I think we can easily rule out destiny, fate, karma and the like… But are we really in control of our lives, at the front helm of our makeship destination? Or are we just a product of consequence?
To me, life is fighting to catch your breath in the middle of the ocean. Just as you reach the surface down crashes another wave forcing you further from your goal of dry land. For most of us we have well and truly fallen off the side of our ships, with the exception of a couple life rafts that float by to bestow a moment of peace before the next onslaught of waves. We spend the majority of our time failing to clamber back on board as we witness every other soul cruise by in their luxury yachts.
I’m speaking of course, relatively and not in the sense of a third world country but in comparison to our own expectation in this… dare I say it, society.
Statistically speaking, in life, is it not impossible to receive negative experience after negative experience? Blow after blow, wave after wave without the release of a positive response, an opposite reaction to balance the apposing forces? Think of a game of chance like the lotto, or rolling a die or even triggering your music collection to play songs randomly. Would you not declare that it is impossible to have the winning lotto numbers be won from the same store, in the same town ten times in a row? Or that you constantly receive the number 1 every time you roll that die? Or that one single song out of thousands keeps being chosen and played over and over, in spite of the rest? It is this anomaly that enforces the law of randomness. If something is to be proven random, then we must accept that the same situation can occur over and over again, for that act in itself is outlandishly random.
So it seems, our lives, being a haphazard cause of events, can remain trapped beneath the suffocating water-filled relapses with us curled in darkness hoping that that day comes when ‘heads’ land face up. Various few say that through exertion we can each ‘control’ our lives and steer it in the direction of our purpose. However this seems, time and time again about finding that job, making those millions but never about real happiness. Notice I didn’t say true happiness, that concept we are indoctrinated into believing fallible, just like the idea of control. I’m talking about a real, realistic, plausible happiness.
At this point we would look back in our lives, to the past week, year or entire life to find those small glimmering exceptions of contentment. Where times weren’t so bad, to suck every ounce of stillness from those pearls of elation till we remember things aren’t so terrible…. right? Then, what if you reflect back and see nothing? We are the ones who look forward, eager for anything better than this fake existence we survive amongst. There was a time when I would gaze to the future and see nothing but black. Imagining myself at 20, 25, 30 and seeing absolute darkness. I’m glad those days are behind me, but in much the same way I’m as lost as ever.
The things that assist me now are the same that lended a hand as a kid. I close my eyes and fantasise the opposite. I manipulate my reality and pretend I have those things that bring real happiness. That people are different, that friends are genuinely friends, that He thinks of me with regret, that every person in the street I pass is a loving and dear person that if I fell, they would catch.
As Gandhi once said; ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world”.
I say; “Plug me in and let’s play pretend!”
With the magnitude of unused power stored in your psyche…. they say you can change.
I remember as a very young child sitting outside in the backyard gazing up into the sky watching the flickering effects the sun makes between the blue and my eyes. I remember searching through the endlessness and feeling the overwhelming sorrow that is loneliness. But somehow I had the innate ability to realise this shouldn’t be so… this isn’t ‘normal’. You grow, but it’s still there, swimming in your genes, a difference you can’t exploit because the seriousness of the situation won’t be addressed for only oddity will bleed through. Nonetheless you focus and from the pits of despair you can adapt the situation and try to turn all that is bad into good, for you can only really be yourself, can’t you… in a moment at least.
Alas, life continues and through the years it throws endless challenges your way, like a ghastly reality TV show with no prize at the end but simply a moment to not exist. The audience however gains some sense of voyeuristic pleasure until you realise in fact there is no audience. The stadium chairs roll away and you are left wondering what is the point of all these obstacles and mental barricades when in fact the only person in the crowd that matters is far away enjoying the benefits of their own game…. the game that doesn’t involve you.
