Rare Groove, Feb. 13, 2011

Andres Diaz playing the Prelude from Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major

Classical music has a unique way of speaking to me like no other music.  There is this sense that the instruments are speaking.  I listen.  I attempt to decipher their words.  It is gripping.  It is intense.  And always, it is beautiful.

I feel something building in this one.  Like the strings are speaking on something yet to come.  There is an anxiousness.  Fast then slow, fast then slow.  Closing my eyes, I think of colors.  Bright, agitated colors, blinking across the darkness in my mind, similar to the scene from The Soloist when Jamie Foxx's character listens to the orchestra rehearse.  The end of this sounds like a layered promise.  Not only will something be there, but it will continue to be there.  At least until it's over.  And oddly, this makes me smile.

Marcus Jamison, the Rare Poet

Crappy Husband, Good Person (Time to Get All Analytical...)

"....you were a crappy husband.  but you are a good person."

For those of you who are House fans, you realize that these were words spoken to Dr. Chris Taub, an adulterous surgeon currently preparing for a divorce from his wife Rachel.

I can't help but feel that I can relate to him.  But not in the adultery category.  Although I have cheated in the past, a fact that I am certainly not proud of, I have never been married.  This doesn't excuse cheating, because commitment is supposed to be commitment, whether you 'put a ring on it' or not.  But my ability to relate to this character has nothing to do with infidelity.  It's about selfishness.

I realize that I want all of the trappings of love, without giving myself completely.  Maybe 85%, maybe even 90, but never completely.  I literally keep one foot over the threshold of the figurative door to the respective woman's heart.  In case I have to run.  Which is often.  And yet, I find myself still wanting her to want me.  To need me.  To allow me to please her and equally please me.  To act as if she can separate being my lover with being in love with me, in case I need to make a clean break.  Reading this aloud to myself, it sounds stupider than just about anything I can think of and yet, it is often where I've found myself in relationships.  Urging her to stay, while looking for any sign to leave.  This is the part of me that must change.

Step one is perhaps the most difficult.  Setting up the 'No Vacancy' sign, and doing the solo thing for a while. Most people are probably laughing and stating how easy it is to be alone.  But for me, who has bounced from one serious relationship to the next since I was about 19, the very idea seems to start killing something in me.

Blue Cafe, Derrick WIlliams

Call it a cafe with permanent blues, and I'm the headlining act.  I guess this feeling should be appropriate.  Especially since I feel like I've caused more emotional damage than that guy who used to play Screech.  But being alone creates within me a similar feeling, nearly as bad as witnessing all of the heartbreak I have caused.  And while it helps, saying none of this was intentional, I realize that the damage has already been done.  I think of some of the women from my past.  And how broken/affected they are.  It makes me wonder why I don't feel that same what.  What in the world is wrong with me?

Struggle, Derrick Williams

I'm in a one man battle, against myself.  These types of fights usually take place when I'm alone. And they test everything that I am, all while challenging the very idea of the man I want to become.  I keep wondering how much fight I have left in me.  Maybe I should just surrender to being that husk of a person I keep turning myself into.  Then, I can merely float from heart to heart, sampling, but knowing I'll never fully surrender.

Sounds like Shakespearean tragedy.  And if there's anything we've learned from that it's this:  The guy in love either kills himself, is murdered, goes crazy, or winds up stranded somewhere alone.  Perhaps my mind already embraces a bit of this tragedy.

Marcus Jamison, the Rare Poet

Picking Up the Pieces...Again

I really don't know where to begin.  Things were supposed to be different.  And then, once again, I happened to myself.  Much faster than before, but the result is the same.  I'm left wondering if I'm a vile creature, and she's left regretting that I ever existed.

But I'm not making any excuses.

Right now, it feels like I am mentally incapable of reciprocating love.  But my heart seems unaware.  And my body keeps jumping left and right, an independent uncertain of which side to vote.  But the fact that it keeps happening tells me one startling truth that I've probably been aware of, but have been unwilling to embrace.  I am the problem.  So many different women can't all be wrong.  Especially when the methods and madness keep feeling the same.

I've stared at myself in the mirror for the last 10 minutes.  I'm trying to see who blinks first:  the charismatic poet still looking for true love or that heartless bastard that keeps fucking up the potential.  My latest scary thought is that I really can't tell them apart.  Because if they are one and the same, then this is going to be a long, lonely ride.  It's a good thing I've always embraced talking to myself.  Misery loves company, but it's hard to find when you're constantly all alone.

Even now, feeling like an emotional scab that's been picked at and momentarily left to heal, I have to laugh at myself.  I'm the hypochondriac complaining about medicinal side effects.  The suicide bomber who is irritable because the backpack is too heavy.  Meaning that I cause my own pain.  I imagine some saying shut up and suffer like you wanted.  But I am, like all of my relationships, conflicted.  I want love.  But I worry too much about what it should feel like, how long it should last, and whether it is deserved.  I start questioning.  Dissecting bits and pieces, until before long I've cut dozens of holes into the fabric, simply because I thought a strand or two looked shabby.  This is my nature, and I hate it.  But like anyone feeling stuck being "some kind of way", I really don't know where to begin to change.

Bring on the sleepless nights.  Cold sheets and the weight of an empty bed.  The worst part:  I can remember each one of them next to me.  And I'm not saying that to be callous.  It is a sad reality that I can't escape.  I've run into a few of them from time to time, women from my past who now stare blankly, as if they don't remember, or stab me with icy eyes, unable to forget.

Reading this, I make it seem like I'm Colin Farrell.  (I mean I've had some strange relationships, but I haven't propositioned any 70 year old ladies, thank you very much)  In actuality, it's not really that bad.  I'm just a bit mishap prone when it comes to love.  I'm hoping one day soon, I'll correct this.  Until then, my heart is as fragile as glass and now comes with a disclaimer:  Objects that appear in glass are much further away than they seem.

Marcus Jamison, the Rare Poet

This is How I Imagine it Feels

Losing Track        

by Denise Levertov

Long after you have swung back

away from me

I think you are still with me:

you come in close to the shore

on the tide

and nudge me awake the way

a boat adrift nudges the pier:

am I a pier

half-in half-out of the water?

and in the pleasure of that communion

I lose track,

the moon I watch goes down, the

tide swings you away before

I know I'm

alone again long since,

mud sucking at gray and black

timbers of me,

a light growth of green dreams drying.

Rare Groove, Feb. 10, 2011

Cage the Elephant --- Shake Me Down

Starts slow, but then delivers quite the punch. But what else can you expect from such a consistently awesome group?

Marcus Jamison, the Rare Poet