Today is a very special day. It’s my bestie @travisalabanza birthday Here is a lil #tbt of us doing a show together back in summer 2017! (We missed you there, come next time?)
One of the paradoxes I hold to be true is that we only become ourselves only through other people. Meaning: we spend our lives waiting to be witnessed by the right people. And in that encounter we uncover who we are in the most fundamental sense. You know it when you feel it: that first hangout that lasts for hours but feels like a blink. The conversation becomes an inauguration. You become someone else.
To say that Travis has changed my life is an insult to language. It would be more accurate to say: they made me remember that I was alive. Or rather — they made life worth living again.
Because they see me. Even at my worst. Through all my denial, naïveté, evasion strategies. Through my melodrama, chronic pain, idiosyncrasies. Even in gym shorts and a t-shirt. Even when I can’t see myself. They see me. And as most things that matter do: it both thrills and terrifies me. The spiritual nudity of being recognized. no — of being.
I think it was Bourdeiu who once wrote: “being is...being perceived” (I think he was right.)
The irony of being a poet is that pretty soon you learn silence is the most potent verse. There is a moment at the end of every call. A moment when one of us flies away to another country. Where the particles that compose me reassemble themselves into something else.
the quiet gravity of love,
how it shapes us.
Happy Birthday, Travis
