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Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.
–Pablo Picasso
I love this quote from Pablo Picasso. On the one hand, it gives me hope — if only I am diligent about practicing my writing, inspiration will find me.
On the other hand, it encapsulates what I am coming to believe about writing. It is important to work at your craft, regardless of whether the Muse has graced you with her presence. Daily (or otherwise regular) practice of writing will lead to creativity; it will find you if only you are working.
Now I just need to carve out a little more time to write, and inspiration will track me down!
“Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.”
Shunryu Suzuki
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“The less routine the more life.”
Amos Bronson Alcott
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“The secret of your life is hidden in your daily routine.”
Mike Murdock
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“As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge.”
Henry Van Dyke
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I am a creature of routine. I adore my routine. I like to get up in the morning, have a cup of tea, read the paper, eat breakfast. Take the dog for a walk, come home, have another cup of tea, check my email. Then I can shower, get dressed, and start my day.
If this routine is disrupted, I feel off. I get cranky. I like things to go as they are supposed to go. I like to go to bed at the same (insanely early) time every night. I like to watch murder documentaries while I fall asleep. I like my days to be predictable and for things to happen when they always happen.
Of course, in between my morning routine and my evening routine, I kind of like to have a varied bunch of things to do throughout the day. So, I have to wonder, am I really a creature of habit, or some sort of hybrid? And is it a bad thing to be bound by routine?
As you can see by the quotes above, there are lots of opinions on this question. I kind of like the zen quote… but, being someone who likes routine, of course I would. I dislike the quote about routine preventing new dimensions of the soul from emerging, naturally. So is it a good thing to have a routine, or am I hampering my creative process by sticking to the same day-in, day-out?
I can adapt, don’t get me wrong. I can deal with it when my routine doesn’t happen. Like I said, I get grumpy sometimes. But I can do it. And I don’t spend the entire day stuck into a lock-step pattern, either.
As I’m typing, I am thinking this through. I think that actually, routine can be a help to the creative. For myself, I know that I have to write regularly, or I don’t write at all. If I wait for inspiration to strike, I will generally wait a long time. A lot of the reading I have done on being a writer states that an aspiring writer should sit down on a regular basis and just write, whatever flows out the fingers. And I know from my own experience that I write more and write better when I do just that.
So I think that rather than blocking my creativity, routine might actually be the secret that sets it free. I am trying to set aside a certain amount of time on a regular basis to just write. Part of that is the revival of this blog — I can come here and just do it, consciously leaving my perfectionism aside for the duration. (Not an easy thing to do!) I think I will experiment with this idea, and see if devoting regular time to write makes the difference that I suspect it will. Now I just have to follow through, another not-easy thing to do!
National Poetry Month is a month-long celebration of poetry established by the Academy of American Poets. Many poets celebrate this month by writing a poem a day; it is sometimes called NaPoWriMo. This year, I am taking part in the Poetic Asides April PAD (Poem a Day) Challenge. Robert Lee Brewer is the head poobah in this challenge, and every day this month he will post a prompt. Today’s prompt was to write an origin poem. I will be posting my poems here, as well as at the Poetic Asides site.
Writing a poem a day, especially for someone like me, means that what I post will not be the great polished gems that I would prefer for people to read. I might edit my work a bit, but there’s no way these poems are going to be much more than drafts in progress. Hopefully, I will take some of them and keep working on them. But I will do my best to do some writing every day this month, even if all I end up with is a fragment.
Edited to add: I can’t make WordPress give me paragraph breaks between stanzas. Therefore, you will note that between each stanza, there is a line with a period on it. That is my version of a stanza break, because I don’t have the time or will to fight with WordPress today to figure out how to do it properly.
So, here is today’s offering:
The Attack
It begins:
A near-silent whisper
Through the subconscious.
Or perhaps
A nebulous shadow,
Flitting between thoughts.
.
