Art Doesn’t Betray.

Why do we hold on, when we should let go?

I’m sick of crying. I’m stuck in this deja vu of emotion, but it’s not even real. If it was I would be able to write about it. It’s just a sad, cheesy song playing on loop.

My ego is hurt and I’m confused. I deserve better. Suddenly it’s easy to idealize past relationships, people who are long gone from your life, when the present is bleak.

I have no one to blame but myself. I’m afraid of this pit of loneliness, and being with him chases it away, at least superficially. But I don’t feel loved, so consequently I can’t experience love. There are too many barriers between us. I’m at the point where I’ve resolved myself either to a fate of loneliness or settling for whatever is there. Sometimes he’s a nice distraction, but something is always missing. I  hope time will fill this emotional void but the gap only gets wider.

Can I be strong?

I only find strength in running away and shutting everyone out. You must do that, to reinvent yourself. You crawl into a dark cave underground and go through the horrific process of catharsis, it is so gruesome no one should be allowed to witness it.

This notion was rewarded with proof before. At my lowest I was at my highest. Alone I strove and achieved things I was later proud of, it was the influence of others that stumped my progress.

Can I be strong by running away? I know he won’t run after me to catch me and make everything okay again. Not him, maybe someone else. Maybe no one ever again. Or maybe I just have to do it for myself this time.

Back to the mirror, back to the same much discussed issue of internal conflict that bleeds into everything else that concerns my life and relationships. It’s difficult to separate the patient from his disease. Is he defined by it? Or can he be cured, overcome it? Leave it behind and be reborn?

What must I do?

I can’t keep making promises to myself and never keep them. It’s just that little gap between dependance and freedom that I have to overcome. If I stay away long enough I could heal and be restored to my former glorious self: strong and impervious to emotion, dedicated to art and nothing human.

Art, after all, doesn’t betray.

Why Write?

Don’t ask me, I haven’t written here in over a year.

But I don’t have the guts to press send on my meandering thoughts and have them reach their destination to be flippantly criticized. There are unsent letters in my draft-box, permanently addressed to no-one.

I don’t have the guts. It’s redundant to repeat but I do it for emphasis. I’ve lost confidence since reality hit me in the face like the fickle Montreal wind.

I used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked myself for that. Chain-smoking, unapologetic, shaggy, skinny, smirking in the shadows of mediocre passerby. I was a silent revolution. I would be stopped on the street and commanded for being different. I would be harassed by weirdos because they mistook me for their own. I demanded the adoration of the foolish. I aroused intrigue. I was untouchable, but not in the boring sense of the word that often describes only beautiful people. I used to be pure and unspoiled and I had a blog called Another Bullshit In Suck City.

Yes, the city has changed, and it finally fits the description. There’s no suckiest city than this abominable French-English hybrid. This certainly isn’t a place for a  high-bred, stuck-up Torontonian. But sadly my loathing of Suck City doesn’t help escape it. It exemplifies me. It’s like staring in a mirror and seeing a hot mess. The more faults I find with it the more convinced I am that I belong. The further I ran the more relieved I am when I come back and begrudgingly accept that it has become my home.

Not that I ever had a home. I always said I was easily domesticated, like a rare breed of a traveling snake-bird that could grow and shed feathers depending on climate.

But why does this place rub me the wrong way?

The minute I ask is the instance of realization. Suck City is the place of disillusion. The basket with all my eggs in it, which I dropped repeatedly and turned into yellow mush. I had high hopes for this city [and this is the only cliche I regret using, despite the fact I write solely in cliches]. I rode in on a big, gray bus with a smile and cheesy music playing in the background. I built a perfect existence in my mind.

Here I committed and I followed through, I invested more time and effort than ever before. Here I’ve experienced content in loneliness, happiness and a friendship that restored my faith in friendships. Here I fell in love, again, in the senseless fashion of high-school crushes. Here I experienced being part of the coveted, popular crowd, and realized why I was smarter to stay away from them in my teens. Here I felt like the prettiest girl around; I made boys stand in line for a chance to date me. Here I followed my dream; I realized what the most important thing to me was. Here I finally figured out who I was, and I polished it into close perfection and put it on my “to do” list.

