A few words before resuming Thread watch, or rather engaging on here, because I came to know and respect many of you, and because I respect all of you.
About Sinéad…
I was at a lab with my wife, waiting for her to get blood drawn, when the news of Sinéad’s death hit me. I don’t even remember which of you posted it (I’m sorry, under normal circumstances I credit the find with a @ or a quote), I just hit the web and read the news there. I just had to make sure it was real. I immediately posted an official source on my timeline, and right after, also the link to Troy.
And I just stepped back. I needed it. We have lost so many brilliant, amazing artists, among them singers and musicians which to me really strike a chord in my heart, for I see my life as and through music.
I remember the pain I felt when Michael died. When Whitney died. When George Michael died. When Bowie died. So many. Voices that are deeply rooted in the soundtrack of my life. But this…
When The Lion and the Cobra came out, I had already left the Army. I had joined after failing my psychic eval at the Air Force Academy. I was crossing the desert between that catastrophic event in my life, right after high school grad, and College. A crossing that lasted 13 long years, during which a lot of shit happened in my life, most of my own making, some just… fate, if you will. I fell in love with Sinéad’s songs at hello. The Lion and the Cobra is a masterpiece.
But this one song…
Troy is “my song”.
It came to me at several points of the desert crossing, and it is, to this day, a song I never place on any playlist. The reason is, I never know how it will hit me. It brings back to me the events it speaks of, a very select group of life altering events, small enough to count with my fingers, that emotionally cut me to the bone. Some of you may know the feeling. But today, it was death. Her death. The Phoenix’s death, from which she can only rise again in song.
The sadness I felt for her, for her life, for her loss, merged with my life, my loss, and the death I came to know. And inevitably, I was transported to that dark place from where I had to escape many times, like a Phoenix, for the only escape from it comes from dying a little more inside.
All my life I found a small measure of comfort and sanity in writing. Always a fountain pen or a graphic pen, always black ink, always white paper… Then computers came along, and here I am. Again. Rising from the ashes of yet another lost piece of my soul by virtue of my written words.
For the one event I was drawn to by her death, is as inescapable to me today as it was when it happened. Irredeemable. Unforgiven. Final. This is why I needed a place to hide and begin the healing. And this long rambling post is part of the process. For the first time in my life I go through this in public. Not in a Moleskine no one will ever read, not in an obscure Blog page with zero visibility. Here.
I apologize for the long thread post, but I never know where my words will lead me when I embark on these journeys. If you made it this far, thank you for reading. You know me a little better.
Maybe one day I will stop.
Maybe one day the pain in my soul will consume the last bit of it left. And I will have no more words to save me. No more Troys to burn.
But not today.
Not today.
[finis]
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