The air out here

Feels like air I remember from when I was seven. Escondido, California. Never too hot, never too cold. It's a temperate July day here, unseasonably so, maybe 75 degrees. I've got a scuff of a hangover hanging over my head. But ne'ertheless I felt compelled to write and put the feeling down. I've been writing music lately, a couple of new songs, and it feels so good. Life is so strange, how times come and go, how feelings come and go. And how you cannot deny them or force them to be there when they are not. But I suppose you can promote them with good healthy things like sitting down at the piano and rootching through notes and words in old books. Or old journals. But what a privilege when a feeling comes so strong sometimes (out of nowhere you wonder) about a certain thing and then does little tricks on your mind, fills your imagination with scenery until it slowly empties out over days, weeks, sometimes months. Sometimes it truly comes out of thin air  and appears like a phantom in my head, sometimes it is born from another's mind in the words in a book or a vision in a movie or song. Like the first time I read Desert Solitaire. That feeling stayed for months, and it comes back whenever it pleases with a vengeance. Just a photograph of red dust will spark it back into existence. But when a feeling comes out of nowhere and passes through me, that's a real mystery. For me the past couple of months it has been this early 60's thing like remembering something that I never was even alive for. But there it will be in my head, a scene from the world before the gleam of candycoated corporations and shining freeways to suburban strip mall sprawl. Like when there were just Main Streets, and those were still all that mattered. And the blacktop was for playing jacks and sittin' on stoops and girls wore high ponytails and checkered shirts and the heat was unbearable and there were flyswatters and cigarette smoke everywhere, and AC was an absolute luxury. And the scene gets stronger and stronger, until a song comes out of me.

It used to piss me off when people talked about misery being the root of great art. Like artists were so much better at what they did when their lives were not complete, when their hearts were broken, when they had drama and sorrow. I couldn't bear to believe that you couldn't be just as hearty of an artist whilst living a life of happiness & contentment. I wanted to have my cake so badly and to eat it as well. But I'm beginning to see that what used to piss me off so much was the fear that what they said would turn out to be true. And in the end, it probably does. Does one stop creating art when they are happy, or perhaps just a whole lot less of it? And doesn't it take a WHOLE LOT more initiative, dedication, and inner resource than it does when it just helplessly pours through with tears and instability? Honestly, from what I can remember of being heart-broken, music seemed to just create itself constantly in me then, and without much work at all. I didn't even try. Perhaps turmoil pushes the visions out, like a frothing raging river pushes the boulders through. And that's OK. I'll take what random and infrequent inspiration comes with happiness, but I suppose I cannot pretend that I wouldn't be overwhelmed with more song-visions if I was poor, single, and miserable. And not that this is just about song-writing or music. I mean, really, in all other aspects of life I thrive off of inspiration and the strange imaginations of sceneries in my mind. Sorry I'm going on and on about so little. I mean, no one really gives a hoot what I thrive off, little dorky me, and I'm absolutely fine with that. I just have gotten off on a tangent. I suppose this could all be summed up more optimistically if I just said that what I really mean by all of this is that I am so very very grateful and in awe of the mystery when a "feeling" comes without trying. It's quite precious now, and rare. I must seize the opportunity. I hate having to invent a feeling. I want a feeling today, but I may have to invent it. I'm trying to grasp what the day's vibe is and what with this blurry head of mine, I don't think I can figure it. But through the hazy curtain I do b'lieve there are a lot of little visions back there. Perhaps there are ten or twenty visions that have been just out of reach? Maybe there's one about unrequited love, one about a Fitzgerald-esque night, one about the red canyons and rattlesnakes? I might just have to keep pinching myself, like in a dream, to see if indeed I can forge ahead and get to the stuff of them. Or just hope that one comes drifting through the curtain and lands smack dab in the middle of my mind.

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