Aching

Tonight, I have an absolutely wretched, mind-splitting headache. And I have no idea why. I also have a feeling that my not being able to figure out the origin of the headache may be bothering me more than the horrendous headache itself.

I've realized something about myself: I like to try to find the logic in absolutely everything in life. This has two main effects.

1. I am continually interested in everything. Every area of study, every story, every person, every place. Which explains why I'm so into the whole interdisciplinary trend, and which I think is probably a pretty positive quality here.
2. I drive myself absolutely insane with the areas of life that I simply cannot explain. When I am sad, or lonely, or frustrated, or depressed, etc., (or have a random ache or pain) and cannot immediately figure out where that feeling is coming from, I feel even worse. However, once I can come up with a logical source, the issue and the feeling is almost always resolved to a certain extent.
   

This could explain why/how I drive myself as crazy as I do. Also, makes sense of my artistic impulses: so much of what I do involves using my past experiences - both good and bad - and tapping the emotional memory content again and again. Always reprocessing the past, drawing on it, and learning from it again, hopefully healing a little more each time. But still digging back into the thick of it repeatedly. Taking introspection to a level where it becomes performance for however many people will be there to watch.

No wonder musicians are as crazy/tortured as we are. Yet able to deal with it, somehow, most of the time. It's like we're going through self-therapy all the time. But publicly, on a stage and with an audience to see every raw bit of embarrassment, pain, and breakthrough.

And we love it. Psychos.

Displacement

Sometimes, I forget what city or country I'm in.

It happens particularly when I go somewhere new by myself, where there are no familiar 'reference people' to clearly tell me where I am. Or if someone from a past life-place has come to visit and we discover somewhere new together. Or if I'm reading a book that takes place in one of my former areas and get mentally transported to that place.

This morning, for example. House-sitting in the Chicago suburbs, I sit down to read a UK edition of a novel that takes place in New York. I'm reading about Central Park, but the spellings and word choice convince me that I'm clearly reading from the British perspective, so I look up at the end of the chapter and reminisce about how lovely the Park would be on a sunny morning like today, so far away across the ocean... and then realize that it's not across an ocean at all. Somehow I've found that my body is in the Chicago area, which suddenly seems lacking simply because it's not where my brain or my book had put me at the time of reading.

I am continually 'displaced'. Not sure how this realization makes me feel.

On Blogging

I know. What you're all thinking (myself included) is that the last thing this world needs is yet another blog about blogging. It's terribly self-referential, self-important, and more often than not just incredibly annoying. But here we are.

The truth is this: I have tremendous respect for regular, thoughtful bloggers.

How many times have I begun blogs that didn't last past the third, or second, or sometimes even first entry? How many of my friends can say the same thing? Sure, I tweet, I use facebook, but both of those actions are almost entirely mindless and require a 4-second attention span. This activity, on the other hand, actually requires a bit more thought for quite a bit longer. (I have to admit, I got completely distracted by a bird outside the window for about half a minute in the middle of the past sentence... even only this far in. Really, brain?) Well, at least it requires it for longer. We all wish that everyone would use a bit more thought.

I recently read a surprisingly interesting blog post about blogging (if I can somehow find it again, I'll eventually put a link in here... not happening easily right now), where the author spoke of the blogger's duty to his or her readers. To keep going, to make their writing interesting, truthful and relevant, and to maintain some sort of consistent tone so that their readers know how to interact with what they publish. I found myself thinking what a great post it was, how wonderful this blogger was, and how rubbish all of those terrible, uneven, mindless blogs were that clutter up the internet, un-updated and without sense...

Then I looked in the mirror.

Fine. New commitment. New blog. (Well, considering this one only had one post of one line... essentially new). All going along with my still new-ish city.

Let's see how we do.