I Am Not Here. You Do Not See This.

So why am I writing again after posting I was done? Seriously, what is wrong with me?

These are probably questions no one will ever be able to answer and I really hope that no one's concerned enough to pursue their resolution. Yet here I am and perhaps there is a you out there reading this. If not, life goes on and none's the pity.

Don't worry, there's nothing appearing below that will change the shape of the universe or mold your aesthetic into something new. It's just more meandering and, I hope, blather without morose carping. If any carp manifest, obviously I should not be writing at all.

The months since June have been interesting. Friends and heroes have died, time has marched on unrelentingly and I am going more invisible with each passing moment. These are all just symptoms of living. With all of it, some clarity has come. Not much, but some.

I doubt it will surprise anyone who's read any of these posts that the one thing of which I've become keenly aware is my own sadness. Not that huge self-esteem crushing, paradigm shifting stuff, but much smaller yet fiercely tenacious sorrow. Some of it is due to what I see in the world around me (see any of the previous posts for examples), but much of it is due to the fact that what was once a freakishly connected life is now floating through the ether all but completely untethered.

Side note: this will not be kvetching nor will it be laying blame. Really.

One of the side effects of living is, if one's lucky or focused, having a life. This means gaining a certain momentum and having some things sort of spin free of one's metaphoric/metaphysical gravitational field. If the life is having a family and/or having a career, it means that some of what's thrown out of orbit is individuals.

That is some powerfully awkward grammar, but I think (hope) you get what I meant.

My trajectory was very public for a long time and it was glorious. But then things changed dramatically and little has been the same since. This is no one's fault but circumstances changed and I have done what I could to keep pace with things.

I have failed.

People have told me that my solitude and isolation are easily remedied and they are right to a degree, but there is much that people can't, won't or don't see. First, no one is me so no one truly has my perspective. The facts are easy to review, but without having my mind and life experience that's like equating data with wisdom. Fallacious. Given my circumstances and how they changed, many people would respond differently. But this is the point: I'm me and no one else.

I do not blame Mother Nature for weather, nor do I hold people with different views than mine in contempt. I sometimes wonder why it is that few attempt to see another's perspective but I doubt I'll ever understand that. Again, this is life.

But the events that redirected the trajectory of my life had a powerful impact on me as a person. I became more closed off and jumped less frequently into things head first. This was both a result of fear and a desire for self-preservation. I don't expect anyone to understand that, including those who have been through similar things, but what's happened to me since has also sealed my decision to stay on this path at least for now.

It isn't that I don't want to take chances, but I am tired of being hurt and abandoned without explanation. I think these are things most can grasp. Please if you're reading this and riled because of what I've written, don't tell me to buck up or pull myself up by the bootstraps. I have done this. It's why I'm alive. But over the last decade or a little more, it's become clear that I am just not that twenty-first century. This is not bad, it's just a matter of having an outlook that doesn't line up with most of those around me.

Part of that is a result of getting older, but it's also due to that same foolishness of me being me. You see, my views have never made a lot of sense to those around me. They're romantic and I've traditionally held myself to a fairly high ethical standard. I don't expect the same from others, but I have hoped that the people who choose to be in my life will accept these things about me and not make fun of me for them... too much or too often.

If I haven't written before about my realization about quality of life, maybe I'll make that a future installment. And if I have written about it then I'll try not to repeat myself. But what it all boils down to -- for me and probably for me alone -- is that it makes more sense to be away from the world for a number of reasons. I get to deal with less random hostility. I'm much less caught up in drama that has nothing to do with me. And I get to be the architect of my life, free of the concerns of dragging anyone else along for the ride.

I am still not opposed to a relationship. And if one comes along that proves substantial, obviously I will amend the way I live now. But I stopped holding out hope for one and making the rest of my life contingent upon that possibility some time ago. I will always love women. Always. Now I just understand that I've gone into so many relationships with ridiculous expectations that there's no way any of them could have worked out. Yes, I absolutely own that. Do I wish any of them could have worked out? Hell yes! But the person I was then made it unlikely at the very best. I salute anyone who tried being with me.

As I sit here, I realize I could write much, much more. But considering I hadn't intended to post even this much, maybe I'll just post again.

Maybe not.

Either way, have a great weekend and take care of yourself!

