Lust For Life

Everything seems absolutely excruciatingly alive at the moment, and I’m feeling it all at once. I had a strange moment on my way home from work today, after remembering a conversation with a friend last night about the never-ending need to somehow respond to life, to art, to everything I see, hear, read, feel. Then I thought, what other way could I respond? This is what got me. I thought of children. Of how they’re the ultimate response. Except you can’t control them, completely. You mould them a little bit, but once you leave them for a bit, in the sun, in the kiln, on their own, they turn into something you kind of half anticipated, but didn’t really. I’m comparing children to clay, yes, it’s an innocent, naive kind of comparison, but still an enormous one. The most enormous part is when you consider how much of an incredible thing it is to actually make a child. You’re giving the gift of life. LIFE. Hey, hey you there, welcome, here’s the world, it’s all yours, you can do whatever the hell you want with it. I’m not sure why it took me so long to realise this, maybe I already had, but somehow must’ve forgotten along the way. Suddenly I felt a huge appreciation for family, for life. I’m alive. So are you.You know this. Duh.

Nevertheless, being so hyper sensitive is making me really quite in love with people, all the time. It’s confusing. What’s more confusing is that a friend of mine was crying all day because somehow she feels like she’s really in love with just this one person, for the first time, properly. After so many relationships. I guess that's what everyone feels in the beginning. I don’t know if I believe it, I don’t know if she believes it, I don’t know how anyone believes it. I’d like to have that much faith. Especially so early on. But all I know is that there are people I know I love, because I think about them daily. And often I find myself telling small portions of these types of things to those people, but there’s always something I hold back from each person, though that something is never the same. If I did tell everyone everything, and they did the same, would that be some sort of higher love? If I just really payed attention to it all, forgave every detail, listened, cared, hung around, didn’t mind the boring parts, I dunno, you see there’s so much more and it’s just how people are, and to me every real true friendship is love, and these things just happen, I can’t control them. But I do believe in karma, and luck - so much of it is luck and timing and coincidence, so why am I bothering trying to figure this out? It really isn’t as complicated as it seems. I just have to let it be. Let people in, more. Use more intuition. Maybe that's all I have. I guess I should stop analysing, trying to control, predict. I should live more vulnerably and not be afraid of that vulnerability. 'Lean into the discomfort', and 'with fragile honesty'. One of those lines is from a Ted Talk, and one from a Huxley book called 'Doors of Perception'. I'm not sure which is from where, but both have stuck in my mind, and I keep coming back to them.

I guess this all didn’t need to be said, really. You just need to hear one line from a Jen Cloher song: ‘Love is a feeling, but feeling aint fact’. That’s just the way it is. We'll all get used to it, eventually. Or maybe we won't. Maybe that's part of the fun. And so it goes.

A friend posed a really interesting concept to me the other day: If someone finds something (he used the example of a flower, but you can imagine anything, I'm thinking a person), really appreciates it, has a beautiful moment with it, and then someone else comes along later and feels the same - is the moment, or appreciation, or connection, just as valid? Is it less valid if heaps of people do the same? Or if a group of people have that appreciation together? And does it matter? Can, or should, these things be measured? See, this is what I’ve been wandering about loving more than one person at once, as with polygamy. Or with non commitment, casual relationships, friendships and love and all of that. What makes one love so much more full than all the rest? Is it as simple as more time, a fuller level of honesty and understanding, of investment and trust? Maybe. Then, how many people should I let myself open up to? This is what I’ve been thinking. I only half have answers, at the moment.