The mind,
Not consciously aware,
Nonetheless sounds the alarm.
Like good soldiers,
The body’s systems
Ramp up for battle.
.
Lungs, they quicken,
A bellows squeezing
To keep pace with the siren’s roar.
The heart
Sends blood thundering to
Cells: on guard.
.
Sweat rushes
The pores of the skin –
Drowning, drowning.
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Now the mind is listening.
.
Fear, intense and cutting,
Flies through the circuit.
Limbs tremble,
Reason crumbles,
The flood of danger rumbles.
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A dagger through the chest;
The bellows can’t keep up.
Brain is spinning, dizzy and dipping,
Sweat is dripping,
Mind is ripping, stomach tripping,
Hands are gripping.
Panic has taken control.
from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/03/20/depression-they-just-dont-get-it/. I am just cutting and pasting it because I’m too lazy to blog about it today.
Depression: They Just Don’t Get It
March 20, 2009
I’ve learned in 12-step support groups that if you decide to share something important with a loved one, or try to mend a broken relationship, you should do so without any expectation of a response.
I wish I had followed that advice the day I sent a family member an incredibly personal piece that I wrote about my severe depression (suicidal thoughts and all), and the first moments of dawn, hoping that it would make us closer.
Her response was one word: “Thanks.”
I felt like Princess Leia in “Star Wars” when she cries out to Han Solo (before he leaves for some empire war): “I love you!” And he says back, “I know!”
But part of my disappointment was my own fault.
I sent the piece to her with an agenda. This is what I wanted to hear: “You’ve been through a lot. I’m so happy you’ve come through to the other side.”
And when I didn’t get that, I was upset. I assumed she “got it”–the whole depression thing. I see now that this involves two mistakes (actually just one really big one): an assumption. ALL assumptions are termites in a relationship, and ESPECIALLY with regard to depression. Most people just don’t get it. Period. And I should stop expecting them to.
My mom keeps teaching me that lesson. Over and over again. I just now hung up the phone with her. Her last words: “People don’t get it. Remember that. And you’ll be less disappointed.”
I was venting to her just like I did the afternoon, fresh out of the psych ward, when my friend Liz told me that she thought antidepressants suppressed a person’s emotions, insinuating that I’d do well to pitch the happy pills and tough it out like the rest of humanity.
“No one understands, Mom. You and Eric. That’s it. And a few friends. Everyone else thinks I’m weak for joining the droves of Americans on Prozac.”
“Who cares?” she asked. “Why do you need their approval?”
“Because I’m not weak and it’s unfair to be labeled that way,” I explained.
“I don’t think you’re weak. Eric doesn’t. And you have several friends who believe in you. If you don’t want to be constantly frustrated I suggest you lower your expectations. Assume that people won’t understand, and you’ll be less disappointed when they don’t.”
Just as seasoned parents say “Just you wait!” to the pregnant lady in front of them at the checkout line, a person can’t begin to appreciate the harrowing darkness of depression unless she’s been there.
William Styron wrote his memoir, “Darkness Visible,” as a response to the public’s reaction to the suicide of Primo Levi, the Italian-Jewish writer and chemist who had survived the Holocaust. The scholars who admired Levi wondered how he could have endured years of torture by the Nazis yet break under depression.
“The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it,” Styron wrote. “To the tragic legion who are compelled to destroy themselves there should be no more reproof attached than to the victims of terminal cancer.”
Like Styron, I was both enraged and saddened that friends and family were shocked to hear that two doctors sliced me open — before full anesthesia kicked in — to save little David’s life in an emergency C-section. Yet when I voiced the desperation of depression — which made the knife cut feel like a knee scratch — they often brushed it off, as if I were whining to win some undeserved sympathy votes.
But I should know better. Most people don’t get it. And the day I get that through my head I’ll be less disappointed.
I don’t know whether there is or not; I haven’t found one yet.
