Thinking some more about aesthetics and such and the difference/divide between aesthetics and function/experience
I don’t know though, I’m quite tired and out of it, was out late last night. That’s the funny thing about this idea of doing writing on saturday is that it’s a time that I’m not used to thinking critically so it really lends itself more to stream of consciousness stuff which is what I generally end up writing regardless. Just even the act of typing is something that I get some satisfaction out of as well.
so maybe this week I’ll make a more focused effort to not go too deep into anything and just write about surface level stuff or something. Having said that now I’m thinking about bigger topics. More about real life stuff than theoretical though.
I recently was talking to a friend about all of this, life stuff and such and making the big decisions. It’s odd because I feel more and more that I’m not one to give any pointers on this kind of thing because I exceedingly feel like I really don’t know what direction my life is going in. Although I suppose if you do really know exactly what direction your life is going in you’re living a life that’s fairly straightforward and maybe not as exciting. Not to say that’s a worse life necesarilly, certainly there are advantages, but I don’t think it’s the kind of thing that’s for me. I think I know that now though, that I crave a lot of oddness from life, a spontaneouty on a large scale. But also of course this manner of living brings hardships. Once the dust of excitement settles it can sometimes lead to mundane stretches of loneliness, or feelings of confusion, purposelessness. I’m getting the sense though that this is the time in life to have those experiences.
It’s all making me think of this song by Velvet Underground “Candy Says”. I’m not often one to be extremely attached to song lyrics, but I find these lyrics really interesting.
(And I think that we project a crazy amount of meaning onto things and totally mentally manipulate them to fit what we think they mean in the context of our current lives. But I don’t see this as a bad thing at all. This plasticity of meaning especially present in music is what allows me to listen to a song for years, and have an evercahnging and evolving understanding of what the lyrics are)
Anyway these are the lyrics I’m thinking about:
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Candy says I’ve come to hate my body And all that it requires in this world Candy says I’d like to know completely What others so discretely talk about
I’m gonna watch the blue birds fly over my shoulder I’m gonna watch them pass me by Maybe when I’m older What do you think I’d see If I could walk away from me
Candy says I hate the quiet places That cause the smallest taste of what will be Candy says I hate the big decisions That cause endless revisions in my mind
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The song is very dreamy and calming and beautiful, but then if you read the lyrics they sort of perfectly show what’s its like to be breaking down a bit. Especially so in this last verse, “I hate the quiet places” and “I hate the big decisions”. Its just the exact feeling of being burdened by thought, and over thought. That these spaces of quiet in life actually become things to avoid, things to fill with distraction because or else your mind starts churning and questioning, the “endless revisions”. It’s really quite profound in a way how simply the whole song shows what this feeling is like. And the chorus is the perfect antidote in a way. Seeing the smaller, simpler parts of existence, the blue birds. And recognizing this moment in time, and furthermore recognizing that this is a state of mind, that this is a condition, not reality: “What do you think I’d see if I could walk away from me”.