Howl at the Moon vocals Unfinished rough draft – click on the title to hear it
Early yesterday morning just before dawn I found him, my partner, lover, and friend who’d been lost to me for so long. He was there in the song he’d played the day before, and that was coming through my computer speakers. It was easy to think, listening to the melody, that he was there with me in what had been our bed, playing to me, taking care of me. In that dim light, the dogs sleeping quietly, his guitar filling the room, I thought I understood at least that he loved me with some kind of purpose.
I’m not sure what deadens creativity more than apathy. Certainly not pain or pleasure; both of those feed creative impulses (though pain is a far better fat wood), and anger gives perspective, so that when the skies are done blowing we have some material at least. I haven’t written songs for many years now because, I’m starting to think, in suspended animation it’s important not to think or feel too much, lest you notice the world revolving without you.
Music, something I can’t live without and what brought us together, has been painful to visit since it became ammunition in this war of attrition between me and New Ex. For so many years he held the door open for my muse, and then for reasons he can’t or won’t tell me, held it shut. I could have walked out a different door, but it would have meant walking without him.
My need during this break up has been for music, or at least that’s the currency that’s bought what I need, so I demanded it like an alimony payment. What you withheld when we were together I’ll take now that we’re apart, goddamn it. Because I have a right to some of it. I said I wanted to go into the studio and record something for a project I’m working on, and we did; first the basics with friends on bass and drums, and then day before yesterday my vocals on his foundation guitar. Just the two of us, ending where we’d started, alone in the studio, doing what had gone right once upon a time.
It’s just a rough mix we’ve got – vocal bobbles, guitar flubs, imperfect levels, no solos or additional instruments yet. The Cheryl Wheeler song fits me like a glove, though my rusty pipes haven’t yet done it justice.
Comfortingly painful – do those words really go together? That’s what it was, singing for the first time in so many years. Stuffed up from the remnants of a cold and from sometimes being overwhelmed, my familiar, good voice replaced by a years-older OK voice, but my comfort in the headphones and in front of the mic as if I’d never left. Swearing at my many mistakes, thinking up harmonies and working through parts, it felt so normal, even after all this time.
And he agreed. Yes, it was hard, clearly. But won’t this work, don’t you think? Don’t you think we might start again somehow, doing what we loved doing, ridding ourselves of the other trappings that so clearly didn’t work? Friends once more? Music once more? Yes, he’d agreed, absolutely. It’s nice doing this again with you. I’m glad.
So I listened in the early hours, several times over, hearing him finally tell me what I’d been needing. Here I am. Here’s what I have to say. I’m thinking of you. We’ll do it together. I’ll help you. I love you. Yes.
The problem with one-sided conversations is that they don’t really tell you any of the story, but only what you can understand. You’d think I’d have learned that by now. Thank you, I said to him yesterday. I’m so grateful for this. Really. This means so much to me.
I shouldn’t be surprised at much any more, but I’m really not learning to recognize promises and head nods made to appease. Well, he said, I’ve been thinking about it, and I think we should take a break for a while. Maybe in a few years…
If you put yourself in someone’s hands, you have to know they might drop you. Sometimes their power lives in the ability to do so. Sometimes that’s all they’re capable of. And I guess there’s not much to do but pick yourself up carefully, feel around for which parts need to be glued back together, and then howl, singing that ancient song that needs no words, and no one else, to say absolutely everything.