I'm a bomb regardless

Maybe something has to be taken away from us in order to realize how much we need it.

Maybe it has to be taken away from us in order to realize how much we really don't.

I'm in love with a lot of things that the world isn't. I spend my time dwelling on things that aren't necessarily best-sellers or critic darlings because to me they mean something more. It's something personal, you know? It's something that stirs in me and my heart and doesn't necessarily knock anyone else off their feet. But I'm finally okay with that. Sure, there's moments where I'm hopeful and I wish that something that moved me would affect someone else in the exact same way so we could share it. But our experiences shape us, and there's not always going to be someone else rooting for the same things I am.

But then again, that's also why it's so rewarding and astounding when it does happen. When Jacqueline tells me about listening to a live version of some little ditty and it moves her and it moves me and we're together on this feeling it just makes me ecstatic. I'm never alone, really.

Nothing'severgonnastandinmyway (again)!

Guaranteed

We're driving literally on the edges of mountains in New Mexico, crossing over into Colorado and I'm speechless. We've got no cellphone service, the windows rolled down and the only radio station that's able to come in is playing a static-filled "Sharp Dressed Man" while Kyle is pointing out the fact that there is still snow underneath some of the trees. It's a sweeping landscape that makes me feel so small and awe-struck. It's a scene from National Geographic or Into The Wild for as far as my eyes can see and I'm just so astounded by all the magnitude. Treetops and rolling hills are just the beginning of what my eyes take in and my camera lens is working overtime. There's something so freeing about feeling so very tiny and surrounded by such beauty and I'm starting to understand why so many writers pleaded with the common man to go out into nature and experience it full-on. Realize that something is bigger than yourself and that if you tear your eyes away from an LCD screen long enough you can see something even more glorious or amazing. Realizing that nature reveals so much of human nature and that it's not just a literary device or technique to feel something powerful when you're surrounded by wildlife. I'm not saying that I'm just running down cliffs with nothing but my sanity at this point, but even without laying on top of a plateau this trip is a spiritual journey. I'm staying in a log cabin, not completely down to the bare essentials of living, but still, being so far away from how I live comfortably allows me to feel this sweeping sensation of LIFE. You know, real life, not just sitting in my suburban at a stoplight. Watching things around you grow and change. I swear, this is when I turn into my grandmother, getting all excited about birds and listening for their sounds. I'm observing all these other woodland creatures that I wish would follow me and help me make clothing and do chores like in Snow White. I try singing but alas, the chipmunks, beavers, hummingbirds and squirrels don't follow me onto the trail near the river and I'm exploring alone. It's refreshing and maybe I've just been breathing in too much thin air, but I really like walking through the woods by myself. It's calm and it's like I'm discovering a secret, some amazing hidden place, the farther I get from the road. I can't see the cabin anymore but I'm in no way worried. I'm alone with my thoughts and the music that I keep replaying in my head, a current mix of Springsteen ("I believe in a Promised Land"), The Hush Sound ("I'll break the sky") and oddly enough, a mass, Festival Magnificat, that we sang in Chorale years before that somehow lodges itself in my brain. "My soul doth magnify the LORD and my spirit hath rejoiced in God, my Savior" is replaying in my head and maybe it's too cheesy, but sitting listening to the rapids rushing over the stones and taking it all in, I take a moment to pray. And it's not an elaborate prayer, just a whole lot of Thank you's. Thank you for all these blessings. They don't belong to me but I get to feel them and drink them all in and for that I should and will be eternally grateful. Thank you for music, both with notes to sing and those melodies I hear made up of wind and water. Thank you for letting me breathe all this in. Don't ever let me downsize these gifts-- let me grasp just the tip of how seriously breathtaking creation is. Allow me to realize there's a whole lot more on this earth than me and my normal surroundings and give me a hunger to always want more of it.

Half-Awake

Done with high school.


...weird.

*I know it's only been a few hours and it seems a bit ridiculous to already be reminiscing but this has been floating around my mind for quite some time.

And you know, it's funny, because there's so many little things I will miss. Side comments and people encouraging me and always being there. I will miss hugs in the morning and dancing at night. It only really hit me when I saw them perform. Knowing that I wouldn't get to be on that stage and probably not even the audience made me upset. There is so much talent I'm surrounded by, but it's more than just a bunch of prodigies...they all are fantastic people. Yes, we learned more from a few thousand three minute records, along with words on a page that became more than that and conversations that I wish we could order transcripts of to this day.

I will miss the sense of family, some from specific classes, but specifically the makeshift one I formed late nights backstage and never ending rehearsals for concerts and contests and pop shows. I will miss singing more than I can even fathom. Not any song in particular or for that fact, any director in particular, but just the times that we spent creating something that was bigger than ourselves...something that was beautiful and communicated so much better than we all could have done individually.

