Heady vs. Heavy (vs. Harry, haha)

If something is not at least slightly heady in some kind of way, then it’s something I’m not gonna watch. Of course, there are exceptions, but you know what I mean. I’ve noticed that a lot of people, though, think of heady as being heavy. And that’s ok, we’re only human and we’re very different, but we’re much more alike than we’re different. Heavy is the opposite of light. Guess what! I’ve just written life instead of life. Did it again! Life instead of light. I looked at life and almost thought of leaving life there, it felt so genuine. Still. Let’s not go metaphorical that quickly just yet, right? Wait, why not?

When I, abruptly, feel something as heavy, it is, usually, something that I know is really light in fact, yet someone chooses to mock it (let’s say unconsciously) and tries to make me (or you) feel heavy af about it, I’d better open my eyes and truly see. Not blame, just observe. You with me, I know you are. When a wave, not even that big of a wave, comes and, all of a sudden, you’re underwater and feel like water is flooding your brain, you shake your head to get the brain back into its beautiful pinky shape and calm space. It’s great when you manage to. It gets pretty weird when you don’t and that inflicted heaviness begins to feel heavy for you, too. That is when the crystal water – you’re supposed to enjoy and marvel at while the sun makes it shine and reflect its shimmer onto your face, makes it smooth for you to float on – pulls you in and you lose yourself. Now you’re with me. And it doesn’t even matter if you know how to swim or not, sometimes it’s at the shore that the waves make fun of you and pull you in. The waves would never do that, we are only symbolically speaking here. And for real.

The hair is deeply connected to the head. Both metaphorically and literally, depending on how you look at things. Perspectives. My new bangs – that can almost come across as no bangs, they’re subtle and they come with a subtle change altogether – are so new that I am myself surprised by how, unexpectedly, they choose to, one day, be. Straightened out was, undoubtedly, not a solution and this is what came out of it. 

It looks like chillin’, but, I had to, in fact, look at it, for fractions of seconds, in the mirrors I passed by, on my way going places, just to make sure we’re in sync. I glanced. I wanted to see what the hair chose, for the day, to be. I kind of knew I liked it from early in the morning. Life… It will make you look in the mirror on special occasions (which are everyday) and truly force you to see yourself, to start to discover and rediscover. I like when we’re in sync and this is how a series of pictures come together, on my phone, and, instantly, write a title somewhere inside my brain. Heady vs. Heavy.

Laying in the sun, under an umbrella, in the perfect weather, sipping on the juiciest frozen strawberry margarita vs. struggling to breathe underwater. And underwater is where one, ideally two, can get so vulnerable in that they forget about breathing and remember about the truth. Perspectives.

I learned to escape pretty early in life, since I can remember myself. Love, nature and art show you the door. Ever since I’d learned how to, I refused to sleep by my own in my own room, so it always had to be arranged for me to sleep in the same room as my brother. Luckily, those times are some of the happiest both of us have ever had and now, many years later, we get to praise them, be grateful for them. You see, back then, my older brother was not thrilled to share the bedroom with me. I was! Thrilled. I still am whenever I remember about it. Now, he is, too. When we were kids, we used to fall asleep to the same music cassette every night. Once side A or B was over, the stereo would automatically stop and go off, so we had no worries about pushing any buttons whilst falling asleep. When bed time came, I was immediately hooked. I knew what was about to happen. A calm, charming even – I say charming now, lovely is probably the word I used to describe it when I was six – voice would say, in such a warm English, Hello, dear friends… This was side A. I loved to hear it. It was the moment the silence in our room began and we, in sync (again, yes, I must love this in sync thing a lot) relaxed in our beds, nothing came to take the moment away. I was so happy. Calm. Calm again, yes, I love calm just as much as I love a fun concert. And in sync. Serene, peaceful would do, but there’s something about calm. Occasionally, we talked about things, but most of the times, Hello, dear friends… was a moment we shared as brother and sister, although we didn’t think of it like this back then. It was just a moment of pure love. One of the moments in life that made me aware of what pure was and of a song that has always given me goosebumps and is, of course, on THE cassette.

We sank into our beds and let ourselves float. And we thought we were only going to bed. Kids back then… It felt like getting onto a pretty cloud and dream. With eyes closed. At other times, with my eyes open, looking into the ceiling. Whole movies projected onto the ceiling. Or, you know, the depth of the stars in the sky at night. 

Lightness is what we need in life. Lightness for me is when being profound allows you to fly high, said Franca Sozzani in the – gracefully directed by her son – Franca: Chaos and Creation documentary and it completely resonated with my entire being, life. It took me straight away to precisely the lightness I felt in the shared bedroom with my brother, as kids, at home when Hello, dear friends… (or I can’t remember how the other side) started and my brother wouldn’t give me the cassette so that we don’t, somehow, lose it. Yup, we still got it and I have a feeling we’re going to put our children to bed with it. It has to go digital is probably one of the most technology nowadays related things to get out of my mouth, but hallelujah!

