Blog: A Patch Of Grays

This is not my story, at least I’m not the instigator of this story. I definitely did have a part in it though.

The other day I had a friend of mine, who is in his late 20s send me a picture of the back of his head on snapchat. In this picture he was pointing out the firmly established patch of gray hairs on the back right portion of his head. Only around the size of an American dime, I made the joke that the patch of gray was indicative of him finally reaching what is known as “twink death” in the LGBTQ world. I’ve linked the urban dictionary definition for those of you needing further clarification on the meaning. He then began talking about his somewhat jovial concern that people would no longer think he was 22 because of his growing patch of grays. I reassured him that even with my entirely grayed-out sides & chin, I still get occasionally mistaken for my late 20s at age 34. He would be fine.

Our conversation around the topic didn’t end there though. He slipped in what I interpreted as genuine concern for his aging & his feelings around where he was & wasn’t in life. Something I absolutely understand as someone still trying to ‘make it’ in the music industry way past what the world of entertainment would designate as “my prime.” Hell, I even had a friend at a label once tell me that the executives thought an artist with millions of followers who was doing amazing on their own was too old to sign at the age of 21 or 22. It’s brutal out here. I did my best to reassure him though & in doing so actually ended up stumbling upon an analogy that I really enjoy & that feels incredibly timely with the current time of year.

I am somewhat notoriously a hater of the seasons of autumn & winter, the latter especially. I really dislike the cold; it makes my body physically hurt &, no matter how many people insist upon it, there seems to be no amount of layering that will ever get me to a comfortable state. Additionally, I am often affected by SADs (Seasonal Affectedness Disorder) when the darker, colder months roll around. The depression & the lethargy hit me like a ton of bricks. I’ve written many a song & many a blog on the topic that you are more than welcome to interact with around the many corners of the internet. We are now rolling into one of said seasons as this blog is being constructed. We also are currently in the release cycle of VisionQuest, the most recent installment in the WandaVision trilogy of limited series on Disney+. This all ties in, I promise.

There is a scene in WandaVision that I quote often. It revolves around Vision discovering Wanda in her room at Avengers Headquarters grieving the death of her brother Pietro in Avengers: Age Of Ultron. In the scene Vision, who is a synthetic being, is trying to wrap his head around the idea of grief, as he, himself, has never experienced it & only has an understanding of what it is from having unfettered access to all human data ever. The most famous quote from this scene is “but what is grief if not love persevering?” but there’s another line from earlier in the scene that I attached to with this specific conversation.

The scene goes like this:

Wanda: I’m so tired. It’s just like this wave washing over me again & again. It knocks me down & when I try to stand up it just comes for me again. & I can’t… It’s just going to drown me.

Vision: No.

Wanda: Yeah.

Vision: No. It won’t.

Wanda: How do you know?

Vision: Well, because it can’t all be sorrow, can it? I’ve always been alone, so I don’t feel the lack. It’s all I’ve ever known. I’ve never really experienced loss because I’ve never had a loved one to lose. But what is grief if not love persevering?

I’ll admit, it’s a bit of overkill for this scenario involving a patch of grays & the perceived loss of youth, but I want to draw attention to one specific line here that sent my brain on a tangent. “It can’t all be sorrow, can it?”

Life gets compared to seasons quite often. You hear things like “in this season of life” or “spring’s awakening", “someone is in the winter of their youth or their life.” The seasons play a key role in how we as people personify the experience of time, maturation, & aging. That being said, much like myself, many of us have our favorite, as well as our least favorite seasons but just like my views on the autumn & winter, it can’t all be sorrow, can it?

With the spring life is renewed, the cold slowly starts to melt away, & the cycle of life is once again flung into spin. Flowers bloom, creatures emerge, activities resume. Summer everything flourishes & grows in the warmth & the abundance of the sun. The flower becomes the fruit, life hits its stride, & events are plentiful. With the autumn we fall into the decay. The plants & animals prepare for their slumber or their death, passing along what provisions they need for those who will rise again in the light of their own spring. Winter we sit in the silence & the stillness of the loss & the absence of all that was before. Clearly you can see my feelings laid bare with each of them by just how I write about them here but that’s not the entirety of my feelings.

Autumn also brings Halloween & Dia De Los Muertos, two holidays I thoroughly enjoy. I was also privy this year to the visage of a herd of bison & a pack of wolves in the misty rain set against the colors of chlorophyll absent foliage while geysers erupted all around. It was spectacular & something I could have only seen in October in Yellowstone National Park. I got to see the first snowfall of the year there, the trees & the hot springs all coated in white for the first time in months & though we got stuck in a pass for a while, it was still stunning to bear witness to. It made me realize, at the age of 34, that it can’t all be sorrow, can it?

There is beauty to be found in these moments, just as there is beauty to be found in the revelations of aging. It is a gift that fewer & fewer receive each year. Some never make it to the winter of their lives, hell, some never even make it through spring. We can grieve the loss of the warmth, of the renewal & the fire as much as we want & for as long as we choose, but unless you can stop, move forward, & find the glimmers of beauty in the change, you are doomed to be drug down by it.

Each scar, each wrinkle, each worn-down ligament & joint in your body is a part of your story. They are the signs of a body that has lived. Much like so many of us musicians cherish our scuffed-up, dented guitars & other instruments we too hold the physical reminders of the journey we’ve made in this life gray hairs & all.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Beauty & Grief

Hi friends.

