6/25/24 Today I was walking one of my dogwalking clients in the arboretum. It’s been very buggy in the woods lately because its so damp there, so we were trying to escape it. My sweetie was with me and pointed out a feather on the ground along our path. It was a feather from a blue jay and I picked it up. It felt like a gift just to see it, let alone hold it or dare to walk away with it. My sweetie looked up on his phone what a blue jay feather might indicate. I found one particular potential meaning significant to me: “a message of hope from a deceased loved one”.
There is a particular family member I have been thinking a lot about lately - my maternal grandfather. I have been feeling his presence, I’ve encountered him in dreams, and sometimes I feel like we are having a conversation together. This is all very strange to me because: I usually am not sensitive to the presence of deceased people and also - I barely even knew this man.
I don’t know much about Witold. I remember him as a tall, lanky man with dark brown hair and big bushy eyebrows. I remember he was always smoking cigarettes and having a drink. I know animals loved him and would practically flock to him. When mine and my sister’s markers dried out one time when we were trying to draw, I remember he told us to dip them into his vodka to bring them to life again (but I can’t remember if this actually worked or not). Sugar cubes were a luxury item in Poland back then, but he would always sneak one for me. I remember his calm and collected nature, the complete antithesis of the stereotypical Polish man of his times. I asked my mom to tell me a little about him today. She couldn’t remember his birthday, but said it may have been in October, 1934. If I had to guess based on his vibe, I suspect he would be a Libra rather than a Scorpio (but who knows what I don’t know!). Back in my 20’s, I found out that he wrote lots of poetry. Today I found out that he also drew pictures a lot. I don’t have access to these documents, but would give anything to see his drawings. I did read his poems one time. We were trying to compile a handmade book of his poetry as a Christmas gift for my grandma one time, sometime before 2010. There was a question of whether or not we should give her the book because they were all love poems about other women from his youth lol. It sounded like he loved a lot, and with much precious passion.
I’ve been reading the book Health Communism for several months now and I just finished chapter 2. I have to take this book slowly, because it brings up a lot of fear, trauma, and rage inside of me. I’ve been through the ringer of American healthcare for the past decade of my life and this book essentially sums up why. After I finished the first chapter, I had to write a song in order to process what I had just read, not only to aid in its digestion but also to aid with the trauma rage. I assumed I would just write another song when I was done with the next chapter, but instead I felt the need to write it out. That is because it made me think of Witold.
Chapter two is called WASTE. It has some history about attempts for socialized medicine/healthcare in America and the suppression of these movements. It describes in detail how the “eugenic and debt burden framework” is an inextricable aspect of capitalism and how this is rooted in this country’s long history of racism, classism, and ableism. In simple terms: if some rich guy can’t profit off of your body and the labor that it is “supposed to” produce - you are worthless. You are an expendable body, a “malingerer”, a burden to society. Basically, you don’t deserve to live. This is the foundation of eugenics. American eugenics are still in practice today, as seen in the recent face mask bans sweeping the country or this country’s complete lack of any regard for mitigating the spread of COVID during the ongoing pandemic. (I still remember, back in 2020, when the CDC specifically told us *not* to wear face masks. They already knew that COVID was airborne, but they didn’t want the American public to “panic”, so they told us to wear plastic disposable gloves and wash our groceries with alcohol instead.)
As my health significantly deteriorated over the past year, I had to confront (yet again) what it means to be an artist/musician given what is left of my abilities. My hands don’t work so great anymore, so I no longer make a partial living off of tattooing. I rarely draw anymore either, but sometimes I can still paint. It hurts to write in my notebook, so I don’t do it for very long at a time, but I still do it despite the pain. I can’t play bass much anymore, but I can still play drums and guitar as long as I don’t go too hard or too long. Every day is now all about conservation of energy and ability: if I do this, will I be able to do that later? I try not to dwell on what I miss. I make daily attempts to refocus my energy on what I can still do with the time I have left.
My grandpa was very sick when I knew him. My mother told me recently that he tried to get medical help but Polish healthcare in 1992 was a complete shitshow (see: American healthcare today). She said a dismissive doctor told him that his symptoms can only be attributed to “laziness”. He told him to get off his ass, and “get back to work”.
Witold Nadstawny passed away on June 9, 1992 from cancer of the larynx and the stomach. He was 58 years old. Later that same year, my mom, my sister and I moved to the United States to join my father. My dad was already in the states and had just secured us a small apartment in Montclair, New Jersey, with the help of one of his carpentry clients. (He was a new immigrant after all, and no one would rent him an apartment. This wealthy client of his offered to be the co-signer on the lease and it became our home for about 10 years.)
I think about Witold all the time now, and I see warnings from him all over my body and every time symptoms flare. He keeps reminding me to take care of myself and my health as best as I can, because this is one of the most radical acts one could ever commit to. He also keeps reminding me to write poems and make art. I’m not sure which comes first: being a sensitive soul or a delicate body (maybe they always go hand in hand? maybe only sometimes?). No one is immune to circumstance, obviously. Fascist governments will always try to destroy the beautiful, the vulnerable, the truth. But art will always win, because it lives far away from all that nonsense.
