Detachment blues

You know that awkward feeling when you’ve just taken a shot at bowling, and you’re walking back to your seat?

You don’t quite know how to act.

Whether you’ve hit a strike or thrown a turkey.

You feel equally weird on those few steps back to your seat…

You know that feeling?

Well, I feel like that all the time.

My whole life is that walk back to the seat after taking a shot at bowling.

So, why do I throw myself into situations where I’m immediately at unease?

Like music award ceremonies.

Why do I do it to myself?

As soon as I enter, I’m looking for the exit…

Or the bar.

To ease the pain of it all.

Lubricate the situation with alcohol.

What is everyone doing here?

What am I doing here?

I don’t get it.

I look around.

Everyone is shmoozing… hob knobbing… rubbing shoulders.

I wonder how many others here feel the exact same as me, but they wear the mask.

I can’t do it.

I leave, and find the quietest corner of the quietest pub, and feel a hundred times better.

Away from the sea of faces.

I don’t know why, but I’m right at home here.

Before too long, I’m joined by a couple of stragglers from the ceremony.

Small talk ensues, and I bring up a quote where a famous poet says an artist should never ‘arrive’ anywhere.

They should be continually on a never-ending search, and the second you feel you’ve landed, is the second you are screwed.

I look up, mid-sentence, to see my uninterested buddies’ faces looking at the TV screen.

I stop talking, and slink back with another beer.

Best not to penetrate their bubble.

Their comfort zone.

…And who could blame
them.

Through the crowd, I can faintly hear Chet Baker on the radio, and my mind starts to float away.

Whatever demons haunted Beethoven or Erik Satie are the same demons that haunted Chet Baker.

There’s an ancient energy; a frequency that they have all tapped into.

The only difference between them is the year they channelled it, and wrote it down.

It’s no coincidence that Robert Johnson and Nick Drake both wrote about being pursued by a dog from hell.

There were decades between them, but they both died at the same young age.

I visited both their graves.

One in the Mississippi Delta, and the other in Middle England.

An ocean between them, but they were right next to each other.

Connected somehow; part of the same energy.

It’s like when I first read Charles Bukowski and first heard John Fahey; I was convinced they were the same person.

They weren’t, of course.

Just two guys who drank from the same river.

The only difference was one of them used a typewriter to express himself, and the other used a guitar.

Years later, I found out that they briefly had an acquaintance with each other, when
Bukowski released a record of his poetry on Fahey’s ‘Takoma’ label.

Of course he did.

Makes complete sense.

In a world of junk, it’s only natural that these two would cross paths, and seek each other out. All this is going through my brain while those around me vomit words into the air.

What am I doing here?

The older I get, the less common ground I’m finding with my fellow humans.

Floating further adrift.

Nobody notices when I leave, and head out into the rain.

…I feel better now.

I walk softly into the night, and I think about what Bukowski once wrote:

‘You won’t see them often,

‘For wherever the crowd is, they are not.

‘Those odd ones, not many’.

Maybe he’s right.

Perhaps I am ‘just one of the odd ones’.

Forever walking back to my seat after taking a shot at bowling.