Rising above the currents of self-inflicted inadequacy
Coasting on the crests of ludicrous imaginativity
Day-dreaming into present oblivion
Until far away i find me
At 6.15, rolling on the shores
of my own creativity
Rising above the currents of self-inflicted inadequacy
Coasting on the crests of ludicrous imaginativity
Day-dreaming into present oblivion
Until far away i find me
At 6.15, rolling on the shores
of my own creativity
Gliding.
So soft, like a whisper coaxing a roller coast to dance in the
Light, filled with the ephemeral weight of a breath
So sweet.
Pure. Clean, patiently drawing out each note
with eyes lightly shut, lashes hovering, daring to exhale
Gently.
Integrity and authenticity in the simplicity.
A releasing breath of clean purity -
and it brings a hesitant joy.
Quietly drawing it out, softly coaxing it to dance
before it glides, once more.
Written whilst listening to this beautiful song below. Hope it touches you as much as it did me, and you support the artist.
Today I was accosted with too many ideas to even try and condense into a single post. From looking at the relationship between Islam and Christianity, to questioning one’s beliefs, assimilating and finding home links, the ability to ride my bike again, the beauty of taking a sunshine walk, awkward texts, writing letters. So much. But, maybe it’s generic of me, however, I am aware that today is ‘Shrove Tuesday’. Shrove coming from the Medieval word ‘shrive’ which is to confess one’s sins before entering into the period of Lent, fasting, letting go of worldly desires and focusing in on God before we reach Easter.
Often people give up chocolate, fast food, smoking, sex, gossiping etc. I always find these types of fasting, not contrite but another word in the english language which I don’t know. I don’t really have ‘addictions’ or cravings for such things as those listed above. In primary and secondary school i used to Fast, but then I’d spend the whole day focusing on when I broke my fast which would be followed by unwarranted gorging of foods as though I was suffering from a daily acute famine. I think I probably focused less on God in those days than when I wasn’t fasting.
I am someone however, who likes to be in control of themselves. Not necessarily situations but in control over myself. I just recently finished a year of not eating meat because I come from a culture which doesn’t seem to understand the concept that chicken + rice is not an absolute for every meal. I wanted to be in control of what i was eating: to regain the choice to eat or not eat meat. I gave up Facebook during exam periods – and was sorely unimpressed by the relatively minor backlog of notifications: it was then i realised how unimportant I was to my friends *enter self-pitying music*.
But I’ve spent the day thinking about how to shrive myself. I confess, I lack a lot of control. If there is a biscuit on the table blink and it will be in my tummy. If I smell a yum yum and have 99p in my pocket, I shall leave said store with a crumpled receipt and an already opened plastic box.
A friend suggested giving up makeup – but it isn’t something i depend on. Maybe i should give it up. Yet i feel as it isn’t a crux in my life and I regularly do the au naturel look ( let’s be honest, those 15 minutes putting on eyeliner et al, is a quarter of an hour in the comfort of my pillows.) it wouldn’t be a major sacrifice.
So, how will i prepare myself for this Lent period. I don’t think I’ve really given it much thought, which is ironic considering it’s something i should be dedicating myself to mind, body and soul.
But, for the next 40 days and 40 nights, i think, no, I will…imperatives are coming out…give up…
something personal to be shared between myself and God.
This is me. This is you. This is the world that we live in.
When scientists have developed a way to generate meat without a soul
My flesh simply becomes something to be weighed, to be measured
And evidently, as the market is still fresh
Wanting.
You want to conjecture reasons as to why?
Why i ended up this way?
It was my choice? It was a sad sate of affairs?
How about you check your wife, your husband, your son and daughter
Your niece, nephew, your grandson and daughter.
Where there is a demand, there is always a supply
Didn’t you know, this is the age of capitalism
Economy, trade, a receipt, you get laid
You get raped, abused and misused
A number with no clues.
Check yourself.
Check your values and after all that, check your front-window view.
I may be nameless, nocturnal,
battered, bruised, with a penchant for the suicidal
But it’s your money rubbing up between my legs
That ten pound note you fingered
As you went to buy bread.
It was your laugh, that put the idea in their head
Your encouragement that led me to this bed.
This is me, this is you, this is the world that we live in.
Fix it
Before it fixes you
As another slave in this cattle market zoo.
[During the 2012 Olympics they expect 100,000's of women to be trafficked into the UK to provide 'entertainment' within the sex industry for the millions that are coming to the United Kingdom. Don't you dare turn a blind eye to this injustice. Get vocal, get active and make sure your community is not made a home to these wicked acts. Be the voice for these modern day slaves. Stop the traffick.]
