12minds.com

Tomorrow marks this site’s fifth birthday.

Five years ago I moved to Nanjing and the intention of the site was to document the adventures, every-day experiences, and thoughts of my time spent on a continent, country, and city whose language, customs, and culture could be so very different than my own.

I learned that kind people are found everywhere; that the good thing about globalization is that I could walk into a McDonald’s anywhere in the world, head to the cash register, point my index finger to the sky, and the cashier would nod, smile, and give me a big mac meal (See Also: bad things about globalization); and that time – in and of itself – solves nothing, but that it requires intention, growth, will, and action to change.

And so I wrote. Through the writing and actual action – with enough miles and pages between the now and then – I hope I have changed and grown.

But somewhere along the line I stopped writing for myself. This site was never so much a conversation between reader and writer, but more of an internal monologue. The thought being that throwing everything out on the page would allow me to filter through, sift it all, and figure out what’s true.

Tell enough stories, talk about enough songs, find the appropriate metaphors, and the underlying truths will be made clear.

But it’s only as effective as the truth, song, and story that’s put on the page; there has been too little truth and too much editing. The metaphors and analogies are too convoluted to be effective or discernible and I can no longer descry the foundations in the gloaming.

If part of growth and the process is knowing when to stop, then this is me growing and processing. End of line.

It’s not an easy decision; I hate stopping. Part of it is me, another part is when I was told, many years ago, that giving up or stopping something means that I don’t care enough about it – that it doesn’t matter to me. The stark demarcation has always unsettled me and I’ve never known if it’s true or not. If I stop, then does it equate to my not caring? If I stop now, then does it follow that it was always a worthless endeavor?

I don’t know if I owe this site, or you, any explanation, but I do want to clarify that the reason I’m stopping has nothing to do with me not caring, but just the opposite. It’s about how very much I do care and how much it means to me. If I can’t be honest here, then I’m not growing. If I’m not growing, then I’m either stagnating or reverting. Neither of which are acceptable.

Winter’s always a good season for poetry and introspection. We go to sleep, wake up the next morning, and find that the world is blanketed in white and suddenly so very different from everything we knew in the past. I suppose — I know — that in many ways the Significant Breakup is like that, too.

Indeed, by our mid to late 20s we’ve all be there before, we’ve all been through The Breakup – the one breakup that defines time before and after. The world we once knew changes dramatically — friends of the former couple have to take sides; phone plans are split up; entire portions of your city have to be divided up in a plan reminiscent of Yalta (Georgetown is the equivalent of a radioactive wasteland to me now); and the swan song of the couple, of trust, of friendships, of shared books and bands and movies, and, in many respects, of the self have to be faced head-on.

Frightened Rabbit’s 2008 album, The Midnight Organ Fight, dealt with that pain and shock of the immediate breakup and destruction. The individual “armed with the past, the will, and a brick” who doesn’t necessarily want her back, but also doesn’t want to see her so happy so fast. The individual who blindly dances, drinks, and dives into the bed of others for distraction, diversion, and definition.

Some say that the amount of time it takes to get over the relationship is to divide the total length of the relationship in half, but really, who knows. At the end of the day, it takes what it takes.

But The Moving On is a whole other story, isn’t it? In a lot of respects, Frightened Rabbit’s latest album, The Winter of Mixed Drinks, is about that very story. It’s about the morning after the post-breakup binge period where one has to tackle the difficult questions, look at one’s self frankly, and make the decision. Do you move forward? Do you walk into the unknown?

I’ll be honest, I love this album. It’s about change – about the fading away of the past, about the healing of the now, and about the delicious and fearful anticipation of that which is to come. The first single released, Swim Until You Can’t See Land, asks those very questions – “Do I wait? Do I dive?…Let’s call me a baptist, call this the drowning of the past/She is there on the shoreline throwing stones at my back.”

And in the power of being able to ask those questions is the power of having control over one’s life. And in having control, one can act; to continue with the oceanic metaphor, one can dive. Indeed, one of the lingering questions throughout the entire album is the question of whether the listener is a man or a bag of sand.

Where do you stand? More importantly, what do you do?

Which ties in with the parallel metaphor of death – You’ll hear references to graves, to white pine boxes, to digging, and to bones. But what is change but the death of the past? If we dive we inexorably leave the shore behind us, if we move forward we inevitably turn our back to the past.

If I can’t shake myself, I can’t dance with you.

And when it comes to this album, that’s the entire point.

Well this is easier now
I’ve found all the pieces that I lost in the flood
And it wasn’t that much.

It’s about picking up the pieces, weighing them, understanding them, seeing it all for what it’s worth, and maybe — just maybe — diving in, moving on, and swimming until you can’t see land.

The Winter of Mixed Drinks will be released on March 9, 2010 on the FatCat Records Label, and Frightened Rabbit will be playing at DC’s very own Black Cat on April 27th.

Today hasn’t been a good day. In fact, it’s been something of a shitty day.

Sometime during elementary school I had a terrible day of, what it felt like from the perspective of an 8 year-old, epic proportions. I hadn’t yet read The Odyssey but I’d imagine that 8 year-old me would have felt as if only Odysseus would have understood how I felt that day. He would’ve looked into my eyes, shaken his head in understanding, and sigh in solidarity.

“I feel you, buddy,” he would’ve said.

Me and Odysseus against the world.

And while I don’t have any recollection of the problems I encountered that day, I do remember that when I came home, when I finally was able to rest, my mother surprised me with a card she gotten at some point throughout the day. To this day it is one of the sweetest and most touching things that anyone has ever done for me.

I bring this up because, years later, I try hard to remember that feeling of warmth and love when I have days wherein I feel like that small vessel beat and battered against the myriad waves, winds, and wings of fate. I try to remember that this, too, shall pass and that there are people who love me enough to give me hugs, get me a card, and do their best to make the ship a bit less fragile.