More than nine years ago, I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder and soon after, Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Both diagnoses were a long time coming, probably since as far back as high school. And here I am, more than nine years in, and I still rail against them. These twin demons define my every day, and I’m bloody tired of fighting against them. Even though this battle drains me and drives me crazy (ha!), I haven’t yet found the way to stop.
All my life, I have been a go-getter. An over-achiever, a person who could do anything she put her mind to. For many years, it never even occurred to me that there were things that were beyond me. What an ironic slap in the face to find out that I really can’t do everything I put my mind to, that many things are just not possible for me.
I always had a pretty clear vision of what my life was supposed to be: fulfilling career, travel, achievement. Comfort. Contentment. Home ownership. But here I am at 36: disabled from work, agoraphobic, actively uncomfortable. Likely to be spend the rest of my life renting rooms from people who are kind enough to accept less than market value for the space, because that’s all I can afford. My best achievement most days is getting out of bed and getting through the hours without completely breaking down. I wanted to make a difference in the world, but most days I can’t even get outside of my own chronic conditions to make a difference in my own life.
The lingering image of what I expected my life to be like is probably part of the reason that I cannot accept that my life just is the way it is. Perhaps I fear that by giving up on my dreams and my vision, I will be giving up hope. Hope that I could ever achieve those dreams, that I could ever have the kind of life that I always wanted.
Acceptance would be far easier than the hell that I live with, but it is harder than anything else I can imagine to actually attain it.
A dear friend told me today that in her opinion, I am working harder now than I ever have before. It is a feature of the depressive mind to see the negative aspect, and here it is: If I am working harder than ever and at best only keeping myself afloat, what does that say about the years ahead? It is true that keeping myself going is a momentous task, and I guess the fact that I’m here writing this is proof that so far, I’ve succeeded. I’ve been fighting for my life for more than nine years; I don’t know how many more years I can do it. And there are many days like today, when I question whether it is even worth trying.
Before you jump on that statement, just indulge me a moment. Imagine that every day for years, you are lost at sea, struggling to keep your head above water. Treading that water every waking hour, every single day. Over and over, year in and year out. Wouldn’t you be tired? And what if you had no realistic reason to expect that the years ahead were going to be any different? That is to say, you will be treading that same water indefinitely? Never gaining much ground and in fact often losing ground, drifting further away from shore. How excited would you be about the prospects for that life? How long could you keep treading along? (And let me warn you: It’s easier to say that you could do it for as long as it takes, than it actually is to do it.)
That’s life with chronic illness. Life with Major Depressive Disorder, particularly when it’s treatment-resistant (as mine is), is one big struggle to keep treading that same water. It often seems hard for people to understand unless they’ve been there, but living with this kind of depression requires a tremendous amount of work. To just survive the moments strung together, to simply make it through the day, is a huge chore. And I’m talking about a day where you don’t accomplish much beyond surviving. I’m not talking about a day filled with activities; often, to even do the simplest things that most people take for granted is impossible. I long for a life where I can regularly keep my house clean, where I can do laundry when it needs to be done, where I can cook dinner every night. It has become my new dream: being able every day to walk the dog, to get dressed, to shower. A far cry from the dreams of my youth, that’s for sure.
And I won’t even go into the stigma that people like me face all the time. Or the fact that so many people cannot understand that this is not a matter of willpower or strength of character. If it was, I would be queen of the frickin’ world by now. Excuse the bitterness; the title should have warned you.
All this negative spew was spawned by finding out that a friend from my past has achieved a huge milestone in her life – and despite the way it probably sounds, I am very happy for her. It just brings crashing back into focus the fact that I won’t ever reach that milestone. That I cannot reach that milestone. Even if I find the magic medication and take all the therapy and rehabilitation on offer, it’s not in the cards for me. I haven’t accepted it all yet, but one thing that I have realized is that there really are some things that cannot be done. No matter how well I someday may become, there are concrete limitations that my illnesses place on my life. And should I ignore those limitations and forge on ahead, I will find myself right back where I started. God knows, I don’t want to end up back there again.
