week 31: refrain

while i know that by the time this week's entry will be posted you wouldn't know that while i have most of the sketchwork down for the actual art, i am doing something that i don't believe i have done in all the years that i have been doing this whole fifty-two fridays thing.

well two things.

the first is that i am writing the entry before the art is completed, not that it couldn't be done any other way, typically i have gone through the process of reflecting on what the prompt means to me, how that applies/ does it apply to what is going on in my life, create the drawing, and then kind of process all of the things that had gone through my mind up to sitting around and writing about it. 

the second thing is that, if you are a follower of this particular blog, you might have caught on that music tends to play a fairly large role in my work, and that while i have posted almost five hundred entries, and many if not most of those entries mention music - i have yet to share a song, well, the song. and i am not entirely certain why i have been so reluctant to do so

i guess i should explain:

tomorrow wendy. a song about a woman with aids, who decides rather than suffer through the disease, and this was in the 80's, and go through the stigma, fear, and hatred associated with that particular virus, she would end her life on her own terms.

one of the most amazing things about aids, is that the disease brings out the worse in people, people who don't even have it. while some things have changed in the understanding of the disease, it still kills. it kills every.fucking.day. and somehow, like around the end of the nineties or early 2000's its like we stopped being scared of it, the numbers were down and all. no it seems to be coming back.

there are people who say that it's a permanent solution to a temporary problem. and i'm sorry but those people are assholes, especially when they rattle that gem off when someone has just died.

if you want to talk about temporary problems, life is a temporary problem. 

that said.

there are songs that have shaped my life, in some cases taken me in directions i might have never gone had i not known of them. these songs, they can be many things. they can be memories, smells, tastes. company, friends and women. they can take me back, like magic to some summer moment driving down the highway as the sun set, music blasting, windows down and the hand of someone i loved at sixteen, and at twenty-three, and shortly, thirty-five.

i wrote once:

"I don’t need any more random reminders.

Music is the same way.

Tori Amos.

The cure.

Radiohead.

Nirvana.

Smashing pumpkins.

Peter Murphy.

Weezer.

James.

Hole.

nine inch nails.

Songs to f**k to.

I realize that listening to the downward spiral will be difficult for now on."

and 

"Have you ever accidently discovered a song that touched you so deeply that you still listen to it years later and it still moves you the same as it did the first time you stumbled upon it?

The miracle in that is that you weren't even looking for it, almost like it found you and it’s amazing that something that you didn't know existed before that moment becomes such an important part of who you are from that point on. The scary part is when you realize how easily you could have missed it. and how that would have changed everything.

i have been thinking about something in particular these last few weeks, along with mounting depression and anxiety, i haven't been nearly as productive as i'd like to be. what i have been doing though is thinking about my life, when i'm going and where i have been.

i was sitting in a booth earlier working on the sketches for this entry, and thinking about heaven, well not heaven specifically, i guess it was more of what happens next.

and the the thought that had been elusively just out of reach, came out of my pen on the paper i was sketching on.

"this, this is where i go, where i would live if i could. this moment. this is where i hope to one day return."

"i can only hope that heaven, or whatever it may or may not be, is just one single moment of my life. a moment that i get to chose and experience for eternity. hell, that would be living a life that had no such moments from which to choose. 

tomorrow wendy

andy prieboy

johnette napolitano

concrete blonde

It is complete now the two ends of time are neatly tied
A one-way street, she's walking to end of the line
And there she meets the faces she keeps in her heart and mind

They say 'good bye' Tomorrow, Wendy, is going to die,
They say 'good bye' Tomorrow, Wendy, is going to die,

Underneath the chilly gray November sky
We can make believe that Kennedy is still alive and
Were shooting for the moon and smiling Jackie's driving by and

They say 'good try'
Tomorrow Wendy is going to die
Tomorrow Wendy is going to die

I told the priest, Don't count on any second coming
God got his ass kicked the first time he came down here slumming
He had the balls to come, the gall to die and then forgive us
No, I don't wonder why, I wonder what he thought it would get us
Hey, hey, good bye
Tomorrow Wendy's going to die

Hey, hey, good bye
Tomorrow Wendy's going to die
Tomorrow Wendy's going to die

Only God says jump
So I set the time
'Cause if he ever saw her
It was through these eyes of mine!
And if he ever suffered it was me who did his crying

Hey hey, good bye
Tomorrow Wendy's going to die
(Tomorrow Wendy's going to die)
Tomorrow Wendy's going to die
(Tomorrow Wendy's going to die)
Tomorrow Wendy'd going to die

(i got to see her

the day before she took her last

i held her close that firm resolve manifest

we talked in depth of life

we kissed and soon began to cry

i wept for her and she for those of us she'd leave behind)

Hey, hey, good bye
Tomorrow Wendy you're going to die

Hey, hey, good bye
Tomorrow Wendy's going to die
Tomorrow Wendy's going to die
Tomorrow Wendys going to die

"this song, has been my companion since was thirteen. over the years it's meaning to me has evolved, this song has held my hand through a parent's suicide, so many of the wrong women, many poor choices i had made over time. this song has traveled with me in one form or another, the late teens, my twenties, and these few years since i turned thirty. this song is always close to my thoughts, my heart. this song in its own way saved my life during some very dark chapters. i owe Amie Rolf, Andy Prieboy and Johnette Napolitano... so much more than i could ever hop e to repay. and thank you wendy, i think you saved a lot of people.

thank you.
thank you so very, very, much."