"Fault Lines Tremble Underneath My Glass House"

It used to bother me when I didn't know what a song was supposed to mean, officially.

In fact, I didn't realize until about thirty seconds ago that it DOESN'T bother me anymore. I think it might bother me more when there IS an official meaning.

Many of us have probably had a moment where we're listening to a song and it speaks to us. It feels like it's speaking directly to us, about our specific circumstances. It fits too perfectly to mean anything else.

After having one of those moments, I used to take to the internet. I wanted my interpretation confirmed. I wanted the songwriter to agree with me, or at least the majority of other fans. I wanted other people to say, "Yes, that's it, OBVIOUSLY. You got it right."

But that was never the way it happened. Instead, I'd find myself deflating as I read other people's interpretations. Either they took something beautiful and made it something ugly, or they had an interpretation that held water so much better than mine that it made me feel foolish and disillusioned.

I've never been one of those "all interpretations are correct"/"whatever it means to you is valid" types. Anyone who knows me knows that. I see so much of the world in black and white. So many things to me are as clear as "2 + 2 = 4," and it frustrates me when people think their opinions should be considered facts. (MY opinions on the other hand...yeah, I have a truly ridiculous amount of growing still to do.)

But...my opinion on song meanings has changed.

I think I prefer the songwriters' being silent. I think there is beauty in having the same song say different things to different people.

I don't necessarily want to compare all songs to scripture, but I read Psalm 5 every day for a week a few months ago and I swear it was a different psalm every day. It said different things, it was in a different tone, it convicted me of completely different things. And yet it meant what I needed it to mean every day.

Maybe music is supposed to be that way too. Songs have radically altered the trajectory of my life before—for the better. Is that any less true if my interpretations were "incorrect"? Of course not.

This post is inspired by the song Earth by Sleeping At Last. It's been in my head for four. straight. days. When I wake up, it's already in my head. It's in my head as I try to read books, as I'm on meetings. I hear it as I eat and as I watch TV. I listened to it in the car on the way to Raleigh on Tuesday.

My favorite line is "Until the sirens sound, I'm safe."

That feels like the way I've been living my life lately. I'm not really okay; there's pretty much definitely a disaster or a crash headed my direction. But hey, as long as the sirens aren't sounding, I'm fine, right?

I Googled the meaning of the song. Got a lot of stuff about religion and environmentalism. For a second, I felt the familiar foolishness and disillusionment creeping in, but then I just closed the tab on my computer.

I don't need to know what Ryan O'Neal meant. I don't need to know what JohnDoe74 or JaneDoeXO think it means. I know what it means to me, and it fills me with something that feels like truth.

I think I'm just gonna let that be for now.

~Stephanie

Jocosity and Other Words

I had a life-changing moment this morning. Or really, I guess it started on Tuesday.

A few weeks ago, my boss and I were talking, and she mentioned that Shakespeare's vocabulary is estimated to have been about 29,000 words. I just fell down a rabbit hole of statistics concerning Shakespeare's and modern Americans' vocabularies, but long story short: Shakespeare puts us all to shame.

That's been bumming me out lately. I consider myself to be well-educated, and I LOVE words. However, I encounter words I don't know pretty often, and I just sort of move on. I can usually guess what they mean from context, or my ignorance doesn't affect me—that I can tell.

I've wanted to develop my working vocabulary, but I haven't known what to do. Do I just get a Word-a-Day calendar and hope something sticks?

As I read my most recent Agatha Christie (The Mysterious Affair at Styles), I decided I would make a note of words I didn't know. I'd look them up and record them in a Note on my phone. I'd think about them during the day and recite their definitions so I could keep them in my head.

One of the words I've collected is "jocosely: playfully." This morning when I was doing a writing assignment for work, I paused and tried to think of a word. "Jocosity" came to mind. I wondered if that was a real form of "jocosely," and when I looked it up, it was. It meant exactly what I thought it meant, and it worked in the sentence I was writing. (Don't worry; I was doing an exercise that had me mimicking Jane Austen's style, not writing for YA at large.)

My jaw dropped a little.

It's working.

I know this is a small, silly thing, but it filled me with a happy hopefulness I haven't felt in a while. It's always exciting and a little unbelievable when I manage to make objective progress on myself. It's like lifting heavier at the gym. You don't feel any stronger, but suddenly you just are.

New Words So Far :)
1) Stentorian: strong, powerful
2) Unctuous: excessively flattering
3) Chary: cautiously or suspiciously reluctant
4) Jocosely: playfully
5) Numinous: having a strong spiritual quality

~Stephanie

One of the Worst Things I Can Imagine

There is something about "grown-ups" that I have been wary of for as long as I can remember—and I have memories from when I was two. It's a quality that has always been very important to me not to adopt.

I recognized it when I was little, and it scared me so much that I didn't want to get older. How could I avoid it if I didn't understand what it was? Maybe it could come upon me all of a sudden before I could do anything about it. Maybe it was one of those horrible things that come upon you, and then you don't mind. Maybe part of possessing the quality is that you don't mind possessing the quality.

I dreaded turning sweet sixteen.

I recognized that not all grown-ups shared this terrible quality—whatever it was—to the same degree. There were a handful of grown-ups who were still largely okay. They weren't fully okay, but they hadn't completely adopted the terrible quality, or maybe they still had some good one that protected them, like some kind of psychic amulet.

I'm still not sure what the quality is, but I suspect that it has to do with imagination, and I suspect that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry knew what it was.

I'm still scared of the quality, but I know that it does not overtake you all of a sudden before you can do anything about it, because I can feel myself fighting it every day. I fight it every time a kid tells me about a rock he found; every time a dance student launches into a conversation she had with her mom; every time an adult talks about a child as if he isn't right there, hearing everything said.

The quality has something to do with priorities and perspective, and maybe personhood, although that might be my obsession with alliteration talking.

I think I've avoided the quality for the most part, or maybe I have the psychic amulet too. I know this because of the way The Little Prince and Christopher Robin make me feel. It's some kind of soul-related equivalent of Cogito ergo sum.

I hope that when kids talk to me, they feel the same kind of vague reassurance and relief that I found in the adults who were still largely okay. If they do, then it means I'm right, and I haven't succumbed. One of the worst things I can imagine is that the quality turns out to be imperceptible to those affected. Or maybe not caring would still be worse.

~Stephanie