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<time datetime="2024-08-08T00:00:00&#43;00:00">August 8, 2024</time>
<h1>smooth runs the water where the brook is deep</h1>
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smooth-runs-the-water-where-the-brook-is-deep
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<blockquote>
<p>Write a blog post about words of wisdom your younger self would have appreciated hearing.
(via <a href="https://blogprompts.fyi">blogprompts</a>)<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup></p></blockquote>
<p>I&rsquo;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.<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup></p>
<p>I&rsquo;m going to select two quotes — both song lyrics — that have resonated for me.</p>
<p>The first is from &ldquo;Banshee Beat&rdquo; by Animal Collective, which I first heard in my late teens (maybe 16?) and still consider one of my favorite songs.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Either way you look at it,</p>
<p>You have your fits</p>
<p>I have my fits</p>
<p>But feeling is good</p></blockquote>
<p>My childhood was rife with trauma surrounding my parents&rsquo; divorce and the ensuing fallout. All through it, I refused to talk to anyone about any of it — and I needed to. It wasn&rsquo;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&rsquo;m continuing to work on it and push through, but hearing &ldquo;Banshee Beat&rdquo; was an inflection point. The song opens as a quiet whisper and crescendos into jubilant emotion. I&rsquo;m still working toward that joyful ending, but &ldquo;Banshee Beat&rdquo; 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 <em>feel</em> 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&rsquo;d have my fits, but feeling is good.</p>
<p>The next lyric comes from &ldquo;2009&rdquo; by Mac Miller, off his album <em>Swimming</em>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Okay, you&rsquo;ve got to jump in to swim</p>
<p>The light was dim in this life of sin</p>
<p>Now every day I wake up and breathe</p>
<p>I don&rsquo;t have it all but that&rsquo;s alright with me</p></blockquote>
<p>There&rsquo;s a lot of beauty to be found in the lyrics to &ldquo;2009&rdquo; (and <em>Swimming</em> as a whole), but I&rsquo;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 &ldquo;Banshee Beat&rdquo;: 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.</p>
<p>I&rsquo;m realizing now that both songs use referencing jumping in and swimming — &ldquo;Banshee Beat&rdquo; opens with the line &ldquo;Oh there&rsquo;ll be time to get by, to get dry, after the swimming pool,&rdquo; and the chorus goes,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>So I duck out, go down to find the swimming pool</p>
<p>Hop a fence, leave the street and wet your feet to find the swimming pool</p>
<p>&lsquo;Cause when I&rsquo;m snuffed out, I doubt I&rsquo;ll find a swimming pool</p>
<p>Hop a fence, leave the street and wet your feet to find the swimming pool</p></blockquote>
<p>Water and swimming is, of course, a motif within Mac Miller&rsquo;s <em>Swimming</em>. I&rsquo;m realizing lately that it reoccurs in my life, too; in the music I like, both lyrically and in feeling, impact.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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<p>The original prompt had a typo that I corrected, so it&rsquo;s not verbatim, but it&rsquo;s close enough.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:2">
<p>My favorite bloggers are folks like <a href="https://veronique.ink/">Veronique</a>, who captures these fleeting vignettes of her daily life, and <a href="https://passerine.bearblog.dev/">passerine</a>, who writes with such sharp insight and beauty. That&rsquo;s the sort of person I&rsquo;d like to be.&#160;<a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p>
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