I can birth the story but when I do, it takes on a life of its own.
I can scribble my true feelings onto paper but now it’s more than a poem.
I can live and take my bed up here and still have it not be my home.
I can have friends for life but really still be alone
I can have a heart of flesh but really have a heart of stone
I can pretend to not be affected but still be prone
I can write you a poem on your birthday, written in prose
I trail on alone… in the darkness.
I’ve never been more frightened. It’s thundering and the clouds are dark and charged with rain.
For a moment, it seems the only thing raining down tonight is me.
But I can’t turn back… not now anyway.
There’s nothing to go back to. They say home is where the heart is. In that case, my home is definitely not my home. And I have nowhere I can place my heart.
I feel stranded. Like the loneliest creature in this long and dreary night.
I call a friend but strangely their phone has been disconnected. It’s all awfully too convenient.
I look for a sign. Telling me to go back. Or to keep going. I’m done relying on signs. Suddenly, it begins to rain. So I search for the nearest cover. A tree provides me with temporary shelter. Still, I’m shaken with fear. Will anything ease my troubled mind?
Suddenly home doesn’t seem so bad. At least it’s a shelter from all the dangers of life. Although one day I won’t have that safety cushion anymore. I’ll have to venture out into the wilderness alone. Kind of like now.
Who or what will I give my heart to? Who or what will be the tree that shades me through the storms and the rain?
For now, there’s nobody. And that’s just a reality I have to deal with. Although I don’t want to, I will have to return home immediately. And not because anyone will worry about me. But because I have to. It’s my only home. As broken as it may be.
As the night progresses, I strangely find solace under this tree. This thing, it’s not a human but it’s providing me with necessary shelter. Life’s comical that way. I somehow find peace and quiet even though the weather has not yet tempered.
The street has no perceivable end. I could shout and no one would hear me.
It’s puzzling to me how no one is slightly worried for my safety. All I have is myself and an iTunes library of music. Is it enough? Who knows.
I was afraid of being caught in a thunderstorm but nature isn’t to be feared. It’s to be respected. And right now it’s coming through for me when no one is.
It’s not like I’m completely alone. But I might as well be. Having someone to talk to isn’t the same as having someone you can be yourself with, unapologetically.
I know I’ll make it through this. There’s no doubt in my mind. I always persevere and that’s a trait I like in myself. But for now all I see is a lost little boy. Alone in the rain.
A drifter.
A wanderer.
A vagrant.
A misnomer.
A complete anomaly.
No identity.
No ties.
No friends.
No lovers.
No profile.
1 of ?
Team player.
No… no.
If the answer was in him he surely would have found it.
Something’s missing.
He’s missing.
But to have been missing, he would have to have had a place where he belonged in the first place.
A ghost.
A virtual nobody.
No record.
No backstory.
Just the perfect phantom.
And the strange thing is… he might actually prefer it that way.
Do you remember waking up early Saturday morning and flipping to VH1 or MTV to maybe catch a glimpse of your favorite music video? Remember coming home from school and catching the “Top 20 Countdown”?
This guy here does.
They were simpler times back then. Times when music videos weren’t ready to stream at a moment’s notice.
I remember watching entire countdowns from number 20 to number one just hoping that my favorite song would be in there somewhere. I remember 106&Park everyday after school. These countdown shows were also a way to discover new music and to find out what was really hot in the music world. Sometimes they would premiere a brand new artist and it would be exciting.
I’ve never gotten over that. I still love music videos. I think most people do. But I pay special attention to them, the direction, use of animations and colors in the video. Sometimes I like to recreate that “countdown feel” by making a playlist on YouTube or letting the algorithm autoplay songs.
Still it’s not the same as watching a countdown anxiously for your favorite videos in between commercial breaks and finding new songs to go and hurriedly download onto your MP3 player.
I guess I’m just feeling nostalgic but I think there was something so pure about how we discovered music in those days. Not to say I’m not thankful for all the advances we’ve made thus far.
Do you have any special memories about watching countdowns on TV? Let us all know, we’d love to hear from you.
Remember the good ole days of burned CDs and mixtapes on cassette? This one here does. It’s crazy how the new generation doesn’t remember these things and God I feel old for saying that but it really is a blast from the past, you know?
I remember when I asked a friend of mine to burn a CD for me for the first time so I could play it in the car. I gave him a list but he managed to put in a few pleasant surprises in there that really made me happy. It was a special feeling. Then I learned how to do it myself and everyone got CDs.
The way we share music has changed. Barely anyone has the time anymore to just check out some music you send them. The music scene is saturated right now so we have too many options and also, there are just way too many distractions online. With a video tempting you to click it with a clickbait title or a juicy social media thread; we’ve spread ourselves thin.
Nowadays we just pay a subscription fee and we can have unlimited downloads. I’m guilty myself of downloading music I’m never going to listen to. Whereas in the past we had to scour a file sharing site for the best quality upload so we could download it onto our MP3 player and risk getting a virus infection on our computer.
Mixtapes used to be personal. They had your name on it, they were your signature. You got the chance to be a curator, or a DJ. A tastemaker. And mixtapes came with their own titles like “music to listen to when you’re sad” or “music that makes you dance.” It was almost like the art of making a playlist as where if you had one skippable track on the whole thing then it was a dud. It’s crazy how romantic it seems now looking in hindsight.
I’m not saying I don’t like the advantage of having access to hundreds of thousands of songs in great qualify readily available. I just miss the times where we paid special close attention to the details. Where we tried to create music for an occasion. For the right moment. Music pairs well with experiences as they imprint memories in your head that last a lifetime.
All I’m saying is that if someone wanted to send me a mixtape titled “songs that make me think of your beautiful face,” I wouldn’t be mad.
But just kidding.
Artistic Apathy 