(uh oh...this new pandora thing makes my music references really easy to figure out sometimes...)
One theme I have increasingly become aware of as I have grown is that much of what we encounter on a day-to-day basis is "human-made". Rules, laws, mores--all constructed by us humans. (Realizing this as a kid could have been a ready salve for many an angst, but alas...)
When I first moved to Burlington, I wrote several songs. Full-fledged songs with words and chords and everything, that I still often sing in the shower or on walks, etc. (Someday I will make myself brandish them at an open-mic night somewhere...) One of them was about softly shaking my head on behalf of people that think they can run away towards some external idea and it would suddenly make everything internal better. My first chorus throws a jab at people romanticizing California. This evening I discovered someone else has put the same thing in a song, too. (...hence this blog post title...not my words, but this other song's...)
So, having poked plenty of scorn at other people clinging to social or personal constructs, it's only prudent to turn that same scorn on myself from time to time. This round is about relationships. Why do I think I want one? Do I really? And if so, and if I am fortunate to find one...who's to say it will last. These are questions which I once thought I had answers to...and now...I don't know. And what's more, I don't know if I ever will have the answers.
I want something to believe in. (Something personally constructed.) I need something to believe in. Can I give that to myself?...I don't know. I'm not sure what it would even be, this thing to believe in. This is an interesting bit of philosophy that I'm sure entire books have been written about over the past several hundred years. But maybe everybody just has to figure it out for themself.
I'm just gonna do what I gotta do (as John Legend--stealing Aretha's chords--would say...) Maybe constructs are just made to be broken, and you can only ever count on yourself.
"This next song, I don't know if you've heard it. It's a song about cheating. But it's a nice, sexy song about cheating. It kinda makes you wanna cheat. It's called, 'She Don't Have to Know'..." --John Legend at the end of a live track
(And despite myself and everything I stand for...I really like that goddamn song...)
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2 comments:
I have a conflicted time with the romantic notion of "moving to California," since, well, I did it.
Still, though, I have been...transformed somewhat out here, and it becomes tempting, in retrospect, to attribute that to California itself.
Until I remind myself I didn't romanticize it much like that before I left, I was doing it as a grand relationship gesture.
(Round and round it goes, until I get caught up in thinking circularly about the crazy adventurous stuff I mostly seem to do in the context of relationships or crushes)
I don't think there's anything particularly romantic about Illinois (although it seems Sufjan Stevens would beg to seriously differ), but I've been 'transformed somewhat' by my time out here as well. (for whatever it's worth...) I think it more has to do with being in a strange land, rather than specifically what that new land might be.
The cause of finding one's self in a new land being attributable to a grand relationship gesture maybe has something to do with it, too.
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