.the visceral violin. August 27, 2008

.authored by something.of.substance.

.feel the music.

I wasn’t sure if this would be considered a memoir. It is not a poem nor a story, but a descriptive thought on musical expression. What I talk about is beautiful to me, but not in a way necessarily knowable by others. I decided, in the end, to make it a short Something.

This piece has a quality of the metaphysical about it, but what started the process of writing this letter was the idea of something very solid and very real.

“Today, I had a very visceral experience while listening to music. I found a copy of Pachelbel’s Canon in D that I adore. Being one of the most-overplayed songs in the history of life, I don’t often gravitate towards Canon when I’m in the mood for classical music. But, today, I gave it a try; I was in the mood. While listening to the sound of the 1^st violin cleanly accentuate the scales and arpeggios on the D chord, I remembered music. I closed my eyes so that I would have nothing to distract me from the intricate tonal harmonies. I, once again, felt the violin in my left hand. I felt my palm slide up the neck toward the nuts. I felt my fingers close around the strings in first position. I felt the tips of my fingers pressing the steel strings into the wooden neck. I remembered the way the bow fit into my right hand: pinky on the frog, thumb supporting the weight, fingers and wrist flexing just enough to draw it across the strings.

.break-up letter #4. August 12, 2008

.authored by something.of.substance.

I told you

“I love you”
before I meant

it.

Or, maybe I never did

Mean it.

.the aftermath of our generation. August 12, 2008

.contributed by twinks.

DISCLAIMER: Those pieces contributed to Something.of.Substance do not necessarily reflect the views of the author or of the community. However, they are Substantial to the contributor, adhere to the guidelines and give everyone Something to think about. -S.o.S

Shattered – all sense of security, trust, safety. Hardened for the worse and lacking an adequate roadmap to guide me back to sanity. Yet, even that word, “sanity,” does not seem a tangible reality.

I live my life sheltered: no man’s word is to be trusted; his touch insincere.

It is almost guaranteed that once a month I will run into a man who claims to be “different.” We begin an initial conversation where he belabors the point of his repugnance of “those men,” the ones who chew up and spit out women like a piece of chewing gum. He reacts hurt when I vocalize that I represent a growing community of women who despise men as a gender; however, he claims to understand my plight. Fast-forward two weeks, and that man who claimed to be different turns out to be just like every other guy. His “listened,” “loved,” and left. I thought it was the beginning of a new possibility.

.read.- Wallace Stevens’ “The Plot Against the Giant” August 11, 2008

.authored by something.of.substance.

face of a reluctant genius

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), an American modernist poet, debuted “The Plot Against the Giant” in his first book Harmonium, published in 1923. Born in Pennsylvania, Stevens was educated at Harvard University and New York Law School and spent most of his adult life as an insurance lawyer in Connecticut. After winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1955, he was offered a faculty position at Harvard University. He declined as he preferred to retain his promotion of vice-president of the Connecticut insurance company.

Because Stevens’ output of poetry began well into his thirties, it demonstrates a meditative and philosophical sophistication. Stevens was constantly playing with the concept of “reality”; he believed that “reality” is the product of the imagination as it shapes the world. In fact, Stevens wrote in his essay “Imagination as Value”: “the truth seems to be that we live in concepts of the imagination before the reason has established them.” Because he viewed the world as ever-changing (reality), he constantly sought new ways to see the world (imagination).

.break-up letter #3. August 5, 2008

.authored by something.of.substance.

In order for you to be “safe” sex, I’d first have to consider you ‘safe’. To me, you are no such thing. You are a workable male equivalent of myself: self-righteous, moody to the point of tortured, questioning, direct, and disappointed. It is for these reasons that I don’t like you. These are qualities I would care not to have and yet I tolerate them, times two.

However, my dislike for you as a person is the most minimal of all emotions I feel towards you. In fact, it is far outweighed by the fact that I love you. I’m not in love with you- that’s an important distinction to note- but I love you as a person. I care about your well-being. I care about whether you are happy or sad. I love you for all your confusion.

I’m also confused. You understand me so well that it bothers me. Like tonight, you asked me about my emotions on a night when I was consumed by them. You seem to preternaturally understand the strange things that tumble out of my mouth and applaud that which rumbles around my brain. And, for a long time, I was worried that this mutual understanding was based on similar feelings of pain, but I don’t think it is anymore. I think, instead, it’s based on mutual sleaziness and wanton lasciviousness. Lust runs rampant!

