words

boxes.

things I don't have the English for.
(definitions/explanations/ words taken directly from here and here)

Vovohe Tahtsenaotse (Cheyenne)
To prepare the mouth before speaking by moving or licking one’s lips.

Sigurista (Tagalog)
A person who is particularly concerned that everything goes as planned. The kind of person who will not initiate a particular action unless s/he feels 100% sure that the desired result would be obtained.

Komorebi (Japanese)
The sort of scattered, dappled light effect that happens when sunlight shines in through tree leaves.

Hiraeth (Welsh)
A feeling of longing associated with displacement, but not necessarily displacement from one’s original home. An intense yearning to be somewhere you are not.

Khalas (Arabic)
A term used to mean that something is completely and irrevocably done, finished, and over.

Zastóy (Russian)
Intellectual stagnation.

Moit (Scottish)
Pretended indifference/shyness while speaking about a thing one is very keen for.

Talkin (Indonesian)
To whisper instructions to the dying.

Saudade (Portuguese)
A vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, which indicates a mental turning toward the past or toward the future. It is not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent, dreaming wistfulness. One can actually have ‘saudades’ of someone with whom one is. In this case it would indicate a feeling of loss projected towards the past or the future.
It can also be described as the emptiness and absence one feels when something or someone “should” be there in a particular moment, but is missing.

(Also described as "the love that remains")

(*** it's different from "nostalgia," though that might be its closest english equivalent, because it has a sort of fatalistic connotation attached to it; it is at once an emptiness and a living again).

Torschlusspanik (German)
Literally translated as a “gate-closing panic”. It is sense of anxiety or fear that one’s life is passing them by and that their future opportunities are diminishing.

Dostoprimechatelnost (Russian)
A place you can take notice of a hundred times. It is generally translated as a “point of interest," but it means much more.

Toska (Russian)

Vladmir Nabokov describes it best: "No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels, it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases, it may be the desire for somebody or something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom."

Mamihlapinatapei (Yagan) (indigenous language of Tierra del Fuego)

The wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start

----

Do you understand? I'm not sure I understand. And maybe I'm manic and maybe I'm musing, but Oh! it's impossible to say it all.

bone thin bone.

"we sing as the sky falls down
we sing as the sky collapses
and make what we can of it
it's ok
we're all going to end up dead and gone."
--Tunng, "Hands"
.
temporary-ness.
everything.
hopelessly, not my own.
flashings else's.
fleetings dyings-off.
and I'm left
only one?
the only--
only?
bone thin bone.


I'm not afraid of disappearing.
Just afraid of everything else
Leaving before I'm gone.

Cat Stevens' "Trouble"

Is still the saddest, most heart-wrenching thing I've ever felt/heard.
And I can't take it off repeat.

To take on the world at all angles (requires a strength)

There's this old Southeast Engine song from their One Caught Fire EP (before they even had a studio album, let alone five) that they never play anymore. Actually, I don't have any memory of them playing it ever, but I wasn't around in the beginning beginning. And anyways, it's called Nothing's Wrong, and there's this haunting way Rem says:
"but I swear there's nothing wrong at all. there's nothing wrong at all. there's nothing wrong."

that always gets to me.

The first time I heard it I was a sophomore in high school and Frances (an eighth grader) said, "I can't tell if he means it"

And now maybe everything and nothing is wrong simultaneously. Maybe things are so wrong, that wrong is right. Maybe I'll say Nothing's Wrong, and let you decide if you believe me. It won't make any difference either way.

floating? falling?

1. Fear of trapped.
2. Fear of future.
3. Fear of loneliness.
4. Fear of failure.
5. Fear of unconsummated talent.
6. Fear of too much.
7. Fear of not enough.
8. Fear of boxes.
9. Fear of being ripped from boxes.
10. Fear of language.
11. Fear of finality.
12. Fear of change.
13. Fear of rejection.
14. Fear of never-ending tiredness.
15. Fear of peaking.
16. And slipping.
17. And disappointing.
18. And disappearing.
19. Fear of forgetfulness.
20. Fear of losing perspective.
    
21. (Fear of unaware irony).
22. Fear of money.
23. Fear of apocalypse.
24. Fear of mindlessness.
25. Fear of rabbit holes.
    
26. Fear of being too afraid to jump them.
27. Fear of losing agency.
28. Fear of history repeating.
29. Fear of arbitrariness.
30. Fear of being too small.

music

1. speaks
2. transcends
3. heals
4. awakens
5. connects
6. feels
7. channels
   
8. moves
9. displaces
10. vexes.
    

Action! "Sandpiper" (Official Video) from Action! on Vimeo.

Action! "Remember This One" (Open Call Video Submission by Seth Graves) from Action! on Vimeo.

disappearing.

(but I feel so heavy).

photos by Francesca Woodman.

(introduced to me by Mel Cheraso).

..

And another thing.

"The poet and the dreamer are distinct. Diverse, sheer opposite, antipodes. One pours out a balm upon the world, the other vexes it."

FROM John Keats' "The Fall of Hyperion"

----

In his dream, the speaker visits Moneta, the goddess of memory. He swears he's a poet. Oh, and she swears he's wrong.

(I will never be a poet).

----

There are two kinds of chaos: commotion, yes, but also the void. Today concluded with a sinking feeling of the latter. And I know this sadness is temporary, but the realization doesn't seem to be helping, because it's temporary-ness that's making me sad in the first place.

