How I became obsessed with Celtic music:

It all started with Enya. Mom and I would listen to her in the car on long drives to my aunt's or my grandma's. or maybe it was the random Celtic music radio station we found between Coldwater and Muskegon, Michigan before it faded out to static. We'd listen to it while driving north on highway 69 to highway 96. The sun was always setting, fading into darkness as wove through the rolling hills covered in pine. It was narrated by a woman named Fiona. I loved how she said her name: "Fee-yoohh-nah." Her accent in general was lovely. Celtic music makes me feel in touch with my roots. My family has been in America since the 1600s or 1700s. Meaning We were about 5 types of European ancestry and about as American as it comes. But my last name was Irish. And I'd been to Ireland. So I felt more connected to that than any other white Europeans nations my ancestors tramped through. I liked to imagine them, living in the green hills of Ireland, tending sheep and being caught up in other romantic stories. In reality, they might have been drunks, or pious, certainly racist at one point in history or another. my ancestors certainly wouldn't like me the way Mulan's ghost-like ones did. Other than my name, my love of potatoes in all shapes and forms, and maybe my alight abundance of knowledge on Celtic history I've done through school and on my own, I'm not very Irish. Some people know second languages, or still perform customs their great grandparents did. Maybe they still carry a name from their ancestor or have family back in the country they're from. I think there's still something tying us all to our roots which had woven through history to bring us to where we are today. I also think it's important not to lose that. So I have Celtic music, two trips to Ireland, and my family crest. And that's good enough for now.

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Day 1--Starting, Ending, Everything in between

I made a deal with myself, one thousand and one in a long line of deals I've made with myself to keep a blog or journal or some semblance of documentation on my average-as-hell life. I've always been fascinated by documentation of history and events, from my own, to the world's--if I could have done something with it I liked enough, I would have been a history major. Alas, I'm not the biggest fan of research when I HAVE to do it for something or someone and sucked at homework. I'm more of a freelance researcher/learner--I don't know. My aversion to doing something when I'm told to or I HAVE to is still a mystery to me.

Anyway. This deal. It's to write. Day 1, Day 2, Day 3... so on and so forth until I fail and then maybe I'll just have to start over. Maybe my goal will be 30 days, for now, in a row. Even if I have nothing much to say, I have to write something.

Today I'm going through my NYC photos from a trip I recently took with a few friends. It was my first time and I've fallen in love with it. Not sure I want to live directly there, but Brooklyn (the part I saw) was amazing. It's heavy, you know? I kept trying to describe New York City to people when I returned to Indianapolis and I just couldn't. It's indescribable, truly. It's huge and loud and overpowering and staggering and dirty and beautiful and creative and sad and happy and inspiring and concrete, yet also abstract. I don't know, maybe that's just me. Either way, I've never been to a place where I have, in equal measure, felt so entirely like an outsider, yet so entirely like I could belong all at the same time. It's the roots of America. As we tread our way up and down Manhattan and Brooklyn streets, all I could think about--and indeed I think about this anywhere I go that's older and bigger than the places in Indiana I have lived--the history of every little thing: from the sidewalk below my feet to the leaning rows of buildings. Anyone from famous people to possibly my own ancestors have walked these streets and maybe, they even felt a little bit of what I felt when I was there. Like New York City encapsulates America--where we've come from and where we're going and why people come here in the first place. Jay Z and Alicia Keys's song wouldn't leave my head, but the words rang true--concrete jungle where dreams are made. I know I will never find another place like it. I can't wait to take my bf friend back with me and really do NYC right.

Song of the Day: "I Followed Fires" by Matthew and the Atlas (via a lovely Reign TV show 8tracks I've been obsessed with

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