The Return of Our Lorde (and a word from our sponsor)

 

"Now if you're looking for a savior, well, that's not me." -Lorde, The Path

So Lorde is back.

    The significance of this -- of all the little things that had to fall into place to be in a similar headspace as this literal pop icon after whom I've patterned myself since 2013 -- is astronomical (hehe). 

    First things first, however...

    I sleep through the night now; I no longer look with yearning at certain tools of destruction; I wake up and want to live; I can tell my story without dissolving into sobs; I drink hot tea every morning before work; I serve my small town as a bastion against illiteracy and misinformation, spending paid time amongst the quiet and the sacred rows of books. I've found kindred spirits (read huge nerds) in my fellow laborers. I've read 11 and 1/2 books this year (but that's a post for another time 😉). I spend a little less time on my phone placing the weight of the world on my shoulders and a lot more time smiling and laughing and wearing dresses and comfy clothes. I embrace my body as she is.

    Each night, before bed, I take one little pink pill and one little green-and-cream-white capsule, and in the morning, my bladder works and my brain doesn't try to kill me with grief.

    Grief for myself, for my vile wretch of a country, and for the other nations and peoples aching beneath her steel-toed boots. I feel alive and newly attuned to truths of The Nazarene. I've tossed away the stifle of a certain mantel. I have not darkened the door of an American church in more than a year. This in itself has been one of my greatest reliefs. Best of all, I'm unafraid to point the finger at our infighting, our squabbling, spittle-spewing divisions, this time around. The Bride here is diseased, rabid, and I am glad to be far away from her. She hurts people. She uplifts pedophiles, defends abusers, shouts down victims, and profits from the pyramid scheme of membership and "offerings," a disgusting Get Rich Quick scheme for the televangelists, and a demonizer of the Other in the mainstream and the music.

    But I digress.

    Personally, I think I'm able to because of those little pills I take before I fight my own demons in my dreams. Funny how much better you can feel when you, I don't know, use the tools God helped us discover to manage the weird electric meat in our skulls! And no one is around to shame you for doing so! Weird! 😃

    I've removed myself far, far away from my point of entry into this world, and spend 15 minutes in the sun as often as I am able. Ella (stage name, Lorde) has a point about going outside that I'm sure other adults have tried to tell me before, but it's so much easier to receive from someone my age. And the young rarely want to hear from those who always say things like, "All you young people just want everything for nothing! That's not reality!" 

    This coming from some of the generations that were literally handed everything on a silver platter (post WWII) and promptly made sure no one else would succeed so easily after them...

    Again, I digress. I guess I'll always want to pick imaginary fights, even if I'm not angry all the time. 😉

    In my dreams, I ward off my abuser. I teach him what I've learned about wounds; I keep his hands far away from me. I don't know much about ancestral work nor if my faith allows for such complicated things, or if I am venturing into a system not my own (we are so apt to steal from each other here on this planet, aren't we). Each night, each day, I stand firmly in the gap, trying to redirect our family tree away from the ravine, trying to undo all the rage, hate, and pain sewn into my existence from mothers and fathers past. To grow in grace and mercy. In these consistently themed nightmares, it's almost as if my ancestral line -- as violently damaged or cruel to others as it may have been -- is reaching out through my subconscious for healing. 

    So I heal it. We don't have to treat people that way. We will no longer be abusing others. Is that clear? Good.

    The past few nights, he has not come into my realm. I hope it stays that way.

    As I drift in and out of sleep, I roll over to cling to my husband, my partner in healing, my God-given strength when I have been o' so weak. I remember Him telling me on a train that this man was His gift, a peace offering to teach me what He's really like. Since then, I've held onto the hope that he was for me and he is.

    But back to the new album...

    (No pearl clutching about the cover, please; if it causes you to sin, pluck your eyes out. Now back to the show. 😌)

    Some people have been wanting her to narrate our twenties. She did so well empathizing and putting our teen angst and wild, raging ecstacies into words. Me and mine will never ever be over "Ribs" or "Green Light" or "Sober II" or "A World Alone" or-- and on and on ad infinitum. 