Commit This to the Void with a Glad Heart/See Ya

One final ramble for anyone who might peruse this speed bump in the ether. No whinging about vexation or musing about the ghost of love. No trying to understand the mores of the twenty first century western world. No life advice or attempts to amuse. Just a last meander before diving back into the real world.

Much has changed since I posted last, and really not a lot at all. Circumstance, other than the inevitability of biologic change, is much as it was on this side of the keyboard. But the reality of my inner world has shifted. I've dived into the book with enthusiasm and am enjoying the unspooling of the thing that's been in my head for years onto the page. The sprawl of it is in some flux, meaning I could make it comparatively short or let it unfurl into its full weirdness across a series of books. I doubt any attempt will be made to publish and it's unlikely I'll share excerpts. Not because of any personal judgment on the quality or nature of the work, but because I don't think this is a time when people read.

Since my last installment here, life has been about making peace, letting go and working to shift my perspective and allow beauty back in since it is literally and figuratively all around me. Walking through my days bitching and moaning rather than being able to appreciate all I can has been at odds with what I believe. And since I haven't been able to practice what I preach, much of these months has been spent silent and melancholy if not outright sad. Or angry. What's the expression? Holding a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die? It isn't that I've held a grudge, but I've clung tenaciously to so much that hurts in some strange hope that the universe would intercede and essentially tell me that I was wrong and things will be fine.

But it doesn't work like that. Anyone with a brain will tell you words like 'right' and 'fair' don't figure into adult existence. However I know from first hand experience that it is possible to live a good, fulfilling life without much in terms of material goods or resources. Here in America there are so very many people who don't see all they do have and spend most of their energy on accruing more stuff for which they will also not be grateful.

I'll add that I'm not better than anyone else, more compassionate or more evolved. In fact it's my own shortcomings that pushed me to put this blog online. At the same time I've reviewed a lot of what's here and found it -- and me -- powerfully lacking. Not, as my mother would have put it, particularly good grist. In fact I'm coming to accept that the last woman I dated was right: I'm not a real person.

But that frees me to live in a way that makes more sense to me. Whether one chooses to call me recluse, hermit or anything else is irrelevant. It's become painfully obvious that I fit in this era about as well as a fish on a bicycle.

Happenstance: the tune "Survive" by Bill Connors started playing as I wrote that last sentence.

Does any of this mean a thing? Nope. Just the opposite. I've come to realize that I want to put good into the world, but I think I've been going about it all wrong. I'll leave the grand gestures and true moving/shaking to the brilliant while I work in the small, subtle ways to which I'm better suited.

Who knows what's ahead? I mean seconds from now, not years. As a friend sings in a wonderful tune, this is not a trial run. We're in it. And it's fleeting. To sit and wait for good to come is a dangerous approach. Certainly it's possible but I don't know how likely it is, particularly as one gets older. Obsolescence and anonymity are more probable.

These are funny words coming from someone who's rankled at pep talks and motivational speakers. But that's the nature of subjective creatures and shifting perspective. Nothing comes easy (guilt and grief excepted) and it takes work to bring and keep the good in one's life. Humans don't like work. We're just a mass of contradictions.

Anyway, this is spiraling fast into nothing and its being written at all is a pretty silly gesture so I'll just thank those who've slogged through what I've scrawled and wish you all the best. Life really isn't all doom and gloom. Go out and find what makes you happy, cherish it and understand that it's not likely to be with you long.

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

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...

Crawling from the Mire

It’s really something to reach a point where I can look back at my own life and just be amazed. I’ve been in love, homeless, worked an assembly line, written for an international magazine, made the cover of a magazine, met some of my heroes, crossed the country alone more times than I can easily remember, helped to build a community and a hell of a lot more in my time so far. Someone once even wrote to tell me I’m his musical hero! For someone who expected to be wiped out in nuclear war before ever reaching puberty, this is nothing short of remarkable. 

My wont is normally to kind of kvetch and crack wise here, so this is a conscious effort not to do that. Doesn’t mean I’ll succeed, but I always figure I don’t know what I can do until I try. 

And there have been avenues I didn’t tread, too. I was offered work in the porn and escorting worlds. I had a chance to audition for one of the biggest bands in history. Though offered the chance, I never shot heroin or snorted coke. Although I’ve worked in them, I’ve shied away from becoming a full time studio musician. Could have married younger or jumped on a freighter bound for the Caribbean. 

