Living in Silence

meme

Living in silence

I wonder what it’s like. Or not having someone whose sensitivity is so aligned to yours that their words (and their notes, if they are musicians) you can turn to as beacons in the storm whenever you need them.

Leonardo calls from overnight camp, being miserable and wanting to be picked up early. He is not attuned to the manners and words of most Italian kids. As I listen to him I think “so this is what it’s like to be an adult. Trading magic for fact, no trade-backs.” As I lie down, unable to sleep after that call, more words lulling me “a bad time, nothing could save him...” “alone in the corridor, waiting, locked out, he got up out of there, ran for hundreds of miles” “a wave came crushing like a fist to the jaw...” “first he was stripped, and then he was stabbed by faceless men well fuckers, he still stands”. It’s the ringtone I have for him when he calls me. He actually hates the part with the bad word. So this morning I told him, over the phone. Son, I raised you to be kind and respectful, but I never meant that you would take punches and pull over from any course you choose to take because of rude, insensitive people. You tell them... that’s your camp, too and you “won’t back down”. Fuckers, you still stand.

Music and words that shape your moods, your choices, your memories. I wonder what it’s like to not have a random song come up to you on shuffle when someone has just been rude and insensitive, and that song beginning with the words “karma police, arrest this man...”

Or when you are calm, but sad and blue, and you can’t look for some soundtrack to your walk along the Hudson under the cloudy sky. And you don’t have “that there, that’s not me... I am not here, this isn’t happening” to turn to.

Or you are angry, and can’t scream off the top of your lungs “I would rather starve than eat your bread... can’t buy what I want because it’s free.”

And what about when you are in the final stretches of writing something of which you have grown nothing but disgusted, just so you can get something you are not sure you want anymore. How do you pull through without savoring the time when you’ll be able to drive past it, fast? “Saw things so much clearer, once you were in my rearview mirror. I gather speed...”

And what relief, as you are driving through a campus in Central Ohio, where someone has plastered the walls with gruesome pictures of broken feti... what a relief to be able to raise the volume of your car stereo “drop the leash, drop the leash...”

And when you are on the verge of doing something you have never done before, and never thought you would do. You know you may just be building regrets, your conscience is warning you against it “and I listen to the voice inside my head...” What if you don’t have those words “nothing, I’ll do this one myself” to push conscience aside and actually do it, for better and for worse.

I wonder what it’s like when you see that curly girl sitting on the grass watching her son play t-ball with yours, and you do not have Jack White in your head singing “I can tell that we are gonna be friends”. Or not think of the same song when you think back to when you entered your son’s “baby room” for a parents’ meeting and saw the smiling lady with beaming eyes. Are they green? Are they blue? You thought she was friendly and didn’t know yet what a friend she’d turn out to be.

And would people come up in my heart as often and as randomly, without music? How else would I bring up the pain of a friend I have never met, for whom “Just Breathe” is a love song yes, but also a desperate plea to a child who is breathing no more?

I wonder what it’s like to live in silence, or to live with just your own words, but I am glad I don’t.

Mike's Side

Good read! I wonder what's it's like to spend your time alone, re-digesting past regrets, without the inspiration that you need to come to terms and realize that it makes much more sense, to live in the present tense