We are all just looking for a place for our souls to rest peacefully
It seems yours isn't peaceful with me
So peacefully I'll let you be
At different times in my life
I might have taken offense
But I recently realized it didn't make much sense
See if everyone's meant for someone in particular
That means there's 6.7 etc. billion who aren't him or her
And that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with any of them
It's just the unavoidable other side of love being a one-of-a-kind gem
Friday, October 28, 2011
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
No Turning Back Now
"Kinna Herra" is a Yiddish expression that basically means, jinxing yourself, but a special kind of jinx where you call attention to the thing that is going well and subsequently screw it all up.
So at the risk of giving myself a kinna herra, I will express how well things are going right now. Absurdly, bizarrely well. The end of October includes a move into an apartment in the East Village with one of my bandmates, continuing to work on my first album, and a gig at my favorite musical spot in NYC so far. And like, if I get into the details of these things, they are even better, at least for my purposes at the present time.
But I am aware of how precarious everything in life is. A month ago, I was seriously contemplating living in my car. My job was ending, and I knew I had to get out of my current apartment but was having no luck (if luck is even the word) finding any option of a new place to live, something that gets even harder when you have no job to speak of.
I felt like my world was crumbling, even though, as far as music was concerned, things seemed to be going well. I was working on staying positive, working on staying faithful that things would work themselves out, but I was stressed. There were a few times that all I could do was escape to the stairwell of my office building and cry. And cry.
I started seeing people living on the street in a different way. "There but for the Grace of God go I" would run through my mind. It occurred to me for the first time that maybe they were on the street not because they had no other option, but because this was actually the best option, for their current purposes. And I felt a camaraderie with the people living on the street, and the people begging, and I started giving money to every one of them I passed. There but for the Grace of God go I.
My best friend was furious at me about my plan to live in my car. I actually thought it was a resourceful solution to a temporary situation, and kind of an adventure, like urban camping. (As an aside, there are a ton of online resources for car living, and apparently a lot of people do it, especially nowadays with the economy as it is and people losing their homes.) But my best friend was not having it, citing lack of safety as her major concern, and she kept harping on me to consider other alternatives. "Can't you ask your bandmates if you can live with them for a while?" she suggested.
Ask for help? Shudder. Such a hard thing to do. So humbling. To admit you just can't do it on your own. To take off that cloak of invincibility, of self-sufficiency.
But I did ask, and help was given to me, abundant help, magical help, generosity beyond what I ever could have fathomed.
And here I am, a month later, with all the stress and anxiety replaced by excitement and gratitude.
So I should probably remember this all, next time life hands me crying in the stairwell situations.
Ultimately, I remain secure in what I realized months ago, that what I am supposed to do with my life in this moment is put my energy and focus into my music, creating it and sharing it with others. It's become very clear that part of this path, at least in this stage, is dealing with continual uncertainty. There is no guide to this. You can Wikipedia what other people have done, but even following someone else's steps is no guarantee of your own outcomes.
In fact, following someone else's steps is a poor strategy for a variety of reasons, starting with the fact that you are not them. Likely, they lived in a different time than you, which makes their situation entirely different. If they are living now, they likely have a completely different set of life circumstances than you do. And even if they somehow were exactly like you, there's just no way that you could replicate what they did anyway. So off you must go, into uncharted waters, following your keenly tuned inner compass, and weathering the occasional storm, because there is no turning back now.
So at the risk of giving myself a kinna herra, I will express how well things are going right now. Absurdly, bizarrely well. The end of October includes a move into an apartment in the East Village with one of my bandmates, continuing to work on my first album, and a gig at my favorite musical spot in NYC so far. And like, if I get into the details of these things, they are even better, at least for my purposes at the present time.
But I am aware of how precarious everything in life is. A month ago, I was seriously contemplating living in my car. My job was ending, and I knew I had to get out of my current apartment but was having no luck (if luck is even the word) finding any option of a new place to live, something that gets even harder when you have no job to speak of.
I felt like my world was crumbling, even though, as far as music was concerned, things seemed to be going well. I was working on staying positive, working on staying faithful that things would work themselves out, but I was stressed. There were a few times that all I could do was escape to the stairwell of my office building and cry. And cry.
I started seeing people living on the street in a different way. "There but for the Grace of God go I" would run through my mind. It occurred to me for the first time that maybe they were on the street not because they had no other option, but because this was actually the best option, for their current purposes. And I felt a camaraderie with the people living on the street, and the people begging, and I started giving money to every one of them I passed. There but for the Grace of God go I.
My best friend was furious at me about my plan to live in my car. I actually thought it was a resourceful solution to a temporary situation, and kind of an adventure, like urban camping. (As an aside, there are a ton of online resources for car living, and apparently a lot of people do it, especially nowadays with the economy as it is and people losing their homes.) But my best friend was not having it, citing lack of safety as her major concern, and she kept harping on me to consider other alternatives. "Can't you ask your bandmates if you can live with them for a while?" she suggested.
Ask for help? Shudder. Such a hard thing to do. So humbling. To admit you just can't do it on your own. To take off that cloak of invincibility, of self-sufficiency.
But I did ask, and help was given to me, abundant help, magical help, generosity beyond what I ever could have fathomed.
And here I am, a month later, with all the stress and anxiety replaced by excitement and gratitude.
So I should probably remember this all, next time life hands me crying in the stairwell situations.
Ultimately, I remain secure in what I realized months ago, that what I am supposed to do with my life in this moment is put my energy and focus into my music, creating it and sharing it with others. It's become very clear that part of this path, at least in this stage, is dealing with continual uncertainty. There is no guide to this. You can Wikipedia what other people have done, but even following someone else's steps is no guarantee of your own outcomes.
In fact, following someone else's steps is a poor strategy for a variety of reasons, starting with the fact that you are not them. Likely, they lived in a different time than you, which makes their situation entirely different. If they are living now, they likely have a completely different set of life circumstances than you do. And even if they somehow were exactly like you, there's just no way that you could replicate what they did anyway. So off you must go, into uncharted waters, following your keenly tuned inner compass, and weathering the occasional storm, because there is no turning back now.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
A Poem I Wrote a Few Years Back
by Casey Dinkin, 2005(?)
The first line of this poem was borrowed from someone I know--I think I know who but I need to confirm.
We may instigate and we may grasp at things
But reality determines itself
I'm grasping at you, falling down
And landing on someone else
I don't think reality's best interests coincide with mine
But somehow I'm still here and doing moderately fine
We procrastinate procrastination
While we fixate on fixation
And sometimes inebriation
Is our only salvation
They say everyone's meant for someone
I don't know if that's true
But I know I'm meant to overanalyze everything
And sing my songs for you
We may fantasize and we may idealize
But no one's ever seen Heaven
Happiness is fleeting and
Dreams end with one vigorous shake
Life becomes a test of will, coping and dealing
And you spend it alternately breaking and healing
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