Today 11/1 is my fourteenth anniversary for being in recovery from self-injury. This past year, well okay, these past few months have been the hardest... I won't say in fourteen years b/c that first year was rough as hell but certainly in the past seven years.
There's this artist that I really like whose name is Kimya Dawson. She got a little pop of notoriety when they used songs of hers for the soundtrack of the movie Juno, which is when I found out about her. I can't really describe her style, just to say that she's amazing and other people have used labels like "anti-folk" and "freak-folk" so there you go.
Last night when I was journaling I can't remember what gave me the association but I thought hm what's she up to lately and re-checked her out. Apparently she released an album last year with this great song on it, "Walk Like Thunder." I listened on YouTube this morning. Talk about serendipity or fortuitousness or the universe giving you the thing you need at the right time.
I found two links, a studio version which has a cool pic of the tattoo she references in the song, and honestly the quality is better, but the other version I found was a live one at a bar in Pittsburgh (!)-- I hope she comes around again on her tour this / next year. I'm giving you the live one b/c the energy is there and you get to see real people and real faces and emotion even though it's less polished.
The reason this song is important to me today is b/c I realized yesterday when I was talking to A that this grief I'm carrying around --I can't stop and wait for it to be over. I have to somehow start getting on with my life, my work, again. I need to go to readings and hear people. I need to go to open mics again. I need to submit more stuff. I feel like I'm on the cusp of figuring out how exactly to do that. Like emotionally, how to do that. There's no way I can sort out all the strands of this giant clusterfuck that was dropped on me and THEN get back to my endeavors. They will have to happen at the same time. Yesterday I was like, I have no idea... just NO IDEA how to do that. This morning I heard the song and I felt like maaaaaaybe I could build a little bridge between here and there.
So listen to it dammit! If you can't spare the whole eight minutes, at least listen to half. It's really good.
Clicky click.
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