BORN INNOCENT

I am melancholy in that classic sense that sometimes (usually when I am alone but it also happens when I'm in a large crowd) I get overwhelmed by the scope of this world and the idea that we even exist, and that humans suffer, and that lessons aren't learned and mistakes keep being made, needless mistakes that anyone with half a visionary eye could prevent with just some decency and common sense...

My defense mechanism is to embrace nihilism, embrace nothingness, telling myself nothing matters. This is accompanied by a shriek or a howl, deep from the bowels of my churning guts, a primal concession to the pain of being a man. I smile as I talk freely of death and dust and disease, daring all others to peer past the layers, to dig beneath this clever charade, to "get" the cosmic joke, to catch me winking as I speak of entropy and gravity and cruel destiny...

But inside I am a sensitive child who searches madly, perhaps in vain, for one man or woman who can prove me wrong irrefutably. My desperation reeks, stains my clothes and forewarns others of my impending arrival; there I am, with lantern in hand, searching for God underneath carriages and in shop windows, shouting at passerby who deride my station, who cannot see that I merely strive to serve something greater than myself, because there HAS to be something greater than me, something out there that is greater than all of this... otherwise it is all rubbish, isn't it?

I don't expect everyone to understand, especially those who have never felt the degree of discomfort that a great deal of folk have felt, the agony of waking each morning and knowing there are many reasons to end one's life, the pressure to live up to invisible expectations, the eyes of an imaginary God scanning you, infusing you with guilt as you walk this scorched earth... No, I don't expect you to sympathize or relate.

Don't let my fatalistic words throw you-- my mood right now is the result of little sleep and a wide-open imagination tarred and feathered by the psychoactive properties of high-grade marijuana smoke. But these blue moods are brilliant in the most tragic possible sense, in that way that enables misery to become pleasurable, and in a way that makes one wish that the pain could be prolonged somehow, because it is so beautiful, so sad, so doleful and remiss, what a songwriter I admire once referred to as 'sweet pain'...

Music elicits the melancholy, the bad blood, the listless humor, to stir inside me. Certain songs come on at just the right moment and paint a watercolor landscape that cascades over my eyes, washing clean the impurities, causing me to see beyond what is front of me. And I hate it, because sometimes I don't want to like these songs, I don't want them to speak to me and reaffirm the things that I know to be true, the damned regulations and self-imposed rules and the crazy meaningless rituals that bring things supposedly into focus...

I can't stand Sarah McLachlan. I don't know why I don't like her-- she bugs me. But she has a song, and it's called "Adia", and it is speaking to me as I reflect upon my breakfast with Holly. The song has invaded my mind because it was playing in the restaurant where she and I ate yesterday morning.

I needed to know what the song meant, so I did some searches. This link says the same things that other sites have said about the song, so I have included it here for cross-reference.

Once again, the actual meaning of a song that I am haunted by is miles away from the meaning I attribute to it. "Adia" is about a female friend of McLachlan's who was hurt when McLachlan, weasely whore that she is, started dating the ex of said friend. But I think about "Adia" as my words to Holly this morning, as I struggled to explain indescribable feelings, inarticulate emotions, trying to pinpoint instances and convey the gist of my heart to her.

Being a bit psychic, she got the picture.

Holly is the Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands that Bob Dylan sang about, a woman who is defined by her sadness. There is a glimmering glimpse of her inner turmoil trapped in the glassy cage of her downturned glance that, when leveled at me, dilates and pulses with emergency. And she looked at me today and instead of telling her I loved her (like I've done so many times before) I tried to transmit it through my actions, my facial expressions, my eyes.

The song played. My heart ached. McLachlan sang:


Adia I do believe I failed you
Adia I know I let you down
don't you know I tried so hard
to love you in my way
it's easy let it go...


We talked about the band, what a glorious failure it was, how saddened we were that it didn't go anywhere, how joyfully dismal our prospects were... She never doubted my commitment to it, not once.

It was at that moment that I realized that the band was a literal symbol for our love.

We never dated, never made love, never fell into that trap. We shared countless nights in bed, talking, dreaming aloud, crying in each other's arms, sharing our torments (she more than me, I might add-- she never asked me about my personal demons, and it's just as well), exchanging the softest of kisses, tender like a piano playing in the dark...

I wrote a short story once about a couple who decided to have an imaginary baby. When the relationship between the two became strained, they stayed together because of their "baby", but later on in the story the woman wanted out-- she no longer wanted to play this game with her man, and she came to view their "baby" as a farce and indicative of how non-existant their bond was becoming.

The band was my "baby" with Holly. We nurtured this thing together, the two of us. It was a proxy relationship-- God knows the both of us are too neurotic and wounded to conduct ourselves properly. This was the closest thing the both of us could manage, both of us having been hurt so much and now being so wary of afflictions like love and desire.

I told her I would miss her immensely. I told her that she was the most important thing in my life in the past year, and that the general happiness that I have been feeling lately is due to her having faith in my talent and abilities. I told her that I would visit her in Orlando the first chance I got. I told her that I would never forget her.

For a second, I thought about how tough the first few weeks would be without her, knowing that she is not around.


Adia I'm empty since you left me
trying to find a way to carry on
I search myself and everyone
to see where we went wrong

'cause there's no one left to finger
there's no one here to blame
there's no one left to talk to honey
and there ain't no one to buy our innocence


"You're too sensitive," I told her, when she said that this city was killing her and that she needed to leave. "I know, because beneath this stoic facade, I am also."


'cause we are born innocent
believe me Adia, we are still innocent
it's easy, we all falter
does it matter?


"This is not the end, of course," she said, sipping on her tall iced tea. "I'll be back for showcases and promotions and stuff like that... I just don't think I can live here, it's too fake."

"Babe, I've lived here all of my life," I said, "and although it sometimes takes the piss out of me, it has never won. I have never let this city win."


Adia I thought we could make it
but I know I can't change the way you feel
I leave you with your misery
a friend who won't betray
I pull you from your tower
I take away your pain
and show you all the beauty you possess


She picked up the tab-- last time we met for breakfast I handled the bill. It was her turn. She asked me to come back to her apartment to help her move some things. I met her there and helped her dispose of a crusty old coffee table that had been left outside on the patio for all the years she lived there.

We sat down and watched a tape of the new season of The Ali G Show, as I massaged her back. The spaghetti strap gave way, falling to the side. My hands were rough, her back was tense and knotty. The room was virtually empty, a shell of its former cluttered atmosphere. It was spare and stripped-down. I liked it.

Kisses, but nothing out-of-the-ordinary... warm embraces, realizations that time is running out; realizations that, even if time wasn't running out, there is nothing that either of us could do that would make it any better, except to just enjoy these moments for what they were-- fleeting indulgences.


If you'd only let yourself believe that
we are born innocent
believe me Adia, we are still innocent
it's easy, we all falter, does it matter?


We laughed at the misadventures of Borat from Kazakhstan. The two of us hadn't sat down and laughed like that together for some time.


'cause we are born innocent
believe me Adia, we are still innocent
it's easy, we all falter ... but does it matter?


I told her I would call her later on in the evening, but I didn't get the sleep I normally allow myself. After working at The Garage, I called it an early night, drove home, and slept until it was time to go to work. I will call her before I leave from work, and I will call upon her tonight. We will drink wine and nuzzle close to each other and wait out this sentence until the last day, when she drives away from this godforsaken place and leaves me here to rot...


believe me Adia, we are still innocent
'cause we are born innocent
believe me Adia, we are still innocent
it's easy, we all falter ... but does it matter?


Goddamn you, Sarah McLachlan.