Vanity Thy Name is Stew (A Reckoning of Sorts)

When I returned to these meanderings, I was at a rough point and feeling raw. I had no intention and I was at a metaphoric crossroads. I had watched social media, what had become my primary social interaction, pass through a few iterations until it had become something far removed from what had initially drawn me to it. Where it had been a distraction and a place to amuse myself, to sometimes learn of or experience what was outside my own world, it had become a gateway to overt hostility and was no longer about connection. Instead of posting silly, fun or musically instructive things, I was spending most of my time ignoring and deleting hate mail, trying diplomatically to tell people who were hitting me up for free instruments that I am not rich and fielding strange random missives from people who had never interacted with me prior but who I somehow betrayed by showing affection or amusement to my actual friends. This was my outlet for, well, just about everything that was percolating in the grey matter.

But things change. And as I read those comments posted here in the last months, I reflect on what this page has become for me. What I've left here recently has been neither insightful nor amusing. I've been carping. Nearing the end of each month I would think, 'Oo! Better blog!'

The truth is I'm not who I was when I started The Unheard Music. It's not about the artist's path or the struggle of an individual to sort through trauma in a changing world. And, funnily enough, it stands in direct opposition to my assertion that I want invisibility.

Of course the truth is I don't. Invisibility, while possibly an inevitability for me and those like me, is actually an inversion of what I want. It's not to be famous or remarkable or anything similar, but to be seen. Ideally by one person, bu probably to feel like my thoughts and feelings mean something.

They do and they don't.

To me obviously they're at the center of everything. Outside of me, they're meaningless. And in keeping with so much of what went into these posts, irrelevance is nothing to throw at people again and again.

The other day I had the most bizarre exchange online. Someone posted an odd comment on one of my videos. I attempted to reply, sharing facts. The poster claimed that because he didn't know me or what I'd done (having a career in music) that it couldn't have happened and that I was instead delusional. As those things I wrote about earlier in the month, it was a coffin nail. It's evident I no longer understand how people interact and should therefore restrict how and when I do. Buying groceries, paying bills and what's on that order are probably safer.

So perhaps someday I'll turn Facebook on to prove I was here. Maybe there will be something significant that occurs in my quiet life that will merit my sharing words, thoughts and feelings. Who knows? Maybe I'll return to performing, recording and teaching. Maybe I'll finish and try to publish the book.

Maybe not.

Living a quiet beautiful life was enough. I think it can be again.

Take care, all. See you in the funny pages.

Nails in a Metaphorical Coffin

So I've mentioned more than occasionally that I'm at odds with consensual reality. No, this hasn't changed. I'm actually about to spew some more virtual blather about why that's still the case. This is your chance to head elsewhere rather than slog through the morass.

There have been a handful of hallmarks in my communications with lovers before, during and after our time together. I am powerfully aware that my side of that equation is not ideal. While I've tried making sure that's understood going into a relationship, liaison, affair or whatever term one chooses to use for connubial time shared, I know I'm not an easy partner. I wish that weren't true, but it is.

But it's the other side of things that remain baffling. Yes, years after I've washed my hands of having a playmate or even the abstraction of one. You see, I know I'm crazy but even with that as a given, I'm still hoping someone can help me with understanding things like what I'm about to throw into the electronic ether.

Like most peoples', the breakups I've got through have been painful, extreme, unpleasant and at times just bizarre. I've enumerated too much here already, so this meander is really not going to be about circumstances so much as it is about, for lack of a better term, communication.

At the end of one relationship -- what I didn't know was the end of one -- my partner had gone ahead of me to find us a new place. I had my hands full with work and used the time to finish my commitments performing and recording with various people. We checked in daily to see how things were going for each other. Until the day she didn't answer, and the subsequent days she neither answered nor returned my calls.

I'm going to interject at this point that I know it's seldom an easy thing to leave a loved one. I know that the decision was not an easy one for anyone I'm about to describe. Even thinking of leaving someone can be brutal. Having only had to do it twice myself, it's horrible. Being left and blindsided isn't much better, but that's the side of the coin I call familiar. Tangent over.

She finally called me and was ominously quiet, using short phrases and leaving long pauses. While it was clear at this point something was up, I left it to her to explain rather than push or wheedle to get some resolution to my curiosity. And then she offered that she didn't want me to join her, that she didn't want to be with me anymore. I'll spare you my emotional reaction to that statement, but after a long pause of my own I asked if she'd made arrangements to have the rest of her things picked up.

She exploded, demanding if that was it. I tried pointing out that us living in different places and her not wanting to be with me made it seem like, yes, that was it. She railed at me for several more minutes before the call ended.

Now you're likely seething. Yes, the romantic in me did want to fight to save us. But we'd already been through months of couple's therapy with more than one counselor. We'd tried all kinds of exercises, given one another time and made various attempts at spontaneity. I was tired and sad. Even if it wasn't clear to her in that moment, she'd made up her mind. With time to talk about things, she'd opted to leave and announce her decision this way. I don't blame her, although at the time I was devastated. What leaves me wondering is this particular exchange, not her choice of actions.

Years later, another relationship ended abruptly by my other simply disappearing. No goodbye, no explanation. I am expressive, though, and wrote for months after. She regularly wrote that she missed me, although she never explained what changed for her or why she left. In fact, she still hasn't said goodbye. Eventually she stopped replying to anything. I wrote to tell her that I felt foolish and wouldn't write anymore.

Then she wrote her first real communication since before her disappearance, telling me she would be sad if I stopped writing as she adored reading my words.

Huh??

I tried explaining that it felt masochistic to put my thoughts and feelings into communications that were never returned. She wrote to tell me she could understand what I meant, but she still wished I would write.

More than a decade after the end of a relationship, I had a fun night and it reminded me of an ex. I sent a quick text about the evening, ending it with the explanation that I wouldn't write again. For the first time in I don't know how long, she replied and asked me to please stay in touch even though she was terrible at doing the same. For the first time in my life, I didn't bother to reply.

There are other things I could bring up but this is probably too much already.

Again, I'm no prize. I know I've left an awful wake of my own and have hurt others, regardless of my intention. Has this resolved anything? Nope. Sure hasn't. But I am willing to bet that others have stories like these. If you've endured these kinds of things and you're still willing to march into the fray, you have my admiration. Maybe things will change for me. After all, I am always in love. That doesn't change. And I am mightily infatuated on a regular basis. No matter how I've tried to exorcise it, sentiment remains. That yearning for love, affection, romance and the host of goodies they bring are all still alive in me, I'm just tired.

And for someone with aspirations of invisibility, it's probably not a good idea to fan the flames of this particular hope.

Probably...