Photo: Nicole Tori
I once wrote a lyric: “I’m in love with something, but I don’t know what. Make it all come out. Make it not there.”
I have never killed myself nor have I come close. But I have been dogged by the pain of life’s background noise. Tape hiss everywhere. And sometimes I’ve felt like maybe there was a solitary, pinched (like an ’80s gated snare drum) prophetic voice. But I couldn’t transcribe it word-for-word.
Ian Curtis did kill himself. He wrote it much bolder: “Someone take these dreams away / that point me to another day … They keep calling me!”
I recently met a new friend who reminded me of how life is when you’re engulfed in the torrent of dead souls that swirl all around our own literal, sense-able plane. This happens when you become obsessed with an anguished thought. The most usual subject is an unattainable love. Being obsessed with wanting what you can’t have. Sexual desire and flesh-and-bone faces are only approximations for the real obsession and the supreme disappointment we have: we can’t hear the voices from the other side. The dead souls. We can’t die and come back. We can’t live our lives completely; we can’t benefit from the wisdom that death would bring.
Sometimes we hear the residual strains of ghosts and spirit. I actually believe that. It happens to artists. Thank God I’m only a small artist. Like Lee Mavers said, “Thank God for this feelin’ / Oh my Lord, I can’t take no more.”
Aw thanks for the credit!
that’s a great photo.
how does the dead souls background noise jive with the roller girls?
i know i know i know.