I’ve been thinking a lot about the many ways technology helps people stay connected from a distance. I connect with people and places via music, so while living abroad, I’ll often stream The Current out of the Twin Cites or WXPR’s Northwoods Cafe out of Wisconsin’s northwoods. These are great ways for me to connect with the Midwest, a place I will always call home. I’m connecting to Grenada too, through music. Two great trends I’ve enjoyed about the music here: 1) popular songs that have been caribbeanized (think Simon & Garfunkel with steel drums), and 2) 80s/90s soft rock and R&B. There is a radio station here that I swear plays Luther Vandross at least 50% of the time. If you’d like to tune into Grenadian radio, I’m a big fan of Radio Garden (also an app), which allows you to stream radio stations from all over the world. You can explore the globe through an interface similar to that of Google Earth, each green dot representing a different radio station. This is how I discovered Interferencia IMER (Instituto Mexicano de la Radio), broadcasting out of Mexico City. I highly recommend it. They play a wonderfully eclectic mix of tunes. It was through Interferencia that I first learned about Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers being traded to the New York Jets. At the time I thought, “How appropriate is it for a Spanish teacher from Wisconsin to get big-time Wisconsin news from a Mexican radio station?”
I also wrote about the moon and how it connects us to one another across great distances.
Stepping out of a life that has become your normal is always a jolting experience. You almost instantly realize all the basic routines and rituals of day-to-day living that you’ve taken for granted. On a deeper level, you physically leave your people, your support network and the relationships that bring you meaning and significance.
One of Angie’s routines in Wausau was teaching yoga on Sunday mornings. So this past Sunday morning we did some yoga poolside, Angie instructing as the pair of us moved and found breath. Angie prompted to think of a word to serve as a mantra that would set the tone for the week. As I gazed out on the gorgeous Grenadian landscape before me, with its mountainous peaks and valleys, all I could think of was the song, “Lonesome Valley,” from the movie, O Brother, Where are Thou?. In low and rolling voices, The Fairfield Four sing:
You got to go to the lonesome valley You got to go there by yourself Nobody else can go for you You got to go there by yourself
This, of course, is a song about death. “Death” — maybe not the best choice for a mantra. But as we continued to do yoga the song’s refrain played out over and over again in my head: you got to go there by yourself. To be clear, I know that I’m not here by myself. I am married after all and I live with Angie in this new place. But the demands of medical school are intense, and the reality is that the past few weeks I’ve spent much of my time alone while Angie is in class or studying. And Grenada is, in fact, and island, the perfect symbol of how I’ve been feeling: isolated and alone.
But I embrace my solitude for the time its mine to bear.I think that being alone is especially beneficial during times like this when you need to adapt to an unfamiliar environment and new community of people. To be alone heightens your senses, allowing you to more acutely observe all that’s going on around you and inside of you. There’s less conversation filling your thoughts and fewer distractions vying for your attention. Solitude affords you the space you need to grow and acclimate. As an introvert, I benefit from my seasons of solitude and even look forward to them.
Music is a great friend to me when solitude loses its luster and fades to loneliness. I like how Jeff Tweedy describes this impact of music in his book, World Within a Song:
Almost all songs function in a way that consoles the listener with a brief but vital companionship. In essence taking the place of another human in the room — another consciousness filling the void of isolation. It’s a tender relationship regardless of a song’s musical nature. From the bleakest black metal to the sweetest pop confection. The power to embrace the lonely is always at the heart of the bargain.
Adjusting to a new life requires patience. Patience and faith that Angie and I will find our people here, and also meaningful moments with one another. Life gets so much more messy and beautiful when you occupy space with others in an intentional way. Real meaning, I believe, is created in community, when the barriers come down and you see people for who they are and they see you. At some point you need to take the risks and get in the game. Engage with life. As Lucy puts it, you need involvement.
Being alone and being in community both inspire growth in their own way. I know that next week is a new week and one that will bring a new mantra.
Anne Lamott’s book, Bird by Bird, is a helpful and honest guide for writing fiction. She pulls back the curtains to confirm what we all already know about writing. It’s hard! Lamott paints the writing process as one riddled with insecurity, self-doubt, and despair. But she does so with a light heart and a whole lot of humor.
