I am back at it again. Three listens back to back to back of “LEVII’S JEANS” today. Reading the lyrics throughout it made me shout one thing or at least prompted an internal shout: “Hello Confidence!”
I know this song describes an undeniable, almost animal-like attraction and bond with someone but it still takes confidence to express how sexy and hot you feel even within the confines of the relationship. I have felt beautiful. I have sprinkled some sexy and gotten spicy but this level? Can’t say I have.
Centerfold? Nope.
However, this has me thinking. What if this is just an untapped part of myself, lying dormant, waiting to be awakened? Romance and love and cuddles and poetry and commitment? Fantastic. I’ve got it. I wouldn’t dream of letting it go.
But what about the confidence that developing your sexy for yourself brings?
Today was “II Most Wanted” on the Cowboy Carter album. Three listens back to back to back. I’ve listened several times before so it has settled in like an old friend. I didn’t have young “the first time I saw your face I fell in love” feelings when I met my husband but I knew early on he was causing the old me to make an exit. I learned to trust and see purity and goodness and intention without ulterior motive in a man.
I wasn’t afraid.
In the years since we’ve been together, I can conjure many memories of long car rides full of music, laughter and comfortable silences, and early rides where we pulled over to kiss frantically. Arguments and cold silences and ear and neck strokes. Sometimes, you know the love of a lifetime in those moments.
A whole lifetime.
I wish I could tell the old me that it would be alright, whether or not “he” came along but back then, I am not sure I would believe this time traveling version of myself. I needed to live it and breathe it…this most wanted love.
“Just For Fun” from Cowboy Carter was today’s back to back to back listens. I am going through a time where I am making choices about my health and my writing career. I am choosing to participate in a creative cluster reading “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron and showing up to a communal writing space on Sundays. Over the past three weeks, I have recommitted to moving past the stagnant stage of my health journey. I even got back to jogging yesterday which felt like I was flying, hearing old Missy Elliott and A Tribe Called Quest, checking the rhyme and flying. I am keenly aware of how this life can run me over. Arguments with a partner, maybe feeling slighted at work, chronic pain since my surgeries last year and sometimes an honest overwhelm. When Beyonce sings about getting through this or decide to get used to it, I felt it at my core. At what point do you make the conscious choice not to get used to it and make those changes, as hard as it may be to consistently show up.
I understand sometimes we have to make room for the “I just need to get through this” days or months. I certainly have. I wouldn’t be at the point of showing up for myself and my craft consistently unless I did.
I had the times where I literally wanted to hide my face, retreat to the covers or head out on a long drive just for the hell of it, just for fun. I am glad I have a song to belt out during one of these rides.
It was three short listens of Willie Nelson in “Smoke Hour II” on Cowboy Carter. I have seen a video where someone complained that Beyonce should not have used Willie Nelson or Dolly Parton on her album as if only a white voice could legitimize her foray into a countrified Beyonce project. However, I saw it as a flex because they are legends and because Linda Martell is prominently featured on the album as well, the commentor’s complaints did not have legs. The album’s influences and features have many Black voices, past and current, so again, no legs to stand on.
But back to Willie Nelson, the quote in this interlude/intro: “Sometimes you don’t know what you like until someone you trust turns you on to some real good shit”..elicited the strongest of head nods from me. It is true. Sharing the love of a song, a book, a TV show, a movie, a new artistic medium (for me, it was weaving on Friday night and songwriting class on Saturday morning) creates community and builds on that trust.
I don’t know about any of you but a recommendation from a friend or trusted source rouses me to try that new thing. Even if I don’t feel the same, I am almost never disappointed that I tried.
That I introduced something to this day that the previous one had never seen before.
I am four listens in to “Alligator Tears” from Cowboy Carter and I find myself thinking of every element from the meter to the chorus to the hook. I normally would never use those words but I attended my first songwriting class this morning. I cannot sing or play any musical instruments. I cannot read music but I was still drawn to this class. I told the instructor that I will never hear music quite the same and it’s already true.
I let myself get carried away but there was a second listen where I thought about what words were stressed versus unstressed. How deliberate the vocal arrangement is especially when she sings “Sunrise in the morning.” Most of the time and this will persist of course, I allow myself to be swallowed up by the music but I liked how learning new information expanded the way I experienced the music.
As for how I feel when I listen to this track, “I’m into deep.” I love it. I want to slow dance with myself. I want to slow dance with my husband.
It is a romantic lullaby.
I want to hug myself to sleep and wake up whispering “I adore you.”
