Word Vomit

I can’t write a rap. Nor will I ever be able to. Maybe some day in the far future where new people exist and new creations are created. But for right now I can’t write a rap.

I can write songs. I can write spiffy songs about love and heartbreak. Melodies that relate to people’s lives and soul songs. I can hum a tune and sketch lyrics about loss and abandonment, and shorty after, turn around with a brand new smile etched upon my cheeks and come up with a chorus about the wisdom in an old man’s somber eyes, or the kindness and gentleness in a mother’s hands.

I am a writer and I intend to tell stories for the rest of my life. I intend to share marvelous spiels about things that happened in my livelihood, or I thought up in my brain and concocted in my thoughts and embellished with my lips.

I love words just as much as I love human beings. I love the way words feel when you speak them and the tingles you get in the back of your brain when you hear a word that strikes you funny. Words are mysterious because we will never know what every single one of them means. We can only imagine how many words are out there. The amount of species of animals and plants has pretty much flat-lined in the most recent decade, while words keep getting created every minute. Dictionaries and thesauruses are expanding weekly and our brains capacity for words is growing by the hour. It’s mesmerizing. Words can do so much, yet people use them so little.

People use acronyms, which are no fun at all. LOL and BRB need to grow long, lengthy legs, and run far, far away where no one can even think of them ever again. I demand that WTF and OMG get scooped up by some atrocious creature and get carried to a land even farther than the edges of the earth and get dumped off a cliff where people won’t even know that they existed once upon a time. These acronyms kill the essence of my beloved words. These phrases of letters exterminate the need of words and sentences in their entirety. It’s disheartening. Words are meant to express how we feel in wonderful and awful moments alike. How can we tell people how we feel when we cut half the letters out of our words? Or how can we effectively relay to the ones we care about how much we love them if we simply emote with purple and green hearts on our iPhones. Words are so important, and like animals and plants, they are becoming extinct.

Remember in third grade when the teacher would have a new word of the day when you walked in the door? She would flip the laminated paper pad over one more page and reveal a brand new word that you were completely and utterly clueless as to what the heck it meant. Then, once she described it, you got some kind of reward for using it or finding it in your reading. This word-of-the-day shin-dig should happen every single day in every single class in every single school. Even in the colligate level. We need to stop describing things as “good”, and start describing things as marvelous, fantastical, whimsical, and infatuating. Simply saying I feel “sad” is annoying and flat, we have the capacity to feel underestimated, heavyhearted, dejected, and down in the dumps.

It’s completely okay to use words and phrases that raise people’s eyebrows and make them think about what you really just said. Someone might take you as the smartest person they have ever met because of your extensive vocabulary. Words are beautifully impressive. They hold the power to make you sound incredibly well versed, even if you googled “words to make me sound smart” right before an important interview. Hey, no one’s judging you. No one will ever know about your Google searches you conduct while grabbing your Starbucks coffee from the drive through window. At least you are making an effort to expand your vocabulary. And chances are, you’ll remember those new words for a long time after you use them just once, and you’ll end up impressing people with them for years to come.

My best friend is a thesaurus these days. It never lets me down. It boggles my mind every time I open it before I go to bed at night. I like to learn new words every night while I sip some tea and write songs and short essays and poems and such. The lamp in the corner of my room flickers and makes strange clicking noises, and I try to take my mind off how creepy it really sounds and looks by burying my face in my gigantic thesaurus. I close my eyes and open to a new page and read the simple words, then delve into the words that trail behind the bold ones. Some are impossible to pronounce, and those are the ones that I like. The bigger the word, the happier the Maddie. My biggest pet peeve is not being able to express precisely how I feel because of a lack of terminology. I get frustrated and mumble inaudible noises and grunts, because I can’t find suitable words in any of the wrinkles in my brain. I self prescribed my problem by gifting my self with my elephantine thesaurus. Well, my mom actually gave it to me, but I started to really indeed use it. So, my mom gave it to me and it was MY choice to start looking at the thing.

I started this entire thing by saying that I can’t write a rap, and now I intend to tell you why I believe that to be so. When attempting to write a song where syllables and timing are even more crucial than normal, I would screw up the phonetic entity miserably because I would use words with entirely too many letters and vocal percussions. I would try to add to many syllables within every verse and the rhythmic feel would be thrown to the way-side. The only thing I might be able to succeed at would be the rhyming aspect of things. I love rhyming words to each other; it’s almost like finding their soul mates. I’m a word match-maker so to speak. Its like “here you go wonky donkey, I’m going to set you up with honky tonkey. you’ll sound perfect together”. Sure that was one of the lousiest rhymes of all time but you get the point.

