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: What Is Grief If Not Love Persevering?

Don’t worry, don’t worry. I’m not here to spoil the ending of WandaVision for you all, nor am I here really to review the show either. In reality I wanted to talk about something very much outside of the show itself. If you haven’t been watching WandaVision, Disney+’s excellent show about Wanda Maximoff & her endless grief you’re seriously missing out, especially if you’re someone who claims to be a Marvel fan. I know a lot of us, myself included, weren’t exactly hype over the reality bending sitcom that the show initially presented itself as but boy was I wrong to feel as such. You see, the MCU aside, WandaVision paints a very interesting picture of how we as humans (or super humans) handle grief.

(MCU Post Avengers: Endgame Spoilers To Follow)

At the end of Avengers: Endgame we are left in the fallout of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes having to sacrifice a great deal to save the universe at large from Thanos & his plan to (successfully) wipe out half of all life in the universe. A study of grief & loss in it of itself especially the first act or so, Endgame concludes with the funeral of Tony Stark & the retirement of Captain America, the respective friends & families of whom are left to mourn on their own as they go their separate ways. Each of these groups of individuals have their own support systems in place to help their grief & consul them with the exception of Wanda who after losing her love, Vision, in Infinity War is left with no one. Truly no one. And there in lies the true tragedy of Wanda Maximoff.

Wanda is an outsider to the rest of the Avengers at the best of times. Entering the MCU as a follower of Ultron, Wanda reluctantly becomes an Avenger with a little talking up from Hawkeye before losing her brother, Pietro, in the ensuing battle. At this point in the timeline Wanda has known her fair share of grief. Having grown up in war torn Sakovia, Wanda & Pietro lost their parents to violence at an early age. Following the Age of Ultron Wanda is inducted into the Avengers & basically becomes the linchpin that the events of Civil War revolve around. She is tossed in the middle of a conflict by people who treat her as an outsider, as someone who doesn’t entirely belong. Only Vision, a fish out of water himself, seems to care to show Wanda genuine kindness & humanity.

Why do I tell you all of this? Why give you the MCU wiki page on Wanda for the purpose of discussing grief? Because perspective is important, as is recollection. If you’re an avid MCU watcher you’ve no doubt noticed Wanda being sequestered to being a side character throughout the films despite her overall importance to the plot of each film she is featured in. I think this is intentional. She is meant to feel alone, isolated, because that is what she is. Wanda is a tragic character destined for misunderstanding & that is why taking the time, as Marvel/Disney+ have done, to give her breathing character moments is so important & relatable.

Wanda’s grief is poignant to us because she is forced to save face & continue foraging through her life without taking the time to offload the accumulating grief & pain she is baring. She is forced to be strong, to be an Avenger because people are afraid & don’t know how to handle her emotions & her sadness. Wanda is forced to carry these things on her own until she cracks, until she can no longer hold it in any longer & has to find some way of coping with her sorrow in a manner most would deem unhealthy.

So often we do exactly this; we don’t make the time or have the energy or the support systems in place to allow ourselves to truly face the things the are weighing us down. We mask our pain, we bottle it up, we let the rot fester until it consumes us because we decide that’s easier on our peers than honesty. We don’t want to inconvenience people or come of as weak so instead we self destruct. This is beautiful illustrated in WandaVision. Wanda had no one left to turn to, no one left to hold her & consul her so she creates them. She fell down the rabbit hole into a fantasy that ended up doing harm to those who happened to be caught in her orbit simply by proximity.

Gah, there’s another statement to be said here about the ending of this series but I won’t spoil it, especially since we’re still within 24 hours of it having dropped.

We have to be more self aware, we have to give ourselves more grace & love. We have to recognize the signs that tell us to stop & grieve; to process the emotions & trauma we are going through because if we don’t, no one will. The world will just keep chugging onward piling on new experiences & fresher wounds that just stack on top of the ones we haven’t taken the time to heal until we can no longer take it & we break. We have to show ourselves a little of the love we’ve lost along the way because as Vision so beautifully stats, “what is grief if not love persevering?”

WandaVision is a beautiful look at the consequences of grief avoided. It sees the beauty in the sadness & illuminates pain in a way that is relatable to all. Give it a watch & don’t forget to check in on yourself from time to time.