“disconcerting” - a voice ramble (Patreon)

hallo loves. good morning.

we will get back to this.

if you missed my poem last night, i have a favor, which is: could you go share it on facebook? i usually publish these in the kornjng but i was inpatient last night and that meant the algorithm swallowed it. the post is here:

https://www.facebook.com/100045146024077/posts/pfbid04qGjiNkrVa2j6xYtfKsmGQSbcwCf8J5CKdE1kp39FvG1LDALYrUHgphBFTUjhNNDl/?d=n

…

meanwhile

it’s been a while since i did a voice ramble. these are just little long and winding answering messages to you. sometimes i’ll just throw them straight into a post and sometimes i’ll wait a day or two for alex to transcribe them (that’s part of what your patreon money pays for, hooray!)…but even if i wind up throwing some up spontaneously, i’ll make sure to get them transcribed within a few days.

enjoy.

i missed doing these.

they help my heart.

xxxx

transcript:

Good morning, my loves. 

I haven't done one of these in a really long time. And I just am on my own this morning, about to take an early morning drive down to New York City, and I decided to go for a walk at the break of dawn with a cup of coffee, and I realized, I don't think I've done a voice ramble since I got back here. Because it's been insane. And I've been so incredibly scattered.

I was talking to a pal a couple of weeks ago who's gone through a lot, a parent who she nursed for a long time and then died, and then a big move, and she's in this new living situation, and the boxes aren't unpacked. And I said, how are you doing? How are you feeling? And she said, it's disconcerting. 

And I thought... there's a word I rarely use. Maybe I've never used. But goddammit does that sound like a useful word. 

So I started adding it to my vocabulary, and I've found it incredibly handy.

Everything is a bit disconcerting. 

Everything in this country feels a little disconcerting.

The things happening in my personal life are a bit disconcerting.

Yeah.

When you look at it from a certain angle.

But when you wake up at the break of dawn and you walk through the woods... I don't know. You're reminded that you can look at it from either perspective. Either everything is disconcerting, and all of these things living and dying and eating each other is really disturbing. Or it's just plain as day. This is the way life goes. It's always a little bit disconcerting.

Anyway. I thought I would offer you up that word as a little gift, if you find yourself scrambling and searching for the words. I tend to overuse the word weird. I tend to overuse the word interesting. It's nice to have some colors to add to the verbal palette.

And as I've mentioned here on the Patreon quite a number of times, it's about to be a heavy season for me.  Lots of travelling, time with Ash, time without Ash, a real crunch in the run up to the Dresden Dolls shows. 

And this material is so emotional for me that every time I sit down to rehearse it, I get so excited and amazed and overwhelmed. It's like its own piece of art in itself, sitting down and looking back at these songs that I wrote when I was in my 20s. Some in my teens. 

That would actually be a really good exercise, to go look at the lifespan of when these songs were written. The first would have been when I was 15, which was Slide, on the first Dresden Dolls album. And the last would have probably been in 2004, because I think we recorded Yes, Virginia in... Maybe we recorded it in 2004 and put it out in 2005. So at a guess, because I didn't write any songs in the studio, or even anywhere near the run up to the recording, all of the songs were written well before we recorded that album... So, let's see. 1976, 1986, 1991... I am visiting songs that I wrote between about 1991 (holy shit! Some of you were probably born after 1991) and probably 2003.

And I've written a lot of material since then, and it's different. The songs that I wrote in my teens and 20s are not like the songs that I have written in my 30s and 40s. And I love them. I love them because it's like... let's get back to our moving metaphor. Not that it was a metaphor. But it's like finding a box of old clothes that you really loved and you thought you loved... And it's sort of like you've changed sizes many times, but you're back to a size 8, and you're finding all of these clothes that you really loved 15 years ago, 20 years ago, this beautiful faded old jacket that fit like a glove, and a really beloved worn-out comfy pair of jeans, and a squishy pair of shoes, and those incredibly warm socks. And you find this box, and it's all just there, none of it's moth-eaten, these clothes that wouldn't have fit you six years ago because you lost a lot of weight, or gained a lot of weight, are just there waiting for you. That's sort of what it feels like to play these songs. 

I've changed many sizes, but in many ways I'm in a similar headspace to the 20 year old, 23 year old, 25 year old, disconcerted, confused, heartbroken girl who wrote those songs.

And it feels like a really interesting conversation with a past self and a current self. And a reach behind my back, to grab an arrow that I have not crafted yet, to aim at a future self.

It's so beautiful here, everybody. The leaves are gold and red and all colors of the rainbow. I'll take a little picture for you.

I did miss this when I was in Aotearoa. I missed this, I missed the really dramatic fall. The season change. 

Upstate New York is really beautiful, I'm falling more and more in love with it. But man, I miss that little island a lot too. 

Ash looked at me the other day, he was feeling homesick. And he said he didn't understand how you could miss two places at the same time. He misses New Zealand. And the idea of leaving Woodstock made him sad because he would miss it, and he said, I don't understand how you can miss two places at the same time.

And I said, oh my darling. You can miss so many things at the same time.

I love you all.

I hope you have a beautiful day, night, day, morning, midnight, noon, lunch, breakfast, dinner.

I love you all a lot.

Bye.

xxx

more soon my dears