Voice Note #19 - Dark Places

Too much and not enough

There’s this Neil Gaiman quote that goes: “The moment that you feel, just possibly, you are walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind, and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself... That is the moment you might be starting to get it right.” I finished writing this song yesterday. And I do, in fact, feel like I’m exposing too much of my heart and mind here. Only I don’t know if I have gotten it right. I don’t know what to make of this song, although I do hope it contributes something worthwhile to your day.

Maybe to create anything when you’re in a dark place entails pouring that darkness out of your heart and bottling it up into your medium of choice. Music for me, this time around. I’ve been writing songs. I did two this weekend, and this is one of them. I was afraid that if I didn’t send it out now, I never would. So here it is. My heart on a platter.

For you today: this song (and some stream-of-consciousness musings, and a poem).

Dark Places

People are good
But it’s hard to believe it
And it’s cold here but I 
Guess I’m looking for
Proof I exist

Here’s my heart on a platter
Served with a glass of red wine
These days I’ll do just about
Anything to pass the time

Groping for signs in dark places
Gasping for air
Can anyone hear this?
I know that I can’t
Stand to be alone
Nothing but static
Coming through the line
As I’m calling for home

I did everything I was supposed to
I don’t understand
Why I still always find myself here
Broken glass in my hands

I give ‘til I’m all emptied out
It’s still never enough
If there’s a place for me here
Why do I jump through hoops for your love?

I want too much
I’ll never be enough
Hollow in pieces I can’t put
Together anymore

I’m a person like you
If you cut, I’ll bleed through
To the floor

I give and I give and I give
And I’m all out of goodness
I’m so afraid to lose it all
‘Til it’s too late to fix this

I’m terrified of everything all the time
And I’m tired of waiting for fire

This seems like the kind of place
Where love needs to be hustled for
I’m not doing cartwheels anymore

People are good
And I want to believe it

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A self-portrait from earlier this afternoon — my reflection from a water pitcher

• In her newsletter, Unsolicited Existence, Alejandra Smits writes, “I have little to offer today. But all to give.” These days I too feel like I have little to offer but so much to give, everything, all I have in every fiber of my being. I operate in this mode at all times. I don’t know how else to be. 

• I’ve been trying to write this for weeks, in brief moments I can catch in between everything else. Strolling through grocery aisles. Standing underneath the shower. In idle moments during Zoom classes when I should be listening but my mind, like a caged dog, yelps to be elsewhere. Words come to me and I get them down as quickly as I can. These snatches of time feel like cracks of sunlight. And then darkness again, for longer than I can anticipate. Life has been crazy. I don’t know how to talk about it while it’s happening. Maybe I’m not supposed to. Either way, creativity has been hard. I believe it was Durga Chew-Bose who once said that writing is grunt work. This morning, while getting dressed out of the shower (at one in the afternoon!) I put on a video that my Youtube algorithm offered on my home page: “I could write my magnum opus or I could simply go to bed.” I had to laugh. These days, I’ve been choosing bed. In the video, writer Savannah Brown says, “I don’t want to be someone who burns really bright really quick anyway.” Neither do I. But lately I’ve been worrying that I’m built to do just that. Little to offer. All to give.

• I don’t know how to describe what it is that weighs heavy, that has always weighed heavy. A predisposition to sensitivity. For catching the light while the sky is still dark, potentially promising in its cobalt hue. Dawning. For smelling a storm before it arrives. For feeling more pain than I would like to. In the end, the sunlight doesn’t always break through. Sometimes the sky stays dark, then muddles into gray. Sometimes rain doesn’t arrive when it’s supposed to but catches you by surprise, too early or too late.

• My heart feels tender like a boat in a storm.

• The truth is that I am lonely. I have been lonely for a very long time. I am not sure I have ever been anything else.

• I wake up already hungry. An incessant gnawing in the pit of my stomach. I walk to the kitchen, my bare feet padding over floor tiles and a thin layer of grease. I open the refrigerator to find last night’s leftovers and four apples. I choose the smallest apple and set it down on the wooden chopping board. When I slice it in half, it splits apart to reveal a rotten core, something gray and dusty like cotton candy, spun into cobwebs spooling around the seeds. I slice off the sides as far apart from the core as best I can. I wonder how much of it can be salvaged.

• Maybe on some level, it will always hurt. Maybe the trick here is to learn to live with the pain.

• A hand on my heart while I cross the street. I can feel my heartbeat and with it, a sense of my own fragility. It feels both sobering and comforting to confront it. Walking aimlessly in the mid-afternoon swelter, pretending like I have somewhere to be. Leafing through all the books on display in the bookstore, to all the places that aren’t here.

• When someone is kind to me, it can feel like a respite. I’m so terrified of everything all the time and it’s fucking exhausting. It feels like God to me when a person cuts me a break. Extends some sort of kindness, an understanding. Easy forgiveness. To be let off the hook, to know that someone else knows you are trying your best. Like, alright, maybe you mess up but you are trying your best. What’s the word for it? Deliverance. Absolution. Someone else’s kindness. That feels like God to me.

• I’ve been thinking, maybe the world is beautiful because there are people I love in it. People I love, people I could love but may never meet, so many wonderful people. The mere knowledge fills me with joy. To know that we are in this world, and that it’s full of good people. Maybe the love I give will always be overwhelming and broken and inadequate. But perhaps the fact that these people are here for me to love at all is enough.

• At the end of a bad week: A friend shared a playlist that began with Ana Roxanne’s Venus. I was ensconced in a warm feeling, and it was like the universe reminding me that I am being held. The boat rocking gently on calm waves. A sliver of sunlight breaking through the clouds, gleaming onto the water.

• Here, the moon deceives me
  And the sky wraps me up whole
  Like hard candy

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Lastly, a poem for you before I go:

Apocalypse Movie

My dear, I believe
We are coming to the end
Of our final days here
Barreling down the runway as the wings
Go up in flames
Sticking the landing, just barely
Hey, do you promise
To be best friends forever?
Pinky-swear on your life.
I’d cross every heart for you
I’d step on every crack
We both know, I think
That we might not make it
But the last drop never hurts
As much as you expect
And we may be relieved, I suppose
When it all blows away

Then right before the crash you turn
To me and say,
You’re my best friend
You’re my best friend in the whole wide world

It isn’t over ‘til it’s over, you say,
‘Til the fat lady sings.

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