There is reason to believe I have to reroute some of the back roads on the road map of my thinking parts. I have been spending a lot of time in Elizabethan England lately due to my obsession with who I think Shakespeare really was. There are a lot of dark alleys to be plumbed on that section of the map. I really admire the Roland Emmerich film Anonymous about Edward deVere, the Earl of Oxford being the real writer behind the works of Shakespeare, but I do recognize that it is a work a fiction, and an altered-history work of fantasy fiction at that. So I find myself not yet ready to tackle that particular essay in the Shakespeare series as yet. More think time and creative-mixing time is needed. I need to stop at one of the quaint little mental inns on that particular Elizabethan back road and get some much needed rest for my Elizabethan conspiracy muscles.
Meanwhile back in the real world, Trumpzilla has been busy wrecking the world I live in with a bleak inauguration speech written by Steve Bannon that works its fire-breathing magic to blacken the hearts and perceptions of people I love and care about who also happen to be staunch conservatives. My Facebook feed is up in arms about how many people actually attended the inauguration ceremony and how unfair the media is for trying to make it seem like Trump’s celebration parade was a deserted wasteland when in reality it was… well… what’s a synonym for deserted wasteland that won’t offend conservatives who will bend or break any truth to defend Trumpzilla’s turkey-tweets?
But then, as I was going to QT for my morning caffeine-addict’s fix of Diet Coke, I heard Lionel Richie’s song “Say You, Say Me” playing on the radio. Ah, the perfect metaphor. It is a song used as the theme song from the 1986 movie White Nights about a Russian ballet star who has defected to the US during the Cold War and then was in a plane accident-incident that put him back in the Russians’ clutches. The movie stars Mikhail Baryshnikov, an actual Russian ballet star turned defector, and Gregory Hines, the American tap dancer. It is a beautiful movie that features amazing dance sequences, Russian conflict of interests because the dancer wants to be free and yet misses his homeland and culture, and a resolution involving intrigue and escape. In many ways, the plot, centered around a Russian threat and dark days in a place where the sun doesn’t set, is exactly what we are going through with Trumpzilla. But the song is about two people communicating and eventually “coming together, naturally”.
It started me thinking about the purpose of this blog. I mean, you obviously know that this blog is really about me talking to myself about myself, if you are one of those crazy few who actually read this far through a goopy blog post like this. I use this blog to think about myself, the world around me, and even sometimes, like now, to think about thinking. Yet, I have a duty to the reader to reach that point where our thinking comes together, naturally. If not, then why bother to post and publish at all?
So here’s what I think about the Shakespeare question, written in the tavern room at the inn on parchment… with a quill pen. The real Shakespeare was a writer just like me, writing for himself. And he discovered through the play-writing process that he had to share that writing for himself with the great wide world, because the Prospero’s magic of it could change the world for everybody. That is the real purpose of Shakespeare’s existence, no matter who he really was. And that is the real purpose of my existence as well, even if I turn out to be nothing more than one of the top hundred best writers that no one ever actually read.
Morning Has Broken
Today is off to a miserable start. I heard on the radio that David Bowie has died. Ziggy Stardust… the Goblin King… The Man Who Fell to Earth… the Thin White Duke…is gone. And even though since high school in the 1970’s I have never been quite sure how I felt about his music, I wept. The man was a musical maker of lyrical poetry. He could make you feel really really terrible… but he always made you feel. And he made me depressed as he led me through the Labyrinth… but he also made me soar… on the wings of a barn owl. It was about facing the darkness and finding your way. Finding the way out. Singing the Little Drummer Boy with Bing Crosby, but not actually singing it… making peace on Earth instead. Sometimes things are just so weirdly beautiful it hurts.
I dropped my daughter off at her middle school, and then Jody Dean & the Morning Team played this on the radio.
I wept again. Darkness is my old friend… I have lived with and through depression after depression. My own… my wife’s… my children’s… And it is a miracle I have lived this long without succumbing to the Darkness. It took Robin Williams. It took Ernest Hemingway. But somehow, the Goblin King always goaded me onward, to find the answer at the end of the Labyrinth. “You… you have no power over me.” And then I am okay once again.
I captured the dawn once again this morning. Once again I failed to truly ensnare the subtle reds and pinks and purples that were actually there. But there it is, anyhow. The morning has broken. The blackbird has spoken. The morning is new.
My heart is still sore this morning. The dog didn’t help when she spilled the trash to get at the napkins with bacon grease on them. We may have a dog-skin rug as a doormat later today. But David Bowie left so many words and ideas behind to comfort me. Is he one of those “neon gods we made”? Of course he is. But as the owl flutters off in the closing credits, we can take comfort in the knowledge that no one is ever really gone. And we can always anticipate some… Serious Moonlight.
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Tagged as battling depression, David Bowie, depression, loss, love and life and laughter, music, photo Paffooney