So now you all know of my undying love for words and how fascinated I am by them. They shape the way I look at the world and how I interact with the people around me. Coming off well versed, is much better than coming off sort of dumb and kind of possibly incoherent. Being at a loss for words is the scariest thing I can think of having to come in contact with. I’d rather be at a loss for anything else, than to lack the ability to communicate properly. What would the world come to if everyone was like, “OMG Laura I can’t even right now. IRL you are seriously being V annoying and I just can’t handle you right now”. Even writing that made my skin crawl.

Let’s all make it a goal to come across as more sophisticated and intelligent. It’s simple really; take the time to articulate your words instead of blurting out what comes quickest to the forefront of your cranium.  Random blurtation is absolutely unacceptable. (just like the word blurtation should be unacceptable. I don’t think it’s a real word. But I like it)

Make sure to check out my new website and get your The Simple Movement gear J

Madelinemusic.com/thesimplemovement

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You all are awesome and thank you an endless amount for your support and love. I wouldn’t be where I am today without you!

-Madeline

My Endless Mind

I’ve been messing around with a few new songs lately and new ideas have been circling around in my head and I can’t seem to get one solid, connected thought onto paper. The mind of a creative person is like a jungle, or one of those splatter paintings, or like a web browser with 4,052 tabs open at once.

My brain. Never. Quits.

I never, ever complain though. There are people that have brilliant ideas, but they do absolutely nothing about it. Magnificent ideas go to waste every day, and it’s utterly tragic. Thinkers are marvelous human beings who walk the walk and talk the talk and think the think. Does that even make sense…? It makes enough sense… what I’m trying to say is these people who are not scared of their own bewildering minds and ideas, are the ones that change the world. I’ve heard that if your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough. That is the best thing I’ve heard in my nineteen years of life on planet Earth. If you’re scared of what people will think of you, or that you’ll fall flat on your face, that’s great!! You’re doing something right! You’re ideas are tremendous and your thoughts are so vast, they reach as far, and FARTHER, than the eye can see. You genius, you.

With all these delirious doo-dads floating around in my head, I have had trouble writing a song that makes sense. I start with something about maybe liking a guy.. then I end with something about moving across the country or my love for food, or possibly something about my dog. The funny thing is, I’m not even slightly joking. I can’t sit still for five seconds and I can’t concentrate on one single thing for more than about twelve minutes. I’m surprised I’ve even gotten this far in my blog post… speaking of, I’m actually thoroughly amazed that I haven’t walked away yet. It’s probably because writing some things down like this is giving me a chance to step back and really look at what is going on in my head. Like a detox, for my brain.

So anyways, I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not yet but it’s already the middle of summer. Holy cow. I was fishing with a friend and spending time with him when we got to talking about how we wished it was this time last year. How nice would it be to be able to rewind and feel a couple things twice? Pretty darn nice. Time is going incredibly too fast, people are walking in and out of my life all too quickly, and I’m growing up so rapidly, I don’t even remember being eighteen. I’m going to be twenty in six months. That’s insane!! Weeks are racing by and months are over in a snap of my fingers. It’s like the wizard of time is looking at us all laughing saying, “well, It’s already almost the last week of July, you miiiiight want to start packing for college or thinking about school again. Sorry, not sorry!!!” And then we’re sitting here, wallowing in all our past memories and trying to catch up with friends and family, scrambling to find time to even sit down and enjoy a sunrise or sunset. It’s not fair. Life never used to go this fast, ask any parent or grand parent. Summer’s would coast by at a comfortable speed and the rest of the year was smooth sailing. People had enough time to laugh and to dance, and they were able to reach out to old acquaintances and keep up with high school flames. Now we’re rushed through middle school, forced through high school, and regretfully pushed through college, even though we want to make it last and hold on to every day. But days are like balloon strings, they’re so thin and tiny and too easily able to slip out of our hands before we are able to admire the color or the beauty of them floating by.

I want to be able to relish in all that life has to offer me. I want to be able to swim in sunbeams and walk to the tips of rainbows and search aimlessly for pots of gold that aren’t really there. I want to believe in everything and be perfectly content with the world surrounding me. Instead I’m running out the front door at 7 am, hoping for a rainy day so that I might not feel so bad remaining inside for hours on end at work. Instead I’m counting my pennies and budgeting every last dime, wishing that a pot of gold would show up at my doorstep. Instead I find myself skeptical of every word that comes out of people’s mouths, and I find it hard to believe in the things I would like to. Life seems to be a crazy paradox lately, and I hate it.

