Warm Recollections #27

More from the Bitz Files

As introduced here, these Warm Recollections are random cullings from thirty years of notes files…

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It’s striking how hard it is to recognize ourselves in photos, when we have (in our generation) seen so very many of them, and also see ourselves in the mirror every day. Even harder is recognizing yourself on video. It’s very odd to be reminded what you look like. It doesn’t feel like who you are. And of course all the people that you look at doubtless feel the same. Perhaps why we look to the eyes as a window to the soul, as our physical form is almost always an unavoidable disguise.

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Emotional auto-immune deficiency: one event/thought/feeling causing the whole system to turn on itself, attacking parts that were working perfectly well before.

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Interesting to reflect upon the fact that in French ‘to worry’ is a reflexive verb. Ne t’inquiéte pas. And this is how it is, of course: you worry yourself, or allow yourself to worry — sometimes, let’s face it, you indulge yourself in worrying.

Worrying can be a comfort, a habit and hobby, an escape valve for the anxiety which seems to build up in so many of us. The upside being that, perhaps, once this is realized you can choose not to worry, too. You can not worry yourself.

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Sometimes I hear songs for the first time and they make me cry, immediately, from some deep, wrenching place inside, and I wonder if it’s because I know, somehow, that they will become part of my life and I’ll be listening to them when I lie in my coffin and they’re played at my funeral, on the mix tape I leave behind for the wake.

I acknowledge that that’s a bit fucking depressing.

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Nothing makes a place feel like home so much as the prospect of leaving it.

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