...is the title of the Grey's Anatomy episode with the Ingrid Michaelson song "Keep Breathing," the intro to my current moodstate. I was going to have an involved / mildly pretentious post about how fucking cool that song is, but unfortunately the lyrics are fighting for top shelf in my brain with my intense hatred of Shakespeare right now.
I mean, it's not that I hate Shakespeare on principle or even in actuality, but seriously, this paper? It's making me realize what absolute hell being an English major really would be. Seriously. "Let your paper grow organically." "Go with the flow." What does that even mean? I need organization, and facts, and cross-references, and backdating, and total precedent for my claims. Not Elizabethian English. It's a tad pathetic that I fought valiently through the first six pages and I'm taking three times longer than I should to write the last one.
/kvetch-fest. Paper's due at noon tomorrow, either I'll hate myself while I'm turning it in or I'll just be sleepwalking.
Right, Ingrid Michaelson. While it took me awhile to warm up to the song "The Hat," it sort of infiltrated my subconscious until I was sitting in class and the whole "I should tell you that you were my first love" refrain started to play in my head. But she's got this cool vocal thing where what looks like one line on print gets trilled and stretched and carried out to two or three, so it's kind of a slow-moving song in some respects. "The Hat" is cute and sweet and fun to dance to, but nothing mindblowing.
"Keep Breathing," though? Blew my mind when I heard it first (Grey's), and I thought a little of that was probably because it's the close of season ... 3? When Cristina leaves Burke at the altar because fuckall, she is too much of a badass lady to get married, and then Burke leaves Seattle without telling her. And she starts hyperventilating in her apartment and Meredith has to cut the wedding dress off of her.
The song stands well alone, still. It sort of builds through verses, and then the last half is one long rolling build of "all that I know is I'm breathing / all we can do is keep breathing..." but with a little half-breath hesitation before the end of each line. She a capella's it for a while and then when the percussion comes in the whole song sort of peaks, which is so cool.
What I think is really interesting here is the simplicity. All we can do is keep breathing now? I mean, who hasn't felt that way entirely too many times? Physically -- running, pounding the pavement, gasping for air, all you can do is try to breathe. Have you ever been punched square on in the solar plexus? All you can do is sort of fall over and agonizingly wish that you were breathing. Moving from the physical into the more emotional sense -- jumping horses, adrenaline that is half fierce terror and half fiercer joy, a static awareness of how loud your breathing is.
Other things. The way that we breathe in different situations; breathing in the anticipation or in the wake of pleasure, or of pain. Listening to someone else breathe when you lay your head against their chest. And of course, the way it was used originally -- the way that when depression crests inside you, the automated function of breathing is lit'rally too much effort for you to expend. That's when people have to cut you out of dresses.
That was entirely too much discussion about one song, but I thought it was applicable.
Tomorrow, tomorrow, I will be done with this hateful paper and this staying-inside nonsense. I will go to class, turn in my paper, and if weather permits, lie down in the soft grass and the softer sunshine and watch the world spin by.
reading: ENLT final paper
listening to : Keep Breathing // Ingrid Michaelson
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