I don’t hate life itself, however. I adore life. I love every day I’m given on this planet. I’m obsessed with the beauty of everything. I’m dumbfounded by nature and impressed with how everything works and coexists. Life is a truly spectacular thing.

I feel like sometimes I tend to point out all the negative things happening in my life in these things I write. It’s easier to write about the lousy stuff. The favorable events are seldom when you’re insanely busy like me, but when they happen, man are they are outstanding. I just recently became a nanny for a family that I absolutely adore. I go over every day to their cabin on Cranberry Lake and help with the kids and small things around the house. The little girl has a spectacular mind. I am fascinated by her, and I love watching her every day. She reminds me incredibly of myself. Our brains are the exact same brain. We can’t sit still, we love to draw and create, and already by two and a half, she’s sitting at the piano composing music. I was completely floored when I first saw this. You best believ I whipped out the camera on my phone and started video taping. Sure it was nothing but a jumble of random keys and chords, and a couple la-da-dee’s and noo-nee-na’s, but it was wonderful. She’s an absolute genius already and I am amazed.

I am actually amazed by so many things. By the good, and the bad. I’m amazed with people’s talents and abilities, but then I’m amazed with people’s ability to be inconsiderate. Or their ability to disappoint me so many times, yet they don’t see the wrong they did and forget all together to apologize. It tears me into little, tiny pieces. If you want to see me, please tell me when. Or, when you tell me a time, don’t bail. People that bail are the worst kinds of people. Like, if you make plans with me and I get super excited, don’t opt out last minute. Chances are I’ll be extremely disappointed, and probably won’t want to talk to you for at least a good month. It’s true. OR.. if you tell me you miss me, and then make absolutely no effort on God’s green earth to try to see me or call me, or even text me. I see right through you, you don’t miss me, it’s just word vomit spilling out of your mouth for the sake of it. People need to talk the talk AND walk the walk, just like I said before. I’m AMAZED at people who can lie through their teeth, and look me right in the eye and feed me blatant myths and fables. I want to scream at them, “SHUT UP! ”. I know I don’t handle these situations in the best of ways, but if someone lets me down, or doesn’t treat me well, I don’t take it lightly. Everyone deserves to be treated like kings and queens and princesses and princes. Don’t make me so upset that my head hangs low and my crown begins to fall. I don’t like that, don’t dull my shine. I guess I’m kind of saying here that I don’t handle rejection well. I do! I really do handle it decently, just not when it’s my emotions on the line. Don’t mess with my emotions and my feelings. I’m tough, but I’m easily hurt. I’m a paradox myself, just like I think life is paradox.

Now that I’m starting to see my ideas come full circle here, I think I’m finally getting somewhere in trying to figure out what’s going on inside my head. I’m sorry this blog post is so scatter-brained and all over the place. I shouldn’t be apologizing for anything actually… but I feel the need to this time because of the randomness of each new idea I brought into existence. I hope you can take something out of this. Whether it be you finally figuring out something about yourself that you’ve been struggling with, or that I’m just plain crazy and psycho.  (Because, I CAN be a little bit weird sometimes, and that’s quite alright with me)

Just remember I love you all, and I’m so thankful for you each and every day.

Keep a look out on all my social media accounts for updates on where I’m performing, and MY NEW MUSIC VIDEO!!!!

The video for Somethin’ Like That will be out before you know it.. so you should tell your friends and family and your cousins dog and sisters fiancé!!!

Anyways, you guys are pretty great, never forget that.

Love you all!!!!!

-Madeline

Twitter: @mconsoer_music

Instagram: @madelineconsoer

Facebook: Madeline Music

You are no more Important than the Person Sitting Next to You

Sometimes it’s really hard to focus on the good when there is so much bad happening all around us. Nothing worth giving two cents about is occurring. It’s all going in one ear and coming out the other. Headlines are dripping with negativity, your friends are blowing you off, and that guy you’ve been talking to just started talking to some other tall blonde girl, that just so happens to live two doors down from you. Nothing seems to come with an explanation anymore. It’s become more severe than just “we stopped talking and I have no clue as to why”. People do bad things because they can get away with it. Detachment from people is easier than sticking around. Everyone is temporary, even family in certain circumstances. All because it’s seared into our brains that we don’t need anybody who doesn’t need us. Being single makes you strong and independent. Having the ability to stand alone makes you solitary and influential. Strength in numbers has dissipated and fallen to the way-side. Nobody gives a passing glance to the people around them. We’re absorbed in this unenthusiastic world where popularity is more important than individuality. Beauty is more important than substance. Individuals are more concerned with how much money they have in their hand rather than whose hand they could be holding. The brand on the tag of your shirt holds more significance than the brand you create for yourself. Your attributes are worthless unless your body is flawless. Your ideas are unimportant unless you hold a place of importance in society. Your integrity isn’t about who you’re there for anymore, it’s all about who you know. Morality is now more a concept of who’s on top rather than who could be the better person.

