Thoughts on bein vulnerable

My brother Simon and I have gotten increasingly close in the past couple years, and this has led to a lot of meaningful, thoughtful conversations. Mostly, they've been reflecting on our mutual experience of childhood; the places we went, the food we ate, the movies we watched. More importantly, though, is the way we've been able to look back at how our childhood has shaped who we are today. One of those aspects Simon and I have talked about a lot (especially with his girlfriend, Rachel) has been emotional availability, and general vulnerability. It's weird, but we've both come to realize we're really, really private about our feelings, and Rachel can vet this. This fact is troubling -- I've always thought of myself as open, gentle. Last year in Studio Art, I made a piece with the slogan "Be More Tender" slapped across the front, and I didn't really think about needing to take that advice myself. This has become a sort of haunting personal issue, too. Emotions are awesome, and beautiful, and the spectrum of experience they encompass is so complex and overwhelming and glorious -- but how do you begin to allow that spectrum to be experienced by/with other people? I hadn't even realized until recently that most of my life I've allowed myself to close my feelin's off to the outside world, but there are so many amazing things that come out of being emotionally available to the people around you.

This is a concept I've been battling with particularly in the last couple weeks, because as a senior, I wonder why I was ever so guarded in the first place. It's my last year with this group of people, and there is so much I wish I'd said sooner, so many people I wish I'd let myself be open to. Over the summer, I reconnected with a friend from middle school. We had a weird relationship built on white lies and competition (middle school was an awful, awful time), and being able to look back at that together five years later was incredibly therapeutic. It made me realize how good it feels to be open -- it took all the power in my being to sit with her and honestly talk about that part of my life, gently and thoughtfully, but I left our reconciliation with an overwhelming feeling of calm and contentedness. In my final year of high school, how do I want to leave this institution? Can I make those same kinds of connections with the kids at this school?

I love meeting people that put me at peace. Some of my dearest friends are the types of personalities I get lost in thought with; walking home and forgetting how long it's been because the convo is too good, having talks that make you feel so deeply understood and heard, just being able to lay it all out for someone and know that they'll respect your sensitivity and your thoughts -- that is such a beautiful part of being a person and getting to meet other people. I want to be able to provide that feeling for all the people in my life, and I'm trying my best! It's a slow process, one that I am willing to work for, and one that seems incredibly rewarding, and I'm willing to devote time to it; hopefully by the end of the year, I'll be able to look back and say I made it happen. :-) xx

Stay Up

School has been in session for a little over a month now, and I'm trying to do things differently this time. Typically by this point in the year, I would have let myself fall back into the routine of stress and, essentially, no outside hobbies or leeway for myself. I remember a classic signifier that the school year had really begun in full force was coming home on a night with no homework and not knowing what to do; I used to flush all of the leisure out of my life when school rolled around, and just shut off, turn into a drone.

I've been working to unlearn this, because I'm not really sure why I started doing it in the first place. Perhaps it's like having a full phone -- something has to be erased in order to continue filling, and in my case it often ended up being my summer calm that got pushed out. I wasn't a cold-blooded, punctual, not-procrastinator, though; I still did things relatively last minute, but I would just lay around in my free time. I would, literally, nap from the moment I got home from school until dinner, wake up, eat, do homework, watch videos, and go straight back to bed. Somewhere in the middle of junior year (maybe February?) I realized how screwed up that pattern was. Why couldn't I spend the afternoons doing things I used to like doing in the summer? Before school started each fall, I was free every single day and managed to fill that time amply, and I know I wasn't sleeping away the hours. I must have been doing something, and so I vowed to myself that I'd try with all my might to romp around as much as I could during senior year.

It's been tough, but I think maintaining some level of connection to the lifestyle I had going in July has helped a lot so far. Two weeks ago, I found myself sitting in the back seat of my friend's car with Lil Dicky's awful, awful (genius) 10-minute track Pillow Talking thumping through the speakers, and it felt good to look down at my phone and notice that it was 10pm, and not feel too worried about it being a Thursday night. I did my homework, and then I went out, and that's okay. I got home and went to sleep, and I went to school the next day, and I was fine, but I didn't spend my time in the same sort of comatose I was so used to slipping into in the past. Even if it takes some force to break my old school year habits, I'm glad, because it really does pay off. I'm still experiencing new things, seeing my friends, and hanging my arms out of the passenger windows, even though it's September, and I have papers due, and that's okay. :-)

Post #1 (reflection, very dramatic)

  

I named this blog after a song on Frank Ocean's new album, Blonde. It's been out for about two weeks and, upon writing this, I've listened to it roughly 14 times. Maybe out of a sense of guilt ("it's been four years, I owe it to Frank to listen to this!"), or maybe out of genuine interest and emotional attachment -- whatever the reason, I find myself obsessively returning to Blonde. It's edenic and sprawling, deep and warm, euphoric. Where channelORANGE was veiled in indistinction and hot mystery, Blonde delivers a clear peek into Frank's now-highly publicized life, and it's glorious.

   Frank's music has always had a surprisingly heavy impact on my life, but I've never felt a need to discuss it; like a family pet or a piece of art that makes you emotional, there's a certain level of significance things can have that seems impossible to articulate. I can't describe the reason that looking at Kerry James Marshall's profoundly striking paintings brings me to tears, or why frantisek kupka's yellow self portrait makes me think i understand him so well. I couldn't lay out the justification for why Where the Wild Things Are is my sad day movie, and why it makes me weep whenever I watch it, or why Tropical Malady filled my heart up to the brim with... some sort of emotion I can't explain, but one that kept me intensely infatuated for months. These things all "speak" to me, if you will -- reach out and ask me to come listen, to look deeper. The pieces I mentioned all pang through my chest, move me in some profound way. I love this fact about art: there are people moved to tears upon hearing certain One Direction songs, or watching one scene in a children's movie, or looking at a painting they found online -- and others who feel nothing when observing the same things. Art holds an acutely personal grip on the human heart, and has the potential to effect people in such central ways that seem to shake them to their core.

   The most intense moments I've ever experienced with my parents have come while sharing movies, songs, paintings. When David Bowie died last January, I came home and blasted "Rock n Roll Suicide" from the speakers in my room; when I went downstairs, my dad was crying. My mother and I walked through Goya's exhibition at the Prado in Madrid when I was eight years old, and we stood in front of The Third of May 1808, and we wept in silence, surrounded by strangers but with each other, alone, in that moment. There are parts of the human brain that, I think, were never meant to be articulated; the mutual understanding between psyches is so visceral that there's no need for expression.

    The song Ivy moved me to tears the first time I heard it. I think it was out of relief, knowing that Frank was the same as he'd always been, the familiar complexity and humanity I felt so deeply entwined with. When I listen to Blonde I can't do anything else. It's one of those albums that makes me stop and sit and just... think. It's difficult to write about something that doesn't feel like an explainable emotion, rather an... experience? It's that sense of closeness, intimacy, the moment with my father, with my mother. Reading Boyfriend sent pangs of that indescribable knowingness through my bones, and I can't help but feel close to Frank. He croons about lost boyfriends, laying in bed all day, the sky, the earth, and as he sings, I want to reach out and hold his hand. As my mother and I stood staring forward into the depths of black oil in The Third of May 1808, as the house rippled with the notes of Bowie's Rock n  Roll Suicide, sounds popping in and out like licks of flame in my father's ears and mine, there was an animal instinct of connection, reaching out to hold. Yet, there's never been a need. Looking into their faces was enough, seeing the glass in their eyes, and just knowing we both knew. I wish I was able to look at Frank that way, but I wonder if I even need to.