#haleybonar

(via https://open.spotify.com/user/sillypilgrim/playlist/22nt1BFR4Avk0YVh77sx3r?si=9AgGN2D_T7u4f7fv9UeAYQ)

Since returning from my Santa Fe trip, I’ve been fighting escapist urges and establishing residency at home.  I realize that sounds a bit ridiculous, but it’s just difficult for me to stay put.  Like, very difficult.  

I find I don’t know how to relax or deep breathe.  I am not of my ilk or time or place and cannot stand deep yogic breathing.  It has the adverse effect on me, in fact.    

And so what?  How privileged a discomfort it really is, to have a panic attack in my own home.  A home that will not be summarily ripped away from me, and should not, all things being equal, take much calculated effort to maintain for as long as I so wish.

How truly lucky I am.

Home means different things to different people at different times, and it’s contingent on so much else.  Interpersonal relationships, physical/mental heath, political constraints (and the often tyrannical regimes shaping them), whole ecosystems.  It’s a much murkier concept than just the brick and mortar that go into building physical structure, if only for shelter and safety.  

“Home,” as a concept, is not safeguarded. Ideally, it’s where the heart is, but just as often, it’s a site of abuse; for Gil Scott-Heron, home is where the hatred is.  

So there’s a lot to unpack.  And maybe to then re-pack and take on the road.  Is your feeling or schema of “home” connected most strongly to your childhood, a place someone else - if you were lucky enough to have support - helped make for you?  Maybe your sense of home is most tied to a love and/or family you’ve since made.  

“It goes wherever you go” is the takeaway message from indie-pop artist Haley Bonar’s “Hometown.”  Her sweet and dreamy vocal delivery made me at first take the sentiment to be romantic.   You’re at home as soon as you lay eyes on that sweet boo of yours.  That is definitely possible, and very nice!    

But also, what if it’s to say your “home” was never really what you wanted it to be, and that you’re actively trying to escape it.  Maybe you’re always on the run, and home is no more meaningful or grounded than wherever you happen to be at any given moment (“There Is No Home,” Jana Hunter).  

If you spend time in one place for long enough, formative memories get made. Good memories, bad memories, and everything in between.   Hopefully they balance each other out - at least inasmuch as they mimic the unpredictable and up-and-down patterns of  what most would consider to be an overall “balanced” life.  Like, you fucked for the first time in that bed, and it was awesome!  Then your dad accidentally ran over your dog in the driveway, and it was awful.  

When an event so large shakes your home - death, breakups, natural disaster - a haunting presence can drastically tilt the scales. Pin it on a former lover. “Is this what you wanted … to live in a house that is haunted … by the ghost of you and me?” (“Is This What You Wanted” Leonard Cohen). Pit it on an unforgiving, small-town rumor-mill (“Katie Cruel,” Karen Dalton).

The point is, a person’s sense of home can be totally shaken up at any given moment.  Sometimes, it’s in a  confusingly serendipitous way.  The Talking Heads, my favorite band of all time, hit this in “Once in a Lifetime.”  Honestly, how the heck did I get this beautiful house, with this beautiful wife?  And okay, something weird then totally happened and now I’m living in a shotgun shack. So weird.  What!?