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Nice lazy Sunday, with occasional downpours. Wandered off to church this morning, the sweat dripping down my face in rivulets while waiting for the subway, the cool air-conditioning once inside drying it. Thought today's sermon would be on spirituality and rock music, but instead it was on "authenticity" and was given by a guy who works in marketing. Lay-people or rather members from the congregation manage the service and give the sermons over the summer months in a small chapel. The new topic - was apropos - it fit how I've been feeling lately. The artful act of lying, all the false-truths, pretending to love the social gathering, hiding the fact that you are bored, not sharing your political beliefs at work, concealing portions of ourselves whether it be to date, to mate, or meet new people. And how important it was to find at least one place to be authenticate. To be yourself. For him, it was through art - painting a picture of a cat or just a piece of writing. While he was creating - he was fully himself, no masks, no walls, just him. True to who he was and is. And able to share it with others.
I remember thinking as he talked - that for me, ironically enough, the place I've been able to be most authenticate of late - has been my own livejournal or dreamwidth journal as the case may be. On the internet, I found a way to be myself. Behind the name shadowkat, which metaphorically, at least, expresses who I often feel like in real life, even if I am reluctant to admit it.
Been lonely lately. And loneliness seeps into the crevices, through the cracks, uninvited and unbidden. It's not advice I crave, but comfort. Not society, or social gatherings with all the fuss and bother and noise and well, lying, but companionship. Like a blanket one would wrap around oneself. A soft shoulder to lean against. Arms that hug. A cheek to kiss. Or just an answering shrug, snort, smile or cough. Someone who gets me, accepts me, understands. A need or ache that falls beyond jobs or shelter or food...basic human company. Silent. Yet not. I can after all be alone in crowd. If I want to feel the rub of humanity, all I need to do is step outside - I live in a city of 12 million plus souls. Yet. I'm lonely.
Was thinking on the way to the subway, and on the way home...how I can at times belittle art as little more than just a book, just a painting, just a tv show. And to a degree that is true, they are just those things. But they are also expressions of the person who took the time to create them. Some are authenticate expressions - true representations of who someone is, others less so - made for mass market appeal. And it is not always so easy to tell which is which or who is who.
Was also thinking about my own literary and cultural obsessions. How Angel from the Whedon tv series of the same name, feels a lot like Shakespeare's Macbeth, the character from that accursed Scottish play, obsessing over the whisperings and chantings of three old witches who he perceives as oracles depicting his actual fate. While Cordelia or Fred or Darla wrings her bloody hands in the background. Or perhaps he's just a weary King Lear...running from dire prophecies and worrying over his Cordelia, the prodigal daughter that he endlessly dreams of as his other two daughters plot and plan in the shadows. While Spike strikes me more as a modern Prince Hamlet, prancing about, snarking at ghosts, and waxing poetic inanities to a mad Drusilla. With Buffy from the series of the same name, posing as either an ultra-modern cross-dressing Rosalind, love-struck Herme or the orphaned Viola off to save the world in comic book fashion, surrounded by her band of never-do-wells. Sometimes the stories we tell feel like new versions of old tales. Are they an authenticate representation of ourselves? Or just an authenticate representation of how we view someone else's tale in our heads?
Rainy day. And my mind feels muddled. Envious of jobs and lives, I realistically know I would not choose - even if I were magically provided the option. And venturing online - I find myself disappointed. Disconnected. Lonely. As if it were raining here too. The screen blurred with water, and the sky the color of wet cement.
I remember thinking as he talked - that for me, ironically enough, the place I've been able to be most authenticate of late - has been my own livejournal or dreamwidth journal as the case may be. On the internet, I found a way to be myself. Behind the name shadowkat, which metaphorically, at least, expresses who I often feel like in real life, even if I am reluctant to admit it.
Been lonely lately. And loneliness seeps into the crevices, through the cracks, uninvited and unbidden. It's not advice I crave, but comfort. Not society, or social gatherings with all the fuss and bother and noise and well, lying, but companionship. Like a blanket one would wrap around oneself. A soft shoulder to lean against. Arms that hug. A cheek to kiss. Or just an answering shrug, snort, smile or cough. Someone who gets me, accepts me, understands. A need or ache that falls beyond jobs or shelter or food...basic human company. Silent. Yet not. I can after all be alone in crowd. If I want to feel the rub of humanity, all I need to do is step outside - I live in a city of 12 million plus souls. Yet. I'm lonely.
Was thinking on the way to the subway, and on the way home...how I can at times belittle art as little more than just a book, just a painting, just a tv show. And to a degree that is true, they are just those things. But they are also expressions of the person who took the time to create them. Some are authenticate expressions - true representations of who someone is, others less so - made for mass market appeal. And it is not always so easy to tell which is which or who is who.
Was also thinking about my own literary and cultural obsessions. How Angel from the Whedon tv series of the same name, feels a lot like Shakespeare's Macbeth, the character from that accursed Scottish play, obsessing over the whisperings and chantings of three old witches who he perceives as oracles depicting his actual fate. While Cordelia or Fred or Darla wrings her bloody hands in the background. Or perhaps he's just a weary King Lear...running from dire prophecies and worrying over his Cordelia, the prodigal daughter that he endlessly dreams of as his other two daughters plot and plan in the shadows. While Spike strikes me more as a modern Prince Hamlet, prancing about, snarking at ghosts, and waxing poetic inanities to a mad Drusilla. With Buffy from the series of the same name, posing as either an ultra-modern cross-dressing Rosalind, love-struck Herme or the orphaned Viola off to save the world in comic book fashion, surrounded by her band of never-do-wells. Sometimes the stories we tell feel like new versions of old tales. Are they an authenticate representation of ourselves? Or just an authenticate representation of how we view someone else's tale in our heads?
Rainy day. And my mind feels muddled. Envious of jobs and lives, I realistically know I would not choose - even if I were magically provided the option. And venturing online - I find myself disappointed. Disconnected. Lonely. As if it were raining here too. The screen blurred with water, and the sky the color of wet cement.