It is mid-June, 2024, 7:17pm. I am sitting outside the house, listening to my sweetie DJ'ing records out his bedroom window. We are experiencing a heat wave this week, but the temperature finally dropped enough to sit outside for longer than 5 minutes.
"Slip Away" by Clarence Carter started spinning on the record and I just sat there enjoying it, not realizing until the song's end that I had started crying. It wasn't anguish though, it was more like that sweet cry you have sometimes when you remember a bittersweet memory? (I don't really have words for this feeling but I know you know what I'm talking about.)
One of my favorite music documentaries came to mind, 2013's Muscle Shoals. I knew that Clarence Carter song was recorded in Muscle Shoals because it was featured in that film. The film gives the history of the "Muscle Shoals sound", a magical and hard-to-describe quality that many hit records from the area possessed. The beginning of the documentary briefly describes how that geographic region is along the Tennessee River, where Indigenous people described the river as "singing". Here's some interesting info I found on the internet. Each passage is linked to its source website!
"Some of the Indians believed that the spirit of a goddess lived in the loud, rushing waters of Muscle Shoals. This legend could have originated in the Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, or Koasatis Indian tribes. In another version of this myth, the Yuchi tribe said that the sound of the Shoals was the voice of a woman. The mysterious woman sang sweetly when the water was low and trickled calmly over the rocks and waterfalls, but roared in fury when the river rushed violently over the Shoals."
"The area of Muscle Shoals was a part of the historic Cherokee hunting grounds dating to at least the early eighteenth century, if not earlier. Many Cherokee fought against the rebels during the late American Revolutionary War, hoping to expel them from their territories.
After the Revolution, Cherokee attitudes toward the new U.S. republic were divided, as settlers increasingly encroached on their territory. An anti-American faction, dubbed the Chickamauga, separated from more conciliatory Cherokees, and moved into present-day south-central and southeastern Tennessee. Most of this band settled along the Chickamauga Creek, from which their name was derived. They claimed Muscle Shoals as part of their domain. When Anglo-Americans attempted to settle the region in the 1780s and 1790s, the Chickamaugas bitterly resisted them.
The Upper Creek, residing in what is now north and central Alabama, also resented any European or Euro-American presence in the region. A major incident occurred in 1790, when U.S. President George Washington sent an expedition under Major John Doughty in an attempt to establish a fort and trading post at Muscle Shoals. This expedition was nearly annihilated by a Chickamauga and Creek party sent to destroy it, and the administration abandoned the project."
"Indians first inhabited the lands bordered by the Tennessee River that we call the Shoals area today. No one knows when the name Muscle Shoals was first used for this area, however, there are many theories of where the name originated. One theory is that at one time there were piles of mussel shells found along the shoals in the Tennessee River. Another theory is that the shape of the river looks like the muscle in a man’s arm, therefore, Muscle Shoals. The last theory comes from several booklets that were published before Muscle Shoals incorporated. This theory states: “Muscle Shoals, the Niagara of the South, derives its name from the Indians, who, attempting to navigate upstream, found the task almost impossible because of the strong current.” Thus came the word muscle, symbolic of the strength required to “paddle a canoe up the rapids.”
That particular part of the Tennessee river is described as "treacherous", "an area of dangerous shallows and turbulent currents, impeding commerce and navigation".
This is why when the region became colonized, it was hard putting up a dam (but eventually they built the Wilson Dam in 1924).
"The difference between the white settlers’ reactions to the Muscle Shoals and the Indians’ reaction to it could not be more different. From the beginning, the white settlers saw the Shoals as a wild and dangerous beast that needed to be tamed. The Indians, while likely struggling with the dangers the Shoals posed as much as the white settlers did, saw them as a mysterious force of nature to be revered and respected."
I'm in awe of this powerful river and the powerful people who tried to protect it. It's like this river girl just wants to sing and these colonizers tried to silence her, when her natural power just needs to be acknowledged and respected! Thinking about the river's currents being so strong there and the history of the strong resistance of the Chickamauga people, I am not surprised at all that so many hit singles came out of FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio within the last century!
For me personally, music has always been most closely related to the act of resistance (when compared to other art forms), but I am unsure why. I use the word "resistance" with as much intention as I am capable of in this moment. I am specifically referring to the act of fighting back against opposing forces that are intent on your destruction. It is not a state of being that people *like* finding themselves in obviously, since it implies so much tragedy, injustice and death. Yet it is necessary to survival, so it is just as natural to engage in it as it is for a river to have an unusually strong current.
I don't know why these things feel so inextricably linked but it seems like many others feel the same. (WHO ELSE IS DOING BATTLE WITH THEIR EMOTIONS EVERY TIME THEY HEAR A GOOD SONG UNTIL YOU FINALLY GRANT YOURSELF THE SWEET RELEASE??) Why is music related to water related to resistance? It makes sense to me, but not in a verbal language that I could express in text.
