From 649adc8ceea6437ad188cacabab0d48ab9d27577 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake" Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2020 23:03:50 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] "I Tell": breakup song choice footnote --- ...-end-or-a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md | 10 +++++++++- 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/content/drafts/i-tell-myself-to-let-the-story-end-or-a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md b/content/drafts/i-tell-myself-to-let-the-story-end-or-a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md index 0d29fe8..f25dd3a 100644 --- a/content/drafts/i-tell-myself-to-let-the-story-end-or-a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md +++ b/content/drafts/i-tell-myself-to-let-the-story-end-or-a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md @@ -14,7 +14,15 @@ Status: draft > > —Sara Barellies, ["Gonna Get Over You"](https://genius.com/Sara-bareilles-gonna-get-over-you-lyrics) -I haven't been doing so well for a lot of the last ... um, thirteen-plus months? I mean, I've always been a high-neuroticism person, but this has probably been a below-average year even by my standards, with hours of lost sleep, occasional crying bouts, _many, many_ hours of obsessive ruminating-while-pacing instead of doing my dayjob, and too long [with](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF18bz2j5PM) [a](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hny1prRDE3I) [Sara](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUe3oVlxLSA) [Barellies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emdVSVoCLmg) [song](https://youtu.be/jZMQ0OKVO80?t=112) on loop to numb the pain. I've been reluctant to write about it in too much detail for poorly-understood psychological reasons. Maybe it would feel too much like attacking my friends? +I haven't been doing so well for a lot of the last ... um, fifteen-ish months? I mean, I've always been a high-neuroticism person, but this has probably been a below-average year even by my standards, with hours of lost sleep, occasional crying bouts, _many, many_ hours of obsessive ruminating-while-pacing instead of doing my dayjob, and too long [with](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF18bz2j5PM) [a](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hny1prRDE3I) [Sara](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUe3oVlxLSA) [Barellies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emdVSVoCLmg) [song](https://youtu.be/jZMQ0OKVO80?t=112) [on](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqamOOSdeHs) loop to numb the pain.[^breakup] I've been reluctant to write about it in too much detail for poorly-understood psychological reasons. Maybe it would feel too much like attacking my friends? + +[^breakup]: I'm proud of my choice of breakup songs. My breakup song with institutionalized schooling was Taylor Swift's ["We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA4iX5D9Z64), a bitter renunciation of an on-again-off-again relationship ("I remember when we broke up / The first time") with a ex who was distant and condescending ("And you, would hide away and find your peace of mind / With some indie record that's much cooler than mine"), thematically reminiscent of my ultimately degree-less string of [bad](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2012/07/trying-to-buy-a-lamp/) [relationships](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2012/12/draft-of-a-letter-to-a-former-teacher-which-i-did-not-send-because-doing-so-would-be-a-bad-idea/) [with](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2012/12/a-philosophy-of-education/) [UC Santa Cruz](https://www.ucsc.edu/) (2006–2007), [Heald College](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heald_College) (2008), [Diablo Valley College](https://www.dvc.edu/) (2010–2012), and [San Francisco State University](https://www.sfsu.edu/) (2012–2013). + + My breakup song with my should've-been-best-friend-forever "Elmer", also by Taylor Swift, was ["The Story of Us"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN6VR92V70M), about the pain of not being on speaking terms with someone with someone you thought you were destined to be with, like how I felt when Elmer refused to see me for a year because of status/money tensions ("How I was losing my mind when I saw you here / But you held your pride like you should've held me") that were _another_ incredibly boring and petty story, but one which I don't need to blog about. + + The song accompanying the story recounted in this post, Sara Bareilles's ["Gonna Get Over You"](https://genius.com/Sara-bareilles-gonna-get-over-you-lyrics) is about trying to move on from a relationship that was wanted but ... didn't work out. + + The fact that I've invested so much symbolic significance in carefully-chosen songs by female vocalists to mourn relationships with one male friend and two abstract institutional perceived-authorities, and conspicuously _not_ for any relationships with _actual women_, maybe tells you something about how my life has gone. But this blog is not about _not_ attacking my friends. This blog is about the truth. For my own sanity, for my own emotional closure, I need to tell the story as best I can. If it's an _incredibly boring and petty_ story about me getting _unreasonably angry_ about philosophy-of-language minutiæ, well, you've been warned. If the story makes me look bad in the reader's eyes (because you think I'm crazy for getting so unreasonably angry about philosophy-of-language minutiæ), then I shall be happy to look bad for _what I actually am_. (If _telling the truth_ about what I've been obsessively preoccupied with all year makes you dislike me, then you probably _should_ dislike me. If you were to approve of me on the basis of _factually inaccurate beliefs_, then the thing of which you approve, wouldn't be _me_.) -- 2.17.1