enterprising transient.

A Retraction by You

A retraction of everything I’ve said, of joylessness and unmade beds, of priority to autonomy, of the old world, the old shapes a body makes as it curls around itself to sleep. 

midnight train

Afterwards, the long walk,
rounding the corner home, it was just
me and a small black cat blinking passively,

and it was not enough, and too much,
that autumn ghost in the breeze, itself a wild-willed girl
and I wanted to be driving south, through the
arcing brambles of headlit-caught country turns,
screaming and remembering,
to the ocean, to the ocean, ink rolling over itself, 
a midnight train of bodies, our eyes wet with dawn.

I would throw you to the night, feet first, 
and the night would sleep tamed in your lap as
we lost our way home.

What it Means to Grow Up

[written over Christmas 2012, finally edited and reposted after his concert, March 2013]

I adore Bruce Springsteen. Without irony or concern for trend, I adore him. And I’m not alone in this: I am surrounded by people in their 20s and 30s who are fervent in their love of him, in a way that extends well past the typical shorthand for ‘80s cool that can accompany any popular retroactive fan base (see: almost everything hipsters have done or claimed to enjoy over the last decade). A deep love of Springsteen is not a badge for us. It is far too emotional; there is too much ugly honesty in our proclamations for that.

With his upcoming Australian tour (finally) announced, the burning question of why we are so in love with him became more pertinent than ever: it seems important to prove that this is not part of the cultural despoiling that seems to have ravaged anything of note from the last three decades, endlessly remixed in an attempt to seem aware of our heritage. Seems important to prove that we are not, in fact, the worst sort of hipsters, obsessed with something we have no real connection to as a way of asserting our specialness. Conversely, it is all about connection, and our very real need to locate ourselves in an ongoing narrative of what it means to grow up.  

The answer, as I’ve found it, is a two-part process: the reasons his music and magnetism are still relevant, and a chronological study of that music, from his beginnings to the last album we still find relevant (it’s Tunnel of Love, for those playing at home).

Read More

I take back almost everything I said here last night. 

throwing one’s voice.

I figure that seeing as I’ll be replaying today over and over in my head ad nauseum, I may as well write about it. 

So today I intro’d a new initiative that I worked on with P&C to the wider company. Just a quick talk about what the policy involves, and why it’s great - and I love the policy. Helping people develop is definitely where I want to go. Speaking in front of a (fucking huge) group of people was not a random request - part of my process this year is trying to navigate the things I’m bad at, and my biggest block was being scared of people. So it’s nice to know what I want to achieve, or overcome, is being kept in mind, even when that stuff is literally the most terrifying thing they could ask of me. 

It was shambolic, unsurprisingly, but the feedback I got ranged from “authentic” to “Jennifer Lawrence”. Synonyms, I might add, for shambolic. But not terrible. Not wrong.

How, then, have I managed to augur my demise based on this one thing? In my head, this garbled, terrified talk means that people will give up on me, the potential I was showing is written off, my own understanding of where I can go is undermined, my sense of usefulness and purpose is diminshed because I can’t imagine where to go from here, who would trust me, who would listen? In my head, I’ve picked up and moved to a year in the future, and am reflecting back on this time as being not good enough.

I’m mourning something that hasn’t even happened yet. That’s how pre-emptively anxious I am. 

So I’ll be replaying today over and over in my head, not so much how I could have done it better but how it should have been perfect, confident, funny and relatable. 

There’s nothing really to be said: I know my instincts are wrong. Adjusting my expectations after the fact is acceptable. I can’t be perfect at things. People don’t write you off for something like that. 

It would just be so much easier if I was great at everything. It would save so much fucking time.