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.