I hope you have had a wonderful week, though I know for a lot of you that hasn’t been the case. For whatever reason there seems to have been an uptick in those passing this last week or so; dearest friends & loved ones, beloved furry companions, staples of communities, & sudden shifting tides that have led to difficult decisions & great heartache across the board. If you find yourself in any of those categories I first want to offer you me deepest, most sincere condolences. I also want to shed some light on what you can expect going & hopefully bring a little peace your way through shared experience & understanding.

If you weren’t aware, back in May I lost my almost decade & a half companion Harvey & while yes, he was “just a dog,” he was so much more than that to me & to most of the people that had the pleasure of knowing him. I have no children other than those who bare fur & walk on all fours. That’s not a dig at saying my (non-existent) human children are very bizarre, I’m simply saying that all I have, paternally, are the animals that I have adopted over the years. I’m not going to turn this blog into a statement about how people should or shouldn’t be able to grieve their pets, but a lot of recent research shows that those of us who have strong, almost familial connections to our pets, mourn them in an identical way to how you would mourn the loss of a family member. Harvey was my boy, he was with me for over thirteen years of my life & he was, for a long time, who I looked forward to coming home to at the end of the day. So his loss ripped me apart, it shattered me to the core, & forced me to rebuild a life without him in it.

I’m not going to sit here & lie to you or belittle you. It’s hard, it’s impossibly hard, the grief that lingers like fog & settles into your bones like lead. You will have days where it is debilitating, but you will also have days where the sun shines through the blinds & melancholy & hope replace the anguish & despair. But with all things challenging in life you must face it head on & take it one step at a time.

There will be a time, when the wound of loss is fresh, where you will seemingly forget a time when your eyes were not floodgates constantly on the verge of spilling over. Then too will come a day when you can’t remember the last time you felt that way, when you can’t remember the last time you cried. You will be visited in your dreams & reach for them in your sleep & wake up with a tear soaked pillow & a yearning that can never be satiated. There will be times when a certain song, sound, smell, phrasing, sight will hit you in just the right way & you’ll find yourself back in the thick of it all. Even I still find myself here once in a blue moon all of these months later, but it does get easier & the triggers get fewer & farther between & at some point melancholy takes over the bitter sadness & all you will find is sweet longing & remembrance.

There’s a quote that I use often because of just how perfectly stated it is. It can be found in the Disney+ Show “WandaVision” at a point where one character, Vision, finds another, Wanda, sitting in the room ruminating on the death of her brother. In my mind Wanda becomes apologetic for her expression of grief & Vision delivers the beautiful line "what is grief if not love persevering?” That’s a line I think about often & as someone who often deals in lyrics or creative writing, is ultimately one that I wish I had thought of. Though as of now it definitely would’ve reached a wider audience on Disney+ than me.

We seldom think of grief this way. My perception of it has always been a dark, navy/grayish cloud of despair that sticks to the skin & sinks into the marrow. Almost like some dark force whose job it is to chain you to the depths. I think recently that idea has changed for me. We like to quantify grief in stages. First you hit the one, then the other, then the other three. And while a part of me thinks to an extent that is true in terms of the overarching experience, I think we dip in & out of each of the five stages intermittently & at times randomly. You see, if we look at grief from the perspective of love’s perseverance it becomes something entirely different, it becomes an immensely beautiful, deeply human experience.

Those who do not grieve are whose who have not known love. They have not felt its entirely. individually unique hold on their heart to then know what it is to suddenly have to live without it. They do not see the way in which our memory replays each of the moments, begging us to find what is irreplaceably lost. They do not understand the vacuum of space that feels ripped from your chest because they have not felt that level of DNA melding, intertwining love. Be so glad for that. Know that your sadness can only come from one who has been loved.

My advise to you is to feel these moments. Live in these memories savoring the shimmeringly perfect details & embrace the pain & the detriment that comes with them because these moments will fade. The intensity at which you feel their loss will fade & so too will the sharp edges of those bold, flashing memories. Grieve as you are told to love, wholeheartedly & know that you don’t owe anyone your tears or your smiles. You are allowed to be as “put together” as you need to be, or to not be. Feel what you need to feel because that is the only way to experience grief for what it is, without allowing it to compress down & fester & become this thing that sours your soul or the memory of those who you have lost. Be vulnerable, be bold, claim time for yourself & feel. You will get through it & you will find that those memories that bring you pain will, over time, fill you to the core with that feeling of love that I know right now you feel you have lost. I would also advise you that those you have lost would want you to continue living your life & to not let the delicate balance between succumbing & healing shift too far into the former.

My thoughts & love go out to you all. I understand that no words that I say or no sentiments that I extend will be enough to repair what has been broken, that is entirely up to you.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Object Writing: Easel

It stares tentatively at me every time I enter the spare room at the end of the upstairs hall, longing for the attention it had amorously received in its former life. What once belonged to my inspired grandmother now stands forgotten, collecting dust out of sight & out of mind. A half finished painting rests lazily against its frame, the acrylic paint of which still encrusts the shelf that hoists it aloft. It's been a while since this easel has been loved, properly loved that is. It was once the advocate for beautiful expressions of art; oil slicked splotches of plumage, delicately washed lofty cliffs overlooking the sea set under the watchful eye of a salt white lighthouse, true enchantment put to pigment. Now it yearns for such activity, its use long dismissed by the passing fancies of a neuro-divergent brain. Poor, lonely easel, you are so deserving of the flourish of life you once received in the past. I guess it may be time to once again crack out the paints & feel the tug of creativity.