Vabagond: On Home

Home. Home is a fire, a burning reminder, of where we belong, love. With walls built up around us, the bricks make me nervous, they're only so strong, love. Plates they will shift, houses will shake, fences will drift, we will awake, only to find, nothing's the same as yesterday.
-Death Cab for Cutie "Home is a Fire"

I have been slightly homeless as of late. Not that my family isn't taking care of me, that's not a problem. In fact, the problem has less to do with a lack of a physical center as much as it does a lack of some emotional centrality. Allow me to give a bit of back story. You see, I am currently living between two cities that are about an hours drive from one another. Seeing as how this particular epoch is following one of bumming off of some friends on their couch, in their home office, etc, for a few weeks, it gives a particular sort of ambiance to my life that I find both liberating and dissolving, diluting--depleting, perhaps. What a paradox. As I come to know my own self, and find respite in 'doing my own thing', I almost have a sense of a dissolving, diluting, and depleting of the things that once held a great deal of value to me. It is like pouring liquid from one vessel to another. One fills while the other depletes. There is no replenishing effect at work.

Yesterday morning I boarded a plane in San Francisco that was bound for Long Beach with a connection to SLC. As the plane taxied around the runways, I decided to listen to Death Cab for Cutie's latest album "Codes and Keys" in its entirety. I bought that album a while back, during a very different time in my life, and have connected with the album a very distinct and vivid set of memories. As the music and then lyrics of the first song (quoted above) came through my headphones, I let the rhythm drive the words into me, and began to think about the concept of "home". What does "home" mean? Really. What does it mean? People have been writing about it, speaking about it, singing about it for centuries, so what has anyone actually learned? A few contemporary music examples that immediately come to my mind follow here:

Another summer day
Has come and gone away
In Paris and Rome,
But I wanna go home
Mmm I've got to go home.
-Michael Buble "Home"

Well I'm going home,
To the place where I belong,
Where your love has always been enough for me...
These places and these faces are getting old,
So I'm going home.
-Daughtry "Home"


Peel the scars from off my back.
I don't need them anymore.
You can throw them out or keep them in your Mason jars.
I've come home.
-Radical Face "Welcome Home"

Of course I cannot forget what is, perhaps, the most personally poignant of all of the songs dealing with the concept of home. It has particularly been on my mind as of late for various reasons:

And I have torn my soul apart from
pulling artlessly with fool commands.
Some nights
I just never go to sleep at all,
And I stand,
Shaking in the doorway like a sentinel,
All alone,
Bracing like the bow upon a ship,
And fully abandoning
Any thought of anywhere
But home,
My home.
Sometimes I can almost feel the power.
And I do love you.
Is it only timing,
That has made it such a dark hour,
Only ever chiming out,
"Cuckoo, cuckoo"?
-Joanna Newsom "In California"

For Buble and Daughtry, home is the place that surpasses everything else that once seemed more interesting. It is the place we never ultimately tire of, and where we find the love we need. To Radical Face it is a place where we take off our baggage (in probably a literal, but mostly a psychological sense) and abandon the harmful things we picked up on our travels. "Scars" that we thought, perhaps contentedly, were permanent parts of us. Death Cab paints home as both powerful and dangerous, comparing it to a fire that pulls us in. Ben's song is uncharacteristically (I should specify that I mean uncharacteristically for this album) somewhat pessimistic. I say that it is pessimistic because it suggests that home cannot last. It pulls on us, and then it falls apart, or threatens to fall apart "[the bricks] are only so strong, love." For Joanna (and this whole song should really be included here to get a definitive idea of her full and complex feelings on her home, California) home is like a gravitational energy that we cannot escape. Her home is both wonderful and awful in that it holds and comforts her, but takes her away from the other things she loves--things that are incompatible with home (e.g. in this song as well as others on the album, the narrator shows a great deal of reluctance to bring any non-native love into the sanctuary). Thus she feels she cannot leave her home, but "Must stay [there] in an endless eventide." Paradoxically, she suggests that once we have been outside, we are forever changed, even in trying to return. Her narrator states that "I am no longer afraid of anything, save the life that, here, awaits." We go out, we see the world, we overcome all fears, and then the only thing that scares us is returning to where we were before this happened. We only fear the life we knew and loved so purely in childhood, and the near-emptiness of those memories when we return.

I have learned from my own experience, as well as the experience of artists, that home is infinitely more complicated than we wish it were. Kitschy phrases like "home is where the heart is" have so little meaning for me now, in this odd stage of my life.

Ingrid Michaelson seems to agree with me on that point:

They say that home is where the heart is. I guess I haven't found my home. We keep driving round in circles, afraid to call this place our own. Are we there yet?
-Ingrid Michaelson "Are We There Yet?"

How am I to use my heart as a compass when I am not even sure where my heart is? I guess I am learning the hard way that you're never really lost until you've lost your compass. Is that irreparable? I'd like to think that it can be redeemed. I'd like to think it could be fixed, but I do not know where to begin. I will illustrate with a story.

