Title Post: The Floor
So I’m back to the velvet underground… back to the floor that I love.
- Stevie Nicks, “Gypsy”
The name of my blog comes from the song “Gypsy” written by Stevie Nicks, an incredible Fleetwood Mac tune that speaks to my soul on so many levels.
When explaining the meaning behind the lyrics, Stevie Nicks said the following:
“In the old days, before Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey [Buckingham] and I had no money, so we had a king-size mattress, but we just had it on the floor. I had old vintage coverlets on it, and… even though we had no money it was still really pretty… Just that and a lamp on the floor, and that was it—there was a certain calmness about it. To this day, when I’m feeling cluttered, I will take my mattress off of my beautiful bed, wherever that may be, and put it outside my bedroom, with a table and a little lamp.”
It meant so much to me to know that she was speaking about the actual floor when writing those words, “back to the floor that I love,” because the floor is where I, too, find my calm.
It is where I find my most vulnerable self, my only self that feels detached from the constant movement and madness of things.
On the floor I am raw and in touch with the aspects of me that are otherwise silenced or pushed aside. It is as if, in taking to the floor, my body and mind are finally and at once willing to say, “it’s just us here… it’s our time to be heard.”
On the floor, there is a feeling of separateness from the demands and insanity of daily life. The world feels smaller — or perhaps my world feels smaller, but the entire world feels larger, so large that I can’t possibly factor into it in too important of a way, so it’s OK to detach, if even for a while.
For that reason, I sit on the floor (the kitchen floor, to be precise; I prefer the cool tiles of the kitchen to the warm wood of the living room) every day to write. The floor is where I find my center, myself. It is where I can find my most honest pieces and patch them together to create writing.
And so, with a heart full of gratitude for Stevie, I use those lyrics to name this blog, where I will showcase writing (mine and not mine), writing-related events, and other random musings and things I find inspiring.
With that said, I leave you, for now, with this:
