Bending towards the sun

A week ago, I told myself I would write a blog post about Elizabeth Fraser. I had it all planned out: it would start with a reflection of the song All flowers in time bend towards the sun which exists as a demo which was recorded by Jeff Buckley and joined by Elizabeth on vocals – it was never fully polished or released.

I was going to write about what a gorgeous piece of music it was and how the friend of mine who introduced me to it described it as “celestial.” I had never heard anything described of like that before but it made so much sense to me when I was listening to the song: of course this is the sound of the planets aligning.

I would then move to talk about my adoration for Elizabeth’s voice and how I have a Cocteau Twins playlist (which is the band she was a part of and recorded with throughout the 70s to the 90s) that I listen to songs from every week.

I thought if I was clever enough, I could turn the post into a kind of sophisticated music essay. I was so convinced about the subject matter, I found myself listening to the playlist while writing the post. Alas, I kept running out of things to say. I kept rewriting the same paragraph. I kept listening to the same lines in the same songs. I love Elizabeth’s voice but I didn’t know how to convey it fairly to the reader.

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Who are we but the stories we tell of ourselves?

For a very long time, I’ve been afraid of my story. But the fear, actually, hasn’t been known as “a fear of my story” it’s been disguised as something else. It’s been disguised as “a fear that I have no story to tell.”

I have spent a big portion of my life thinking that I am formless, weightless and without an anchor: that I am a blank canvas with a shitty memory, a perchant for forgetting everything that I read or watch. “There’s something wrong with my brain” I convince myself – if only someone could do a scan on it or something, they’d see my hippocampus or frontal lobes or amygdala were all out of whack. And yet – no one has perpetuated this narrative that “there is something wrong with me” more viciously than me.

There is an idea that I have learnt about from different books, friends and other wise souls, the idea that storytelling is validating. When we speak of our own stories or when we listen to those of others, we are sharing something fundamental about our existence. Whether we are revelling in shared pain, joy, resilience or suffering those stories strengthen and reassure us of our humanity.

You’d think someone who prides herself on writing and creating stories as much as reading them would have realised this long ago. Perhaps I did realise it. Perhaps I did know it – once. But somehow the narrative of a warped brain became the dominant belief and somehow having a warped brain seemed to overtake this idea that storytelling is important. What’s the point of telling stories if you don’t remember them anyway?  

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In another, previous, earlier life of mine I wrote poems about my parent’s garden. I wrote about the pond, the frogs that inhabited them, the lizards, sunflowers, bees and herbs. The garden provided enough fodder for me to write my whole English Extension 2 project on it. For my major work, I submitted a suite of poems and a reflective essay on the work.

In this life, I had something to say and I was just starting to believe that if it could be spoken audibly and clearly someone might listen.

In this life, I had a belief that I was like a fistful of weeds growing in and around the shrubby, semi-unkempt but very fruitful and ever providing garden my parents tended. I was intrusive, but alive: I was persistent, I was green, I was hopeful. And no matter how many times people attempted to remove me – I regrew.  

In this life, I was unstoppable.

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There are people that help you shift towards the sun. They help you face its blinding light and take nourishment from its rays. But, at the same time, as Elizabeth and Jeff remind us “All flowers in time bend towards the sun.”

I think this means that we know what’s good for us and we all grow towards it eventually.

I’d like to think I’m bending there slowly but steadily.

This little life of mine has been shaped by suffering and resilience, by distance and intimacy, but flowers and soil. I cannot tell you that every day I notice the sun, but I can tell you that every day, I warmed by it and made alive from it. In our orbit around the sun, there is something so promising – so honest and so utterly, devastatingly real.

Who told you that there has to be a reason? There only needs to be sun and from it, there will be life: the celestial bodies moving in our corner of the universe have told us that all we needed was light and then anything is possible. If I can tell you about the sun, I can tell you about my story – just as Elizabeth Fraser tells me about hers. And just as I listen to all the ecstasy, suffering and misunderstandings about life that I have learnt from other people – I think I am beginning to realise I can learn things from my own. I can look inwards without falling to pieces and find that the light that gave me life, lives in my petals.