Last Sunday I attended a church meeting to support a friend of mine who recently completed an LDS mission in Latin America. Her house happens to be close to the house where I lived when I started high school. When my family left that place, we put in a lot of renovation work, so I take a certain pride in the off-beat beauty of it. I would describe it as a quirky house; blue with an interesting slanted roof, but there is a small wrap-around porch and a lovely three-paneled white door. I drove by the old house on my way out of town; drove around it several times as a matter of fact, circling the neighborhood, listening to "In California". Those brief minutes were filled to overflowing with thoughts, feelings and emotions. I pondered the very musings that are finding public voice here, as well as a more concrete realization: how can you say a house is just a house? I don't think it is. That wood is in my blood. I worked for that place, so many long hours, and I cried and cried at the thought of beautifying it just to sell it and leave it. It isn't 'just a house', for as I drove by, I saw a little piece of myself in it.

The problem is, that is not a piece I can retrieve. It does not belong to me any more than any part of that house does. The family that lives there now seemed, judging by the outside decor, enthusiastic about the ensuing holiday. They were probably inside, listening to music, surfing the web, making lunch. They were blissfully unaware of my small agony as I circled, as I thought, as I wished.

And so it is with many houses, and people, and situations, and dreams, we leave them and they take little pieces of our hearts with them, and we hope that in our generosity we do not deplete the essence of who we are.

I retract. It is not born of generosity, but of necessity. The necessity to be a part of that which is around us. The necessity to give of what we are to what we are not, in the hopes that what we are not will become more like we are and what we are will become more like what we are not.

You say you're not interested in that sort of an exchange? To that I would reply that we can try to keep things from changing us, but we will find that in doing so, we are a great deal more than simply selfish, we are delusional. We come to this world to change, and to be changed. There is no place for holding tight to everything that we feel we "are".

I am changing. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes (like now) I feel that I have given away too many bits of myself, and that in my inability to reclaim those pieces, I am somehow rendered un-whole. I am still waiting on redemption. I am still waiting on a reciprocation that will make up for all of the missing pieces. Perhaps home is where the very most of you is collected. Perhaps home is your head, where all of the memories are stored. I do not merely want to look at home as a concept, more than a place. I have to. I have to see home non-conventionally in my present circumstances. Home as a state of being. Home as a little box of all of my most treasured memories. Home as a place of personal and powerful worship.

I want to experience a new level of worship, of love. A love that allows me to pour my heart out and find it filling to the brim in return. I want to change in the holiest of all avenues of change: the give and take, the ebb and flow, the exchange, the barter between a human being and that someone/something they love, that someone/something they dedicate to, in every moment, waking, sleeping, breathing, fighting, living, dying...

And when I come up for air, and glance around, I want to find that the object of that love is Home; and know that I have found it at last.

North and South- 19th Century Musings

I watched a favorite film tonight. 'Twas one of those days where only the thought of coming home, and keeping to oneself all evening with a favorite movie can get one through. This selection was cousin's idea. Brilliant woman.
Funny, the last time I watched this film was New Year's Day. I remember the day well, and am almost surprised at having spent so many months not watching this movie. Yet, it is a slightly longer film, which has probably kept me from watching as often as I have some other favorites. This film makes me want to find that part of me that lives in 19th century England and do one of two things:

A) Bind it up irreparably and make it behave.
B) Give into it entirely and dress like Margaret Hale every day.

If I went with option B, I would have to ensure that most people around me died within a year of each-other, and I don't think I would get the chance to crack a single joke.
I think it would be good for me.
Anyway, as I watched, I wondered what it is about that time period that pulls at all of our sensibilities so. It is not as if the people in that time period were living easy lives, or that they did not see their share of misery. In fact, this film does a much-better job than others of its class in portraying the vile aspects of the period. The dirty streets, the dangerous mills, the riots, the sociopolitical turmoil. Why would we want that? What about the film, and so many others like it fascinates us so?
I have always believed that one reason for this phenomenon is the fact that we as human beings are (throughout different time periods) fundamentally the same--whatever time period we were born in. Many of the daily struggles were different then, but congruent to our own today. Trying to feed our families, and make it in a crazy world, find love, transcend cultural norms, be happy, etc. We have always fought for the same things, just in slightly different ways. It is like watching ourselves under different circumstances. Doing studies on human-ness. That is what I used to do every day of my University experience.
Yet I do believe that it goes deeper than that. I think we all just like the clothing they wore.
Terribly wicked of me. Did that just come out in this post?
Actually, I would assert that it has more to do with the fact that those were times vibrant with a different sort of.... doing. It required a certain amount of activity that today's world does not. I see the way that technology has worn our senses to the point that we do not see the world as vibrantly as they did. That is not to say that I believe that technology is evil (this post is brought to you by the makers of Apple Inc, etc) however, I think there is something about a technology-free world that piques our interests. We want to go back to the simplicity. It is not that those times were, in reality, more simple. I am not that naive. They were just less.... complicated.
As usual, the thoughts are not translating.
For instance. I've no idea how this computer works. It scares me sometimes to think of how little I know about the known world. There was a time (the time in question) in world history when things were not quite so unknown. Interestingly enough, one of the themes in this film is that of technology and its effects on human behavior. It focuses in on a time when the age of industrialization was beginning to blossom (does that word work?) over the empires, and the smoke had begun to pour into the streets from the factories, as well as the chimneys. The world had just started to open up to the newness of technology, and it seemed that one could keep on the outer edge of it, that one could comprehend what there was to comprehend, and "keep up"so to speak, with the technology. Or, one could completely let it pass by. It was an option to not engage. To go on knitting in the parlor and let the steam engine's clang by someone else's front door.
Today there are more ideas, bits of knowledge and technology than we know what to do with. The age of information is the age of the overwhelmed. There are so many causes, so many good and bad things to pour our time into that we hardly know what to do with ourselves. It is not merely a question of moving about in a small sphere, influencing one's friends and neighbors, working (if one was not a gentlemen), or managing one's affairs, etc.
Now there is so much to do we do nothing.