Life is all about choices and consequences. Cause and effect. Living with what we decide and not carrying the kind of regret that makes us constantly ask, ‘what if…?’ So while these last years have probably been the quietest in my few decades, the quality of them and the ways I’ve spent my time have been good. I may have been taught not to be proud as a boy, but I feel like I’ve accomplished more than my healthy imagination could have predicted. 

That’s more than a little cool. 

So when I step back and think that not only am I still alive but there’s more ahead, it’s mind-blowing. 

Had you told juvenile me that I’d be described at different points as a pioneer, a cult leader, a lothario, a svengali, a role model, an inspiration or infamous, my response would have been 

incredulousness, shock or most likely uproarious laughter. Which is why when I look back, I still sometimes think I’m looking at someone else’s life.

Along the way there have been things that were tougher to learn or accept. Understanding I can choose to be happy was a big one. Truly grasping that I can be or do anything, well, there are times that one hasn’t fully sunk in, but the biggest thing I carry with me is that I don’t have to be as hard on myself as I historically have been. I don’t fully understand the mechanism, but the cutting of slack is not easy. Not for me. For much of my life, I’ve held myself to an impossible standard and beaten the snot out of me when I all but inevitably failed. I was well into my 40’s before I could even seriously call myself an artist. I’ve been one of those people who accepts all the negative I hear or read when it comes to me and would probably receive uranium before a compliment. So getting word that I’m talented or talentless strikes me in very different ways. 

Thus it’s been kind of a revelation when I’ve spoken with those I’ve looked up to only to have them tell me they only see the mistakes and shortcomings in what they do. Some of these are individuals considered iconoclasts and legends, but trailblazers across the board. It’s even more inspiring having seen them do what they do with such (seeming) confidence and facility. One of the things I hear most among creative types is that this constant questioning and demand for more and better keeps one honest but also striving. One of the things I hear from the rest of the planet is that this is commonly called beating oneself up. 

Contradictory input seems to be a recurring theme in my life and in my posts here.

So maybe it’s just that lines are blurrier for humans than for most other critters. Maybe, as a friend points out, there is no truth or that if there is, we aren’t destined to know it while we walk the earth. I don’t know. 

But I know that it’s seldom too late to learn. If we want to grow and change, we can. Where we’re blind to things about ourselves, we will have occasion to see. Whether or not we do anything about it is personal choice. 

Again, choice. 

These things to which we’re blind in ourselves are often also the same things that rankle when we see them in others. This has got to be one of the strangest things in human nature. People who cheat on their partners are often the most jealous and demanding. Those who bloviate are aggravated hearing others get on a soapbox. The intolerant criticize this same behavior in others. Or as the Russian proverb holds, don’t blame the mirror for your ugly face.

But it isn’t that we’re ugly souls so much as the fact that we assume we are where we aren’t and gloss over the things about us that are. An absolute gem of a line popped up in an otherwise bad film: “He’s a prince who thinks he’s a frog.”

And this is the beauty of aging: gaining perspective when we let ourselves. There are so many things that are hard to see or accept, but once we acknowledge simply that we’re human and imperfect, once we accept something less than glorious in the mirror, we can begin to accept more. We don’t have the power to change everything about ourselves, we can change a lot. More importantly, we can change how we feel about things. While we can’t change circumstance, we can change how we react to it. 

I was thinking the other day about some past relationships and partners who chose to walk (or run) away rather than work through problems. I’m not excusing myself from issues in those relationships and have certainly been complicit or denied that problems have been there, but these are individuals whose patterns I’ve watched repeat again and again. What a horribly glaring way to see one of those childhood cliches proven: those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. 

As a stubborn cuss who is anything but enlightened, I offer you some small hope at this point. It isn’t impossible to cast ourselves in a different light, see some of those things and then work to change them. Find good friends who you trust to give you the truth and ask about this stuff. There are professionals paid for this. While your friends love you, there is some real benefit to talking with someone who’s not only trained to navigate the psyche but whose concern is your wellbeing. If finances permit, it can be a good choice. But as is the case with all relationships, not all therapists are a good fit for all patients just as there is no one method of teaching that can be applied universally. 

