Death of a Salesman

I am continually amazed at how much I’m learning each day. How much there is still to learn about the ways of the world and myself. It never ceases to baffle me how this process can never be a finite one. No matter where I’ll be, what I’ll do, how old I’ll be: there will always be something to learn. If it weren’t like this, mankind would not have been fuelled to excel. Motivation would not have been present and major theories and inventions would have died in the desk drawers.

I’ve learned so far that the main aim in life for everyone should be finding what they’re good at. It’s a strenuous process, but wholly rewarding at the end because everyone is good at something, and that only needs to surface. I’ve found writing. Modesty and an imminent threat of big headedness prevents me from saying I’m good at it, but I’m trying. Writing’s a craft that needs to be practised and polished. I love the craft of it. I love the potency of creation. I love the phoniness of it as well. I love the fact that the self can get lost in the haze of glamorous words and leave the writer nakedly exposed at the same time. This duality brings the craft its amazing power and the craftswoman’s hunger for appreciation, for each word offers the writer on a plate and therefore makes the creative vessel lead to unthinkable vulnerability. What I write is not me, but what I write is only me. If you look closely, you can see me bare all. But then comes the paradox. I possess a type of creativity that can only be called boxed in, or limited. I work well with limits, I respond to restraints and no matter how much my mind wonders, I still arrive back at the problem of lack of motivation, willpower and a fenced off scope of imagination. I’m creative but within the city limits. I’m something a little and something else a lot. I have to work out how to balance this and at the same time try to enhance my creative output. And I arrive back at the aforementioned path of nihilism and complacency running through my veins. A helpless state of being.

Then there’s love. I’ve learnt a lot about love too. After seven years, I have finally gotten it into my head that there’s two kinds of love. I’ve finally realised that the first kind, the one that everyone wants and should experience at least once, the kind that leaves you gasping for air, is the one that will leave you with scars much deeper than you expected. The kind of love that’s pure passion and blind and flaming and makes you want to hang from a trapeze, makes you travel far and wide, makes you cry and cry was never meant to last. That kind of love was meant to teach, but was never meant to last. That kind of silly passion and burning desire, heathen longing was only ever thrown down at us mortals from above for amusement. But we took it too seriously and some ended up waiting seven years: “for that kind of love, that kind of intensity surely can last. It can surely reach across oceans and lands. It can surely be re-ignited with just one glance”. And the heart has such power over the head. The heart can murmur soft words so it drowns out the sensible screaming of the head. I love the heart for having the faith and I respect the head for having the courage, but most of all I salute the compromise of the two in showing that love can be calm and gentle, mature and sensible, comforting and convincingly passionate. Love can be all this and a million more things.

At least now, my hopes are not in the sky and my heart’s not like grape gum on the ground. This train of thought I will continue because there’s far more to tell…

Jewel and Me

Then there are the dreams that stay sweet because they can never possibly be fulfilled. Dreams that were to become reality would hurt more than aid. Pretence is left for the weak hearted to fantasise. Projecting the unreal outwards leaves the inside relatively healthy. I am humbled beyond belief and shaken like an autumn leaf just at the thought, the sound, the sight of her. Jewel and Me: a whole chapter in my life that I will attempt to unveil.

It started when I was 17, in Prague. Prague that is forever tangled with love and love can only ever be Dan and Dan means failure and failure means self-doubt and self-doubt leaves me yearning for perfection. Jewel entered. Jewel’s second record “Spirit” was my first gate to self-discovery. The first Jewel record I owned. I listened to that record in awe and still do. She spoke of things that I realised were important not to her or me individually but to all of us: citizens of the world. The self experiences the pains of the world on a much smaller scale but that experience can be drawn on heavily when attempting to understand the evils and joys of living. So she, with her guitar and her fragile but magnificently powerful voice, sang about the deepness of despair, the hopes caught with one hand, the eyes filled with hatred, the brokenness of rejecting each other. And I was captured and a journey started that I take with my all time favourite singer: Jewel Kilcher.

But Jewel is more to me than just beautiful music, than just informed ideas, than just creative genius, than just an intelligent woman using the only podium she has to speak her mind. Over the years, I’ve built my own world around her. I’ve created a wholly distorted but perfectly comfortable padded saddle around her. But somewhere along the way my admiration turned into my own struggle at coming to terms with my life, my destiny, my desires. Jewel is just an aid, a tool, an image that I hang ideas of greatness on so that I can follow someone. So that I can follow someone mortal and present. I love the music, I love the ideas, I will forever love all that she does, but it’s not the woman in her that I love. It’s the music in her that I love. It’s the ideas in her that I love. It’s the beauty of sincerity that I love. It’s the guide that she’s been for me that I love. With that, I think even she can live.

Jewel’s to some extent a role model. Not because I want to be a guitar strumming, crowd working, entertainer. But because if I ever get to walk a path that is a dream, I hope that I would be able to handle it as smart as and as honest as she does. It’s not what she wears that’s important. It’s not how fancy a cord or tuning she twists her songs into. It’s how she uses the words to communicate her feelings. It’s the way she will bear all in an interview without you even knowing if she’s said anything at all. It’s the way she so quickly sees the connections between things and it’s the way she deals with the world as best she can, with all that wisdom and intelligence almost silently creeping in. Without a word, she has you off guard. If I ever will have the strength and determination to pursue a dream, I only wish that I could handle it as gracefully as Jewel’s been handling hers. Dreams are sacred and terribly fragile. Some think they are best left in a safe place without them ever seeing the light of day. I shamefully adhere to this philosophy and only allow myself to project a look of longing to the outside when I can pin it on something else, like Jewel. If Jewel puts out a new record, I have and excuse. I can come out and say all the things I want. It’s a childish game, but the safest I know. Jewel’s more to me than just the singer of lustrous melodies, of profound words, of eternal ideas. She is a dream I only ever dare to dream when it gets dark and no one can laugh.

It’s my one weakness. It’s one of my many faults. I elevate another human being onto a pedestal of greatness and worship her as a deity. If only Jesus was a pop star. But in fact it’s only truly an excuse for me to make everyone look at me for a second. Jewel will always mean a lot to me because she embodies everything I secretly want. Every dream I secretly dream, every future I secretly plan, and every answer I secretly circle around in my head.

Two weeks ago her sixth album was released under the name “goodbye alice in wonderland”. Three years ago her previous album “0304” was released. My dear friend Robert and I were sitting on the beach in Portugal days after I had received that album. I went on and on about all the above to Robert. He looked at me and said, “I wish she knew what she means to you”.

I wish she knew what she means to me. Jewel and Me. My eternal dream.

http://www.jeweljk.com/