The Apple In The Ashtray

I just back back from St. Paul after a show at some downtown venue with Big John Bates and The Voodoo Dollz. Nice night, I suppose. Go-go dancers and everything. It's late; too late for any rational people to be awake and functioning...

It started to rain when I decided I would drive down here to write all this; fitting for the mood. Are you wondering about the title? No this isn't about fucking apples and cigarettes. I didn't eat any apples today and there are always cigarettes but they mean shit to me. Just a little visual imagery to play on what I want to say, I guess.

You ever just know when a night is going to be one you always remember? This is one of those nights. I walked around the city after I finished playing and lay my head down as I walked. Thinking of the past, thinking of the future, thinking of what is lost and gained in the schemes of change one makes in one's own life. It is hard to remember when things were not so difficult. So I'm going to tell you a story. A short one, for far be it for me to intrude too much on your daily life; you who have problems of your own and no conceivable way to relate to mine. You would have to know me to understand or give a shit. I tell you, I am weary of chickens.

Tonight is a night in my life when I get a glimpse. A glimpse, by definition, is an impermanent thing. Seeing myself on the stage with the two other members of my band was a glimpse. Seeing how far we've come and how well we've done is now a glimpse, too. It is sad, my friends, that I not take myself any further down that road. You give and you give and you give and there is always more wanted and needed and asked of you. That is a tough life, let me tell you. We've all known it. So why the big fuss, right? I guess I'm just a sentimental fool for genuine passion in the name of things. My right hand boy is leaving. He wants to go home and go to business school, the prick. That's fine, you can't hack it, you can't hack it. My dear friend is staying, and it's out of pride and fear and anger and all the other wrong reasons one could stay. Blinded by his own ego and short-sided thinking to even conceive whats really going on. Not only that, but I get two for the price of one with this kid. So here I stand. Walking on some street in some city I have never been too, and not giving a damn about it, or the rest of the night that most people in their waking lives will ever get to experience. I can't savor it. I can't just live it up like people do.

I am a drifter. I am always and never happy. I stay, I go, it makes no difference to me. I will always be just as I am at this moment; stuck in an open cage. Do you want to know what the really bittersweet thing about it is? I could live this life. I could go on and push and push and we WOULD make it and I would be that person you knew who made it and worked for it, and yet I let it go. Why? Fuck, I don't know. It's not pressure from friends or family. It's not practicality or morality issues. Feelings. Fuck em, sometimes. It's all I have ever had in this world. I tell you one thing, I pity the poor girl that meets me one day and decides to take up the challenge of putting up with my crazy shit.

I don't know many things. You get one life, and one life only. 75 years if you're lucky. What to do? Everything, if its possible. I have done many a thing since being hatched into this world. I've been crushed and crushed others. I have travelled to different cities and met some amazing people. People who are in it, people who are living a life, doing their thing. People content and distressed, people in and out of love. Yet here I stand, forever in some strange transition. Derived by the belief of ultimate contentment. I want things that are real. I want a day when I wake up and relief is the first arrow into my chest, rather than grief and heartache. I'm not talking about a girl. I'm not talking about hating my job. Think if a wave. This wave is emotions. This wave is everything you have experienced in the past and everything you prject for the future, and your emotional connection to them. I feel this wave when I wake every morning. I wake up, and immediately I am hit by all the things I feel I have done wrong, and all the things I can't control, and all the things that I want to do and should be doing and everything thats wrong now. Everything. My dreams are ridden with puzzled abstractions about the future and the past and I don't know what I can do to strip them from my mind. A psychiatrist would be in order, I'm sure, but fuck that. Point is, things aren't always as carefree as you might think they are.

So I'm leaving. Saying the long goodbye and hitting the open road. A little soul-searching, if you will. Who knows who I'll be when I get back. Hopefully not the same; not so ridden with problematic insecurities about my life and what I do and and do not do right.

Any words of wisdom? Didn't think so. The e-mail address is at the top of this blog page, you tell me your story.

-C