Prompt -
Write a letter to someone you have lost that was very close to you.
The person I was closest to and lost is C. I addressed my feelings over this in an entry that was lost in a Bloop crash long ago. So today I will be lazy and put this information back. C inspired people. He was the strongest among us, the closest to making a living at his art. He was someone who changed everyone he met. Maybe we should all be more like that.
I only get inspired by other people. Can you motivate me, do you want to be my muse? We'll walk ash-marble steps examining ancient blood stains, our masks immaculate with shining cigarrette burns and licked inflection. I want to spy on the other people under table-cloths and inside windows and laugh at life's joke. Deep down, maybe we all just want someone to laugh with. The joke is always sickly funny, but only a few bright or crazy souls have the confidence to laugh alone.
In a thick wilderness between Ohio and oblivion there is a tiny town full of inbred homesteads which look like Ewok Villages, a church, a general store, gardens designed by madmen and cracked streets filled with violent, wandering rapists who chew tobacco. At the edge of this town is a giant, tree-covered hill. There is one road going up the hill for miles. The road is narrow, winding, covered in slippery gravel, and raised 5 feet in the air. It is so narrow only one small car can drive up it at a time, if 2 cars encounter one another one must back up endlessly to avoid sliding down the roadside then rolling down the hill in a churning fireball. Driving up or down this thing is the scariest bloody thing I have ever done, you can feel the entire time that one bad turn of the steering wheel can easily kill everyone in your car.
Once you reach the top of this mountainous plateau, you are confronted by a brief clearing and a wide chainlink fence surrounded by forest. The trees are loud, they drown out voices and claw the air, this place silences the very idea of humanity. Inside the chainlink fence is an old cemetary with upraised headstones in rows. Outside the trim fenced graveyard and off to the right on the edge of the forest is a grafitti-covered park bench, a tall stone gargoyle wearing a faded paper party hat, and a lone black headstone. Hallucinogenic mushrooms grow here, empty gin bottles litter the ground. Deep down below the isolated headstone, in the lone coffin is the battered body of a muse in the true legendary sense of the word.
This muse is C. Not sure why his family buried him just outside their cemetary, but it seems to fit because he always stood out. He really wanted to be cremated, and have his ashes spread into a gin bottle and drank at his wake. That didn't happen.
He comes from music, and lived music. This was revealed when he said "I am the son of Jesus" because his father was playing Jesus in a broadway production of "Jesus Christ Superstar". His father sang a christian song at the funeral with a full band, they were a family of performers. The song did not fit the dead man.
C used to say he was kicked out of the entire county this plot resides in. The story goes that they dropped him off at the county line where the pig-like Sheriff told him this:
"Do you know what your problem is, boy? You get these kids a-thinkin. And they don't need to be a-thinkin, they need to be a-doin."
The police parted with a passing nightstick blow, and C walked down the road and on to the city I grew up in. When he came back years later, he was dead and accompanied by a crowd which would make Marti-Gra blush and Jesus run in fear. It felt almost like retribution.
I am getting off-topic. We need to face this spirit, so we'll reach into the grave, pull the body upright and corrected and wake it up with a drink of good gin.
Who were you?
Beetles on a chewed tongue, broken jaw dangling.
What was your purpose in my life?
"In 20 years of policework I've never seen anyone beaten so badly." -Larry the state policeman who's daughter I dated.
What were you meant to teach me?
Milos: Tony who killed C was a boxer. If he was a martial artist, he would have been crucified.
Fight Club: "Let it out, Tony"
Is it that even those destined to succeed can fail? That the most beautiful of things can die prematurely? That nothing lasts forever? That noone is perfect?
I may never know. Maybe I dwell on this because the funeral was closed-casket, the death could have been faked. Maybe it's because his killer was only sentenced to 7 years and is out now. Maybe it's because it sucks when someone you care about is murdered. Maybe it's the contrast between his vibrant life and horrible death. Maybe it's because his son is still alive and living with Luna in her peculiar den of cocaine and disorder. Maybe it's because his music is still around. Only the memories can answer. Only a few quotes, a few songs, a few places, a distant tombstone, and passing time.
As I turn to leave, the body rises in a clatter of bones and speaks. "You're not really going to leave it like that are you? You always did give up too easy, you melodramatic douche nozzle. Why, whine, why. If you really wanted wisdom, you should have dug up Socrates or Confuscious, not a musician. The questions of why we meet and why we die are as old as all things. According to the Greeks, it is the hand of fate. To the Christians it is the mind of God. To the Cherokee, the whims of the earth-spirits. To the conquerors it is manifest destiny. To the satanists self, the capitalist progress, the humanists the great randomness of free will. Frued would say that each death is the suicide of the subconsious brain. Neitche would say I died for being weak. You would say it is for nothing more than inspiration if you weren't acting like such a bitch right now.
I say it doesn't matter. You are alive, fool. Leave me alone, move on, get out and do some living. You've now lived longer than I did, and I still had more fun. Don't waste time wallowing in self-loathing or bad memories. All you have is now so don't let anyone steal it from you. Dance, sing, make art, make love, laugh, do what you have to do. Go. Good night. Don't come back unless you bring beer."
I leave the upturned earth behind, drive slowly down the treacherous hill, alone into the eye of the setting sun.
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"I wrote that song from last night's dream, sometimes those turn out, sometimes they don't"
"You're in the real world now, you've got to learn somehow or you're gonna die"
"If we can find and play at a rave every weekend for the rest of our lives, we'll be just fine financially"
"Evening beer balances out morning coffee, otherwise you're just an insomniac with peeing fits"
"I wonder...what you're dreaming about. And I wonder...would I like it if I found out?"
"I'm so gay I fuck my own ass"
"For Mary, the most beautiful girl I never met" -there's a story behind that one, maybe I'll post it one day.
"Nobody freaks out on acid that bad unless they overanalyze things"
"Whenever I drink gin, I hit on blonds"
"I'm not even going to be around when this bet is settled. What are you going to do, take it out of my kid?"
"Who wants to get out of bed? I do. I have maybe 75 years, 75 summers, 75 winters, that's not long. There are plenty of reasons to get out of bed"
-C The muse, 1975-2000
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Deep down, maybe we all just want someone to laugh with. The joke is always sickly funny, but only a few bright or crazy souls have the confidence to laugh alone.
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