GRIEVINGS AND FLAGELLATION, CHILDREN OF THE NORM!

It has been an INTROSPECTIVE week, mon bebe carrots, and I have a modicum of things to share with ya. The overall “Theme” this week is not going to feel as constructed as many others, because I want to talk about speed bumps.

Before you go getting excited thinking this about cocaine races, let me clarify:

When I say “speed bumps”, I mean them in reference to our lives. Many people seemingly need to reach a certain point of life-threatening stagnancy before any form of internal “fire” kicks up inside them, as they are consumed with the unfinished threads of “best before” dates, unrequited loves, and the turmoil of being wrapped up in the cycle of doing the same fucking things every SINGLE FUCKING DAY. Hung-up on missed opportunities and comfortable pieces of nostalgia, or the very safety of said routine.

Capeesh? I will only be speaking from personal experience because I’m not going to reference anything other than what I have lived and felt as a certainty within myself without the confirmation of others.

WHAT LANDS US THERE:

LOSS – Be it love, opportunity, advancement, time, drive, or even joy, each of these aspects can be powerful enough to make someone feel incredibly isolated. Sure, they can still be the chipper, always-a-laugh, kind of person you’ve always known on the surface, but they may also be unable to maintain that facade, and that SHOULD NEVER be seen as weakness. I like to think that the bygone age of ” I tough guy. Make muscles big. Win sports war. Tear ducts removed at age 7″ thing is only not an uproarious cliche to bodybuilders and roidheads. Almost fucking nothing in life necessitates being 300 pounds, all-beef, 1% body fat, but I digress. I believe failed/failing relationship (not solely of the romantic variety) are one of the biggest bumps we can hit as we roll through our lives, placing us uncomfortably high-centered on memories and friendship formed within, and the evaluations of how much we wish those new people and paths to remain a part of our lives thereafter. Unfortunately, sometimes, it is only after we have crossed those new bridges with individuals that we turn around to see that the bridge is both on fire, being swept away by the current, and that we may have left important things behind. Hindsight, amirite? Missed opportunities will likely be the most common rock-to-skateboard-wheel feeling we feel from all those aspects, as it relates to age. gender, race, and applicability. Imagine being competitively good at something and finding out the day after the competition comes to town. Missing that band you’ve always worshiped because you’re only 18 years, and 364 days old. Lastly, I find that the time, drive, and joy points all kind of breaststroke in the same kiddy-pool. Nowadays people don’t even care to refine the aspects of their lives that still have creativity and uniqueness due to some weird social-overbearing which has confined them to the belief that creation is somehow immoral. As if, when you talk about the struggles and the pain, people are only allowed to either look the other way or synthesize their own reality over what you’ve already said. God forbid our happiness to be based on different values, characteristics, and unviewable pieces of minutiae. Challenge the readily accepted standard of care for your friends that says they can’t be going through something just because you aren’t able to understand it.

NOSTALGIA – Momentos become painful reminders. Photos become vivid flashes of entire memories. Scents become familiar enough to bring you tears when you lay your head on the pillow that still smells like a distant lover, or playing your father’s guitar after he has passed. Heavily laiden with cracks are the lines of the heart. I have a recording of one song for example that my father wrote called “The Most” which despite him still behind alive and well, I cannot for the life of me sing along to without becoming absolutely shattered. It reminds of the vulnerability of the soul, and the pittance of time we are alotted here, but most of all it sledgehammers into me how disposable most music is. That’s right, coming from the dude who digs out records with one pressing, and four radio plays, MUSIC HAS BECOME DISPOSABLE. You see it in pivotal moments like Josh Homme kicking that photographer in the head. Even the artist is so disconnected from what they are playing that they have ceased to care how it is perceived, or the impact it makes. Do you think Freddie Mercury ever had a spare breathe to waste on shit like that? No, because he nurtured Queen every day. There never was, and now never can be, an underwhelming Queen show. Songs deserve 18-part harmonies, 4 reprises, to be licked until they are a sopping mess, AND a guitar solo. WE deserve those things as well, and yet we craft the songs of our lives like a fucking dubstep song; Uninterested with few breaks. “Screaming highs, dragging lows” which is actually far from a bad descriptor of my generation or any of the ones which came after me. Each note of nostalgia, a weight we may use to keep the sheet music in order. Each mis-played note a part of symphonies left behind, if we choose to.

“I played that song yesterday. Why am I playing it again today with less emotion?”

That line really took me aback as I read it from my friend Will’s status, questioning the twists taking the voice from someone like that and I realized, it isn’t because we are struggling to get something back, no-no-no, to tell at least myself that would be a lie. The longing for similar comfort to what we’ve lost is not a replacement, it’s growth. It is stepping forward and sometimes those steps just happen to lead you through the Swamp of Sadness. Whether we choose to drown with our Artax, our sole source of companionship in this rancid hell, or we can trudge on in the belief that this is not a neverending story of suffering, but just speed bumps (even if some are unjustly big). Sometimes we aren’t searching for the healthy aspect of what we had in previous relationships because they may not fill us with the same carnal emotions, and to that I say,

“Meh”.

Where do you place your values? Is your job your existence? Are your hobbies more like time-vampires? Who isn’t a part of your life anymore because you actually CHOSE and not because of who stuck around? What did you make the effort for? WHO did you make the effort for?

If you tried, you succeeded, because it’s not about what you get in the end, because we don’t know the end. When you reach a plane of comfort, then turn around and evaluate how far you’ve come, not when you’re kicking sludge in a swamp. The view will be better.

Also, if you hit those speed bumps with enough velocity you might be able to get some SWEET AIR.

STICK AROUND.