I will miss the laughs more than anything. The people that woke me up and danced with me and knew exactly what to say to make my day ten times better. I have shed so many tears in laughter, literally on the floor gasping for air, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

It's a big school but I won't miss anything major or necessarily tangible. I won't miss a building or a costume. I won't miss a script or a few measures of music, just the people and the memories. There's a couple dozen faces and brains I'll miss, but I know they won't be gone forever.

I know it can't last forever and it wouldn't mean the same if we could stay. But there are so many people that have changed me for the better (not intentionally connected to Wicked) and I don't think a yearbook message suffices.

I've heard it before many times but it's still true:

"Never say goodbye because saying goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting." -Peter Pan

So I have no intentions of saying any form of goodbye. I don't want any cliched "Good Luck!" messages. I have no intentions of any of this ending...we'll just say it'll be a little different. The passing of time can be a good thing sometimes. I didn't cry at any banquets or ceremonies but I don't think that's always the most sincere and honest expression of emotion. All I can say personally is that I wish all of you exceeded expectations in your future and all the good things about life you can get. I wish you love and more music than you can take in and lots of new discoveries. I'm not worried about staying in touch, because, one, Facebook makes stalkability that much easier and two, because this whole sense of family that I crave doesn't just go away. It won't be far at all.

Holden was right, actually, but I think even the 'missing everybody' part was and will be worth it.

It feels like years since it's been here

Life is making a lot more sense now.

I'm happy, generally every single day.
I know why I'm going to Texas State, it all makes sense!
& I'm studying music journalism, which is ultimately a passion of mine.....so we'll just say these next 4 years can be my life's replica of Almost Famous, hopefully
Today is the 2 week anniversary of the best concert and coincidentally the best day of my life!! (more on that later, I'll eventually write something less scatterbrained about it, rather than just typing I TOUCHED BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN in all caps whenever I think about it)
There's so many relationships building me up
It isn't all sunshine and kittens 24/7 but I am learning from all of this
GRADUATING IN A MONTH!
And then there will be summer, long lazy days and freedom, in a sense
Carolyn is okay, and I'm praying for her to heal fast
God is so amazing lately.

I'm so grateful for music and conversation and real feelings and relief and warm hugs. These days really are living up to their reputation, you know.



edit: yeah, i'm listening to atlantic city right now and i swear i still get a lump in my throat hearing it. i no longer think it's a weird thing that music affects me so deeply, i know this is all for a reason, for a love of something that is worth all the love and focus i can give to it. it really is the best feeling when you can feel a song moving through you and becoming bigger than a few pitches playing through your headphones. oh, i can't even put it all down. seriously good goosebumps.

Hi, I'm Alexander Supertramp

I want to get out of my comfort zone, I really do. I want to give my life to something bigger and better. I know that it seems typical since I'm the suburban upper-class kid who just watched Into The Wild before writing this, but lately, I have this need to get out of my neighborhood. It's probably a culmination of wanting to graduate and get out there and actually see things, but I know it's also in some scary way a call to some sort of mission work. It's intimidating and daunting, but I think that it's also definitely in my future. I want to help other people that can't help themselves so much it hurts. I want to go to Africa eventually, I've said it before, but I don't just want it to serve as something for my own goals; in other words, this trip I hope to take in my future won't be about "discovering myself". I want to discover things that are completely not my own- different languages and cultures and different needs that other people in this world have that I can help. I don't want to go for myself, I want to go because I know I am capable of serving someone else. I'd like to say I'm ready to burn all my money and live in the middle of nowhere, but I'd prefer to take this a little slower. For now I'm just trying to focus that attention and affection for service into my everyday life.

And on a completely different but taking-over-my-life note, I can feel something good ahead. There's something building behind all these melodies. Behind every drumbeat I hear there's this drive and every word sung just seems to get me more excited. My parents just laugh when they catch me dancing and most every class seems to overhear my commotion about what will be happening in exactly one week's time. I think most of my peers think I've gone a little crazy overboard on how much music I can listen to in one day, but I'm finding it essential. I've said before that my dream job would be to get paid to go to concerts and it's sounding better every minute. I'm insatiable for more rhythm right now, I only want more saxophone, more crescendos, more call-and-response. Is this healthy? I'd say based on my walking-on-air-good-morning-world!-how-are-you? attitude, it just might be. I don't even care what the general public's opinion is. It's real to me, it matters to me, and I am literally waiting and counting the hours. It has to be wonderful, I just know it.

"We accept all races of cupcakes!" -O. Simons

(none of this is an april fool's joke, fyi.)

