I only believe in "soul" as an adjective.

"How much of my brain is willfully my own? How much is not a rubber stamp of what I have read and heard and lived? Sure, I make a sort of synthesis of what I come across, but that is all that differentiates me from another person?"

--Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

(via Choosing Pancakes)

Choosing Pancakes and I, along with some of our other friends, were having a conversation last week sometime which briefly touched upon the concept of the self as body v. the self as something like a soul. She seemed quite surprised by the fact that I don't believe in somethings-like-souls. And I think that very little of that disbelief is due to the fact that I associate the term "soul" with religious indoctrination, or religiosity at the very least. 

I just don't see where something-like-a-soul comes in. To the best of my knowledge, everything that I am and have been and will be results from combinations of nature and nurture--that's genetics and the biological aspects of my body and mind that I don't necessarily understand on one hand and ecological processes, the spaces and places and sociocultural situations I've found myself in throughout my lifetime on the other. I have nothing to convince me that some other person with the same biology and who has been through the exact same set of everyday lived experiences as I have been through wouldn't come out to be me (though I suppose I have nothing to convince me that this hypothetical person would be me either). 

What am I, really, essentially? I am thoughts in a brain in a body in a particular social location in a world. I am memories. I am hopes and dreams and decisions and emotions. I am a mind. If a critical difference lies between the term "mind" and the term "brain," then perhaps there-in lies the "soul," but I don't know that I buy that. I could fathom calling something the "soul" that is actually the sum of one's lived experiences that have come to shape who and what they are, because that's the only thing I can say is essentially me, but I feel like that's not what my friends were talking about. The better terms for what I'm talking about, I suppose, are the "self" in the social-psychological sense, or the "self-concept" or "identity" in a sociological sense. I am me by a series of happy and unhappy accidents. I could have been anyone. Anyone could have been me. That negates the idea of a soul, in my mind.  

I'm exhausted but cannot go to sleep without talking about:

Erykah Badu's voice!

So small confession time: I wasn't the hugest fan of Erykah Badu when I somewhat nonchalantly suggested that K and I go see her when she came to Atlantic City. I was still excited when he wanted to turn my suggestion into a reality, and planned to bone up on my Badu-knowledge before the show, but with all the craziness of my past week that just didn't happen. So I was expecting to know the hits, be generally pleased by the rest even if I couldn't sing along, and enjoy myself for the most part. 

I love those experiences where reality exceeds your expectations. Blown away can't even begin to cover it.

HER VOICE. I CANNOT BELIEVE HER VOICE. 
30 seconds into the show she had me and K both going "MMMMM!" and it got better from there. Her voice made me wanna touch myself, in both senses of the phrase. Every time she showcased those chords of hers by doing a fancy trill or hitting an impossibly high note, I had to clap my hands or snap my fingers or stomp my feet to help all that energy pass through me cleanly. I found myself grabbing at my thighs, my neck, digging my fingernails into my collarbone, out of a need to both hold myself together and a desire to rip myself apart and let all that spirit into me. (I wonder if that's how people feel when they "catch the Holy Ghost" at church. Hmm...) I mean, I've always loved her sound, but hearing the raw talent and beauty amplified over a small dark grown-folks space (and being one of the grown-folks there!)...it was all I could do not to sink to the floor and revel in it sometimes. Never have I been in awe of a performer like this. I almost want to say that her CDs don't do her justice. She is a performer, not a recording artist. I wish I could bottle the energy she had tonight and the beauty and the talent and the attitude and the ass (to quote K: Erykah Badu has ass for days. DAYS.) and just carry it around in my back pocket every time I need to be reminded of love and magic and truth and beauty and the knee-weakening power of peace. Maybe I'm just particularly susceptible to beautiful things right now, but tonight I feel like I witnessed greatness. She is so...herself and like no one else. It's inspiring. She may not want to be a role model, according to a little song she sang to introduce herself, but dammit I will see her as an inspiration. The strength of her soul pours out of every pore. I want to be radiantly me in the same way. I don't feel particularly chained, but she makes me want to seek liberation. She makes me want to be...greater than everything I am, but also makes me feel like the only thing I need to do to be greater is to BE thoroughly who I am. I hope that makes some kind of sense. I'm rambling. It's 3 am. Something wonderful happened here. I will post videographic evidence once I get home tomorrow to my own computer to upload the files.