wearemostly - Tumblr blog

[wearemostly]

It’s Time for Musical Musings, a.k.a. Mus(ic)ings

When I was 12, I sang in my school talent show. Although it was not an outright failure, the memory of my so-so voice projected through the auditorium haunts me to this day. I just wasn’t great. I had no business belting out “Love Story” in front of all my classmates. I’m no musical expert. I’m not even a musician. There was a brief stint with the violin in fifth grade—that ended after, I’d say, three months—then about a year or so with an electric guitar...that my brother now owns. Needless to say, musical talent is just not a part of my life.

But I love music so much. My education actually began when I stopped playing guitar and started listening. Sickened by the fact that I only listened to pop and a bit of Fall Out Boy (because, what else does a 12-year-old in 2009 listen to?), my now-guitar-playing brother took it upon himself to expand my taste in music. He started with something he liked—hardcore Led Zeppelin, which, sorry, just wasn’t the move at the time. But then he showed me The Beatles. And honestly, my life has never been the same.

I don’t need to wax poetic about how listening to the fab four opened my mind to literally all the incredible music that exists in this world. (But, seriously, it really did). The Beatles are a gateway band for so many people, and I’m more than happy to count myself in that population. Not only were they the uniting factor between me and not one, but two of my romantic relationships, but The Beatles also strengthened my connection to my brother and my father. Okay, so I guess I did need to wax poetic just a little bit.

After I listened and listened and listened, my brother and I journeyed to other bands, other albums, other genres. I didn’t completely abandon pop—a frequent source of eye-rolls for my brother—but I now knew that it wasn’t the end-all-be-all of music. Listen, I won’t pretend I didn’t go through the One Direction phase and scream my head off at my fair share of Taylor Swift concerts. I just did so while also adding a lot of indie rock to my iTunes library (RIP).

And then. Then there was Bob Dylan. When I started listening to Dylan in high school, it was like looking back on a past life, or experiencing some alternate existence I was always meant to have. The king of reinvention, Dylan’s extensive library provided songs for every emotion, be it happy, sad or in between. He made me want to wander Greenwich Village in 1960 with the artists and dreamers. I was on stage with him, going from acoustic to electric, being heckled by angry fans. There was, and still is, plenty I don’t understand—plenty I’m not supposed to—but I felt it all so strongly. 

Blood on the Tracks, in particular, has always meant something more to me. Released in ‘75 as Dylan was dealing with marriage troubles, the album has a folksy, heart twisting vibe I just can’t quit. Although Dylan avoids saying the album’s about his estrangement from his wife—and although I’ve never dealt with something so romantically terrible—I am unavoidably drawn to the vivid stories of love and loss that wind through the tracks.

I’ve also gone through other phases with my music taste. For truly no reason at all, I was a very angry teenager. Honestly, I’m probably just an angry person, but nowadays that anger has just morphed to...weariness. In high school, though, I sought out harder, louder songs to wrap myself in these raging emotions. Teachers ruthlessly unfair? Blasting The Rolling Stones on the ride home will fix that. Boss at work sexist? Let’s see if some Arctic Monkeys will cure that. 

Clearly, music has always been a source of escape. It’s also been a way to cloak myself in feelings, emphasizing and heightening the similar thoughts already in my head. Recently, I’ve dived headfirst back into my devotion to Blood on the Tracks...but on steroids. When the pandemic first kicked off in my life, I hadn’t been as dedicated to any artist or genre in particular. But things got bad (duh) and I felt an innate need to surround myself with this fuzzy, retro, gut-wrenching sound. It started innocently enough, with me playing a combination of Carole King’s Tapestry plus James Taylor over and over again. Then I was researching the best ‘70s chill’ playlists full of folksy singer-songwriter hits and physically could not turn off John Denver.

Fast forward several months and I am...still listening to this playlist on repeat. I’ve tried returning to more modern selections, like Folklore and Haim and Harry Styles, but I keep going back in time. I just can’t get enough of that velvety sound—it’s like your favorite old t-shirt, so soft to the touch and rendered nearly vintage from countless runs through the washer. A warm embrace from your mom or your best friend or your partner after you haven’t seen them in a long time.

It’s not even that I was returning to some of these songs after not listening in months or years. I know that feeling, and it’s a completely different nostalgia—almost uncanny, like you’re reliving your past. It’s not that, because half the songs on this playlist are ones I’d barely ever listened to before. Some are completely new to me. Yet, just like with Bob Dylan, I knew I was always meant to hear this music. It just sits right with my soul.

And I think that’s why I can’t stop listening. Because it’s more than just music, comfort, catharsis—it’s home. In a time when quite literally everything is uncertain, and I’m feeling rootless in an entirely new way, these silky songs give me a sense of belonging. They blanket me in other lives lived and loves lost. I don’t feel so completely alone when I hear Neil Young croon about searching for a heart of gold, or Jim Croce wanting to put time in a bottle. Mama Cass humming about dreams of California can soothe me to sleep every dang night for all I’m concerned. 

