Day 2: Meditate with Charlotte Adigéry

February Second, 2022: Day 2

Charlotte says: You're allowed to be weird, Hun.

Person: Charlotte Adigéry 
Media: Yin-Yang Meditation

Dear Reader,

How do you handle self-doubt or anxiety? Do you feel the need to excel?  How are you being measured? How am I being measured? Do I even measure up?

I've always struggled with self-doubt. For me, it manifests as a "stasis of anxiety": not being able to get out of bed, procrastination, fear, lethargy, etc...  Someone [add link to them later, if I remember] once said to me: "If only I had the confidence of a mediocre white man, think of where I'd be."

I don't think non-marginalized people worry about stuff like that. I don't think I did when I was white. I was me, ineffably so. A product of only meritocratic growth. They tell you that kinda shit at Ivy League Schools. "You are the best and brightest. You are tomorrow's leaders." I call bullshit.

Where did all my confidence go?

Charlotte Adigéry meditates on this feeling in a powerful piece she wrote called Yin-Yang Self Meditation.  I actually gave a limited edition cassette of it to my friend Zach as a gift a few years ago.  On one side, there's the piece itself, a meditation to the pressures of fame, self-worth, desirability, and how these things intersect with not just American (Charlotte is NOT American), but GLOBAL racism and sexism. It's a brutal 17mins.

On the other side, the vocals have been removed and you are encouraged to explore and create your own meditations.

I feel like this might have been a bad gift... Sorry, Zach! I hope you still have it, tho, they're gonna go for big bucks one day.

Kinda par for the course for the guy who takes a white man to see SLAVE PLAY [Insert a link if you remember, dumbass.]

I'm going to close my eyes now and listen to the piece now.  I invite you to do the same. 

See you on the other side of Dar Williams (you don't need to get that reference)...

Ok! Who's ready for coffee? Woof. [LYRICS]

God I love that song. It's torment made manifest. It hurts and I feel it. Both as something I want and as something that I understand.  Like, she's famous, successful, a person on the rise.  I want to be that, but I seem to get in my own way.  If only I had my white confidence back; maybe I'd get over my own mediocrity. But I also get the pressure to perform to be someone... someone they want you to be.

I think being mixed to me means, in part that people will want me to be something clear and definable, to fit into some box, that I'll never be able to fit into. There will always be more coffee dates than I can go on.

But my strength is in my haecceity.  I am unique, maybe not important or special, but unique... and valuable.

I don't believe in love, anymore... that's not fair, I'm more agnostic about love; at least romantic love. Relationships fall apart and do all die alone.  I do believe in familial love; I mean that both in terms of loving your biological family and chosen family. When I was hitting rock bottom with my depression, my chosen family stood with me. Until the day I die, I will never stop being grateful to them for that. And I want to tell them that all the time.

She ends the piece by saying: NOW LET GO OF THIS MENTAL INTERPRETATION.

I'm going to try Charlotte. I'm going to try.

Adigéry is a brilliant musician who's on one of my favorite labels, DEEWEE, founded by the Dewaele Brothers (aka SOULWAX).  I started listening to her when she performed under the name WWWater back in 2018, but I was reacquainted with her when her song Paténipat appeared in a trailer for The New Pope; nothing like mixing Jude Law and Blackness.

Other than really enjoying her music, which I do and you should, too, Paténipat is sung partially in a Creole Patois... and I happen to be Creole.  It's cool to see someone claim something, and claim it with pride, that you are still exploring.

Is she on tour this year? YES.  Will I be seeing her at the Empty Bottle on May 14th, 2022 [LINK TO TICKETS]? YES. Are you welcome to join me? Sure, whatever.  You do you.

Not all of these are gonna be CRAZY deep. Sometimes I'm just gonna tell you about Black shit I like.

Good? Good.

Sincerely,

Ian