Think of those 3 seconds when your past comes flying towards you and time stops as you realise everything you’ve been running from is in human form, standing a few feet away and you are given one of a few social choices to react. This is the point where you think you can choose your own adventure but in your dumbfounded stupor you simply stand and breathe in the calming moment. For you are everything you are and were, could and will be, all rolled up not in your perception of yourself, but theirs.
It was evident that after two years of hurting, writing, singing, talking, asking for advice, using in analogies and keeping in the back burner of every daily moment, pinnacle or otherwise…. something needed to be done… physically, ritualistically, with witnesses, minute takers, the whole deal. After the first, I threw his bracelet he gave me into the lake we would frequent as a pivotal moment to myself and the unlikelihood of the lake, that it’s over for good, in reality and my heart. The same henceforth, needed to be done again. I replaced the lake with a bar and the bracelet with my words. With a round of drinks and the friends most affected with the repercussions of my turmoil, I threw it all away. Not in the hopes that maybe this time I’ll win, but in the firm knowledge that I WILL!
The freedom this brings convoluted with the hindsight you’ve somehow achieved, has teared a hole in the fabric of the race and slipped you in directly at the finish line. No longer do you have to worry about the next stage of the grieving process or wonder why they’ve chosen to repeat themselves time and time again. It’s simply over and the only possible winner is really yourself for no one else, including he, is actually in the race.
This brings to mind, once the game is over, that life is yours to play out in the fashion you wish to conjure. The question bares to mind of what type of race you really should jump into next and with this new found knowledge you begin to see the hierarchy amongst racing tracks. Thus brings on the new battle. You have escaped the forest of thorns but now must make your way through the ocean of dead and soulless duplicates to find your higher ground. You don’t have to be a cultural analyst or critical theorist, but I do prefer if you have some concept of moralistic virtue before you lose all sense of intellectual facade gained from the curve of your ass.
“It’s got to happen, happen sometime.
Maybe this time…. I’ll win.”
If I were to think like everybody else on the planet, maybe some consistency would prevail….
It feels like falling, through a rabbit hole or like your presence is slightly disjointed, like a movie reel skipping and the image jittering. Confusion sets in when your actions unbeknown to you are constantly affecting everyone around you in what they convey as drastic and terribly wrong. All retaliations thereafter are redundant due to disbelief that your silence is the cause of such grief… but then again it’s not the first time silence has put a stop to your life.
It feels like at any second Laurence Fishburne is going to dive out of a helicopter and give me an ultimatum between a blue and red bill. It is THAT disturbing to me, this place we’re supposed to call home. A home shouldn’t feel like this.
As depression sets in you can feel it surround and consume you like a big warm blanket ready to bring together every forgotten thought or dark nagging cloud once dispersed. This blanket however is so unbelievably ironic. As every bad thought enters in and scenarios, potential or reminisced all turns into the same pain and numbs you until you can’t feel it or anything else. They could all bring you back, sit you down and beat you blow after blow, but you’re in what feels like an apathetic, drunken stupor where nothing could possibly touch you anymore. It stops you from verbalising or creating any defence logically necessary, like your mind projects razors into the throat that forces your eyes to just observe the destruction falling around you.
“You may be acquainted with the night, but I have seen the darkness in the day.” – Amanda Palmer
There must come a point, statistically speaking, when someone out of the billions must break through the chaos and actually appreciate my deepened and emotional truth…
if they can get passed my stilted jawline that is.
So, 24 years old today, the big two four as the teens say. Today I officially become unattractive to all gay men alike…. but at least I get a free boost juice… right?
Now now, let’s not get over-dramatic, we all know life doesn’t end at 24. It’s over at 25!
So with this social theory in pace I have only one more year to fulfill all the things I have yet to experience. Mind you in my, some would say short life, I have experienced more than I would wish on anyone, not even all the-love-of-my-life-assholes-who-don’t-deserve-one-ounce-of-forgiveness. I’ve partaken in an abundance of torturous experiences including operations, near-death experiences, religious oppression, mind-fucks, sexual abrasions and enough heartache to soak the pages of every teen in this galaxy and the next… but there’s that one nagging land I’ve yet to discover. I’ve been given tastes, well, ‘a’ taste. Once. As fleeting as it was, it was a glimmer.