It doesn’t really make sense, considering I was born in 1997 and have barely experienced a world separate from 21st century technology, media and speed. But when I hear songs of this genre, this era, I know they belong to me, and I to them. It’s not to say I can’t get along with current songs—I can certainly strut through my neighborhood to Bastille and feel completely in power—but this time-worn playlist hits a different note.

I don’t know if there’s a future where I stop listening to my 70s chill playlist. I kind of, sort of, maybe don’t want it to end. Home is hard to find, whether it’s a person, place or thing, and I’d really like to continue living in this nostalgic bubble—even if it’s not my own nostalgia, not really. But it is my home.

[wearemostly]

source

[wearemostly]

Yes, I Want to Be a Carrie, How Did You Know?

Up until a month ago, I was living with my parents. Like so many of my fellow young twenty-somethings, I fled New York City in March to nestle back into the comfort of my mom cooking dinner and telling me everything will be okay. After living, working and half-surviving on my own for almost a year, it was a hefty demotion (yet immense comfort?) to crawl back into the small shadowy corner of my precious adolescence.

I spent the first six weeks of quarantine working remotely, where, unsurprisingly, WFH has been a frequent topic of discussion in the now never ending pandemic conversation that is life. One particular dinner, which was some deja-vu echo of eight previous quarantine dinners that consisted of frozen vegetables and rice, my dad brought up the virtues of working at home.

“I think we’ll start to see more and more people deciding to work from home permanently, even after this is all over,” he told me and my mom. “I’ve heard from some coworkers that they prefer it, and honestly, I don’t think it’s that bad either!”

A few weeks later, while scrolling through LinkedIn on the perennial job hunt, I came across multiple posts on the future of our work-from-home world. Each praised the ease of the situation—zero commute time, flex hours, freedom for working parents, pantless opportunities. 

But I’d really rather not live in a society where working from home is the norm, okay? I WANT to go out into the world and get dressed up for meetings and sit on a train and eat bland desk lunches and go out for happy hour drinks and feel exhausted at the end of the day. Because it may be tiring and stressful and overwhelming—but it’s rewarding and beautiful and exhilarating, too.

I dreamed for years about what my young working life would look like. I saw Carrie Bradshaw tap-tapping her Manolos through Manhattan’s swankiest bars, and Andy Sachs, strutting her big girl Chanel boots from fashion shoots to art shows in The Devil Wears Prada. I didn’t always picture moving to New York, but I knew that I’d be somewhere metropolitan, doing something creative, wearing something terrific. And I had that, for a short seven months. And it rocked.

And now, I’m writing this from bed while not wearing a bra. And editing it from my couch where I’ve been parked watching Marvel movies for two straight days. Sure, that may sound like a comfort to some—maybe even to the me I was at the start of 2020—but now it’s like a tiny prison of laziness and gluttony. Gone is the young professional excitement I had from attending swanky post-work events or wearing a new blazer to the office.

My dad is a great man and a personal hero, but he’s nearing his fifth decade in the workforce. It’s only natural that after years of the 9-to-5 grind, WFH flexibility is pretty appealing to him. That goes for many others who are decades into their careers, as well as introverts, busy parents, commuters—anyone who finds it easier to work remotely. I fully understand and support having those remote work options for them. It’ll revolutionize their career abilities.

I’m not saying I don’t want flexibility either. I’d love the option to forgo the office occasionally and do my tasks from a coffee shop or my couch or my bed. It’s a great comfort knowing I’ll likely be able to devote ample time to both a family and a career in the future.

But for now, I’ve barely had the chance to experience young professional life. I had the faintest taste of what the world could be before it was snatched away, and I’m not through with that dream yet. I’m sick of not having a real reason to put on pants and not caring that my hair’s been in the same two braids for three days. I don’t want to work from my bed every day. I want to get up and have a life again—and permanent WFH just isn’t a part of that future.

[wearemostly]

[wearemostly]

a good place to self-isolate

[wearemostly]

Yes, I’m a Cancer, How Did You Know?

Home, i.e. my parent’s house, never felt like home after I left for college. At the end of my freshman year I went to live at my aunt’s house for the summer and it was there that I fell into a strange hole that haunted the rest of my college years. A shadow of homesickness followed me wherever I went.

I consistently got myself stuck in a place where I would put all my hope into my next trip back to Austin. I’d arrive back in Texas, throw my bags on the floor of my room and immediately go see all my high school friends. The almost blindingly bright blue color of my walls reflected the eagerness and loudness of a younger Molly, not really meshing with the Molly who’d become An Adult. I’d have dinner at the kitchen table with my family and we’d watch movies after. My homesickness whispered in my ears promises of happiness if I got these moments, but when the moments arrived, the satisfaction never came. More often than not, I’d start to daydream about being back at school — I missed waking up across the room from my best friend, Eva (who happened to also be my roommate — I majorly lucked out), I missed being able to walk everywhere, I missed my friends and my classes and having my own space and kitchen. Madison, Wisconsin was my new home! 

