I take back everything I said about music. I've just been listening to the wrong stuff, I guess. Last night at the gym I listened to "The Clash" and all was right again, at least for a little less than an hour.
That is how a debut album should be done.
Though that is probably just nostalgia, the thing I have been told to be wary of. What is heartbreak but an acute version of it. An interminable case of longing. The mind's silly sweet love afair with returning to a memory.
I see a friend, online, one who is struggling through their own breakup trials. I see the hopeful posts, about somehow waking up each day and getting through it, and I think to myself: yuck. I want no part in it.
Isn't it bad enough already? Soon I'll be posting messages of hope, quoting people like Paul Coelho and Deepak Chopra.
My life will be as smooth as one side of a bumper sticker. People will offer to call and talk to me, encourage me to cry, etc.
I just might.
My life will be as smooth as one side of a bumper sticker. People will offer to call and talk to me, encourage me to cry, etc.
I just might.
If I were forced to tell the truth - under extreme conditions, torture - I would reflect that I am restful, resigned to what will happen.
Once, Jean Anouilh, in his play Antigone, described it very well:
The spring is wound up tight. It will uncoil of itself. That is what is so convenient in tragedy. The least little turn of the wrist will do the job . . . The rest is automatic. You don’t need to lift a finger. The machine is in perfect order; it has been oiled ever since time began, and it runs without friction . . . Tragedy is clean, it is restful, it is flawless . . . In a tragedy, nothing is in doubt and everyone’s destiny is known. That makes for tranquillity . . . Tragedy is restful; and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it. There isn’t any hope. You’re trapped.
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