{"id":940,"date":"2012-10-03T22:44:21","date_gmt":"2012-10-03T22:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/?p=940"},"modified":"2012-10-03T22:44:21","modified_gmt":"2012-10-03T22:44:21","slug":"keeping-the-music-on-and-a-poem-i-read-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/?p=940","title":{"rendered":"keeping the music on and a poem i read today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some songs kinda kill me. I&#8217;ll be sitting at work with my headphones on and be trying to get shit done and all of the sudden I have to stop because it feels like birds are flying away in my chest or my brain is going melt a little. It&#8217;s kind of magical but not always sparkly or fun. Still, music is my secret weapon to opening my heart and I&#8217;ve been listening to more and more of it on purpose, ever since I said to myself this summer that I wanted to be more open hearted.<\/p>\n<p>Before this summer I had been in a long phase of not listening much to music, a sure sign that I am closed down. Sometimes, I wish one of my good friends would tap me on the shoulder during these turned off stretches and ask me to make them a music mix; it would shake things up a little for me and crack open whatever I&#8217;ve shut away. I need some help like that. Because even though I intellectually know what&#8217;s going on when I&#8217;m not listening very much to music, I can&#8217;t undo it by myself.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a poem I read today that I thought was pretty brilliant.<br \/>\n<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Stories Have No Manners<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I&#8217;m listening to the words, but as usual,<\/em><br \/>\n<em> watching something else. I hate myself for this,<\/em><br \/>\n<em> but who could not watch as the tip of his cuff<\/em><br \/>\n<em> nicks the top of the egg yolks smashed in the grits.<\/em><br \/>\n<em> Some day next week he will take out the coat<\/em><br \/>\n<em> and see the yellow scab and think how little<\/em><br \/>\n<em> keeps us from drooling, even in a tie,<\/em><br \/>\n<em> drooling when we should be driving, drooling<\/em><br \/>\n<em> when we should be keeping the crazy bastard<\/em><br \/>\n<em> at bay. It&#8217;s the crazy bastard story again.<\/em><br \/>\n<em> He doesn&#8217;t want to tell it, but, like listeners,<\/em><br \/>\n<em> stories have no manners. They track mud in<\/em><br \/>\n<em> no matter how much you scrub, down on your knees,<\/em><br \/>\n<em> and remind them, this is my tongue and groove,<\/em><br \/>\n<em> my bunched little rug in front of the fire.<\/em><br \/>\n<em> Is that running water, a bird up the flue?<\/em><br \/>\n<em> You start making noises behind closed doors.<\/em><br \/>\n<em> Friends think you probably ought to be watched<\/em><br \/>\n<em> or at least let go. Though no one knows where.<\/em><br \/>\n<em> There&#8217;s no pasture out here for horses who<\/em><br \/>\n<em> break down and cry. Horses who say on the sly,<\/em><br \/>\n<em> I&#8217;m expecting a call tomorrow.<\/em><br \/>\n<em> Horses who just want to sit under a tree<\/em><br \/>\n<em> and look at a cloud. Horses who think too much.<\/em><br \/>\n<em> You&#8217;ve decided to eat your grits and not<\/em><br \/>\n<em> smash up the eggs and leave them dead on the plate.<\/em><br \/>\n<em> And you&#8217;re watching your cuff, for the first sign<\/em><br \/>\n<em> that the story won&#8217;t lie down, won&#8217;t stay told.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>-Roger Mitchell<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some songs kinda kill me. I&#8217;ll be sitting at work with my headphones on and be trying to get shit done and all of the sudden I have to stop because it feels like birds are flying away in my chest or my brain is going melt a little. It&#8217;s kind of magical but not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-written"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=940"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":942,"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940\/revisions\/942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}