My college experience could be mapped out and charted not by the classes I took or the friends I hung out with or stopped hanging out with but with the cycles of missing home that I went through. Like clockwork, as soon as my environment changed, my perspective shifted and I was dissatisfied, lonely, and upset being wherever I was. The worst part was that each place I was also came with really fun memories and great conversations, which made it that much worse. I felt guilty for not being happy or grateful enough. 

Senior year consisted of me just being excited to move back to Texas. Finally, after four years, I was headed back to what I considered home. And I was going to live at home, with my parents, so I’d make up all the lost family time that I’d missed. 

I drove for two days and dropped my bags on the floor of my too-bright room, same as always. The posters I had hung in high school — one of a bear, one of Stevie Nicks, another a map of Austin — hung on the walls as they had for years. The rose-patterned comforter I always craved snuggling up with was sitting on my bed, pillows against the headboard. This was it, this was home. 

It took me all but a few weeks to realize that this wasn’t going to work. Nothing about being home felt right. I painted my room a color aptly named “Moon White” and rearranged my desk to face the window, so I could see all the green of our front yard. The belongings I collected and gathered in college — a gray and white striped tablecloth that I historically draped over any dresser I had, a bunny lamp, all of my books — slowly assimilated with the pre-existing furniture of the room. The Molly I had come to know had surfaced into the room and then, suddenly, I inched towards feeling at home. 

There was a missing piece to the feeling of being at home that I was chasing. A house isn’t a home until you’re there and you’re comfortable and at peace. I was searching high and low for external situations to make me feel at ease — if I see this person that I miss, if I go to this coffee shop back in Austin that I’ve always loved, if I get back to school and see all my friends, then I’ll be happy. 

One core trait of mine has always been to put all my eggs in a basket that is not my own. I daydream feverishly about an ideal future situation, instead of easily enjoying the current moment. I always want to know what is happening next — what are we doing tomorrow, next week, three weeks from now? How will things look in a year? I had always wanted to spend every waking moment with someone else, to give them my attention and time because I don’t think I ever knew how to give it to myself. 

My eggs still lay in another distant basket but I pluck a few out for my own basket every once in a while. My mind still tends to be future-oriented, but I can’t say that I’d love to spend every waking moment with someone else now. That first summer in college, my first away from home, I learned what loneliness looked like. I spent a lot of time with my extended family there but I also spent a lot of time on my own, wandering the woods or sitting under trees all alone. It sucked! But it was also kind of cool. That’s how learning goes, I guess. I eventually came to know and love being by myself. There is no better salve for the depletion of my energy by the outside world than to shut my bedroom door at the end of the day. 

My partner, Jacob, and I have just moved in together. We also took the biggest leap we could and moved away from our respective homes in Texas to move to Hawaii. I’ve been struggling in an odd way — this small cottage we’re in feels much more like home than any other place has felt in the past few years. It’s confusing because I hate having to figure out how to adjust my routine, whatever it may be, to fit a new space. This transition has been the easiest I’ve ever had. All of the newness of moving in with a partner for the first time, plus moving so far away, plus being on an island, plus being on an island with a lot of cool new things I’ve never seen before should be a recipe for a spiraling meltdown. What gives? 

The new, scary things that should be sending me running are no match for what I’ve found in the past few years. I’ve figured out what it means to be at home, not in a physical place but in my little heart of hearts. I’ve also found someone who has always known what that looks like for them and knows what that would look like for me. We are a perfect team of little homes. 

IKEA’s 2018 Life at Home Report surveyed 22,000 people from 22 different countries — across four territories — to see how they defined home. They found that there are five emotional needs that go into creating a home: privacy, security, comfort, ownership, belonging. 

Sure, at times, my different residences were lacking one or more of these things, probably contributing to my unease. But realistically? There were certainly times when I lacked one or a few or all of these things for myself. If I, the walking, talking, traveling meat vessel home for my soul lacks these things, then no physical place will have them for me either. 

My homesickness was never for any place in particular. It was for another world, one where I knew what home looked like in my mind and in my body. Any other place is simply a nice means to an end. A nice new shell on the same meaty and tender crab.

[wearemostly]

Welcome, Friends

Hi hello hey howdy, it’s your unbeknownst-to-you best friends, Molly & Cassie. We like books and we like to write and we like to write about books, among other things. 

And this fact — the fact that we do also enjoy writing about other things — is why we like to call ourselves “Mostly.” We mostly want to write about books but we will most definitely write about some other things too. Cool? Cool! 

A little bit more about each of us: 

Molly loves tchotchkes and clutter, but organized. Everything must be in its rightful place and finding a place for all her random shit is her life’s most wonderful puzzle. She also enjoys puzzles — Sudoku being the best and most entertaining to her little brain. She lives in Austin, Texas and enjoys the food and sunshine there. She writes on Medium too. 

Cassie goes through an identity crisis on the daily, which makes short-and-sweet intros about herself rather difficult. Like Molly, she is a chaotic mess, but neat. Puzzles are also kryptonite to her, particularly crosswords and jigsaws, but Sudoku is a worthy competitor. She lives in New York, New York, which is absolutely terrifying for her to admit. She enjoys the food and dislikes the greasy trash fire that is Manhattan. She writes on her website too (haha, jokes).

Yeehaw!