I mean, what did this feel like?

Later in life, the word meditation started to swim around. I had not researched it that much, but I could relate to this warm, fuzzy feeling a meditation is supposed to bring to your soul, mind and body I heard about here and there. It makes you feel beautiful. Still, I’d kept questioning myself whether this was really it? I have, all my life, enjoyed escaping in those special, precious moments. Loosing myself in the music, or movies, or books, stories in general. Escapism vs. real life, because I haven’t ever escaped in my real life, yet it is the escapism I’ve always happily been doing that has helped me ground in my real life. I am blessed to have been in touch with what feels right. Great stories can get you to a place where you start to meditate without realising. You’re so in the moment that the moment starts to feel like a meditation. Meditation teaches you how to be in the moment and, then, moments that feel like meditation start to occur. A song, a movie, a book, a painting, sculpture, a fashion collection, I believe, can put you in such a holy state that you can’t even tell the difference. Art has the power to make us feel whole in such a natural way that, again, we don’t even know when or how, but, swoosh, we’re levitating.

Imagine what music has done to me from the moment I was born. I don’t remember many minutes in our house without music playing on whatever. The amount of some of the best out there I’ve been exposed to is hilarious. From Prince to The Fugees to Pink Floyd to Whitney to Simply Red. It’s stories everywhere and then it’s the silence. Inside yourself, but, man, when it’s – not only comfortably, but soothingly – shared with someone. It’s light. We all know what Mia Wallace said in Pulp Fiction: That’s when you know you found somebody special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably share silence... I was so young the first time I saw Pulp Fiction. It was with my brother, we share the same sort of humour.

I was even younger when I first saw Twin Peaks. I used to watch it with my mom, dad and brother, at home, in our living room. They were watching it from the couch and I was both watching it and hiding from it from behind the couch. Now you know why I wanted to only sleep in the same room as my brother did until I was thirteen or something. You thought it was because I loved him? Because you’re right if you did. 

That’s why I’ve never fallen into eating loads of sweets, or shopping, or what else… Dating? I’ve always liked something with a story and you can make one heaven of a story through a relationship. A relationship is heady. Random people dating random people create stories, but stories that more rarely than often last forever and it’s all casual sex lately, it seems. Or no sex at all. In these times, it seems easier (or maybe it’s been like this forever) to stay on a line that is not good and doesn’t do you good (I’m talking about very fine lines here). I think it’s better to figure it out. To fight a little for yourself, both if you’re in any kind of relationship and if you’re single or if you’re in a relationship where you start to feel alone. Then, it’s very likely that you’ll choose to be single, for a while, so you don’t become the one that makes you feel alone and lose yourself. On the other side, that’s where the good fine line lives. Hop on.

There’s way more potential in relationships. So there I went, a long, long relationship, a long relationship, then a long relationship with myself, then a shorter relationship and now here I am. I’m good. Where was I? Right. A relationship is heady to me. Therefore, light. It’s the only way. The intention while you’re in it depends on the kind of life you wish to praise everyday. Anyway, a relationship to me is easy, sexy. Amazing, above all. No, this is not about expectations.

In my last relationship, I had none and it lasted nine months, so that is proof that I’d learned not to have expectations. I didn’t know him at all, so I just went with the flow, enthusiastic to get to know him and eager, it seems, to forget completely about me. The inevitable happened and it, again, hurt like hell. This happens when you fool yourself into believing you’re in love again and it’s possible that you were, but you love love love (‘cause I’m addicted, I’m addicted, you know I’m gonna do it again’, Love Is A Game, Adele), so I knew it had to end. It’s about the day to day relationship, life, it’s about the little things just as much as it is about the huge things, it’s not only about the family you dream about. That’s the collateral magic.

It’s about making everyday feel like Christmas, I mean why not? The second day is still great, chilling, but so is the previous one. Cozy af. Or you know, a good day at work, a night under the stars. We’re always surprised by the day, whether we like it or not. Like?! Love! The trick is to do good and do every thing good even if nobody knows about it, every day, in the day to day life. What else is there? It just feels too good, it feels light. It might, however, become heavy the moment you fall off the wagon, but that’s ok, we’re only human and we’re very different, but we’re much more alike than we’re different.

So we started with a music cassette, it’s from Los Angeles, my brother got it, at sixteen, from a friend, as a gift from his trip to L.A. His friend taped it while being there. My brother was big on taping music, mixtapes and I know I’m romanticising the shit out of this, but it’s so worth it. That cassette did wonders to us. I learned that where and what and who we put our attention into is vital. Then, we got to meditation and whether or not the cassette might have been the way to it. Orgasms – that escalated not that quickly – you know when you have those. At first, you wondered Oooh, so this is it? But then, you were so thrilled by it, now you so well know it. 

Now this thrill 

On a heady trip a.k.a. sparkling relationship, 

That’s the shit!

And this is how we get to connection. 

