I haven't noded in quite some time, at least in a relative sort of way, and I regret that I'm easing back in slowly with a daylog; it's all I've got the wherewithall to do right now. All night I have wanted to do nothing but make music -- fingers caressing frets like an old lover, gently working the brightness of strings too new into the sweet voice I've known for as long as I can remember. But I can't. I play, and the motion is wonderful, the strumming, sliding, bending all perfect, strong, and adept; but the sound is wrong. Where I am angry and afraid and grasping for a piece of the old beauty, it is trite and sweet and lifeless. Where I want to thrash and scream and cry, it makes me grin and bob my head gently like some cheap toy.
I am listening to Crash, an album that gave goosebumps and heaving sobs to a boy I once knew. His copy was incomplete, edited to fit on one side of a 90-minute cassette; still, he wore it to death. By the time it was lost in a move it had been worn practically to pieces, fading in and out here and there, refusing to play at all in some places. The sad songs were his favorites; "Say Goodbye" had some very deep and meaningful place in his life that he has since forgotten, although he understands it better than ever: I have on very good authority that he has all but given up on true love at the moment. And he shall stop speaking in the third person.
To say that this album does nothing for me now would be inaccurate. It gives me little chills the same as any sentimentally important music does; I haven't heard a single note of it in 4 or 5 years, but I still shiver in anticipation of the nifty fills and soulful groans -- and that random chirpy bit, panned near-center, in #41 -- that I know are coming. I've forgotten, however, what it used to mean. My memory of those days is remarkably poor; someday I will remember high school -- the bitterness, the confusion, the undifferentiated pain. I don't know what will happen, but I don't anticipate it will be pretty. No matter how bad, how tired, how sad, how hurt and alone and confused I feel these days, I can always look back and thank my lucky stars it's not how it was. I dread the day when I can no longer say that.
Maybe tomorrow the notes will come out right. Or maybe the notes will come out right, but my fingers will feel all wrong. Or maybe nothing will be right and I will collapse into a heap on my bed and wonder why I bother to make music that doesn't give goosebumps to anyone but me. And maybe I'll come a little closer to wanting to fall in love again.