But two years have passed and it’s still on my “to do” list.

I gave up on my dream, and I lost myself. I got my heart broken, again, and realized I was meant to experience unrequited love in a continuous loop. Here I lost faith in people and long lasting relationships of any kind. I understood that my place will forever be on the other side of the cool-fence. And came to terms with my life never being extraordinary but forever mundane, broken and lonely.

It’s so hard when it doesn’t come easy.

I wish that Suck City only had a supply of monotonous Bullshit Nights, but instead it’s a dangling carrot of possibilities that eventually wash down the drain, Ultimately, it made me numb and pathetic. A bruised orange peel with the vibrant coloured juice squeezed right out. I roll around, trying to stay grounded and not be carried off by a stray gust of wind.

[God, I can’t believe I’m entertaining this stupid metaphor.] But the point is Suck City has made me empty. And my only tactic is to run away again; become MIA in the only world where I’ve made a small imprint. I hope to find a place in the real world this time, but I’m not holding my breath.

If I had any shred of logic I wouldn’t blame Suck City for my disillusion. Realistically, I can’t expect to leave old problems behind in another city. Eventually they resurface even when you’re under the impression they were magically sorted out.

But I’ve never superscribed to something as simple as logic.

If a writer falls in the forest and no one reads the writing he has left behind, does he still exist?

Then why write?

I still can’t figure it out, but I write nonetheless. Let my words echo in an abandoned forest forever.

Madness of Meaning

I’m no longer sure.

I’ve let myself down.

I whole-heartedly screamed “I’ll never give up”

I turned

and I got swallowed in the grey world around me.

The prophecy of a secret garden no longer holds

and before I encrypt this message

I’d like to recreate that certainty I often acquire when writing.

Before I lose it forever again, I’d like to know again, if only for a brief moment the meaning.

I live a half-life. Somehow only my body has managed to survive. My mind refuses to believe in the essence of the soul, it goes against reason and the dogma of self-loathing and masochism –and we simply can’t have that.

The state of the tool is trivial, it can run on low quality fuel, as long as it works, walks and shuffles through life until it ends.

But what then? What’s the point, if the end offers a mystifying, magical concept, so much so that life pales in comparison –death seems almost beautiful. The colour that is death, the absence of colour to some, seems sweeter than the million shades of grey that life is.

“There is another world,

there is a better world,

oh there must be.”

I could let go, but I hold on to the possibility of magic.

Some possibilities are inconceivable: true, lasting, unconditional love; selflessness; the existence of God.

The part of me that hasn’t relinquished to total decay and to the absence of human consciousness (perhaps, the pinky?) holds onto the notion, the possibility, the dream of a better place, of magical concepts like destiny, heroism, greatness.

Those things we imagine out of proportions when we tag them to the mysterious faces of our idols. Suddenly, their suffering, their turmoil and achievement is no longer of human proportions. They’re simply untouchable.

I can’t place the magic, not in the hands or hearts of people. Where does music come from? It can’t come from the fingers of a mere mortal, it can’t be formed on paper or in the mind of a prodigious person. Its source is divine.

Who said the beauty of the human spirit is in its contradiction? So is the ugliness.

Lyrics are misguided, they can freely describe ludicrous feelings of fleeting infatuation, clichéd analogies and hyperboles attempting to recount hormonally induced emotions, or the most primitive desire, disguised with clever euphemisms for the mere act of fucking. But melody… melody is untainted. It remains universal, transcendent of both sadness, nostalgia, hope, faith, inspiration and joy.

I don’t understand art, not do I care for it. My talent for drawing is wasted in my hands.

I understand the technical necessity of language and how it can be creatively manipulated to both expel an emotion and to induce it.

