playlists + pinterest boards
making sense of an abstract thing when you don't even know what you want
Please note: This is the second part of an exploration into my word for this year. If you want to catch up, please read my last post, “words, warmth, & meg ryan.”
Does anyone else out there sometimes experience trouble in processing their many inspirations? I mean, Ican take a road trip, go on a hike, watch an artsy film, or hear a great song, and there will inevitably be something about it - something more than a word or an image can capture - that touches me. Something I can’t let go of. Something I must then add to a long, long list of indefinables.
For example, on my honeymoon trip to New Orleans nearly two years ago (whaaattt?), I became obsessed with the live oak trees that lined every residential street. There was something mysterious about them, something alive, something with personality and history and age-old knowing. But what to do with that? How do you capture a tree when you don’t really write about trees? Or paint them? How do you envelop the feeling and the sensation that that tree evokes in a way that is lasting and meaningful? How do you make sense of an abstract thing?
Answer: I don’t really know.
Of course, I took tons of photos of them. I touched them. I etched their memory into my brain. But after that, nothing. There was nothing I could really do that felt quite as good as having them around me.
I’m saying all this because, over the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to delve into my word of the year, Warmth, using both playlists and Pinterest boards to better formulate what it actually looks, feels, and sounds like. I already know that this aim - to live in warmth throughout 2023 - is about much more than sunshine or firesides. It’s about an inner feeling, one that I want to better understand in every way possible, which is a pretty abstract concept now that I’ve had to reckon with it.
The process began easily enough: I collected a few warming meal recipes, like homestyle meatloaf and Swedish meatballs, and several images of women in big cardigans and chunky scarves. I found some vintage Coach ads, a pair of loafers, a cozy chair and lamp photo off an Instagram page that I love. I began collecting my favorite songs from artists like Nicolle Galyon and Evermore-era Taylor Swift, as well as some comforting standards from Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald. It was all there, nestled in the back of my mind - I just had to dig deep enough to uncover it:
Worn-leather bags. Big comfy cardigans. Birkenstocks. Retro tunes. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan movies. Piles of books. Long camel-colored overcoats. Beautiful, forgotten pieces of jewelry. A longing for film and the physical feel of a stack of photographs to sift through. Art. The Carpenters. Writing in a notebook. The smell of Grandma’s house. Memories. Old photographs. Old books. Old home movies. Pasta. Storytelling. Metaphors. Hope. Heart. Kindness. Connection. Meaning.
But it wasn’t long before my mind began to get muddled and distracted. Pinterest soon began suggesting highly-curated images of influencers with big knit sweaters, heeled booties and designer handbags. Yes, they were attractive to look at, but were they WARM, I had to ask myself? Were they warm to me?
No. In fact, they were kind of…cold?
Which got me thinking:
Isn’t it amazing how quickly we can be convinced that we want something other than what we originally set out for?
Answer: Story time!
Back in 2015, I got my first big girl job. It was in the music business, which is what I’d always wanted. It was also in business management, which actually has to do with managing money, which is definitely not what I ever wanted. The talk around me was both foreign and cold. My bosses were consumed with who had how much money, and how they could get more. They were easily impressed by homes with art that required velvet-roped security and some guy who had a Range Rover Phantom from every year they’d been released.
It’s important to know that this was also the dawn of the Girl Boss era, so it wasn’t long before I was crafting a 2016 vision board of Chanel bags, black stilettos, platinum blonde hair, champagne, and sparkles. What can I say? I was a product of my surroundings. (Thank God I met my farm-dwelling, car-building, devil-may-care husband just a few months later.)
Because, you see, I have never been black stilettos, champagne, and sparkles, but the definition of success would have me believe that’s what I should want. That business management job was an important opportunity for me, but it, too, was not for me. I know better. I know myself better. And, the older we get, the more we learn, the more important it becomes for us to realize that this is what’s most important in the “success” of a life. Success is an abstract thing.
Of course, Pinterest is probably having just as much trouble predicting my warm aesthetics as I am at choosing them; my inspirations range far and wide and I am very easily distracted by pretty things. It’s not the algorithm’s fault that “warmth” was equated with luxury, either. Because what I want from a year of warmth is akin to a very unique brand of luxury. I mean, hell yes, I do want that designer bag. But I want it my way. I won’t be fit into someone else’s tiny box of what my world should look like. I’m content with figuring it out as I go.
Which brings to mind the beauty of having such an abstract word of the year: it doesn’t all have to be figured out right in this moment. What warmth looks and feels like in 2023 will change, ebb, flow, and grow just as I do. I can add and delete as much as I want from that Pinterest board, anytime I want. I can do the same with a playlist, too.
Ultimately, there is no one way to do anything. There is no need to sum it all up in a word, a vision board, or a collection of songs. There is no one way to be successful at your own life. Just do what feels right to you. Have fun with it. The rest will come in time.