"Couldn't wait to turn fifteen, then you blink and it's been ten years: growing up a little at a time and all at once..." - Lorde, Secrets from a Girl (Whose Seen It All)

    

    Surely something similar would be forthcoming eventually for these strange, ugly, messy, dark years sprinkled with small pinpoints of light. I mean, here we are navigating making friends as grownups, wrestling with the intricate debris of our parents unbelievably damaged inner worlds, surviving (and then being forced by greed, narcissism, and apathy to live with) an actual plague. 🙃 (Get your damn vaccines and wear a mask. It's not that hard; I do it every day at work. Get some compassion back in your veins, spare a thought for literally anyone else but you and yours.)

    Well, anyway, in spite of the fans' clamoring, Miss Girl delivered something else entirely. A diary of sorts, things she wants to listen to, and we are invited to listen along if we want to. An album full of yellow sunlight, the pleas of flower children from times past, guitars, layered vocals, mellow early 2000s pop drums; of ponderings and love, sprawling yet tidy little wisdoms that she learned away from the spotlight as a regular human girl. 

    Through the death of her sweet dog, Pearl, she says she learned about loss. One can hear in "Man with the Axe" that she's learned to take the love that's meant for her rather than force the one from her bright-eyed girlish days to outlast a clear deadline. She's learned to forgive. She's learned to grow things and take her meat suit outside to recharge in the nature part of this simulation.

"...Shivering pines and walls of colour: I can't believe I used to stay inside." - Lorde, "Big Star"

    

    Another prickly topic she tackles in the songs "Dominoes", "Mood Ring", "Fallen Fruit", and "Leader of a New Regime" is the way our planet and ourselves along with it are perishing from greed and sudo-spirituality. You know the type: Instagram "influencers" blowing love and light up our @sses, jet-setting to a tourist's version of Hawai'i with no room left for its native sons and daughters, and white ladies burning endangered Indigenous sacred plants to "cleanse their space" as unconsciously as they vaporize Young Living essential oils. (I remember Melecio's bright chortle here: "Pharmakeia!(Greek) It's witchcraft!")

    Questions young people keep trying to bring up when we shouldn't have to (Greta Thurnberg's tears fill us with rage and courage. "How dare you!" indeed). Will we have enough time to undo the curse of selfishness we've inflicted on our one viable planet before she just can't give to us takers anything more than storms and starvation? And don't even get me started on the current phallic measurement contest that is the modern bajillionaire space-race to an uninhabitable Mars. Why fix your mistakes when you could just make new ones! 😤

    In the end, for all her witticisms, she sings with that signature new breed of smoky-light pop girl voice along with the leg scrapings of Brood X, 

"Oh was enlightenment found? No, but I'm trying, taking it one year at a time." - Lorde, "Oceanic Feeling"

    And honestly? Same.

    It's an album to vibe to, to sit around in the grass and then sing in the cool after-sunning shower. It's an excellent album to zone out to or get a little work done. To write an online journal entry 😉. I'm stoked at the probability of seeing her live next year, getting to vibe and sway with other Solar Institute inductees if the Covid/Delta variant curve doesn't bulge outrageously upward before then. 🤞

    That's all for now. Maybe in the future I'll be able to pull off that ultimate test of selflessness and disappear from social media altogether. Facebook was an easy cold turkey. 

    As I read over this for errors, I can tell I'm still preachy as ever. The irony is not lost on me. I just want to be as kind as possible, and these are the things that make it difficult. Guess I'll "just have to breathe and tune in" as Lorde says. One day we'll stop killing and hurting each other, like at the end of "Raya and the Last Dragon" when *SPOILERS* the nations surge together as one, whole and rejoicing (when I tell you I WEPT!). I know it was a Disney movie ("Pharmekeia!"), but for a split second my soul caught a glimpse of what it might be to live in peace with all mankind, and I couldn't help it. 

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” - C.S. Lewis

   The sons and daughters will be revealed someday. This is enough to hope for. Till then we ache and groan together, under the sun...

   "It's all just a dream; I wanna wake up, I wanna wake up..." - Lorde, "California"

    

    

Mood Ring Premier Screengrab from wtfisuptaylor on tumblr
Lorde eye Gif by itszonez on tumblr