who to be, who to become.

I don’t have clarity yet on exactly what I will have “done” with my life, in sum, however many decades from now. But I DO know that especially once I am out of school (where information and enriching experiences are so easily accessible, all packaged and spoonfed) — I want to always, always live my life deliberately and highly reflectively… I want to make these “intake” choices of who to know and what to know in a highly thoughtful way that makes the act of living itself not merely a practical endeavor, but an intense, rich, aesthetic one as well. Crafting the contents of oneself, over time.

I keep a small bronze dancing Shiva statuette next to my desk, not because I am Hindu but because the image of a multi-limbed, dangerously powerful dancing god surrounded by a ring of fire reminds me of the metaphor under which I live my life (I believe strongly in the power of having guiding images.) I have mentioned this before, quite frequently mention it, in fact, so if you know me you have surely heard this already: Life as a dance, not a race.

I gravitate toward this image because it captures so well so many core aspects of the experience of being alive, in my view:

…Sometimes you perform alone in a solo piece, sometimes you dance with others, and both can be beautiful, in different ways.

…Sometimes the music is upbeat, sometimes sad or melancholy, sometimes intense, disturbing, perhaps even angry — and more.

…There can be recurring motifs — channels over time through which can flow an ever-growing accumulation of meaningful references, allusions, for imbuing things, relationships, and memories with ever-greater, deeper meaning.

…In both dance and life, you get part of your joy from performing for others… but you also get joy from the sheer act itself — from feeling the beats, literally feeling sound waves shake your chest if it’s loud enough, and from moving your limbs, sweating, working, expressing.

…Sometimes you can successfully choreograph exactly what you want to do, for however many counts ahead and you execute flawlessly, just as envisioned… but other times, the utterly unexpected takes over. Break your ankle, just when you had some complicated footwork coming up? Well, then time to invent some new moves, perhaps using more of your arms — perhaps you will discover something you didn’t know you had in you, and can create a whole new look and feel, perhaps even more compelling, more beautiful than what you had originally planned on.

The curtain is about to come down on this particular show, but the music will keep playing, and I will keep choreographing. Work in progress.

From Virginia Woolf

No questions for today. Just sharing the words of someone else:

 ”We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds’ feet is unknown. Here we go alone…” (Virginia Woolf)

Music

Why does music mean such different things to different people?

I think it’s high time for me to have a more serious relationship with music.

It struck me today, really strongly, that music is a far smaller part of my life than it could be. Since my iPod was stolen a year and a half ago (!), I haven’t owned any MP3s, for the most part I can’t remember song lyrics or titles or band names to save my life, or at least I haven’t particularly bothered to thus far, and my use of services like Last FM  and Pandora has been limited at best. I really enjoy live shows but don’t make it to them as often as I could.

Overall, I mostly just find myself throwing on local radio stations in the background when I do work or random stuff around the house, or when out running, walking, driving. The funny thing is that I almost always  have it on, though — virtually any time that I am home or walking — I really enjoy having music in the background.

So what gives? This state of affairs really doesn’t seem to  fit with the rest of “who I am”… not only did I dance and play music myself (although classical piano might not really count for this) for years and years… I also feel like in general I am constantly seeking meaning, an aesthetic spin, beauty, in daily life experiences, and  I often feel like flat words simply aren’t ENOUGH to say what I want to, can’t capture what I am inchoately trying to express… and it just seems so obvious that a real relationship with music would open up a whole new realm for expression, experience, exploration that I currently tap into shockingly little.

How did this come to be, I wonder… where does one’s relationship with music COME from?  My starting hypothesis/assumption is that it is probably mostly about exposure, especially early in life,  from parents, peers, etc. I read an interesting discussion once about the music of Igor Stravinsky… He (deliberately) wrote music that was considered so ugly and discordant, compared to the standards of the time, that when it was first performed,  it literally provoked audience riots. After some time, however, it became highly revered and appreciated. The point being that the neural pathways that enable appreciation of certain sounds are malleable, and can be altered over time. (I read this bit on Stravinsky in Jonathan Lehrer’s fun little book Proust was a Neuroscientist.)