There's a lot of new thoughts and songs buzzing around in my head right now and it's distracting. I used to make a lot of sticky note lists of things to do, songs to download, movies to watch, and it only made me more stressed out when I couldn't cross those things off. I had to hold on to every list, making sure I remembered whatever seemed so important at the time. I sort of went back to that habit at the beginning last week, but instead of to-do lists, the lists were more or less thoughts I was pondering. Apparently I ponder a lot now? I guess so. Anyway, this will probably be really jumpy and random but I wanted to get a few down.

It hasn't necessarily been overwhelmingly stressful, but it has been busy. I've been waking up disoriented and forgetting what day it is and what my schedule is for that day. I've taken to making everyday things "events" on my phone so that an alarm goes off at a certain time and tells me what's going on. Plus, scuba class is so much more exciting to attend when it is announced with the Samson & Son theme song playing out of my phone's speakers! But even with all these insignificant events, there has been a lot of time to do things I've been putting off. Lately I've been turning into a senior citizen. I have done nothing but nap and read lately and I've really enjoyed both activities. I'm conducting a shameless love affair with a turntable and Dean Martin records. Also, I'm baking at least every other day and I'm giving Betty Crocker a run for her money. Yesterday I bought knitting needles and I'm actually kinda excited about knitting things when I get the hang of it.

Let's please just all consider that last sentence. Seriously? Yeah.

I was reading old livejournal entries today (after napping and Oprah) and I think there was so much I missed. Thoughts I had, thoughts other people had-- I think I skimmed over a few or they didn't all make sense at the time. Some of it's intensely bittersweet to read, actually. Things I was so idealistic about suddenly don't seem all they were cracked up to be. There is so very much about life that I've now learned since my older ramblings, and I'm not even talking about looking back so far to the days of my 2004 posts (let's not even go there, actually). The most striking thing is that even now there's some fantastically worded sentences written years ago by other people or about other people that can still tear me up a little or give me butterflies in my stomach. It's weird, you'd think I'd be over these things, but it's like a movie you keep rewatching and cry and laugh every time. Words are powerful even after the hundredth time you say them.

There's one thought that's been in my head for far far too long and I swear if I don't get it down I'll explode. I think what really unnerved me one particular time in recent past was that someone told me indirectly that my affection for something seemed false. That my love for a particular object was not real or it was all a show. That all this energy I had exerted into absorbing this thing, these melodies that were permeating and seemingly stuck in my thoughts, was untrue. I didn't know what to say; I didn't know how to convince someone that I wasn't trying this music out like homework or a task I had to be forced to complete. I wasn't forcing myself to like it and I wasn't grasping onto it because I wanted any form of prize in the end. I remember laying down on my floor, trying to push expectations and preconceived notions out of my mind, and pressing play and really listening. Sometimes I think my musical methods are crazy to anyone else, really, but this is exactly how it happened. I remember laying there and feeling like dancing. I remember almost feeling nostalgic, thinking that I wished I had heard it sooner because each track seemed to feel well worn-in. I wished I could meet the people in the stories and I wanted to hear more of it even after the 47 minutes ended. It was a feeling I'd really only felt a few times before, and feeling that strongly over a few measures of notes always excites me. So, I latched onto those notes and tempos and measures. I found myself talking about the album and playing it for other people. I would hear something that reminded me of a line and instantly I'd be playing a guitar solo in my head. I would sing it and feel amazed that lyrics that seemed so personally written, like a story I'd somehow been dropped into, would suddenly mean something to me personally. I felt this impassioned about it, but then I heard that it appeared like I was just pretending. That maybe I was just halfway sidestepping around this album and really I was only listening to it to make myself seem more likable or desirable. That all this was superficially for someone else. I didn't know what to make of this or how to defend myself or the thing I now loved. Maybe I didn't have pages of history and I couldn't answer every question about it, nor had I even listened to the very tip of the iceberg of an extensive catalog, but I knew it meant a great deal to me. That never fully resolved, apparently, as I'm still talking about it now, but I've just made the decision to drop it. 7 songs in particular are important to me and that's enough.

There's a few future plans I have planned out and heard more on lately, but overall, I'm just trusting God and putting it all in his hands. I hardly know everything, but what do I know? I've got a book list to read and a set of records and box sets of LPs that Olivia is letting me borrow that I can't even believe I am actually hearing and amaze me. There's also a graduation date to look forward to. And larger than that, I've got an intense passion for music that overwhelms me sometimes, a family and group of friends that I run out fantastic adjectives for and a desire to serve in some way. I know that those will be there no matter where I'm living or what I'm doing years from now, and actually, yes, that's very reassuring.

"I will be with you when you pass through the waters, and when you pass through them, they will not overwhelm you." Isaiah 43:2

they will not overwhelm you
they will not overwhelm you
they will not overwhelm you
they will not overwhelm you
they will not overwhelm you
they will not overwhelm you
they will not overwhelm you
they will not overwhelm you

Really gotta keep keeping that in mind.

Today's executive decision: Music is my boyfriend.

No, really.