I've also been thinking that people are often too polite to open up to people. Too polite and afraid at the same time. There's also a strange expectation or confusion, often, between people my age, that leads to a lack in honesty and prevents proper connection, because people always wander about whether a guy/girl/other is into you, in a romantic sense, or even just a sexual sense. It gets frustrating. It's nerve wracking, then exciting, then tiring. Someone told me they consider a whole lot of people as though they're never platonic, like they're always on the edge of potentially being something more than friends. I found that same kind of idea imbedded in Brave New World. I like the idea, in that book, that sex and sexuality is confronted and encouraged in youth, not such an exclusive and strangely important concept only for child birth. At the same time, I think the idea could be taken too far, and sex and love too far removed from one another. The whole thing could be devoid of feeling. When I mentioned polygamy earlier, I wandered about the same thing. How much sex and love is honest, how much just something to pass the time, how much is too much? Where's the line between true appreciation and too much of a good thing? Guys, and girls, and those in between, have had so many expectations in the past about what should and shouldn't be. Guys being placed in the 'sleaze' category, girls into either 'tease' or 'slut' or 'frigid', and I'm glad the lines are closing up and these words are becoming less accepted and used. That's not to say they have been completely eradicated, though. 
Although this song was written by The Dresden Dolls years ago, and it excludes people who are neither male or female, I think there's still a lot of truth and relevance in the lyrics: 

'why all these conflicting specifications? 

maybe to prevent over-population

but all I know is that all around the nation

the girls are crying and the boys are masturbating'

With people not being either gender, or either sexuality, so many doors are opening up. Things are more fluid, free, you could say progressive or bohemian even, etcetera, but it's also more blurred, there's less stability, and still I think people are too nervous to talk about a lot of it. It sure as hell makes things confusing, too. Again, I'm stuck for concrete answers, so I think I'll move on.

Another friend asked me recently if I considered myself an honest person. I answered by saying I’d like to think I’m honest, but that perhaps I don’t say enough, that I’m not open all the time, which could be seen as not fully being honest. I left a lot out of that answer though. I’ve realised since that I also contradict myself a lot, I change my mind about things, so what was once honesty then turns into a lie, when I change my mind. I also exaggerate too much, and often pretend to understand things so as not to confuse conversations, rather than admitting my flaws. The people I admire most are people who admit to their own lack of knowledge, nerves, confusion. 

Amanda Palmer is one of those people. In ‘Trout Heart Replica’, she lays it all out like this:

‘feeling helpless

acting selfish

being human and all’.

I’ve been noticing more and more, lately, how often people say yes when they really mean no, how much enthusiasm flows out of insecurity and anxiety, and just how fragile everyone really is. It’s made me appreciate even the most irrational people, a little bit more. Nobody knows what’s going on. Nobody knows how to deal with it. It’s comforting.

There’s another section in an Edie Brickell song that works here:

‘I’m not aware of too many things, I know what I know, if you know what I mean.

Philosophy is the talk on the cereal box.

Religion is the smile on a dog.

I’m not aware of too many things, I know what I know, if you know what I mean. Do ya?

Shove me in the shallow water, before I get too deep.

What I am is what I am, are you what you are, or what?’.

This whole idea of being honest vs hiding things/keeping things, and being true to yourself (‘what I am is what I am, are you what you are, or what?’) goes back to the idea of over-sharing significant moments and significant thoughts (depending on what you consider ‘significant’) with more than one person. Writing here, on a blog, at times I feel everything is spread too far around. It’s the same with sharing an art, music, poetry, whether in a gallery, or at a gig, or when you’re publishing a book, it goes on. All of a sudden it’s all hanging out everywhere, and it’s not yours anymore. It’s a communal thing. It’s difficult to decide what should be communal, sometimes. I’m sure a lot of people could relate to that thought.

Imagine living your whole life just sharing your most profound thoughts with strangers on bus trips, or being the homeless man on the street corner who talks to the occasional kind hearted passers-by who aren’t afraid, or being Jack Kerouac and being free of commitment, of dedication, meeting new people every day but never sticking to just one. I love the openness I can have with strangers, because there are very few preconceptions and expectations. I’d like to live that way with everyone, to not act certain ways because it’s expected, especially with people I know well. I think maybe I'm too ok with not knowing the people close to me. But also, there's a kind of mutual acceptance of that fact too, with many people. Hmm.

