It’s a comfortable thing to hang out with people who ‘get’ you – people who think the same way, do things the same way, aren’t particularly startling in their emotional peaks and valleys.
It’s also kind of boring.
From her new single “By Their Standards,” I get the feeling that Angela Sclafani lives in a way that is imbued with passion, curiosity, a desire to squeeze the juices out of life until the pips squeak.
It can be lonely. There are only so many folks who are inclined to emerge from the sanctum of the familiar, the routine, and the expected, even long enough to say hello. Of the ones who are open to adventure, some are just along for the ride – although that’s another song entirely.
Angela, we desperately need people who are willing to stick out, be themselves in a way that sends out sparks like a train rounding a bend in the tracks just a little too fast (without derailing, of course). We just don’t always realize that we need those people- people who maybe scare us a little, intimidate us a little, because we kind of wish we were more like them, but aren’t sure we could be.
And when we’re scared and intimidated, we put up walls. We tell ourselves, and then push away others with, the message that we have things handled, we know what we’re doing, and we have this life thing figured out. If you did things like I do them, you’d be better off. For now, stay over there.
Fear becomes judgement.
They say focus on you,
But do it like I do
Angela, let “By Their Standards” be your fight song. It’s not really about standards. As often as not, “standards” and policies are just labels we use to elevate our comfort zones, to normalize or systematize or even institutionalize our comfort zones and make it more difficult for us to ever have to leave them, or to allow questions or concerns or even differences to infiltrate that bubble.
Some bubbles need bursting. It’s like that line in Billy Joel’s “Only The Good Die Young” – “The curtain you’re hiding behind never lets in the sun.”
Angela Sclafani is the sunshine that you could be letting in. “By Their Standards” might be the song that introduces the spark.