Sincerely hoping I can visit that place one day, in real life or in a dream, I will literally take either!
"At Painted Bluff, in northeast Alabama, painted glyphs dating to ca. 1400 A.D. have been discovered among cliffs overlooking the river." (Totally wondering what they were singing then and why)
Text on Image # 4:
“1999
MICKEY ME REBEL SOCIETY
Prologue
When you become a teenager, the world is new. It seems small, cramped, and most unfair. Your stomach begins to turn every time you watch the news and hear the latest in politics. Every figure of authority makes you burn inside, because the other day on the news you saw one of them beating a fellow youth to the ground during a protest. Everything the government decides upon seems to matter, as if everyone were pointing at you. You - the failure in society, the bad one, the cause of their mistakes.
Finally, you notice something. To you, its like seeing the light at the end of a tunnel. You notice that you’re not alone. Others hate it too. Others also hate being the scapegoats of society. Also, to your relief, they all seem to be in the same age group. Thirteen to nineteen and you share similar views. Together, you want to overthrow the adult kingdom. But there is that side of you that knows you’ll be an adult soon too, and that what you do in these years will reflect in how you live your adulthood. So you want to do good things that might, someday, exchange for a good life. Still, there is the other side of yourself that lives in the moment. The part of you that craves complete chaos.
In the end, you give in to your destructive side, you give in to your cravings. While you decide upon this, the world goes into a silence, a peace. Everything seems so regular and routine, while deep inside, you know it is like the silence before the war. Then, it all erupts. And they point at you again. They point at all of you. And the more they point at you, the more you want to turn against them. “Well,” you begin to wonder, “what would happen if we did?”
I first met Mickey when I was 12 ”
Hello! I have decided to start utilizing the blog feature on this website again. It is Thursday, June 6, 2024. I am sitting on my front porch in Boston, enjoying the end of the sunset on a cloudy tumultuous day (it’s 8:31 PM & 66 degress fareinheit with a “dense fog advisory” on my phone’s weather app).
I have been nursing an injury the past 2.5 weeks and have had lots of time on my hands so I decided to start time travelling a little bit and revisit past selves.
I am currently 37 years old and have always been too afraid to examine who I was as a child. I’ve always had a poor memory (I think it runs in the family) but luckily that taught me to be a solid archivist! I have been privileged and lucky enough to be able to hoard many documents from (most of) my past, and these little pieces/messages from past selves have been assisting me lately in making sense of my present. I highly encourage this exercise of checking in with past selves, especially if you struggle with memory capacity, brain processing speed, and/or ADHD.
Today I am revisiting a piece of writing from 1999. Nestled in a furry Scooby-Doo notebook lives a “book” I attempted to write when I was 12 years old. I decided to start transcribing it today after reflecting upon an idea I had earlier about my wish to see the normalization of children’s art museums in the world.
Hear me out - the most common gripe I have seen in my personal writing from my childhood and adolescence is the sense of control. I was *pissed* when I was a kid. I hated school and hated even more the fact that on Saturdays, after going to american school monday through friday, I had to then endure a full day of polish school classes (I went to a Saturday school in Brooklyn, NY in the 90’s for polish kids). Then, on Sundays, my catholic family went to church. All my days were accounted for, without my consent. Throw on top of that the burdens of various societal expectations within schooling or church environments - I’m sure most if not all neurodivergent kids struggled with this. Throw on top of that the confusion surrounding being a third culture kid in america - you are *exhausted*.
I’m still analyzing this book, but what I have found is that it might be about a lawless society of teenagers trying to overthrow the “adult kingdom”. They are led by a cult-like figure named Mickey Me, who is an anti-fascist teen who unfortunately becomes the very tyrant he was originally fighting against. Perverted by the social phenomenon of his movement (being looked up to as a “leader” in what was originally supposed to exist as a non-hierarchical society of teens), he eventually loses sight of the group’s reality, purpose, and hope. The group he leads spirals into self-destruction after following too closely the orders of a fallible human being (himself).
Reading the first bit, I couldn’t help but reflect on our current reality. The references to youth protesting, being beat by “authority figures” just makes me think of the recent student encampments for a free Palestine being brutalized by police. I definitely didn’t know that was going to happen in 2024 back in 1999, but I grew up with short, vague, anecdotal stories from my dad about dissidents of the government when he was growing up in Poland in the 70s & 80s and the way they were brutalized and silenced by the state and I guess it left an imprint on my imagination. Don’t get me wrong - I’m all for full communism. But I was raised to fear it because of what happened in Poland. Knowing what I know now (and maybe more facts will reveal themselves over further time), I know that what my parents were experiencing was an occupation, not full communism. To top it off, their liberation movement was coopted by U.S. interests and meddling, and replaced with a promise of liberation via capital accumulation; via exploitation (capitalism). Nobody really won after that. But my US history books in school growing up conveniently failed to mention it…
The text I have transcribed so far (visible in the last photo at the top of this post) reads below. I promise to keep updating as I transcribe this document and others like it!
