They Float Through The Air With The Greatest Of Ease

Her songs that is. Her new songs. Patty Griffin’s new album. I know I talk about this all the time, but if in the years to come I am to ever have the determination and courage to create anything, I would wish to bring to my audience what Patty Griffin’s songs mean to me. The same level of intimacy, of excitement, of endearment. How can her songs mean the same thing to someone else they mean to me? These words I feel speak only to me, that what she describes and wraps in music can only touch my heart so abundantly. She sings of loneliness, of yearning, of hope and then of hopelessness. She strums the chords along to her coming undone. There is harmony is desperation. How can so much talent fit into her wooden box?

Her stories propel me onto a path of self discovery. I am more me because of what she sings. I am encouraged to sit here and type, to write down my deepest and darkest secrets, to admit to the loneliness creeping, to face the lovelessness haunting, to tackle the desperation that lurks at each end of the day. One carefully placed perfect word shakes me to my core. Beyond belief I let myself be sucked in by the mystical tales of another woman from another country, a different world, a much wiser and more talented dream. It would seem pointless to disobey or even disregard. Let the voice wrap my fears around me from the outside, make them more visible than ever. Let me see where I fall short of the glory. I might learn to make myself better and stronger, so much more willing to admit to defeat and insignificance. Compared to such talent, I am a mere impostor. I need to let humility take lead.

My world would be less if I did not know the magnificent art of Patty Griffin. I would be less and there would have been many writings unwritten, stuck at the bottom of me were it not for the tender words of Patty Griffin. Because she lets you come undone, to fall to a million pieces whilst you listen to her fragile songs. She will lay you down, prepare a resting place so magical, so soft, that you slowly rest your weary body into that cushioned haven. Then just before you close your eyes to velvet slumber, she will wake the dormant spirit in you. She will sing with all her might so you catch your breath and hold your head in growing strength. She will not stop till you are standing on your own two feet. Ready to meet the vice, the unforgiving reality that now can be endured just because you are armed with the most tender Patty songs.

Then you see that there is power in frailty.
Such power.
Endless strength in honesty.
Such glowing strength.
Passion in admittance.
Such withstanding passion.
Then you see that there is love in every broken moment.
Such unparalleled love for one another.

Then you will see that what we are, are just simple outlines of lives lived once before. And then you will see that every part is a part of truth.

I have to learn

And so today and from now on I have to learn to write better. I have to take my stories and give them a start, give them a middle, give them an end. Sprinkling the words onto the page, carelessly, will not do any more. If my dearest cannot understand, then I can surely never expect my foes to heed. I want to feel close to my words and I want to make sure that I am able to tame them. I will give them a regime of exercise so they line up, the ones that begin in the beginning and the ones that I want to use at the end go to the end. I may lack power in many areas of life, but with confidence I can see this will work. For a writer, writing is never this complex; it’s never dissected to these depths. Phoneys like me must learn to make friends with the words first. Phoneys like me have to beg these letters to obey just for a half hour.
Then I am met with doubt, for when my words are plain, I feel distraught. If I feel exposed, I will feel vulnerable and weak, little and insignificant, I will see the real me and it will confuse me. Maybe I’ve just watched too much Sex and the City for one night. I need this place, this forum, the outlet, to not be real so I don’t have to face the reality of my existence. For at least with these short writings, I am able to transcend to another life, another person’s life. When I’m me, when it’s late and I am alone, I break into millions of pieces and hardly have the power to squeeze a drop of superglue out of the tube to fix myself. But I do because I cannot stay broken. These words hide me. They burry me. They wrap me soft so I don’t feel the harsh wind, the bitter cold that’s so imminent.
What I write then gets twisted and sees layers upon layers until it’s so bogus even I can’t relate. I mix a word with a thought with a colour with a feeling and expect nothing but appraisal. Simple is true and I wish I could write simple. But even if I was a writer, I’d have to trample across an insane amount of complexity just to realise the beauty in simplicity. I realise the beauty, I long for it, but I most probably will never attain it. Fears laid down on paper somehow seem a thousand times worse than if they are hidden in a cocoon of mystical phrases. And I’m good at that. I’m good at making fog when it’s a clear blue sky. That’s why I have a humidifier that’s blowing out cold vapour. I’m making my life hazy so that everything that makes me nervous is covered. Because when I’m alone, when it’s dark and there’s nothing else but the music, the moon, the humidifier, the heater making crackling sounds, the lonely guitar waiting to be strummed, the open book waiting to be picked up, the three channels on my shoebox sized television, then I catch a moment of truth. That moment chains me to the floor or sofa or chair. The pain from inside of me reaches up and up and escapes through my eyes, if I’m lucky, the tears stream down. That moment throws me into a well that I see no way out of. Those are the times when I take my machine of words and start typing as fast as I can to make the lucid dream disappear.
Because the reality is that I am alone. I’m afraid of holding on to the past and I am petrified of the emptiness that the future may hold. I come undone when the prospect of a useless life flashes itself before my eyes. I realise that life is a circle. Everyone is just a part of the system, taking a place in the grand scheme of things, setting foot within the revolving doors. The Farris wheel. The hamster cage. Join the club! Get married, have children, have a career, retire, die. If I think there is no point, will I stay unhappy? I know that it’s all good and well for me to say now that I want nothing but to be alone, that this is the most comfortable for me, but in ten years time, I will look around and I will not see anyone. All who matter now will have whizzed on without me and I will be left lonely. Confidence? It’s never been a friend of mine. Hope? Oh, there’s always hope, but I tend to think not for me. If I am lonely now and if this is something I enjoy, then this will never change. I am the problem. I tell myself I need to be loved, but then this sends me on an even lonelier quest for fulfilment. What do I have to offer to the world? And is it justified to be existing on this planet in vain?
Love might make sense, but the kind of love I know is buried somewhere deep in the past and I have only just learnt to leave it in its place, in peace. This is why I have never been more scared to take a trip back to that place where it all started. What if I find my heart that I left there so long ago? Is it wrong to always look for the kind of love that touched me the first time? Am I not willing to compromise? Because after I have admitted that I am lonely and after I have admitted that I am unhappy, I still would never dare to hope for a change in things.
It’s comforting to know that there’s a surface and that the raw, the wounded flesh doesn’t stare out to every passer by.

