Emotional Echoes

Well, there is a Time, and there is a Place for all things.

Over the past few weeks I have gone through many, many thoughts, and have been here and been there with where the future may go.

Today, on Studio Brussel, the Flemish station from the multi-lingual capital of the EU and Belgium had a Facebook-off between two songs, and Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" won out. I was driving around Antwerp in my "new" used car and it just really hit me.

My mind has been wiped clean of so much emotional shit over the past couple of years that that line stood out so vividly. Echoes of emotions within my brain...

Where my life will lead me in the next year, I don't know. So very much has happened that I cannot even begin to imagine.

Though, whatever I do, I do know that I am not "in control" of things, meaning, there are such greater powers at work.

I am just happy to be here for now. I hope that you are too....

Stop A While With You

There is one person I know for sure whom has understood this message and song since I was quite young, and I am grateful for you, Teresita, for your friendship many years ago, and again this past year, when I really needed a friend.

Thank you. I hope you know what this song means to me, though I know that you do...thank you...

Symphony

Of the many one-hit wonders out there, this is one of my favorites, and for some reason it has been on the air quite a bit lately. That, or that I am listening to the radio more than normal, so perhaps it has an already heavy rotation here. Neither here nor there.

But, the Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” is right up there on the top of my list as one of those songs that just nails it. There has been controversy about the song with regards to plagiarism and counter-plagiarism, but in all honesty, I could care less about that since the Verve’s version is inspired.

However, I also heard from the DJ on Studio Brussels that the lead singer said that the likelihood of the Beatles having a reunion was better than the Verve ever getting back together. Well, pretty strong comparison, but too bad. However, it is interesting that a band, even with dissonance amongst themselves can at times produce such symphonic consonance.

I will always be fascinated by music and the creative drive behind it and am so grateful that there are musicians in the world and those people who truly are gifted with making it. I know that my life would be lacking so much without the symphonies in our lives that make the Bittersweet easier to take.

At times I do feel like a million different people, so it helps to know that others have felt likewise and had the vision and ability to make the music behind it. Hats off.

Bright Eyes

When you write about someone’s death, you may think of it as a memorial, a eulogy, a requiem, an obituary, an oration, a valediction, or many other ways. In short, there is no one good way to say good-bye to the one audience member you are not sure is hearing your message or not.

There’s the rub.

For whom the bell tolls, and for whom the words flow. Is it the survivors, or for the departed?

I received an email today from a former student informing of the death of a mutual friend, a man who had grown from the kid that was in my class to a very troubled person, though in some ways, was all too clear. Unfortunately, this email did not come to me as a surprise. There are those we know will burn brightly and shatter into the night as quickly, for some reason, we know. I knew this of Joshua.

Joshua was a visionary, but he was also deluded by some of his visions, and those visions both comforted and haunted him, guided him and derailed him. His visions were of Love, and what is Love, and is that not the guiding principle behind everything?

Yes, and No, dearly departed warrior of the Soul.

Joshua contacted me on Sunday, two days before he died, asking about the true definition of Love from Plato’s Symposium that he could use. The Symposium, which literally means a “drinking party” is an extended ode to the god Eros, or Love, and all his attributes. My response to him was that, it was just that, a sym-posium, and that all of the discourses and paeans to Love were collective, not distinct. Parts for the whole, the calculus of the unknown.

Although Joshua suffered from certain afflictions of the body and mind, his Soul was pure. Some may argue that how can that be, but those some would be all too arrogant to say that he or she knew the Truth.

Life is not a tick-the-box scenario, where we can say, “yep, you got that one right, nope, that one is wrong.”

My heart and Soul grieves for Joshua, his family, his friends, and the unfortunate driver of the truck who ended his life, and whose life was in turn invaded and tormented by the tormented Soul of a stranger.

Joshua had a message, a message of Love, one that was all-encompassing, but perhaps the world cannot encompass that message at our stage of existence. Why does the greatest power of Life, that being Love, become our undoing at times? It is a mystery and a struggle, and a power that we may forever strive to know.

Farewell, Joshua, may you have found the Peace, the Love, and Beauty that you so desperately sought to find.

Namaste,

Robert