An Experienced Girl: Keep Moving

As you know, I'm in the process of completely quitting everything that I've been doing for the past few years and moving to New York City to follow my dreams.

This is one of those things, where, if I had any sense of how difficult it was actually going to be when I decided to do it, I probably wouldn't have done it. Which is why I'm, deep down, glad I had no idea what I was getting myself into!

It will not surprise you to hear that this is hard. It's not really surprising to me either. What has been unexpected have been the ways in which it has been hard. 

The move to NYC is just the (hopefully close to) final stage of what I understand to be a quarter-life crisis. A few months ago, a few stages ago, I wrote about the difficult nature of uncertainty and about the flip side of that which I had newly discovered and about which I'll just go ahead and quote myself: Now that I am forced to be here by circumstances beyond my control, I understand the beauty and excitement of the present in all its terrible glory.

And that's it. For a long time I've known about myself that I tend to dwell either on the past (depression) or on the future (anxiety) and that I spend most of my time swinging wildly between these extremes (it's called 'cyclothymia'). It's only because I'm so profoundly worn down by the insane stress of a move like this that I'm able to be that upfront about it on a public and permanent forum like this one. But it's also because I'm so profoundly worn down by the insane stress of a move like this that I'm able to say, what of it?

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The interesting thing about slowly disconnecting all the cords of my life has been that I've really had to realize what I am not. Clearly I'm not my radio show, because that's over. I'm not my job, because that's over. I'm not my blog, because that's going to be over too. I'm not my apartment, because I'm leaving. You see what I'm saying.


The song: Aretha Franklin, "Who's Zoomin Who"; 1985

It's another one from Aretha Franklin's 1985 album Who's Zoomin Who?, which she has said she made because she wanted to do something that sounded young. It does indeed sound young to me, even with the glaze of time, but also wonderfully world-weary in a way that Aretha Franklin sells so well. It also has that great classically-80s cheese in its sound and that's something I'm into right now. I enjoy walking down the street listening to this song and planning how I will zoom New York City, and these plans mostly involve actually zooming (roller disco, which is definitely coming back if I have anything to say about it).

I've said a few times on this blog so far that I've come to believe that maturity is constituted from a mix of toughness and vulnerability. Or more precisely, that's how my maturity will be constituted. I find myself often in the middle of these things: toughness and vulnerability, past and future, anxiety and ability, etc and etc. (Peppermint vs. Spearmint, Wheat Thins vs. Triscuits, Dog People vs. Cat People) There is a bi-polarity in my nature that leads me to create these theories and to see the world in these terms.

That being the case, here's the other side.


The song: Whitney Houston, "How Will I Know"; 1985

These songs are similar, released in the same year and produced by the same person, the legendary Narada Michael Walden (who is responsible for many of my favorite gloriously cheesy songs of the 1980s and 90s). But where Aretha's "Who's Zoomin Who" is confident, Whitney brings her trademark poignancy to "How Will I Know". How will she know? Well, most would say "she just will".

In my experience, it's not that simple. Self-knowledge is a harder thing to master than most people give it credit for. Give themselves credit for, I should say. I do think it often takes a major life event to move it along.

In that way, I could consider myself lucky. It's an opportunity. Although I'm losing my sense of who I am, as defined by external things, I know that I'm gaining something ultimately more important. Which is, the strength to be right in the middle of things and to know nothing more than that I exist here.

Yrs,
AW

inbedwithamywilson@gmail.com

The River's So Pretty, The Air Is So Fine: Traveling

This was an unreleased demo version of Paul Simon's song "Something So Right", which is a song I posted when I was preparing to travel to Singapore around a year and a half ago. In that entry I described the dawning realization I was having that "happiness" is something more than the lack of unhappiness. I don't exactly remember the state of mind I was in when I wrote that, but I think it most likely had something to do with the values and beliefs I've been turning over for quite a long time now: things like self-determination.

Now I'm preparing to go to New York City and look into the eyes of random strangers and convince them (and myself) that me living in their apartment is a great idea. "Apartment hunting". But really more like "life hunting" or "future hunting". But also just "current moment hunting" -- looking for a place to land. At the same time it means a lot and it means nothing at all. This is a common contradiction I find.

In my current job, which I am leaving in a few weeks, I plan and deliver fundraising events. In learning how to do this, in using the skills I already had, I've figured out how to wind up and swing. When you plan a fundraising event you plan and plan, you prepare, you think through everything that might possibly happen -- but then a moment comes and you have to just execute. Make it happen.

I can't help but feel that this might be that moment for my own life. The wind up has taken a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time. Probably it started when I was given Slouching Towards Bethlehem to read in high school and decided that I wanted to be an essayist, a career path for which there is no clear course. And as you do when you have an ambition like that, I've just tried to always take the next logical step.

