I’ve fallen out with quite a few people this year. Probably because my bullshit and negativity tolerances are low. I hate fallouts. They upset me. One person told me I didn’t have a monopoly on grief. I hadn’t actually thought that I had such a thing. I choose to write about it and she chose to read what I wrote. But the impact of that one sentence has been that I stopped writing. That makes me cross and it’s been about 4 months without any prose writing until now.
I did start doing a bit of lyric writing. I get some tunes in my head but I haven’t captured them and it’s too early yet for me to work out how to get the tunes onto the guitar. I’m still too shy to put my lyrics out anywhere. At least I’m enjoying a bit of creativity.
To monopolise grief a bit more. I’ve joined a queer bereavement group online. It’s very supportive and loving. It took me over 2 years to find it thus demonstrating a woeful lack of facilities world wide. There are still places and events I find hard to revisit but in this group there is no judgement and we laugh and cry and listen. I can talk about things that some of my friends and family would probably not understand. It feels like I’ve come home.
Music is still a very big thing. Wish I’d started learning to play guitar a bit sooner but it’s the one thing I really look forward to every day. I got quite a long way with free online video lessons from Justin Guitar but I’m now having a weekly lesson in Hebden with an actual teacher not online. I have tunes in my head nearly all the time. Even when I go to the loo in the middle of the night! Sometimes that’s a bit annoying and it’s nice to have a little break from it however I don’t have any control over it.
I managed to be infatuated with Natalie Maines for 9 months. I listened to everything The Chicks recorded, read everything that’s been written about them, played their music over and over day after day after day, made a not insubstantial website about the band. At last my obsession is abating and I’m almost back to boring old normality. I quite liked being in love with my hero. I still really like her a big lot. And I did all that, it sustained me through lockdowns, through loneliness, through boredom, without any input from the object of my desire other than the videos and recordings.
If I can do that with someone who has no idea that I even exist, well apart from when she liked a comment I made on one of her Instagram posts, then god help me if I feel that way towards someone I actually meet. And god help them too. The last time I was so crazy was for Carol in 1993.
My latest rave is Sheryl Crow, I knew her some of her early records but hadn’t listened in much depth. I love her music and there are some great lyrics but I don’t fancy her the same way as I do Natalie, not such a mad obsession. These lines are from Crash and Burn:
Well, it’s laughter that comes up when I cry for you
Sheryl Crow
And my heart may break again before it learns
And I might be stupid enough to want to fall again
‘Cause I’ve gotten used to the crash and burn
I might be stupid enough to want to fall again.
Bruce said “I lost everything I loved or feared”. Love has been the best years of my life, the pain has been/still is the worst hell on earth.
I’m having a bit of a life now, much smaller thanks to Covid and very different from any expectations I had. But unless Natalie Maines comes walking by…..