Where the thrill has gone

Just some melancholia and time for blues, nothing more or less

Most of my memories from my previous life seem to be gone. Or they don’t feel mine anymore, at the very least. 

When I say my previous life, I mean from before I became an adult. And I didn’t become an adult at eighteen like they decided I should be. Rather I’d say, it was around the age of twenty seven, which is the age a lot of great artists have died. Now I don’t say that to people when they ask me why I haven’t been playing much music these days, but it feels like that was the time when something inside me turned away, decided to retire into oblivion and go on an unannounced hiatus some place in my chest. But I guess that’s true with most adults, somewhat living in silent desperation, grown children hiding inside out. 

Or, this may all be a lie or an excuse to feel a little better about all this. I think my mother, and some of my friends would probably say so. Just a pretentious answer for me to give someone when they ask why I haven’t been playing much music these days (although I haven’t honestly had the chance to give that answer yet, and I don’t know if I should). Another little chance to try and prove my “authenticity” and enjoy (a rather tragic, I must add) fantasy of belonging in the major league, but never really doing the work to create anything that might ever warrant my presence there. 

Photo by Florencia Viadana on Unsplash

Maybe I just never really wanted it that bad, then? Or did my chance come with an expiry date before time and trauma took it away? Or, was the quest a necessary journey for something yet to come, perhaps destiny?

But that’s not to say that I haven’t paid my dues, in music or in life. More than my fair share, really. So when I think about it—I shouldn’t really have to answer for why I haven’t been playing much fucking music these days. The answer is that I guess nobody ever told me how you’re supposed to dream a broken dream again, and I’ve been trying to figure that out. For years now. Somedays, the journey hitherto feels preordained, like I’m being taken someplace with an invisible blindfold, but “they” just decided not to tell me that nothing was ever really my decision anyway. I guess I might find out soon enough, one way or another. The dots only connect backward, as they say? But I don’t have a Gandalf or a Dumbledore to ask who chose my quest and why, so I’m waiting for an old wise wizard to hopefully show up soon in my life (or just give me a call, man). I can at least demand them to give me back my magic; if not an apology or an explanation. Maybe a spell to forget some memories would be nice too.

Or alternatively—my dream was snatched from me by them. Those miserable bastards that tried to take it away from me, when they saw what I had, what I couldn’t see for myself at the time. It was me that let them tell me who I was supposed to be, and it is the real me who’s gone into hiding, not the dream. Well that should seem like a simpler problem to solve then, at least in theory? It should be a simple matter of snipping away the extra flab in my soul that God didn’t want me to have. Except, losing that kinda dead weight has never been easy, for anyone really. There’s too many people that want you to eat that burger when they can’t stop eating it themselves. They can’t stand your soul being so lean and ripped (or your body for that matter). I don’t know if solitude helps with that discipline, and to separate signal from noise, or if it’s a necessary rite of passage to burn away those inessential parts of your being. Or if what has been burnt was the dream, as comeuppance for turning away from your real self, and then sharing excuses for your laziness. Or, if it gave birth to more fire spitting beings inside of you that spew some kind of soul cleansing fire, but burn a lot more than just that along the way, just for their amusement. (Now, that last one can’t be my fault really!)

If it had been a matter of tenacity, I don’t know if I could’ve had the courage to take a stand. It would have felt ridiculously absurd and petrifying at the time, or any time until the adulting happened for that matter. So I don’t know if any regret can or should be warranted really. Maybe the turning has to happen until the decision becomes absolutely inevitable, if it can’t ever become comfortable—and you can only have freedom for it because of health, failure, misery or insanity. Usually they all must come together, from what I’d fathom. 

That’s when you can have “permission” to truly live, and feel again as you once did and hoped you would all your life, unencumbered, unblemished by any adulting. Permission that you couldn’t possibly have given yourself or afford to be given.

And then, feel the fire just one more time, or maybe a few more times, duly returned home, as it flickers at the wick’s end—just before it bows out.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.  - Dylan Thomas