The Angel

It's out.

Like the balding old groupie I am, I waited up past midnight to see if Playing the Angel would pop up for sale on iTunes. Sure enough, it did. And what a surprise! Instead of continuing on the heavy sounds of Violator, Sounds of Faith and Devotion, Ultra (especially), and Exciter, this one is a clear throw-back to the eighties, sound-wise. Even the melodies have a distinct playful dance quality to them, though the lyrics remain somewhat melancholy (ooh, terrible...). Now I just can't wait to see them. Live. In New York City. Madison Square Garden. Front row balcony. December 7. With my wife, and my other best friend. Sweet.

While I was waiting for that Angel to appear, I ran across an old acquaintance. Fiona Apple. Do you remember her? She released a couple of albums in the late nineties. Good ones. Decent ones. This one blows them away. Although not as arresting as Norah Jones, for example, Fiona does have one of those voices that has that dark, velvety feel to them. And this time the sound is honed. Focused. Refined, bassy, strong. Most of time, at least. Needless to say, this is now on the iPod.

And finally, at long last I remembered to pull down some songs from the The Life Aquatic soundtrack. There are, plain and simple, elements of my life that have been lacking the appropriate accompaniment, and that music is on this soundtrack, namely in a couple of Seu Jorge's portugese Bowie covers, and a couple of Mark Mothersbough's quirky tracks. I mean, someone earnestly singing Life on Mars?, in portugese, with just an acoustic guitar. What can be more disarming? By the way, check out Seu's album Cru while you're at it. That one has a couple of seriously good tracks on it. The real Brazil.

Anyway.

I should probably go to bed now.

Life as omelette

More of the same, I guess.

To live is to dip your finger into that pool of screeching noise. There, you have but the faintest control. Over anything. Even yourself. And your own feelings. The concussing, violent amalgam of hope, and despair, and all their cousins, will become deafening. But at any one moment you can pull back. Unplug.

Calm the tremors. Cut the sound. Take that needle of your emotions. Stop them from turning round and round. Ease down your eyelids, and enjoy the silence.

It is too much to take, anyway. Nobody can live non-stop forever. You need a vacation from life, every now and then.

After all, we are only human.

Right?

Bleeding

I have been reliving the horrific experience of my life these last few days. Not literally, and this time not by watching my wife in peril, but a dear, dear friend of mine.

The similarities are chilling. She, too, experienced a sudden and massive bleeding, which threw her over to a place where she felt it was touch-and-go for a while. The episode was powerful enough to evoke contemplations of what were to happen if she would die. How the scariness of it came in retrospect. And then the gratitude for just being alive, apart from everything else.

This girl is one of those precious few people who are already filled with joie de vivre, and thankful for being able to enjoy it. She was therefore in no need of such a wakeup-call, and I dearly hope that she will not receive more of them.

It may be just that it has been a while since we last met, or maybe just the shock of this happening, but I am really longing to see her again. Or perhaps this just caused a 'disturbance in the Force', seeing how I had sent her an e-mail, telling her that I was missing her, just hours before learning what had happened.

My wife will every now and then comment on how we all are really much more connected than we think. I usually shrug off those comments.

But not tonight.

On waiting

I am waiting for the formal 'go' on a couple of work projects. Incidentally, my mother is visiting with us. For the second time in five years. This time around, she is paying more attention to the opportunity that this place presents for relaxation. A change of pace from her otherwise self-imposed, hectic, urbanite lifestyle. So we have been spending the day together in relative silence, she with a book, I with reading the e-mails from you people in response to my challenge from yesterday.

I would like to say that I liked your e-mails even more than the contributions, which by themselves were quite good. Not everybody contributed, but still had some comment or other on melancholy in general, or on how this blog seems to be rooted in it. Regarding the contributions, here is what I have received so far:

• The hour just kept drawing nearer.
• Words can be essential. Not then.
• Losing the we, becoming just I.
• The bus mindlessly drove her away.
• We walked through the high grass.
• Never getting to smell him again.
• Gift for hope, a romantic readiness.

That last one gave me pause. I was sure I had seen it somewhere before. But it was not until tonight that I finally got it. Gatsby, of course: It was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person, and which is not likely that I shall ever find again. Good one, Flygirl!

I waded through the book. It has been a while since I last read it. All the class rhetoric and the jaded 'old money-new money' discussion aside, I do hope that I will never fall into Gatsby's trap. To strand my life on waiting for something which has already passed by. Maybe I avoid this instinctly, to a fault. Years of reminding myself not to get stuck on a place, a set of ideals, particular interests, etc., has cultivated a disposition with me where such changes are usually brought on quickly and decisively. Even so suddenly and matter-of-factly that it can stun people. To the point where they do not believe it. "What do you mean you don't miss [running the marathon/playing the piano/etc.] You did that for years. It was ingrained in you. It was you! How can you just wake up one day and say that you have just changed?" The short answer is that there is no use crying over spilled milk. That once you lose something, however big a part it was of you or how dear it was to you, the rest of you needs to continue on. The long answer is that I actually don't. Not completely. If it was important to me, it will still tug at me. Possibly for a long time, sometimes forever. And it can hurt. Badly. But my mechanism has no built-in options for wallowing. Or for 'working through it'. Or 'dealing with it'.

My only medicine for unwanted change is time. It may not heal all wounds, but it can numb, and soothe, and give distance. Like a rear-view mirror in a fast-moving car, helping you to see something monumental slowly become smaller and smaller, until you can hardly make it out. Time is my most precious commodity. It is a volatile fountain of life, which you can choose to dive into and drink in and enjoy to its fullest, or you can waste it by doing nothing, or worse, by waiting for something which you will never be blessed with or has already passed.

Gatsby's truly was a life tragically wasted. Not just because he was better than the Buchannans of the world, and he was innocent of what his assailant thought he had done. No. The tragedy lies in the fact that even if his life had not been taken, he still would have waisted it.

On waiting.

More six words

OK, I know, I usually don't encourage you people to e-mail me, basically because it is embarrassing how lazy I am in answering. But tonight I'm just bored.

So.

Whisper me back this: Six words that will instantly evoke a deep sense of melancholy in any warm-blooded creature. And yes, it may be clichéed. To start it off, here's my stab at it:

It was not meant to be.

New motto

Live life like you mean it.

Raidexplain

I have always had a terrible time trying to remember what the different RAID configurations stand for. Always an embarrassing moment when a client picks up on that weak spot of mine.

Thank god for water coolers.