5.
Fine. Do it again.
Playing music, up all night again, seemed important. Forgot to do something, did it anyway, did it wrong. Do it again.
Start over, fresh try, you can always count on the old drawing board to come through. Forget it, nevermind, woulda been great. Was great, actually, ended pretty abruptly, well oh well then. Drawing board again. Mostly all I've got is words and some neat sounds I find on the internet. Take Adele, for example. Adele is worth 80 million bucks last time I checked. She's 27. She has a hell of a great voice, some great music, a new album. Christ, she wrote the theme to Skyfall. I'll be 29 in a month, and one time, I actually got my hands on a crispy twenty dollar bill before it was vapourized by the unsubsidized-interest fairy, the bitch. I'm listening to her (Adele) through a cheap pair of old headphones which intermittantly cut out on the left channel. I am hideously embarrased to tell you this. You have to twist the cable counter-clockwise and invoke the spirit of Groo the Wanderer to keep them from fucking with you. An acquantance of mine builds speakers, actually he had a business selling car audio for years--nice enough guy I suppose--and now he has a couple large estate-y type dogs, lives in a large estate-y type mansion on a hill powered by geothermal energy and unicorn paste or something. He has a dozen or so cabinets lying around that reproduce music in such a way as to convince one's ears that the musicians are actually in the room—a true 3-dimensional soundstage. Words do not exist to explain the unadulterated pleasure this system brings. It is steps ahead of everything else. Steps. Ahead. Unless you are listening to one of these things RIGHT NOW how the hell could I begin to tell you about it? It's a d'appolito array, but who cares? That means nothing to almost everyone. Mostly it's just really unbelievable pure and perfect sound. I mean these speakers are a revelation. He tells me they're towards the low end of what he can do. Listening to music through them was a life-changing experience for me. I sharpened some knives for him, made 80 bucks. Not 80 million...eighty. He wants two grand or so for a pair of these magic holo-speakers, maybe 20 grand for "the really good ones.” Two grand, for some I suppose, is a sneeze. An afternoon out. Two grand for me would land me an extended trip to Montreal to start building a vibe that could extend--who knows?--maybe the rest of my life. Two thousand dollars is a base clarinet, it's an alto flute, a bari sax, a new dimension in sound and vision. It's bills paid, stress relieved, gas for Lulla (the truck) and gear for the Soulpocalypse that no one believes me is actually coming. I'd love to meet the Funky Armageddon with a new axe in hand, blowing sweet groovy notes to get sucked up into the gale like a drop of hard water in the hard ocean.
...Life is hard. But I digress.
Do it again.
Couple pairs of rusty scissors here, half-scribbled lyrics on a napkin there. Something about wealth inequality, seemed important at the time. Went through the wash. Ok, sure thing. My bad. Do it again.
Scales again, I've needed to fix my flute for six years. Weights again—yep, still hurts—and running in the cold because it's supposed to help something about me work better than it does now, and remember, I tell myself, even though it sucks now, one day someone will actually dig my future-abs. Even as I consider them, my future-abs smile back into the past at me in my mind. They are super-cut, you understand, and impress my many future-prospects. My prospects smile back at me, too, laughing at the friends I make in the present who are briefly intrigued and then promptly conclude I'm nuts. It's not even their fault.
Disclaimer: I'm not nuts, actually, although the funny humans do confuse me so, sometimes. I just think about a lot of shit, and usually I let myself get sucked into my thinking like a hard-water droplet into a fuckin' black hole. Yeah, I know. It's enough already. Fine. I'm not apologizing for who I am, I've concluded that we actually need me around this place too; I'm pretty sure I'm helping, somehow. Even if I tend to get a little too familiar with you after we did just meet a week ago. Sorry, everybody I've done that to and freaked out somehow in the process. Remember, universal love. Sometimes it's actually a little tricky to distinguish differences between me and you. It's not asberger's, it's actually more like someone swaps out the 2% milk in my breakfast cereal every day for ayahuasca. But...no one actually does! It's just my awesome brain, and its awesome way of finding similarities between me and everything else around me. I dig the sameness of it all; say what you will, we're all stardust baby, you, me, Adele, everything.