So, is there a statute of limitations on bitterness, anger and grief? Perhaps there is. At any rate, the hope that someday I can let them go is the reason I’m getting through today.
When my mood is good, I walk around singing/humming/whistling without even realizing it.
So, yesterday was my red-letter day. The day that I finally made a decision that I’ve been waffling back and forth about for quite some time. I’ll try to make the story (semi-)short, but I do love to ramble so no promises.
I’ve volunteered at my local SPCA for years. This past year, I chaired the governing body of the local branch, as well as a number of committees. I put a huge amount of time and energy into the governance side of things, and I helped out a lot with fundraising and branch support. I had great plans and visions for the coming year, too, and there are big things happening. We are FINALLY opening a low-cost spay/neuter clinic, which will serve both the community and our SPCA animals. We also have a new Branch Manager for the first time in ten years, and he’s from outside the organization. I had a long list of ways that I was planning to help him with the transition. There are other new things happening, and I felt that I could really played a significant role.
Also, I like being an insider. (Dr. W told me on Friday about a theory by Carl Rogers (I think) that involves getting to know one’s True Self and making peace with that Self. So here I am, acknowledging one piece of her.) I like to know what’s happening before everybody else does. And I also like to be a part of what’s going on. If I can play a role in something like getting a new spay/neuter clinic, then dammit, that’s where I want to be. So the volunteer niche I carved out for myself suited this part of me.
But since my chronic illness demons, depression and anxiety, landed me in the hospital, I think I have to focus on my health for a while, making it the only priority. Not to mention, I’m starting an intensive therapy program on Tuesday (three hours a week of class, lasting – I think – fourteen weeks), which I’m sure will involve homework and reading. This will be quite demanding for me. But it will also help me a ton, I think, so it will be so worth it.
(Oh, I guess I should say that the program is for people with co-dependency issues, which HELLO! My name is Muse and I’m co-dependent. More will follow on this program, I’m sure. It will certainly be a big part of my life for the near future.)
Anyway, back to the story. The SPCA has been a huge part of my life, and it’s mission of improving animal welfare is tremendously important to me. And, like I wrote, I had big plans. But the SPCA also been a huge source of stress for many reasons that I won’t get into here. (Roomie is a front-row witness to the effect that being involved has had on me.) For the purpose of telling you about my decision, suffice it to say that I had an event this past Wednesday, and in the time leading up to it, my mood plummeted and my anxiety soared. (How’s that for some overused language?) As soon as I cancelled (and I won’t even get into how guilty I felt about it), my mood started to lift and my anxiety started to ease. And the next day, working on some things that I don’t think that I can abandon, I felt a pain in my chest. My old friend, the anxiety-induced chest pain. Again, I began feeling better once I was done for the time being.
In some ways, I am not a clever person. I usually ignore signals like this until I get to the point where I am in crisis before I stop doing whatever it is that is causing my body to send those signals. For a change, I decided to listen to my body before it has to stage a coup to get my attention. (Aha! Perhaps I am learning… This is one of those lessons that it seems will be repeated until I learn.)
It seems clear that it’s time for me to work on myself (again). So yesterday was my red-letter day, the day that I told everyone (locally and provincially) that I have to bow out. It’s been such a very hard decision, and it’s been really emotional. I’ve been waffling back and forth about what I should do for weeks, torn between what I want to be able to do and what is probably best for me, personally. (I’m not so good at the whole putting-my-own-self-first thing. The concept that my needs are actually valid is something I struggle with constantly. This is one of the things that I think my new therapy program will help me start to work on.)
Ha, so much for the (semi-)short version! Anyway, I tearfully sent out all the emails announcing my decision yesterday, and then I spent some time crying over the replies.
I am still not sure I’ve made the right decision. Or maybe it’s that I just can’t accept that I’ve made the right decision. Since I’ve been going back and forth endlessly on the subject, I decided that I should just send out the emails. Having done that, it will be a little bit harder for me to go back and again change my mind. I will feel silly if I backtrack now, which might be the incentive I need to follow through and look after myself.
I will eventually get involved again, but maybe in a different way. It might be nice to just be a dog-walker for a while. Two hours a week where all I do is play with dogs, never mind the political factors or the interpersonal garbage that has happened this past year. I’ll have to see. In the meantime, I’m sad about the choice, and angry that I have to make these kinds of choices. And wistful about not being an insider anymore (to acknowledge my True Self).
One of the blogs that I like to read is Maggie’s at Okay, Fine, Dammit. (One day, I will have a functioning blogroll. I will, I swear.) Recently, Maggie started a new blog, Violence Unsilenced, which she created “to shed light on the epidemics of domestic violence and sexual assault by giving their survivors a voice”. (I couldn’t say this better, so I’m quoting her words here.)
Each and every one of us knows someone who has been the victim of domestic violence and/or sexual assault. Each and every one of us.
Each and every one of us knows someone who has abused someone. Again, each and every one of us.
We might not know it, but we do.
Shame is a powerful thing. It keeps us in the shadows, afraid to tell our truths. It prevents us from standing up and telling the world and telling our family and friends, about our experiences. It makes us think that what has happened to us is our fault.
I cannot say this too often or with too much emphasis: It is not our fault. If you are the victim of abuse, it is NOT YOUR FAULT.
(I didn’t think about this post before I started it, so I’m a bit all over the place. And this is a hard subject. Please pardon me for the scattered post, but keep reading.)
I am a victim of domestic violence. And I will write my story, to post both here and at Violence Unsilenced. It won’t be today, but I will do it.
The amazing people who have submitted posts to Maggie deserve to be heard. Each and every one of us needs to be aware of this issue and the effects that it has on the lives of everyone it touches. Go there today and read. Tell everyone you know. Take the pledge.
Today, I take the pledge. As Maggie writes, “If bloggers who have survived domestic abuse and sexual assault are brave enough to tell their stories here, the blogging community owes it to them to listen.”
Therefore, If you are brave enough to share your story of domestic violence, I pledge to hear and honor what you have to say.
Do it today, please.
It feels like forever since I posted last. I’m also terribly behind on Dannan’s blog, and on replying to the heap of email in my inbox. However, I am beginning to allow myself to be the awful correspondent that I always have been, but which I have fought against. Three cheers for self-growth!!
At any rate, things were pretty rough here at The Muse Asylum. The “trial” med that I was stuck on for three months wasn’t doing me any favours. Neither was my psychiatrist’s office assistant, who couldn’t find me even a minute of his time. But that’s a whole other rant, which I might actually have already ranted.
On February 19th, I rounded the corner, even though I didn’t realize it at the time. That was the day I made my first trip to OneSouth, our local psych ward. To sum up how I got there (because I’m too lazy to edit): I was on one heck of a lot of meds, which all had nasty side effects that got together, had a party, and increased exponentially. And as I’ve mentioned, my past year has been rough in terms of access to a psychiatrist; when my original Psydoc closed his practice in December of 2007, he referred me to a great female psydoc named Dr. F. She was super, except for the fact that she and her husband decided that they didn’t like it here and moved to the Lower Mainland in June of 2008. Long story short, I didn’t see anyone from June until November, and that was too long.
In November, my new guy (Dr. W.) saw me. I think he will prove to be fabulous if a person can actually get in to see him. We decided to try a(nother) new med, on the theory that I would see him once a month for at least a year. Except that he is supremely busy, and I am on the cancellation list until July of 2009. (From then on, I do have a monthly appointment with him, if I can actually make it until then.)
