Black Magic

My roommates came home this weekend and said, "Oh, your hair! It looks great!" I said, "I cut it with the scissors from my pocketknife." They said, "No way! It looks great!" I'm always a little nervous to do this, to say this outloud, but I told them in a hushed voice that my hair is enwrapped in a black magic spell. I figured it out after I cut it like a boy's hair and dyed it purple in eighth grade. I can do anything to it and it always looks okay. I dye it red, brown, blonde, bleach it, put streaks in it, hack away at it with dull scissors, give myself stupid lop-sided haircuts or miniature bangs, shave it all off, it always looks fine. It's a long standing dare I have with myself, I stand in front of a mirror and instead of saying "Bloody Mary" three times, I just start cutting perilously and think: This is the time it will look like shit when I stop cutting. This is the time I will have to admit that I've fucked up, which would be to see for sure that magic does not exist. But it never happens. It always looks fine. I would be the first to admit if it looked like shit, but it doesn't. Right now, it actually does look sort of great.

We are sitting in Cafe Arabica and they are playing Sea Change and I refuse to believe that it isn't all connected and I refuse to believe that the connections don't mean what I think they do and I refuse to not believe in my horoscope and I refuse to not believe that things happened exactly like I remember them happening when they were happening and I refuse to believe that the future isn't totally potentially perfect regardless.

The last thing I refuse to believe in this moment that writing in a blog is not a legitimate way to communicate with the Universe. Just like what I do to my hair and what I put on my body is a way of Feeling It, writing on the internet and making videos on my computer and putting up pictures is Putting It Out There. Last night I was on the sketchy internet balcony phone with my friend Chris and he was telling me how one of his dance teachers has been talking a lot about Sincerity, and he in turn has been thinking about Honest Movement, which in turn makes me think about Legitimate Forms of Communicating with the Universe, and I believe that this is one of them. Which also makes me think of last March, when I was reading my friend Max's blog, and he had written something about me when I used to perform as Teen Rabbit by singing a capella in front of people:

"I was always struck by how seriously brave that is. It's hard to describe with words (maybe I should dance how I feel). But like: sing it! That is a good way to participate in feelings you do not understand. It's a way of understanding; commenting, noticing."

When I read that, of course I was flattered that he had called me brave because bravery is a quality I hold in the highest esteem, but I also thought it was funny because I had never thought about it that way before: as a matter of bravery. I think about it as a matter of necessity. How can we ever be sincere or honest with ourselves and each other if we are not always trying to understand better the circumstances of our existence? Sing it, tape it, write it, take pictures of it, document it, feel it, start a dialogue with what you DO NOT UNDERSTAND by first stating what you DO. I do not want to be afraid anymore of a world I cannot change because that's all there is: what IS is what I cannot CHANGE, only live, only live with, only live in. And I am not talking about not being able to change actual events, human relationships, I think that things in the world can get better or worse based on what we do and what we do to each other, of course, but I think it is important not to take for granted that we understand what it means to exist in the first place. There is no diagram of the anatomy of existing in the Universe in this moment but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to talk about it and be honest and brave about what we feel.


YOU'RE THE FUNNIEST PERSON I KNOW from MAGGIE MURPHY on Vimeo.