But music is beyond me. And except for admiration and love for the instruments that produce it, I rarely feel the same reverence for the humans “responsible” for its melodic composition. I prefer to remain in the dark when it comes to lyrics, artists, their appearance, their characters. I selfishly long for their voices and melodies to be mine and mine alone, to tell stories of my sadness and to comfort me with hope. I only love music sang in languages I don’t understand.

The only thing that can be truly flawless is music. It’s enough for me to hold on to this stark existence, even living in a grey world that’s inhabited by lowly humans that overpower beauty with imperfection, selfishness, hate, war and destruction. I can’t love myself because I hate them. I am one of them, therefore I hate myself.

I can’t afford myself luxuries like happiness and self-fulfilment, not to mention living in the ecstasy of music.

I keep getting stuck. My body and mind are in complete conflict. Without the soul, a mediating factor, they will continue fighting for control. The body wishes to survive, it even desires to thrive; my mind sees no point.

“Flush it all down, ma, please flush it all away”

I can’t find a purpose. I don’t have a good enough “why” to explain my need to exist. Living for the sake of survival, for the sake of reproduction and continuation of this destructive, lowly species, for the daily pleasure of feeding and fucking, is that enough?

According to my findings: there must be another force that drives us to live.

It isn’t love, or the misconception that you are in love. When I was “in love” I still wanted to die.

It isn’t the pursuit of happiness, especially when you’ve discovered happiness lies in ignorance and that it isn’t achievable through the predictable means (money, friends, love, success, attractiveness and health).

Is it optimism? I’d rather live in bitter reality than be happy and delusional.

Hold on,

The Secret Garden.

The superb capability of the mind to produce its reality, either in perception of the external world or in the total surrender to an alternate, imagined reality.

I’ve done both, and though happiness can be experienced, its effect dissipates and is quickly replaced with bitterness once you realize your body still lives in the grey world you’re trying to escape.

I’m out of ideas.

Until I find a reason, I anticipate many days, weeks, months, years of half-living.

“Excuse me, I apologize. It seems to last for hours, it seems to last for days.”

But I still believe in music.

“it’s easier to believe

in this sweet madness

oh this glorious sadness

that brings me to my knees.”

Never Had It

I see you sit
And swallow pain
For all of those
Who will not speak
You raise your voice
You fill the stage
Your eyes are wide
You know the weakness
That you’ve felt
Is not just yours
So many more
You’re not alone
The song you sing is not your own
You fill the room with something real

Youve never had it so you hesitate to try and find it
You listen carefully for whispers of what lurks behind it
You play the corners
Never get too close to where it might be
Waiting for you
Never had it
Keep on wanting something more

Keep hiding the hope and than the pain is not yours
No ones holding a rope gotta pull up on your own.
All the songs have been sung
And all the doors have be closed
Keep on wanting more.

I watch you wander through these halls
You slouch you shrug you shrink away
I call you stop you blink you pause
You wander who
You think the day
Will never end
But when it does
You stay until the building’s dark
You’re on the bus
The doors are locked
You looked inside
But did not touch

Youve never had it
But you know how to provide it so you
Stand up and call for it
Nervous describing what you go through
You dont wanna get caught up in all the
Things they say to try to provoke you
Dont need anyone to tell you
Keep on wanting something more

Recipe.

If I could numb myself for long enough, automotize every single action on until it becomes a painless habit, one day I will wake up, already in the perfect state, in the perfect world that I’m trying to build…

I just have to endure until that time comes. I just needs to endure. I need strength.

I need to say:

Goodbye to you, goodbye to everything I knew.

But the only way I know to numb myself is too disappear from here and appear elsewhere. I can only live in lies for so long, I wish I could, forever.

I’m not ready to hear yet, I’m not ready to open my eyes.

Just a little longer…

In silence.

Breaking Point.

