The Heart and the Hawk
A post about heart doors and smiles and hawk sightings and poets.
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We are, all of us, on a journey. Soft hearts vulnerable and exposed, hot brains crackling in kilns, bodies launching off the precipice of try. This is what it is to make art. This is what it is to trust in the poem.
Our maps are drawn as we go—landmarks, signposts, and vista points dotting at our papers. We do not use pencil. Routes are never erased, only altered.
Thom Yorke is on a journey.
Justin Hawkins is on a journey.
Even the guy who yells out “We fucking love you, Jonny!” from somewhere waaaay down below me at The Smile concert in Glasgow. Journey.
And me?
Well, I’ve come all the way to Scotland from California—a literal journey of 8,100 kilometers—just to watch Justin Hawkins command a stage without the threat of a YouTube advertisement disrupting his flow. There will be no skipping.
I can see you’re asking why. It is a long way.
Let’s start with the flippant answer.
He keeps saying his heart is open, so I’ve come to jiggle the knob on the door and make sure he ain’t lying.
That—and it won’t be the first time I say this—is not a euphemism.
The theory of the heart door: a primer
You have a heart door. Everyone does. But the sensitive, creative ones—let’s just call them poets—walk around with theirs flung wide open, leaving them vulnerable and exposed to the elements. And the rain gets in and soaks all the mood furniture and the wind howls through the valves whistling tunes of lost loves and broken dreams while whipping up confusing joy tornados. Anger and melancholy and exaltation and ecstasy and every emotion ever given a page in a therapist’s notebook: they’re all in there.
I’m telling you, it's a scene.
The heart door is a swinging door. For the poetry to flow out and into the world—for the art and the truth and the real you of you to drift out to explore freely—the world must also be permitted to flow back in. All of it. For poetry to materialize, reality must be given permission to stomp its boots all through your heart’s hallways.
Absorb. Process. Kick something new back out the door. Drop metaphorical (and actual) sonnets like emotional blood bombs. Rip villanelles like a savage infidel. The door, the door, the door.
Open the door.
Some people never do.
Some people think they can trick you with a screen door, which implies an open heart—stops the insects getting in—but it also obscures and blurs the edges of their poetry. Caught in the gauze, it fragments.
These are just facts.
Anyone can barge through a heart door. Friends, strangers, lovers on a tear. The wind howls and in they come, rooting about in the heart of you, destruction on their minds. People get in and kick stuff around and flip cabinets, and break crockery and rifle about and leave the place a bloody mess. And the temptation will be to shut the door. Do not close the door.
Not if you hold out any hope of becoming a poet.
The Hawk and the field mouse.
“I just came to jiggle your heart door.”
Should that be my opening gambit? No. That won’t work.
I’m in line at the VIP of the “LIVE! Justin Hawkins Rides Again… for the first time” tour and panicking because I didn’t realize there’d be an opportunity to speak to him, mano-a-mano. I’m much better at conversations with myself in the shower, or writing them down. Perhaps I could sneak to the back of this line to give myself some time to whip up a rudimentary haiku that expresses, I dunno, something, and hand that to him instead and cut out all my pathetic attempts at jibber jabber.
“Shhh,” she says, holding a finger to his lips while handing him a Post-It. “Don’t speak.”
No. That won’t work. Also, not a huge fan of haiku.
I’ve named this on-a-whim trip to Glasgow “Art Safari, 2024” but if I keep overthinking this, I’ll have to rebrand it “Creepin’ on Hawkins.”
Is this how it starts? The decline? She used to be so cool. *Scoffs* Correction: No she did not.
Why do I never question moments until I’m in them?
“Sorry, this will be awkward because I’m awkward and please don’t spend a moment longer talking to me than you want to.”
No, that’s even worse. Also, I should be nicer to myself. Ugh.
The line moves. I get closer.
I don’t fit here. In this world. This talking to famous people world as though it’s natural. I don’t fit here, in a line of people who seem supremely confident in their ability to make small talk. Small talk is one of my least favorite things. I’m terrible at it. Particularly with strangers. And as much as it FEELS like I know Justin Hawkins, I DO NOT know Justin Hawkins.
Projection. We’ll get to that.
For now, I take a breath. Wonder if perhaps my heart door is a little too far ajar and creating a heart vortex that is sucking my negative aura right back into me. The heart is a self-feeding mechanism and right now, mine is beating just slightly off the one. (Insert euphemism line?)
I adjust the angle of my door by looking down at my jumper. It has a bird on it. The bird has a beret. The beret bird makes me happy. Confession: It is why I wore this jumper.
“It’s got a beret!”
