Theme
6:41am December 27, 2014
Crater Lake, Oregon.  I know it looks like I’m sitting in front of a giant postcard, but this is a real place, and a beautiful one.  Unfortunately, I rarely got to experience the beauty of such places firsthand.  Travel filled up my brain so heavily with new visual experiences that it was all I could do not to scream or collapse by the end of the day.  It’s only when places get pushed back into my long-term memory, and all the sensory pieces reassembled bit by bit in some kind of warehouse in my head that they don’t let me see directly, that I can actually enjoy a totally new place without feeling like my head will explode.  Often my memories of a place are much better than my direct experience of a place at the time, and this is why. Unfortunately, there are times when my brain gets so full and so overloaded that nothing can put the pieces back together again, ever.  And then i’m just left with the original sensory experience s my only memory of the place.

Crater Lake, Oregon.  I know it looks like I’m sitting in front of a giant postcard, but this is a real place, and a beautiful one.  Unfortunately, I rarely got to experience the beauty of such places firsthand.  Travel filled up my brain so heavily with new visual experiences that it was all I could do not to scream or collapse by the end of the day.  It’s only when places get pushed back into my long-term memory, and all the sensory pieces reassembled bit by bit in some kind of warehouse in my head that they don’t let me see directly, that I can actually enjoy a totally new place without feeling like my head will explode.  Often my memories of a place are much better than my direct experience of a place at the time, and this is why.

Unfortunately, there are times when my brain gets so full and so overloaded that nothing can put the pieces back together again, ever.  And then i’m just left with the original sensory experience s my only memory of the place.

8:24pm July 24, 2014

fruityplant:

nomnomnom! hungry banana slug devouring a leaf.

9:54pm February 28, 2012

T R Kelley playing part of Yellow Moon, and then talking. No captions and I don’t know of any transcript available.

I don’t know if it’s that she was at least for awhile based out of where my grandmother was born, although I didn’t know it till my mom asked me what part of Oregon she was from. Or whether I heard a musician with a similar vocal quality in infancy. But something about her music, especially the “Odd Birds” album with the Raventones, reminds me of my origins and belonging almost as much as redwoods do. And of a place where the world constantly told me I belonged.

So when I’m as freaked out and disconnected as I have been since the opening, I use her music to reconnect me.

Oh yeah and she’s autistic and has an incredibly detailed form of absolute pitch. (I technically have absolute pitch, and was in a study of it, but mine isn’t anywhere near as accurate as hers.) As I recall she was a self-taught musician but I don’t remember.

I strongly recommend all her music but especially “Odd Birds”. This song and many other really great ones are on that album. I can’t really pick a favorite. I don’t understand all the words (and can’t find lyrics online) but that doesn’t seem to matter at all in terms of liking it. And her voice just instantly makes me feel like the world is familiar.