I will live forever,
without the sweat,
the blood,
the tears,
the hurt,
the rejection,
because I don’t have to act
I can live in the world of dreams forever
and each day would be my first
each song would be my enlightenment
each memory will fade into nothing
and I will start over
each day

because I am the anomaly
and its on the tip of my tongue
the revelation

I want to want to live
why
cant I
why hold on, to people and old memories?

if its not by force and structure how then
by love?
I cannot fake this love
and i cannot attain it

validation
I want to know
that I’m not forgotten
whose job is it to remind me?
to remember me?
all my life I’ve been so fleeting
nor here nor there
alon(e)
in translation
in the the corner
in transit
away
never there
absent
absent minded

its cold outside
its colder in

a kindred spirit
or perfection
its a valid quest
especially since none of it matters

how can i believe in love when i don’t have any idea how to feel it?
why would anyone love me if I’m so disgustingly unlovable.

everything is wrong
imperfect
blemished

no blame for running away
this is the breaking point
I will create you
I will make god
especially for me
it’s the only way

i will draw a beautiful morning with you

and suddenly every piece falls into place
[this message is in code]
a secret that’s the rest of the silent world is undeserving of

suddenly i understand every song
and its about me

and i will make you
i now what to do
wonderland will be resurrected, and as its rightful owner will be the queen.

Quest and Resolution

Misery: I’m like a broken record stuck in an eternal loop of past mistakes. I escaped Toronto only to reinvent myself in Montreal, as the old me. And like clockwork, the time has come for self-destruction. For every meticulously created plan there’s a counter plan and I just happen to be better at destruction than creation. I give myself a month every time to climb out of the rut, then I plan my own demise. It’s only fitting to fail, it’s the only way I know how to live.

Do I really want to let go? I’m stuck in the past, idolizing a faded image of myself and resorting to old destructive behaviours. I see no future and I hate the past. I want to escape somewhere and let my mind drift to the solitary scenery of imagines forests and farmlands.

Bliss: Reality never fairs well in comparison to my mind’s cartooned wonderland where music fills the air, where the colours are lurid and there’s love in every flower.

I don’t understand happiness in this bleak reality. I don’t believe in love, I believe in loveless love making. There’s lust and there’s friendship, there’s a parent’s obligation.
The only magic and ecstasy I have ever felt had nothing to do with people. Why would I find a need for them? Why would I feel an inclination to socialize? To love? To care? My world is better without humans. My friends are holograms and ideals. They would never exist in the real world. They would be ravaged by senseless evil and injustice, they would be sacrificed for the greater good. To survive they’ll have to (d)evolve, to become imperfect.

People, however, serve a purpose. People make sex, intelligent interaction, laughter, music possible. Their fingers are instruments. Their minds conjure innovation. They’re tools to satisfy the needs of a greater mechanism. (Maybe nature, in all its glory, enjoys music.) Their voices are vessels for the miracle that makes this grey rock worth-while. If only they could exist without the ugly shell that is the human psyche…  vanity, judgement, ignorance, rigidity makes humans the lowest and the most ungrateful of animals. And I don’t blame mother nature for her calculated revenge. Humans must die periodically, millions of them, for the sins of humanity through a random lottery.

Would I give into the sweet release of death?…

I am a fallen angel, unable to assimilate into the greyness that this world is… Broken, my memories cruelly taken from me and all I have are these visions of love, laughter and music… elsewhere. These things cannot be found on earth. Would death bring me to this beautiful world, the world of my dreams?

All of us are fated to die alone, misunderstood.

[Am I in heaven here or am I in hell? At the crossroad I stand.]

What is my purpose here and will I ever find it? Have I volunteered to lead this life or was I meant to overcome it? Is there such a thing as “living wrong”? I seem to miss things that I’ve never seen before. I feel like I don’t belong, so I drown myself in the only remnants of heaven I possess –angel voices and momentary ecstasy, imagining a world that only exists for me.

There’s a reason heaven reclaimed angelic voices, like that of Jeff Buckley. The earth only deserves a glimpse of what could be.

At least now I know why I have failed before. I try to achieve something dictated by a foreign, solemn force. What I lack is something I’ve had all along. It was buried deep inside me.