We are just us knowing ourselves, after all. Hard to go back from that realization once it sneaks in and sticks to the back of your mind like oobleck. To put it another way, I would urge you to grok that shit sometime, I'm not kidding, really get in there and take a second and try and let the idea in. We're a lot more fundamentally exactly the same than we give ourselves credit for. I'm telling you right now, it's a trip. I'm sure it can be a very fine trip for you, dear reader. Remember I'm just like you, and I do that all the time. Just try and let all the little boxy thoughts go for a sec—you know, all the fiddly bits your brain invents to sort out the strangeness of this place. Remember? Everything Is Arbitrary. That's kind of the motto around here. Surely I'm not the only one who's thought about that lately. But, fine. You don't really want to be friends anymore, I can tell. Oops, think I got some existential on your carpet, there. It'll come out, just...get some baking soda and try not to think too hard. Netflix. World news. Donald Trump! There, all better.
Sigh. I can always start over one more time.
...Ooh, baby, a gig! No, just kidding. Not a gig. A *rumor* of a gig. They weren't serious. See, they just can't split the money an eighth way. They're only making 80 bucks between 'em anyway, and besides, the gig was basically just covering the theme from Rawhide over and over. How did it come to this? Oh right, I fled the beautiful green state of Vermont in terror after my psychotic ex attacked me, broke down my bedroom door, stole my cat and whatever other shit she could get her hands on, and tried to slander (libel?) my ass straight into jail. A real lawyers, guns, and money moment, my first and last, believe me. Maybe someday I'll date again. Someone nice. Maybe a bonsai tree. I'm into plants now. I should tell you about that whole thing sometime; my poor roommate's still traumatized from the ordeal too. She hates his guts worse than mine I think. (I'm fine, but I really do miss my cat. Very sad. :( )
So look, I'm not asking for big houses here. Or even a house. I know I complain a lot, I know everyone and their cat would basically just tell me to get a real job and chill out. But look, the knife-sharpening and -restoration/sales gig is actually, when it works, pretty awesome. I can make a decent chunk of change in a relatively short amount of time, it's just been a little slower than I have needed it to be lately if I'm gonna go tour the world. I'll start over with that one too. It really does work, and I am good at it, I'm happy to say. I love doing it. Plenty of time for a traditional approach to a job in my future (read: rock star). I think wealth is fine, but you know honestly man, I'd just like some sax reeds and a cool little spot on the lower east side of some cool little town. I'm only 80000 pairs of rusty scissors away, I can feel it. Really, fame is great but I don't want to be known far and wide across the land. I'd just like one or two of my irons in one or two of my fires to become a cool thing—a spoon maybe, or a coat hook, pick your favorite metaphor—and not just sit around until somehow the fire gets doused in liquid nitrogen, again. So. Do it again, start all over, make new symbols, make new signs, make a new language, with these we'll define the world—come on. I'm not the only Tracy Chapman fan out there. You guys know what I'm saying. I'm not the only life fan, I know I'm not. I'm just not—how do you say it—I'm not content. There must be more than this provincial life. Of course there is! Maybe I'm just particularly flawed; I'm not ungrateful, I know that by now. What am I looking for? A messiah who never comes? A virgin birth? A perfect drug? A sign, any kind of sign?
Anything that looks slightly...out of the ordinary.
It's nice to know I can always start over. It's really my only defense mechanism. I'm like an armadillo out there alone in the nuclear [listen up!: no͞oˈklē-ər, you can do this, I believe in you] wastes, and I've got but one trick to save my ass...oh shit, a predator! A miscommunication! A weird look! Kapow! I just started over. It's basically a knee-jerk reaction at this point. “I am just an advertisement...for a version, of myself.”
I'm not even the latest version; I'm still in beta. Yes, get the bugs worked out (eww) and I'm sure I'll be a very functional and useful product. I'm sure my command of syntax is showing promise for future wit and charm protocols. I'm sure if I work at this long enough I'll be a fine addition to the lineup, tech support not withstanding. If I'm not already outsourced by the time I hit the shelves, that is. Shit.
Kapoww! Completely scratch everything and let's see what's over HERE this time!
I presume this is how one learns; I would venture to guess this is what most folks do with their second decade of consciousness...you know, muck around and have a few shining moments of glory here and there before they finally become a beautiful butterfly. Just like all those 30-somethings I know who...are pretty much still doing the same thing as me. Hm. Always fancied myself more of a Junebug, really. Gregor.
Something-something Kafka. Ah, fuck it.
...Kapow.