Summer has arrived and not without a few last squeals of protest from his sun starved doppelganger - each icy breath thinly laced with a perfume of finality. It has been a time of climatic extremes and, it would seem, we are all feeling it. The schizophrenia of shifts, tidal flows, ductile accumulation and release. Smoke signals seemed to show me the way and with indecisive lethargy i maybe missed my moment. The clouds part and fruit is offered - but rarely am i hungry and too often am absorbed in the arrangement of stones, the earth and her artifacts, gelling my gaze to the monument, the stream, the sand. For what does one look to heaven if not to know in his bones the wonder and unimaginable excess of is his own mind, his own home? I look up, and feel my earth cry out. Oh my soul, if you will not cry out and give voice to your purple melancholy, then you will have to sing - oh my soul.
It is a Saturday night and i sit on my room listening to Leonard Cohen, that insatiable Buddhist, Suicide and Scott Walker. These friends inspire a dumb reflection of heavy voicelessness - why bother? why set to the stone when these most profound and insightful brothers of the overman have held, caressed, indeed, set to flame the very soil i wish to see drifting under foot - today we listened to Godspeed at a minor place and i realised that i am not even a pawn on the chessboard of creativity - perhaps a checker, unfortunately displaced upon the oak face where i am only strange and a stranger - lost and outcast - one who cannot move, only sit befuddled, impotent as the majestic royalty perform their grand manouver, graceful and sublime. Were i a knight, i would steal so many glances and wash your souls with my own tears. But i am not the mouth for your ears - how can i begin to sing when i cannot yet hear with my eyes?!
These thoughts and feelings come cascading like the waves of a migraine - i would speak further of my thirst for inspiration - i look around and see so many of the same 26 - 35 tide and i sink aside and wonder what have i to show for my time? And my answer is the same as all others - "nothing". For no further can i carry my debaucherous bacchant cries than the other can tug his own house - this treacherous screaming dancing is the earth cracking to swallow bricks and mortar. And so i think about what i have done and would i do it different and the answer is the same again and again for was what it was as what is now is what i will and will forever will it. There are things i might have done and been but could never suspend my disbelief because what was the only true path - i let them scatter, as burnt ash and the dust of moth wings.
Oh my heart, it was you i followed into the sea, and held my breath and swallowed the sun. Diving deep and drinking my fill, you held up my head and i knew my god dancing on the shimmering tide. Oh my heart, it was you that led me by the hand through gorge and gully, to the frozen ridge and wind swept peak; your gentle grasp, unyielding on my shoulder. Your mountain will, with clear precision, gave my stride to ground. Oh my heart, it was you i let persuade me to the forest, where the wild cries of maenads made my terror shriek and shudder. We lost ourselves and danced on, deeper and deeper, until the nectar oozed from the quivering flesh - until the clutching branches tore the silver sky and stars moons planets rushed out, a vortex of light and limbs. It was you, oh my heart, when i fell upon my knee and wept to know myself, you showed me darker nights and burning passion, the demonic whirl of ecstasy. I could not raise a finger in protest when we fell upon ourselves, lost in laneways and terrified of traffic lights. I followed you and did not doubt, oh my heart - these labors of love, these trials tests and the teeming frenzy of obsession. Thoughts, dreams, ideas - all frolicked for my fancy, delicate and beautiful as the flames consumed them. Oh my heart, it was you compelled me towards the stage that i might dance and scream and find myself splinter footed stomping on rickety wooden boards. It was you, oh my heart, that has held my head and arm and always led me on. I shall follow you, oh my heart, into the dead of night once more, again and again, onward and onward. Oh my aching heart.
Chotto Matte will be performing with affiliated rock lords, Forms of Fiction, at the Glasshouse, 51 Gipps St, Collingwood this Thursday the 11th of December - it is a free gig and we have no idea what to expect. It is all improvised so the songs will be brand new. I am terrified. I can't wait. Things sort of kick off from 9pm but i doubt we'll be playing before 10ish. Come down and stroke a beard with us.
Ben
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