Life, an ordeal, is a journey through the atrocities that make the city of Oz. What you found at the end of it is the thing you had all along.

Would being thinner make you happier? Would you be worth more if you were prettier? Do you need money to live and be happy? Do you need to be recognized to have talent? Must you wear your personality on your sleeve? Do you need to reduce yourself to be understood? Do the opinions of others define who you are? Are you intelligent, but is it only in comparison?

The truth is you are born completely alone and you die completely alone. Everything you must face, you will always face alone. All your decisions are yours, your choices and mistakes are yours and the world is entirely in your hands. You choose who gets to live in it, and you choose when it ends. The brief appearances of secondary characters are dramatic interruptions are necessary and unpleasant. That’s why their importance is fleeting…

It’s the angel voices you get attached to, the imaginary characters that you fall in love with, the beauty that exceeds the ugly creation that is humanity. Any sunset exceeds the beauty of an imperfect shell, tailored to the wiles of society. The pained swish of the sea, the smell of rain, the eternity of sound have no comparison to the disposable nature of people.

My depression stems from this: I am bound to the laws of Suck City. I must play by the rules until I have the autonomy to create the perfect world or reunite with it in my death. My realization is this: I must pay my dues to the glorious mechanism which yielded me. For whatever ridiculous reason, it felt inclined to create me –I have significance, mysterious though it is to myself. Each day that I survived my significance was reinforced. I was reared and bred for twenty years, I was awarded consciousness and the skill to write, listen and understand. I must find my purpose and I must live it, until I’ve served it and I turn to the nothingness from which I came from.

Whatever created me wasn’t society. Whatever reared me wasn’t environment. Whatever guaranteed my safety wasn’t my family.

To reach a godlike quality –perfection, one must overcome the greatest flaw–humanity.

Your body is sanctuary. You were born perfect. Your needs are the only ones that deserve to be satisfied. Your world dies with you. Why should you fear? Why should you compromise your individuality? You are law. You come above all others. You are God.

Inhibition, fear and submissiveness are self-destructive and diminishing. The only humans we worship are those who are fearless, confident and selfish. And that is the only God that is fit to rule this world. Your world already has a God –it is you, therefore you do not need to search for perfection elsewhere.
Shhh…. sleep tonight with dreams as sweet as angel’s wings.And all your dreams will bring you sweeter things.Oh, sweet thing, don’t you wish?

Two Things.

The sweet loss of control can only be experienced when you allow yourself to drown in a sea of imaginative possibilities that only art offers.
I find myself relinquishing any creative power and becoming inspired.
My hands have not rested since yesterday. I write intermittently. I eat. I calm myself down, numb myself with routine necessities but my hands itch for creative release.
Strangely, I find inspiration in unexpected places. The fear is paralysing and irrational, and I seem to be able to suppress it for a while. When it takes over, the source is clear: jealousy is shrouded with ugliness and relentlessness.
The root of insecurity stems from unnecessary comparison. This leads nowhere, the feeling of inferiority is self implied. Yet, I covet the talents of others, especially where I thought I excelled.
I feel robbed, with no admirable talents of my own; just bits and pieces of everything instead of an impressive, definitive and admirable craft I can take pride in.
Is it writing?
Is it music?
Is it art?
Is it the dramas?
Philosophy?
They all speak to me with lure.

My weakness is prevalent and spiteful.
I repeat old mistakes like a stuttering record. I only have myself to blame for willingly and lazily depreciating my own powers. I resort to the comfort of nothingness and anonymity. These are just thoughts few of many, and they will mean nothing weeks from now. These words will lose meaning and my lack of action will leave me barren.
I’m stuck in an ironic loop. I repeat the same rehearsed role, I don’t evolve and therefore I decay.
In shutting myself out I finally taste the bitterness of solitude.
I hide behind reality, but fiction has no secrets.
My deepest fears and desires are played out, in that ironic loop.
The loop. The loop. It repeats and overpowers.

This void that could only be filled by a perfect soul-mate is a distant dream. It’s conception by a realist is laughable… but the possibility exists, it hasn’t been disproved.

