This week I battle to stave off stagnation. This day I sit in front of two screens, my ears sparking full of music to spontaneously combust to. I shake the familiar restlessness down my sleeves to the cuffs but it never falls out, just hangs there like weight bands around my wrists. This hour I question my motives, my motivations; I contemplate my dreams, both self-constructed and those scissored into my head as I sleep. This minute I cough up words, try to make sense of it all, just to still my quaking limbs. This second I blink and breathe, knowing that sometimes that’s all there is to do.
All posts in category restlessness
a prelude
Acrid winds from the past barely flutter past these days. It’s been longer than I can remember stillness such as this. Meditation in the moment comes more easily and more frequently, not always lacking in blackened tinges, but welcome nonetheless. And yet the rudderless voyage remains: the spinning in place, the lack of any one singular focus. I can’t ever tell if this is just my fate or my fatal flaw. The present state is not a bitter complacency such as I’ve tasted before, but still I feel tugs and yanks from deeper, richer corners of my psyche: roiling wells that have been tapped before and bubble over in anticipation of release again.
Posted by sean on January 27, 2009
https://sd-stewart.com/2009/01/27/a-prelude/
No. 13 Baby
The last couple of minutes of this Pixies song describes so many moments of my life. Or maybe it actually starts ten seconds or so later, when the electric guitar kicks in, and that melody washes over and over again, crashing through saltwater thoughts, receding then after melting through all that hard-packed sand on the shore of my outer consciousness. There’s another song that is like this for me…Built to Spill’s “Kicked It In The Sun”….the last three minutes or so….swirling guitar and staccato drums at odds with each other, yet still working together to translate into feelings what words cannot ever seem to do. It’s always music that’s the savior…smoothing out the sharp edges…making sense of that which cannot be explained using the blunt tools of language. As Black Francis sings, “I’m in a state…I’m in a state…I’m in a state…”
Posted by sean on December 3, 2008
https://sd-stewart.com/2008/12/03/no-13-baby/
creation story
the song “creation story” on the lungfish album “rainbows from atoms” defies description. it is one of those songs that gives me goosebumps every time i hear it. while i enjoy watching daniel higgs simultaneously play the mouth harp and the dulcimer, i can’t help but feeling he was totally and completely in his element when he wrote this song. it is a pinnacle of musical achievement.
a lyrical excerpt: “the people bound their feet with the skins of the animals to trample their own cities and each other. they developed external organs like guns and television sets. they believed that they owned things.”
descriptive words and phrases for today: trepidation, apprehension, fluctuation, strained and stretched, mixed up, thick with heavy dreams, disenchanted, disequilibrated, thought-provoked, facing forward on unsteady legs.
Posted by sean on July 28, 2008
https://sd-stewart.com/2008/07/28/creation-story/
>restless
>With the advent of warm weather comes old familiar stirrings: leave routines behind, stay out late, seek adventure. It was a long cold hibernation and now I crave stimulation in every way. Been daydreaming about an organic farming apprenticeship at this place lately. Coming up on three years here and the three-year-itch is in full effect, I guess. [note: three-year-itch refers to my tendency to only stay in one geographical location for three years]
Posted by sean on May 1, 2008
https://sd-stewart.com/2008/05/01/restless/
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