I am feeling a little low, a little lonely. I go to my AA meetings and then I remember why I stay aloof, at least in the sense of avoiding intimate partnership with these people. It makes sense in my circle that we are all routinely saved from ourselves because not all of us are sick on the same day. Still – I am a little low, a little lonely today.
I went out last night. A friend of ours is a pro, a blues singer. She has entered a new trio and these guys are really good. They all sing well. I sense that my friend is playing catch up with their musicianship but she has a great voice and knows how to sing, can keep a good rhythm guitar going. The keyboardist is amazing. This puts me in a mood too. He is playing local clubs and he is that good. How steep the slope to the big time – how many people play at such a high level. I am just a dabbler when I compare myself with working musicians. I was among a crowd of people. Most were partners, one gay couple and three heteros. I was at one end with two women I invited along. They didn’t stay long. I was the next to leave, around ten. The trio did a mix of jazz and blues. We ate. This was an Italian place with pretty good food but steeper prices, though modest by big city standards. The restaurant is not in downtown, is out in a local town, the next one north from my place on the local route. They can’t charge like downtown.
It was standing room only. The Ellen Whyte Band logo is well known locally and she can fill the audience with her own fans. That’s what we were part of, all being friends of hers in another context. She has four CDs to her credit and has won local awards for her blues work. Ellen has been doing this for a while now. She is not young anymore, grown kids.
Flying Above Clouds
I followed updrafts
into the clear air above
the clouds. Bright Sun shines
without cover there,
but air is thin and so cold
in that clarity,
not like home, like you,
moist and warm citrus honey,
so I came back down.
May 11, 2009 7:20 AM
Contraction
1 week ago
I pick up on your sadness here Christopher and the way in which another's or others' creativity, musicianship, helps offset the worst of it.
ReplyDeleteSometimes it's hard being alive.
Beautiful writing Christopher....so true Elisabeth...
ReplyDeleteSometimes , some days the lonely side is clearer than the sun that can keep it a bit at bay
Linda
Moist & warm citrus honey... mmmm
ReplyDelete:) I love that home thought
Thank you for your comments. Sometimes the truth seems too easy to say, like what I wanted from you guys was some comfort.
ReplyDeleteI am living a life of privilege. I dropped fifty bucks on a night out as if I could afford that, but I can, really. I treated the girls to this evening because I asked them to come and they are not so flush.
I am friends with everyone I was out with, and I am friends with Ellen. I even got to play congas behind her one time. There are more friends out there besides the ten I was with. We saw a couple more that night, who happened to be there too.
What on earth am I whining about, and why do the Brits and Aussies call it whinging? Ick. It is just I am a married man in my soul and I live better as a partner, this even though I know that my habits are loner habits. I wouldn't say that women live better partnered with me. I am up right now here at the 'puter instead of back in bed. I wander in the night.
That kind of lonliness, being surrounded by so many friends, it almost makes it harder to be alone.
ReplyDeleteYour poem is poignant sweet and I ache for you, wish you had a mosit and warm citrus honey to go home to, to leave in the bed as you away to your puter. Yes, that would be very sweet. I do believe you would love very hard.
xo
erin
Yes, Erin, I would love in detail given permission to love in my own way. What is unfortunate is that so often there is a disconnect between ways of loving. I want to love and be loved my way and most of us do. You want to love me your way but I want to be loved in mine. Here is the trouble. It is often difficult to accept the differences.
ReplyDeleteI know my wife, rest her soul, once had many "If only you would..." and so it seemed that what I did was not as important as what I did not. She had ways to know she was loved that I did only awkwardly if at all. This meant that one of us would be uncomfortable no matter what.
After the heat of the beginning is over, as we all have experienced, this matter of fitting together becomes essential. Love requires growing but the basic pathways of development cannot be too foreign unless we are each hoping for such major structural change in the other.
I know many men experience women who expect as a matter of course big changes from them that they did not bargain for. There are probably sound reasons for this but it is unrealistic.
My wife complained she did not know what I wanted of her because I had very few demands. That meant I suppose that she had not enough ways to rate her ability to love or her way of knowing my love was there for her.
Your poem had me in a glider, maybe alone but enjoying the spectacular view, and floating, an experience individually shared and maybe reported, but something done alone. I read the poem first. Your narrative is a different sort of loneliness with others all around. Being alone either way, I'd choose the sky.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, Anthony. The poem is not about the same sort of thing as the post, not at all. I didn't write the post as an attempt to marry with the poem. Often I have something to say about the poem. This time I was just sharing a bit of my life today. I don't have a rule, I guess and I don't always say what I am doing. Sometimes I will explain myself in the comments. I am still reverberating from my visit with my incarcerated friend, I think. I lose heart a little every time I visit him.
ReplyDeletemmmmmm, everything seems to be already said.... but you know,i just want to be part of this, this moist and warm citrus honey post
ReplyDeleteI understand the melancholy of the narrative...as I have a similar bent, though may be understanding yours incorrectly through the view of my own. The more people, the more alone I feel, and when faced with great talents and opportunities I had wished for myself...the melancholy is compounded.
ReplyDeleteAnd the poem was tender really. I would like to comfort, but today I feel like I have no aptitude for it. Wish I could do better, but feeling a little lost at the moment. I am sitting here with you though, just sittin' in a silence I hope you find companionable. Is that a word?
I feel awkward, sometimes, after I post. I have been working out something. When I visit my friend in jail, I leave with the enormity of consequences and carry them for a while. The world seems to provide. The burden is beyond bearing straight up and so things go absurd. But the fucker leaks and the truth sneaks through and my friend has hives in protest. He is allergic to his position.
ReplyDeleteAnd me, while my life is more bearable, my position is not dramatically different. I am under my own sentence, serving my own time, no parole.
You have that one piece of it right, that when I go see musicians there is a price I pay. It is too easy to place myself there at the keyboard looking at my shade in the chair looking at me at the keyboard. Then I go home and listen to my own playing. Then I go to bed. At least I sleep.
Sometimes, when things get simple, I am amazed at my own music, and incredibly grateful that I have all my expressive ways. Other times I try to make sense of my unremitting need for grandeur. Sometimes I weep.