A song on the staff of the past:

To be honest, I think I had forgotten.

Forgotten the reverence of a spiritual act. Forgotten the respect due that I was already trying to pay. Forgotten how beautiful you look in the rain, overhanging a bridge where we both could jump. Hand in hand, we'd go down to the tracks. Just another set of bodies on the ground.

Don't try to be someone you have never been. But be the thing inside of you that you already were. Or were coming to be. Or were trying to be.

It's complicated.
And I haven't sorted it out.

But tonight there is you, in your bed, asleep in your dreams. Off in your other place. And there is me, in my chair, awake in my nightmares. Off in my other place. Normally, you are breathing heavily into the pillow while I am painting pictures of the world. Tonight, I am sitting here drawing out photographs faded from the past. You are probably breathing heavily into your pillow, even still.

But, as for me, as I look at the faded images and try to recall the time when you called me "Lipstick" and it was funny - when I said you were "emotionally male" and it was clever - when we complained about being in different states and not different states of mind - when we knew that it was all going to be just right in a moment or two, just put us in the room together and the world would have changed.

It isn't that the opportunity is gone or that we don't still desire it.
It's just that it was so much simpler, then, to believe it.

In amongst the muddle of the everyday and the day-to-day and the one day at a time bullshit, when we're drop dead tired and afraid that we aren't loved anymore. When we're angry and bitter and exhausted and afraid we aren't lovable anymore. There is, in that muck, in that shit, in the muddle - one thing that is more true now than it was then.

So, stop, pause, take a breath and just listen.

On the air, in the ground, in our blood and bones and cells shivering like a bell is the song we have been making. It floats and it drifts across the room. It shakes the windows and it shakes our bones. And we force anyone who enters in to listen, to hear it, to at least pause and take their shoes off and pay it some reverence.

And we had always been talking, years ago, about a song.
A song that we were too timid to play.
And now, we play. We take the strings and we warp them. We take our voices and we push them. We take signals and electricity and we force it into a shape it hadn't had before. And together, along with the spirit, we sing. And we dance. And we worship.

Never stop. No matter what happens to things like "Dipstick" or the funny walk you did in Dublin or that first time we went to the club in capes and dark makeup. No matter what happens to the cafes or the apartments, to our books and our mugs and our plates and our little pieces and places in this world. No matter who else comes and goes amongst us. No matter how many times we have to re-plot, re-plan, reevaluate, re-see the course of our lives and change it, accordingly. No matter how many times we have to see a difference.

Never, never, never stop making this song with me.
It is the body of our love.
And it is the shape of our change in the room.
And it is all we ever really had.
And it is all we ever really need.
And it is all there is.

A song and a danse to go along.

Addicted

I want to say that, as a person, I am easily addicted. Easily drawn to the feeling of not only needing a thing, but being unable to survive without it. Easily pulled down by a nagging desperation to, at all costs, get more of it. And not to any one given thing, but more of a general propensity to crave, need, desire, and take illogically whatever it is that has caught my desire.

I want to say that it is just me. That I'm just "that sort of person". I want to say that it is an innate fault within my type of personality, specifically. And if not that, then it's a fault I acquired after years of conditioning, years of experience, years of trying things and liking them.

I want to say that I am wholly responsible. That this is a personal struggle. That the rest of the world does not feel this way.

But then, I stop writing to look around. And I see a culture addicted.

I see stimulants like caffeine, relaxants like alcohol, and pain-killers. I see pools upon pools of various chemicals meant to enhance my daily experience, despite how simple it already is. And I see them all consumed in mass. I see sugar and fat guzzled by the pint, quart, gallon - daily. I see new, sparkling jewels covered in blood and sweat and ragged dirty rags adorning, decorating, enlivening our enriched lives.

I see people barely breathing under the load of their chosen addiction. Strung out or weighed down. Muddling themselves in between fixes. Cutting any edges so they can still feed the yearning inside of them for just one more. Just one more. Just this once.

I fear that we are an addictive huddle of creatures. Mixed up in between a latent instinctual push and the ability to push that aside. Seeking the benefit of our individual selves above the systems, above the model, above the pattern. Seeking without regard the thing we have come to need. The thing that, were it taken away, we would clearly die without.

And, the most depressing part, is that were it suddenly stripped away - we would most certainly die. Over-dosed on our own pleasure. Emaciated by our own gratification. Incapable of bearing up under the true weight of life. Incapable of adaptation. Incapable of survival.

We are the dead. But now, it is not because we are fighting for anything worthwhile. We are the dead because we have chosen it instead of life.
We are the dead, and we will not turn around.