A lot of my friends are gone. They didn't move away or anything. It's not like that. I'm not a kid anymore. My head is a radio for every song that has ever had meaning to me. It's a radio in the sense that it's imperfect. It crackles. Sometimes it's between two places, or a muffled conversation behind a wall. But it tries. Why forget? Why else are we here? Little fragments of a self made defamiliar shift around in my head like continental plates. The abrasions cause deep unrest. I can't remember the last time I heard you laugh. It's selfish but I want to know where you are now, and who you are now. I find coming back to the memories I locked away a strange experience. Little bits and pieces that I never knew were permanent background ambience, now whole once again. Long embedded, it's like a second skin. A lot of my friends are gone.
Are my old shirts and CDs still in that awful basement? Were they thrown out? How can I be present? How can so much of you be right here, and right now, when all of you was way back then? I look for you in everyone I meet. Most days I can be either everywhere or nowhere. My energy pattern is Hibernation -> Explosion. At every corner of the earth some part of you exists: A raw, gnawing synth. A steelpan's pure, forgiving tone. Little arpeggiated, crystalline drops of rain. Something always brings me back to you. To know freedom is to know imprisonment. If only I could just be here, right now, more often. So many of my almost-somethings would see the light of day.
The things I make always feel bigger than me. As I've only barely begun to crawl I hear the beating of wings overhead. This is scary. A lot of my friends are gone. When the lines are agreeable and the polygons show their good side for me, I feel deep inside that long lost mystery made clear once again. As the rush of self flows out from the pen I feel more than just the vessel for the soul. The soul takes control, and the aggressive punching bass is only, and has only ever been, the reverberation from within. When I have privacy I like to sing sometimes. I like to hit the really high notes. It's something that really has to come from inside. That vulnerable, honest feeling is my point of ingress. I'll keep falling in love over and over and over. I'll spill over and make a big iridescent mess. This is a two way street, after all. I believe past me would be happy. I believe past me would be excited.
It could have been like any other day. Novelty scares me lately. What if the flame grows brighter? What if the glowing golden light in my chest comes back? I can hardly imagine until it's there. Lately I feel like every 10 minutes I brush my teeth and go to bed. What keeps me so strapped in when I come back for the memory? What is the strangest, most intensely colorful thing you've ever heard? I've heard songs like that. I've met people like that. It's so wonderful. It's so wonderful to be touched. I bridge the divide of a decade or longer and the pounding in my head is now corporeal. I listen front to back. Then I play my favorite parts again. And again. Over, and over, and over, to make up for lost time. How I feel right now is how I want to feel all the time, or at least, so much more. I imagine you here so I can tell you how wonderful it is.
The memory emerges from the cocoon and becomes the sound. It's just as wonderful as I remembered. I feel the same about if I ever see you again. I choose to believe.
