Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

“When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can’t make them change if they don’t want to, just like when they do want to, you can’t stop them.” ~ Andy Warhol

Before anyone thinks this fall is going to be all gloom and doom, here’s something to remix it up, because fall can be fabulous if you know where to look. Let the beauty and the light shine! Let the glamour and the sparkle ricochet around the mirrored world! Let Studio 54 dip into your powder-keg dreams and blow it all to beautiful oblivion! 

IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND LOVE
WHAT A TALE MY THOUGHTS COULD TELL
JUST LIKE AN OLD TIME MOVIE
ABOUT A GHOST FROM A WISHING WELL
IN A CASTLE DARK OR A FORTRESS STRONG
WITH CHAINS UPON MY FEET
YOU KNOW THAT GHOST IS ME

Fall has always been about the drama. This was when the night-time soap operas returned, and in my formative years I was all about the soap operas. New plot lines were set into motion. Cliffhangers were resolved or spun into secondary moments of suspense. The start of the fall television season in general was always an exciting time. Worn-out characters were replaced by new ones, sets were energized, haircuts were revamped, and styles shifted slightly with the times, whether period or modern. In some ways it was a lot like the start of school, when everyone came back slightly altered and reinvented. 

Perhaps this year more than ever we are in need of such a re-boot, so I’m taking this moment in time to re-energize my good practices, and curb some of the unhealthier things that have started to become habit (we will stop buying so much chocolate and so many cookies, and instead invest in fresh fruit). My meditation practice will continue as well (on the 25th of this month I’m moving up to 25 minutes per day), and I’ll refocus energy on my mindfulness. When things turn lighter in the summer it gets easier to be more naturally mindful – that will take more effort when there’s not a pool or gardens or a pleasant outdoor day just around the corner. 

As for a reinvention here, you may have noticed the darker theme and header and sliders, as befits this marker in history. We are on the precipice of something, and it feels like the middle of night. I’m sidling up to it in the hopes of reconciling myself to the darkness, while glowing a little brighter to make up for it. There is a pair of new categories here as well – Antiracism and Mindfulness – serious topics I’ve been more interested in expounding upon and exploring, and which have naturally grown into what I hope will be substantial pillars of what makes this site vital. 

A new season is at hand. A new chance to be better has arrived. The opportunities unfurl to improve from within. Just as we begin a retreat from the outside in, so too do we return to the interior of our mental make-up, and to improving the constitution of our soul. 

I DON’T KNOW WHERE WE WENT WRONG
BUT THE FEELING’S GONE
AND I JUST CAN’T GET IT BACK

“Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, So what. That’s one of my favorite things to say. So what.” ~ Andy Warhol

The whisper, urgent and fierce, came to me in a blackness so dense I couldn’t be sure it was from another human being. For all I knew, and for all I could see in that night, it came from some feral being that was part ghost, part manifestation, and part spirit. But I felt its heat, felt its fetid moisture, and every once in a while I heard the click and grinding of teeth. Then, the ice cold essence of absence, as if its breath crystallized into tiny daggers of ice which fell to the earth like the delicate, barely-heard rustling of snow falling on hard ground.

“Do you hear me? Do you know what I’m saying?”

In that first semester at Brandeis, I was hearing voices in my head. Looking back, it was just the one voice, and it was less an actual voice and more a manifestation of all my doubts and disbeliefs in myself. But it repeated itself, growing more vicious and more relentless as the days turned colder. At the time, I simply wasn’t listening to my heart, and so it spoke for itself. I couldn’t see it then. I couldn’t hear it then. All I felt was confusion.

And the whispers grew increasingly ferocious.

IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND LOVE
WHAT A TALE MY THOUGHTS COULD TELL
JUST LIKE AN OLD TIME MOVIE
ABOUT A GHOST FROM A WISHING WELL
IN A CASTLE DARK OR A FORTRESS STRONG
WITH CHAINS UPON MY FEET
YOU KNOW THAT GHOST IS ME
AND I WILL NEVER BE SET FREE
AS LONG AS I’M A GHOST YOU CAN SEE

In the family station wagon, I was probably ten years old when this song played over the easy listening station my parents favored. The melody was sweet, the hook was catchy, and the tinge of folksy accessibility made it a natural choice for people who introduced their kids to music through Peter, Paul and Mary. As our wagon careened through the streets of Amsterdam, I sat in the backseat looking out at the world of fall.

I remember passing McNulty Elementary School, where I would attend kindergarten through sixth grade – the formative childhood years that feel simultaneously sweet and dangerous, innocent and somehow teeming with terror. Seeing it in my mind through the lens I’ve chiseled in the past year, I mourn that I couldn’t put voice to my social anxiety and the issues it caused. It was a thread that ran throughout all of my schooling, including that first semester at Brandeis when I was already a young adult. Fall was always terrifying that way, and I went through it all without fully understanding or grasping what was going on behind the scenes.

IF I COULD READ YOUR MIND LOVE
WHAT A TALE YOUR THOUGHTS COULD TELL
JUST LIKE A PAPERBACK NOVEL
THE KIND THE DRUGSTORE SELLS
WHEN YOU REACH THE PART WHERE THE HEARTACHES
COME THE HERO WOULD BE ME
HEROES OFTEN FAIL
AND YOU WON’T READ THAT BOOK AGAIN
BECAUSE THE ENDING’S JUST TOO HARD TO TAKE

In this, the fall of my 45^thyear on earth, I’m beginning to hear that little voice, but unlike it sounded on those fall school days, it comes with nothing frightening or fearful. Instead, it is a gentle guide, nudging me this way or turning me slightly that way, so that I’m always on the right path. The message is finally being heard, even if I don’t always like what is being said, even if it’s going to mean more work, more effort, more confronting those difficult demons so deeply embedded from so many years ago.

Fall is the ideal time for such a reconfiguration: a moment to reset and restart. Right after every restart, the screen has to go dark for a bit. In the past, I would have turned away from the darkness, and possibly offered something lighter and frivolous to counteract the lack of illumination. This year – the wretched beast that is 2020 – I’m not going that traditional route. I’m going to embrace the darkness. I’m going to walk with it, and try to understand it better. I’m going to befriend it and fold it into my life. There is no true daylight without a night that comes before it.

I WALK AWAY LIKE A MOVIE STAR
WHO GETS BURNED IN A THREE WAY SCRIPT
ENTER NUMBER TWO, A MOVIE QUEEN
TO PLAY THE SCENE OF BRINGING ALL THE GOOD THINGS OUT IN ME
BUT FOR NOW LOVE LETS BE REAL

I NEVER THOUGHT I COULD ACT THIS WAY
AND I’VE GOT TO SAY THAT I JUST DON’T GET IT
I DON’T KNOW WHERE WE WENT WRONG
BUT THE FEELINGS GONE AND I JUST CAN’T GET IT BACK

Not gonna lie, this fall is likely to be brutal, and in all bluntness I don’t know how we are going to do it. How do you heal a nation so divided? How do you repair and mend all the emotional damage that is still being rendered? How do you socially distance for an entire holiday season?

But everything that has already happened in 2020 has revealed that we can do it, even if nothing is stable, even if there is nothing of which we can be certain anymore. There is something terrifying about that. Something incredibly freeing too. When the notions of safety and security turn out to be tethers, sometimes it’s better that they break.

Into that darkness, may we fall with freely-given abandon, and let it bring about something more beautiful, more colorful, more enriching and more empowering.