Every year I promise that it’s going to be the ‘happy year’ where regardless of outside stone-throwers I’ll manage to stand above the beaten and bruised, risen high amongst my accomplishments and face my new found reality that I am happy… or at least content. But happiness seems a dish best served microwaved. That’s right! It’s soggy and only seems to last a week at a time.
2009 was not my happy year but since I’ve been rooting for this magical year since my teens I wouldn’t be doing myself any poetic justice if I didn’t hold true for happy 2010. Although we have a couple months to go and hell, it’s spring! So may as well give one last urge of horoscope hopefulness and wish for the best!
In other fundamental anomalies I have recently changed my mobile phone number to escape the haunting grasp of the ex that just won’t die and leave me to wallow in my own misery. The obvious high points of this monumental occasion is that I yes, get to now choose whom in my contact list I WANT to have my new number and also a totally overlooked but in no way trivial occurrence….. The forever cancellation of my life in every myspace/facebook/deviantart/randominternetsiteinserthere aspect in the world from the “love of one’s life’. Yes, the love lost, the love that slipped through your fingers, the love you only began to glimpse, the love you spent 2 years getting over and scrambling over page over page of lyrics to create the songs for your new album. The one you knew you’d never ever ever ever ever ever ever never ever never never never ever hear from again butjustincaseheeverdoeshestillmighthaveyournumber…. and now he doesn’t.
With all the messed-up irony and kinky coincidences in the universe… I never saw this one coming… and wow, what an immense feeling of freedom!
So I’ve decided to start writing a blog to basically whine and gripe on about the world but possibly even promote any sparks of joy I find, all in the hopes that I might discover some people out there in internet land that may agree with me… or not…
…but i guess that’s hypocritical to the point of this first blog!
Today my bull-dyke roommate told me I wasn’t ‘gay enough’ after I mentioned I never ‘fit in’ in any kind of group or community regardless of sexuality, culture or belief system. She then went on to point out after I said I would use my points of indifference to my advantage that I need to camp it up, be more typical, try to blend in…. in an essence, BE the stereotype. Now anyone that knows me well would know that I prance around in makeup and sing show tunes with the best of them… but still, it’s not enough to be accepted in an already segregated society??? What?
So if you’re placed inside a box, and then the people inside that box still make you feel uncomfortable, we need to break out and do our own thing. Now to be true, I’ve been doing this for years and years without my even knowing. This is probably why I find it difficult to make good friends or fall into relationships as the colours I poses just don’t taste exceptionally well. It’s like my niche pallet is congregating on some far distant taste bud, on another tongue, in another mouth, in another galaxy! It seems plausible that this is why on every step of my musical and social journey everyone has always said NO. You CAN’T do this. You WON’T do that. But I’m here to tell you, if you don’t ‘fit in’ then grab your dissimilar flare and FREAKIN RUN WITH IT!
Uniqueness isn’t celebrated anymore, at least for now it remains unpopular. Queens and fairies are despised, even amongst a community already despised. Anything remotely emo is despised, even more so than phags I’ve discovered. Plus gender ambiguity is a huge ‘no no’ unless of course you’ve already shoved it to the masses and placed yourself up on a freak pedestal. However, this is what you must do!
If you are different, unique, weird, quirky, or not fully accepted even in an oppressed, niche and specific sub-culture of intolerance… Use it all do your advantage. Use it to get to that position in life, use it to make people stare at you on public transport and hold your head up high when you’re confronted by your so called community and told you’re ‘just not right’. For this is the flash that’s going to make you explode and shine, I’m sure of it! I’m going to use my flame to score that radio gig, to sell my albums regardless of whether they love or hate me. To find those few special friends who appreciate me regardless of my oddities and to find that one person to whom I stand out to, bright and brilliant, amongst the crowds of clones.
