Hannah, you are out. You have been named.
It’s okay that you cried in front of your whole family during your uncle’s wedding photo, tears which probably appeared to be for no reason. It’s okay when you don’t cry for months because you’re tough and don’t want to put your female embodied emotions on display. You’re so tough, boys enjoy your company because you can hold your whiskey as well as any of them but those nights when you can’t, you are comforted by their displays of masculinity that signify the difference between you and them.
When you cut your hair and some people asked you if you lost any of your strength, you wonder why they are likening you to King Solomon. By cutting your hair, did you gain or lose femininity? When you shaved your entire head in high school, where you any more or less you by doing so? You realize that others view you on your outward appearance and are willing to adjust accordingly in reinventing yourself because no matter how hard you try, you the subject is part of your identity.
Your grandmother once wrote you, “Hannah, be you. Be you…intensely.” So you keep this in mind while performing self, remembering that it’s a man’s world but it’s nothing without you in it. You are the lead role in your life’s story. When you become disillusioned with civilization, remember you are part of it. Remember just as society places subjectivity on you, you do so on others. Remember that without an audience or being audienced, there is no you. But remember as long as you are you, do so with intensity.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
On Music and Milieu
I am a note. I am singular. I am one of many. Alone, I seem insignificant. I am measured by time, relate to others around me and identify myself by initials and symbols. Those who come before and after me define my mood, my milieu, my significance. Within my defined space, I can be melodramatic, light and airy, or understated. Emotions are evoked by my presence or absence, whether by design or chance.
Located strategically, I am part of song but even alone, in silence, I exist. If I am taken out of context, I am still a note - I still disturb the air with sound. If my place changes or if am put in a different position, I will not become insignificant but instead my interactions will signify something different. Other’s perceptions of me are not universal. Distasteful to some, I am revered by others. Even as my creator chose me and positioned me in this space, I seek out and am sought out by others like me. Together, we create a whole whose melody changes with the space we occupy.
The time and space in which I am played is influential upon my meaning. Once I sounded my voice at what seemed to be an appropriate time, but even as the situation seemed necessary to one, it disturbed others. Take for instance, the love of classical music by one Alex DeLarge of A Clockwork Orange. The music he once loved and which embodied his feelings of free will - albeit violent in its materialization - changed its tone once the time and space in which it was heard was violent towards him. Even his appreciation for the lighthearted love song, “Singin’ in the Rain” turned sour as his milieu changed. What was once lovely to him was now a source of fear. His physical location and body had not changed, nor had the notes themselves, but it was the atmosphere which discernibly slipped from gratification to grief.
If you put me in another place, the symbols that define me do not change. Yet, the relationship between me and my surroundings transform my identity. Even in the far end of silence, there are notes. It may be a collection of notes - a collective silence - waiting for a moment to be recognized, signified. It may be a memory that holds a note for safekeeping to be reawakened in deliberate pleasure. It may be a time in which I am waiting to be played in the future, or a place in which to create new meaning and significance to the silence I am breaking.
Poet Oliver Wendell Holmes once said “the best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.” I echo every note that has come before me. I am a remnant of the formations that signify my individual presence in the very space that I form, shape, and even suggest thought and communication. I am a note. Alone, I am singular. With many, I am a song.
Located strategically, I am part of song but even alone, in silence, I exist. If I am taken out of context, I am still a note - I still disturb the air with sound. If my place changes or if am put in a different position, I will not become insignificant but instead my interactions will signify something different. Other’s perceptions of me are not universal. Distasteful to some, I am revered by others. Even as my creator chose me and positioned me in this space, I seek out and am sought out by others like me. Together, we create a whole whose melody changes with the space we occupy.
The time and space in which I am played is influential upon my meaning. Once I sounded my voice at what seemed to be an appropriate time, but even as the situation seemed necessary to one, it disturbed others. Take for instance, the love of classical music by one Alex DeLarge of A Clockwork Orange. The music he once loved and which embodied his feelings of free will - albeit violent in its materialization - changed its tone once the time and space in which it was heard was violent towards him. Even his appreciation for the lighthearted love song, “Singin’ in the Rain” turned sour as his milieu changed. What was once lovely to him was now a source of fear. His physical location and body had not changed, nor had the notes themselves, but it was the atmosphere which discernibly slipped from gratification to grief.
If you put me in another place, the symbols that define me do not change. Yet, the relationship between me and my surroundings transform my identity. Even in the far end of silence, there are notes. It may be a collection of notes - a collective silence - waiting for a moment to be recognized, signified. It may be a memory that holds a note for safekeeping to be reawakened in deliberate pleasure. It may be a time in which I am waiting to be played in the future, or a place in which to create new meaning and significance to the silence I am breaking.
Poet Oliver Wendell Holmes once said “the best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.” I echo every note that has come before me. I am a remnant of the formations that signify my individual presence in the very space that I form, shape, and even suggest thought and communication. I am a note. Alone, I am singular. With many, I am a song.
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