Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you.

image by michal tokarczuk

Tell me,

do you feel it every day?

When you’re buying groceries,

taking a train to somewhere;

when you smoke, eat or dream?

Does it take a toll? Make your feet drag, perhaps,

or your head ache?

*

Tell me,

Does it get away from you sometimes?

Have people around you sensed something

not quite right,

caught that glint in your eye (there for just a  second,

and gone the next)

and wondered what it was that made their skin

crawl?

Or have they wished you good morning every day,

sat down to lunch with you, asked how your mother was,

without ever having a clue?

*

Tell me,

where does it hide? What shape does it take?

I imagine a boiling lava, burning in the pit of your stomach,

roaring with something other than hunger.

Or a demon that sits on both your shoulders,

having laid waste to the angel of good conscience,

whispering secrets and schemes into your ear.

Does it tell you who is ‘evil’ and who is ‘good’,

who should live; who deserves to die?

Did it convince you that you were fighting

a necessary war,

even though your so-called ‘enemies’

wished you no harm;

didn’t even know your name,

let alone that you wished them dead?

*

Tell me,

when did it first plant its seeds?

When did you first start to separate

‘us’ from ‘them’;

first start to see origin as a fault,

a punishable crime?

Was it the age old offender – the colour of their skin?

Or perhaps it was the lilt of the accent, the different dress or faith.

Then, as terrorism familiarised itself with the whole world,

you made the connection;

mistrusted them all the more,

finally turned to terror yourself.

*

Tell me,

does it still speak to you now?

Does it pull your mouth into a smile,

or, like a puppet-master, draw up your hand in salute

as you tell the world how and why you ended 77 lives?

Does it hide, malevolent, behind your eyes, watching weeping survivors?

Does it make your hands wish for weapons; your fingers for a trigger?

Does it croon over you at night,

sending you to sleep with its restless, congratulatory lullaby?

*

Tell me, has it made you mad?

I hope it has.

While thousands, probably millions hope for ‘guilty’,

I hope for ‘insane’.

Because if you are ‘guilty’, it means you did this

simply because you wanted to; because you could.

It means there are others out there, just like you –

‘normal’ but not.

Plotting to kill anyone

for any reason.

Who’s to say I’m not offending someone like you right now,

with my brown skin and my accent?

What if they too would plot to kill me because of a part of my identity

that I cannot choose for myself; that I was born with?

*

Tell me you are insane.

At least then your crimes would be senseless

in every sense.

And ironically, that would make

at least some sense

to me.

* Inspired by the Breivik trail

God Only Knows: A Beach Boys cover

The greatest love songs cover all kinds of love, and that, I think, is this song’s triumph. It’s not just about romantic love — you can sing it to your lover, but it would be just as true if you sang it to your child, your best friend, your mother. Furthermore, it’s not about sweeping statements and dramatic declarations. It’s a jolly, rollicking little tune which takes as its message the one thing we have all sighed to our loved ones at some point in our lives when they have come through for us when we needed them the most: “God only knows what I’d do without you”. It’s a song of simple but glorious gratitude. And it makes me terribly happy.

I’m used to being invisible. I’ve grown so accustomed to it that now I would shudder to be the center of attention. I shy away from light. It has become my enemy.

I always knew how to act the part, but now I look the part. Somehow, over the years, I have folded in on myself, shrinking with surprising ease. I don’t mind my changed stature: rather than stunt me, it has given me all the freedom in the world, and wings with which to explore that world.

Black on the outside am I. Black on the inside too. Invisibility means neglect and neglect colours the best of us in the darkest hues. My coat is no burden – all the better to hide me with. And because my life has been governed by sight – one who is invisible can do nothing more but watch the world go on around them – my eyes have doubled and tripled. I have too many to count and I. See. Everything.

Oh, the secrets I have learned about all my visible counterparts! The kingdoms I could bring crashing down! The stories I could tell! My entire being fairly buzzes with the power accumulated along with my stores of knowledge. I am more powerful than them all – if only they knew it!

My neglect demands revenge. From the depths of nearby shadows, I rub my palms, praying for vengeance. I whisper in the ears of my enemies, giving away my secrets, inciting war. But each time, the same reaction: an impatient swatting, a few meaningless curses… Cruel world! Now that I am finally worthy of their respect, their fear, I speak in a language they do not understand.

They’ll never listen. They’ll never see. 

Me.

