It’s the 4th of July. I’ve managed to keep myself blogging for almost a half-a-year (the midpoint will come this month). It’s been a good ride. Julie asked me last night how it feels to know I really did blog every day so far this year. It’s a strange feeling. I always wanted to treat a blog like a journal, but that’s never really been acceptable. I’m close to that this time around. I think the fact that I know so few people read it empowers me to be a little more open, but the reality is that we don’t live in a world that feels very free. I should be able to say whatever I want. I mean our President does, and I’m a free as he is. In theory. On paper.
I have made some vague references here and there on this blog to the CNF piece of writing I did for my senior capstone project as an undergrad. It opened with a bit of a confessional sort of piece. I feel like, on the 4th of July of the 40th year of my life, I should revise and rework it. So… here’s the opening salvo from “When I Grow Up I want to be a Stand Up Chameleon: A Portrait of the artist? as a Young Dude:”
Time to tell a story.
There’s this thing that happens to people who are artistic, particularly if you’re artistic and you lean toward the verbal in any way. I know it happened to me early on in my life, and it carried with me like a weird burden for years and years and years. We all look a certain way; we can do things to change our physical appearance, but we are in one way or another doomed to certain aspects of self. I have a few things about myself I just don’t particularly like. I’m a grown-up, so I don’t loathe myself for these things (not all the time like I did as an emo kid, anyway, no more sitting in a chair staring out the broken window with Bullet with Butterfly Wings on repeat or driving into the country in the dark of night blasting Down in a Hole), but I’m a large person, meaning I’m not just broad boned but also quite fat. I’m quiet. I have a hard time not showing displeasure with my eyes and mouth.
But as an artistic person, a “creative,” we see ourselves in our minds as we want to be. And the thing I always wanted was a sophisticated voice. I wanted my writing to have that lilting , smarty-smart feel to it. I wanted to write like a Dylan Thomas or a James Joyce, for my words to have the sort of voice behind them of a Sting or a Seal, commanding and confident, smooth and “beautiful.”
But that’s not my voice. I found my voice in music, the perfect representation of my artistic expression. There’s a Rage Against the Machine track entitled Freedom. I will always think that the voice under my writing has the tone and cadence of Zack de la Rocha, but there’s one moment, a moment that I’ve threatened to have tattooed on my body numerous times, a perfect little sliver of emotion and art and pain and joy. In Freedom, just before the cacophony that is the song’s main build to Zack screaming FREEDOM over and over and over (a powerful moment), there’s a break in Morello’s guitar, and so quiet, just a hushed whisper, something you might not even hear if you’re not waiting for it, Zack whispers a raspy, matter-of-fact single statement: “your anger is a gift.”
So I don’t get to be pretty. I don’t get to produce elegant, dancing words. I won’t ever be draped in velvet or adorned with a golden crown. I snarl. I am loving and I am giving and I am kind and I am considered meek by some and I am a nurturer and I’m supportive and I try to think the best of everyone. But my soul snarls, like the caged wolves that are my ancestors. I will die with my teeth clinched, grinding away enamel and bone.
My anger is a gift.
That gift is the art I ply. All I can give to you, to anyone, is who and what I am.
I am the gift of anger, the other side of being blinded by rage, of feeling so broken down, so hopeless, so defeated that all you can do is rise, and snarl out a whisper. Your. Anger. Is. A. GIFT.
I end my 4th of July post, my reflection on freedom, with a few other quotes from my totem spirit:
Yes, I know my enemies/They’re the teachers who taught me to fight me!
Compromise! Conformity! Assimilation! Submission!Ignorance! Hypocrisy! Brutality! The elite!
All of which are American dreams!/All of which are American dreams!/All of which are American dreams!/All of which are American dreams!