The Body Wins

Seldom has the title of an album evoked more thought than this one, at least in my case.  When that title track turns out to be a curve ball production-wise, but in a good way, I am compelled to opine.  I've been waiting to write about the notion of The Body Wins since the pre-release info of the album hipped me to the title.

Sarah Jaffe is gifted.  She has a beautiful voice, and writes evocative songs that communicate a certain kind of blue that I feel at home in.  She also embraces expansion, and with The Body Wins she embraced this by changing her sound and her look to the point where a fan who hasn't kept up with her since her earliest releases, would scarcely recognize the artist.  But the change seems natural, an evolution of her artistic expression.  She's grown, aged, it's what we do.  We can't fight that happening, time marches forward, the Body Wins.

The song itself seems to wrestle with desire's pull in relationships that seem to compromise or complicate our lives.  That's my take on it at least.  It feels like a frustrated resignation, an ode to vice trumping virtue in some manner; or matter over mind.  That's my read on the content, but that's not where I took the phrase when I read it and pondered it.  I took it further down the existential path than is probably intended.  I internalized the concept of the flesh dictating my circumstances, because that very subject has been an issue of mine since I was very young.

The Body Wins, for me, evoked Mortality first and foremost.  As I age, I can't help but feel that I'm on the losing end of a race against time.  Our bodies are beholden to time, and their reactions to its passage get the best of us, like it or not.  It harkens back to Fake Plastic Tries when Thom Yorke sings "He used to do surgery on the girls in the 80s, but gravity always wins." But there are more things to consider other than the ravages of time when it comes to our bodies dictating the terms of our existence.  Some things happen to the young and old alike, getting the best of us.

As a child, it's fair to say I was traumatized by certain experiences, and made to feel hyper-aware and self conscious about my body, its vulnerabilities, its limitations.  Through my development and growth, my body dictated so much of my social experiences as a child, being significantly taller, stuck in ill fitting shoes that would contribute to podriatic problems that bother me to this day.  Suddenly developing gynecomastia near the end of grade school seemed like a karmic punishment, and living with that condition further eroded any comfort I had with my body.  My physical development had taken on a life of its own, contrary to my own hopes and desires.  My vision deteriorated enough that I needed glasses, and I kept growing.  I was tall for my age, but not yet abnormally tall.  The gynecomastia didn't go away as I'd been told it might.  My hopes of playing football were sidelined by concerns that I might have Marfan's Syndome.  After the surreal and disturbing experience of having an Echocardiograph  and hearing my heart truly work, realizing it could, and will eventually cease to, I was cleared of the diagnosis.  I remember the football coach struggling to find cleats I could fit, and me trying on an ill fitting pair and ultimately balking on playing Football after it taking so long to even get cleared to play. 

Mandatory swimming in gym class for a grade was about the worst thing that could have happened to me socially at that point.  I did not, under any conditions take off my shirt in public, or private, given my condition.  It was the epitome of mortifying.  Beyond that, I'd nearly drowned once.  I am not buoyant.  I sink like a stone.  It took a life jacket and a hip preserver for me to be able to so much as tread water.  My exits from the pool consisted of waiting until everyone else left the pool area, rolling out onto my stomach from the side of  pool, and then going for my towel as quickly as possible to drape it over my shoulders.  The production that went into this effort to conceal myself only worked for a little while before it called attention to me.  At that point I refused to swim, and took an F for that quarter of gym class rather than be exposed and ridiculed for something that happened to me that I had no control over, contrary to the piss poor uninformed advice I got from some people.  The only medical option would have been surgery, and financially that wasn't an option.  Surgery also came with risks and complications I was not and am not comfortable with.  It was easier to accept my body as it was, and keep it to myself as best I could without making waves. 

The following summer, after having some discomfort with my feet, the Dr. treating me strongly persuaded my parents to approve corrective surgery for my podriatic issues.  The experience was an exercise in mutilation and futility.  The scars, fused joints, and "gross deformity" as one doctor put it upon her initial examination of my toes, were the results of the procedure, which was meant to be the first of three.  The other two surgeries never came, and my academic and athletic prospects took a severe hit since the procedure basically upended the entire 1st semester of my Sophomore year of High School.  Meanwhile I kept growing, now to the point when I could scarcely find clothes that fit in the regular stores.  I'd already had that problem with shoes since I was 12 years old wearing a size 13.  To have that become an issue with Shirts, Pants, and Jackets was just annoying.  Being socially accepted for being fashionable was out the window.

As I went through the process of healing from having 8 broken toes, two that had whole sections of bone removed, and pins inserted, my cousin Martez was killed, then not long after that my classmate Brian and most of his family died of carbon monoxide poisoning.  My niece Andreana was in and out of the hospital with heart issues.  I embraced an outsider mentality, and rejected the pursuit of social acceptance for the most part. It was self-serving, because there was no way I was going to fit in at that point.  By age 16 I stood a legit 6' 7" or so, and had stopped growing as far as I could tell.  As fate would have it, that's when my complexion started giving me major problems, such that I spent the better part of the next 5 years on Erythromycin using varying topical chemicals to try and keep painful acne at bay.  I'd hoped by my mid 20s it would just stop. But then my beard started coming in, and along with it, ingrown hairs.  So if it wasn't one thing, it was another.  I watched the hair advance from my chin across my jaw, onto my cheeks, but then it kept going, not simply stopping uniformly in a tame beard but creeping above my cheeks as if trying to reach my nose.  My first experience with shaving resulted in so much inflammation due to an adverse reaction to the razor, that I had to get an anti-inflammatory ointment to put over the whole of my face.  I apparently had/ have very sensitive skin.

 I neglected to acknowledge my extreme misfortune of contracting chicken pox at least twice, as a 3rd grader, and again as a high school senior, and my bouts with severe bronchitis that were so disruptive that I was removed from classes by teachers due to the severity of my coughing fits.  Or that I could never take the codine based medicines my doctor prescribed because of the severe stomach pains they caused.  This is especially important given that I would later develop what one doctor referred to as Seasonal Asthma, which was his way of saying Chronic Sinusitis and Bronchitis.  I would eventually make the connection between my sinus problems and a lack of climate control in the places where I resided, or appropriate attire for the weather.  Well-fitting, well-made weather appropriate attire was not easy to come by for dependent children or the "college poor" in the pre-internet age.  It was only through the advancements of the digital age, and belligerent pursuit that I would acquire clothing and housing that allowed for me to maintain some measure of physical comfort to minimize the occurrence of said conditions.

The significance of all of this, without broaching the subject of my parents and family members medical conditions, some I share, others I do not, is that my body has been a hindrance to my personal ambitions, social desires, and self-esteem in the past, and it took a lot of emotional wood shedding to get to the point where I accepted myself physically.  Before I accepted myself, and after, what I  literally am physically has dictated many things in my life.  Much of my time without transportation was in large part due to no one having transportation what would accommodate my large stature.  Something as simple as my height took a great toll on my ability to advance in life in that simple way alone.  I have limitations on what I can do that I can't overcome sans some dramatic modification, if possible, and seldom is it affordable, or worth it.  My Body Always Wins, which has taught me to be as detached from aspects as I am attached to being alive.  It's a mixed blessing that I have learned to humbly accept, because it's spared me as much as it's spurned me.  My body is my vessel.  I have struggled to see it as a temple, and the consequences for failing to treat it as such without fail boomerang back at me and humble me to no end.  The Body Wins.  The Body Always Wins.  In this life at least.