I was listening to “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)” by Whitney Houston. Everyone loves that song, right? How could you not. Certified party song, karaoke song, dance song, loving-life song. I realized recently that I kind of love the vagueness of it. The “somebody” is so random that it needs to be qualified with a parenthetical. Whitney’s only specification: “I need a man who’ll take the chance / On a love that burns hot enough to last.” Now I’m remembering that I actually wrote a poem about this in undergrad. I think one of the lines was: “I Wanna Dance with Semantics.” Ugh. I do love grammar in a sick and twisted way. But maybe we should just enjoy the song.
I so badly want to make a new zine, but I’m feeling creatively stifled. And time is limited and at a mega premium, so it makes me feel a bit guilty to work on it. I anticipated this; setting myself down a path that is an accelerating, nonstop conveyor belt to… work and life. Not that you can delay life. It probably wouldn’t be good to delay life. But I think being in school has given me a cop out when I feel dissatisfied with my life because of the promise of achievable benchmarks and impending change! But what if I settle into “life” and I largely feel the same. What then…
So I’m writing my new poems very slowly. I want to be picky. There’s a lot of bad and depressing stuff in my OneNote. Right now I have a poem about John Mayer, half a poem about being online and hobbyless, half a love poem, and a couple other half baked ideas. What’s certain is that I need to make this zine. I need it feel like myself again. Not to be dramatic. Not to be anything. Not to be Somebody. But who isn’t???
