Shuffle Synchronicities: Volume 1 - #153

"Blue Bell Knoll" by Cocteau Twins - 06/04/21

"Blue Bell Knoll" by Cocteau Twins

This dream pop, ethereal wave song is from the 1988 Cocteau Twins album also entitled Blue Bell Knoll.

The song and album were named after a peak in Southern Utah on the highest plateau in North America which is called The Aquarius.

This band’s sound has a very Aquarian vibe with its airy and cold ‘etheral wave’.

Aquarius is my rising sign, and its Uranus planet’s placement is in my tenth house.

The tenth house is the house of work and career and public space.

And Aquarius/Uranus is innovative, progressive, unconventional, disruptive, rebellious, eccentric, and stubborn.

So I think of my work with copyright law and memoir and what my teacher/friend/peer Al Brown would call the current/next movement in 21st Century literature.

Perhaps best summed up by David Shields here:

“An artistic movement, albeit an organic and as-yet-unstated one, is forming. What are its key components? A deliberate unartiness: ‘raw’ material, seemingly unprocessed, unfiltered, uncensored, and unprofessional. Randomness, openness to accident and serendipity, spontaneity; artistic risk, emotional urgency and intensity, reader/viewer participation; an overly literal tone, as if a reporter were viewing a strange culture; plasticity of form, pointillism; criticism as autobiography; self-reflexivity; self-ethnography, anthropological autobiography; a blurring (to the point of invisibility) of any distinction between fiction and nonfiction: the lure and blur of the real.”

Shields was recommended to me by Al while I was writing the long sentence book in 2019, and it fit exactly because I was already “organically” writing in the style of the “artistic movement” without knowing it existed yet.

“Openness to accident and serendipity,” summed up my incorporation of the Spotify Shuffle there and now here.

“Artistic risk…criticism as autobiography”…sums up what I did by live-streaming my mourning of my dad through the lens of book, music, and movie criticism during that year into one book published a year after I started, and now here, the live-streaming of my divorce and life in general through music criticism and more, which is published with even more “risk” daily.

Some people don’t like to be written about. Or don’t like that I am writing about myself.

My mom referred me to a NY Times article about people being fired over their previous personal Internet content.

And she perhaps won’t like me writing about this, but the article, while on the surface is about the risk, it’s actually about the hope for more grace for personal Internet content, and also how the person who lost their job initially went on ironically to great success despite it as a result.

It made me think of two friends I’ve made in two writing classes I was in.

One friend doesn’t want me to write about them without their seeing what I write about them ahead of time and approving it.

Which has made me want to be their friend less, to be honest.

The other friend doesn't mind me writing about them.

And even admitted that they might actually like it.

That friend seems to have been summoned by the shuffle today.

We’ve just started texting back and forth in the past, I dunno, 72 hours? To much mirth and joy, openness and intimacy.

She traveled during the exchange to visit her twin younger sisters for their birthday aka the “Cocteau Twins” vibe in my mind.

She’s sent over cute pictures of them at a young age and a video of the mac and cheese gak noise she cooked for them.

She’s also Irish-American and has a Gaelic middle name.

And this song’s lyrics are half in Gaelic.

It deshna dmula lono showa (drain, doubt, lone, showcase)
I make up hundreds so always know how to make love
There, you can have my youth, it’s not what I have loved
Start off to see him, not happily be

Tyearn abet yar atsad bedao (“Let me say, I’m sorry")
Drreol (drill) oh

Pasis disea mala faghat ama (“it’s gone out,” bad, “leave behind,” love)
And I have been so completely busy
Amentyao isna pagho (“I’m sorry,” “baby to pay.”)
And your spangle, oh how it hurts, and I have had this feeling

Tyearn abet yar atsad bedao (“Let me say, I’m sorry")
Drreol (drill) oh

Tyearn abet yar atsad bedao (“Let me say, I’m sorry")
Drreol (drill) oh

I pulled a tarot about this friendship and got the Eight of Wands.

Which means:

Eight of Wands Upright Tarot Card Key Meanings:

Hastiness, speed, progress, movement, action, rushing, exciting times, travel, freedom, holiday, holiday romances, taking off, gaining momentum, ahead, thinking on your feet, sudden action, hard work paying off, results, solutions, energetic, positive, infatuation, obsession, being swept off your feet, jumping in

Which felt like the vibe of our “fast friendship.”

I couldn’t help but read ahead to the love/relationship section of this Tarot guide.

