It’s been another one of those weeks, everything goes wrong, and the strange dreams, regrets, questions, wonders, and troubles start to catch up with you. When all you can do is listen to old songs and clench your teeth while you hold your tears back as the thoughts roll through your mind. I have a very special playlist for these nights, there’s always something I’m trying to get off my chest but then Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd comes on and you just lose your composure. You wonder why you’re crying, you wonder why you’re there and not “here.” These days we’re so detached from the present we’ll never be “here.” That place has always been somewhere else, someplace we were heading, but the truth is we live for tomorrow only in hopes that we will arrive in someplace we’ve already been, but how do we get back there. Forsaking the present for our memories, the truth is we won’t be taking them with us, but that’s the hope we look for in God. Jimmy Page says in the ethereal sonnet, with haunting natural acoustics in the recording of Stairway to Heaven, “oooooo makes me wonder, oooooooooooo makes me wonderrrrr.”
After trying so hard, I still carry regrets, with dreams of troubling and glorious alternate realities of my own life, and they’re so real to me I can almost reach out and touch them as I stare blankly into the empty space twelve inches from my face. “As we wind on down the road, our shadow is taller than our soul.” Sometimes when you’re driving down the road and you’re mind has blanked so long and hard in deep thoughts, dozens or hundreds of miles have disappeared and you suddenly realize you’ve slipped into another dimension. Then you realize that the miles are not as important when you consider all the time that has passed. Time is linear, you can always drive the same route back and observe what you missed, but then you’ll always wonder what you’ve been missing on some other route. I could’ve been great, I could be great, but what will I be missing in the meantime, and will I feel empty once I’ve reached all my goals anyways, only to start on a new frontier. And what’s really worth my time, and desire, is anything or anyone anyways? In pursuit I’ve let people down, one or another, nobody is ever really happy unless you do it their way, but we have no understanding of what their plans for us are. “Close my eyes and feel the water rise around me, drown the beat of time, let my senses fall away. I can see much clearer now I’m blind,” Then a soaring technical guitar progression lifts you and places you in a blazing finger sliding, string skipping, sweep picking solo topped with a pinch harmonic that lights your brain on fire!
I can’t please everybody; my heart is heavy with memories of how I’ve let my loved ones down throughout my life. I hope my grandparents don’t hate me, I’m not always busy, but it’s hard enough to grind through life like this. I get time off, but I spend it trying to center myself again. I guess that why I type these thoughts to myself. I go fishing too, and I’ve distracted myself with hobbies. To me, my hobbies aren’t hollow; they hone my skills and give me a sense of accomplishment. It may all be a shallow attempt at self validation, and could be certainly seen, construed or condemned as such. In some ways I’m glad my other grandparents aren’t around to feel ignored. I cry every time I hear this solo; Lines in the Sand by Dream Theater, it’s an emotional roller coaster with major rides that lift and minors that contort your heart into your throat, then drops you off at the rock bottom where James LaBrie drags us beyond the bottom singing: “We fabricate our demons, invite them into our home, have supper with the alien, and fight the war I know, we conjure up our skeletons, enlist the den of thieves, frightened from our closets, and sewn upon our sleeves. In-the-stream-of –consciousness, there-is-a-river cryyying, living-comes-much-easierreeerr oohhhh, once-we-admittttt……… we’re dying.” And what sad horror here, he’s told it and the stings of the guitar lull and weep, but then this subtle major key brings a change where light peaks above the horizon and carries us into hope. And by the time you’ve arrived at the hook your gritting your teeth and smiling in a groove, remembering the remarkable journey you’ve made by listening.
Dad, it’s been you in my dreams, in my thoughts. I feel awkward about last time we met; the circumstances of the visit, your feelings regarding my decision about my name, and how I haven’t heard from you in so long. I’ve changed my name, not out of spite, sorrow, or anger; the reason stems from my insecurities about my personal identity, and indeed the ideas surrounding this monolog. Changing my name was a shallow attempt at grasping onto a surreal idea of my identity from one of those alternate realities. I guess it’s taught me that I have to make my own changes, and that locking the door three times, finding a lucky penny, or a fortune cookie aren’t really going to change my life at all. But it’s more than my identity, I have ideas of what and where the world is, and what a family looks like, what the parts of my life and my family have meant to me, and told me about myself. Or have they told me anything, does any of it mean anything to me? My intelligence has cast me into a prison where I observe and reflect upon realities that others take for granted as truth. I see all of these things and not let them shape me, but simply wonder…..why? I’m a chronic relativist, and somewhat narcissistic, which leaves my moral compass in the realm of nihilist or as an existential pagan at best. A Change of Season: ”Tripping through the life fantastic, Lose a step and never get up, Left alone with a cold blank stare, I feel like giving up, I was blinded by a paradise, Utopia high in the sky, A dream that only drowned me, Deep in sorrow, wondering why .” I have strange compassion for mankind; I do not wish to see him succeed, and even revel in their silly sorrows, instead I’ve found a center in nature, not directly though, only through the tantalizing nostalgia of maritime history and a 16th century sea, un-seized by the clinches of our kind, nostalgia broken by the sight of an ancient tree, looming upon an empty field that’s been cultured by men for centuries, the only native friend that visits him is the occasional sparrow or osprey. It’s a fantasy though, that world doesn’t exist, and so now what? The cause is lost no matter how optimistic you want to pretend to be about that or anything else in this world, or beyond. I get more cynical every day, you know I don’t have all the answers either dad.
I hope you know I’ve learned a lot about Keith and I understand how he was so difficult. I treat him worse than you did, I guess I feel kind of bad about that, although I can’t help but be passive aggressive toward him. I don’t blame you for any of it, never did actually. I was a little peeved about the situation, but I also was never concerned about him taking care of himself. I imagined and can see now that he much preferred it.
I sobbed in the dark downstairs the other night, wondering how you must feel, and wondering what has driven you toward so many changes in your life. What insecurities must you face, and have you ever found what you’re looking for? Will I? And why’d you give it up? We’ve discussed these topics many times, always wanting to return to that time before, to that fateful day in grandpas’ 64 chevy pickup. I would even elect to return to the time I was shitting and puking strawberry milk in the day cab just to be there with you again. James Hetfield: “What I’ve felt, what I’ve known, never shine through in what I’ve shown, never be never see, won’t what might have been, what I’ve felt, what I’ve known, never shine through in what I’ve shown, never free, never me.” You’re a broken man dad, not that I’m a shining example, I’m well on my way to becoming a broken man too, it’s like that Cat Stevens song except we’re both really fucked up and psychotic. Who knows if this letter will ever make it out the door, or even off the computer for that sake, there are dozens here just like it. I think about sending them sometimes, but by the time I prepare to the topics seem irrelevant. It's been two years since we've spoken now. Sometimes I wonder if life is irrelevant. I love you dad, I miss you.
-Andy
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