On that rope bridge of happiness right now I am very much in the middle. The next step, the next step, the next step.


The song: Paul Simon, "Let Me Live In Your City"; recorded 1973

Yrs,
AW

inbedwithamywilson@gmail.com

The Night's Gonna Be Just Fine: So Good

I sort of glossed over it in my last entry (I was feeling sad and thus not inclined to share when I wrote it), but I posted the song "Changes" by David Bowie because there are a LOT of changes happening in my life right now. Many of my closest friends are moving away, which is a complicated sadness because I am also moving away, and many of the things I have occupied my life with (like my work and my radio show and my apartment and even this, my blog) are ending.

It's like graduation all over again, which leads me to believe even more strongly in the circular nature of life and time.

AND in the circular nature of music, as I continue to be rocked and rolled by the resurgence of the disco sound.

Which is why I am so pleased to hear this song, by the ghost of Michael Jackson, on the radio.

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The song: Michael Jackson, "Love Never Felt So Good"; 2014

I've written before about my interest in Michael Jackson and what he represents about talent and the nature of childhood. I think there's much more to say about him, culturally speaking, and about the strong reactions he inspires in people. It's been fascinating (if that's the right word to use) to watch the arc of Michael Jackson's public image change so much even in my lifetime as an observer, from his trials in the 1990s to various delicate comebacks to his death and the re-imagining of his life that happened after.

It would be easy to forget in all the discussion of the man himself that he was a brilliant musician. And brilliant often in a seemingly natural way -- from the way his voice stutters and glides like a heartbeat or a breath to his dance moves, like water. But we truly know that his brilliance did not come easily. To say the very, very least.

I love "Love Never Felt So Good" because it feels like the past, the present, and the future AT THE SAME TIME. (Circular nature of time. Also, there's nothing like a great piano groove.) And my favorite thing about Michael Jackson is that, even with everything else he was, he was someone who truly understood how good it feels to just DANCE. To dance in a way that feels inevitable, like there's really nothing else to do.

And that is true in my experience, that sometimes there really is nothing else. So to that end I'd like to share a few more of my favorite Jackson tunes, just in case you happen to need them too.

"When the world is on your shoulder/gotta straighten up your act and boogie down": "Off the Wall", 1979

"Where did you come from, baby/And oooh won't you take me there": "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)"; 1983

And BONUS JANET: "Come On Get Up"; 2001

Come on, get up!

Yrs,
AW

inbedwithamywilson@gmail.com

It Seemed The Taste Was Not So Sweet: Ch-Ch-Ch-

As are many people, I am fascinated with David Bowie.

Something that fascinates me about him is his aura of untouchable cool (which nobody can deny). It's interesting to consider rationally, particularly when you factor in all the many insane (and theatrical) things he's tried over the years. Many risks. Which seem to have a higher-than-normal rate of payoff. I would bet it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I'm just throwing that out there.

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I'm interested in the places where David Bowie, bastion of untouchable cool, shades into the un-cool. I already kind of went there once with "Young Americans", Bowie's self-admitted attempt at "plastic soul".

Even though I've apparently made part of my life's work into an informal course of study in soft-rock apologism, I'm certainly not immune to the threat of "uncool". When I remembered this song and felt that I should post it here, my first self-reflexive thought was something like, "oh not THAT Bowie song. . ."

Because why? Because I worry about not showing the serious thought behind the soft-rock apologism, and also about showing it too much. Because I don't want to come across as a dilettante who only knows the greatest hits.

This worry has been slightly at the back of my mind for around ten years now, since I was buying "skuf" CDs at Everyday Music on Burnside Rd in Portland Oregon and first faced the ineffable fear of . . . something . . . when I brought my music choices to the counter clerk. (Music choices often being along the line of old Squeeze albums and ABBA Gold.)

Let's not pretend it doesn't exist, that fear.

I used to think that fear and worry were an essential part of the Amy Wilson engine, and even wrote about something to that effect. I chalk this up to a basic confusion in my soul between the feeling of running away from something and the feeling of running toward something.

I am going to tell you I like this song, and you're free to think I'm a dilettante who only knows the greatest hits. I don't like that thought, but I don't like this thought any better: that I could tell you my favorite Bowie song is the bizarre disco epic "Station to Station", or that I know exactly where to put the "wham bam thank you ma'am" in "Suffragette City", or I could just say something about Low, and you might think I DO know anything about anything.

What I know and what you know and what you know I know -- actually I feel none of that matters. It might be nihilism, or maybe it's pop.


The song: David Bowie, "Changes"; 1971

Yrs,
AW

inbedwithamywilson@gmail.com