No. Don’t say that to him. That is not your opening gambit.
Why did you come here? Hmmm. Why? Because Justin Hawkins is trying something new and I love it when people try something new. Justin Hawkins said he needed support for this something new because it was outside of his comfort zone. His catsuited, guitar shredding, voice projecting comfort zone. It seemed like his heart door was open when he said it. I believed him.
“Look, my bird has a beret!” Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it.
I step forward.
“Hi,” I say. “I’m Janeen. I sent you the Santa Cruz care package with the Screaming Hand?”
Oh fuck.
The moment of my realization arrives, too late as per usual. I have flown all the way from Santa Cruz, California, on a whim because a total stranger with his heart door open (allegedly) said he needed support and so I, of course, instantly purchased a ticket and a flight and planned an entire week of Art Safari activities around this one event.
Oh fuck.
This is textbook.
I’m a stalker.
What a cliche.
The instruments are passive until they are played.
In the Dutch wing of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow, instead of standing back and observing the whole of each painting, I start fixating on hands.
Some have aged with a shine of glossy realism and are expressed with such fine delicacy that I lean in closer to check the work. Other hands do not look like hands at all—particularly up close—and seem to be an approximation. An interpretation. The suggestion of a hand as imagined by a poet.
Rough paint strokes of thick oil and color that make them like a fleshy bouquet. But still. Hands. Any dolt can see what they’re supposed to be. Stand back to admire the whole and the the brain fills in the gaps, as if to say: “I know what you mean. It’s okay, my door is open.”
Expression and impression. The illusion of. Hands as instruments, held in configurations of piety and respect and dismay and languid relaxation. Operated by artists—poets of paint—who themselves become instruments. Become hands.
Thom Yorke is an instrument, obviously. He plays many actual instruments. His voice, which I love, rushes out his heart door without even grabbing a jacket. Vulnerable and pure and exposed to our judgmental elements it soars as an incredible human instrument. The sound changes, the mood, the tone. The instrument bends to express—to show the outline of this metaphorical hand and his interpretation of its shape.
From high up in the nose bleeds of the SEC Armadillo in Glasgow—a seating area that Thom indicates to at one point and calls “inhumanely high up”—his strong voice in the finest of fettles swirls and soars above me, seeking out my heart door.
It does not need to knock. I have left it wide open.
“You’re probably wondering what’s going on,” he says to the crowd, who cheers back at him.
“Good.”
The instruments on stage are made active and we are blinded by the light show so as to listen. Jonny Greenwood plays a guitar with a bow. Several times. There are wizards doing wizardy things. With their hands. With their hearts. I close my eyes and look for the shapes.
We are hands. We are instruments. The structure of us is clearly visible and then not. We are constantly changing positions and practicing and stretching fingers and reaching for impossible notes to show you our true form. We are spending our whole lives on this journey, making gestural sketches in the air and on papers and in our imaginations.
With our hands. With, and of, our instruments.
“I would go to the gallows for Bending Hectic,” I think, as I become engulfed in this song. Somewhere along the line it seems I have turned into a dramatic 13-year-old girl. The very one I used to be. The one who dreamed of meeting Paul McCartney and having, you know, a great conversation about art or books or music or something.
To be clear, I wouldn’t go to the gallows for Bending Hectic. What I mean is that this song kills me. I die. And in that death, I am alive.
Incredible, isn’t it? The power of a song. Performed by hands. Delivered by instruments.
You’re probably wondering what’s going on.
Good.
The girl in the beige mask.
When I bring up the possibility of me being a stalker in my short conversation with Justin, he says he doesn’t feel threatened by me. Close the door, Justin. Close the door. I appreciate his attempt at talking me off my imaginary loserville ledge and we continue the chat. He signs my poster, as requested, “To Noodle” thus FALLING INTO MY TRAP. Only my oldest friends call me Noodle. So we are officially friends now.
To Noodle thanks for stalking me so thoroughly.
Straight to the mantlepiece. Of my heart. My open door heart.
You know, I’ve just worked it out. Sitting here, writing this. I’ve just worked out why I came all this way. Of why I willingly read too much into him saying he needed support and took it as a hawk-shaped help signal projected into the high sky. Please come, it implied. Drop everything.
It has nothing to do with Justin. But also, I mean, everything. But also not.
We project onto people some unspoken part of ourselves. Something that we perhaps envy or aspire to be. I don’t want to be a rock star and I could not pull off wearing a cat suit, but I do want to uphold a certain way of being. A creative mindset, if you will. I do want to adhere to a work ethic that is about the constant state of creation and evolution and trying things on for size.
