Thought Experiments, pt. 3

The Twilight Sad album is a tear-jerker. Coming from me, that's saying something.

More on poetry again; I thought I'd just head out and write one straight this week, but it's not working out too well right now. Or last night. I was up until 3:30AM accomplishing not a single word worthy of keeping. Sometimes these things happen.

Things are always more difficult when you care about the quality of the finished product; if you can't somehow disconnect the link between you and the product of your work, you can't ever really get to working your art on it. The hardest poems to write and the hardest songs to record are the ones that you feel represent you in some way. Especially considering the subject matter this time...if it had come a few weeks sooner, or heaven forbid a few weeks later, it might've been easier. All the wrong timing at all the wrong times, or perhaps that's redundant.

Anyway, it all starts from my new, Jessica-inspired theory. The full name of which probably looks something like: You Can't Really Fall In Love With A Girl Until You See The Back Of Her Neck, or the Begans-Chang Conjecture for short. Talked it over with her (as I tend to do most things of pressing concern these days) after CVP the other night, and she confirmed my thoughts on the matter: that it was a matter of vulnerability, and of reacting to it in a certain way that you wouldn't for anyone else.

If that sounded removed and meandering, it was me avoiding feelings again, so let me give it one more try: the back of someone's neck is a symbol for vulnerability, and if your first reaction to seeing it is not to be embarrassed, but to want to reach out--or, even better, to want to reach out but also to be suddenly afraid to do so, because it doesn't matter if you have skinny androgynous hands like I do, in that moment none of your cleverness and dexterity will save you, they will not seem remotely graceful enough, as though they weren't even under the control of your nerves anymore. Or maybe it's nerves themselves that are haywire, spitting sparks; it's the most intense resonance and you've never been more locked into your brain.

And it doesn't help that I think of the first verse of Shellac's "Prayer to God" every time I open this thing to try and write it. Sometimes I creep myself out.