So here. These were uncomplicated words. Untwisted sentences. This was clear talking. From me to you.

I really have to learn to be a better writer.

Photographs

Sometimes it gets really hard just to hold on. To maintain some sort of motivation and not let everything be bogged down by the crude, blemished, disease ridden reality. Shutting out the screaming voices that bounce off your eardrums, always. Shutting out the murmurs and constant drone in the favour of your favourite tune blasting through your headphones. Could those dear songs make forget that life sometimes like a mirage shows false versions of the truth? Defeatism, such a much used word, so powerful on its own, so deadly in its letters, so empty when it stands in the middle of a sentence. These pictures in your head, can you ever be brave enough to show them to me? You say you photograph the insides, that each word is a pixel of another’s soul, mood, emotion. You openly and at the same time secretly dread the idea that you forgot to tell people what you photograph. They tell you, they can’t see. Endless hours turn into fickle traces of burnt paper, dead with just one finger pressing against the other. You say your work is never done. Are we done?

The toil over each sentence, like the discarded clothesline that some foolish geese believed lead to a magical ending, pulls the scent of motivation from her guts, out, out, out. But she is alive and she knows not because her finger bleeds or because she breathes, but because she feels lonely and empty, she feels a deep yearning, a churning of emotions not in her heart but her stomach where no amount of indecency can ever live again. She knows she is alive when she sits crumpled up next to the bathtub, waiting for the water to cover the room so she can float. She knows she is alive when the bread that she tears a piece from never leaves the table but still dances laps around her plate. Where is her home? Who is her home?

You think it all can be undone with one word. When mountains are moved on the inside, when water and cliffs clash and the weak stone leaves itself bare open to the carving and bruising and bullying and finally gives another of its piece to the fearsome ocean. When the fall is met with a cushioned haven that wraps its kind glance like bubble wrap around the unsuspecting fallen victim. She has been building a nest, brought ornaments from far and wide, lined the inside with rose coloured broken images of melodies once sewn to her skin. The seams came undone and she laid them one by one, patch for patch, on top of the branches and their lovely shoots. When the music plays, she paints melodies and imagines paintings of a million colours. She will pick at the thread, she will pick at it at the seams. She will use words to sculpt her broken body and tightened stomach. To make nothing. To live in a dream.

In the end it can be a heavenly day or just another useless collection of empty hours. And now, have you seen a photograph above of a sensation you know you once felt? Read slow. Read again. Has that image been really recorded? I. I try to play with the exposure, the focal length, the colour temperature, the iris and the depth of field. Sometimes it’s a collage. Some other times, it’s a clear picture of a moment that you know to have passed. I’m no longer angry at these words above. I understand that some subjects present themselves hazy even to the best photographer.