I'm always so pleased when Canadians do something awesome. Canada is the home of Linda Evangelista, Daria Werbowy, Coco Rocha, Jessica Stam, and Irina Lazareanu. It has given people the music of Leonard Cohen, Bryan Adams, and Sarah McLachlan. Designers like Mark Fast and Dan & Dean Caten also hail from Canada. So when I came upon "How To Be Alone", a spoken word poem by Tanya Davis, in a Youtube video directed by Andrea Dorfman, I smiled to myself, knowing that a Canadian had once again produced a diamond from the metaphorical rough.
Davis, a Prince Edward Island native, is an extremely talented wordsmith. It's not even just the way she put the words together, it's also the way she says them. Listening to her perform the poem is necessary if you want to get the full effect of it. She speaks in a quirky way that allows you to be comforted by what she is saying. Like she's a friend.
The idea of being alone is one that a lot of people are terrified of. The potential that a person might never find that significant other to spend the rest of their life with, or the difficulties you face after losing that person... for some, that is almost too much to bear. You hear stories of people taking their own lives, and you wonder what could have stopped them from doing so. You see depressed people on television and ask yourself how they came to be like that. Does it result from a mental condition? Did they lose a loved one recently? What if someone had just given them a hug every morning, and told them they were important?
That seems to be the problem with loneliness. When you are alone, when you have no one, you can't know if what you are doing is wrong, because no one is there to tell you. You have no one to confirm that you are funny, or beautiful, or smart. And the unfortunate truth is that the majority of people need that. They need the confirmation that what they think about themselves is true, because they do not trust their own opinions.
Davis' poem is like a training course. It teaches you quite literally, how to be alone. She shows you things that you can do by yourself. She assures you that you aren't the only one in the world who is alone, and who feels uncomfortable with that. But more than anything, she encourages you to embrace the fact. Because if you can embrace being alone, if you can realize that you don't need another person to feel complete and happy and confident with yourself, then being alone is okay.
Anyway, I really loved this poem and thought I'd share it with you, because it's great and also been recieving quite a bit of press in Canada recently. If you want more information on Tanya Davis, her official website is http://www.tanyadavis.ca/, and her Facebook page can be found at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tanya-Davis/8063194647?ref=sgm. The director of the video, Andrea Dorfman can be found at http://www.andreadorfman.com/ and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Andrea-Dorfman-Films/110789945626226?ref=mf. Anyway, I'll leave you with the lyrics of the poem, in case you want a copy of reminders or whatever :)
If you are at first lonely, be patient. If you've not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren't okay with it, then just wait. You'll find it's fine to be alone once you're embracing it.
We could start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library. Where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books. You're not supposed to talk much anyway so it's safe there.
There's also the gym. If you're shy you could hang out with yourself in mirrors, you could put headphones in.
And there's public transportation, because we all gotta go places.
And there's prayer and meditation. No one will think less if you're hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.
Start simple. Things you may have previously based on your avoid being alone principals.
The lunch counter. Where you will be surrounded by chow-downers. Employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town and so they -- like you -- will be alone.
Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.
When you are comfortable with eat lunch and run, take yourself out for dinner. A restaurant with linen and silverware. You're no less intriguing a person when you're eating solo dessert to cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.
Go to the movies. Where it is dark and soothing. Alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.
And then, take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you. Stand on the outside of the floor till the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one's watching...because, they're probably not. And, if they are, assume it is with best of human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats is, after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you're sweating, and beads of perspiration remind you of life's best things, down your back like a brook of blessings.
Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you.
Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, there're always statues to talk to and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence if only for a minute and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might've never happened had you not been there by yourself.
Society is afraid of alonedom, like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them. but lonely is a freedom that breaths easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.
You could stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther for the endless quest for company. But no one's in your head and by the time you translate your thoughts, some essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept.
Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high school's groaning were tokens for holding the lonely at bay. Cuz if you're happy in your head than solitude is blessed and alone is okay.
It's okay if no one believes like you. All experience is unique, no one has the same synapses, can't think like you, for this be releived, keeps things interesting lifes magic things in reach.