Because here’s the thing I love about Justin Hawkins, a total stranger whose heart I cannot possibly pretend to know. He seems to like the process of working. And—as this tour illustrates and is the reason why I wanted to come for a lookeeloo—he tries new things. Things that I’m assuming don’t make him comfortable. Things that would be considered to be outside of his wheelhouse.
We are on a journey. (You said that already). I know. And throughout the journey we have the opportunity to either be in a state of continuation or change. We draw the map as we go along.
Some of us stay on one road, never veering off the path. Straight liners. Shortest routers. Easy streets with no potholes, no jams. It doesn’t always work.
Some of us are the most erratic mother fuckers on the road, swerving at the last minute to take an offramp just see where it goes. To see how it changes or enhances the journey. That doesn’t always work either. Sometimes you end up in a swamp.
But we keep on drawing the map.
While Justin is a glorious frontman of a band that I love, a speaking tour isn’t the most obvious offramp for him to take. I take things at face value and I was inspired by the courage of this plan. I saw the potential for failure (not that I expect that to ever happen) and of how he seemed weirdly excited by it. I saw in this decision someone taking a chance and trying something—a new form, a new structure, a new interpretation of an unfamiliar hand—which is what poetry is.
It seemed so very true. So delightfully ambitious.
Do you think I would like to be brave? Do you think I would like people to look inside my heart door? Projecting much?
And so I bought a ticket. That’s all. And tonight, standing face-to-face with Justin Hawkins, I have come to terms with traveling 5,000 miles just to visit an area on his map just outside The Comfort Zone.
Not a euphemism. That would be The Forbidden Zone.
Thar be dragons outside The Comfort Zone. The poet raises the sword aloft. I will watch him slay this monster.
Speaking of comfort zones, I am well out of mine getting a photo taken with the magnificent clotheshorse that is Justin Hawkins (I don’t know if that’s offensive, but why do clothes hang so well on him? It’s very irritating.) In typical Janeen scatterbrain fashion, I’ve left my glasses at the hotel, and while I appreciate being shown the first photo for approval purposes, I can’t see for shit.
It’s always a miracle to see a good photo of me anyway and I doubt this is one. But I’m sure the bird with the beret looks nice and Justin probably looks like a super model so not all is lost. I squint my old lady eyes at the view screen of the camera as the second shot is shown to me. I shrug at Justin.
“You’re the beige bit,” he says, helpfully.
He has no idea how accurate that statement is.
The Bulletproof Fragility of the heart.
At a recent Bob Dylan concert, a frustrated Crowd Karen yelled out:
“Play something we know!”
Bob Dylan—who has an enormous body of work (not a euphemism)—responded by singing the lyrics of his song “When I Paint my Masterpiece” to the tune of Irving Berlin’s “Putting on the Ritz” and I just want to point something out:
Bob Dylan gives no fucks.
The most successful of poets don’t. Bob Dylan is an instrument. And a poet with a Nobel Prize to prove it. What have you got?
Yeah, but he’s rich as hell. Of course he gives no fucks.
Ok. How about this?
Thom Yorke dancing is one of my favorite things on earth to watch.
During one song at the The Smile concert in Glasgow, Thom Yorke put down his guitar and danced the only way Thom Yorke knows how. Manically, weirdly, and with heart as open as a 24-hour truck stop. It was magic. It’s magical. I would go anywhere to watch him dance and here’s why:
Thom Yorke is an incredible musician and poet and his voice is medicine for the brain, but when Thom Yorke dances—I mean really dances—Thom Yorke is free.
He doesn’t dance like the people in the “How to Dance” video Justin plays during his Live! JHRA show. No. Thom Yorke just goes off. Like a bath bomb fizzes to oblivion. Like a wind-up toy. Like a no-fucks-to-give-commit-to-the-bit human dynamo. You can see that his heart door is so open and welcoming that light flows through him in all directions. We might as well not even be there. He’s too in it to even notice our presence.
Again, I’m projecting, but to be so free—to permit energy to flow in and out the heart door in front of a sold out crowd, in that moment Thom Yorke has no age, no equal and, again, no fucks to give.
Yeah, but he’s rich.
If that’s going to be your response to heart doors being open—for us being given permission to walk right in—you are somewhat missing the point. And if you’re going to keep using that as your excuse to not try anything for yourself, to not open your own heart door and let something creep out and explore the world, I can’t help you.
Also, Thom Yorke doesn’t care what you think. Bob Dylan doesn’t care what you think, and I’m pretty sure Justin Hawkins doesn’t either.
Bulletproof Fragility and Relentless Dontgiveafuckery. That’s all it takes.
We don’t have to understand what they’re doing. We do have to salute the try.