All that written, and as I pointed out recently, it’s definitely time for me to start doing some of this more assiduously. Working on the book has shown me just how far from the person I want to be I am now. But I know I can change. I know that while it’s not fun to see those parts of my character I don’t like, it’s about having the will and dedication to metamorphose. I’ve done it before and will do it again. If I can do it without sagotaging the process or making myself feel bad for not succeeding immediately, then I am indeed learning.

I’ll take that.

The Architecture of Balance / Connection-Disconnection

Being human, thankfully, means that imperfection is built into the equation. We change, forget, assert, guess and demand, but through it all we just kind of cruise along and call it life. For some time now my wacky universe has been out of whack and when it was recently called to my attention that my reactions to things, as well as my decisions when dealing with them, have been unexpected, it finally dawned on me that my own humanity was making an appearance... as well as reminding me that it's time for a change.

In the past I've written that learning for me is a slow process that really means relearning continually. I've also scrawled a bit about my own personal Camelot, that glorious window in my life of calm and contentment. It was the one time I actually felt sane.

So how does this all intersect and is it worth writing about again as well as sitting through for you, the reader? Per usual, I'm just improvising at the keyboard and you're the one who'll have to decide if what's here is drivel, dross or a murky fog concealing actual insight.

As a boy I was painfully -- or gloriously -- unaware of labels or the boxes into which people like to put other people. Being raised around art and hearing from the earliest that those who made art were geniuses and world changers meant that I assumed I was not one of them. Instead I simply did what I did, even when it was deemed odd or went against what most took for my own grain. I was a powerfully emotional little guy whose strong instincts were always being challenged by teachers and the other authority figures in my life who all chanted the same chorus: you're intelligent, so why aren't you letting reason guide you?

But no matter how many times I gave the same answer nobody took it to heart: reason doesn't work for me.

I was taught that people generally do the right thing and that being female meant possessing a specific weakness that required protecting girls and women. But the short history of my time on earth showed me again and again these things weren't true. People most often worked in their own interest and femininity equates (not past tense) with strength. Those world leaders who worked for peace, which to me seemed one of the highest goals, were made fun of and mocked. Artists and musicians were described as fringe dwellers, yet those people who described them this way lauded art and could not go a day without listening to music.

Thus while I was confused anyway, what I was being taught and shown did not make things in any way clearer. So is it any real surprise that I was middle aged before anything like clarity found its way into my paradigm?

So I didn't think it strange that I loved writing, making music, playing sports or spending hours in nature. These things all spoke to something at my core. But with each year those around me told me two things simultaneously and with increasing vehemence: 'you need to focus on your path, but don't change who you are for anyone.'

Huh?!?

It was a strange event that helped to form the man I am now. When I was in college I studied with a published poet, someone whose writing I enjoyed and whose observations inspired me. She asked me to meet her and talk about my writing. When I arrived she was cheerful and encouraging, but she quickly shocked me. "You're a good writer," she said, "but you could be much better. I asked about you and people told me that you play music. Seriously. That you're considering majoring in it. I'd like to tell you that as long as you're serving two masters, you'll never be great at either art. As someone who's read what you've written, I want you to consider writing."

I could not have been more surprised if she had leaned across her desk and punched me in the head.

This had never occurred to me. I enjoyed both pursuits and never thought myself particularly talented in either regard. Music came from an emotional place and writing from a cerebral one. Her statement was well intentioned but jarring. She may as well have told me, "Look, you can have romantic love or agape. Why would you want both? Do you think they coexist?"

I didn't say it, but I was indignant. This came on a a Friday afternoon and -- pardon the pun -- I stewed all weekend.

Then a curious thing happened: I had one of those decisions that makes no sense to me. I had been making music (trying, anyway) for most of my life. I had not gotten serious about writing until I was probably 10 or 11 years old. It may have felt like it, but the reality was that neither of these durations was a great span.

So for a year, I would only do one art or the other. If at the end of that period, I could not live without the other, I'd reevaluate.

Since music had been a part of things for me longer and that it made me feel better, I opted to forego writing. No poetry, no fiction, no essays... nothing but assignments and what was required to function in society.

