Stories, Thoughts and Snippets
Independence 1 Independence 2 Independence 3 Independence 4
After enough time passed, after enough evenings with her reclining on a pillow on the carpet, barricaded by finance books, after enough celebrations for particularly successful shows, after enough exchanges of massage; life with her seemed more real than life without her. She did not consider herself an artist, did not want to be an artist, and I could do nothing but forgive her this flaw which I'd hated my parents for. She did not want to redefine the world, she wanted to support it, she wanted to be a patron, to make sure that the art she liked would have a chance to be seen. My situation over the last few years had forced me to admit the necessity of such people, my time with Lucy had made me understand how such people might even consider such a life as superior to that of artists, even if I did not agree with this argument.
When Lucy left me I did not understand why, and it hurt me in a way that I'd never felt before, I felt betrayed, alone, and ashamed all at once. She told me she had found someone else, someone she felt a connection with that she couldn't explain, he would begin his first year of medical school in the fall. I moved to Brooklyn into an apartment probably beneath even my means, and I listened to depressing music, and threw myself about, and stared at the phone fighting the urge to call her and beg her to take me back. And then I started writing; for weeks I barely left my apartment, barely ate, barely slept, and thought of nothing but her.
When I was done I had eight songs, written so fast I could not reconcile them with the painstaking time that usually marked my writing. I booked myself a show as quickly as I could at one of my old favorites. I played; some of the audience liked it, some did not. I did not care about the ones that did not. I began calling everyone I knew from the studio, looking for a way to get my music recorded.