I am surprised to watch myself type this but this was the musing I was most inspired to write. By the way, it’s “SpaghettII” on Cowboy Carter—three listens back to back to back. The first time I listened I could not stop shouting back “Come Get Everything You Came For” at the song. I think I was shouting it at my life. I am certain every time we try for something, be it a failure or a success, we are coming for it. Every time we love as hard as we can with all of the fullness, we are coming for it. When I step behind a podium and read my work, I am coming for it. When I board the plane for my next trip, I am coming for it. When I show up for the people who matter. When I say no to preserve my peace, I am coming for it. And it keeps me wanting more, doomed or destined to become the explorer I was meant to be in this life.
I could not stop singing “Howl to the Moon” on my walk today. Something about Shaboozey’s voice made me want to heed his command, be out in the open air with my friends, my own riders. It also transported me to the top floor, La Terraza, and La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico in December 2022. I have written about it here. After a dancing hands meditation, led by Jane Sibbett, where I weeped uncontrollably and she saw my ancestors behind me, I was drawn to the moon. I wanted to free myself from my bra and walk outdoors on the terrace and bathe in the moonlight, my own howling at the moon. I stayed indoors to circle up with my fellow participants and listen respectfully to their experience but my eye would drift to the doors.
I guess it hasn’t completely left me, over a year ago and thousands of miles away.
The last thing I will say here is that the voice of Linda Martell was a wakeup call disguised as an intro: “But in practice, well, some may feel confined.” She was referring to the concept of genre. We are all guilty of being placed in a box or climbing inside ourselves and fastening the lid, scared to come out or even loosen it to peek at what’s on the outside. We should all feel free to bust out of the box and climb back in as we please and not solely for others.
We should all feel free to come get everything we came for, howl at the moon and defy our genre.
I listened to “Daughter” three times from Cowboy Carter. Back to back to back. I spent much of the day working and then playing caddy for my husband this evening. I thought I didn’t have it in me but I think this ritual is starting to grow roots.
I heard a painting in this song. A woman beating someone to death, standing over the black and blue bruised corpse, coolly measuring just how distressed to look as she makes her exit, scantily clad with fabric torn.
I thought about why anyone would choose to bring such a fantasy to life with their angelic voice. I think she is singing it because we all know living out our angriest, coldest fantasies is a non-negotiable. We would be lying if we do not admit there has been times where we picture ourselves as the main character in the violent, revenge film or daydream about a world where we could do whatever we want without consequence.
I know “I am not colder than Titanic waters” but that version of myself is free to live in a fantasy or singing alongside Beyonce from my couch as I did this evening.
Three listens of “Jolene” today from the Cowboy Carter album. Back to back to back. Even with a title like that, I thought less and less about the woman she was describing and more about the rooted relationship she wouldn’t hesitate to fight for with all of her “Creole Banshee” might. When you pour a decade or two of yourself, your very life force into a bond, there isn’t much you wouldn’t do to protect it. There isn’t much you can say to adequately explain how each of you are rooted in one another. It doesn’t mean there won’t be crushes or the occasional wandering eye (Don’t we all love a shiny bauble from time to time?) but to break it, crumble until it’s dust is another matter altogether.
I love the smooth rides, the hectic days, the humdrum of our life. I can’t imagine a Jolene or a Jamal or whomever or whatever tearing it apart.
But.
We can be our own Jolene, desperately searching for something that we don’t need or another person or so-called adventure to fix what we believe is broken because we haven’t done the internal work to show up as our best self for our partner.
As the song says, I’ma stand by him. But I also going to stand by and up for us.
Yes, it hurts just the same. It doesn’t matter where you come from or what you look like, if you have loved someone, your heart has the potential to break just the same. We also hold the fear someone or something will break what we hold dear, whether we see it coming in the form of a “hussy with the good hair” or not. A simple interlude from Dolly Parton or “Dolly P” as this track is entitled, reminds me of this truth.
I may have smiled, getting excited to hear “Jolene” next but memories of my own made my smile lose some of its shine. I remembered what it’s like for my love to be threatened, hollow as it was. I am glad I had women who were my peers and older and more experienced than I to show me that they have been here before. And I was never alone.
I am here again with back to back to back listens of “Bodyguard.” I want to be honest here so everything I thought when I listened will not be shared today. What I will say is that sometimes it is unimaginable glee, singing madly, possibly cracking atmosphere with my broken notes and other times, it is gut punches. I am grateful I have the happy times way more often than any other kind. It’s over 13 years and we still have growing pains. We are still learning lessons. We are still holding hands. We are still discovering each other. We are also disappointing each other. I want there to be a perfect love where everyday feels like the melody and the lyrics and the guitar riff at the end.
That is not our love. Sometimes we fail to be each other’s bodyguards.
Kristina Hamlett writes to connect, heal, and be a force for change. 