I'm reposting this diary from long ago - before I had a flame out here in the mid-2000's and deleted all of my diaries. It was written on a night, like tonight, when I had the joy of playing live music, the reality of my struggle to do that for a living and the comfort offered me by the gas heater at home, as it washed cozy goodness over me as I fretted about my life, and the world, the same as I do 8 years later.
I also think it is somewhat pertinent to the bizarre pie-fest in these parts...
I hear songs in my heater.
Do you? Songs of liberation, or sorrow? Do you hear the desperation of hunger in your refrigerator fan? Do you hear the quiet melancholy of an unfulfilled evening alone as the gas boils a lone pot on the stove?
I do.
I live in a world of sounds that constantly remind me of how separated we are from each other. I live in a world of voices, or noises that sound like voices, decrying what we've done wrong to deserve this; to deserve the sadness and travesty of that which we all value most, our lives.
It is a world that most don't live in - even if their lives lead them there in solidarity, joy or despair - because it is the world of a musician. It is the world of one who 'hears' their life. It makes me wonder sometimes if artists are wired differently. Visual artists do see their lives, after all. And I have no doubt that cooks smell their lives. And writers have all ears on conversation.
But that is what I live with every day. I hear things. I hear songs and voices, the gurgle of engines, and the subtle settling of the buildings. No shit, I've listened to every building I've ever lived in.
And to me, those buildings always tell the same story. A story of sad decay, a story of abandonment, a life that desires love and recognition. The buildings want love and recognition - and yet they're inanimate creations of brick, wood, steel, mud.
If the buildings want that, and the heaters sing songs of liberation, or sorrow, what does that say for us - the beings that can only live with each other, the 'social animal'.
I think we all need to listen to the things that make sounds. And I think that we need to recognize, that our own animate beings also make the same sounds, the same gurgling, the same cry for company, liberation, sorrow, life.
We all cry. Why is it so hard for all of us to hear this?