Caterpillar

Lately I’ve been too busy, not the content-busy which gives you the sense of importance or the satisfaction of a hard day’s work.  I’ve been busy pretending to be busy, avoiding the songs that never seemed to change in both lyric and melody.

I’ve always fibbed to those who mattered, now I lie to those who don’t.  Being truthful makes my throat dry, it makes me retch.  Be assured, whatever you have heard from me recently was purely a theater of mendacity performed to entertain my bedridden mind and to ridicule your naivety.

It has been an absolute pleasure, I will not deny, I can live with any manner of guilt, scorn and detest with downright ease but recent events force me to walk down your sorry streets and howl with your wolves and cry with your cranes.

Mankind loves tales and I am a seasoned raconteur, I’ve shat on your hills and pissed in your dungeons. I’ve smoked the ashes of your loved ones and made love to your Goddesses. Now read if you must… a fable of a dishonest dreamer… a reverie of a caterpillar…

I’ve been honest to only two things in my life. My guitar and my writings. Overtime I have realised my dependence on these two things have risen to an all-time high, my head is vividly and constantly looming in the images of blotchy floating inks stains dancing to the notes of Jason Molina, John Haughm and Mikael Akerfeldt. Pictures of Bass notes so burdensome that they drown the swimmers in a sea of black and indigo.

Men of good repute have called me mad, but madness is a virtue, so I thank them. Pondering alone I think a lot, more than ordinary men. I think of a cabin and serene nakedness of mind and body, I imagine a room filled with the scent of smoke and vagina, of rum and blood, of death and life.

I imagine a burning hearth warming me in a cold shivering night, a perpetual night and endless hellfire in the hearth. I see myself on a chair of sinew and driftwood, snow tenderly falls on my forehead and then melts, gently careening down my face.  An Oakwood table stands in front of me… a quill, a page and a bottomless ink-pot lies at its top…

I envisage a garden of sepia grass, under a warm moonless night. The cold touch of her thin fingers, six in number, each colder than the other. A warm breeze flows from the south and she makes a sound unfamiliar, her body of blue cedar glows with carnal intentions … so beautiful… I play with her with my own hands and she sings in an orgasm… A different aria every night… a new love every instance…

Many question my solitary nature and raise contemptuous eyebrows at my manners. I fail to understand them, must we define it as ‘solitude’ when ‘one has forsaken the company of humans’? I have seen lonelier faces and forlorn hearts in a company of thousand men and women. I have seen true solitude in a carnival of mirth and undivided ecstasy in the companionship of the dead and mute.

My nerves have turned to stone, my blood to mud and my emotions to glacial ice. I have watched death and felt absolutely nothing, I have seen life sprawling and felt absolutely nothing.  The only things that beget a pyre in my eye are words and harmony. And why not, at least they speak true and have more vitality than all the humankind combined.

Money keeps making lesser and lesser sense to me as time passes, loved ones seem banal and the rest are but sinful indulgences. It seems most apt for me to drive towards my Shangri-la and let the caterpillar find its wings. In this state, I will lie to you, constantly, relentlessly and remorselessly for I know you will stop me… in the name of love and envy, I know you will stop me…

There is a madness in me that will tear me apart, take me, strangle me, kill me, but for the good I have foreseen  I cannot tame this madness now, I thrive in its existence, and I exist when it thrives. The more I stay subdued, the more I feel the grounds trembling and the walls bending in. A claustrophobia starts to brutally fornicate with my senses.

Alone I was born and alone I must find myself.  The wise ones have said, “You are born to write and make music, and alas destiny is sought not served on a platter. We are all born with wings, but are you fearless enough to fly?”

The more prudent ones have said, “Bards and minstrels lead a lonesome flight, and alone they pass to the grave. A lonely grave births an eternal melancholy. This ominous fate has made many a men and women retrace their path back to the worldly humdrum.”

There is only one thing I have always said…

“A lonely grave sprouts more flowers... flowers bright and blue like the ink on my pages, flowers glowing in an azure hue like my love of six-fingers… and they smell so sweet… oh so sweet”