I don’t want my potential. I don’t want my art, my experience, my past successes and failures culminating in some wild rhapsody. I don’t want to turn a new page, renewal. I don’t want a big tent revival, salvation. I don’t want to be seen by all, or loved by a few, or to start some bullshit cultural cult out of my garage, success. I don’t want to traverse the earthen terrain and to find ants that hold each other by the feet to make climbing mesh for other ants, community. I don’t want the romance of the bower bird or his blue tokens. Wait. That’s the lie. The bower bird: that’s actually it for me. His romantic spirit still makes up the fabric of my heart muscles. It’s exactly that little industrious fucker, who I wanted to be ––navigating a dangerous kingdom, mad dashing for lover’s sake, bounding, begging, borrowing, stealing. By hook or crook, this man finds blue ––perhaps, here, I do want a rhapsody–– in any and all of its forms. She sees blue. She likes blue. So he likes blue. He likes the fuck out of blue. If you were, for instance, wearing a blue hat, and also in this fictitious instance, bower birds were about the size of a pterodactyl (which would make them much less endearing, I grant you), this man (I don’t know why I keep calling a bird a “man” other than the fact that I’m one (a man) and am obviously eluding to being a bird in this disjointed, anachronistic story) would snatch that hat off of your head without second thought, and use it to make his very large, blue, and thereby (by the blueness, not the largess) attractive nest. He does what he does because she likes it. It’s the most honest, humble, humiliating, pleading, bleeding, hopeful, loving act of attraction in the animal kingdom–a bid: for her, for worthiness, but, for him, it is the beat of his tiny, faithful heart. Mine swells with sad hope (a contradictory feeling) just telling you about him. That’s who I wanted to be–a simple servant of the great feminine. Instead, I fucking resent her. My god do I resent her. And it’s not her. It’s what she’s taught. It’s the effects of capitalism expanding the workforce, and greed, and selfishness (again, capitalism), and the shit her dad can buy her (not to belabor the point, but…capitalism) and all the shit I can’t. She’s indoctrinated, and manly, and needs, if we’re all honest nothing I (or you) can provide that she can’t get for her damned self (and I do mean damned) –and worse, she’s a little obvious about it. And thus, she has no needs to be met that aren’t essentially replaceable by the next idiot; no need for the mad dash that was romance. I don’t think she even sees blue, and yet, it’s the only color I can see. And I see it everywhere. So, what do I want?
I want to go back. I’d like to build a nest. But my nest, blue, or filled with intention and love, and imbued with romance and the soul of my bower heart ––that nest–– doesn’t fucking matter. If she wants blue, she’ll buy it.
So, fuck bower birds. Fuck blue. Fuck mad dashings and mesh ants and music and traversing and salvation. And fuck you if you are her. And fuck whichever colors you enjoy. Buy a handbag and move your ass on down the road.
I am the saddest Oscar Isaac characters all in one. A deep blue (god damn it, again) drought of depression comes over me about all of this––and do you know what? I’ll take it. I’ll take it with a White Russian, periodic psychedelics, some art, some music, some terrible writing and with a big leap off of some cliff at some point when I find one dramatic enough for a grand exit worth smiling at.
That line haunts me: “she has no need […] for the mad dash that was romance.” That kills me. That’s the leap. I can only think of the Grand Canyon when I write that, and I am NOT jumping off of the fucking grand canyon. I don’t care if it’s a MUCH shallower dive than that, its just too passé. I’ll be thinking of Joe Dirt(é) the whole way down, which will ruin the Thelma and Louise / Romeo and Juliette of the whole thing.