Stand-up Tragedy

“It’s a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your mind of what your about …will come true. That kind of a thing, you kinda have to keep to your own self, because it’s a fragile feeling and you put it out there and somebody will kill it. So its best to keep that all inside.”
-Bob Dylan, Interview for Rolling Stone Magazine

“People are people wherever you go”, I cant really recall who said it, but the past few days all I have been thinking about is how its not really the fact that people don’t change, but that we don’t. I suppose a more trite spin on the existing epithet would be to say that I am the same, wherever I go. Ordinarily this ought to provide some consolation, constancy of character and all that… it doesn’t. I find that in my mind, too much rested on my changing along with my time zone and one transition without the other leaves something to be desired. It’s a lot like finding yourself lost in a music store, standing in front of a copy of the brand new Dylan album and missing your wallet. It’s being able to see and absorb a new life, but still being too scared to seize it and live it as you thought you would be able to if you were removed from the you, you were once bound to.

I’ve been going through quite a few of those “Tangled up in Blue” days, listening to way too much Dylan and Cohen for my own good, even reading both in my sparse spare moments and I find that there is a lingering loneliness that accompanies taking flight. Sure, it is seldom perceived under the sheer volume of new experiences and new insights, but it is there…the not having a sounding board part. I suppose it would be natural to say I miss home, while still being very clear that I don’t want to go back, but its much weirder the things that I do miss: things like Abbot road ke Channay and waiting for the light to turn green at Kalma Chowk while I’m heading to tell mom about something new I discovered, or read, or wrote, or thought or want. I miss the sense of security that comes with knowing there is no pressure to succeed or ‘be’ anything right now, that all that will come later. That, more than anything has changed. Later is now, Here is come and I find that the words are actually flooding my skin. Every day, while I wade my way through my endless readings I can feel them buzzing under my hairline and I know that if ever there was a time for me to write, or find what it was I wanted to write about in depth…it is now and it is here and that scares the shit out of me. That accompanied by the sheer, overwhelming sense of inadequacy that this city has the potential to hit you with all the time.

“Am I good enough?”
Probably not.

“Can I?”
Can you?.

“Cant I?
Cant you?.

“Will I fail?”
Do you want to fail?

“Will I succeed?”
Do you want to succeed?

“Will I be a roaring success?”
Whyever would you want to be a roaring success?

“Will I be labelled the Town Clown?”
Haven’t you always been the Town Clown?

“Does it matter?”
I don’t know, does it?

“Of course it matters!”

“Does it matter enough to stop me?”
Will you let it?

I suppose it is mostly the fact that I still don’t know how to talk to people. Sure I can babble – hopefully endearingly – to no end but I can’t confidently seek company. I am one of those quintessentially accidental, social junkies. I will mesh with backgrounds, contrive to place myself in situations where I can be alone with a book, while still remaining in a room which allows opportunity for company should I seek it. This allows me to keep my options open and bail at any given moment. Actual, no-nonsense dinner’s and parties still petrify me to no end, so I always pretend I have extra readings or laundry to do.
Besides numbing one’s senses a notch via inebriation, what else does one do at these things?

Although if I am remotely honest with myself it isn’t that - I have met and continue to meet and converse with more people now than I have ever done in my locked up life, it is the connection I miss: of choosing the company, of seeking out someone with similar interests to actually ‘talk to’ rather than just ‘talk with’. I have never really been great at juggling loads of people in my life, ironically I tend to be rather monogamous in my friendships. One real connection is more than enough for my over sensitized being, I can relish it and rest in it with ease.

Mostly it is the fact that I still can’t seem to shun my fucking rose-tinted glasses. I still cannot perceive steel grey hues and stark realities, I still need to paint the edges of every morning with lilacs and nutmeg. I still need to romanticise absolutely everything: cups of coffee, my bicycle, the weather, old bookstores and conversations with strangers on street corners. I cannot possibly conceive casual hook-ups and late night bar binges. I still need to be at the receiving end of ‘intellectual conversations’ rather than initiating them, and when I do happen upon one of those I still need to be the one laughing at myself. I suppose that is something I can still be grateful for, because not many people are prone to laughing at themselves here, most tend to consider themselves the Indent and Full stop to every possible sentence they utter.
This scares me like it never did before. Some part of me always relished the idea of being the naïve, romantic, sarcastic, whimsical idealist I was. It thrived on being the wordsmith carving in a language no one was interested in listening to anymore because it was so far removed from the granite reality of tomorrow. I shall admit that I quite liked being the perennial poet. I fancied myself this last, lost Balladeer forever trumpeting Beautitudes that were reminiscent of all the great poets that drove me to write: Dylan, Barrie, Cohen, Ginsberg, Tennyson. Some part of me, actually enjoyed the impracticality that came with being that lost cause, that odd little sprite that few could understand.

But it is nothing short of terrifying today.

The underlying denial is so palpable it has been driving me to tears –literally- at the weirdest of junctures, in coffee shops and while waiting in line for the ATM machine. The fluttering tension behind my eyelids is so ripe it ought to be sliced with a machete.

See, it is an actual choice that needs to be made now.
It is no longer a far off ideal.

Crunch time, if you will.

I must either choose to continue as myself - as Beentherella, who apparently is real and not a manufactured figment of my need for attention or I can change tack and be what I need to be to be something more. Even as I write this I can hear Mohammad Ali roaring in my head “I know where I'm going and I know the truth, and I don't have to be what you want me to be. I'm free to be what I want to be.”

You see the dichotomy arises in the simple fact that those who can stick to that sense of individuality, that notion of freedom and autonomy are special. They are it, and they know it. I am unsure on both counts. Wavering and completely low on ‘faith, trust and pixie dust’. Exactly how much of a narcissist does one have to be, to believe that they are exempt from ordinariness, that they can push beyond it because –for some reason- they deserve better and shall get it?

Is it really only about believing it enough and letting that carry you, sustain you and challenge you to face the alone-ness that comes with being a troubadour of any sort? Because no matter how much of an idealist I am on my better and badder days

…that is a tall order.