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7:17 p.m. - October 29, 2001 ---------- Something reminded me of something else today, a flashback to a feeling of inadequacy and general ignorance towards the rest of the world that I barely feel anymore, and I don�t even miss it. This memory of my friends, *her* and *her* struggling to get one tiny drag out of the hybrid weed mixed with dirt, choking on their own saliva and hacking into the toilet, the bathroom door closed to preserve what little smoke was produced. Sparks flying onto the carpeting and *her* rushing and screaming to stomp it out before it made a hole. My amazement and distaste at the urgency they felt to preserve this pathetic powdery drug rising in my throat, me closing my eyes, sick with it. They, again, offering the quickly burning joint to me, me jumping back from the wildly spinning spark, afraid of the sting and feeling increasingly disjointed, thinking about how over half of the kids at school spent their nights desperately seeking the sparse calm smoke spiraling off of brown paper. Is this what I was supposed to be doing all these years? Are these what they call �the best years of our lives�, these years spent worshipping smoke? And who would I have become, had I spent my nights like this, instead of at home, writing music, comforting friends, singing, living? I felt small and pathetic, crouching with them on the bathroom rug. It was a tiring job, coaxing the high from the flame. I never did take a hit, the fire was burning too erratically, and I'm even scared of candles and lighters. Kneeling in a half-circle around this small burning stick was almost like a twisted worship ritual, overshadowed by the choking feeling of disgust rising in my chest, me pushing it down again and again. I had nothing against pot and I still don't, I'll never have anything against anything that's people's own choice to do or not do. I support legalization. I support free will. All of a sudden I smell it. And I remember the betrayal feeling of recalled brilliance out under the sun, or driving with the moon coming through the top of my car, the top folded in the trunk. The feel of cold lake water against my stomach, or skin against skin on the sand. And I wonder, with all that is beautiful in the world, why so much impact comes with this smoke, this supposed relaxation, this tiny magic stick, and why so many things revolve around it. Looking at *her* and *her*, on their knees, leaning on the peeling wall and dangling their hands in the rusting bathtub, I realize who I am, and who I�m not. I am someone who doesn�t need to embrace the smoke to feel weak with love, and I am someone who can embrace someone else, whatever choices they choose to make, regardless of whether I agree with them or not. I�m not judgmental, and I�m not weak. I lift *her* by the hand when she reaches out for me, and I carry her through the house, put her gently down amidst the brightly colored pillows on her bed. *she* follows, extolling the virtues of the fuzzy rug, and I close my eyes, leaning against the bedpost, thinking about who we all could have been, had things been different. ------------ Ever since he bought me my first piano, my father was so proud that his little girl was musically inclined. He had never been able to learn to play an instrument, but was an avid music lover and had over 2000 records; classical, jazz, rock, everything. He paid for my piano lessons happily, and when I became interested in the cello, he even more happily rented me one. He blindly rented me a violin, a viola, a bass, a trumpet, a baritone, a trombone, a french horn, a saxophone, a bassoon, and an oboe, in that order, before he realized I wasn�t being trained in a conventional way. My attention span was too short to stick with any one instrument for longer than a year, but within those few months that I played each instrument, I picked up invaluable information on how to write music for each one. The instrument ranges, how they sounded in each register, how they sounded together... everything proved invaluable when I realized I wasn�t interested in performance, but composition. That was when my musical tastes changed dramatically. My entire way of listening was transformed. I began to hear, in each piece of music I listened to, the potential for improvement, the specific chord changes, the makings of harmonies, and the inventiveness of beat. I stopped rushing upstairs when my father blasted Pink Floyd; I stopped poking fun at my mother when she listened to James Taylor. Instead, I would sit increasingly still, writing countermelodies and harmonies and supplemental rhythms in my head. It was the first time I was ever truly, obsessively, interested in buying music just to listen to. I�d always been interested in playing it. Now, I was overwhelmed with the need for new ideas, new styles of music, anything. I�ve been progressively more interested in techno and electronica lately; the way the musician, alone, can create entire layers of music by his or her self. Moby fascinates me, although I do tire of his repetitiveness. I can listen to Mr. Bungle�s crazy, frenetic, insanely musical creations forever. Rosetta Stone�s renditions of the classics are interesting to listen to, and see how a whole band, its whole song, can be transformed into a single line on a computer screen, one man working the controls. Something else that I truly enjoy is rock with orchestral melodies and backgrounds. Silverchair�s Neon Ballroom has long been my favorite CD. I can�t seem to find anyone else who does that, and I�ve lately been working that kind of mix into my own compositions. In my group of friends, my taste in music is considered �weird�. Most of my friends refuse to ride in my car because of the mix tapes I�ve always got playing on the stereo. That�s fine with me. Not only is my taste in music �weird�, but my style of writing it is incredibly weird. I can sit in front of my keyboard and synthesizer for weeks and not have an inkling of an idea of what I�m writing, but suddenly it all comes together, the odd eclectic mix of ideas I�ve had over that period of time. Sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it, but I keep everything I write. I could listen to these little snippets of ideas fifty years from now and know exactly what I was thinking. It�s a little like the music I choose to listen to; the style and the mood of the music corresponds directly with my general sense of being at the time I listened to it the most. Some people remember their lives through drawings, or through journals... I remember mine in song.
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