Why Loneliness sucks.
April 25, 2008I was prepping the show stuff last night and getting my gear list together. I realized I was going to have to wait for the computer to finish doing some digital transfers. Two hours. It was midnight. Sigh. What to do in the meantime? Read something.
I picked up this book, ‘Women Of The Surrealist Movement’ and was rewarded by tales of displaced dreams and talents. The whole thing made me nostalgic and quite melancholy, which is the perfect recipe for a meltdown. When you decide to pick up an old diary or scrapbook that is better left un-opened, the whole thing becomes a lesson onto itself. And of course, that’s exactly what I did. Should have left it on the shelf. The feelings it produced were about the same as the ones you would get from watching someone sticking needles in a voodoo doll across the room from you. And the whole thing turns out to be real. That bad.
I cringed as I read terrible poetry which basically held a candle up to sadness and semi-formed delusions. I began wondering at how I could have transformed a perfectly good book into such a disaster. I considered ripping the pages out and making an example of them, but instead I went with it. What I found became a bit interesting after a while. I could see how my thoughts began to change over time, and the poetry gave way to a simple understanding. But it still had an effect very similar to the one you get when you realize something awful has happened and you have to react, but somehow you are unsure as to how that is to happen. I was numb.
And thus my conclusion is that this language that I have cultivated for myself in the form of art is such a lonely weight. While I endeavor to translate it and teach others the use of it, I am confounded by the way reality changes all around me. So in the end, alone again. And this piece of glass is no help at all. I mean, how can I hope to get some meaning out of this when it seems I am typing into a void. Or worse, a myriad of glass boxes which serve as mirrors of the cold stark reality that is life in 2008. Boxes. Not people. No parties.
This is why it was worse when the CD I was transferring failed. I had to wait all over again. What to do? Hey, what’s that? Oh, I remember that journal… Let’s see now… So it goes.
– Claude
