The Mindful Migraine

On this blog, I tend to write the way I think. Sometimes straightforward, sometimes in a slightly jumbled way that zigzags cross-country as it were, traipsing into the occasional dead-end or cul-de-sac… ending abruptly or circling back on myself.

I try to tidy it up as best I can before I hit “publish”, but I don’t overwork it too much. I kind of like that it sounds as if we were chatting… rather than me lecturing you about what to do… because at the end of the day – I don’t know what to do – I’m still figuring it all out!

Because I write how I think, I tend to start sentences with ‘because’, ‘and’ or ‘but’ which are typical no-nos. I interject factual material with ‘woo-hoo’ and ‘yay-you’ when my enthusiasm bubbles over. I make up words like “you-nique” to get my point across. I throw in lots of “: / -” to break up my thoughts, even when you’re not supposed to have too many different forms of punctuation breaks in a single passage. Almost every paragraph has some form of brackets ([*]) for when I remember something extra I want to include.

AND I use random capitalization to exaggerate certain words as well as being a HUGE fan of ellipses, those horizontal bullet points that recognize when an idea is not finished enough to warrant a conclusive full-stop. I love them so much, because… well, I’m inconclusive… I’m always still thinking…

I laughed out loud the other day when I discovered a person on the internet called Lewky who takes conversations from dating apps and puts them to music. The results are… interesting. I’ve written before about the strange jargon of young people (here), but this oddness relies less on the “yo bros” and has more to do with what people consider acceptable “rizz” (or dating charisma). Let’s just say there are not a lot of ‘song lyrics’ that involve traditional pick-up lines about stars and angels or cheesy one-liners like “your hand looks heavy—can I hold it for you?” In the 2020s, the conversational lyrics (no doubt specifically chosen for this reason) are cray-a-zy!

Before I give you any links, many of Lewky’s songs are VERY rude (consenting adults are apparently inclined to talk about some wild things when they’re chatting each other up online)… so if you’re politely old-fashioned like me, you might not want to look him up – you’ve been warned!

Anyway – the ‘safe’ song I came across on Instagram is referred to as “I have one daughter”. Since being uploaded about 4 months ago, it has gained 1.8 MILLION likes and the lyrics (taken straight from the text conversation) go like this:

You have any kids?
Yes, I have one daughter, how about you?
How many baby daddies do you have if you don’t mind me asking?
…
I have one daughter
I understand that, is she by the same father?
I don’t understand…

Put to music the weirdness becomes quite wonderful – and seriously stuck in my head. Here’s the original account link: Instagram (remember my warning if you click on other mini-movies), and below is the 40 second video version of “One Daughter” (seemingly copy-pasted by someone other than Lewky):

[Source: I have 1 daughter #lewky video by Lewky]

There are three reasons I keep humming and giggling about this song.

Firstly – who hasn’t had a conversation with someone where reality (and basic mathematics) seem to be escaping the other person entirely? And who hasn’t tried to hang in there, clarify things politely, while dying a little on the inside?

Secondly – I have two daughters, so when I happened to wander past one of them singing “I have one daughter” (for once I was ahead of them on a social media trend) they gave me some serious side-eye. One daughter? Were they the chosen one or the forgotten one? And what did that mean? Were they forgotten enough that they wouldn’t have to wash dishes tonight… or so forgotten they might get left out of the will…

The third thing that makes me laugh when I think about it, is the way the text messages are transcribed into song lyrics, so that the narrator says “ellipses” – I can’t quite explain why that makes me laugh… but it does… and now, sometimes, when I’m imagining what I want to write next, my brain fills in the blanks with a dead-pan “ellipses” delivered by a man in a wig.

Anyway – crazy post – sorry, but I really do like the power of punctuation and how those three small dots can be a neat substitute for everything and nothing… for brain-fog or existential angst, vague uncertainty all the way through to unfathomably deep ideas about the meaning of the universe that are SO deep they are hard to articulate…

Life is often hard, so laugh when you can (it’s often the best medicine), and don’t be afraid to reside in the quiet while you sort your thoughts out.

Ellipses.

Take care taking care people, Linda x

PS: About 10 years ago, Penguin Books Australia brought out a series of books for Young Adults which take a sample of ‘classics’ and turns each story into a series of SMS texts. Here’s the link to srsly Hamlet which my “I have one daughter” (typed in tune) owns – the link includes a “look inside” to get a feel for how it works. LOL.