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.
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.
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