The Art Of Friendship
Old friends...in a deep groove...
Friendship is a fickle mistress. Over the years, it is a primordial stew whose essence is like nailing jelly to a wall. Nothing can define it - nothing can truly verbalize it. Words fall short on the doorstep of description.
It transcends.
I used to think I knew who my good friends were. I made a lot of friends through a specific place and a specific venue. Those were golden times - framed in a warm innocence that can't be recaptured or relived. Ultimately, though, those times will be raptured. Raked under the gardening tool of God.
Siphoned. Recalled.
Friends are the folks who you think about calling but then end up calling you. Friends put their families aside, sometimes, because they know that the meaning of the words 'kinship' extend beyond bloodlines and into something very visceral.
I've lost some friends. I'm saddened by that - I truly am. There were some serious battle partners who held my psychological and spiritual weaponry in some tough times (and whom I did the same for). As time draws out like a lengthened blade, though, we are standing the wake of dirty reality and those 'friends' we thought we would never part with are ghosts - memories. Apparitions of a fake vapour trail.
But to be honest, and somewhat dirtily truthful, I don't care to be friends with those who don't get the cost of friendship. Those people are robots and moving through life in a dead, dry-weed manner - blown about by every passing breeze and non-foundational whir in everything they exude. I don't care for friends who want to play 'hide and seek' in a childish fashion, and who expect me to do all the work of contact and correspondence. I'm tired of being that guy. I've been that guy all my life.
Cut me some fucking slack. Pick up the damn phone and get over yourself.
Where are the friends who will return the favour? Where are the friends who will put aside their bullshit and pettiness, reaching out through the fog of the unknown and finding the lighthouse of contact?
I long for those people. I long to be in community with those people.
I long to hear from my friends.
My friends are a great people - often shifting in size and scope but certain in their outlook. They are friends who live on islands and friends who are not my immediate neighbours, but friends who are still truly 'there' in every notion of the word. They know what's going on in my current life. They don't smile at me falsely, and give me a handshake and a hug and a parting word. They stick with me. They jag with me.
They get over themselves - as they understand that I'm constantly getting over myself.
Thankful For All Of It
Today, I am thankful. I look back on the things that have happened in this life and the things that I've done, and I have a deep gratitude for all of it. Paths have unfolded in a manner I could never have predicted and I've done some things that I deeply despise - but I've done other things that make me innately proud.
I have a great family. I have an incredible wife. I have some golden friends.
We have to get it right, this balance - the balance of the beast.
Two years ago, I was directionless. I had creativity and I had support but personally, I had no resolve. I didn't know where I wanted to go, in any professional sense, and how I would make ends meet in a career setting. After 6 months, my mind-frame is rejuvenated. Since 2010, I've traveled across Canada with two different Juno-winning musicians and filmed footage for them. I've traveled across Canada as a musician, on my own, playing original material.
And more recently, I've been accepted as an intern for CBC.
All this time, I've been working. I've been honing my craft and forging my end goal and my ultimate output in the furnace of dedication.
We live in such an ageist society and for many people, I often get the response 'Haha! Well that's great. Don't you wish you'd figured this out when you were 25 instead of in your thirties?' And to be completely honest with those debbie-downers, no I don't. I'm glad that I know now, if at all, because now, I have a consciousness. I have a fully-formed frontal lobe and I can make the decisions and accept the outcomes and fully invest myself into what I'm doing.
Wouldn't you want to get somewhere and fully realize the action and potential of your destination - instead of just magically plopping there and realizing its significance years later?
I am where I am - and I am who I am.
And I appreciate it, all the more.
The Blood Of The Words
I can't wait to sleep tonight. I'm excited to pull up the covers and let the sheets pull me into a warm womb of dreams.
It really is draining to let the words loose - to let them explode from the corners of your freed mind and spout in a fount of revolutionary truth. They rattle around and careen off the sides of my cortex, like a pinball off of a rubber bumper.
The words take shape. They live. They breathe. They form an entity.
I long for lakes. Lakes and long sunsets that make you see the cracks in your skin in the silhouette of the grapefruit coloured sky. We squint our eyes at the source but the light pixelates and distorts in the water of our eye.
But instead, I am here. Here in this deep, dark frost.
We bundle up. We face the winter.
A windowsill cracks open in a frozen crunch of suction and dead cold. The wind is like a vacuum that pulls the breath from our lungs.
Opportunity shines in the cool, austere moon.
Let the words out. Let them bleed.
The Godliness of Guttural Laughs
Get out your favourite comedy - maybe even the one that you hide from your kids.
Watch it.
Laugh.
Repeat.
When we lose sight of everything childlike - everything that sparks that sense of wonder and rejeuvenation and joy within us - well, then we've lost it all. The goofy sensation that overcomes us when we really laugh, and lose the sense of worry that comes with feeling guilty or watched by others, is something not of this world.
It cannot be. I don't buy it.
The serious vultures of somber reality swoon and spiral above the stratosphere. We avoid them and don't look up, but we know that they are there. Flying. Shadowing. Lurking.
Bills mount. Obstacles stack. Smiles turn into half-forced grins.
We are sucked in by the sorcery of the serious world.
Why can't you tell people that they're beautiful? When did we get so ashamed about being publicly uplifting?
Truth is a laser beam. It strikes light and heat all in a nanosecond, and it is there without warning.
I don't think that if anyone is truly laughing at something, and laughing with all of their being and feeling a sense of bewilderment and uncontrollable reckless abandon, that they should be made to feel guilty about that action.
That quiver. That body shake.
That laugh.
There's an inspiration that comes like a shock of cold water on your cortex. You open your eyes for the first time, the scales come off and you see how we are really meant to live. And the tears come without warning - in a hot stream of conscious sobriety.
When you write your friend and ask 'What do you think it would be like to live inside of a candy cane?' just to get a golden, dumbfounded response and a returned laugh...
I think it's all worth it.
The Best Of The Beast
We forge our way through this disgusting land of compromise and the stink of failure looms large.
The moonlight saves our pity and spits it out in a cool, February night light. The landscape of our dreams and our youthful desires dies against the furry flesh of all that we've become.
I think that I've finally figured out how to end The Matt Show.
I think I have the framework in my mind.
I don't want to feel shame anymore. I don't want to keep thinking about what an old, wizened and sickened bunch will think of my lifestyle when their crust-cut-off sandwiches are ready on trays in a sterile kitchen. I want to run free in the fields and think about nothing but the sting of a spring wind.
We now hope we will wait. We don't want to run or act or exist in a cogent space - we want to be hidden and unidentifiable. In a land that has no markings or geo-coding ability.
Trees. Water. A piece of sky.
We're alright.
When Jack Nicholson walks into the restaurant, in that epic scene of As Good As It Gets, extends his arms and gut-wrenchingly asks:
"What if this is as good as it gets?"
There is reality to that. We are always yearning for this example - this ideal of how we think things should be. The ultimate being. The ultimate me.
The ultimate you.
But we are stuck with who we are. We cannot change it. Though we try and struggle and kick against the goads of this life.
We try to look so distinguished - so polished - so ripe.
So holy.
But in reality, we are part of the mud and the roots and the guts of this world. We are connected to the breeze, when it swipes our cheek in a moment of ethereal chill.
That's us.
We are roving beasts, caged in a game of beauty.
Whatever we will get, whether we think we deserve it or not, will only ever be...
The Best Of The Beast.
'And the beasts will dance...in a sunny field of grass and warmth and joy...in a space that exists beyond time...in a forever summer....a forever summer..."