There’s no shortage of people who will seek to exploit the contents held just beyond the threshold of an open heart door, regardless of that heart’s salary or net worth.
At the start of your journey or well on the way down the road, the odds of some hooligan—who isn’t wired to receive your signal noise or your poetry or art—getting in there to kick over all your precious keepsakes and shit all over your feelings are high.
Your fragility and your vulnerability—the truth of you—must be ironclad. Your heart shell as glossy as a hard lolly. Your delicious, delicate heart must be made to feel safe as it walks around with its door wide open.
It is a fragile state, the open door state and Bulletproof Fragility is the way of the warrior. You will find it on the road. And you will need to if you want to survive. You will need it by your side in order to release each poetic beat from your heart as a hawk from your hand to hitch a ride on the warmest updraft. To search the sky for pockets of clean air.
In the second half of Justin’s show he is set to analyze a song by an audience member. I don’t know how this worked for the other shows because the guy whose song was chosen in Glasgow didn’t show up. Justin adapted—pro!—and at the end of this segment, he said a sentence or two that, in my mind, paid for the whole trip. And even though I think I’ve heard him say this before, it hits different when you’re in the same room. The takeaway.
How it makes you feel—that’s the only thing that matters.
Wait, you came 5,000 miles for a pep talk?
Hey. The instruments are passive. Until they are played.
This one’s got fangs.
“Experiences over things,” she says, buying all the merch. “It’s part of the experience?” Yeah. That’s it.
I look around the room as the show ends and Justin Hawkins gets a standing ovation as is correct and true. Turns out he didn’t need my support—the room is full—but I’m still glad I came. This experience flows into my open heart and I guess what you’re reading now is what flows back out. I watch him disappear behind a curtain and off he goes to continue his journey, and me on mine.
Sometimes the heart door is heavy and hard to open, but when you see people and poets and artists vulnerable and exposed, yet sturdy and brave, it acts as an oil applied to the hinges of your door. It stops the creaking. It makes the door swing more freely. It gives you the confidence to fling your door even wider, exposing more of your quiet rooms and secret spaces to the elements.
The world needs more poets.
But I’ll put my hands up to it: it was a long way to come for some lube. Blah blah, not a euphemism.
The driver of the tour bus out to Stirling Castle two days before had said “you came all the way to Scotland for a concert?!” and I’d felt all eyes on me in the vehicle. Was it really that crazy of a thing to do? Should I mention to this captive audience that it wasn’t even for the concert, it was for Justin? No. They were already staring at me in a certain way, making it clear to me that … how did I put it before?
My actions are slightly off the one.
But, to reiterate, my bank account may have regrets but I do not.
You cannot live another person’s journey, but you can observe. You cannot judge, nor can you fathom all the parts and pieces that are being added to their map. But you can take inspiration from it. You can pull from each journey the lessons displayed upon relevant guideposts that are meaningful to you. This is achieved through the consumption of the work.
The participation in the story.
The observance of the handling of each instrument.
Euphemism? No.
After the show, I step out onto the street and a Glasgow wind rips straight into the front room of my heart. The pages of my workbooks flutter and turn of their own accord.
You cannot possibly know what’s in someone’s heart and if the door is closed what chance does anyone have? So here I am walking around with a heart door wide open. Life flows in. Life flows out. I stick my hands in the pockets of my jacket and levitate—happiness cup overflowing—all the way back to the hotel.
It is obvious to me now, as I feed off the inspirations of poets and musicians and artists and more. As I have devoured the culture and street art and accents of this town. As I have, on a whim, traveled halfway ‘round the world just to see just how open a stranger’s heart can be—it’s obvious to me now that I am not a stalker at all.
I am a vampire.
I don’t know if that’s better or worse, but I think the movies are cooler.
Yours in tiny thought,
Janeen
PS: If you’re a Darkness fan, you might enjoy this writeup on seeing their first show on the Permission to Land Anniversary Tour. Read it here
Watch the Video about the themes in this post 👇
This week’s amends…
"Try and stay ignored for as long as possible.”- Cy Twombly’s advice to artist Jenny Saville. She mentions it in this YouTube short and I wish SAB Gallery has posted the whole thing.
I am nailing this one!
On Rotation: “Welcome tae Glasgae” by The Darkness
In the last decade or so, Thom has done a lot of choreographed dancing. Lotus Flower, the whole ANIMA film on Netflix. It think he has ambitions. But again, that’s just me projecting. Here is Ingenue.
"When I paint my Masterpiece” set to the tune of “Putting on the Ritz”. Bob Dylan, I salute you. Although this version will always be my favorite.