My voice is my weapon. For a long time it was my identity. It was musical, it was dramatic, it was political, it was big. I was ‘the voice.’ I struggled to engage with people and situations without utilising it. How else could I express myself in worship? How else could I make that person understand the injustice of that situation without making an audible sound? It also stoked the fires of my ever simmering vanity. To have people turn around and whisper – You have a lovely voice – at times was met with modesty, others self-satisfaction. When those comments didn’t roll through, the voice was saddened, put out, it became jealous of the other voices in the area. The voice spewed out even when it was unconscious. Walking, a little melody would slip out, sometimes it would speak to itself making up arguments, debates, speaking in French, German, even on occasion made-up languages. It wasn’t to anyone in particular, it just needed to be kept active, the centre of attention. The voice won many awards, accolades, commendations – a lot of the opportunities I have had have been to due to the voice. Yet, it/I, never knew the beauty, the power of silence.
Music, one teacher had quoted, was the silence between the notes.
In the summer I felt God challenging me. He seemed to be saying – you, whose whole identity revolves around your voice, people recognising it, when you sing you are aware of it, I want you to be silent.
I balked at the idea. Impossible. Me, silent? Impossible.
And yet, here I find myself at University, slowly and surely being silenced. I had no urge to join the worship band, i didn’t pursue any jazz music or show choirs, i just floated, sometimes humming to myself, but the performance factor had been dampened. The only debating I took part in was at dinner, I didn’t sign up to any teams, didn’t put forward any motions. I joined no drama societies, didn’t incarnate and replicate the voice of Elizabethan or Brechtian plays. No-one knew me as the voice. Some people mildly stated with luke-warm praise, your voice is nice. They didn’t know what it had been, what it had achieved – and the best bit was, they didn’t care. I didn’t care.
I had a voice, but I was not a Voice. There was a liberating freedom. Liberation, mind, and Freedom, are not always enjoyable euphoric experiences. Depression, sadness, confusion, mourning, and lamentation characterised and to a degree still do characterise me. I broke into tears when I heard my sister and her small gospel choir singing Now Behold the Lamb. My heart was tearing at its chains and wanted to soar and join in the harmony. To boost the tenor section, compliment the alto’s, and eclipse the sopranos. It wanted to reverberate, i wanted to worship through it, perform, be identified like I used to be. One bar in and those who knew me could pinpoint my voice as acutely as a homing device. But my lips stayed shut as my body was racked with sobs. Frustration and anger ranged the terrain of my mental emotions. Frustration at the fact that I wasn’t seizing the opportunities, anger at those who were. Jealousy reared its head, inevitably. Wherever pride is jealousy is cheering it on.
Yet within this silence, this desperate need for silence, was His grace and patience. Hold out. Wait. Learn how to be free by being silent. Then, when you speak, sing, when you use your voice and are not used by it, the power, the joy, the impact, will be incredible.
I’m still waiting, trying to learn. It hurts. I feel my identity is being crumbled, disintegrated, and I am praying that it will be remade. Yet, within it all, I have realised how much I love my voice, and love the fact that I have the freedom to use it. So now I will wait, and exercise the freedom of being silent that so importantly compliments, and at times is the biggest sound one can make, without speaking, singing, being A voice.
One of the reasons why I was hesitant to start this blog wasn’t because of my poor time management, but because I’m an English student. I presented the argument that I am harassed daily by literature in all its various forms, I am trained to analyse, understand and reinterpret the written and spoken word, my whole aim is to criticise what has been created. Most of the time I don’t even comprehend what i have read sufficiently enough to analyse it, let alone trying to create something myself every day. But there are those times, like tonight/early this morning, when some of the most banal, base and simplistic strands of the written word can’t help but assault your ears.
It’s one thing to ‘party hard,’ or to ‘get down low.’ To be frank music and movement are almost symbiotically intertwined within human culture. When the beat drops you can’t help but pop (I’m sure one cheesy 90′s rapper used that line, if not they should have.) Yet, as an English student, I can’t help but hear the lyrics that are being blown out of low-frequency speakers and judder to a halt. We all know Rhianna is the ultimate ‘bad girl,’ she’s so bad ass she was once even considered to be good. However, when she asks knowingly “Come on rude boy, boy can you get it up? Come on rude boy, boy are you big enough?” before going on to offer him Captaincy of her ‘ship’ or to be a rider, encouragingly singing “Giddy up, giddy up, giddy up,’ I’d like to think that she is not speaking for me. You know, the hips are swaying, the shoulders popping, you have that ‘dance face’ on, chin slightly raised, eyebrow arched, lips in a little twist at the corner, and if you aren’t feeling it yet, F-off stamped across your forehead for anyone silly enough to get some strange ideas into their heads.
