Language

First off, has it really been six weeks since the last time I posted?

Knocks has been extraordinarily time-consuming, in great but unexpected ways. My phrase these days is, "I accidentally started a business!" My desire to write music journalism and provide a place for others to do so turned into a really cool magazine that I actually do have to view as a business for many reasons. Crazy! So, in a sense, I'm a businesswoman now!

Anyway, I was terribly overwhelmed with Knocks but figured out a way to organize the work and my time more efficiently and am no longer freaking out and am actually able to keep track of everything. Thanks again, DKSimon.

Which doesn't at all mean I'm working on it less. I'm still working a ton but in a much more relaxing yet efficient manner. I'm also still enjoying the coffee shop and start tutoring a new child in two weeks, a middle-schooler with dyslexia. I love the combination of all these different types of work! Whoever created this whole 40 hours a week from 9-5 in the same place thing really got it wrong.

Midst the various types of work, I've fallen behind on my fiction but am still chugging along. I've also been making time for puppy play and leisurely reading (part of organizing my time and work on Knocks was also setting aside time for fun stuff, like watching Basil go on a humping rampage at the dog park -- it's his adolescent phase), and am currently reading Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy, a poet turned autobiographer. It's a true story of her childhood battle with cancer that left her missing half a jaw for the rest of her life, written beautifully and insightfully and thought-provokingly. One sentence she wrote in the section about the day after her first big surgery where they removed the tumor along with the majority of her jaw (she was nine), making speech extremely difficult and making her emotions hard to express without the physical hurdle, particularly stood out to me:

"Language provides us with ways to express ever subtler levels of meaning, but does that imply language gives us meaning, or robs us of it when we are at a loss to name things?"

This is such an interesting statement, because it's almost like a catch-22. My first reaction was, "Obviously we have meaning and emotions without language, so neither is true." But then I realized that expressing your emotions and thoughts to others, and even to yourself, requires some form of language. I think in English, or Spanish when in Ecuador. I figure out what I'm feeling and thinking through putting it into words. No one knows my personal experiences without my expressing them in language. So does language give us meaning to these mere impulses and internal surges, do our emotions and thoughts remain useless and empty until we express them in language, or do we have these developed feelings and thoughts and are restricted by the need to express them through language?

It's tricky to separate. I like thinking about phrases like this.

I also like just sitting and not thinking, zoning out to a truly great song. I'm currently listening to Dr. Dog's album Fate, and for those of you who haven't heard it, go download now. It's good music, and it's calling me.

'Til next month, or hopefully sooner.

Knocks is up!!

My apologies once again to "From KY to NY." I do enjoy you, though you are on the back burner at this moment, because...

Knocks From the Underground is a real live blog now! Ta-da! Will and I are so very excited to share this with ya'll. Please check it out, leave comments and let us know what you think. Woooooooo!

Happy New Year to everyone, and Happy Holidays in general. Dave and I had a great Eve, watching good live music at a masquerade party at this new art/performance space called Cameo. It was small and there was no art on the walls, but I think there will be in the future. The sound mix was also pretty bad, but I imagine that will improve (I think last night was their first show). Overall, good fun but odd place.

We just got back two days ago from a quick week in Kentucky, visiting with both sides of my huge family and squeezing in some play time with the Baize family. Their father was my high school English teacher and I babysat for the kids throughout high school, since their first child was about one, all the way through the birth of their fourth. These kids are so amazing, I can't even explain how cool it is to be in touch with a family and watch them all grow up. We also got to see James Kurk Vertigo, hearkening the old days by meeting up at the trusty Dairy Queen (my brother's first job). We went bowling at the old school alley also from my youth, run my the same old man who somehow never looks any older. We got in some awesome daily Granny time (including a remarkable patch-up of the hole Basil ate in a quilt she made for me), Christmas fun with stockings, presents, entirely too many cookies and Mom's whole side of the family (all very sweet, loving people -- it was good). Max and Kelly in snippets, the biggest Firesheets get together since my grandma's funeral, a very strange night in a Louisville bar that actually had a jerk-off room upstairs (ewwwwwwww), delicious dinners that everyone else paid for, and many hours on the road with my goofy dog in my lap (though he did sleep in the back for part of it...he's learning). Overall, we loved KY.

And now we're back in the hectic city, but weirdly the busyness makes me feel at home and relaxed. It's somehow comforting that there's always something going on, always somewhere to go or something to do, even though I'm cozy in my apartment. Oh New York, it's totally addicting.

P.S. Don't forget to check out Knocks!