I wanna cut to the feeling

I want to never forget how happy it is possible to be.

I have listened to Carly Rae Jepsen’s 2017 single “Cut to the Feeling” approximately one hundred times in the last five days. It’s got everything. Driving percussion, breathy backing tracks, unfulfilled desire. It’s not contemplative; the desire is right there on the surface: I wanna play where you play with the angels / I wanna wake up with you all in tangles, oh. At the height of the chorus Jepsen’s voice veers slightly away from the pleasant to border on the shrill. And the chorus — it comes quickly and basically never goes away. I love when artists know to give you a lot of chorus. That’s what I came here for, Carly, thank you. It comes down three times in a row at the end, the last rendition a variation, Jepsen interrupting herself as she starts to sing “I wanna cut through the clouds / break the ceiling,” the second half of the line turning into “mmm, cut to the feeling.” She’s already made her point, and she wants to make it again. 

I put in my earbuds and queue it up a few times so I don’t miss a beat, strutting down the street like I own it. I — loudly, rudely — say hi back to the truck driver who hangs out of his window, coyly waves, and says “hi” to me. I get home and keep listening to it; I dance down the hallway and in my kitchen and in the bedroom. I pump my arms and jump up and down and let my hair fly in my mouth. I leave early in the morning for a run and queue it up again, dozens more times, making laps around Prospect Park. I pass a pair of short blonde women around my age running in sync and chatting. I do not chat while I run; I listen to music and regulate my breathing. 

The first several dozen listens did enough to shake away the initial visceral shock. I can do more than just feel this song now; I can think about it. So I’ve started to wonder, is this a happy song? Listen to it enough times (as I have) and it starts to resemble something sinister, something that can’t be only benign. What kind of feeling even is it that she wants to cut to? What is the “all or nothing” that she wants, because, actually, being taken “to the stars” sounds pretty scary. 

No, this is not a happy song; it’s a release valve for something pent-up and terrifying. I listen to it again, and again and again. I am full of steam and it’s coming out my arms, my fists, my mouth. 

I have other release valves. Sometimes, halfway-unconsciously, I picture someone who broke my heart doing physical violence unto me. It’s not that I want him to punch my teeth out with his fist or put my face through a plate of glass but the picture in my head releases whatever proportional hurt might still be in my heart. Sometimes I watch Mad Men and let myself feel such deep empathy for whichever character is lost, seemingly forever, that I cry for several minutes. Sometimes I recite, out loud, to myself, one of a couple dozen poems I have memorized, lock myself in a trance, let myself traffic in the feeling to which someone else has put words. 

When I do these things my heart feels huge in my chest and my brain feels tiny and I feel like I could turn into a cannonball and smash through the nearest wall. I feel untouchable and enormous, like I felt when I was a little girl and the only way I knew how to draw space around me was to get angry. I didn’t throw tantrums; I got angry. It was directed and concentrated; I knew how to wield it so that whoever had trespassed on my boundaries would know not to do it again. It took a long time to unlearn anger-as-shield but God was it useful sometimes. 

I moved. My life is brand-new now and it’s also exactly the same. I’m angry and happy and sad and excited, in equal measure, all the time. I want to see my friends and write words and get into arguments. I want to call my brother and have him interrupt every single one of my sentences to tell some idiotic joke. I want to Facetime with A until late at night because he is on the West Coast and there are three hours of difference between us now but the conversation is so great that we forget. I want to take Mira to the dog park and watch as she gently tries to sniff the butt of a seven-pound terrier puppy named Zeus while hordes of high-energy dogs run around her. I want to make dinner for P, who tells me he’s had a bad day, and then eat it together while we drink the wine I got from the store across the street from my house. I want to see everyone I love as much as possible, and I don’t want to be mad at anyone that has done me wrong because I or we or they could die tomorrow. I mean that. I want to forgive easily and love even more easily and I want to never forget how happy it is possible to be. I want to open the release valve so I can fill myself up again, and I want to cut to the feeling.