Everything is messed up.

We can’t push people away because we believe we’re better off on our own. We can’t wipe our schedules clear of lunch dates and cocktail parties all because relationships seem so superficial. We can’t push people away because we want to be noticed for being solitary. Things don’t work like that. People don’t work like that. We need human interaction in order to be healthy and happy. We need people to lift us up; we can’t always do that ourselves. It’s impossible for someone to be completely self-reliant.

So let’s get over it.

Let’s make up our differences with the people around us and start leaning on each other again. Lets take off our suits of armor made up of hurtful words and pride and start bridging the gaps that we unknowingly formed with each other. If we can start to realize again the importance of human contact, I think we’ll all be a whole lot better off.

Never again should we push the ones away that could help push us to be better individuals. How can we build on our own character when we don’t have others’ to base off of? We can’t improve or grow unless we have the influence of improvers and growers in front of us.  We cannot follow by example if we avoid the examples all together. What’s the fun of seeing all the captivating sights in this world if we can’t share them with someone else? We’re not useless on our own, but we’re more useful with the uphold of others. We have a greater chance of success if we surround ourselves with successful people.

NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU.

Give your time up for someone who needs it. There ARE people who actually need things more than you want them. Place yourself in someone else’s shoes for once. How can you do that if you don’t associate with anyone else? You can’t begin to learn about other people and their struggles if you don’t place yourself in their vicinity and position.

Solidarity is okay, until you look around at who you love and cherish memories with and you see an absolutely and utterly empty room. You can’t celebrate your life with yourself. You can’t love yourself the way someone else can. It doesn’t work like that. Life doesn’t work like that.

If we were meant to live alone we wouldn’t miss people. We wouldn’t feel little panging holes in our hearts when someone is gone from our lives. Our eyes wouldn’t sting with diamond tears when loved ones left for good. We wouldn’t be in denial when the one we thought loved us up and walked away. We feel all these things, so we are meant to be with people in our day-to-day lives. It’s so simple and obvious.

Let’s stop being oblivious, and let’s start soaking in all the relationships around us. Let’s start loving everyone and embracing the people that we associate with in our daily lives. Life is a beautiful, overwhelming thing; why not share it with someone? Fall in love, make friends, and hold family close. Never push someone away because you feel it will make yourself look better. It’s not fair to yourself, or the people around you.

Think about others, not just yourself.

xoxo,

Madeline

I get a Little Help from my Friends

Life gets busy and overwhelming sometimes. It gets to the point where you want to throw in the towel and say, “I’m done! That’s it! I can’t do this anymore!” You have 1,042 things to do and they’re all eating away at you, making you more stressed out and even more irritable than you were before.

That’s why we have friends!

I was talking to my mom the other day about how thankful I am for the friends in my life and all the great people I have. They help me not only get through the day sometimes, but they support me with my music and reaching my goals. I wonder how they put up with me... or WHY… but I don’t think too hard about it because, they’re here for me, no questions asked.

I love that.

I know for an absolute fact that I’m the craziest, weirdest, strangest person ever sometimes… but my friends put up with that, and that’s pretty neat. Without these people I would be utterly insane, bonkers, derailed. With music being my primary outlet for expressing my feelings, my friends are my other source for letting my emotions run free like wild horses. (cue rolling stones song going through your head right now.)  I can tell them my secrets, where as if I wrote a song about those same secrets I might be taken to some sort of specialist. My brain works in mysterious ways, I tell you. Not even I understand it sometimes. The mechanics of my thoughts are to be understood by God alone, and it should stay like that.

Anyways, I truly am one blessed individual to be able to have these close knit friends that I consider like family. I’m an only child, so it does get lonely to an extent sometimes, but my parents have always been there to keep me entertained. I think I’m extremely lucky to be able to call my mom my best friend, and she calls me hers. God gave my mom me to be there for her, to talk to her, and to be a friend to her, and I take that very seriously. I would do ANYTHING for my mom… just like I would do anything for any of my other friends. She means the world to me and I love being there for her. My favorite thing on this planet is when we sit and talk for hours about deep, life stuff. Like, people that are put in our lives to teach us patience, and what the world would be like without certain things, or how certain relationships happen only to teach us a lesson, not to stay with us for the rest of our lives. She’s a genius sometimes, I swear. I go to her with any of my troubles and I walk away with a new understanding. Sure, I get mad at my mom but who doesn’t. She is the true rock in my life and I have absolutely no clue on God’s green earth what I would do without her. I’d be a hopeless fool.

