My crash course in music theory was going well, and, although I’d never be a performer that memorized something—or traveled around on a tour, it was, I discovered, possible to record my voice saying and or speaking the lyrics that went with my songs. For now I just wanted to focus on learning and writing the music and the lyrics before getting into actually singing something. But anyhow—Ursula was pleased that I managed to delve into this aspect of myself, which had been hidden, for years, in my longing and or frustration at one of the few people I ever dated. I’m glad that’s over – and, yes, although i don’t know how over anything ever really is when you’re in recovery—which is a state you live in, not something that happens and you’re ok. Are you feeling jazzy tonight? what did she mean by that? Yes, we often listened to jazz while we were eating and playing cards—or whatever game we were playing; but I don’t know how—then, yes, i understood. At some point I no doubt would expand and write music akin to jazz—my own particular interpretation of it. Nothing was stopping me from doing that—studying and writing music a little every day in the same way that I did everything else.
So, what’s going on here? I didn’t want to joke, again, about being the greatest artist that ever lived, because, well, we were getting to the point where saying something like that wasn’t funny anymore. I had to be a little more conscientious if I wanted people to like me—and, indeed, if I want to continue to advance through speaking the language of love. Well, I hadn’t been in a four count in a while, so I gave it a go—i was kind of automatically doing the frequency and amplitude modulation, now; that kept me from getting beat up a little by people that are both talented and use drugs to exploit that talent—which doesn’t belong to them. Talent doesn’t belong to any one person—you share a source of talent that you tap into. That source actually belongs to talented people from both the past and the future—as well as the rest of us.
Ursula was telling me now that she was going back to New York, as in, she’d finished her college and she was going back to her home, which I could only interpret as her saying that I didn’t need her anymore—not unless I made some changes. But I wasn’t going to change anything that felt right—and by feeling right I don’t mean getting stoned, which is what some people do, or at least used to do, so anyhow—that wasn’t going to happen. What else? What did she want to change? Or did she mean that she, too, was succumbing to the notion that this man that lived on the other side of the camera would never get both famous enough and inclined enough to win her over. The odds against that happening were simply too great, and, furthermore, I was well aware that she was happy, at least happy “enough,” with the competition.
That was a little disheartening, but I’d felt that, too, and, while I felt definite qualms about living in a city that would be the target of a nuclear attack—if such an event ever happened, I was willing, at least, to consider moving somewhere whenever I was making my own money, and plenty of it—more than I’d need to both store my work and have space to work; so, basically, I’d have to be wealthy. Given how highly I thought of myself, that, eventually, was a possibility, but it was far more likely that my work would remain a little too far out there to be picked up by a certain audience until I was much older, if not dead. So, yeah, I know what she was talking about—I just didn’t have to go home; I was already there. I guess if I allowed myself to daydream, I might imagine her saying that she meant, when she said she was going back to New York, that I, at some point, would have to go with her—that was probably what she meant when she said that things had to change: so, I figured, we might spend half our time in New York if that was a dealbreaker, and the other half of the time, i guess, would have to be broken down into thirds or fourths, since we’d probably need a residence in Washington DC, too.
And what about this notion that the French like my work better than Americans like my work? Was it conceivable that, at some point, i might find it necessary to move to Paris? How was that going to work? Frankly, I didn’t see how I could be happy if I never got to spend any time here, in Georgia, at my parents’ house, which, in my opinion, was the perfect place for me to live indefinitely. I had a studio, my paintings were here, and I wouldn’t be targeted in a nuclear attack—and, if that was a possibility, well, we could always retreat to my parents property in the North Carolina mountains—it was just unfortunate that the North Carolina people were notorious bigots, if not entirely hateful people.
So Ursula was going back to New York—was I overhearing her break up with me after some future relationship? That was a possibility, too, I guess, although I didn’t imagine us breaking up if we ever got together, since, as I understand, Ursula really has herself together—and, because of that, I would never feel that she didn’t love me, or didn’t love me as much as somebody else would, somebody, that is, that had the ability to understand me as something besides a modicum of opportunity; somebody that saw me as a partner—not someone overly ambitious, or, on the other hand, just downright lazy and dim. i’m not going back to New York for good that was interesting. I always imagined that she’d refuse to call her home anything but New York, but maybe I had it all wrong. I don’t know—did she feel that if she left New York she’d be abandoning the people that believed in her? Apparently, if that was ever the case, she’d changed, or was in the process of changing.