THE WAY IN, RAINER MARIA RILKE

this passage comes from rilke’s the book of images, and i especially love it in the context of ‘homecoming’ because it sort of turns the concept on its head…to be at home in this world is, perhaps, to leave home.

i’ve actually never experienced this feeling as fully and richly as i have over the past year. for so long, new york as a city seemed like the antithesis to a home – full of chaos, crammed full of people’s individual whims and desires, everyone teetering on this paradox of immersion and detachment, an incoherent mess to my uninitiated eye. and still, i found so much love here between, and even within, these conceptions. i discovered new york to be a meeting place for everyone, for every reason. apparently, ‘home’ has roots in an old english word that means the gathering of souls, and what could be more new york than that?

rilke’s poem is about seeking. that might be the only way to really understand what home is – by meeting things beyond what we already know and understand, to give more weight to those special places, to choose what ‘home’ is in the end. and with what we are open to seeing, we create our world. there is work to be done, not just an offering to be had, and so home can be created, just as much as it can be given.

-liv

DEPARTURE, ARTHUR RIMBAUD

this is a poem from rimbaud’s “illuminations” collection that leaves a lingering residue behind after reading. it’s so short, yet so direct and precise in the gentle attention it draws to the things in life meant to uproot us. departure thought of through the lens of a “homecoming” might be read as a snapshot of a life rhythm: dreaming, doing, learning, leaving behind, listening. maybe we know when to move on precisely because of this cycle described, the cycle that prompts us to make change, to come and to go and to find newness in the world and truly have this, truly know this. listening to ourselves lets us reimagine all that we know as life goes on and our distance from the starting point grows.

the world beyond our own that we dream about is one we really are able to go see and feel, and what is found may be something from which we simply take a lesson and move on. to keep seeking affection and noise, connection and vibrance, love and chaos, is the task. for me, affection and noise are core remnants of my memories of home, and also what i seek in life. i feel this in my environment outside of myself and in my heart inside. perhaps the homecoming in this poem is the devotion to forward movement, and the continued pursuit of not what is comfortable, but what feeds and holds the spirit.

-sum

EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME, BAND OF HORSES

i’ve always been a little bit scared of nostalgia…living so much in the hazy glow of the past that we give ourselves over to it, allow it to swallow us whole. but there’s something necessary about falling into a memory every now and then, being called back to a home that once was. that’s how i think of this album – a wistful tug on the heart that somehow lets us remember and go forward at the same time. the nostalgia introduced on this album positions itself as a sort of undercurrent to life. a drumbeat below our now, lived experiences that we can embrace or change or come back to. these rhythms are malleable, but they’re there. a tribute to where we’ve come from, inviting us to return home whenever we please – as a choice, not because nostalgia is pulling us under.

when we settled on the word homecoming for this month, i thought immediately of the funeral. i could hear the song in my head, the way it builds and rebuilds itself over and over. how it speaks directly to this weird superficial death of the self as things change. a death that isn’t really a death because it’s simply part of the cycle of birth and death and rebirth that everything is made of. those parts we are ready to let go of will find a home somewhere else, even if it’s only within our memories. this is getting easier to understand as i’ve gotten older. that this whole idea of returning somewhere – anywhere – is a way of breathing new life into something we thought had already served us.

a lyric on this album that captures these big, sweeping feelings comes from the song monsters: “if i am lost, it’s only for a little while.” to me, this might be the simplest way of expressing that there is always something to come back to, no matter the distance.

- liv

WHO AM I? PALE WAVES

i love this album so much! who am i? is poetic, dazzling, angsty, raw. for me, this is the perfect album for “homecoming” – heather baron-gracie wrote the perfect callback to the early 2000s pop-punk era, full of rage and love and depression and confusion and pride. it captures that feeling of wanting to rip off the cloak of who you used to be and shove your independence in everyone’s face, like the thing inside of you is so huge and yearning and nobody could ever understand, and that often, you don’t even understand yourself. passionate and misunderstood. embedded in confessions of lessons learned and misunderstood dreams, this is a love letter of solidarity to the odd ones out. 

this album feels like “homecoming” in the way it pairs the courage of risk taking with the humility of failure. a portrait of the self bred from and in spite of home — home and its tenderness and trauma and the tangled web of memories of youth. newfound pride in oneself can change the way home fits, feels, and changes where and with whom home can be found. after leaving home, or moving on in some way, I think it’s easy to want to identify yourself devoutly with anything counter to what you’ve always known. but it’s also easy to get caught up in the anxieties of what is being left behind…will everyone be ok when i’m away? will i? this album is suited for the type of self-exploration that happens when you return home, a search for what was constant, for the home inside of yourself. 

i’ll say the song “run to” is my favorite…you’ll just have to listen to it, and you’ll know why i chose this record.

