Beneath the surface

Some of us are better than others.

In concealing what’s inside.

Some days I feel that I must be so good at it. I have this inpenetratable surface — hard and shiny, slick and never-changing — that clearly states to the world “I’m fine and dandy, the same as yesterday.”

Other days, I fear that I am as transparent as an open journal. Naked and lonely, exposed and vulnerable, and people poke at my skin, just to see it bruise and bleed, because it’s so easy.

One of the books I read in college, the one from Counseling Psychology, started with this parable (I may have told this before): you gather a room full of people, and ask each of them this one question: what do you want?

And the room fills with yearning, desperate cries of people, carrying hidden unfulfilled desires and unfinished businesses.

Some of us are better than others, at concealing them.

Some days, I show up at work, and wonder if the reason all of us work, and work so hard, is because our day jobs, ultimately, are so inconsequential. Office politics, pleasing our clients, getting evaluated for their standards, not yours…. We rather do this than to deal with the real, heavy issues, that list of must-do-before-die that get buried deep, deep beneath the pile. It’s simply easier.

But below the cover, there is a huge, dark cavern, in which all kinds of creatures and treasures hide. Good and bad, beautiful and repulsing.

Waiting for the moment to come out, and be revealed.

This is why I make music.