steeped in the words of others

when i was younger i used to write out the lyrics to songs that moved me, or stuck with me. all the time. i'd have a notebook just for writing out songs by other people. is that weird? i find myself missing it. maybe it's part of my mental efforts to put myself back into a place where words used to flow through me. how many teenage habits can i adopt without reverting? i'm blogging, i'm writing out song lyrics... shit, i'm even dating my high school-era boyfriend. have i gone too far in the pursuit of poetry? in recapturing youthful habits in the hopes of rediscovering youthful words?

i think there's some drive to echo beauty. you know how when people - particularly kids, at least that's when i remember this - hear something funny, part of their appreciation of it is repeating it? i wonder if that's a similar instinct. i don't remember particularly feeling this desire in my baltimore era. or maybe call it my ZM era. if i had to hypothesize, i'd guess that back then i could sing more. we had more space, more privacy, more places to ourselves - our own building, a store i was frequently alone in, our enclosed car. i used to sing. all the time. i loved it. i miss that tremendously, too. i used to be able to sing along to songs i liked, if not at the top of my lungs then still passionately and frequently. that was my channeling the beauty, expressing that it moved me. and it really did (and does) feel cathartic on a soulful level. i think even in my new apartment i won't feel free to sing as much as i'd like. i learned how noise-permeable the walls of my childhood apartment were after hearing a first floor neighbor sing loudly one day, and instantly being horrified that my whole building could hear much more than i thought. sorry, neighbors.

so maybe now that i've been a few years without regular private car access and in a very non-soundproofed apartment, it's all pent up in me. if i can't use my voice and my lungs, i'll use my pen. ..and hope that KW doesn't think i'm super weird. there will be fewer habits i can hide from him, now.