How am I supposed to 'vex' it when my agency's conditional--out of (my) control?

music for the morning// paste it together.

music by Shelly Short. video from youtube.

a musing on bodies//feelings.

Maybe everyone will tire of hearing about my sleeping habits, but I haven't gotten real rest since I've come back to Athens (on the 31st) and I don't know why. And I've remembered every dream--sometimes multiple dreams per night--which is a little uncharacteristic of me. Last night's was really disturbing. I was caught in military state/ Thomas Pynchon novel crossing. At one point, I was badly beaten in a library; my father rescued me, but was later attacked at a road checkpoint, right in front of me, for listening to music. I felt so helpless. (I should probably call him). The whole dream was really invasive.

Lately I've been practicing making non-prescriptive, non-judgmental observations. I'm typically pretty attune to others (though, I certainly have my failures), but I'm pretty lousy at letting my own self just-be, at letting my own self feel whatever it is that I am feeling without feeling badly for feeling badly, and without holding onto Joy that is not mine to have--just to experience. And right now I'm in the midst of a shift, I think: one that I cannot fully understand, which makes it hard. I do not mind external challenges (or even carrying intense feelings/emotions internally) as long as I can understand them somehow.

I felt crazy Saturday night. I literally had six invitations to do six different things with six different people but for some reason none of them felt right. I think I just wanted to stay in and get work done, but then I felt guilty for that--like: it's a Saturday and it's the first week back, there must be something wrong with me if I do not feel like being around people. (Which is ridiculous, right? We're all entitled to feeling introspective). And suddenly I felt like a visitor and I felt really lonely for no real reason and it wasn't until I skyped Dale and verbalized it that I was able to recognize how silly and broody it all sounded. He's right: I'm just always diving for lobsters.

Then, yesterday evening, out of no where, my period started--10 days early. And I laughed because suddenly I was able to understand it all: the emotions, the sleeplessness, the acute tingling numbness in my fingers and toes...
I think I'm just a super-sensitive listener when it comes to my body. I can't drink caffeine--not even a single glass of green tea--without feeling jived at night, and stiff in the morning. And I try to pretty consciously recognize shifts in hormones that truly do effect my feelings (without apologizing for those shifts/feelings), but this time I didn't see it coming.

I do not know where this is going, really, except to point to the obvious: human bodies are magical (but confusing) things.


musing on bodies//feelings. by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

presently.

de-cluttering (my life in boxes).

[the science of Tetris, and sleep-memory].

flashes:
1. faces.
2. routes.
3. sounds.
4. inventions (deconstructions/fusions/syntheses).

discoveries:
1. everyone but my father thinks I look like my mother.
2. laughter disappears when we are solitary (and without 'supplemental' social mediums)

tensions:
1. what constitutes a 'social medium,' anyway? (the line is blurry).
2. I am special; I am special; I swear I'm special; I'm just like everyone else.

presently by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Inspired by Radiolab; on Laughter, among other things.

sound to touch like music to feel.

I'm just going to go ahead and project that Arcade Fire made last.fm's #1 most played for 2010. Either way, they're my #1.

Hearing Arcade Fire for the first time was like learning what music could be for the first time. It was my Freshman year in high school (so sometime '04-'05?). Dale was home (either already on OU's big holiday break, or for a weekend or something), and he, Frances, and I were driving his beat-up white Geo down Rt. 736, playing Neighborhood #2 (Laika). I think I owe my fascination with Régine Chassagne to Adam Torres (Adam, I don't know I ever told you that?), who likely introduced Dale to Arcade Fire in the first place. Hell, Adam, I think you introduced Dale to Southeast Engine, Joanna Newsom, and Neutral Milk Hotel, too-- who were all passed down to me through him around the same time. In a weird way, those 4 artists + oddly enough, Roman Catholicism, were what kept me strong for some of the hardest things I've faced to-date (all of which sort of compounded in those early years).

Funny--I've watched my musical tastes refine subtly each year--in high school I was jamming out to a lot more Brit-pop and a lot less banjo--but those 4 artists (plus a few others--Ryan Adams, Modest Mouse, & the old-folkys I inherited from my folks) have remained constants for a really long time...

Drew and I had a conversation about music the other day, and about "staying on top of the scene" so-to-speak, and I've gotta say: as much as I love discovering new music (it's a hell of a feeling), part of me doesn't mind humbly playing and re-playing the same familiar artists I've been in love with forever. Music isn't an image. It shouldn't be exploited to project some status of "hip-ness." Music is a feeling. It's always been a feeling.

Actually I listened to an old Radiolab the other day on Musical Language (which--side note--did a fascinating re-visit of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring), and in the episode this psychologist, Anne Fernald, describes sound as touch. Science confirms it: hearing is the act of sound vibrations touching our ears in different places, at different frequencies. I guess, internally, I took it a step further (the podcast doesn't go here, but it could, I think):
If touch is the action that gives the result of feeling (like looking is the action that results in sight, for example)-- and if sound is touch...
wouldn't music be the feeling that results from the action of touching (sound)?

It doesn't really work when you analyze it, I guess. That's the funny part. Feelings shouldn't be deconstructed by literary devises or critical theory--

(oh, this is a head/heart thing, isn't it?)

sound to touch by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.