Where have you been?

Where have I been?

The same place for the past few years. Feeling the same. With good days and bad days.

Today started as a bad day. With that feeling of dread, it was so strong, as it hasn't been in a while. I couldn't control it. It started last night. I felt like the car took off without me, leaving the music and laughter of the day behind (will get to the music later). Conversation was muffled, anything I said floated out of someone far away.

 It happens often now that stress disappears (my phone prompted me with the word disorder) at the end of a day like a short term memory, a phone number you didn't write down. I feel it leaking out of me and I feel like it happened to someone else. The past few months have been like that, full working weeks, dreaming of fuck ups and clients. Don't mind my disjointedness, I'm a few pegs of after dark down. But it always comes back.

The dread appeared last night and hounded my dreams and didn't leave. I was reading Viv Albertine's book (which I recommend to everyone, specially men, but I don't know a single one I could give it to who would read it) and her pain and confusion and utter lack of a self in the middle stage of her life made me tear up in the metro, it resonated with me and I couldn't stop feeling flushed, I had to read David Byrne's How Music Works and listen to Hole because Courtney's voice makes me feel defiant and strong. I felt completely alone, like no one cares about my life, like I don't care about my life, like I'm going nowhere, like I'm trying to avoid becoming a photograph in someone else's head (there's a story here, about a photograph where I look amazing - with a long neck, porcelain skin, big eyes, a sideways gaze, a mysterious half smile. It looks nothing like me, its instagram me, doesn't feel like me, I'll never be the girl in that photograph. But it was taken by someone who possibly imagines me to be that girl, even if just in flashes.  They, at least by the little experience, should know I'm not that girl, but choose to ignore it. It makes me feel powerless. Even if they don't feel that way about me, that gaze, that photograph makes me feel powerless. Like I don't control who I am or what I communicate to people)

So, where was I?

Yeah, so I feel like I'm caught in a place where I'm just managing little disasters everday, trying not to fuck up or disappoint and not building myself into the person I fantasize about being. The fearless, outspoken, naturally gifted, unafraid of fuckups person. I understand Viv because even though I didn't ever do anything as crazy and brave as her, I relate to her confusion and lack of confidence.

I'm stuck stuck stuck. I'm sorry I've been so repetitive all these years but I'm stuck.  I'm trying to be honest here, I don't have a single idea in my head and that's my job but I have nothing new to say. I'm the same fucking banal self involved individual who is waiting to be relevant, to be understood, 'waiting for the disaster of my personality to be interesting again and modern' or whatever it is Frank O Hara said. 

Sometimes when I'm out there and moving fast and being exceedingly polite I stop and listen. I want to hear stories, that's what I love, listening to someone else's story and feeling like you're looking through someone else's eyes. (My friend A, who is one of the few people who I feel really hears me, and I were having #intense conversations and I told him that the only way I think anything in the world will change is through real human interactions, where you see into another person's headspace)

I want to collect the stories. I want to devour them all because  I don't feel like I can create any, or that I have one of my own.

Some of my friends returned from the hills last month and were excitedly making plans of going away again soon, starting cafes, schools etc. And me, a year younger, felt incredibly depressed. Like I had to get the fuck out of that conversation, that I would never get out of this place that I'm stuck in because I won't let myself.

Reading back on this I feel I have to get back to the music, because you must be getting bored of my boredom. I went to Weekender, it was happy but not as happy as the past few times. Less stages.  The good - F16s (most polished indie band this year? And they have their crunchy edge and their sorta Bloc Party guitars but polished as in they sound tight, like they are really on game, loved it), The Supersonics (got lost in the indie jangly guitars. Sanchal from Superfuzz came on for one song and I lost myself in the guitars), Ragu Dixit, Songhoy Blues (happy dancey stuff) , Amit Trivedi (the only song I could bear to listen to all day today was Shubh Arambh from Kai Po Che, because we did garba to it last night in the crowd and I felt happy as one can only feel when dancing with one's friends). I missed Hoirong (only heard Bajrang Bali from the box office) who I really wanted to see but their tshirts were so bad I realized I'd never wear them. But I loved the first album. Dandhaniya is good, in a more dancey way. But Princess whoever and her Vampire hound posse is all I want to listen to sometimes.  Nucleya was shit, couldn't stand it. Last years dance music was so much better. Skrat I only heard a bit, which was sort of teenagish punky stuff.

Fuck the music. I'm done. This is all you're getting. Everytime I feel like writing, I feel too tired at the end of the day, and I want to get rid of whatever it is that I  feel like writing about so I just drown it in Buzzfeed or something irrelevant till its time I'm about to fall asleep. My stop's almost here. I know I'm going to regret posting this immediately, but whatever, there are so few of you and I don't really care if you know how useless I am.