Radio Dada

It was the wrong key.

The key doesn’t fit the ignition. My heart hurts and I’m alone.

I talk to a dead figment of my imagination because the living, and anyone outside my head, don’t listen to understand.

How am I going to describe what I need, succinctly, and stop wasting time with people who ask questions or tell me what to do instead of actually doing anything? Why do we talk so much to avoid doing things? What is the point of meetings if they take up time and things don’t get done? Having a meeting does not water a lawn, put out a fire, treat an injury, aid a friend. Talking about a problem is not solving the problem. We talk too much and do too little. We talk ourselves out of doing anything, talk ourselves into misunderstandings. And talk itself becomes a trap, an addiction, a way of numbing awareness and avoiding reality. Be a better drummer by showing up and playing drums. Be a better friend by showing up when your friend asks, with a minimum of excuses and discussions, and doing what is asked, or being honest about your ‘no.’ I guess this is why I trust and respect people more who just say ‘no,’ rather than saying, ‘let me get back to you’ or say ‘yes’ and then don’t actually follow through. To have more trust and respect, do what you say you’ll do, and spend more time doing than talking about it. Either promise less or do more, but talking more throws gas on the flame and undermines bids for more trust, connection, respect, love. Without trust there can be no love. Without action, love does not happen. Love isn’t an idea, or a feeling, or an intention, and it isn’t even just doing a thing and labelling it ‘love’ regardless of the impact. Love is in the experience of the recipient. When I feel loved we’re not talking about it, we’re doing it. And when I’ve had jobs I don’t talk about them, I do them. People want to be the noun, have the title, without doing the verb. Words make cowards of us all, and kill action. Maybe that’s why I love ‘Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead’ but hate ‘Waiting for Godot’ — the latter described by Beckett as ‘“a play where nothing happens, twice.” I want to scream to the world at large, “SHUT UP AND SHOW UP!” Put your body where your words are. Sometimes it seems like everyone is doing less than nothing, so if anything gets accomplished it’s a newsworthy feat. Stop wasting my time. I’ve got to make this flier, and have a simple sentence I rehearse and say to as many as possible. Starting with my PCP.

Maybe this will help. Enough, anyway.

It’s okay, they have cookies. Instead of love.

A body double. I don’t even need the ‘emergency contact/4 am friend’ level of commitment. Your role can be silent, a stand-in. But you must physically show up. My heart will belong to those who show up. My heart, but, importantly, NOT my genitals or body, okay?

I may forget this, may doubt it. I need to remember there is a physical person on my side now. She will show up for me as soon as I need it in time-sensitive matters and understands.

Maybe a maker eventually but trying to get through this end furlong.

Taking the batteries out will not put out the fire. Silencing me will not fix the source of pain. Feelings aren’t choices. Intentions aren’t impact. Does love actually exist? The body is stitched and stapled together, slab raised to the sky forested with lightning rods, but the sky is as clear as if storms never existed and were just a story I told myself long ago, or a special effect on TV. As improbable an explanation as unicorns for narwhal teeth, dragons for dinosaur bones, demonic alien ghosts for the autistic meltdowns of a tortured, abused child. I don’t hate people until they hurt me. It’s hard to hear, somehow, that what happened to me was not natural, but was the result of choices people made and rationalised doubling down on. It’s hard to hear what humans can do to each other, for reasons that have nothing to do with what we deserve, without warning, in secret, alone, betraying some level of knowing that This Is Wrong. It’s harder to hear the things people say without thinking when they don’t know what to say and start quoting the most poisonous aphorisms and radioactively positive capitalist wall décor like it’s some unique epiphany. The best words I heard were, “That fucking sucks.” The only person who ever loved me died, do you really think the f-word is more offensive than sprinkling me with words like glitter-craft-herpes that will take many months of showering to get off me? Sometimes I think my bitterness is a psychological histamine reaction, a defence against homeopathic poisonous positivity buried in thick layers of sweet chocolate and sugar. Advice is a nice, stiletto knife in the dark. Validation is hydrogen peroxide, a dose of opioid that trusts that sometimes I need pain relief in the moment and it doesn’t automatically lead to addiction if I get the long-term humanising, support, care, and love transfusions that match my type. Whatever that is. But when I feel loved then it’s mostly in the impact of actions, and the words are mostly distractions, or stating the obvious. If someone loves me they never have to say so. Hell, look at dogs. No words, just love.