Her chapter on jealousy stood out to me as one of the most insightful and one of the funniest. In it she describes a severe bout of jealousy she experienced when a less-skilled writer friend started to have a lot more success than her. She writes:
My therapist said that jealousy is a secondary emotion, that it is born out of feeling excluded and deprived, and that if I worked on those age-old feelings, I would probably break through the jealousy. (…) She said it was once again that business of comparing my insides to other people’s outsides. She said to go ahead and feel the feelings. I did. They felt like shit.
She goes on to detail the small pieces of advice that strung together a solution for her jealousy. I would summarize this string of advice as follows:
Show grace to yourself and others, knowing that we will all die someday
Practice mindfulness to get a little better day by day
Use humor to make negative feelings funny
Accept negative feelings and defuse their impact on you
Talk and write about your feelings
I’m a big believer in using strategies from Stoicism (see “7 Stoic Lessons on Living Life to Its Fullest”) and ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) to overcome any negative emotion that is preventing you from experiencing more fulfillment in life. This is exactly the stuff Lamott used to move past her jealousy. After putting these strategies into practice, she was able to reach a point of compassion for herself and for her friend, with whom she graciously decided to part ways. She writes:
And finally I felt that my jealousy and I were strangely beautiful…
The very day I read this chapter I learned of another resolution to a conflict involving shades of jealousy. In early June, Charli xcx released her album, BRAT. On the song, “Girl, so confusing,” she addresses an unnamed artist and the struggles she experiences in their relationship. Immediately following the song’s release, many speculated that the artist she was referring to was Lorde. This was confirmed when just two weeks later, Charli xcx released a follow-up single, “The girl, so confusing version with lorde.” On the remix, Lorde actually has a verse in which she responds to Charli’s lyrics about their relationship. She responds, in part:
Well, honestly, I was speechless When I woke up to you voice note You told me how you’d been feeling Let’s work it out on the remix You’d always say, “Let’s go out” But then I’d cancel last minute I was so lost in my head And scared to be in the pictures ‘Cause for the last couple years I’ve been at war in my body I tried to starve myself thinner And then I gained all the weight back I was trapped in the hatred And your life seemed so awesome I never thought for a second My voice was in your head
This is still pop music. Such a public display of resolving conflict is going to promote the work of both artists, and as the song suggests, “make the internet go crazy.” But I hear the dialogue between Charli xcx and Lorde as being vulnerable and honest. The very act of putting your work out into the world makes you vulnerable. The song’s subject matter brings me back to what Lamott’s therapist told her about jealousy:
She said it was once again that business of comparing my insides to other people’s outsides.
I try to remind myself on a daily basis that everyone I encounter is experiencing some kind of suffering, even those who appear to be happy and successful. Often times their sufferings are internal and go unnoticed, maybe even to the closest of friends. Knowing this can help us all give one another a bit more grace, reconcile the conflicts that divide us, and ultimately, reach the potential that each of us carries.
I’ve been following Austin Kleon’s work for a while now. I like how he talks about process over product in his book, Show Your Work.
The products of artists we admire and follow are all around us. The process they go through to reach such heights is often a mystery. One reason I like Kleon’s work is that he doesn’t shy away from sharing his process. In fact, sharing his process is kind of his thing.
Lately I’ve been seeing the idea of process, i.e., how artists go about their work and how they find inspiration, crop up everywhere.
In Jeff Tweedy’s book, World Within a Song, he writes about the influence The Beatles Anthology had on his music. I was 15 when the first of the anthology albums was released in 1995. One of the singles for the album was the demo, “Free as a Bird,” a “new” song by the Beatles recorded in 1977. I remember being mesmerized by the song’s video in which you experience the perspective of a bird flying through Beatles history as John Lennon croons about being free.
The Beatles Anthology featured rarities, outtakes, and live performances spanning the Beatles’ career, all providing an insight into their process. Of the anthology, Tweedy writes:
It’s truly hard to overstate how important it was to be given the validation of knowing that even the Beatles struggled, made wrong turns, changed course, and ultimately surrendered to each unsure moment as an invitation to swim in a starlit sky of possibility. I was given permission to sound bad on my way to sounding great by these records. Bad with gusto and an unabashed joyful wonder. No one looks inside and discovers only diamonds and pearls. If art is at least in part an act of discovery, you might as well learn how to enjoy getting lost, too.
My family has a saying that we use when facing difficult times: The struggle is real. Like Tweedy, it’s validating to me to know that other artists, writers, teachers, etc., struggle through their process. It gives me courage and determination to work through my process, with all its imperfections, towards something more beautiful.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eric Wenninger is an educator and writer. He teaches language and culture and writes about his travels through thought and space here.