In a love Tarot spread, if you are in a relationship the Eight of Wands is a good omen indicating progress, exciting times, infatuation and being swept of your feet. Whether the relationship is new or you’ve been together for years this Minor Arcana card brings a rush of love, excitement, sex and passion. It is a sign of the relationship moving forward at great speed and you and your partner jumping in with both feet. If you are single, the Eight of Wands signifies meeting someone who will sweep you off your feet. You may become infatuated or obsessed with this person and the romance will take off quickly. It can also represent a holiday romance or meeting someone while travelling.

But not soon after that, our conversation opened up even more into talk of her current romantic relationship, and more about my previous one, and then I brought up the Eckhart Tollean idea of pain and pleasure cycles versus relatively conflict-free ‘true love’, and how she feels like she’s in the latter, and how I felt like I was perhaps too much more in the former sometimes, but hope for much more of the latter in the next relationship either with my (ex?)-wife, or with someone else.

Then just after this song came on the shuffle!

A song from the 2019 children’s stop-motion animated movie The Missing Link by The Walkmen singer, Walter Martin, about making a great friendship with deep intimacy.

Oh, what a mystery
This crazy world can be
And all the wild stuff that I've been through
Searching all around for something true
I went clear from here to Timbuktu
'Til I finally found a friend like you

No I'm not too sure
What I'm always searching for
But I'm searching each day
'Til the day gets late
And wake up on the floor

Buddy I don't know
Just where that river flows
Yeah all I see
That's guiding me
Is the fuzz on the end of my nose

But I believe
In destiny
Or whatever it is that brought a friend like you to me

So we sing
La Di Da Di Do De Li Do
A friend like you

We went on to text about non-romantic love intimacies and intentions.

And I reflect now on how great the former is so far with her.

And also the latter.

How the intentions started 100% as friendship.

I was hoping she’d introduce me to interesting people like herself in her orbit (to date LOL).

And have stayed mostly that.

But honestly they have vacillated sometimes in moments a bit in the past 72 hours.

Buddy I know you got my back
You even laugh at my cheap wisecracks
And if I fell down,
And got turned around you'd put me right back on track

Then there was something unrelated but synchronistically mentioned by her in the texting: “Is this instinct any kind of way of wanting to hurt yourself or blow shit up”.

Which synchronizes with reflecting on the urge to publish unvarnished truth or reality as I see it as close to the moments in time they happen, what Al Brown called in our class, serialized memoir, if it feels called upon by the shuffle synchronicities in this newsletter.

That “artistic risk” as Shields says. Or the “consequences” in real life as Al Brown calls them versus just the “stakes” in a fictional story.

But isn’t this just the way to live life well?

That this friend if they are my ‘buddy’ (another inside joke here, we thought she was a 6 wing 7 at first, i.e. the buddy instead of a fun-loving, versatile, but scattered 7, i.e. the Enthusiast, which she seems more to be), this buddy would honor my natural at times vacillating intentions?

And that when “I get turned around” my buddy would 'put me right back on track!’

And I'm looking out for you
Cuz buddy I'm a good buddy too
And if you're in despair you know I'd be
There 'cause that's what good buddies do

But that, even more importantly, I “look out for her,” too, “Cuz buddy I’m a good buddy too,” by maintaining my clearest intentions and “putting myself back on track” i.e. take responsibility for my role in her life, which she has so graciously included me in.

Or as the Cocteau Twins sing: Tyearn abet yar atsad bedao (“Let me say, I’m sorry") if my intentions weren’t always Christian and true blue.

And believe
Camaraderie
Can help us solve all world's great mysteries

As we sing
La Di Da Di Do De Li Do
A friend like you

HIT IT BUDDY!
(Solo)

Everybody now!
La Di Da Di Do De Li Do
A friend like you

What'd I do to get a friend like you?
What'd I do to get a friend like you?
What'd I do...
To get a friend like you
D like you

And so after I wrote this far, I realized, I actually wanted her to read this piece before I published it.

Somehow being given the respect to publish something about someone without approval then made me OK with seeking that approval.

Softened this stubborn Aquarius.

And so I’ve sent it to her just now.

And so hopefully on we go down the “river”.

What’d I do to get a friend like her?

And what do we do to maintain the ‘loose grip’ and not ~lose~ that friendship?

Is it a mystery?

Perhaps it’s just this honesty!

And she’s written back: “Hahaha it’s great. Post away. (Not that you need permission honestly but ty).

Okay, that’s the one hundred and fifty-third Shuffle Synchronicities.