A tribute to the big hatted man who’s groove never goes out of style.

I love Mayer Hawthorne. Just going to put that one out there. I love his style, his groove, his crazy falsetto - all of it. I had the privilege of seeing him live a few weeks ago and it was just so much *fun*. And that’s what his music is about. It’s about bringing back fun retro music that you can really groove to. I wasn’t just bopping about at his concert, I was actually *dancing*. It was awesome.

I found this song really hard to sing - mostly because it’s sung in quite a high register and a girl singing that high hasn’t quite the same charm as a boy singing in falsetto. But I tried to do what I could with it and went crazy on the harmonies as usual, so it was a lot of fun, even though it took a while to actually come together.

Now *these* are the Oscar years I would have cut out on work to watch. http://life.time.com/culture/lifes-best-oscar-photos/#1 

PS- Image #7 takes the cake.

newyorker:

Hide/Seek: Sexual Identity in American Portraits

Today in California, the ban on same-sex marriage was ruled unconstitutional by a federal appeals court. The news reminded us of “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” the current exhibition up at the Brooklyn Museum. The show, on view through February 12th, explores the role of sexual identity in modern art through a variety of media, including photography. For more selection of photographs, along with captions from the exhibition, visit our Photo Booth blog: http://nyr.kr/AgOCAM

All photographs courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

The first time I heard this song, I was completely captivated by Lana Del Rey’s voice. So much so that I barely registered the music video. But on the next few immediate listens, I saw her and fell in love with her look - that vintage, 60s, Valley-of-the-Dolls, seductive but vulnerable thing that she has going on. What a voice. What a style. I just had to cover the song - it’s got such a different, retro feel to it that I love, although I admit I’m surprised it’s doing well in the mainstream charts. Del Rey’s come under fire quite a bit in recent months for the song being ‘anti feminist’ and because her image is ‘manufactured’ - to the critics I say, what musician *isn’t* manufactured in some way these days? Every act needs their own image, their own distinctive style - something to separate them from the millions of other aspiring singers and musicians out there. Who cares of Del Rey has her own? She’s rocking it. Here’s my tribute to this jewel of a song.

WARNING: Spoilers for anyone who hasn’t read the book.

I finished reading J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye today. Despite being such a short book (at just over 200 pages), I was surprised that I managed to finish it so quickly. I read every day but sparingly – perhaps on the train on the way to work if I’m lucky enough to snag a seat, or sometimes during my lunch hour. (Well, lunch half-hour but sometimes I cheat a little.)

I was also surprised at how easy it was to read. I have this childish preconception that books now dubbed ‘literary classics’ will, simply for that reason, be difficult to read, both in terms of content and language. Fortunately for me, and to my enduring delight, I often find that this is not the case. It was so with Catcher in the Rye: the language and tone of the narrative was very modern-retro, and hilariously pock-marked with the protagonist’s incessant swearing - a combination that had me hooked from the first paragraph.

People have seen me reading this book at work and said things like “Oh I loved that book”, and I’ve found this reaction quite difficult to reconcile with my own. At first I thought it must be because I hadn’t yet finished the book and had missed some vitally cheery ending, but now that I have, I am still unable to be so… effusive about it. It’s not at all that I didn’t like the book – on the contrary, it kept me both entertained and ponderous right through – but when you get right down it is, it’s not exactly a terribly ‘feel-good’ read, is it? In the colourful words of Holden himself, “It certainly didn’t make me feel too gorgeous”.

The entire book – or at least a sizeable chunk of it – is written as the continuous stream of consciousness of one Holden Caufield, the teenaged son of a wealthy family, who, despite his privileged environment, has managed to get kicked out of yet another in a long line of prestigious boarding schools. While every one else his age is attempting to battle through school, get their grades, date their girlfriends and think about going to college, Holden remains detached from this world, bored, disgusted, and unable – or just unwilling – to fit in. With this latest strike against his already blemished school record though, Holden finds himself at a crossroads, faced with a future he finds quite suddenly to be rather bleak. Suffice to say, he doesn’t like it one bit.

Then again, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of anything that Holden likes. His little sister Phoebe, all of ten years old and the center of his emotional axis, hits the nail on the head when she throws the truth in his face: “Name one thing you really like” she demands of him, and he is at a loss.

