I've struggled a lot throughout the years. I have struggled the same as many struggle. As much as I'd like to think it is unique to me. Suffering pulls us in and cloaks us behind it's advertised invisibility, but once under the cloak, you see the details and can recognize the reality of it's design. It whispers to you it's powers of invisibility while camouflaging it's true talents of discourse and manipulation. Your suffering is not invisible. Everyone can see it. And your suffering doesn't want you to know this. It wants you to hide away and listen to it's sweet nothings. Removing the metaphor of the cloak entirely, it's become a funny thing to me almost. Trying to create something. Making art for the purpose of augmenting the cabinet of my life in some way. Pretty decorations to show off my mind palace. Naked and unafraid. But no, truly, I have no desire for visitors these days. Even writing this, unsure of if I will press “publish” when I perceive it to be done. Already knowing the fate is sealed for me to look at it with the unconditional love of a father to their child one day, and the pity and resentment of an addicts discarded pill bottle the next. Of course I will press publish. And hide behind some strategy of branded authenticity or unfiltered sincerity. There is truth somewhere though. It slips in as it will. I don't even know where to put these commas half of the time. It seems the duty of the writer is more vomit than soap and sponge. But I doubt I could ever call myself a writer. It reminds me of magic. Being something you do and not something you are.
I ramble with purpose here, or at least I hope. I read some quote from an Italian sculptor, Alberto Giacometti who said (and I'm paraphrasing here) if he was trapped inside a burning building and could save a cat or a Rembrandt, he would save the cat. Every time he would save the cat. And then he would let the cat go. Because when presented between the choice between art and life, he would always choose life.
I don't wish to regurgitate instagram pseudo-wisdom here but the quote struck me. It struck me in the way necessary messages and truly insightful comments can, deep and resonant, and clinging to me for a long while. I have left the cat to burn in many cases in my own life it seems. Art can be a fanciful form of escapism and even my description of suffering points to some privilege beyond immediate survival. Those who suffer most seem to lack the time, energy, or capacity to analyze it. I don't wish for this to become too analytical either, but it seems everyone is checking their corners these days, and I do acknowledge a certain capacity and privilege.
Back to saving cats.
I have dedicated a lot of time and effort, energy and discipline into writing, producing, playing music, practicing, reading, studying, debating, collaborating, trying to do all I can to gain some advantage in the realm of harnessing lightning. I readily share what I have learned with whoever I am able, but I feel an exhaustion weighing on my soul. Something that started when I began to try to put my music onto a certain dominant digital music platform - called spotify. There is a certain line it seems you have to walk nowadays if you want to play the game, and reap the rewards the game offers. In fact the game designers and rule enforcers will be quick to tell you that this is the only game in town, and if you don't like the rules, maybe you really had no real desire to play in the first place. This of course comes from people so deep inside the game they could never even imagine life outside of it, they could never imagine someone trying to play a different game.
I always stuck to my own game. I tried to make stuff at my own pace, self-imposed deadlines and intrinsic motivations and expectations. I'm not naive enough to assume I had barricaded myself in from all external influences, they were just not consciously explicit in their integration.
A few years ago my buddy and I were gaining creative momentum and it all came crashing down on us from some choices I had made to mingle and share romantic intimacies with an outside influence in the shape of a dear friend's fiancée. I will spare the details but it was one of those earth shattering life moments that alters your trajectory permanently. I lost some of my best friends in life and it fractured my creative relationship with art.
I had been so blinded by ambition and the speed of acceleration, I lost sight of why or where I wanted to go in the first place. I tossed relationships to the wind if it meant I could continue moving onwards and upwards. I started this website and made all these vows to myself to try to become some great thing I could never be if I stopped. If I rested just a moment I might fall asleep to a new dream. I had to trek onwards. Onwards. Work harder! Onwards. Work harder!
But I lost something. In trying to polish all my songs, they turned to dust. In striving for perfection I found it in finding flaws. In punishing myself with discipline I forgot how to play. Inside my own burning house I saved Rembrandt after Rembrandt.
Reading through a journal entry I wrote at the end of last year and reviewing the goals I set for myself I see that many have been obtained. But the framing of the entry and the resounding theme of the goals themselves can be revealing. I will set no goals for this next year…other than to save a cat or two if I can. Return to the land of the living and stop trying so hard to be something other than myself.
I don't really know how to course correct here. I'm choosing life when and where I can. I haven't played in a while still. I'm hoping to make time for it today. I'll forgive myself if not. I may stop using spotify entirely some time in the future…I do sense a great evil in it. I may continue to put music up there as well. I may never record a song again. Who knows. But I know I will play again. I will make that my new light to walk towards into this new year. To rekindle the flame of my spirit. To let go. To play. To live.
Maybe all this cathartic blogging (lol) will provide some mechanism of relief. I know I will find value digging through the bones of this now fading piece of architecture. I can only hope someone else will as well. In closing I will distill these thoughts in the best way I know how…
The Eye of the Storm
I will face the rain
mothers tears
drowning silence
filling empty feelings
with distractions
shelter from the storm
To step outside
I will face the rain again
fathers fears
and hopes and dreams disposed
reminding folks
who know just why the genius broke
who chose the view of smoke
to clear reflections
hidden sections not detected
I will face the rain again
wash away the mud of past mistakes
a child who needed fists of strength
to punish those he saw his weakness in
splitting neck a wound as deep as oceans end
and beach begin
the seed therein
the truth of choices scary
when the focus becomes one
with what avoids is sharing
poetry and thoughts of planning
life has different ways of branching
soaking up through leaf still standing
I will face the rain and thunder
pains of brother are the same each other
feels the suffering
singing wonder
all is us the love uncovered
light is shining on the bridge
but down below the valleys ridges
hides a different kind of vintage
something stained with stories systems
tangled in their lines and digits
can’t define the victims or refine position
mystery is locked with wisdom
but there’s movement down below
something there to catch the eye
something screaming out in code
something burning out a light
something that we’ve always known
the heart is trapped beneath the shrubbery
I see it shaking up the bush and then
it’s right in front of me
I will face the rain