Whatever. Here's what I know about music: I like being a little surprised by it. I like playing with people and feeling the pull of that thing you're doing take you where it wants you to go. And tapping into the energy, on stage and off. And just feeling a little awed by it. Letting the sounds rush over you. The sounds. Drowning out everything and forever. And feeling your heart race because you're not sure where this thing is taking you exactly, and it may drop off the next cliff, but it'll be one hell of a ride if it does. . . .
Aside from the way he looks, everything else I know about him is a product of my imagination: He's smart, but he doesn't talk unless he has something to say. His humor is understated, like his strength. He loves the people in his life to the point that it hurts. . . .
So this morning he came back. Mike, I mean. I considered not answering again, but figured that might get awkward. I opened the door in white pajamas, the top casually unbuttoned, revealing and covering, like a wish. I hadn't looked at my hair, but I knew it was pleasingly disheveled. Men have told me I look sexy in the morning. Like I don't know this? Like I don't know exactly what the fuck I look like in the morning? . . .
But the novel has mostly kept the same form all this time. It's comprised of pages and broken up into chapters. And it has a start and a finish. The emergence of digital literature could change that up a bit. For instance, why do we need a beginning and an end? What if, instead, authors created worlds and casts of characters that just existed along with the reader, indefinitely. . . .
It was how I referred to the vacation that was odd. Alluding to some project I intended to start, I had said to my friend at the dog park: "I'll work on it as soon as I get this vacation over with." She had laughed. "When you get it...over with?" I laughed too, because I understood on some instinctual level how ridiculous it sounded and I figured I should act like I was joking so as not to seem weird. Like I had spoken these words, you know, just to be funny. But the truth was I really didn't find much humor in it. It's honestly how I see most vacations: as something to get "over with." . . .
My friends are becoming avatars, smiling faces with one-liner quips next to their names, short expressions of happiness or sadness or love or hate. Or, oh my god, self-promotion. Propaganda. Marketing. We've become our own advertisements for...ourselves. Publicity agents for our own lives. Whoring ourselves to our friends. And I'm sure it's all genuinely felt. Oh, I'm sure it comes from deep within. But I know I start to get numb to it. And I just skim now and I don't really read. And I've "hidden" more than I show. And I think probably my friends deserve more than that. More, even, than my "Like" or "Become a Fan." An email, maybe. Or a phone call. Or simply our memory. Some of our friends just deserve our memory of them. That's it. We should all kill our Facebook. And I have a date to do just that. With a friend who isn't even in my Facebook. We'll do it over shots of whiskey. And we'll curse while we do it. And bang our fists on the bar. And celebrate our freedom. . . .
