I have never had the sort of illness that holds you in its grip for years and then releases you. But in my single digits i was sick for two weeks and fell out of view, when I returned the landscape of friendships had changed so alarmingly, it imprinted itself and I watched for it.
It is interesting if you are interested in time fluctuations; in how things appear to be one thing, and then appear to be another.
Conor Oberst nailed it in “Tourist Trap”: on the road for an indefinite period of time, he returns to find, things, different, the same, people here, but you gone.
It is also what is lost in the present rock world: people don’t do, you can’t drop out, and if you do, there is a huge hole with many things left to fill.
When I feel sick I imagine sounds heard from a great difference, I drift to death and they drift further away from me. All of music, all of life, is somewhere else.
because this is what happens: life is about action, or rather interaction, it is about confrontation and if you can’t participate you will be forgotten (you will be forgotten anyway, but you will be forgotten IN YOUR LIFE). Even by those who love you most. You sit inert. They move. they visit you. Maybe an hour a day. They tell you what is happening out there, but you are lost in here.
It is terrible for you but it is also rewarding: you get a glimpse of eternity, how things would move if you were dead. How great is that.
That’s another thing I imagine.
What if I was never born.
Here’s my belief: since I have no kids not a single fucking thing would change. Bad, yeah. But cool as well. My friend Joe Stevens used to warn me, never fuck with history.
Let me just have a cold? fuck writing… do I have to analyze everything?
Well, that’s what Cyn says, you can’t have a headache without numbering the severity.
So what, feeling about as bad as I can, do I want to listen to for sustenance?
Golden Slumbers – The Beatles
I know you know: the swelling strings at the beginning, the “Cradle Song” words do just that, it holds you in the palm of its hand, it comforts you, even though the “golden slumbers” hook is a tenor not a soprano, Macca goes down deep. And the hope to wake up to something else.
So suicide and long term illness were my last two posts: the great thing about writing a music blog? you can force people into the misery of your cold comfort…
… next?