2008年 Mar 20日 Thursday, 7:51

(Cross-posted; written on March 19, 2008)

I woke up this morning and Pelle Carlberg's I Love You, You Imbecile was stuck in my head. I took it as good news for today. It was, after all, a far cry from yesterday's first thought upon waking up: "I want to hide under a rock." Things will get better.

It was 4:30 in the afternoon yesterday when the moon started to show. It's already summer but the days are still short; darkness still wants to preside.

Over the past six months, I have found myself obsessing about the sky. Which could be a total cliche for a creative person, but I just cannot escape its beauty. I have been studying cloud movements, noticing that it is at 2:30 in the afternoon when the sky is the most beautiful. The sun shines brightly at an angle, casting glorious halos around the clouds. I see other things in the sky. Zeus. Koalas. My future. Dancing stars and changing moons.

Yesterday at sunset, I watched the moon for at least an hour, to escape the traffic boredom. It was a cloudless sky, so there was not much to look at. 5:30 in the afternoon and I watched how the moon got bigger and brighter, the sky dimmer and dimmer. The Magnetic Fields began to play, You and Me and the Moon and Save a Secret for the Moon and I Think I Need a New Heart and I knew it wasn't coincidence that two songs spoke of the moon. The man on the moon was asking me to tell him a secret.

I did. I saved a secret for him. And there was no "you" to come in between. It was just me and the moon. I felt better after that. I didn't want to crawl under a rock anymore.

This morning, when Pelle Carlberg woke me up, I had the desire to return to two months ago. Escape, spontaneity, invisibility. I want to go back to those places that made me happy. And the night that I sat less than ten feet away from Pelle, no heads to obstruct my view, no cameras allowed, so I did not have to worry about getting the perfect shot. It was just him and me and the music.

This is what I have to remember from now on: the moonman and the musicman understand me the most. They were witnesses to the times I was most vulnerable, or lazy, or creative in the past two years, at midnight when the moon would watch me and song after song played.

The moonman said, "You're still young. You should see, experience the world: it's big and beautiful."
The musicman said, "I can show you sadder poetry than you ever dreamed there could be."

I'll be okay. :)