Back to those small, fleeting connections - if you only had them, would you feel fulfilled? If you didn’t have good friends, but you had countless heartfelt moments with acquaintances, would it be satisfying? I don’t know. I think I’d always be too curious about the other person’s thoughts. I’d have to keep going back. 

Small talk is interesting that way. It leaves a mystery, but it can be dreadfully boring. Though, I find it comforting with people I see a lot. Because we’re both aware so much has already been said, or understood, that the small talk’s just a mundane way to pass the time, like some lines you just have to say. It’s the same with banter.

‘The little conversations

on me are very rough

they leave me all in pieces

you know there’s never time enough

it’s like a book with missing pages

like a story incomplete

like a painting left unfinished

it feels like not enough to eat

starving’.

(Johnette Napolitano, from Concrete Blonde)

The people who fascinate me the most are those who are slightly out of reach. Of course this is probably true for most people, and maybe I’m spoiling that concept about myself by putting so many of this stuff out there. That level of curiosity mixed simultaneously with nerves and excitement is such a nice feeling. The anticipation of knowing people and knowing there’s more to know keeps me endlessly fascinated. 

I think some people thrive off knowing they’re a mystery to others. It becomes like a game, especially to those who put up a face that isn’t their own, much of the time. But I think that game can become more boring than anything, after a while. Fiona Apple mentions the concept in one of her songs, too: 

’All that loving must’ve been lacking something

if I got bored trying to figure you out’. 

It becomes boring because you know that you’re not going to see the truth. Some people are just not there to be reached. They’re too interested in not being real, perhaps because they’re afraid of themselves. I think that goes away after time, for a lot of people, but for some it never seems to. There’s a fine line between being honestly, quietly mysterious, and being falsely mysterious. If your life is too much of an act, where is the truth? I remember hearing Nick Cave talking about that. How for him, he became his act, to a certain extent. Not purposefully, probably. But still, it’d be so difficult. I think fame and popularity would completely destroy some people. Even if they don’t want it to. The most well known are the most unknown, and I wander if they know themselves. 

On a slightly different note, I love seeing couples, especially old ones, really surprised about small parts of the other person’s character and actions. It’s comforting to know that surprise is still possible in the longest and strongest relationships. Because of this, in my opinion, I try not to worry about seeming mysterious, because I like to think there will always be mystery, even if you know someone like you know the contents of your fridge on a Monday night when you should be doing something, but you’re not. There’s always more to know, hence my Lust For Life. (This is the time when you go on youtube and listen to that Iggy Pop song.)

These are some other small things that are keeping me in lust with life at the moment:

• Lying on grass, or sitting on a bed, or in a grubby alley, on some sand, in a coffee shop, anywhere, and doing nothing, but with people who particularly matter to me
• Solid eye contact, especially with a knowing smile
• Awkward strange airs of expectancy and nervousness
• Really missing people, for no rational reason, all at once
• People I half know, but see all the time, and feel completely comfortable around, somehow
• Completely wanting to know someone’s everything. I think I mentioned that earlier
• Bugs. They seem to be a sign of connection, lately bugs come out when I have really good chats
• Tenderness, leaning on people’s shoulders, a pat on the back, a good hug, an awkward hug, a crap high five, an arm resting against mine, and so it goes
• When people just really pay attention to things I say, that seemed unimportant but somehow stuck in their minds
• Doing everything, but everything that’s really nothing
• Running down steep hills
• Guacamole, yoghurt, fruit juice
• Burying my feet in sand
• Losing things and not minding that they’re lost
• Hearing my brother and sisters being fascinated by the smallest, strangest things
• When it’s quiet enough to only hear trees rustling and traffic moving
• Pillows that look like they’re falling over one another. I imagine the pillows are people and that they’re playing ‘stacks on’, or that they’re lying together, exhausted, watching the world as though it’s a tv

Maybe I’ll add to this later when I discover new things. Or maybe I’ll just write a new post. Thanks for reading.