Where is the courage to live my life along the lines of my choosing? I don’t like my job, my boss, or my company. Perhaps this is the consequential face of my chosen directions. Quit this place, take on this responsibility, endure this debt. Make this grandiose statement about conquering a world I can barely comprehend. Writing has stagnated. I’m unclear as to whether indie publishing or waiting for an agent is best. Or whether I will even want anyone to read it because of the cliches: they’ll hate it or they’ll like it. Kissing cousins of the same anally restrictive mindset.
I am tired. Perhaps that is it. The years of love’s dislocation, the abandoned hope that something will just work out. I am old, tonight, in spirit. I carry a weariness sleep can not cure. The zest and passion of love has faded. I have leftover dreams of the one great love that never existed or has passed from existence. My desires are a remnant of their once pristine hope. The shard cut and dropped to the floor by time. I am lonely when alone. I am lonely when not alone. I feel less lonely when I write or listen to music. I feel that somewhere in those meditative moments, my love and passion reignite. I can cry again. I can love again. I can hope.
That is too dramatic; the bit about hope. It sounded good when I was writing the other two true things. That is the trouble with true things–they breed lies. We love a person so we lie about the moments when we hate them. The sunrise is beautiful but we turn away when boredom sets in. We don’t want it to see our disappointment.
We see and feel and write the truth and that brings the lie.
It is because, maybe, the Buddhists are right. All things live in One and at Once meaning that all things are equally good and bad. This would allow, I think, for the truth and the lie to live in the same spirit. No, you don’t look fat. Yes, I like your shirt. These are lies that live in the spirit of love’s truth. We protect people we love with lies we despise. Lies provide cover. First in the mirror. Then in the world. Songwriting seems to avoid this–lie spouting truths–through brevity and meter. In the next life, I hope I write songs instead of stories. Brevity is the soul of wit, Polonius said. That’s a great line.
These philosophical moments come and go. It’s as if I don’t know what to do with them. Way to go, John–you once again hit some real reasoning–now what? Come on you fucker, think of something to DO with them all…
Then, they come back, and say, “You don’t have to do anything or be anything or say anything.” and I retreat off production’s perch to remove the conjunctions in my mind. The ands, the ors. There are no conjunctions needed because everything is a run-on sentence that evolves for infinity. There is no end or beginning.
There is
and it hurts sometimes.