Unfortunately, the implications of this for the sophistication and range of my own current musical taste are not too good :) … As a young kid, I had my head in a book all the time and was totally oblivious to whatever it was my friends were listening to, and the main music I actually HEARD was whatever pop/soft rock stations my mother would play around the house. This is probably why I find it pleasant and relaxing  to have local  radio on in the background… probably brings back feelings of happy comfortable childhood, ensconced in my home and family love.  (Thanks a lot, mom, for helping to foreclose my chances of becoming a punk rock star.)

Of course, since childhood, I have had — or could have had — plenty of opportunities to take my musical exposure into my own hands, and to seek  it out, but somehow this has never become a top priority for me. Perhaps it’s simply that, never having gotten truly “hooked” on it any kind of deliberate, intense, focused way as a child, I perhaps have just never really missed it, have had no way of knowing just how much richer my life could  be than it currently is — or something like that.

But I think it’s time to change this. I want to know what I don’t know… or rather, I want to hear what I haven’t heard, would like to develop a real relationship with music, and bring it closer in to my experience of life… not only in the background, but in the foreground too.

Whose gaze do you live for?

I have been thinking this morning about Milan Kundera… about graphomania and the question of audience. I have always loved, and often bring up, this question that he posed (can’t remember if it was in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, or The Unbearable Lightness of Being):

Whose gaze do you live for? What audience do you perform for, speak to, and care most about?

If I am recalling accurately (apologies if I am misquoting, but it’s roughly right at least), he poses these possibilities:

1) The gaze of an ideal, inspirational imagined someone, or perhaps a real person who is now absent

2) The gaze of one specific someone in your life, a lover

3) The gaze of a close set of known people

4) The gaze of the broader public

Twitter, blogging, Facebook, social media in general is all quite new to me still, I really did resist for quite a while… and I can definitely feel it changing a bit the way I go through my day, the way I experience things, who I feel that I am speaking to and sharing life with… Just as email did when it became a big part of my self-expression, or letters when I was younger (I was quite into pen pal letters and such, when I was a kid.)

So much of what we experience really only becomes real in the telling, in the sharing, and I have always been a firm believer that WHO you choose to share things with, and in what WAYS, through what media, and whether privately or not, MATTERS, just as much as the fact that you are having the thought or experience and sharing it at all. I think there is often a very real difference between the way you share something with just one person, tailored to your unique relationship with them, versus sharing “at large” (although “at large” could perhaps mean sharing with a particular, identified, group, which is yet again different, I think).

The way in which we exchange information and thoughts with other people is a core part of the constant performance that is self-identity and relationships — with choices around media and selective privacy (how you divvy up the different kinds of views you allow of yourself) serving as instruments for that performance, it seems to me. And the type of gaze you want to live for seems like a big part of determining what media and types of privacy and sharing are most appealing to you, no?

I’d say that I personally fall into some combination of #1 and #3 among Kundera’s options… I’ve always cared most about sharing with and reflecting with a small set of people whom I truly respect and find challenging and inspiring, or with whom I have the most lived history. I couldn’t possibly care less about #4, and I think have too many different interests and sides of myself to ONLY, solely, live for the gaze of one single real human being…hence the draw to #1. But really, #3 is where it’s at for me — passing along the richness of that to my #2, so to speak, when I happen to have one — thereby enriching both of our lives.

In lieu of a guitar

I’m having one of those days where I really wish I could play an instrument… REALLY truly play an instrument… not the 9 years of sort-of-practicing-the-piano-between-weekly-lessons that I actually did. I’m feeling, at the moment, all sorts of creative/expressive energy pent up… the sun is out, spring finally arriving to the northeast, but no real outlet on tap at the moment.

I played piano in a jazz band, during early high school, and I had SUCH a crush on the other pianist in the band. He was a complete natural… he had never taken any lessons, or maybe a mere year of lessons or something — but he could just absolutely play his heart, play his mood, on the keyboard, could feel his way naturally to the right chords, the right key during a solo improv session. Meanwhile I sat next to him plodding along, plucking away at the standard blues scale, just trying not to make our music sound actually BAD…

I definitely want to give my future kids, hoping I have some, the opportunity to give music a shot if they are interested… especially portable instruments like a guitar that they could take outside on a sunny day, and play with a couple of friends. Pianos aren’t exactly well-suited for that.

