B-E-A-Youtiful

I had a dream last night. In this dream I was in a place that I don't know, but recognized as home. It was big, but the rooms were really dark save a few randomly placed lamps on desks, most of which had blue lights in them. With me at my home (I'm not sure if it was supposed to be Boise or Idaho Falls) was a beautiful, racially ambiguous woman. She looked like some kind of Asian/American mix, short hair, tall (maybe 5'7", being tall for both asians and my family) and curvaceous. Her full name was りゅうぐめい (Pronounce dYuuGuMae), which is a Japanese sounding name, but is not an actual name at all. She also went by a few nicknames, including ぽくぽくめい (PokuPokuMae), and せっぷっくめい(SeppukkuMae). I was in love with this girl - truly, truly in love. She felt like some kind of inner part of myself that I didn't show around my family and friends made manifest into a physical form. She was beautiful, but very natural. She had an "alternative" look, I guess you could call it - a few piercings here and there, punk-ish, but fashionable clothing. There was nothing superficial about this person. She was honest.

Then, I woke up. I still felt a lingering feeling of longing for My Ryuugume, this lasting for a few hours into my day. And, for whatever reason, this whole experience has affected me in a really intense way.

Lately, I've been questioning what I consider to be beautiful in life. I mean, normally people look towards something attractive to the eye or sensitive to the heart (love, mostly) for something to qualify as beautiful. I certainly fit into that group once. However, now it seems that my opinions are being challenged by little, seemingly insignificant moments in my everyday life.

Recently, me and Ryan have been working on a little musical project that we like to call a "band," and in doing so have stumbled across a barrier that gets pretty tough to get through - Originality. Being fans of music, we're inspired by a lot of different artists and bands, and trying to find a balance of originality and inspiration is very difficult. Plus, this band is somewhat of an "emotive hardcore" band (kinda), a genre relatively common today. We started writing a few songs, and sure enough they were a little too reminiscent of other musical acts (i.e. Ulver, Misery Signals, Jument, Cult of Luna, etc.). However, we've been listening to a lot of non-metal related music, and sure enough that started making some cute little ideas pop up in our head. We played around a bit in our rehearsal space in Garden city, and eventually we began to notice some strange things.

Garden City is creepy. It's a city within a city, it's dirty, and at night it feels very unfamiliar. Still, it's safe in our practice room (not like there's any danger outside, mind you. It just feels that way sometimes, not too dissimilar from the hallway downstairs), and we could be locked up in there and be away from the world. Other than our amps and drum equipment, inside our practice space are a lava lamp and a mini strobe light. It's pretty common for us to have only those two lights on while we write music, and it's very uncomfortable.

One day in the rehearsal space Ryan played a riff he had been writing. I jumped in, and pretty soon we had a whole song hashed out in about thirty minutes. For the start of the song, Ryan decided it would be interesting to have Tom play his bass with a Cello bow, making a variety of bizarre overtones and frequencies not normally associated with the instrument. We tried it out... and my heart sank. The sounds Tom began to make were so real, vulnerable, and heart-wrenchingly sad. It was beautiful. Definitely one of those, "Holy crap. What have we DONE?!" kind of moments. With the limited light, one couldn't help but feel alone and vulnerable, scared. It was so primal and honest that it was beautiful, and we knew we had come up with something awesome. (Here's the song so far... Mom and Dad probably won't like the last half, seeing that it's "pretty Heavy" Download Plaza - We're Almost There


When did THIS happen? When did feeling scared and vulnerable translate into something beautiful? All I can assume is that Beauty for me has become something that I deny myself... Something just always out of my reach. Beauty is not something for me to witness, but something for my heart to cry out for. I guess for the sake of my blog format, I can make a list of what Beauty has become for me.

3. Beauty is Natural
Beauty cannot be made or forced. It is something that occurs due to our environment, past experiences, opinions, mood, anything... it's a raw form of natural emotion brought about by not you, but everything else.

2. Beauty is Best Reflected Through Primal Instinct and Emotion
Beauty, to me, is represented not through twitterpation, but through emotions like fear, vulnerability, heart-ache, ecstasy, worry, mystery, doubt - emotions that remind us that we're alive, and conscious beings. You cannot fake those emotions. They don't lie.

1. Beauty is Less About What You Desire, and More About What You (Or Your Heart) Can't Have
I think this is why people are so attached to stories of Romance. What is beautiful in stories like Romeo and Juliet, or the Fountain is not what we see on the outside, but the deep, internal struggle their hearts feel. They cannot have what they need so badly, even if it is as simple as another person to hold their hand. The pain and sorrow of love and longing is much more impactful than the look of it all. りゅうぐめい wasn't beautiful because she was attractive. She was beautiful because she was so real, and so pure... but I couldn't have her.

So, that's my mopey post for today. It's not as pessimistic, I guess, but it's dark and truuuuuuuuuue. I'm interested to hear what you have to think about all this, what with the appearance of beauty, my dream, etc. I'd especially like to hear from Challis and my Mother about what they think of the dream, seeing that they're into that crap.

It's late. I'm going to bed.

Let's hope I don't fall in love aaaalllll over again.

P.S. If it helps at all, PokuPoku in Japanese is an onomatopoeia for the sound of eating, and Seppukku is the act of killing yourself in the name of honor... Those were the nicknames Ryuugumei went by in my dream, so if it's of any interest...