– I want more of the thing last night. The thing that’s been going on, in fact.

– Yup, that’s the shit, it’s called intimacy.

– With you it’s addictive.

And we hadn’t had sex yet. 

The fact that I grew up with men such as my brother and my dad could have not but only strengthen my vision of love shared with the man in my life. I believe in men just as much as I believe in women. In fact, I don’t see any boundaries whatsoever, we’re only human and we’re very different, but we’re much more alike than we’re different. So no, it’s not weird intertwining familial feelings with orgasms. We all came from one, ideally from two at the same time.

My dad told me one day, many years ago, when I had no idea what to do in a relationship that made my head so heavy I barely could see the sun out of the water, that sex is as important as everything else in a relationship. It felt so good, I thought God, I’m not crazy. My dad and I, up until that moment, had never spoken about sex and I’d used to cover my eyes whenever a revealing scene in a movie would’ve come up on tv. In a relationship, a woman should feel all the pleasure in the world she wants. A man is a fool when he doesn’t get that and I just don’t think you’d be happy in that kind of relationship. I want you to be happy and I can’t believe my fingers have just typed this.

Growing up, I was so shy that the idea of me talking with anyone in the family about a potential love interest alone made me choose to live a completely different life outside the family at home or the classmates at school. I used to giggle on the inside, long into my teens (and twenties, lol), whenever I found out a couple had a baby. Whooh, now everyone knows they had sex. I guess I had to practice my boldness somehow, I knew I had it in me, could not articulate it, so I danced!

I love to dance. My brother used to skateboard as a child. Oh! Then I skateboarded, too. The whole neighbourhood knew when he, not even in his teens, walked me in the stroller from on top of his skateboard. I wasn’t yet speaking, I was only carelessly looking at the sky, just laying in my stroller. Everyone knew about our adventures, the news reached our parents, my brother must have continued his endeavours, now it’s a topic that gets us smiling whenever we remember about it over meals together and something that makes me understand a lot of things about myself. Like why I’ve always loved rollercoasters.

Heady vs. Heavy is easy to apply in today’s weird fight between men and women. There’s no doubt that the water are about to be cleared out, perceptions and perspectives are about to be put on the table and discussed, but what kind of table are we talking about? If there’s no delicious food on it and wine is not clinking, then all we’re doing, as women, is only showing men what they’ve already shown us. Women are speaking up and I love that. I surprise myself, sometimes, talking about it over meals with friends or people I don’t even know (I know), when something beyond myself takes over and puts up this flag of speaking out.

It’s interesting because I’ve been raised by the two men who are the most feminist (and gentlemen) guys I’ve ever met and my mom who is the most feminine woman I know and, yet, the word feminist has never even showed up at our table, at home. Now, it’s everywhere, I know how blessed I’ve been to have had that growing up and maybe this is why I treasure values so much and why that something beyond myself shows up, whenever needed, talking for people who are, in one way or another, afraid to. I observe what’s around me. I don’t speak from books or history, it’s from my own something inside myself that I can draw some strings of wisdom without any kind of filter.

Being in friendships or love relationships with both women and men, I can not but support the truce that is about to be made between the two armies. Anything else only gets men where it’s got women, throughout the ages. Into both fighting and pretending. Which is so far from the truth, from the looking for the truth. The outcome of living in fear, on any side you’re on, can only lead to separation on both global and individual level. In the day to day relationships. If it’s with someone who truly gets it, you both become warriors that’d stopped taking sides, you only fight for love. Are love. Aw. But if it’s with someone that doesn’t really know themselves and, thus, doesn’t really know the relationship either, something intervenes and it’s not the juiciest frozen strawberry margarita you could be sipping from while laying in the sun, under an umbrella, in the perfect weather. Remember? And it gets you underwater and you struggle to breathe. And this is how heady becomes heavy af. 

Sometimes loneliness is the only rest we get / And the emptiness actually lets us forget / Sometimes forgiveness is easiest in secret, Adele

Learning is a beautiful thing, is one of the gifts life gives us daily, but it takes someone who loves to actually learn to learn. Paying attention, therefore, again, is key. Water is light, but when water becomes heavy, you’d better run, because disagreeing is acceptable, disrespect is not and consistent misbehaviour must be corrected. The harder I try, I regress, as Adele says on her 30 album. A woman’s power is very similar to water. You’d better watch out when a woman reconnects to herself and stands up. While learning, one, inevitably, bumps into heady, recognises the bullshit in the heavy and lets that different fall in place and spark something wonderful inside. Just like a love bubble rush does. Like the very small metal ball in the game you’re supposed to move, inside a device, left, right, up, down to get it into its place. Naturally.

All of the above or just listen to this song.

Because the love I thought I had for you was, actually, finally, for myself. Everything on top of it is a bonus. Just like humour is. In case you’re into lyrics. Keep your heart safe and your music dangerous is the best advice Adele has been given and she gives it forwards. Adventurous just came to mind.

To be continued.