Of rebellions and mediocrities

I'm not in the mood to write, let alone write something 'publishable'. Well, actually, I'm in the mood to write, but not the kind I want to publish or even put out into words. I want to write something I don't feel like writing right now, something radically different to the kind of words that are right now fighting their way through my head to get out. I don't want to let them out, and I want to send out different ones in their place. A really hard thing to do and, in fact, something I've always thought of as impossible. I could attempt it, against convention, against feelings, but the absence of the muse would ensure a failure. So, what do I do? Torn between an obligation to myself and a metaphysical authority that claims control over my creative pursuits, I choose (immodestly, if I may add) myself. I certainly don't feel like writing this right now but I'm going to. Maybe, if I'm successful, it will go down as the beginning of a well-documented rebellion against the muses, otherwise will serve as a relic of a failed, and little known, rebellion against the muses.

Right then, the door's locked and the long, random playlist on winamp is already on the way. Let's begin.

It's early morning. Wonderful weather, not too cold, not too warm either, thanks to a distant sun. Not much traffic bothering my feet which, for a change, rest in peace while driving. I'm not alone in the car, but that's about as much as we're going to delve into that matter for our present purposes. Mediocrity, no, something even worse if I dare to call it so, emanates from the stereo. And out of nowhere, I start sounding the horn, for no apparent reason. There are no cars ahead of me on the road that I want to communicate with but that doesn't stop me. I keep doing it at regular intervals, without reason. And, that's all this incident is intended to convey.

And it wasn't just that morning that I did it. The obsession with the horn didn't begin that day, nor did it end then. In fact, I found out I'd been doing that for a long time before I started noticing it myself and decided to get to the bottom of the mystery. Not going too much into the perfunctory details of that tale of analysis and deduction, we'll arrive at the eye-opening realisation. As usual, it was a surprise that ceased to surprise me once it wore out, which, pretty quickly, it did. And, as if purely out of habitual compulsion, I go, "Oh, yes, I should've known! How could I miss it?"

Enough drivel. I was sounding the horn to block out the mediocrity the radio was giving me. And not just for myself, for everybody else around, and, supposedly, the whole world. Yes, that's right, armed with a horn that wouldn't even always function satisfactorily, I had set out to change the world. To purge it of the mediocrity that has become modern music. As if I could block out those sounds by simply making one of my own. Pathetic, I know. Call it whatever you might, that was what it was.

Common sense tells you, and me, I could've simply turned the radio off and let it go or put on a CD of my choice and spared you all of this, and more (or less, depending on the way you look at it) importantly, spared myself of resorting to all these -------- (for lack of a better word) tactics. There's only one thing I can say to all that. Life doesn't always let you do what you think you ought to do, and on the rare occasion it actually lets you do that, you don't feel like doing it and don't. Some sort of masochistic pleasure, I guess.

I've never been one able to appreciate the terpsichorean cadences of modern music and hence accept that my perspective on this issue might be dimmed a bit because of that, but still, I don't see the justification for such abysmal songwriting tuned together into... Now would be the part where I go on a rampage and offer a scathing criticism of the kind of, and quality of, music we're forced to listen to these days but well, I don't need to cos I know you get the point. Once the cat is out of the bag, there's no point dawdling around. I'll save all of the other lines for another day and just type out the conclusion which actually seems out of place without all that preceded it and hence brings what would seem to be an abrupt ending, which I'm prepared to concede. Not every rebellion starts perfectly, it only has to end so.

I'm not the type who keeps saying you can't change the world on your own, because I believe you can, but I prefer to ask myself one question before initiating anything of that sort and that's what generally stops me most of the time. Is the world yours for you to try and change?

Pantomime

All it takes is a moment. A word. A silence.
And you're lost, searching for yourself among the crevices of life.

There are some moments that define your future, some that retrace your past, some that just take an eternity to pass. This isn't one of them, it's all of them.

The world around you is a travesty, and all of a sudden, a pantomime. Time begins and ends, morphing everything around you except you. Words no longer reach your ears, they no longer escape your lips. Everything has ceased to be. All you're left with are faces, faces that no longer recognise you as one of their own.

You can't see. You can't hear. You can't feel.
Drifting through nothingness, clinging to your non-existence, unsure of everything that ever was, you see it approaching. There are no more upsides, no more downsides. No more left, no more right. Just a straight line. Just a straight, undeniable certainty.

You wonder why. Why it is the way it is. And not the way it is not.
How it all came to be just this and nothing else. There was supposed to be more to it, more than just this. You deny the tears in your eyes and try to wish them away. And then, from the bottomless depths of that inescapable pain, it hits you, squarely to the moment, light as a rock, heavy as a feather.

Living is just a habit.
And after a while, just as with every other, you forget why you made it in the first place.

Morning

A denial.
An empty room.
A periodic beep chipping away at the mind.
Blurry blinds, a shadowy ceiling.
Floating words, talking walls.
A broken dream.
A dawning consciousness.

A splash of hot water.
Droplets on a mirror.