On Human Irrationality and Poems

We're crippled by banalities,

Quotation makes us lame,

We forge a rhyme,

Add sense of time,

"It's artistry," we claim.

Aestival Lethargy

I'm recumbent on my cluttered double bed, licking sticky, crusted dollops of ketchup from my ring finger and enjoying the sunlight that is cast on all my things from my opened windows. I've finally got some Belle and Sebastian songs up on autoplay and I am convincing my reluctant self that I do in fact want to finish The Stranger, maybe even re-read it in French.

So while I keep myself occupied with the incredulity of how I've managed to clip my hair up in a most perplexing fashion, and the neglect of a small number of chores to do; boxes to unpack and flight bags to pack, I shall wistfully anticipate the sensation of finally drifting amongst the clouds, as the passing of each one takes me further away from an academic year of absolute stress and exhaustion. And of course all of this is done whilst tapping my rested feet to The Boy With the Arab Strap.

Here's to the forthcoming summer of 2012; 56 glorious days of lovingly abrading the pages of paperback classics, 9 o' clock daylight, day-trips to quirky English towns, country pubs, cosy nights watching topical comedians, prolific bouts of writing and what will hopefully be the most expedient mixed-tape soundtrack to accompany it all.

Bus-stop Socialite

Today on the evening bus there stood a lady in a black dress, with hints of lace around her waistline. She poised herself as close as possible to the window, her gait slightly elevated by straw wedge heels and a messy yet volumous updo that had been worn away with hours and showed strands or disobedient baby hairs. It almost made her endearing. With the burden of department-store shopping bags and large beige handbag on the bus floor and just a sequin clutch in her hand she stared out to the window's vista of pretty lights and luminous socialite wealth, and allowed her arms to graciously float as if they were affectionately touching the arms of guests at her debutante party. Her right thumb and forefinger graced the pole as if she were pinching the skinny bulb of a champagne glass, the other three splayed and curled slightly. She then lightly adjusted the neckline of her dress, as If about to float down the staircase with an organic guilded banister before hundreds. Then the out of tune melancholic dissonance of a two tuneless bell tones sounded and the doors steamed open. She fled the the bus in a silent fluster of self-consciousness.

Thursday Retrospective

I sit here, sprawled out across my recently-acquired double bed which, I may add, is still a major novelty, and whose boundless creases of a cream-white bedspread still enthralls my minimalistic aesthetics. I oscillate with slight discomfort; crossed-legged to legs outstretched, and my toes caress the rusting keys of my cheap old lacquer saxophone, which lies in a languid poise much similar to my own, following the contours with the grace of adoration.

The fact that I am currently musing myself on an instrument that not four hours ago was causing me so much grief. The keys that my sweating fingertips once slid off in a desperate attempt to play the right notes now lie at my feet like a pet dog, subjected to my child-like, yet somehow condescending, strokes.

It turns out that I had reason to be stressed earlier. The recording was a disaster, and not even my prolific statements of apology aimed at my duet partner could amend my cringing performance. But I tried my best to keep a smile on my face and my "sorry"'s sincere.

And now I'm home alone, enjoying the fact that I can say my own name, or rather, hear my own name without the need to get up and fulfil the chorish demands that follow. (Not only am I a narcissist but a lazy narcissist!) All that comes to mind when that fiasco of a recording is recalled is the utterance of a mirthless laugh and retrospective sighs of exasperation.

Dusk

You resolve lethargically in a deep-set, off-white couch in a deep-set, off-white room. The hasty golden hour casts itself down with unpromising itineracy, redecorates the walls, exposing a vacant , vulnerable canvas to whichever pigment was to to make its way there. And the walls would drown in the added dimension that the light forced upon them, leaving them to wallow in a deeply euphoric beauty and calm that only fleeting nostalgia could bring. 

And only when the evening's colours are completely woven in to the atmosphere, the insidious entwinement that sunlight always silences by a façade of beauty, do you take notice to the direction from which the wall's new tint originates.

