a few days ago there was a trending tag on twitter called “calm down a band” whose purpose was basically to make a play on aggressive- or energetic-sounding band names. with #zest and #gusto (and #exhaustion and #procrastination), i gave it a shot, making some up, watching the tag, favoriting and retweeting the best i saw, until it hit me, in a moment of clarity:
taylor swift. swift.
this is genius. i started diving through digital thesauri trying to find calm-down synonyms for “swift”. oh yes, i thought to myself. this is good. and original.
eight searches and no luck later, the thought first occurred to me that maybe, just possibly, someone had already thought to make a play on the name of one of the biggest pop stars in modern music.
oh right. uh, #nvm!
i tell this story, not only because i find my life on twitter kinda ridiculous, but also because it sets up the original dangerously worn territory we are about to step into: reflections on new year’s. on december 31st.
if you just had the reflexive urge to change browser tabs, i understand. the fact that you are still reading this is a testament to your patience with rehashed and re-rehashed topics, and for that i salute you.
new year’s matters only as a touchstone or turning point moment if you want it to. i said that two years ago, and i stick with it today: the “landmark moments only matter because we remember them”, including birthdays, anniversaries, and new year’s celebrations.
but as i get older, i realize that landmark moments are becoming less and less substantial. i’m feeling data overload because everything seems to be happening so quickly and feels like it’s getting smashed together, without chance for introspection, moralizing, or response.
i recovered from my old stuff a poem which i wrote sort of as a philosophizing joke about the way we depend upon landmarks, even landmark seconds, to be the bluffs onto which we herd our expectations. oddly now it resonates with me much more than it did when i wrote it.
hypercolor #7: ticks I saw a clock that didn’t tick But rather, in a quantum smear It spread the seconds evenly In gliding, silent motion clear My gaze pursued the gliding hand Just angling for a time to touch To put at rest a moment’s plan And make another plan to clutch But the pause never came. Drifting along, the sweep, unthinking, swept me on
this is what my life increasingly feels like these days. the weeks, semesters, and years whip by in a frenetic stupor, and when i try to look back on the year, i see six hundred thousand things that i can’t connect into a single narrative of “stage-of-life”. there were things triumphant, terrible, tenacious, titillating, traumatic, tedious, & troublesome.
how do we deal with this? how do i deal with this?
the truth is, as we get older, our journeys become things that are more significant than a new year’s flip-of-the-switch, a birthday passing, an anniversary observed. we no longer have just “one thing” that is going on, to which we can easily assign some kind of value and reflect upon our greater development. our lives are meshes of bold risks and backslides, and if we wait until two, three, or four times in every year to look back and consider, we will have missed out on so many opportunities for growth.
here’s a resolution for next year: stop and think more. seek silence. reflect weekly, not bianually. don’t let yourself barrel unthinkingly through your own existence, only stopping when cultural ritual demands.
if we do that, perhaps we will stop having to make so many new year’s resolutions.
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