I just finished vomiting the contents of my heart out onto my mother. It was awesome. I felt so refreshed afterwards, almost like I was my old self again for a moment. Sometimes I try to write what I'm thinking because I need to release my thoughts and I feel like if I work them out and organize them I will be more put together and what will result is a powerful, effective piece of writing. My brain goes too fast for my hands to type. Or my brain works in a scattered random way and my page ends up being a list of random thoughts. Or sometimes I don't even know what genre I'm writing in, where I can't decide if this should be a blog post or a poem... or if it will be more effective read on a page or heard out loud. This time the predecessor to the written word had to have been speech.
I don't know shit about art. Do I have the right to enjoy music when I don't understand it? The only thing they teach us to analyze in school is literature (which is taught because it is an extension of reading and writing which are basic core subjects we learn in elementary school, yet it is an analysis class, which ergo I argue is an art class, I digress). I also learned to an extent how to analyse music because I was in band. I wasn't in AP Music Theory, but I was in band, so I did learn some about how to analyse music. And there is a lot of information no one knows about. There is a scientific theory behind music. Contestants on The Voice should sing and be rich and famous because they have the "talent." In any other field, for someone to be that successful, they would have had to go through years of schooling, extensive experience... but our culture capitalizes on image, and marketing milks boy bands for every teenage girl's mom's dollar (ahem, my sister...). Can I decorate my dorm with minimalist hipster canvas art that only mimics the ingenuity of DIY Culture from Office Depot of trendy symbols like the "&" sign plastered against a white 6 x 6? What does that sign even mean in this context?? And what?? It is literally just a swirly symbol of the word "and" randomly placed in my bedroom! Is it supposed to be some sort of romantic gesture to literature or journaling? Is it supposed to symbolize connection? Hopefully by now you can see that sometimes I wish I would stop thinking quite so much and go back to living in ignorant bliss in my bubble of a world filled with meaningless swirly gold "&" symbols.
What if I had been taught to analyze, say, paintings instead of novels? I don't know why certain colors look good together--I don't know the logic behind it. And I know there is a science: I had a taste of it when I was really interested in fashion design when I was in fifth grade. I had a design book that taught all about different styles, techniques, prints and the color wheel. So there has to be more than that. Can anyone just put on an outfit, or do you have to be qualified in order to look good?
Moreover, do I have the right to enjoy music if I don't understand it? There are some popular songs that I do like. Can I indulge in cheap pop culture if I like it or am I just manipulated by market?
It is immoral to eat animals, but it is how the world works and we just need to accept it. The wrong thing to do is the correct thing to do, and it depresses me. We can be happy or we can be real. The act of eating itself has become a tragic oxymoron.
I feel like I'm floating. Floating with my thoughts... I feel so distant from everything, with my mirror. I almost expect to wake up into my old life tomorrow. At the same time, I am having a harder and harder time remembering what my old life was like. It seems so foreign now. This is reflected from my physical existence: I am in my first year of college, swinging back and forth from my dorm at Evergreen to my parent's house in Sequim. I don't have a home. This is kind of what I wanted--a gypsy, living on a dream and a dream alone, my spirit enough to sustain me. I guess my young adult idealist girl ambition wasn't enough.
During this talk/vent with my mother, I realized a few things:
1. This is called thinking critically. It is what liberal arts schools are supposed to teach. This is what's supposed to happen when I go to Evergreen. Phew.
2. I say, "I feel like I'm braking everything I used to be down and starting from scratch." My mother says, "I don't think you're starting from scratch. I think you are growing."