The clouds are hazy with an anomalous tropical drought, creating a thin mask of misprision that makes the origin of this incandescence indistinguishable. Burning are the dying flames of a celestial fire as time wears on in its fickle pace. Through bands of orange and embers of rose is a flowering bud of fire, that lends itself to the combustion of an evening thick with nebulous tension; igniting the heavens in one last blaze that is near-becoming a vista of evanescence. 

Stagefright

I find myself in far too many situations like this, where fate and music (who are, I might add, in sadistic cahoots with one another) have dealt me the sheer adversity of a project that calls upon my skills as a musician and my dedication to the practice and preparation of music for a certain deadline. How ridiculous! Could it be that I, an unassuming music student, am in fact called upon to show the traits of a musician? Like so many scenarios that have repeated themselves in my (music-related) life, I have had time to prepare for something, and of course I have acknowledged my sheer inability and the voice of past ambition and future shame screaming melodramatic cries for improvement without doing anything about it.

It's something that gets me every time; for once I feel like I am being genuinely challenged, completely out of my depth. I know what I need to do but apathy acts as a shroud of misprision when the time really calls for the want/questionably surprising motivation to practice my instrument. 

So, once again, I have coasted through in a style that is oh-so idiosyncratically me. I have not converted the value of time into the value of practice, and let anxiety's grip become firmer on everything without eradicating the inertia that has rendered me anxious, not to mention emotionally stressed beyond words. 

The usual trend for a musician is as follows:

• prepare piece weeks, even months in advance; 
• practice regularly and in accordance to the difficulty of the piece; 
• allow for several smooth run-throughs before the actual day of performance; 
• feel pre-performance nerves; 
• play piece soundly without mistakes of hesitation, thus proving the nervousness to be, in retrospect, irrational;
• get a pat on the back from general audience and make pseudo-grimacing along with the words "omg," "no," and "I messed up."

And here is how I go about such an endeavour, because I'm clearly far too good for the whole practice-with-diligence-and-save-yourself-from-breakdown procedure:

• Reluctantly decide on piece, but make the decision mostly due to the surge of delusion that makes me think I will be able to play it within the next 4-6 weeks;
• Have rehearsal with teacher/duet partner. Fail to play adequately. Make false and empty promise about vigourous practice sessions, all of which will miraculously take place between now and the next rehearsal;
• Repeat aforementioned step as many times as necessary;
• Acknowledge lack of ability and the chance to practice for hours. Allow self to remain in state of inertia, and feel surprisingly carefree about it all, even though the emotional stress of it all is blatantly insidious;
• Cry;
• On day of performance/recording, do what is known in layman's terms as "bomb". The entire thing was a fiasco. Apologise profusely to duet partner and make apologetic faces at audience. 

As I type these last words, the bell is ringing and  my stomach is churning like it's full of lepidoptera. One more quick inhale of breath and I'm going to have a nervous breakdown.

Artless Beauty

Glory be to Mother Earth for simplistic things, 

For arabesques of single-stroke as a fluid stream

For cascades and creases of artless cloth, that variegates a plain of greater canvas

Wind that adorns the looking-glass sea; thrums of turquoise in monochrome ebbs

Cream-white paper recumbent in a leather-bound embrace - sallow with time

And their words, modest curlicue spires upon consonant pillars.

All things stoic, unornamental, austere

Whatever is void of guile, beguiles

With plain, pure; chaste, clear; comely, modest;

She fathers-forth without wish to coalesce her hues

Praise her.

This was a poem written for English class, as an "homage" to Hopkins' Pied Beauty. Like most of my poems, it makes me cringe, and I think very little of it. But, hey, when a blog is this empty, style's supersession of substance is indomitable.

Debutante

If my current streak/rich history of reluctance to see projects through does in fact desert me, then this will be the beginning of a long-lasting and prolific documentation of my amateur writing.

Creating a blog -a real blog, not just a tumblr with posts that feeds off the carcass of adolescent originality- has been an intention of mine for far too long. The sheer gluttony that has possessed me to scroll for hours through all the self-published essays, poems, and columns of others has left me feeling inadequate in both my ambition and ability as a writer. I suppose it was finally time to at least pay heed to this unfulfilled want.

So here is my debut as a columnist; a writer of a blog that will never have an audience.

R. Louise