The music numbs the fears again. It whippers: the existence of a nirvana is only possible in a utopia, along with other discarded ideals. And to the land of broken dreams that live on, I’ll go.
I’ll curl up in the arms of a profound angel, shrouded with romantic mystery and poetic aestheticism.
My heaven will prosper in ruins.

A Case of You/ Joni Mitchell

Just before our love got lost you said
I am as constant as a northern star
And I said, constantly in the darkness
Where’s that at?
If you want me I’ll be in the bar

On the back of a carton coaster
In the blue TV screen light
I drew a map of Canada
Oh Canada
With your face sketched on it twice

Oh you’re in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you darling
And I would still be on my feet
Oh I would still be on my feet

Oh I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints
I’m frightened by the devil
And I’m drawn to those ones that ain’t afraid
I remember that time that you told me, you said
Love is touching souls
Surely you touched mine
Cause part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time

Oh you’re in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you darling
Still I’d be on my feet
I would still be on my feet

I met a woman
She had a mouth like yours
She knew your life
She knew your devils and your deeds
And she said
Go to him, stay with him if you can
But be prepared to bleed

Oh but you are in my blood you’re my holy wine
You’re so bitter, bitter and so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you darling
Still I’d be on my feet
I would still be on my feet

It has began.

“My world and I is as quiet as can be
Self imposed solitude isn’t half as bad as it seems…”

Suddenly…

The slow change is awakening from the ground and spreading from the roots.
I’m getting to the bottom of this and I’m letting myself be lead blindly.
This time, however, I am confident.
Because if you have no particular place in mind, any road will get you there.
And I’m ready, I’m armed with charm, wit and a nice ass.

Why do I let myself be swallowed in this universal hate?
Why do I go against my own nature and try to blend in?
I only feel loved when sound envelopes me like a velvet blanket.
One of those, fuzzy, electric ones that vibrate with warmth.

It certainly evokes something in me no person can.

I regret for ever for neglecting, in my ignorance, the things I love most.
I repress my talents because I’m a rigid monogamist, even when it comes to art.
I would let myself be consumed in love for a single art.
I would give it my all.

But I’m afraid?

Ah, it’s wonderful to be misunderstood! To yell to the world words that mean nothing!

We’re preached of a unified world, that of peace and a solitary existence. We’re all matter that attracts and expresses itself in mysteries only nature can decipher.
But who says I want to be as one?
I embrace my solitude, which has a negative connotation to other but to me it’s the sweetest sanctuary. I embrace my right for individuality. I reject reality and its imposition on my imagination!

I need nothing more.

“Don’t forgot the songs that made you smile,
And the songs that saved your life.
Yes, you’re older now,
And you’re a clever swine,
But they were the only ones who ever stood by you.”

My friends are the voices. Raspy, hesitant, beautiful, soulful, strong. The rhythms, climbing, slow, steady, nostalgic. The lyrics, sweet poetry that expresses the most beautiful of feelings. My friends are the golden leaves that dance in the wind, the trees that rustle as I walk by, the birds that get me out of bed, begrudgingly, the sunshine and the fresh rain, and nothing more.
I need nothing else.

“If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.”

I have died a thousand deaths and I’ve lived ones more to hear it again. For it alone, I would live a life of misery, writing love songs in the dark to proclaim its name.

Art can only be expressed in art, any intention to describe a feeling so inexplicable–the catharsis art creates–is in vain. Express your love, your catharsis in art, as Bloom says.
For art opens a doorway to the only world that could be beautiful, the only one that can be magical and full of love and the only one that justifies the title ‘utopia’.

And so it began. A noble inspiration for a humble cause.
I’m not sure where I stand but I’ve made sure I stand on my own.
Now where to find this love, this passion outside my sanctuary?
Perhaps this is my quest.

“And when you’re dancing and laughing and finally living
Hear my voice in your head and think of me kindly.”

The pursuit, happiness and love will forever be credited to art and music.