"I want to change the world, instead, I sleep." -Ingrid Michaelson

Well, now I am bringing Ingrid into it. This post has taken me places I was not expecting to go tonight. Such is the way with free-style thinking provoked by a favorite film. I think I just like the sound of the buttons on my keyboard clicking (especially as they are the evidence of the fact that I have so far triumphed over the "keyboard, low battery" warnings). If this were a school paper, I would fail. Good thing 'tis not.

These thoughts should be more organized, and should contain less talk of 19th century fashion. Forgive my in-eloquence and enjoy the following clip. It rips my soul in two every time. I wrote a whole paper on it Freshman year of college. I am quite sure I did not get a good grade on said paper, but I wrote one all the same.

Tomorrow. Maybe, in the future.

About this time last year, all of the girls in my apartment, including myself, adopted an apartment theme song: Ingrid Michaelson's "Maybe". It has been a year now since those fall days when we used to walk into the apartment in bunches, singing the song and snapping our fingers, blasting it on ipod docks, or laptops. It doesn't feel like a whole year since we used to belt that song so loud our throats hurt, as if doing so could somehow negate or balance out the emotional stresses and struggles of young, single-adulthood packaged with its particular set of worries.

When things didn't go as we planned, when boyfriends broke our hearts, when boys who weren't our boyfriends broke our hearts, when friends passed away, or plans fell through, when days were too hot or too cold, too rainy or too sunny, when assignments kept us up until all hours, when snow came before anybody was ready, we sang,

"Maybe, in the future..."

A few weeks before the end of the semester, we decided to make a music video to "Maybe". The main focus of the video was balloons-- the perfect symbol of maybe. While the video was not professionally made, and had its cheesy moments, the project sparked a lot of introspection about the relationship between having hope and being realistic. We used to talk until all hours of the night about our project, the song, our lives, and the word Maybe. Such conversations helped to teach me important lessons about the future--that it is all just one big MAYBE. Nothing is certain, and that is why Maybe is such a beautiful concept. It is more optimistic than no, and more realistic than yes. It is the perfect blend of emotion that allows for the future to happen as it will. "Come what may and love it" if I may bring Joseph B. Wirthlin into this.

Jack Johnson is known for singing "It seems to me that maybe pretty much always means no." I believe that he is right--yet, he seems to be missing the true meaning of what he is singing: only "pretty much". There is always a chance with maybe. That is what maybe is about--chances, taking them and loving them for what they are.

"You can make a plan, carve it into stone.Like a feather falling, it is still unknown." -Bright Eyes

"Who can say where the road goes, where the day flows? Only time." -Enya

"It came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time." -Death Cab for Cutie

There are dozens of songs written about "maybe" and about the future. This shouldn't be surprising. The future is something that fascinates and frustrates us all in turn. We seem to simultaneously love and fear it because it holds what it offers tightly concealed until the present has been reached. Yet, "maybe" is an important part of everyone's lives. It is a part of my life.

"Maybe in the future" I'll have a good job that will allow me to not worry about money all of the time.
"Maybe in the future" I'll be able to get my business off the ground, and start doing what I love every day.
"Maybe in the future" I'll meet someone who will love me and help me to fulfill all of my goals, and in whom I can take pride.

"The only way to really know, is to really let it go. Maybe, in the future..."
Now all of those roommates have gone their separate ways, becoming wives and expectant mothers, or brides-to-be, pressing forward with education, leaving on missions, or graduating from the University. Some of tomorrow's maybes have become yesterday's realities. Some of the things that were important then are no longer important. Our hearts have been broken and mended, we've lifted each other up, we've seen each other through. We're not disappointed with how our pasts turned out, and are content with our present circumstances.

Yet still, in those moments that life never fails to give out, when we are thrown curves and plans fall through, I hope we'll all always be known as the girls who learned, in the fall of 2009, in a little apartment in Provo, the invaluable lesson to size up the situation, pack away the disappointment, and hum quietly to ourselves,
"Maybe, in the future..."