- sum

THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, WES ANDERSON

an old favorite. in fact, i think this is the first wes anderson movie i ever watched. i remember sitting in my college dorm room, cross-legged on my twin bed, watching the royal tenenbaums in the middle of the day. i was eighteen, i had just left home, and for whatever reason, i was completely enamored with this movie about three siblings who were returning home, bored and depressed, grappling with the confusions of adulthood.

i think part of me wanted to understand this. at the time, i couldn’t have fathomed going back home – i had just escaped the trappings of small town life and was finally on my way. somewhere. what grown adults, seemingly settled into their lives, would choose to return to a place they had already spent so much time? a place they knew so well? i watched and waited for the answer.

this movie so beautifully humanizes the experience of getting older, and the discoveries made as we become more honest with ourselves. the three main characters hold mirrors up to each other, and then, in turn, are forced to hold mirrors up to themselves. they speak plainly about each other’s softest spots, not because they want to, but because they are the only ones who can. it’s this need to be there for each other, to coax out some deeper selfhood in one another, that makes the place they have returned to a true home – and an evolved one. i guess sometimes, you can only truly confront yourself when you arrive in a setting that doesn’t allow you to be anyone else. and so, the return in the royal tenenbaums is more of an arrival. a sort of hey, that’s where you went! – both to each other and to themselves.

- liv

WE ARE WHO WE ARE, LUCA GUADAGNINO

i simply think everyone should watch this right now. a tale told from a u.s. military base in rural italy, we are who we are is a one-season show about finding a home that transcends time and place. something i think we all hope to find in the place we call home is unconditional love, this beautiful experience of being so intuitively known and accepted that it is fundamental to your becoming. i love this show because i think it captures the marvelous love of being truly understood and the rage of being fundamentally misunderstood. i love the way the minds of gen z are portrayed — so stubborn, inattentive, obsessive, deeply curious, yearning.

when home is not a place we can know anymore, when it has no face, what do we go back to? under the omnipresent machine of militaristic conformity, to live freely and with the revolutionary spirit of youth is a courageous and trying task. to discover what is real, right here, right now, is to find home. the teens in this show rebel and rage hard and recklessly in response to their world being defined for them, and in doing so they experience a homecoming to their truest selves. this show is explicit, awkward, artful, queer, uncomfortable…it stuns.

i think the coolest thing about this show to me is the way the characters go through these different experiences of surrender to something bigger than the stories they’ve been told about who they are. the lesson? maybe, when leaving is always on the horizon, the only enduring home is inside yourself.

-sum

GYPSY, FLEETWOOD MAC

perhaps the most important and joyous homecoming is when you return to yourself after a period of distance or detachment. most of us will have stretches of life where something (or at times, someone) disconnects us from our true selves, leaving us momentarily treading water, wondering who we’ve been, who we are, and who we’re supposed to be. when you finally arrive at a moment of coming back to yourself, there may be a whirlwind of emotions — grief for the old version of yourself you may have lost on the journey, but also overwhelming joy as you look ahead through the new — yet familiar — eyes of the person you’ve become, who ultimately is the same person you have always been.

“gypsy” captures these feelings perfectly. stevie nicks sings about returning to old versions of herself and old places which played important roles in her life, where she embodied a freer spirit. the song also alludes to a close friend that she tragically lost to cancer. although the tune of the song sounds upbeat, it also captures the complex sadness and nostalgia associated with revisiting the past, noticing the parts of yourself you have shed and perhaps the people you have lost along the way. life is full of change, and it is at times unavoidable to lose touch with the core essence of who you are. but, as stevie sings: “to the gypsy that remains/faces freedom with a little fear/I have no fear, I have only love” — coming home to oneself requires the pain and liberation of deep self-knowledge, the shedding of an old skin, and, most importantly, the triumph of love over fear.

-tess