From mid-December, no matter what we told the office assistant, I couldn’t get in to see Dr. W. It didn’t seem to matter that I ended up moving home with Mom and Dad because I didn’t feel safe at home alone all day, or that my mood had absolutely plummeted on the new med. Nothing would get me an appointment.
Finally, The Therapist suggested we tell her that it was “urgent”, which is apparently a code word that opens doors as if by magic. Except. Except her response was that their office doesn’t handle “emergencies”, so if it was urgent, I needed to go to the ER or to my GP.
Finally, on February 19th, Mom took me to my GP. By this time, I was in a very bad way. GP said she couldn’t do anything except admit me to OneSouth. I didn’t want to go (OH, how BADLY I didn’t want to go), but I told Mom and GP that I was in no position to be making decisions for myself. And this is how I came to be admitted (involuntarily, despite both my consent and Mom’s – the only way to get a bed was to go involuntarily), and how life started to be a bit brighter.
I have always been terrified of going to the hospital. I have never been in the hospital overnight, other than for two sleep studies. And when I practiced law, a number of my firm’s clients were folks with various mental illnesses. Often when they called, it was from the psych ward. And did they ever have awful things to say about it! It’s quite ironic, actually, that their descriptions would foster this great fear in me. When I think back to those days, one former client in particular comes to my mind, and I wouldn’t have considered here to be a credible witness on any other issue. One of the more prominent features of her illness was that she was delusional; most of what she told us was considered to be questionable in terms of it’s actual basis in reality, until further investigation was done.
However, the lasting effect of her (and others’) accounts of life on the psych ward was that I became extremely afraid of the place. Certainly, at the beginning, a big part of the fear was probably that I wouldn’t, couldn’t, be admitted to the very ward ward where my clients could be. (My whole adventure with mental illness began in Victoria, and it really was a possibility that such a situation could have happened.) Thus began more than nine years of absolute refusal to be admitted to any psych ward (even after I left Victoria), and absolute terror of what would happen to me if I were admitted.
Despite my terror, OneSouth is a good place. Even the isolation ward (where one wears yellow baggy pajamas and has a bare cinderblock room with only a bed, a pillow, and a blanket) isn’t so bad. I was terrified when I got there, even under the influence of a hefty dose of Haldol. At GP’s office, I literally begged my mother not to send me to OneSouth. I even at one point promised her that I wouldn’t be ill anymore, I would be better, if only I didn’t have to go. In the circumstances, I am very proud of her for having made the decision to have me admitted anyway.
I calmed myself down once I was in the “cell”, mostly because I knew I wouldn’t be allowed to go home if I was hysterical. (Suffice it to say, I could never have actually calmed myself if it weren’t for the shot of Haldol.) I was, at first, determined to go home as soon as humanly possible (hopefully the next morning, if not sooner). As time passed, I began thinking that the isolation ward wasn’t such a bad place to be. (I may write more about this in another post.)
I got to see Dr. W. the next afternoon (Friday). How do you like that? Three months of begging for a moment of his time… Admittedly, I wasn’t begging him, but rather his office assistant. Anyway. He transferred me to the open side of the ward as soon as we had finished meeting. Our decision was to take me off all of my psych meds so we could start all over again. No better place to do that than in the hospital.
I’m now on a med called Remeron (mirtazapine), and I was in a good place to go off everything else. And I finally got to see for myself what the psych ward was all about. I have a friend who told me once about one of her other friends who called her times in the psych ward a vacation. I couldn’t imagine before how anyone could say such a thing, but it is in reality a very nice place to be. Rooms of four, a richly-appointed lounge with a pool table, a table-top curling game, a ping pong table, a piano, board games and puzzles, and lavish comfy chairs. An open kitchen where a person helps herself to whatever she want at any time. A TV room, nurses to look after anything a person needs, and time to do whatever a person wants. I had a grounds pass, so I wasn’t confined to the ward.As long as I wrote on the chalkboard by the nurses’ station that I was going for a walk, I could do it.
