There are no such things as control freaks. They are simply the adult version of children whose autonomy has been wrested from them.
– Jennifer Butler Basile
That may be the single most profound thing I have realized and written in my life.
There are no such things as control freaks. They are simply the adult version of children whose autonomy has been wrested from them.
– Jennifer Butler Basile
That may be the single most profound thing I have realized and written in my life.
Posted by Jennifer Butler Basile on August 9, 2021
https://choppingpotatoes.com/2021/08/09/cancel-control-freaks/
I was going to say something along the lines of “Holy Therapy Session, Batman!” but this has nothing to do with male superheroes. This is all about the ladies.
The innate power of women.
The smoke is from the top of my head blowing off, my mind exploding. The holy vespers of the spirit swirling around the space.
When something is known with surety, a warmth spreads from your chest, across your shoulder blades, up your neck into a tingling of the scalp. Water rises and pools along the cusp of lashes, glazing the eye in a softened yet magnified lens. The heart swells and throws the arms outward, seeking the embrace – of an idea or confidant or both.
Searching all one’s life for the fiat; once found, the yes is effortless.
Posted by Jennifer Butler Basile on February 10, 2021
https://choppingpotatoes.com/2021/02/10/holy-smokes/
Last week I learned via a post from Reggae Steady Ska that May 29, 2019 was dubbed (see what I did there?) The Specials Day in Los Angeles, California. Now I was a little confused as to why LA would honor a band who hails from the UK, but then again, I am a white woman in RI who listens to reggae, rock steady, and ska. The idea that The Specials themselves and the themes of their music exemplify and encourage diversity is what drew a Los Angeles councilwoman to hold them up for the city to see. It drew me to my CD rack (yes, I still own those) and The Specials album I hadn’t listened to in far too long.
As the bright beats of trumpet danced above the driving guitar, the music swelling from the speakers and spilling into the corners of this room and the next, I realized the deep hole that is left inside me when music doesn’t play.
I have four children. My house, my life, my mind is very loud. The last few years I’ve taken to not turning the radio on at all in the car because, there is enough noise in there already. The power button on the radio is one level of sound on which I can hit the kill switch. About a year or so ago, on a return drive from ‘the city’, about an hour away from home, I got through more than two thirds of the trip before I realized I hadn’t even turned the radio on then, when I was by myself. The cacophony in my head was complete if I couldn’t even partake of music when I could listen uninterruptedly to what I chose.
And that’s so sad.
Most of my memory has an overlay of obsession with music. So many genres and artists. So many generations and styles. I’ve imagined the soundtrack of certain parts of my life and relive other parts of my life through song.
In August 2017, 95.5 WBRU, the local modern rock radio station I had cut my anti-establishment musical teeth on, closed up shop. (Well, they were sold to a Christian rock outfit.) I still had the CDs, I still had internet access, I still had the memories – if I dare be so dramatic – but I mourned the loss of that running record of new and individualistic music as if someone close to me had died. Still, nearly two years later, I wax nostalgic if I happen to catch the low-power signal they sometimes broadcast on. I still post from time to time about how much I miss the station when I find a song they used to play on YouTube. I was getting to the point where even I was wondering what was wrong with me. Why was I so attached to a freaking radio station?
The obvious answer is because its going off the air was a death of part of my youth. BRU’s Retro Lunch was the soundtrack to the lunch we all had at my house before Junior Prom. Their Screamer of the Week was something I talked about with the guy I’d just started dating. Their Friday Night Countdown was what I recorded onto a cassette and mailed him when he went away to Boot Camp and we were still dating. So many pivotal moments of my coming of age were backed up by the beats of WBRU.
And research shows that songs elicit the same emotions we experienced when we first heard or listened to them most frequently. If I loved that part of my life and its soundtrack was now going away, it was almost as if that part of my life was dying. A leap, yes. And yes, I can cue up any of those songs on a streaming service or ‘go down the YouTube rabbit hole’ as I say my husband does of an evening every so often (He likes to relive the days I made him all those mixed tapes – yes, we married), but the spontaneity of what would appear next, the destiny of your song coming on at just the right moment, the discovery of something new you’ve never heard before, or hearing it at the moment of its release – that magic of the broadcasting universe is gone.
That radio station represented my teenage self thumbing my nose at the world. It signified my independence, culling my own style, my own voice, my own philosophy. I started listening to it when I was first heading out into the world. Its closing reminds me that I’ve been out here some time now. Not hearing it makes me suddenly wake up from the melodious trance and notice all the things I wanted to do, but haven’t yet. I don’t know really any much more than I did then; I am really no happier than I was then. The teenage angst has been switched out for that of the existential sort. Only now I can’t blare the radio and rage.
I think the closing of BRU was also the death knell of something bigger in my life. The joy of music I once had. The carefree release of a rollicking rhythm. Now I think too much about heavier things. I have too much to do. I don’t have time to pop in the CD or turn on the radio before I rush on to the next thing. I really feel adrift when the only two stations that play anything remotely my style of music either are out of range or on commercial. There’s probably a part of me that figures it’s so different, so lesser, then why bother trying to find the music at all.
It’s no secret that I hate change. I dig my heels in and get drug along unwillingly more often than not. I’m trying to open my heart to grace, allowing the full potential of situations, my life unfold. I know reopening my heart and soul to music would only make the journey that much richer. It’s just sad when you’d found your canon and reveled in it – and now it’s gone. But I can always use signs from the universe – like FB posts read in RI of UK bands being honored in LA – to signal it’s time to break out those old albums. And there’s always Pandora. But if it’s not painfully apparent already – I’ll always be hopelessly old school.