Rebellious and troubled, Holden blames all the wrong turns he’s taken in the past on the world around him. He is convinced that almost everyone he knows is ‘phony’ – putting on an act for the benefit of those around them. Every new person he meets during his 3-day aimless journey around New York has something about them that he finds utterly distasteful. Reading him, I found that at times, it was easy to forget he was just a young boy – his constant negativity somehow gave me the impression that he was older than his years. This was probably aided further by the fact that he spent much of his time pretending to be much older than he was in order to be served alcohol, prostitutes and other adult commodities.  

Still for all, it is difficult to dislike Holden. I think the reason for this is precisely because of his youth. Whether or not he sounds older than his years, there are always reminders that he is in fact very young and because of this, I often found myself both feeling sorry for him and also laughing a little at his expense.  There always remained the comfortingly familiar (albeit unsaid) adages “it’s just a phase” and “he’ll probably grow out of it”. The fact that he is just an adolescent with many more years ahead of him is always at the back of the reader’s mind and even as he wishes he were dead, we know that it is unlikely that he would ever succumb to that wish.

I also liked Holden for his rare, uncharacteristic, but still endearing enjoyment of seemingly random moments, things and people. He would find utter satisfaction in something as insignificant as a red hunting hat, or a child humming on the street, or a chance encounter with two nuns over breakfast. Every now and then his stream of largely negative thought would be pleasantly broken by random incidents like these. Coupled with his extreme affection for both his little sister Phoebe and deceased young brother Allie, these occurrences served to soften the harder, harsher edges of his personality. And although they were quite few and far between, those moments revealed a truer side to his personality – which was simply that of a confused, frightened and alienated young person.

And haven’t we all been there?

Frightened when we’ve taken a wrong turn in our lives, unsure of what lies ahead, unable to assimilate with our surroundings, wanting to escape a bad situation, defensive of our mistakes, convinced it’s everybody’s fault but our own, and – what I found the most haunting of all – “afraid of disappearing”: of vanishing without a trace, with no legacy left behind, and having been of no use to anybody. These will be anxieties familiar to any reader, regardless of their age. They are absolutely universal and will be the most compelling reason for our inability to hate Holden: we all have a little bit of Holden inside of ourselves.

A loss of direction can sometimes be the most frightening feeling in the world. So can loneliness. And it is both that Holden feels in equal measure during those three days in which he puts off telling his parents the bad news about his school and instead desperately tries to occupy his time, calling up everyone he can think of to keep him company and finding that most of them have better things to do. The few people who do agree to meet him are quickly put off by his social awkwardness and almost aggressive need for their company.

Although he constantly points out people around him as being phonies who do not act true to themselves, the entire narrative of Catcher in the Rye is a showcase of Holden’s own performance in the role of a young boy full of false bravado, trying to fit into an adult world, trying to make adult decisions for himself, and failing miserably at it all. Even Holden only half believes his own act, but tries to distract us and himself from this with a steady stream of judgment of others.

I was only ever worried for Holden during his conversation with his old teacher, Mr. Antolini who provides what feels like the novel’s only moment of clarity. It is the only part of the narrative that feels independent of Holden. During their largely one-sided conversation, Antolini neatly recaps Holden’s predicament, voicing many of the readers’ own fears for Holden, and also advises his former student against an impending “terrible fall”. Coming from an adult – even a drunk adult with a seemingly lecherous intent – it seemed almost like a warning both to Holden and the reader that something bad was about to happen.

Reaching the end of the book, I was relieved when the culmination of Holden’s dramatic few days turned out to be rather anticlimactic. The prodigal son returns home and is disinclined to talk any further about his escapades as he awaits his transfer to yet another new school and yet another new beginning.

…He had me worried there for a second, though.

In the end, it is another one of those seemingly random events that turns things around for Holden. He has a moment of absolute catharsis while he watches his sister on a merry-go-round in the rain and that seems to be that. I believe that in that very moment, he realizes for the first time that his actions may seriously hurt someone that he loves more than life itself: Phoebe. As it turns out, there is someone who would feel a terrible loss at his absence – the little girl with her blue coat on the carousel in the pouring rain. His life is worthwhile – indeed absolutely necessary – to the wellbeing of another’s. He is needed.

And thus, Holden leaves us quite secure in the knowledge that while he still has a fair amount of growing up to do, the worst is most probably over. A surprisingly happier ending than I predicted, but an apt one all the same.

Come to think of it, it has left me feeling quite gorgeous, after all.