What we hold onto
I’ve got a close buddy who likes to lightheartedly tease me about being a bit of an emo boy: I’m team Raphael when it comes to my ninja turtles fandom, my favorite band is Radiohead and 9 times out of 10 I’m listening to something that’s a bit melancholy like The Smiths, Sigur Ros, Beck’s “Sea Change” album, or Sparklehorse’s “It’s a wonderful life”. The kind of picture this often paints for people is of a faceless figure trudging through mud, face down in the pouring rain as each step becomes more and more laborious. Add to that someone who has been diagnosed with and has often written about depression, and you think, “Jesus, Ricky’s kind of a sad bastard.” And while that can technically be true sometimes, I think that’s a bit of an unfair caricature of not only the emotions that we all feel, but of what purpose they serve.
My sister and I regularly send each other TikTok videos, usually of ridiculous shit like memes about being an uncle or having a Mexican mother—your classic brainrot posts. Every once in a while we’ll sneak something more heartfelt in: a poem about growing up with a sibling, or being far from family. More recently, I sent her this video:
I find Stephen Colbert to be a really compelling person as someone of the more nerdy persuasion who grew up Catholic and was kinda steeped in that tradition. Beyond just his history in comedy, I’ve always got the sense that he really sits with things and dwells in the space of his thoughts and ideas. When he talks, it sounds like the voice of someone who is always thinking through the lens of his grief; whether it’s a sketch, or political commentary, or even a rant about Tolkien, there’s this sense that deep down is a well of feeling that fed through the aquifer of life experience. And I think that his take on grief is refreshing in that it reframes a feeling that we tend to find uncomfortable-nobody likes feeling sad so we try our best to ignore it or distract ourselves from it. But what if grief is your body’s way of coming to terms with the feelings of loss or sadness? What if, like anger, grief is a tool for channeling something far more complex? Sometimes I like to think back on the people and moments and feel that sadness because if missing them makes me feel sad, then that means they still matter. And if they still matter, then the pain is worth holding onto.
I was compelled to write this blog because I was going back through my past entries and I realized that I needed a bit of…not a manifesto per se, but more a thesis statement for how I’ve been approaching this blog and other digital spaces. Yes it’s true that a lot has happened in the past few years, much of it life-altering, and I can understand how this could portray me as reveling in sadness. That’s not what I’m doing when I write or post photos, though. Yes, I’m biologically predisposed to feeling sad and it’s a condition that I pretty much live with every day of my life, even on my best days. But that doesn’t mean I’m reveling in suffering by any means, and when I write I’m not trying to cry out for help or self-flagellate. On the contrary, dear reader; I’m sharing a perspective on the world that’s disjointed at times, uncomfortable at others, and can maybe even be exhausting (believe me, I get it).
But it’s also quiet, not silent. Calm, but not passive. Delicate, but not quite fragile. A jumbled and often jagged pastiche of blues, purples and maroons that only make sense when you give yourself the time and space, to step back at a distance, and see the yellows, oranges and pinks that complete the collage. And my hope is that, when you read these, you can see the colors.
