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May 15, 2006
this is the story
at least, i think it is. i don't know anymore, really. since i left my job, i've discovered exciting new levels of doubt. most of the time lately, i question the last bits of myself that i believe give me meaning. do i really have that much to offer as a writer? and even if i do, have i anything to write about? and even, as those hopes should by all rights be completely laid to rest, i wonder what i can still do with music. is the belief i truly hold in my voice enough to make that vocie heard? would it be enough to move someone?
what would it all mean? what would i mean? what do i mean without it?
i came to homeslice tonight. ran into friends, talked to the people i know that work here. i found a spot to call my own, as much as my corner spot at fado's, as much as the end of the bar at the coffeeshop.
i tried to write. i tried to make this whole experience of the last month and a half worthwhile all in one night, tried to make the hopes and dreams of a lifetime manifest in an evening with a bit of salad, pizza, and a notebook computer.
maybe the result is telling. maybe it's not. maybe this is like ESPN lately, cutting away from other events every time barry bonds goes to bat, ready to broadcast live the making of history when he breaks babe ruth's home run record. countless times now, the anticipation has only been rewarded with the sight of strikeouts, walks, and caught fly balls.
i will go down swinging.
*****
another chapter in the book where the chapters are endless, and they're always the same - a verse, and a verse, and refrain. aimee mann - 4th of july
i'm supposed to be writing. when i quit my job a little over a month ago and called an end to my legal career, it was in hope of finding a beginning in that end. even then, though, i feared, suspected, that the action would only hasten greater, more resounding endings.
i quit in hopes of shedding the false mask that i'd worn for so long, to uncover the real me, ready to reveal what i'm capable of, and what i mean and am worth. i hoped a new career would be found, though in retrospect, it was lunacy to think it would come so easily and readily, without a costly reinvestment in a complete reeducation, all of which would leave me nearer to 40, and 20 years behind the competition.
i had hoped that the writer would emerge more completely after i leapt from the sputtering airplane my life had become. but no new inspiration was found as i whooshed through the air. i am too lazy to commit myself to ideas that i don't have faith in. the things that i used to write here aren't enough anymore. they're no more than (hopefully well-written) curiosities, just reports for the caring and curious.
in short, i have technique - i can play the music of language - but i no longer hear a melodies that i believe in. improvisation is dead. i am salieri with no heart.
i look for jobs. once again, i have fallen back, and i'm applying for law jobs, although i'm avoiding jobs with litigation or high conflict.
i sleep. as much as before, i dread sleep, for the end of another day, and for the dreams it brings. i dream in color, in the technicolor truth of failure. i dread the mornings, dread waking to find the world as i left it.
i have also found love in this time. it has been a blessing of timing and fortune. it's also been painfully ironic. she seems to see me as more than enough, more than worthy, even as i've been confronted with my own mediocrity. she's given me some sense of reason, even as i'm becoming increasingly resigned to giving up on all that i thought i would ever, might ever, mean.
growing up, i always thought the idea of a mid-life crisis was absurd. but then, i also thought that i would be the person i knew i was meant to be. i never envisioned anything other than being a musician. writing was a fall-back position that came later. i really never prepared myself, mentally, for anything else. i certainly never prepared myself for this moment of realization, this crisis point where failure can no longer be denied.
through all the permutations of the dreams of my future, the key was beauty. i wanted to create and convey beauty. increasingly, i hide my eyes, because, increasingly, music and movies and words move me to tears. more and more, i appreciate the beauty that they can hold, but it's more a matter of loss. narcissistic, yes, but in those moments, i only feel that i have lost my life.
so this is the story. not the story written when i was 17 and clung to for 20 years thereafter. not the story i tried to sell to my friends, and to myself, of potential and possibility. not the story of a new and beautiful future. just a story where the same chapters seem to keep repeating, even when i try to write them differently.
Posted by Rob at 08:51 PM | Comments (0)
May 01, 2006
freefall (april, part one)
i've forgotten how to do this.
i can't entirely reconstruct the last few weeks. it's only been a few weeks, but it feels like... well, like a cliche, i suppose. it feels like a lifetime. no, not a lifetime, but just a life. a thing, a song with one mood, broken only by a single bridge, with choruses that do little more than sum it all up.
time has little to do with it, you see, because i jumped further, finally, further than just an extra moment in time. i jumped sideways and upwards and out, not just further down the ray my life has steadfastly lurched along for two decades.
the previous leaps that seemed so bold in my life were feeble. some part of me was always conscious of where the edges were, and of my balance. i knew how hard to jump, so that i cleared a little ground, but didn't leap off of the familiar platforms that others had created for me.
i was always conscious of the harness that was more about fear than safety. i jumped this time clutching fewer of the tethers that i had always at once railed against, despised, and depended on. even when they were slackened, i felt the reassuring weight of those ropes that might become strained, but would still undoubtedly break my fall - the approval of my parents, the continuing easy promise of an empty career. and again, there was my own fear, my own cowardice, and my own repeated failures to hold some faith in myself.
the first week was a matter of bravado, the adrenaline-ridden exhiliration of freefall, of the knowledge that i had stepped from the plane, unsure of whether the pack strapped to my back held a parachute, or just a diary and a bible with the same empty pages.
i ran, i biked, lifted weights, laid in the sun, looked for work. i felt the assurance of my own body, and some sense of the sort of self-awareness i felt during the hours of the marathon.
the rush went to my head. i wasn't ready for that kind of acceleration, and i wore out quickly. i backed off for a day, and then another.
and then, i realized that i was just falling. the moment of choice, and any self-affirmation that arose from it, had passed, was no longer relevant. i hated the direction of my life, and i exerted force through will to change that inertia. but i had only traded one sort of inertia for another. now, it was just a matter of gravity, a steady roar of wind in my ears so constant and steady and overwhelming that it was no different than silence, like the droning of asphalt beneath a truck at four in the morning.
nights and mornings and afternoons blurred, not out of indolence, not for a lack of structure, but because there was no meaning to differentiate them. my friends called, emailed, left comments on the blog, but many are only now getting answers, because i haven't known what to say to them (except thank you, thank you, and i love you all).
i ran a 10K race, and once again, i couldn't push myself. the question, and the dire need for an answer to it, had returned: why?
in the midst of this, passover came. an observance of sorrow and joy. an invitation, a seder dinner, and there i met frances. that night, we began to read, began to write a new story that changed nothing, and everything.
Posted by Rob at 10:34 PM | Comments (4)