I am so happy to have undefined time! Holiday! One of the time wasters is following the white rabbit down that inevitable hole that is the internet. This morning, a Facebook spirit posted this:
It is a rehearsal with George Michaels singing Queens “Somebody to Love” (which is possibly the purest genius of Western music, just my opinion). And there is Mr. Jones smiling in the background.
So that got me thinking about Bowie and the time I spent trying to look like him. I spent some time during my teens doing a lot of psychedelic substances while wandering around back alleys with friends, who like me, had no place to go, their family homes having turned into fortresses clearly defined by their lack of comfort or welcome for the likes of us. If we had become unrecognizable to our families they had also become unrecognizable to us. But we were seeking guidance from heroes who were children themselves, reading voraciously in a way our parents never had, Ken Kesey, Vonnegut, Carlos Castaneda, Solzhenitsyn, Tolkien, following Art and Culture, yet undefined, with a kind of devotion found in cults. (No wonder our parents were afraid of us.) But I was still just a girl, in love with a boy… so I looked up what I wrote about David Bowie, here on LJ and found the following. (I edited a bit).
An artist questions… she is naked, so we dress her in what we understand, but we only show our own misunderstanding.
If we can bear the embarrassment, and this is the point when we can change, when we laugh and start open up; we realize we all are these frail and imperfect beings, naked in what we thought was our brilliance, vulnerable.
Our true brilliance is, …we are all like stranded aliens, homesick and searching. Looking for a name for ourselves and hiding in our lies. When a voice reaches out of the rubble left by our insistent need conquer anyone who questions us, it is a voice of pure desperate need. George singing in joy, in desperation, “Find me somebody to love”: These are the moments when even the Gods are gobsmacked.
And then I came to my friend (? I flatter myself), Sub Rosa, here on W.P. Her writing about art has challenged me in new ways and the work and writings she has exposed me to in her blog have lit a bit of a fire in me. This poem is advice on how we keep the brilliance from shredding us to pieces. Have I reached the time when I can?
<a href=”https://omstreifer.com/2016/08/05/live-the-questions/”>https://omstreifer.com/2016/08/05/live-the-questions/ </a>
I will end here because I am hungry because I now know what my desperate need is, not someone to love, but something… I have to tighten it till it reaches the pitch required to achieve escape velocity, just for my own satisfaction, as if it’s all I ever wanted.
Because no matter how horrible we humans are we do our best when we are lost and on the brink of disaster.
And now, in addition, I come to the loss of Princess Leia, Carrie Fisher who so artfully made struggle for mental wellness lyric, and comic and true and made room for all of us to admit our vulnerability. When she was Princess Leia the boys pretended to love her tits, but it was her courage we all loved. As temporary as youth and beauty are, courage can grow and she showed us how.
(Side note, apparently sleep is the new way to stay young. Oh Gwenith Paltrow why must you? I must admit I giggled a lot when I read that.)
Words About 