Quote // Cecil Beaton

"Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary."

-Cecil Beaton

Dedicated to the man in my life, Christopher James Hartley.  This is your modus operandi.

An oldie but a goodie... <3

Gotye + Kimbra // Somebody I Used to Know

A friend of mine recently showed me this tune, and I just can't seem to get any part of it out of my head.  The lyrics resonate so soundly with prior life experience.  The best part, though, is the duet composition - allowing both sides of this crumbled love affair to be expressed in the first person.  All too often the stories we hear, whether recounted by friends or presented in fiction, concern only one protagonist's perspective of the experience.  Every story of such has two sides, but rarely are we allowed to empathize with both.  As I always say: it is all about perception.  No one can make another person feel anything.  Our feelings are based on our perception of what's been said to us or how we've been treated.  Here we see two people, clearly hurt, and clearly with their own ideas of what has happened.  What is love's demise if not some dose or version of misunderstanding?

 

Do you think the rose-colored tint on the lens is intentional?

Now and then I think of when we were together
Like when you said you felt so happy you could die
Told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and it's an ache I still remember

You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end
Always the end
So when we found that we could not make sense
Well you said that we would still be friends
But I'll admit that I was glad that it was over

But you didn't have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened
And that we were nothing
And I don't even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger
And that feels so rough
You didn't have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records
And then change your number
I guess that I don't need that though
Now you're just somebody that I used to know

Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believing it was always something that I'd done
And I don't wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say
You said that you could let it go
And I wouldn't catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know...

But you didn't have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened
And that we were nothing
And I don't even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger
And that feels so rough
You didn't have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records
And then change your number
I guess that I don't need that though
Now you're just somebody that I used to know

I used to know
That I used to know

Somebody...

Untitled // Unabridged

April seven, two thousand-eleven,
By way of a dream I journeyed to heaven:
My heart is beating out of my chest,
This feeling will not allow me to rest.
All I can focus on is the feeling at hand,
The feeling you have before seeing the man,
The man who you've held, for so many years,
But never close enough, to bring you to tears.
Suddenly I'm here, in this new domain,
Knowing only as much that this feeling won't wane.
But what to expect outside of this conviction,
Is unknown to the extent of lovely affliction.
Uncertainty is enlivening in one way or another,
While steadfast the hope you'll always have each other.
Optimism wares when its roots are insincere,
But the truest kind leaves you with no ounce of fear.
So I stand my ground and patiently wait,
Minute after minute, nerves start to abate.
Then all of a sudden, I sense, I feel...
Oh my god, it can't be real!
I turn around and our eyes lock,
Before I know it, my body's in shock.
His arms around me, his kiss, its paralysis!
I wonder what this is but can offer no analysis.
The loss of all meaning of time and space,
Everything disintegrates as our hearts together race.
My legs feel like jelly, my arms feel light,
What's pumping through my veins is the furthest thing from fright.
This feeling running through me is purely euphoric,
This energy between us is highly caloric.
I relish in the moment, I savor his lips,
The surge carries down, into my hips.
Our bodies are close, together hearts beat,
It takes all of my energy to stand on two feet.
The beauty of it is, I'm not afraid to fall,
My heart believes he'd catch me, flaws and all.
Now who can say what the future will bring,
But in the moment right now, its not even a thing.
Nothing else bears weight as we stand here eye to eye,
I feel so happy, I'd feel ready to die.
This is the thing I've been waiting so long for,
Its everything I hoped for, but so much more.
The prospect of what's more to come,
Makes me feel both deaf and dumb.
Its overwhelming, all of this,
But I'd trade the world to stand here and kiss.
Lucky for me to trade there's no need.
The stars have aligned, they have indeed.

Suddenly I stir, and then I wake.
"Not a chance in the world that that was fake!"
But so it seems, this moment has passed,
So far-gone, who knows, but alas...
Here I am, nowhere but here.
This dream for me was quite a sheer.
A turn for the better from what has been,
Almost hard to go back to "real life" again.
Albeit vague, the time and even the face,
In my heart, this dream will hold a place.
Whether it was real or completely not,
This experience has bore on me a spot.
A spot of which I have no desire to rid;
A spot for which I would take no bid.
A moment had is never mislaid,
Only better moments can cause it to fade.
So cheers to life and forward motion,
Reviresco from your lovely potion.

The Epiphany

Recently I had a little epiphany.  One of those momentary revelations where you "suddenly" realize something; something so significant, it feels as though you've consumed it - quite literally.  These occur every now and again, from the smallest of realizations, to grasps of new consciousness far greater in scope.  Albeit in varying measures, they always feel profound.  Now, the source of such a little epiphany is the inception of an idea that unifies - makes sense of - your current state of being.

In the moments before your epiphany, you realize where and how you are in this moment.  Then you realize where and how you were, say, six months ago.  It’s like black and white, then and now!  You feel like a new being, reborn somewhere in between “then” and “now.”  The essence of you is still there, nothing has changed... its just, suddenly... accessible.  When and how did this happen?  Where were you when black turned white?  Was it a split second unrecognizable to the conscious mind?  Or a gradation of shades so infinitesimal that a distinct point in between is unidentifiable...

On that note, we’re going to make this a little less vague and slightly more specific by applying this theoretical “little epiphany” to the one I’ve most recently had.

As baffled as I felt by the changes that had come over me, or come out of me, rather... it was not a mystery this time how the change came about.  For lack of better words, I will transcribe here the letter I wrote that provides my best attempt at an honest account of the change from black to white; the grey, if you will.

Dear Journal,

I have something to get off my chest.  Its not going to come out entirely now, but I promise it will all come out eventually.

Over the last few months, I have begun to acknowledge a void in my life that I have felt in my gut for some time.  Overall, I've felt there were far more good things in my life than bad things, and so I chose to ignore my gut.  There are a number of things that helped me to start realizing and rationalizing what I was feeling, or what I was not feeling...  But out of everything, I began to distill that the dissatisfaction I was feeling was not transient, but rested at my core.  Writing my thoughts, pen to paper, over the last couple months has helped to shed light on what I felt dissatisfied with in my life - in the fewest words possible.  I realized that the substance of what I feel missing in my life, I feel is defined by my writing to you - in the most abstract sense.

On Sunday I decided to turn my world upside down.  It was a terribly awful and difficult decision to make, but I know it is the right thing.  I feel grateful that I’ve been able to be more honest and reflective lately; I think I would have stayed in this for longer just because it was the easier choice.  With as many things in the world that are in flux right now, this was something stable and consistent that I've thrown to the wind... but I think it will bring more freedom than I ever could have imagined.  In some measure, I thank you for that.

Emily

...
So, yes... I am able to identify a catalyst partially responsible for my divergence from “black” that would ultimately lead me to “white.”  What I am not able to identify, is how it all began.  What was the seed of the feeling of dissatisfaction?  What was the seed of the acknowledgement of a void?  At the most inconvenient timing and with no words for a clear and concise explanation, I made a life-changing decision with conviction.  From within me this decision came, and for that reason, I knew it was right.  I felt it in my bones.  Yet feel it in our bones we may, we like to understand what it is that makes us so sure.  We like to rationalize, to verbalize.  Nothing I wrote bore relevance to any bone of contention in my life.  It was the act of writing itself that brought about this feeling.

A week has gone by since I turned my world upside down.  As I walked down my street in the crisp cold of evening, my pink scarf blew in circles in front of me as I walked... glowing against the blue tint of twilight.  I realized I had worn a bright colored thing every day that week.