I was there from the Thursday of the GP appointment until the following Monday, and it was the best decision I never made. (I have thanked both my mother and GP many times for finally overruling my fearful protests.) And, so far, the new med is working well (knock on wood). Not too many side effects (and most of myformer side effects are gone!). I am very sleepy all the time (somnolence being the #1 side effect), and I’m pretty dizzy most of the time (the #2). My appetite is also way crazy (another side effect), but I’m trying to keep my eating in reasonable check. I had also decided that if I had to choose, I would choose sane and balanced over keeping my girlish (ha ha!) figure.
The big thing: my mood is better than it has been in many months, and my anxiety (which had become almost unmanageable) is well in control. I haven’t really been doing well since June of 2006 (when I went off all meds to do my second sleep study, which in the end told me absolutely nothing), but I think that I might have turned the corner.
Wow, what a long story. All to get to the point of writing this: as I wrote, I am doing better than I have in a very long time. I nap a lot; nothing like compulsory napping to make a person feel four years old. But when I was in my very bad state, having to nap everyday sounded a hell of a lot better than the way I was feeling. So I’m holding to that memory, and I’m also happy to say that the somnolence is lessening as time passes.
The dizziness, not so much. I did a trial drive to the grocery store yesterday, having decided that I was okay to be on the roads. (Fortunately, the grocery store is quite close to my parents’ house, and I can get there and back on roads that are virtually empty of people at the time of day I tried this.) Turns out, sitting around all day and only moving around the house is a misleading test of how dizzy I am. I drove home very carefully, on the deserted roads. So I have to give up some of my independence and allow other people to drive me places. (Have I mentioned that public transit makes me very anxious?) And I even have to ask people for rides, which is an exercise that The Therapist will be very happy to hear about.
My appetite is still enormous; indeed, it seem to grown everyday. I could eat the world, that’s how it feels. So we’ve stocked up on fruit, veggies, cereal bars, rice cakes, cheese and crackers, and the like. I’m not trying to diet, but if I’m going to eat the world, I might as well start on the healthier part. Get some of my recommended servings from the food pyramid.
I am slowly starting to get back to my routine. I’m going out to dinner with The Roomie tonight, and tomorrow I am going to a Chamber of Commerce social for the SPCA. I’m posting here, and I’m catching up gradually on the many posts piled in my Google reader. I’ll post something soon for Dannan, too. It’s all so much better than it’s been in so long, I can’t even begin to tell you (even though my 1800 words so far are probably far too long of a start!)
That’s the update. Now for the next part…. Elton John gives me shivers!
I was watching the last episode of The Bachelor last night (no, I’m not going to bother linking to it; Google it if you need to find out what I’m talking about), as well as their post-competition wrap-up shows. (Yes, I watch terrible t.v. You don’t have to watch it with me, so let me have my vice in peace.) During the commerical break, I was channel-surfing, and I found this: Elton John: Live at the Royal Opera House. As long as I can see him perform songs like “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” and “Your Song”, the world is a wonderful place.
Seriously, hearing him play these songs with a 90-piece symphony sent shivers through me. And at the time, I was thinking: I must always remember that life is worth living so long as there is music out there that can send chills through my entire body when I hear it.
Music is so powerful, such a gift to humanity. For me, many pieces of music (from all sorts of different genres) evoke this kind of response. Elton John (at least his older work) is an example. If death metal, hip hop or even Marilyn Manson give you chills, then I’m glad for it. Even if I don’t understand it, I’m glad for it. If there’s someone out there with this kind of musical taste who can tell me that it makes you shiver, please leave a comment. For me, this is the magic of music, and I’m curious to know if you fans feel the same way.
Enough for today. I’ve got many other ideas for posts bubbling away in my brain, so hopefully my next post will be soon!
I just want to be well. That’s all.
The Muse Asylum 