The Unsung Song... the intro to a book I would really like to finish some day...

What happens when you find a song in your heart craving at the core of you to overflow and express to the world your happiness or grief or sense that there must be something more, yet you lack all ability to express it? I find myself as a janitor with only black paint to use as soap. I am incapable and the results are unspectacular, I can hardly keep a beat let alone perform a song that can sum up all of life’s adventure and longing, humor and pain. If I could, I would write a song about an epic journey through the incalcuble ways a heart can be pulled and twisted, undoubtedly resembling the thoughts of a madman. Of this I am sure, there would be many rich thoughts with forgone conclusions; great ideas with foggy endings. I believe people would see how different we are, yet how at the core we all struggle with so many of the same things. I believe my obsession with looking perfect would take a back seat to understanding my perfect imperfection. Through the song we would realize it is our individual baggage and imperfections that make us… well, us. From these flaws come some of my individuality; from these flaws come the hope of a better world for my children. To mask these flaws to fit in makes about as much sense as sticking a band aid on a bullet wound and sending a soldier back to war. In the end I’m just another flawed human being, I am in fact imperfect. However since this is my song I choose to look at it a different way, I choose to say that I have achieved Perfect Imperfection. This means simply that I am in fact my current state of being. I am not who I hope to be, I am perfectly who I am in my imperfect state. I may achieve what I hope at life’s end, but in life we are bound to the here and now, to the present. We cannot escape it by planning or promising something different. If I listen to all the noise, no wonder I am so uncomfortable in my own skin, I am told to be so many things and so much more, I can never enjoy what and where I currently am. The song would continue and eventually break down into disarray and disorder as I sang about wanting to live every moment doing what I believe matters, all the while I can’t even find meaning in my day to day existence. Yet here I am, unable to direct this orchestra of melancholy beauty and sometimes painful existence that is life in this the American Dream.I think what I crave is a constant connection; a connection on a deeper level than this world has to offer. I wish to be understood on the deepest most intimate level, I crave someone to know me through and through. I desperately want someone to understand my deep rooted desire for adventure in an assembly line world and see me as I see my self, an unexplainable masterpiece of emotion an utterly indefinable individual.I’m not certain, but I believe everyone desires to be truly known. While we may never be able to fully know each other, one of humanities greatest gifts I believe is the simple power to relate. We may never experience the death of a child yet when I hear the voice and see the face of a loved one that has experienced this great loss somehow it feels that my heart swells up and starts to restrict my airway. My heart feels as if it has burst into an overflowing and uncontainable emotion and in an instant I find myself relating to the pain and suffering they find themselves in. The power of relating is not that I truly experience what they are experiencing to the same depth that they experience it, it does not make me the same as them, it makes me compassionate toward them. It allows me for a brief time to connect on a level that we all crave to be connected at. The power to relate does not make me any less of an individual. Relating simply pulls at something already inside of me and brings it to the surface. It’s almost like it allows me to experience more of myself then I was before, a part or emotion that I didn’t know existed.It seems there is a need for human connection in the world. Without it I believe it’s too easy to fall into the assembly line and efficiently waste your life. It’s a wonder that we wonder how life can go by so fast. I feel hypnotized by IPOD’s, work and all this stuff I am supposed to want, and do in fact sometimes want. I’m in a work induced coma with very few signs of brain activity, yet I’m forced back to life because of a deep longing to be and feel something. I want a connection to someone or something but I have to get more out of the relationship than my IPOD gives me, and that is saying something, because I love my IPOD. It is full of great music and makes me feel cool because I have so many bands and songs that you have probably never heard of. Yet if I set all these great benefits aside I still need a real connection, my small mass of metal, with a spinning hard drive and bright screen still lacks the ability to relate to me. Itunes can predict bands I’ll enjoy and load them on my IPOD with the click of a button. I can take it fishing but it doesn’t share in the joy of actually catching a huge fish, it just sits there selfishly uninterested blaring away its cool music almost mocking me in my unshared joy. It distracts me but doesn’t distract me perfectly.The perfect distraction would quite possibly be the most marketable invention ever. Can’t you imagine it… on the box it would say, “Prepare to be perfectly distracted for the rest of your life. You will never worry or wonder “what if” again, you will never be let down by somebody or bored. This perfect distraction will occupy your every brain wave from now until the day you die, you will be a perfectly content entity unmoved by the current state of the world and unaffected by factors such as economy, weather and wealth. Prepare to be distracted!” I think we have been attempting to create the perfect distraction for sometime. How else can you explain addictive things like sports, drugs, video games and “The American Dream”? I believe we all experience Perfect Distraction at different moments. It’s those brief moments in life where I forget all of my imperfections, I forget all the things people want me to be and all the things I think I’m not; The pain and the weight of the world that I feel in my human condition for a brief moment is lifted. For a moment in time, time doesn’t matter. My every sense is dialed into that deeper connection that I crave, that very same connection I chase. It seems to be an out of this world connection because it doesn’t follow the typical busyness that is ruling this world. It is a pause button in a fast forward universe, where all at once I find myself feeling completely human yet completely ok with it. All my deficiencies are forgotten and for a moment I feel something or enjoy something to a depth that it seems the world has forgotten could be. Then, the moment passes and fast forward begins again. The weight of the world is back and I don’t quite feel as comfortable in my own skin. Have you ever had a severe itch on your back and then somebody else scratches it? Something almost magical happens in your body, it is like your skin is having a party, fireworks and champagne are going off just underneath the surface, then all of a sudden it is done… nothing… not even a tingle… the itch is gone and your skin feels boring and human again. The Perfect Distractions are like that, after I come down off my high everyone welcomes me back to real life, they tell me that this weight is just part of life. What I can never explain is why the Perfect Distraction that I experienced felt more like real LIFE. At least it made me feel alive, maybe it wasn’t just a distraction, what if that was life and all this is the distraction… argh, alas it is too much, my brain begins to hurt. I don’t know whether the distractions are life or this is life; I just know that at these distracted moments, these timeless happenings, during these deeper connections I feel more alive and more comfortable in my own skin than maybe I even should. If only it where possible to reproduce them and sell them in flavors, if only they where easier to recreate. I can’t make an assembly line that can create true connection. I can’t create a sequence of events or toy that will cause everyone to relate on a deep enough level to forget their problems. Of course, this is why I have IPODS and Nintendo and toys, this is my piddly attempt at sub par distraction. It doesn’t make me forget my problems and it definitely doesn’t make me feel ok with being human but it does help pass the time.I am writing this book to document my Perfect Distractions, my moments of blissful timelessness, my moments of life. I don’t want to forget them because they are all that I have that brings depth to my existence. I cherish these moments more than any possession because these moments define me. I don’t always know how to be myself but in these moments I feel so much myself that I forget about myself. It is in these moments that I wish I was a musician; Moments where a deeper connection is made and I am able to truly relate to another being. I feel like music is the only way to truly tell the stories in a way that they can also be felt. As fate would have it, with all of life’s imperfections, I am no musician, so I will attempt to put into words these moments found in life’s great adventure.