It was a wildly productive year. Without the split in my brain between where I felt these two parts lived in me being at odds, I made great strides as a musician and specifically as a bassist. A friend told me about something he'd seen on TV, a new type of music school. I immediately contacted The Musicians Institute for literature (ironic!), and weeks later I decided to apply.

Not only was I accepted, but it led to one of the most intense years of my young life. I was constantly working on my technique, playing in bands and recording. Learning while teaching and performing, without the distraction of any other pursuits freed me dive aggressively in and take chances I never had.

But then at the end of that year, something else curious happened. I hit a saturation point. So much had lodged itself in my brain and under my fingers that I just had no desire to play. I needed to decompress and process, not necessarily in that order. At 23 I needed a break from the arts.

For three years to the day, I worked in retail. I took the stage a handful of times in that period, but I didn't teach and I doubt I wrote three tunes. Of course this too led to another crossroads because trying to live like everyone around me didn't work. I'd denied myself the emotional outlet of music and the intellectual release of writing. Trying to be 'normal' was a complete fallacy. What I didn't see and couldn't articulate was that we are all simply different, but much of what we feel is the same. We don't deal with things the same way, but we're told that there is one. I'm still waiting for someone to tell me what that is. Dozens of people have told me their solutions but none of them seems to realize that they're different from everyone they address.

So yeah, balance comes for me in fits and starts. And I am out of balance. I forget that balance needs to be tested. Things have to be shaken up. I have to relearn.

For six years I wrote for a music magazine and people told me more and more than I'm a writer. I finally hit a point where I had nothing to offer in my own column, but I'd started working on the book by then. In fact, I've been working on it for almost three years now. When I gave notice at the magazine and dove into my own world building project, there was an initial feeling of relief, as if I'd taken a bunch of pressure off myself. Maybe I had. Pages and pages flowed freely and before I knew it the cabin was littered with reams of writing, covered in research materials and there were paths on the floor from the front door to the kitchen and the bathroom, with a little trail leading to my bed.

When someone pointed out the aforementioned curious reactions and decisions I was making, a few things dawned on me. Slowly. First, a big wave of bass related hate mail crashed over me at almost exactly the same time I decided to resign at the magazine. Second, I really hadn't been making music in any significant way since I'd injured my arm a few years back. I'd worked to get it back into shape, but if and when I picked up my instruments, it was more noodling that creating.

Again, out of balance. Again, slow learning. Relearning.

So all that brings me full circle. It's time to forge a new equilibrium. No matter what else may be true, I'm an artist. There is no way I'll gain enough objectivity to see whether I have what I consider talent, but it's moot. I have these different facets and expressing them makes me feel good. As I'm human and imperfect, I'll no doubt continue stumbling along my way, but that's fine. What's emotional and instinctive lives side by side with what's intellectual and rational. Of course they're at odds. Of course I feel crazy.

But I've had balance and perspective. I've been healthy and had contentment. There was a window where I lived without want. It is absolutely possible to form a new kind of balance. It's just as possible I'll lose it again.

That's just fine. Whatever I am, whatever I'm not, I'm just this guy. Like Howard the Duck, trapped in a world I never made. But for all the hostility and harshness, this is not a bad world. There's beauty all around me. Not just in the grand vistas and great art, but in the small momentary, day to day ways. Little things can be glories. A look or a word might just be perfect in a certain moment.

If you don't see me here or on mainstream social media, I'm working on navigating more smoothly. I'm teaching myself to see a bigger picture and making peace with my place in it. Time to forgive myself for being human and letting go of a lot that's keeping me from enjoying it.

Does this mean I'm going to have Buddha-like equanimity and mythic enlightenment? Probably not in this short lifetime. But it means I hope for good, both within me and in my ability to put that into the world. Will I squelch the snark in me? Doubtful. Will I purge cynicism and sarcasm from my humor? HAH!! But I can be my own enemy a little less, and I can let love both in and out more.

At the very least, I can hope.

There are Worlds Between the Worlds

It isn't that there's been nothing to write so much as time's gotten away from me. I stepped away from one job to try and have more time for writing and music (not necessarily in that order), but time's been gobbled up by life, the living and the dying of it. Bass and the book get their allotment, but it's the day to day that keeps me offline. Ultimately that may not be a bad thing as, let's face facts, the rambling I do here is nothing that needs to be posted (foisted) with any kind of urgency or regularity. And in that spirit, let the blather commence.