For me, dance has been my main creative/expressive outlet, I think. I did ballet for years and years as a kid, which is actually pretty rigorous and constrained, but then during college was able to let loose a bit more energy for fun in the jazz/modern dance group, all student run, student choreographed, etc. Few things are more fun and totally expressive, in my view, than moving and sweating to music. (Although have you ever thought about how amused and confused aliens would probably be to see us in a crowded dance club, bobbing away? I’d love to hear their attempted theories to explain exactly what we are doing and why, haha.)

Then, of course, there are always the private dance parties I have with myself when I am feeling stir-crazy from too much studying or work… nothing like a little getting down to old school hip-hop in your living room when no one is watching (check), or playing some air guitar to Bon Jovi with a roommate (shout out to an unnamed friend :)) when you’re really needing a silly release… :)

I think the topper though, of all of my “I think I’m alone now” dance-moments was definitely in India, two years ago… I was in this small, incredibly peaceful and laid-back town called Orchha, in northern India, wandering through a starting-to-crumble but still gorgeous, stately palace, listening to November Rain on my iPod. I stepped out of the back of the palace and came upon this big platform, overlooking a wide expanse of open dry plain. The sky was a brilliant bright blue, and the sun was literally just BAKING into my chest like a sheer liquid stream of heat (I couldn’t resist doing the whole turn up your chest, open up your arms thing). And there was not a person in sight. So… yup… I couldn’t resist, not with music playing in that kind of setting… dancing and spinning on that platform — I mean, come on, it was practically a stage!

That was one of the most amazing, memorable mornings I had that entire spring, I think. I can still remember the feeling, so vividly and viscerally — the same kind of sheer-liquid-euphoria running through your veins that comes from a long run — only way stronger than usual. A rush of endorphins, I guess. Or soul-food, depending on which vocabulary you prefer… so here’s to dancing. Or playing. Or singing (how freakin’ FUN would it be to be Bono? ), writing, painting, climbing, running, competing, laughing, shouting… Whatever your outlet is. Happy spring —

Using the words of others

I find myself quoting other people’s words a lot (if you hadn’t noticed from my first two tries at this whole blogging thing) — when I speak to others, when I write to others, when I write in my journal.

Why do I do this, and why does anyone? How and why, exactly, does using a quote really add to your own personal expression of the very same point?

(Incidentally, FYI — I will hereby publicly succumb to the common usage of “quote” as a noun… for a long time, in my steady defense of proper English, I had maintained that “quote” was a verb, and “quotation” the noun form, but this seems to be one of those situations where colloquial usage is just determined to trump, so I will lay down my sword…)

Some of my random top of mind thoughts, some possibilities, at least…

Part of the urge to quote others, at least sometimes, is surely just that someone else “said it BETTER” — you just love the way they put it, the sheer aesthetics of their words, and so you want to use their words to express what you mean more artfully than you think you could yourself.

I think we also, of course, often turn to quotes as an appeal to some sense of quality and/or authority. If a published author, or topical expert, or simply a well-known public figure, has said something that corroborates what you are trying to say, then citing them will add some weight, in the eyes of others, to what you are saying. The power of turning to “famous” people to back up what you are saying is of course a key element in our overall social system for the production of knowledge, “expertise,” and quality hierarchies — from ranked educational institutions to exclusive awards, peer-reviewed publications, websites that rank and compare bloggers, the art critic industry, and so on. Quality and expertise are every bit as socially-produced as the perceived value of a company on the stock market…we live in one big jury of our peers, at all times.

The urge to quote probably also, at least partially, comes from some sort of deep-seated reverence, even for the most secular among us, for the “sanctity of the written word” — especially the ancient written word… the older the better. Somehow, words seem to gain more authority with time… as if, if they seem to still apply now, and someone said it way back then too, surely there must be at least some “truth” in them, or so the typical reader might feel.

I also think, importantly, that in quoting someone or something DISTANT in time, you enable your readers to imbue that historical “voice” with all sorts of authority, mystique, or insight that they probably won’t and don’t attribute to just YOU, whom they happen to know personally is just a random punk pundit, speaking up all the time about things you know nothing about… :)

And when it comes to using quotes for personal, self-expression (vs. for a logical argument), I think they can serve yet another function, too: they can expand the range of possible interpretation for what you are saying, thus expanding the range of possible connection with another person.

