The Tangerine Star of Tunisia Road

They say that seven is the age of reason –– the age when you're old enough to start truly developing a sense of self. This makes sense to me, as my memories from that age (and just after) are among some of my most poignant and vivid, even if I'm not entirely sure why. 

There was a street lamp on the corner of Tunisia Road where we lived on post after we first moved to California, just a few steps away from our little home. Our house was the kind of house everyone in the military gets when they're lucky –– comfortable but also forgettable enough that you didn't even realize you were supposed to forget it.

But at that age, everything still seemed magical and sacred. My room wasn't just an ordinary room in an ordinary house. It was the hallowed sanctum where I spent hours organizing my toys and brushing my dolls' hair. It was my first little office and creative studio, the place where I first fell in love with drawing with my pencils and typing up stories on the old, secondhand typewriter my parents had given me for the purpose.

I was used to military life, so I technically knew the house and my place in it were temporary. But somehow that didn't matter. When you're only seven or eight, even a summer feels like an eternity, so a change that was still probably years in the future felt like something to worry about in some other lifetime. 

In the meantime, I had living to do, stories to write, and that street lamp to dream underneath.

It was just an ordinary street lamp on an ordinary suburban street corner. But what I remember most is the way it stood tall and strange, like a metal flower that waited all day to bloom at dusk. That's when the soft, orange glow of evening flickered to life, and it always felt like something sacred had been summoned.

On Lana Del Rey and the Beauty of Melancholy

So, Lana Del Rey dropped a new album a few days ago -- Chemtrails Over the Country Club. I've been listening to it quite a lot since, as well as revisiting some of Lana's other music. I've also been having some interesting thoughts about music in general, the role it's played throughout my life, and the effects it has on me still. 

Lana Del Rey's music occupies a strange category for me. It evokes strong feelings of nostalgia and reminds me of all kinds of things despite not also being music I grew up listening to. 

She wasn't even around as an artist when I was still growing up, as she would have been just a child herself. However, her style as an artist and much of the imagery in her music reminds me of how I felt, thought, and took up space in the world way back then. The fact that the beach and many references to life in California come up often in her music underscores all this even further.

When I was young, I had so many strong emotions. Many of them were difficult, dark, and consuming -- like longing, melancholy, and restlessness. Life was difficult for me as a young person, and it took me until I was in my 20s to start coming into my own. But I had an incredibly rich fantasy life at that age, as well. I was always obsessed with some boy I knew, or occasionally I'd construct elaborate fantasies around actors (and even fictional characters) I found objectively attractive. I'd daydream about what I'd be like when I was older -- painfully, sorrowfully beautiful and, of course, so very deep -- as well as all the tumultuous, passionate romances I was sure I would one day have. 

One of my favorite things to do was indulge in these fantasies and wonder what my life would eventually be like while listening to music. If I could be outside taking up space in some beautiful setting while I did it, so much the better. I especially loved going on long nature walks, hanging out on the beach while watching the waves, and spacing out in the passenger seat on long road trips while watching the world go by. I never felt very connected to my family, my friends, or most of the men I dated when I was in my teens and early-mid 20s, so maintaining this sort of rich inner life seemed to fulfill some of the needs those relationships didn't. 

Authenticity: The X-Factor That Makes Your Writing Pop

I get it. As writers, we want our work to resonate with people. We want them to read it and -- hopefully -- come back at some point in the future to read more of it. We agonize over how we can make that happen, meaning we try to figure out what people want, and that's fine. But if you're not also carving out a little piece of your heart and weaving it into what you're writing in one way or another, your writing will miss the mark. It will register as empty, dull, inane, and lackluster. No wants to read more of that. There's already way too much of it out there.

I'm lucky in that I fell head over heels in love with writing through personal journaling, so I've had a literal lifetime's worth of practice when it comes to making sure my writing is intimate enough. In fact, I'd almost argue that I've had the opposite problem most writers today have. If I'm not careful, I wind up injecting more of myself into my work than people even want to see. Whichever direction you're coming from, establishing and maintaining the right balance is the key to getting where you want to be with what you're doing.

Be Truly Genuine and Vulnerable

I read an article on authentic writing from a favorite writer on Medium recently that actually took me aback a little. He seemed to be arguing that no writer is ever truly genuine when they open up a vein for you and expose their more vulnerable side. He talked about how they're really only doing it because it gets them clicks, views, read, and comments.

Writing Lab: Full of Stories, Full of Stars

Head of a Young Woman - Jean-Baptiste Greuze

Prompt: "Do you have a lot of untold stories inside of you? How do you feel carrying them around?"

Well, any writer is full of stories to at least some extent and I'm certainly no exception. I don't get writer's block as far as ideas go. I'd even go so far as to say that I come up with at least a couple of viable new ideas a week. However, I'm not terribly disciplined about doing much with any of them. Some of that has to do with how much of my writing energy gets poured into things for my clients these days, but the rest of it is just sheer laziness and apathy.

That said, I do have a lot of untold stories living inside of me to one extent or another. How does it make me feel? Perpetually bloated and full, like a person feels when they overeat at Thanksgiving. On the one hand, there's a satisfaction to feeling that full, because when you're full you're the very furthest thing from empty. On the other, it can be incredibly uncomfortable at the same time. You know it's not normal or healthy to be overstuffed to that extent. I do talk about ideas and whatnot to some extent, which helps. However, verbal conversation and Facebook are really no substitutes for proper stories and poems written on the regular.