smooth runs the water where the brook is deep

Write a blog post about words of wisdom your younger self would have appreciated hearing. (via blogprompts)¹

I’m trying out doing blog prompts in an effort to populate this blog with more than just weekly round-ups and to get more comfortable writing about personal things.²

I’m going to select two quotes — both song lyrics — that have resonated for me.

The first is from “Banshee Beat” by Animal Collective, which I first heard in my late teens (maybe 16?) and still consider one of my favorite songs.

Either way you look at it,

You have your fits

I have my fits

But feeling is good

My childhood was rife with trauma surrounding my parents’ divorce and the ensuing fallout. All through it, I refused to talk to anyone about any of it — and I needed to. It wasn’t until I was 20 years old, with my current partner, that I ever vocalized how it all made me feel. I have healed (some, or at least scarred over) since, but I still feel the aftershocks. In times of stress or great emotion, I clam up and shut down. I return to stasis because I perceive it as safety — and avoid letting emotion in. I’m continuing to work on it and push through, but hearing “Banshee Beat” was an inflection point. The song opens as a quiet whisper and crescendos into jubilant emotion. I’m still working toward that joyful ending, but “Banshee Beat” was the first step out of the dark. It shook me awake and forced me to accept that my stoicism was a defense — that I had to allow myself to feel emotions instead of avoiding them. In order to experience the good, I had to let in the bad, to process it, let it wash over me, and come out unburdened. I’d have my fits, but feeling is good.

The next lyric comes from “2009” by Mac Miller, off his album Swimming.

Okay, you’ve got to jump in to swim

The light was dim in this life of sin

Now every day I wake up and breathe

I don’t have it all but that’s alright with me

There’s a lot of beauty to be found in the lyrics to “2009” (and Swimming as a whole), but I’m going to focus here for now — and specifically on the opening line. The meaning here is clear, and not far off from the message in “Banshee Beat”: we have to open ourselves up to the unknown to live fully, and often that choice is a leap of faith. We will never fully know what lies below, so all we can do is take a chance and jump in.

I’m realizing now that both songs use referencing jumping in and swimming — “Banshee Beat” opens with the line “Oh there’ll be time to get by, to get dry, after the swimming pool,” and the chorus goes,

So I duck out, go down to find the swimming pool

Hop a fence, leave the street and wet your feet to find the swimming pool

‘Cause when I’m snuffed out, I doubt I’ll find a swimming pool

Hop a fence, leave the street and wet your feet to find the swimming pool

Water and swimming is, of course, a motif within Mac Miller’s Swimming. I’m realizing lately that it reoccurs in my life, too; in the music I like, both lyrically and in feeling, impact.

I believe I found both of these songs when I needed to and that they may not have had the impact they did had I heard them at a different point in my life — so to return to the prompt, I think they are words of wisdom that my younger self could have used to hear, but I would perhaps not have been ready for them. Perhaps I simply needed to hear that there were smoother waters ahead.