There's a folder on the hard drive, static snapshots from the blog I once used to bleed myself. Lately, I've dived back into it, remembering something I once felt and put out for everyone to see.
I feel a little nostalgic, but more voyeuristic, looking back into what seems like someone else's life. I feel surprise at what I've forgotten, and I feel a little bit of regret and admiration at the force of the words.
It's a struggle now, trying to come back to writing, maybe like an athlete that left the game, and waited too long to realize what he had. It's so hard to be open to the words, to catch and be carried on the flow, to be swept without effort or struggle towards something beautiful. It's hard to believe the courage, or foolhardiness, that I once had, to write so honestly and completely.
I'm so afraid that it's gone. For most of my life, writing and music, and love, were all that hope was to me. Love has been... well, love. Mistakes and misconceptions and misses.
But writing and music... They've been the means to the moments when I was the most alive, the most myself, the most meaningful.
They were hope. But they are also the objects of my greatest failures - my failures to try, to put in the work, to rebel and be who I was meant to be.
As much as writing was also a passion and potential unrealized, music was always a path for me that was even more clearly marked. My first memories are of music. When I first reunited with my father, at 29, his first real question was, "Are you a musician?" In the 25 years since he had last laid eyes on me, he would linger over the concerts aired on Austin City Limits, believing that's how he would see me again, first, and maybe at all.
I had, in my voice and writing, a sword and shield. The desire to use it to make a difference, to bring a few minutes of feeling at a time to people, burned in me. And admittedly, to be known and loved and remembered, to not be left behind by time and the constant turnovers of lives, was an imperative to me. It was maybe even a point of desperation.
But the path away from what I knew and what was approved was scary. Exposure and the chance to fail were considerable monsters for a kid that desperately wanted approval, but got jeers and beat-downs. Showing everyone who I really was and could be could solve everything for me, but the risk of feeling even more alone in failure and ridicule and the loss of the identity I secretly clung to was too great.
So, when I was told, "No," there was safety. There was safety in letting fear keep me from opening myself by opening my voice.
In the end, it hasn't been parents or bullies that have kept me from singing. It's been me. It's been cowardice, and laziness, and resignation.
A few years ago, a friend got me on stage to sing, and in the years since, I've done more. Played open mics, been asked to sing with other people, been in a couple of promising, but short-lived bands, even sang the national anthem before a crowd of almost 20,000.
But I've rarely done my best. Some fear, some restraint, has usually still gripped me. And more importantly, I haven't put in the work on my own. do work best singing with others. But I also feel a resignation, a fear, or knowledge, that maybe, like that athlete trying to recapture what once was, I waited too long and have lost what could have been.
My roommate watches talent competition shows - X-Factor, America's Got Talent, The Voice. I've been pulled in. I've still got the ear, I hear the missed notes, and the notes skillfully maneuvered, or the barest, most beautiful changes in pitch negotiated with skill and passion. I see and hear the fear that will spell doom.
And, even in the most upbeat of songs, I'm sad, and lost. I see my once-maybe futures 20 years past, from my spot on the couch. I feel the tightness in my throat, from emotion, but also from disuse and misuse. I feel the weakening gravity of the keyboard, quiet and covered in clothes. I sit in the living room, watching live reruns of my old dreams, safe, but learning to have faith in danger.
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