"The vitality of thought is an adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them." A. N. Whitehead
I'm feeling quite low today. Something about the proximity of Christmas and the way in which it seems designed to pinpoint and expose those of us who don't feel we really have a home to go has begun to gnaw away at me already. Additionally, the reminiscences about this time last year, before the final throes of the end of the dredges of my former relationship has started pecking away at my mind, like an insistent and anxious bird. This is obviously not helped by an overwhelming tiredness. I'm not sure how to combat it, when I know what I need is some time off and a bit of hope for the future. Which, of course, will require some planning.
I also know this is part of the call of the creative stuff, begging me to come back, when I can't. How can I come back, when I don't even have a whole day off anymore? I am doing what I said I would. I'm paying my way. I sold my piano to do this, but I have no hope of ever buying a replacement, let alone having a flat to put it in. And even if I could, it's already too late. It's still painful to look back at how long it took me to think I could even begin to call myself a musician, how much I dedicated myself to trying to prove I was, to make up for my total lack of formal music education. And the suspicion in the eyes of many that music was not where my 'talents' lay at all and I was heading for a fall by liking music so much, did so much more damage than anyone could have imagined. (They were right on the latter, but for the wrong reasons.)
And so it is that I find myself a little lost today, away from a real sense of home, speaking three different foreign languages in one day (French, Czech and German, in that order) and wondering what on earth constitutes 'home' anyway. I keep thinking of that Christmas when I was cat-sitting in someone else's flat, looking after the two cutest cats in all Christendom and being paid for it. I knew I was the luckiest person on earth. I also knew it would never happen twice.
I was slightly envious that the couple I cat-sat for had such a lovely life of heading off to LA one month, Stockholm the next. I still have a silly little dream of going to California one day and hanging out on some under-populated beach somewhere there (if there is one). Oddly enough, on the other hand, I wouldn't mind heading way out to San Francisco instead, even though the two are not even remotely close when you look at a map. Still, fantasies are fantasies. They work fine in your head.
Just like the idea of being able to change trajectory and run different groups of meet-ees, maybe even for singing/songwriting or even do some playing, writing and performing of my own, keeps circling my mind but there's great doubt it'll have a real landing place. And all the while, I long for a couple of days of luxury, such as a long afternoon reading books and magazines, followed by a languid bath with all sorts of potions to pamper myself with. Or a day just playing and writing and even recording songs. But fantasies are hard to convert to reality. Especially when you haven't even got any time to think.
No comments:
Post a Comment