The last span has been odd. Yes, even in the context of my lack of life. The fire still burns on the mountain, about 40% contained now. And while we can't see flames lapping up the hillsides, the air is still disturbing. Skies are sometimes orange-grey and air quality is... chewy. Some strange mass has taken refuge in my sinuses, rattling around when I blow my nose or gasp while trying to sleep through the night. Coughing has become a regular part of my functioning. This is not so much a complaint as it is my way of giggling at the fact that the accoutrements of 'old man-ism' are now on prominent display. Maybe it's time to add whippersnapper to the lexicon and start yelling at those kids to get off my lawn.

Actually, the demeanor has changed. I saw a photo of me a couple of years back with what looked like a blossoming bald spot, a patch of thinning hair, and thought I'd just head it off at the pass. Yep, shaved the dome. I could reminisce or opine my locks, but the reality is that it'd been years since anyone other than a coiffeuse or me ran fingers through it. Before I bought clippers, I visited a barber a few times. That was enough window into grumpy old man culture that I not only bought my own depilation apparatus, but I quickly became proficient with it. If you haven't, let me tell you that grooming with two mirrors and learning to instruct one's muscles to operate completely counter to what instinct dictates is quite something.

And if you thought that was exciting, I grew a beard. Not one of those lumberjack accessories that hipsters seem to enjoy, the ones that require combs and oils to maintain, but something like you'd have seen on Sean Connery in decades past. Only without the style or flair of that legendary Scot. But I do have a lot more salt than pepper, and while the women in my life tell me that's very attractive to the fairer sex, I have no evidence to support it.

Which works out just fine. For yes, I crave the company of a woman, but I'm even less in a place to have that in my life than I was before. I have only enough clarity now to know I'm completely off balance and out of whack. Then again, when was I ever in whack?

Life of course seldom lets up with its parade of the strange and unexpected. In a rare moment of peace recently, not one but three of my exes wrote. Not to ask how I am or to see what was up, but to flirt or unveil emotional need out of the blue. Neither of these is a bad thing, but it wasn't anything I saw coming. Of course that may be why they reach out, but I'll never know. And in tried and true fashion, as soon as I reach back, they disappear.

But the deepening invisibility is good for perspective. Taking my vanity out of the mix has meant that I can simply go my way anon. There's a line in an anime film that I adore and I apologize if I've brought it up prior, but a character is in existential crisis. While he's a considered and cerebral figure, he's also known and needed for his less savory skills. When discussing who and what he is versus who he wants to be, he paraphrases a Buddhist poem:

'Let one walk alone, committing no sin, with few wishes, like an elephant in the forest.'

And it's to this I subscribe. It would be lovely to share me with someone who wants to share herself, too, but I think unless things line up just so, this is not a contingency for which I need to account. In all honesty, as I'm never out of love, there's no real need for someone in my life. The pleasantness of a partner or playmate is offset too often by that jarring, jagged weirdness of the blindsiding that occurs when something has come up in her cognition and rather than bring it up for discussion, she simply launches into some strange behavior or diatribe counter to whoever she's been to that point. If I have learned anything it's that this is the point where she's already got one foot out the door and this is the gesture that makes that exit easier and smoother. For her.

So I remain a solo act. I have a life filled with love, but I have no human contact. No canoodling or cahoots. I hug two or three people a year, but I'm more likely to roll around with a dog than caress a lover. I dole out some of the carnal on the written page, and I think there's sensuality -- even sentimentality -- in my music, but none of that is spent easing my own flesh. This is a time for living in my head, not below the neck. Maybe again someday, but not today.

Nope. Off kilter is not something to invite someone to join. Whoever I am now, it's not who I was a few years ago when I enjoyed the company of a lover or the squishier emotions. This person is too impatient and not empathetic enough for a partner. A time when I want attention is the time not to have it. If I feel that, then I have nothing to bring to a relationship. As nice as it would be to receive, I'm too damaged at the moment to give. This is when I need to let go, to find those things that are toxic and send them into the ether. So much needs untethering.

So how's that for a ramble? Sean Connery, Buddhist elephant imagery and a fire that won't stop burning. Sounds about par for this course, for discourse.