You Said Something
I can’t remember to how I got to writing about this, but all I know is that I forgot what my original plan was. I always like to share a more personal, less analytical piece every second Friday, and whatever that was meant to be, has escaped me.
Those who read often will know that these essays, that come out every second Friday, often have a song lyric as the title. The other day whilst listening to Harry Styles in preparation for the concert, I heard a lyric that I thought would be perfect. That lyric has escaped me too. Yesterday I read the lyrics to every single Harry Styles song, and nothing stood out as the line I so deeply resonated with only days earlier. Nothing.
I am aware that I could go into a long diatribe now about overwhelm.
I could talk about listening to music that doesn’t quite hit the mark, or doing what YouTube has encouraged me to do, and put all my hope and energy into a skincare routine. An explanation of the amount of stationery I bought lately would fit in here somewhere, as would the fact that on my way home I stopped to buy whipped cream, chocolate fudge and chocolate milk for an indulgent after work snack.
It was, but now I feel sick.
I could explain that I feel I’ve not been listening to my instinct when it comes to my classes, and that when something happens that relates to this, it haunts me. Regardless of how many times I tell myself it’s happened, I’m human, I still hang on to it. The constant email checking isn’t helping, and neither is the downloading and deleting of Instagram, the YouTube during shows, or the way I stand on my phone (like using it, not literally standing on it) in the hallway (next to the table where I put it at night), forgetting what I even picked it up for isn’t helping either. Messages sit unanswered, but I have watched the reel of Louis Theroux explaining his new podcast name, maybe 100 times. My Pinterest algorithm is too skewed again, so deeper and deeper into the hole I go. I never was a Tumblr kid, but if I was, it’d probably be something to do with Dark Academia, going by the images of desks and notebooks and people in navy jumpers I keep saving.
Whenever my brain feels like this, I want to take it out and give it an exfoliation. Flush it all out. I’m not aware of any Science surrounding this, but I’ll start making decisions based on restoration, to slowly alleviate the gunk.
I’ll listen to lots of Arctic Monkeys to hear Alex Turner’s voice. Beyonce will be played at full volume. CSI or a movie I’ve always wanted to watch or watched 100 times before will be viewed. I’ll watch good YouTube. A very subjective description but, for me means not watching compilations of celebrities imitating other celebrities or bad vlogs. There are non-media related things I’ll do, but they’re peripheral to this.
After I started writing this, I came across this interview between Anne Helen Petersen and Dr. Pooja Lakshmin. The blurb reads, ‘A bath bomb will not cure....pretty much anything’.
I don’t have some sharp line to tie this piece together, but I’m going to leave it here anyway.
I hope you have a good weekend.
Today’s title is from this song.