Yet as a woman, even with all these precautions in place – the angry dance face, the group of friends, the - I don’t speak english – if it gets too far – I almost feel violated by taking a 2-step to some of these tunes. As though by encouraging whichever singer it is for me to either get up my panty line, run to the window and the wall, or even be a California girl just for the night, I have prostituted and beastialised who I am, and most importantly for me, what it means to be a woman.
I’m stuck in a dilemma. On one hand the desire to be sociable, and to dance to a good tune – most of these pieces have beats so hot you don’t even notice the lyrics the first 100 times. While I’m teaching the room how to dougie, I have failed to miss until tonight, that Cali Swag thinks all his ‘b*****s love him – and that may involuntarily include me. The unfortunate event occurs however when a) there is an overspill of over zealous men – age is not a factor here – who assumes because one does a little side shuffle it is an invitation for them to embody Rhianna’s Captain, and make any girl who didn’t put her F-off stamp tightly on her head, a victim, or b) the uncomfortably desperate event when girls, lacking a suitable male partner, turn on one another to act out a sexualised dance routine, either for their own pleasure or to incite interest. It’s quite sad. It’s uncomfortable. It makes me wonder whether by simply being there I am condoning the antics, the antifeminist rhetoric that in my daily life, and most of my essays, i am so quick to deplore and challenge.
How do you find that balance. This isn’t an issue for simply modern music, or even worse the stereotypical ‘RnB’ music: women have long been objectified, even before ‘My Girl’ was proclaimed, or men were watching us walking down the street singing. It’s just, as each generation outgrows the ‘youth’ classification, and music evolves like everything else within nature, we continue to be objectified, and to encourage it. I just think, at times, it is to our own detriment.
They bring a little piece of home with them
It wafts over
like a scent from memory
it’s foggy, hazy, with a subtle degree of opacity
But it’s there, emerging from the Unconscious
That deep, sweet, piece of home
That family brings
A familial shard, with a familial ring
Normally they excite you. They hold the potential to surprise you. When they remind you that at 6.20 you need to be out, in the cold, on a boat, they compromise you, into expletives, that decidedly emphasise to you, the depressing nature of emails.
All that identified her was the sound of the penny whistle. It glided through the air, tickling the tips of ears, pulling at the corner of mouths, but there was no source, no presence that helped us discern its point of origin. It was too beautiful a sound, too mischievous and playful to be the result of modern music. It was too pure a sound, too wholesome and fruitful to be the expression of electronic devices.
There was something incongruous about that lilting melody. As we trudged down the street, conversation flowing, fingers dipping into salted chips and vinegar ladened fish, the bright lights of shops created an artificial luminance to the winter evening. In the shadows of chain stores, on a filthy worn mat, sat a beggar, warmed by the heaving sides of a black labrador. Her nose was pierced, her unwashed hair hung in mangled, tattered plaits under a worn hat.
You know bagpipes. Those irritating, annoying musical british heirlooms that encourage wincing, cursing and ill will when played. They whine like a petty child with a snot filled nose, they wheeze like an elderly asthmatic too stubborn to accept their lungs have reached their expiry date. You never expect anything beautiful to come out of it. They are just part of the grand picture of British History and Archaism. Once in a while they shimmer from the mundanity of their background position, at a royal parade, wedding, maybe even New Years Eve, before melting back into obscurity, shunned into silence.
It was an incongruous sight. Seeing mottled, chapped fingers flying over the holes of that pipe. Gaunt cheeks were sucked in, eye lids half closed as the penny whistle blew, sang, its melody soaring, limitless, unbound. To see so much beauty emerge from so much dirt. To imagine that a human, because it was a human, like you and I are, or claim to be, could produce such harmony effortlessly, was incongruous. But like that ill-fated bagpipe, its potential was often ignored, censored.
How many of you even noticed her sitting outside Sainsbury’s, caressing your hearts with her vagabond arts of music?
How do I choose to be honouring?
As a friend, as a woman, as a human?
How do I know what (not) to say?
How do I know how far to go?
You expect me to talk about love
But that concept is lost
In this honour-less world.
You expect me to talk about lust?
I’ve yet to experience that spray painted pearl.
This day of love, passed like a day of
Just simply time, life, me, my view, my life
I’m not saddened, I’m not waiting for that process to change
You expect me to speak of desire or hope
I choose to widen the scope
To the question of – what does it mean to be honouring?
Am I an honourable, woman, human, friend?
Can I honour the prospective potential of the multiplicity of love
When it comes in various forms to knock at my door?
Is there such thing as honouring amour?