.love life. August 3, 2008

.authored by something.of.substance.

“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart,
and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”

-Kahlil Gibran

Depression must be more common than cancer these days.

There is a field of thought that considers depression to be the result of not living your most authentic life.Then, of course, there is the discussion of depression as a biochemical imbalance in the brain. Having only briefly studied Neuroscience in my undergraduate career, I don’t feel that I am qualified enough to give more than a simple opinion on the matter. Because I cannot discount the chemical depression that arises from post-partum hormonal shifts, after detoxification of long-term drug use, or as a cyclical variant of bipolar disorder, I believe that some depressions are organic. Other depressions however, I believe are manufactured by several societal factors including, but not limited to, the technological distance between all of us, the further removal of us from our sustenance and the very speed with which we bounce from one “thing” to the next with no commitment or dedication.

Suffice it to say, whether chemical or societal, those who claim depression experience something very debilitating and very real. When you are in your deepest hole of despair, all you can think of is getting out- at any cost. This is where death comes in; it is the great unknown. It is the one thing you often haven’t tried as a curative. But, when you are trapped in this spiraling mindset, the death you envision will catapult you from either the numbness or pain is narcissistic; even though you know pain isn’t a singularly felt emotion or response, you believe it to be true to you alone.

The following story and rumination took place while I was “on-duty” as a Resident Advisor one evening. For privacy reasons, all identifying information (including names) have been changed.

.insecurity doesn’t happen in a vacuum. July 21, 2008

.authored by Something.of.Substance.

Let’s just cut the shit.

We are, all of us, insecure. We’re all looking for the same vital components to life: love, acceptance and validation. We are all searching for something to cling to that gives us these necessities: faith, intellect, drugs, food, pets, other human beings, all-consuming hobbies, our occupations. We define ourselves by what we do and how we interact, not by who we really are. We don’t want people to know who we really are because we think they’ll hurt us. We are insecure.

.break-up letter #2. July 17, 2008

.contributed by Anonymous.

When I met you, you were sweet, and respectful and romantic, and I wanted to share my life with you. But I felt in some ways that you weren’t that interested in who I really was, or just didn’t understand. And you even disapproved of me in ways…which made me sad, because the person you’re with is supposed to be the one to love you in spite of your flaws. I just wanted to involve you in my life, and you wanted no part of my life or sharing with me what was important to me, but yet you wanted to get married. I tried to do everything I could to make you happy, and always just wanted the best for you. So I guess from the beginning, I really loved you for the respectful sweet guy that you were, but I could see the other nasty side coming out when you’d drink. And that has just gotten worse and worse, and yes, I was unhappy, but it was a problem that could’ve been eliminated if you’d have stopped drinking.

.break-up letter #1. July 15, 2008

.authored by Something.of.Substance.

This is a love letter.

This is about those feelings that began when you planted yourself in between the smallest cracks in my armor. This is about those sentiments that sprouted limbs and expanded in my heart.

This is an accounting of how you’ve grown in my mind.

.is your glass half-angry?. July 15, 2008

.authored by Something.of.Something.

We’ve all seen the comments. You know, those disparaging remarks that have nothing to do with the original post. For example, read almost any short news flash on a well-known celebrity stalking site- such as a piece on how laser light shows in Moscow are causing blindness- and you’re likely to stumble across consumer retorts such as the following:

“Angelina’s new name is PIMP-Elina Jolie!” (disclaimer: Angelina wasn’t mentioned in the article. at all.)

“Do you even know what “niet” means? It doesn’t look like you do. What should we expect from the idiot self-proclaimed Cuban that can’t even speak proper Spanish, though.”

“… you are fucking ignorant. first of all learn how to spell russian words if you are going to use them. second, raves are still very popular and sun glasses wouldn’t help you for shit. oh not to mention that i’m sure this is waaaay over exaggerated (if it is even true at all) just like all the other bullshit you say. go find some real news to report on instead of sitting there all day long talking out of your ass.”

You can claim that by making a career out of simultaneously skewering and sucking on celebrities begets these sorts of comments. And, in truth, some people responded to the substance of the article in an (almost) intellectual manner. However, this problem is not limited to celeb-ploitation blogs.