Swan
March 28, 2018
It’s Nell’s birthday. The morning started predictably. A dream / nightmare where she and her beau came to visit me at my house. I couldn’t face her. I locked myself in my room and threw up. It sickened me how I was failing at life, how I wanted to be somebody by now, but I’m not. I’m still “a work in progress”… just unrealized potential. Unless you’ve already made it, you’re still just a loser. It doesn’t matter if you’re gonna make it ten years from now. In this moment, you’re a fucking nobody. Everything around me in the dream was a reminder of how ashamed I should be.
And it’s not her. She just wanted to see me. I’ve imposed these burdens on myself. But it’s real. It doesn’t matter how much other people want to look past my shortcomings. I’ve let myself down. I haven’t lived up to my own standards, which I’ve concluded are the minimum requirements to earn a modicum of dignity.
Everyone she chooses to interact with must have been special enough to catch her attention… I’m the ugly duckling, and she’s a swan. And the only birds she talks to are other swans. Before the ugly duckling became a swan himself, his life was fucking miserable. That’s well documented. Here’s the part only a few people mention: he becomes a swan by complete accident. The only thing he did to become a swan was 1) be born with great genetics and 2) be a spectator to the passage of time. He did absolutely no work himself.
So I’m not an ugly duckling who’s actually a swan. I’m just an actual ugly duckling with a pipe dream. You know who the real victim of that story is? The second ugliest duckling. After the ugliest duckling becomes the swan, the previously second ugliest is now the ugliest. And he wasn’t gifted with “plot armor” as they say. He’s just an actual duck. Now he’s gotta take all the shit the ugly duckling used to take, without a lucky break at the end. If he contemplates suicide (yeah the ugly duckling was suicidal at one point), he won’t be saved by just happening to be beautiful. He’ll fucking die. The end.
What a sad start to a journal entry. It’s been ten years!! Ten years have gone by since I started this journal, and I have a little to show for it… but I still don’t have anything concrete. All of my songs are still in development, although a couple are almost complete. Despite the idealistic negativity of my unconscious mind, consciously I’m proud of how everything is turning out. It’s thrilling how the songs are coming together… I have a talented drummer I’m working with via the internet and the songs sound amazing. I just wish I had an audience for it.
I have a song about her. I might as well chuck the nickname Nell now. Her real name is all over the fucking song. I think I’ll keep it as Nell, just to differentiate the real Nell from the fantasy Nell that I’ve constructed via the old imagination box. The song has a bit of fantasy in it too though. It’s not really about her. There’s a presumption best described by a line in there that tells her “it ain’t wrong to put your faith in love”, as if she doesn’t have a sickeningly perfect relationship with her husband. No… that sentiment is a reminder to me. And for a new generation of young men and women. One that’s been forgotten. One that’s lost touch with love and has had their trust broken and stomped on over and over. Love demands bravery and heart. Something that’s been in short supply.
Love did pretty well in the sixties, they say. Since then it hasn’t done any better, and I think now almost two decades into this millennium, love’s street cred is at an all time low (except in Utah where all the Mormons are gay for love). I want my music to restore some of the faith that people have lost in love. It’s especially true for Nell’s song.
No, it’s not all about her. The first scene in that song where we’re dancing… that was lifted from a scene with a different girl I nicknamed Jane in the journal’s prologue. So the song’s mostly about me. But the parts that are about her… boy, do you know it. There’s a special place in my heart for that track. Happy birthday, Nell.