You can send a quote to someone, with some sense in your head of why you like it, find it meaningful, are choosing to share it… but there is no way of knowing exactly how your reader will actually interpret it. You enable your reader to make his own guess about why you chose to share a particular phrase, what meaning it might have for you, what you are trying to “say” by sharing it. Your reader is free to interpret you, via the intermediary of the quote, in the way that most allows them to find a connection with you, a point of presumed understanding. Obviously, this is true of language in general, as all words have different meanings for different people, but I think that quoting entire phrases written by others allows you to reach even further beyond yourself than usual, to further expand the possible range of connection. Which I think is kinda cool.

Of course, I really should be signing off with a particularly fantastic quote, but for once, I don’t have one to offer. If anyone else has a great quote about quoting, by all means, do let me know. :)

A trail of bread crumbs

Sharing another quotation today, one that rings deeply true for me:

“Life’s splendor comes not from what it gives but what it promises.” (Teresa de la Parra, Mama Blanca’s Memoirs)

Although I know (or think, rather) that blogs aren’t supposed to be read chronologically, or don’t need to be, since this is all new to me, I still think I would like to “start” with saying how I think I might use this experiment.

The easiest way to do that, I think, is to share my favorite painting: Salvador Dali’s La Muchacha en La Ventana. Why is this my favorite painting? Two reasons.

First, because it captures so perfectly and simply my love affair with potential, with What-Might-Be… with the future and what life promises. This was one of Dali’s earliest paintings, when he was barely older than a teenager himself, just beginning to find himself as a painter – and the image itself to me just exudes that fundamental seeking and exploration. Five years ago, I wrote this about this painting…

In this image I see a young woman who is at the same time old. She crosses her ankles almost coquettishly, but her body is thick and exudes a solid, weary calm as she leans against the window sill. She has been working hard, and she will soon pick up her cleaning rag to return to the daily tasks from which she has temporarily escaped. But for this fleeting moment, she is spellbound by the breathtaking view of the possible. This single window, thrown wide open to the breezes which are rippling through the curtains, offers her a flash of illumination, a shining glimpse into the vast world beyond her room. The landscape across the water is nearly untouched, but it will not remain that way for long ― already meandering walls have been built, and someone is about to embark on shore. The young woman feels an ardent yearning, a mighty inchoate desire to be part of what will one day be created on that land. What will it be, and will it be meaningful?

Second, because of the window, the strong frame, through which the young woman is gazing. I kept this painting on my wall during college as a reminder to always push myself to question premises and learn new frameworks, different viewpoints from which to see the world.

————————————-

When I was a child, I would often spent hours and hours in silent contemplation, awash in a vague sense of possibility and curiosity, but unable to formulate anything but the haziest of daydreams. As I have grown older, many years of education have proffered forth numerous suggested tools and frameworks for sharpening that nebulous reflective impulse. I have found some of these helpful, others I am more skeptical of, and still others have surely deeply shaped the way I see things without my even noticing. But one thing is for sure, and that is that I have not found any single way of viewing the world in all its complexity to be completely satisfying. I certainly don’t feel satiated and done, don’t feel full, am still collecting and seeking… and probably always will be.

@ceonyc said to me, when I explained why I love La Muchacha en La Ventana: “The key is at what point the girl turns around, looks back at her room and says, ‘Ok, now time to paint this thing the color I want it.’”

I wholeheartedly accept that challenge – the challenge to DO something with all of the education and experience that I have been so blessed to have — I have always held that as a core life goal. But for me, I think, this will happen over time, will unfold a bit slowly, not right away. I firmly believe that different people can have different ways of “painting their room,” so to speak, different ways of coming to something that is “theirs,” and I’m definitely a slow-cooking stew. And I deeply relish the process of the learning and seeking — it is what fuels me and make me feel most acutely, fiercely, tinglingly alive. Once again, someone else said it better:

“I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can… to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” (Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, Letter Four)

So there you have it…

This blogging experiment, for me, will start, at least, as the exploration of questions. NOT answers, NOT advice, NOT judgments, NOT expertise. Merely, merely a partial, occasional record of my own meandering personal exploration of questions and ideas as I go along… the trail of bread crumbs of a seeker, I guess you might call it. :)