This Is My Attempt At Being More Present
I can’t seem to write in full anymore. I am mostly writing this at the gentle urging of an artist I greatly respect and admire. She told me to write more. I trust her and truthfully, I’m always thinking about writing more, so this is me writing more. I have decided that no matter what this ends up being, I have to post it and not delete it for at least one week. If I succeed, it will be a victory of new heights for me. I am hopeful that someday I’ll get the hang of it. Currently, I am reading Neil Young’s Waging Heavy Peace and before this weekend when I saw him in concert, I found it difficult to get through his words. He’s incredibly sporadic, so now that I’m enjoying it, I feel like I can get away with being a bit wishy-washy in my own writing.
Speaking of Neil, my heart wells with him and Patti, two souls whose voices don’t ever seem to age. I am so in love with their beings, Patti’s innate artist and her vibrato’d yells. Born into her white t-shirt and black vest. I would never want to meet her, afraid she might look at me wrong and crush my soul. A part of me is confident Neil would be as sweet as pie, and maybe even under the right circumstances, interested. Maybe that’s just because he didn’t live on the streets of New York (and didn’t write in depth about a love I am invested in to a fault), and  I feel connected to his being from here, but there’s a sense of humility that exudes from his song and speech. My dog scratches at the fold-up bed for the company I missed on the weekend. She wants to go out, but I have forced myself into this fabricated dream-land, one I made out of pillows,  Tonight’s The Night, and my cat. I can’t leave now because I have tried for over an hour to make this all worth it. I tried to write some bullets about things I’ve learned since becoming an “artist”, but it all felt too pretentious. What do I know, anyway? I haven’t devoted my whole self to art. I haven’t suffered. I justify this with my invisible list of responsibilities. I don’t want to suffer, but I know that I have to make a drastic change to get drastic results.  In some forums I may say I have suffered, but now,  I feel silly. I torture myself, so there is that. Yet here I sit, a gin and soda garnished with raspberries and lime to my left. Leftover Bombay from my contribution to the weekend that my father otherwise paid for. My dog has given up and she’s now resting her head on my right knee. My cat has taken a perch on the chair under the desk. This is all very familiar, they find their spot in every room I frequent.
So here I am. Nice to meet you.