LA Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez with Horace Panter and Terry Hall of The Specials
Posted by Jennifer Butler Basile on June 7, 2019
https://choppingpotatoes.com/2019/06/07/old-school-soul-hole/
How does one bounce back?
A perfectionist prolongs her reentry, waiting for the perfect post, story, sentiment; making her grand reentry so untenably grand, it may never happen. Or be such a tremendous let-down, it truly disappoints.
A dweller in the present seizes the few minutes’ pocket of silence to write like her life depends upon it; easing back into life with the monotony of a moment, a microcosm of her world, the gentle ebb and flow of everyday.
If the procrastinator gets a hold of either of these two, nothing will ever be written again. Too many of the dweller’s moments will pass, needing explanation, analysis. Explanation and analysis swoop in upon the perfectionist like the ugly albatross.
As the sun warms my legs and slowly melts the snow outside, I sit at the center of a circle drawn by these three.
Posted by Jennifer Butler Basile on February 16, 2017
https://choppingpotatoes.com/2017/02/16/threes-company/
It is a tough time to be a woman.
I would say that applies to this point in time, but really, it applies to all points in time.
Eve was blamed for the poor choices of a free-thinking man; Joan of Arc called a witch; Hillary Clinton, a nasty woman.
In this election season, the vitriol aimed at the nation’s first serious female contender for presidency does not seem possible in our post-ban-bossy society. I’d like to say it is the opinion of one misguided and egregiously ignorant man, but I fear it is more than money that has allowed his rise to popularity.
In a world where our daughters, our students are taught they can be anything; encouraged by anyone, male or female, an individual asking to run an entire country of democratic citizens mocks and degrades a successful and powerful individual who dares challenge him – even more so because she is a woman.
And the mocking and degrading is not school yard quality. It seeks to degrade the very essence of womanhood. That to be a woman is somehow nasty and brutish.
Rather than counter policy with opposing policy, debate becomes a game of sexual power. Gender specific jibes become weapons, instead of informed discourse. Winning becomes the ultimate trophy – regardless of personal injury or insult, disrespect or demeaning.
Media are correct when they say Trump has created a sympathy of sorts for Clinton; a bond between all ‘nasty women’. But as repugnant as he is, Clinton is insidious.
TeenVogue
I was almost tempted to pull the nasty woman t-shirt over my head – until I saw half of its proceeds directly fund Planned Parenthood.
While Clinton offers a face for the rallying cry of female power and pride, she does not offer a platform for all women.
The evil of calling a woman nasty is not countered by supporting an organization that denies the amazing capabilities of the female form.
To deny the claims of nastiness, all of womanhood must be embraced. Feminism cannot assert any sort of power if it seeks to destroy. It is not a matter of subverting individual choice; it is allowing all of the wondrous capability of life. The conception and continuance of life is the most beautiful occurrence in the universe. There is nothing nasty about it. If women want to show the true beauty and majesty of their form, of their essence, of humanity, they will not seek to snuff out life at its inception – simply to prove males like Trump don’t own their bodies and decisions. That is a hollow and soul-sucking proof of power. Death is not a victory. Bringing life into existence – that is power.
That is not to say that women who choose not to or are unable to conceive are not powerful. But we, as a society, cannot view such an integral part of the female essence and physiology as a stumbling block to power.
Women have been taught to fear their fertility. To see it as a barrier instead of a benefit. If we didn’t seek to meet men like Trump on their playing field, but elevate the arena to the full scope of what women are capable of, men would never dream of calling any woman nasty.
No woman deserves to be called such. I do feel sympathy for women mistreated by misguided men and women. But I also feel that neither candidate for president in this election represents the ultimate potential of women, of humankind.
Related Articles:
“Nasty woman” becomes the feminist rallying cry Hillary Clinton was waiting for by Liz Plank
There’s Already a “Nasty Woman” T-Shirt For Sale — And It Benefits Planned Parenthood by Phillip Picardi
Before Applauding Hillary’s Abortion Remarks, Know the One Fact She Ignored by Christy Lee Parker
Nasty Women Have Much Work to Do by Alexandra Petri
Election 2016: Time to Decide by Fr. Bob Marciano
Posted by Jennifer Butler Basile on October 21, 2016
https://choppingpotatoes.com/2016/10/21/truly-nasty/
I went to sleep in the springtime
I awoke in summer
A riot of green,
a vibrant rush,
an air of energy
My body reclaimed and yet not my own
Inside out
the protective covering of conception gone
Gaunt fingers and ankles
ghosts of padded appendages
no longer needed to sustain life
for two
Whole again
and yet suddenly separate
A new path split
in two
Posted by Jennifer Butler Basile on June 9, 2016
https://choppingpotatoes.com/2016/06/09/two-to-two/
I am very much inside myself lately.
Thinking about what needs to get done,
Worrying about pain and exhaustion,
Waiting for my next chance to lie down
I weigh this alone time
for its relaxation
vs
opportunity to accomplish,
both sans wee ones
Motherhood has brought me to this state
and yet, it’s all in my head.
I struggle and strive to survive
for them
yet yearn for me
.
powercube.net
Posted by Jennifer Butler Basile on March 31, 2016
https://choppingpotatoes.com/2016/03/31/without-wee-within/