I’m going to try and document as much of these feelings/sensations as possible in as much detail as I can, as many times as possible. That might be a little overambitious, considering that I wouldn’t always have this music to write to.
I just spent an excruciating hour and a half with my family. Had dinner, sat with my bua who just came to town. She’s going to be here for a month. The thing is, they’re beautiful people, and spending time with them isn’t bad, and should feel nothing like something that even remotely resembles excruciating. I love my family, and I’m worried. I’m worried that I’m starting to do these things out of an obligation that I feel looming over my head, an obligation that I can only trace back to the blood I share with them, a tie that I can’t sever (not that I want to), a tie that I tell people not to let define their lives. I’m afraid I’m becoming the very hypocrite I love to hate. It was just that hour that was excruciating, not their company, and I’m afraid, this was one hour too many, and too many hours of my life are ending up being the hour that just was.
I feel a strange sort of high, a high that’s a downer, really. The feeling is quite similar to that of a marijuana high, but the sensations couldn’t be more different. Nothing is palpable. I’m strong enough to be able to push myself to stand, but I’m also weak enough for every contortion to feel burdensome. I’m as aware of my slow breath as I am of sound of the cellos that just kicked in (now playing - Tom Day). I’m as anticipative of the next moment, as I am curious whether teal is a shade of blue or green (a thought I only ever thought momentarily when my sister told me that a teapot I mistook for green is really blue, since it is teal and teal is a shade of blue).
I’m trying to understand the difference between presence and existence, and I’m not making any progress. It’s more a stationary box of thought, rather than a train of thought. I just felt the nape of my neck liven up as the drums and bass kicked in (a song called Lala & Lili by Tom Day). I love Tom Day. That however, as normal as it is a thing to say, is a strange statement, isn’t it? After all, I don’t know Tom Day at all, fuck, I don’t even know what he looks like. The only awareness I have of his existence is this outline of a regular thin white male in his late 20s, working on his thesis (his soundcloud page says he’s a PhD student), sitting somewhere in Australia (I think it’s Melbourne), in his apartment, making this surreal music at a home studio that he might have set up. Which brings me back, it’s his music that I love, isn’t it? It’s the presence of this music, that ranges from plain uplifting when I’m writing exams, to a downright all-encompassing envelope of sound that I’m seemingly floating in. Is this presence? Making me feel the lack of it? It’s incredibly strange, that it’s making me feel the lack of the very thing I’m trying to understand the nature of, of which I don’t think I know anything.
Why do I feel that at this moment I’m feeling the lack of presence? I don’t feel very aware, that is, if aware is defined by the degree of vigilant that you are at any given moment, how much you can tangibly perceive the physicality of the surroundings that you find yourself placed in. I don’t feel aware at all then, I should say. But at the same time, I’m as aware of these sounds as it could possibly get. I’m as aware of what they’re doing to me as familiarity and habit can teach one to be. I’m feeling as transcendental - in that place between aware and unconscious - as a set of seemingly inconsequential sonic storytelling and painting can possibly make one feel. So is this presence? Not the presence as defined by the physicality of things. I’m not even sure. At this point, I feel like I’m probably just being pseudo, trying to think because I must? I don’t know. But that’s not what this is supposed to be an attempt at anyway. And I like how Tom Day’s arrangements make the nape of my neck liven up, as the tiny hairs scattered there rise and fall so gracefully, so alive. A feeling that reminds me of how we kiss, of how innately human the feeling is, of how inexplicably scared of it we are, I know I am.
Is this the soundtrack to that kiss? To that suspension? To the intimacy that binds yet builds that moment? Is this how you feel? Is this how you feel when you feel this feeling? I hope someone does, because the wonder that it is, on account of it being untouchably innate, mine, and at the same time, so very distant, so reserved, shy, protected, is hauntingly beautiful. Is this presence? Is this what awareness should mean? I don’t know. And I probably never will.
I feel like I should continue writing, but I promised myself I’d write to one of my best friends tonight (who too happens to live in Melbourne).
