A Cohesive, Well Written Article To Make Up For Yesterday
I had an abundance of sexual energy that needed to be directed toward something creative
It has been brought to my attention that my article from yesterday lacked a main central theme and a neatly arranged conclusion in the last paragraph.
Actually, I was aware of this. I believe the last line mentioned something about cohesion being subjective. But that’s BS. We all know when something is done well and we should always strive for excellence. To that end, I have decided to make amends by writing an article that stays with a theme and includes a clever and well thought out conclusion.
Five or six years ago, I had a major social media crush on a person I knew from “the writing community.” It was somewhat typical of me to obsess like that before the years that I invested in therapy. What I learned in these years (and I still go weekly btw) was that I had an abundance of sexual energy that needed to be directed toward something creative or it would just go blasting into spaces that were not terribly useful.
I’m not saying that the poetry that I wrote about this lovely person was a waste of time, because that is certainly not true. Some of it wound up on a spoken word album I did called “A Boy From New York.” That was righteous. Not only did jazz great, Jamie Saft, produce it but he also played his gorgeous Steinway, improvisation style, over the pieces I read. One such piece that she inspired was:
What might it be like to climb up a Rainbow
To slide down from the sky to The bottom of the sea;
To swim back to the surface on the tail of a dolphin
What would it be like if you were here now
With me?
What might it be like to fly as a blue jay
Soaring through sky past the tops of the trees?
What would it be like to breathe in your
Essence- to have you for a moment in the
Same world as me?
What would it be like if the chains you’ve
Been bound by broke down into pieces
And rendered you free?
What would it be like if I knew that
Tomorrow you might be standing right
Here next to me?
Romantic as hell, wasn’t it? This, for a person in Chicago, that I never really saw face to face. I will, once again, reiterate that this kind of energy is always living inside of me. I just needed to find a more useful way of expending it. I mean, besides ill advised dalliances with complete strangers.
The point is, I woke up, pre-dawn, and saw that she posted something on Facebook. I won’t embarrass her by copying it word for word, but essentially it said that after a certain age, people just stop caring about things. Then she admitted that she stopped caring, too.
Well, first of all, as Dylan said when he was called “Judas” at a concert in 1966, “I don’t believe you.” To reflect upon something and post it, when you are clearly the type of person who posts less than monthly, is very telling. In fact, there is way more evidence that this person does care than there is to the contrary. When we get to the point where we don’t care, we certainly don’t post it on social media.
Because, we don’t care.
I could have privately messaged this person, but I thought, for old time’s sake, I would create something bigger to celebrate our connection–such as it was. Life, especially as of late, is extraordinarily difficult. It is difficult for those of us who get up and push against gravity and it is difficult for those who allow the world to roll over them everyday. Probably, more so for the latter.
I played a gig yesterday where I went completely unacknowledged by every single person who walked into that winery. There wasn’t one person who thought to reach in their pocket for a dollar to put in my bucket. And I played the same way that I played the weekend before where my tip bucket was overflowing, people offered to buy me wine, they clapped and came up to shower me with compliments at the end.
Being human, the memory of the weekend before was not enough to mask the way I felt when I was leaving that other gig yesterday. I had one of those cartoon thought bubbles with the black smudged ink over my head. The kind Charles M Schultz would put over one of the Peanuts when they were pissed as hell.
But that was okay. Because it shows that I care. A lot. As do you, dear old friend.
There is redemption in the sunrise after a night’s sleep. I find it most every morning. I brush off the crumbs of the previous day and show up, showered and dressed, for the next one. I do it because the alternative scares the shit out of me. The idea of not caring whether I wake up or not. The idea of being so sick of life that I don’t even post about it. That place that this person hasn’t gotten to, yet.
You do care, Wendy. Even if it pisses you off.
Photo by Becca Tapert on Unsplash
Great essay and beautiful poem, Billy. Thank you.