Fall begins again…

IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND LOVE
WHAT A TALE MY THOUGHTS COULD TELL
JUST LIKE AN OLD TIME MOVIE ABOUT A GHOST FROM A WISHING WELL
IN A CASTLE DARK OR A FORTRESS STRONG
WITH CHAINS UPON MY FEET
THE STORY ALWAYS ENDS
AND IF YOU READ BETWEEN THE LINES
YOU’LL KNOW THAT I’M JUST TRYING TO UNDERSTAND
THE FEELING THAT YOU LEFT

I NEVER THOUGHT I COULD FEEL THIS WAY
AND I’VE GOT TO SAY THAT I JUST DON’T GET IT
I DON’T KNOW WHERE WE WENT WRONG
BUT THE FEELING’S GONE
AND I JUST CAN’T GET IT BACK

This summer’s soundtrack belonged indisputably to Taylor Swift’s ‘folklore’ album, which was gorgeously low-key, saturated with a searing melancholy, and accented by a melodic beauty missing from a lot of pop music these days. For these last few days of summer, and just before we begin the seasonal recap, give this cut a listen – it’s called ‘This Is Me Trying’, and it makes the perfect accompaniment to one of the last swims of the season, fittingly cloaked by the night, perfumed by the angels, and draped in ambivalence.

I’VE BEEN HAVING A HARD TIME ADJUSTING

I HAD THE SHINIEST WHEELS NOW THEY’RE RUSTING

I DIDN’T KNOW IF YOU’D CARE IF I CAME BACK

I HAVE A LOT OF REGRETS ABOUT THAT

PULLED THE CAR OFF THE ROAD TO THE LOOKOUT

COULD’VE FOLLOWED MY FEARS ALL THE WAY DOWN

AND MAYBE I DON’T QUITE KNOW WHAT TO SAY

BUT I’M HERE IN YOUR DOORWAY

I JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW THAT THIS IS ME TRYING

It’s the way the water pulls you down, at that time of the year when the water is warmer than the air, when the only way out is through, when the wilderness of night floats above the break of day, and you swim down deeper into the warmth, into the place from which we came. That crux of summer and fall, that space between happy and sad, and all you want to do is let go and release and succumb to the darkness. It might be easier that way. It might be better to sink all the way down…

THEY TOLD ME ALL OF MY CAGES WERE MENTAL

SO I GOT WASTED LIKE ALL MY POTENTIAL

AND MY WORDS SHOOT TO KILL WHEN I’M MAD

I HAVE A LOT OF REGRETS ABOUT THAT

I WAS SO AHEAD OF THE CURVE, THE CURVE BECAME A SPHERE

FELL BEHIND ALL MY CLASSMATES AND I ENDED UP HERE

POURING OUT MY HEART TO A STRANGER

BUT I DIDN’T POUR THE WHISKEY

I JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW THAT THIS IS ME TRYING

Will we ever make sense of this summer, or better yet this year? I don’t know… I don’t know. What were the lessons we were supposed to learn? Even the teachers don’t seem to know. Where has all the wisdom been hidden? At the bottom of the ocean ~ deep and dark and impenetrable ~ or the bottom of the pool ~ empty and full at the same time, like the heart and the head? In this warm water of life, like the fluid in which we all began before being expelled or pulled into cold, vicious air, I float down, falling gently, waiting for something or someone to break my fall. Only no one is there. 

AT LEAST I’M TRYING…

AND IT’S HARD TO BE AT A PARTY

WHEN I FEEL LIKE AN OPEN WOUND

IT’S HARD TO BE ANYWHERE THESE DAYS

WHEN ALL I WANT IS YOU

YOU’RE A FLASHBACK IN A FILM REEL

ON THE ONE SCREEN IN MY TOWN

AND I JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW THAT THIS IS ME TRYING

We laughed and we ran, we played and we danced, we stumbled and we fell – that’s what summers are for, and we took our cues from the stars and the moon. We weren’t perfect, and we made mistakes, but we never gave up. The older we get, the less we understand, and the less it seems to matter. There comes a time when understanding is a luxury, when survival is more the raw stuff of breathing and sleeping and moving solemnly through the silence, through the hurt.

And so I move through the water and the summer, and if I come out at the other end maybe we’ll find each other there.  

I JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW THAT THIS IS ME TRYING

AT LEAST I’M TRYING