Somewhere different still…

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Some songs I love don’t just make me feel more keenly alive, they attach themselves to my insides, to my story – for good.

This was on my mind when I decided to revisit my 2014 post about the song “Somewhere Different Now”by Girlyman. To my chagrin, I found the old media links no longer usable – not that surprising after this many years. It was good to find this out so I could rectify it here. Another serendipitous aspect of going back: I’d forgotten the rich conversation that ensued in the old post’s comments. 

I’m glad as well for the occasion it presents to reflect anew on my connection to the song. As it happens, pondering former sources of meaning in an updated context represents one theme of the song itself.

The lyrics intertwine familiar details from the songwriter’s surroundings with expressions of disillusioned hopefulness. That’s where the relatability for me is – in that incongruity and in how memories tied to place can amplify it.

Who knows the somewhere I’ll be the next time I listen?

What bears repeating…

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Whenever I’ve been away from this blog for a while, something about the return always gets me pondering the nature of the whole writing enterprise.

Long abandoned has been my early aim of posting here weekly. Over the years, extended gaps between date headings usually pointed to background turbulence, in the form of personal difficulties I sometimes told you about later. 

More recently, it was the elongated Rivers project that kept me away. 

In both scenarios, as I debated whether to share with readers something of my coping or composing processes, I asked myself why you’d be interested at all. A familiar trope about writers labels them arrogant – it may apply to personal essayists above all. For my taste, those who lean too heavily into advice-giving or who obsess over minutiae tend to lose me. (An old favorite quip: “Is it solipsistic in here or is it just me?”) 

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Coming ashore…

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The artistic endeavor is contemplation twice rewarded.

I wrote that line in a long-ago post about exploration and discovery. So often our creative impulse springs up from an emotion or idea – and then our attempt to express it leads to others that surprise us.

In a discussion with fellow creatives a while back, one advice-giver urged that we talk about our projects with everyone we encounter, even in line at the grocery store. Her point was that it feeds our own energies and may find us a few interested “followers.” The suggestion didn’t ring helpful for me, maybe because imagining myself on the receiving end in that checkout line makes me feel sort of put upon. 

It’s true, though, that in my everyday interactions, if others ask what I’ve been up to, I’m only too eager to tell about it. This post is an iteration of that, because if you are a follower of this blog, you have, by implication, already asked. And if you’ve been here long, you’re aware my creative energies have been diverted for some time to a separate longform project.

In other words, I’ve been out exploring.

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Remembering…

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“Music is…the most reliable engine of nostalgia. But as I get older, I’ve come to see that nostalgia is not just about looking back at good times. It can also be a remembering of the exquisite pleasure of longing, of anticipation of the life you want so badly, of the self you will make of the materials you collect along the way.“

Lydia Polgreen

(photo by Rula Sibai)

Stay curious…

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“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.” (Einstein)

Also, try not to demand things of yourself which are out of your control.  🙂 

The second part of the quote sounds slightly more doable than the first. 

In my previous essay, I cited an uncontrollable circumstance when I gave an explanation for posting less frequently (ok, way less frequently). I pointed as well to a couple of positive milestones since then that led to my return to the blog. 

With respect to one of them, the completion of an initial book draft, I was less than forthcoming with you. I neglected to explain that it’s a manuscript in two sections; it is only the first part that’s finished, the shorter of the two at that. I will be at this a good while yet. Long enough, that is, that I’m choosing not to elaborate on its contents here for the time being. When it’s closer to ready, you’ll be among the first to know.

Unlike some stretches between posts in the past, it feels fantastic, if a little unfamiliar, to be able to account for the absence because of writing, instead of lamenting factors keeping me from writing.

The larger project I’ve involved myself in has to do with the past – which I always say I don’t want to live in. But I do want to learn from it, interpret it, celebrate it (the joys and the survivings). The process can be exhausting as well as energizing; I always want to wrest more. 

I think this field of curiosity – reflecting on one’s past to mine wisdom for one’s future – fits well with Einstein’s exhortation. Maybe it’s one way to refuse to grow old in defiance of the gathering years. That’s my plan anyway.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a train of thought to catch.