Insomnia= something from the BFG’s witching hour (Roald Dahl). And it becomes like a peak shift effect for my fantastical thoughts and weird twisted art (it gets weird at this hour). There’s something about this late night restlessness that a creator craves like a drug and something about the sun that makes it melt as if a passing fog. And then it all becomes vague like you were unaware and you really don’t remember that trance. But for now all is grossly heightened. You kinda accept it as reality, but it isn’t reality right now. You kinda like its darkness, its sick but you are so attracted you can’t help drink it in.
Everything is bigger in the witching hour. I wouldn’t flinch if I did see a BFG outside my window right now. But why, oh why, oh why can I not write one lyric tonight? My piano is a waste. Had some crack heads move it into my place. I’m serious. I went for the cheap. Got the piano for free from some grumpy old man in Sheepshead Bay. Never met the man. Just hired my dudes (never met them before hand either) who showed up smoking cigarettes in my apartment with the piano sitting in a truck outside. They walked through like they live here, assessed the doorways like they knew what they were talking about (they didn’t). They were the strangest hodgepodge of people. They hauled that thing up the stairs like a dead body, heaving it recklessly over each step. Mainly the skinny guy with the big hair and big baggy shorts was lifting. And it was pretty warped when it got here. I gave them the $200 cash and watched them walk off. And its music eludes me, I just stare at it begging it to give me something. I’m tired of being an artist, you’re always fishing for a line, fishing for a melody. And it always comes from pain. Even the happy songs come from pain. I stupidly want things to be easy. But maybe I don’t. I think I like difficult.
There was a time when I would jump without thinking. Two years ago. Jumped. Got on a plane, went to London. No plans, no friends. No place to stay until the night before my flight. I lived everywhere. Couches, guest rooms, had an 81 year old roommate in South Kensington, lived with a lovely English family in Hammersmith with their three red head children and feisty black cat, house sat for a friendly couple from New Zealand at their studio in Chiswick, got stuck on the street one night but with a quick text landed in Rick’s guest room, hopped over to Omar’s futon shortly after. I wasn’t always happy. But the jumping, the risking was great.
Right when my saturn return hit, I was back on a plane (immigration’s decision) to NY. This was after an 8 hour flight TO london after I took a short break in the states. Then I had a lovely ten hour “break” sitting in detention at immigration. Back to NY they said, so after skipping across the Atlantic once, I did it again after answering a slew of ridiculous questions, eating wilted sandwiches, losing the trust of the people I lived with and talking to the other “criminals” in that nice smelly detention room for hours and hours. And I went back to the same couch I was on just a year before that in NYC. Back to square one again. Back to the same risks. Thanks Saturn for the run around.
Always jumping, jumping. Risking, fishing, trying, prying, plucking, yearning, groping for truth, for words for a song to sing, for a sound. And then what? Start again. Start again. Never satisfied. I wish I could just “arrive” as a musician and an actor. But its a journey. I’m trying to be more journey oriented, I’ve been very results oriented in the past. I wonder, will I be doing my best work at the end of my life? Is this work really that important? Is love a better goal? Or can we have it all? Love is an art too. Pulling away, giving space, coming together. There’s a time to argue and a time to make love. A time to give freely and a time to stand up and say what you need. I’m not trying to quote Ecclesiastes here. I’m not so fond of the tension in creating art or in creating balance. I just want to wander down a quiet stream, my legs kicked over a boat, just sailing with my fishing rod hanging over effortlessly catching things like its nothing. Its hard work to stay inspired. Maybe hard work to stay in love too. Is the artist forced to pick one over the other? I’m opening up a can of worms. Too many subjects.
How to tie this up? Insomnia at least keeps you in that sedated spot where anything flows freely out of you. Are thoughts really honest in the middle of the night? I would think they are more laced with worries and anticipations that are too exaggerated. Its the witching hour. One of these nights I’m gonna write a good song.
“When I am with you, we stay up all night,
When you’re not here, I can’t get to sleep.
Praise God for these two insomnias!
And the difference between them.”
—Rumi
From Essential Rumi
translated by Coleman Barks
Tuesday July 21st, 4:00 AM