Also, whenever people tell me, especially people younger than me, that their parents are annoying them or making them mad about something, I say that I understand, but to not get upset with them. Take what they have to say and do what they tell you to do. Being in college now, I miss my parents so much, and I look back and appreciate all the things they told me and taught me. I was angry with them, yes, and I still do get aggravated with them, but I’m thankful for the way I was raised. I’m strong and independent because of them. They taught me to stand up for myself and to be firm in my beliefs. They showed me how to not be intimidated by others, and that giving into peer pressure won’t make you fit in, it will only make you like everyone else, which is something you don’t want to be. Standing out in the crowd is strangely satisfying. Because you are different, people want to know who you are. If you look like everyone else in the crown and do what they crowd does, no one cares who you are or what your name is. You’re just a person in a crowd. Plain and simple.

When I was younger I always had the idea set in my head that my parents were way too strict. While sometimes I still agree it would have been nice to let the reigns looser a few times, I’m thankful I wasn’t able to do whatever I pleased. Not like I would have six tattoos or a drinking problem or anything, but I would have gotten into a lot more dumber stuff than I had if I didn’t have them watching over me. Nothing good happens past like, 11pm in this town, so I get where they were coming from. They wanted to keep me safe and protect me from the world and it’s tiny hidden evils.

Speaking of my mom though, it’s her birthday tomorrow and I want to do something awesome for her but I have no idea what to do. I could write her a song but, I’ve done that already. Or I could write a poem, but I’ve done that already too. I’ve made her larger than life cards and drawn and painted her many pictures, so what’s left?! I was thinking plane tickets to Nashville… that way the whole family can reap the benefits of my generous gift (insert cool sunglass emoji here). I think I’d be considered the best daughter ever… just saying.

Anyways, friends are beautiful people that we must never take advantage of. I always try my absolute hardest to keep in close contact with my friends, and sometimes I fail at this, but the ones that forgive me, or understand that I have a busy lifestyle, are the ones worth keeping around. I tend to do this thing where I fall off the face of the earth and I forget to text people back and call them and email them, but that’s just me. It’s who I am. I honestly forget EVERYTHING which is awful, I know, but sometimes there’s just nothing I can do about it. When someone gets mad at me for not talking to them for a week I’m honestly hurt by that. I say I’m sorry, because I really am, but then I almost want an apology in return. I realize I haven’t talked to you but you need to realize that I just completely blanked and needed time to myself for a while. It’s normal to want to be solitary for a little while. When people get mad at me for that, it makes me pretty blue to be honest. I get over it though, because I like to live a happy lifestyle. I never hold grudges and forgive always, because if you hold bitterness and bad blood with people, you’re bound to end up unhappy and bliss-less. That’s not cool!

Happiness is key to everything in life. If you are happy, then the people around you are happy. Your mood affects the ones surrounding you. If you’re upset and angry at the world and giving off an attitude to everyone you come in contact with, they all will take your attitude and apply it to themselves and go on with the rest of their day acting like big ol’ cranks, just like you. Don’t do that to people! Smile at everyone, say thank you to everyone, look people in the eye and mean what you say. It will rub off and the world around you will be such a happy place. Not even a rain storm could dull your sunshine. (I sounded lame there, I get it) But I’m trying to prove a point, if you’re happy, I’m happy, your whole life will be happy, and the world will be a happy place. Yay! Sunshine and sprinkles and unicorns and happy stuff…

Ok, enough with sounding like a six year old… I’m going to attempt to tie this whole thing together. It’s like those conversations where you start talking about one thing and end up on something totally different and you look at the other person like what the actual heck were we talking about in the first place…

So, in concluding all my thoughts into one thought; I’m so thankful that I have the relationship with my parents that I do, and am even more blessed to have friends that are like family to me, which in turn make me the happiest person on the planet. Then throw in something about it being my mom’s birthday and me having terrible forgetfulness. There! I think I did it!

I’m actually impressed with myself.

Anyways, I hope you guys are all doing swell and leading good, happy, healthy lives. THIS TIME I SERIOUSLY PROMISE TO KEEP UP WITH MY BLOGS. It’s summer now and all of my time is dedicated to my music and everything associated with this career that I love so much.

Have a wonderful, happy day.

Love you much.

-Madeline