And it doesn't mean you're not connected, that communitie's not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it. take silence and respect it. if you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it. if your family doesn't get you, or religious sect is not meant for you, don't obsess about it.
You could be in an instant surrounded if you needed it.
If your heart is bleeding make the best of it
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.
Davis, a Prince Edward Island native, is an extremely talented wordsmith. It's not even just the way she put the words together, it's also the way she says them. Listening to her perform the poem is necessary if you want to get the full effect of it. She speaks in a quirky way that allows you to be comforted by what she is saying. Like she's a friend.
The idea of being alone is one that a lot of people are terrified of. The potential that a person might never find that significant other to spend the rest of their life with, or the difficulties you face after losing that person... for some, that is almost too much to bear. You hear stories of people taking their own lives, and you wonder what could have stopped them from doing so. You see depressed people on television and ask yourself how they came to be like that. Does it result from a mental condition? Did they lose a loved one recently? What if someone had just given them a hug every morning, and told them they were important?
That seems to be the problem with loneliness. When you are alone, when you have no one, you can't know if what you are doing is wrong, because no one is there to tell you. You have no one to confirm that you are funny, or beautiful, or smart. And the unfortunate truth is that the majority of people need that. They need the confirmation that what they think about themselves is true, because they do not trust their own opinions.
Davis' poem is like a training course. It teaches you quite literally, how to be alone. She shows you things that you can do by yourself. She assures you that you aren't the only one in the world who is alone, and who feels uncomfortable with that. But more than anything, she encourages you to embrace the fact. Because if you can embrace being alone, if you can realize that you don't need another person to feel complete and happy and confident with yourself, then being alone is okay.
Anyway, I really loved this poem and thought I'd share it with you, because it's great and also been recieving quite a bit of press in Canada recently. If you want more information on Tanya Davis, her official website is http://www.tanyadavis.ca/, and her Facebook page can be found at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tanya-Davis/8063194647?ref=sgm. The director of the video, Andrea Dorfman can be found at http://www.andreadorfman.com/ and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Andrea-Dorfman-Films/110789945626226?ref=mf. Anyway, I'll leave you with the lyrics of the poem, in case you want a copy of reminders or whatever :)
***
HOW TO BE ALONE by Tanya Davis
If you are at first lonely, be patient. If you've not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren't okay with it, then just wait. You'll find it's fine to be alone once you're embracing it.
We could start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library. Where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books. You're not supposed to talk much anyway so it's safe there.
There's also the gym. If you're shy you could hang out with yourself in mirrors, you could put headphones in.
And there's public transportation, because we all gotta go places.
And there's prayer and meditation. No one will think less if you're hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.
Start simple. Things you may have previously based on your avoid being alone principals.
The lunch counter. Where you will be surrounded by chow-downers. Employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town and so they -- like you -- will be alone.
Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.
When you are comfortable with eat lunch and run, take yourself out for dinner. A restaurant with linen and silverware. You're no less intriguing a person when you're eating solo dessert to cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.
Go to the movies. Where it is dark and soothing. Alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.
And then, take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you. Stand on the outside of the floor till the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one's watching...because, they're probably not. And, if they are, assume it is with best of human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats is, after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you're sweating, and beads of perspiration remind you of life's best things, down your back like a brook of blessings.
Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you.
Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, there're always statues to talk to and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence if only for a minute and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might've never happened had you not been there by yourself.
Society is afraid of alonedom, like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them. but lonely is a freedom that breaths easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.
You could stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther for the endless quest for company. But no one's in your head and by the time you translate your thoughts, some essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept.
Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high school's groaning were tokens for holding the lonely at bay. Cuz if you're happy in your head than solitude is blessed and alone is okay.
It's okay if no one believes like you. All experience is unique, no one has the same synapses, can't think like you, for this be releived, keeps things interesting lifes magic things in reach.
And it doesn't mean you're not connected, that communitie's not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it. take silence and respect it. if you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it. if your family doesn't get you, or religious sect is not meant for you, don't obsess about it.
You could be in an instant surrounded if you needed it.
If your heart is bleeding make the best of it
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.
***
Peace, love, and floating,
Gill Ford
No comments:
Post a Comment