Remember When I Was a Babe?

Here is a poem by William Blake:

I have no name,

I am but two days old

What shall I call thee?

I happy am,

Joy is my name.

Sweet joy befall thee!

Pretty joy!

Sweet joy about two days old.

Sweet joy I call thee;

Thou dost smile.

I sing the while-

Sweet joy befall thee.

Since I was about 14 years old, I've really had an obsession with childhood, particular the innocence of childhood. When I think back to listening to the Titanic soundtrack in the back of my dad's black Mercedes convertible and daydreaming about some boy I'd seen on TV, I truly start to cry, because every thing has become so much harder. I look at pictures of myself, or see kids when I'm running errands, and I want to pick them up, hold them, and ask them to never grow up. The older you get the less immune you become to witnessing other peoples' pain, like you were slowly regaining sight after a period of being blind, and what you see is not what you had expected at all. I think I'm at an interesting age because I'm being pulled in two directions: retreating towards the past, and flying forward to the future at light speed. Every thing is uncertain at this point, and I know that over the past couple years I've earned some scars, scars that mean the innocence of childhood are fading away. Some of it has been stolen by people and things in my life without permission, boys who break your heart and make you jaded, or watching your parents cry and suffer from the hardships of a long life, or the death of a loved one. I never gave permission for life to make me grow up so fast, I never said anyone could take my innocence away from me. Yet, I realize that, although my innocence is mine, it is completely on the surface of me, and I can't control what comes of it as it weathers and chips and cracks. It makes me sad. A lot of the time. Because I am a control freak, and I wish I had a say in how fast time is going by. I only wish.

xoxo

M for Music

My musical story is a cliche that includes me singing Reflection from Mulan on a weekly basis in front of my whole family at 7 years old. I was always a musician, always wrote music and sang, always knew it was what I wanted to do with my life. I recorded an EP, played locally, and kept pushing myself to pump out songs factory style. I never thought I'd ever burn out of it because it was the biggest emotional outlet in my life, and it used to be the only thing that made me feel powerful and purposeful. But these days I fear the worst, writers block in a permanent way, like maybe I worked to hard over the past five years and didn't let myself have enough fun with it. That could be the effect of writing alone, exclusively, and about heartbreak, exclusively. I just miss being inspired. My dream is to be in a giant house with a group of people who love music as much as I do, and who have an unbelievable amount of passion, drive, ambition, and LOVE for having fun while making music. I want to write music again from that place I once used to, where I was giving all I had and putting into a song. Where did that love go?

I think it's just an inherent part of all the changes my life is experiencing in life.

Everything's got to stop shifting before I can focus my energy on any one thing.

That's the hypothesis.

Anyway, on a happier and funkier note, here is an AMAZING song by an AMAZING band called HAIM (rhymes with rhyme)

Let's dance.

xoxo Yaz

I'm always looking for myself in things. In books, in films, in songs. There are many different "me's" that I look for. Potential me's, current me's, who I was before. And there are always these iconic characters that I think most of us have found ways to identify with in one way or another. The eccentric Sam in Garden State (Natalie Portman), Clem from Eternal Sunshine (Kate Winslet), Gatsby, and so many more. It doesn't matter how much our worlds truly do collide, we are always seeing through the looking glass self, always searching for a way to connect ourselves to every experience. So imagine watching Sharon Stone, hand in hand with DeNiro, walking down the steps of a private jet in an electric blue skirt suit in the iconic Casino for the first time. Priceless. The minute you start to wonder what it would feel like to be a blonde, hustling, femme-fatale. I think for today I could get lost in that world.

I love fashion week. I wish I were at fashion week. But I'm thankful for the internet, and how it allows me to sit alone in my room and drool over Rag and Bone, Rebecca Minkoff, and so much more. Also, it really is a good time to scour the internet for great street style.

How amazing is this handmade ring I bought on Etsy?! It's becoming clear to me that i'm obsessed with triangles (i.e. my tattoo, a stack of three).

(I take no credit for any of these photos except the one with my new brass, triangle ring that I ordered from RawEarthStudios on Etsy. It's handmade!)

Secondhand Rose

I am good at thrifting. No, I am pathetically good at it. When I start to feel like I'm drowning in the banalities of every day life, the first thing I do is head to the teeny, tiny shopping center near home that is solely dedicated to housing the antiquities and remnants of cute, little old ladies whose earlobes have sagged past the point of wearing gaudy clip on earrings. I love sifting through dusty racks of clothes, even though they smell like a wet sponge that's been sitting out too long, and keeping my eyes peeled for the most ridiculous of the undesirables. Those pink velvet lined jewelry containers hold all the dearest, over-the-top pieces that probably, in the prime of their lives, proved lucrative to their owners. Maybe got them a few dates or a hot make-out session in the back of a Chevy. Each item in that store has a story, each of them ended up in these temporary homes of transition, only to end up in the greedy hands of each of us, searching for something to give meaning to. To ressurect. It's beautiful. It's a little weird, like the dark side of consumerism, but it's a paradox. And a lovely one at that.

Dear, Lena

I don't want to be another shadow on your wall.

I want to LIVE. The problem is, what does that even mean?

It's sort of like losing weight. If you just focus on the numbers, and how ten steps forward ends you three steps back, it can seem like an impossible surface to cross. So you made a leap, then you messed up, and now you are lying on your floor listening to Call It Off by Tegan and Sara and licking cake crumbs off your face...again.

That's why I love Lena Dunham's TV show, Girls, so much, I think. Because it makes me feel better about embracing my insecurities and failures, well, perhaps embrace is too generous, but co-exist with could work.

I have to learn to be fine with the fact that sometimes I will go to school wearing a backwards baseball cap and hot pink lipstick and feel an unwarranted amount of sexy. Or that I can wear my Huck Finn novel on my head like a hat, forget about it, then have my professor remind me, and my whole class, in the MIDDLE of his lecture.

Even if every thing confuses me, I still feel OK about it most days because It keeps me curious, it keeps me moving, because I don't have my bearings and that freaks me out, so I move. I move and move and move and run into people and inanimate objects. I forget to moisturize, and spend what little money I have on black turtlenecks and Astrology For Dummies. But it's all in good fun.

This blog is a direct reflection of where I'm at right now in my life. So exhausted from 19 years of over thinking, and feeling embarrassed by myself constantly. I'm just tired of it. Life is messy, and I think by now it's socially acceptable to live that mess with a bit of freedom. It is, after all, a part of the skin we're in.

xoxo Yaz

Tonight

Here is a poem. Because for once in my life, I don't have too many thoughts in my head.

Always we pull our shoulders back

Stand up straight so they know,

"Know what?"

There is no outline

Only a glimmer of who

you should be

When the lights go off

and you're standing behind a

white sheet

Shadows, shadows

Is that all that you are?

My shadow

My shadow

Is that all that you are?