Feeling a Ghost

2 days ago

I make you. Feel. Feeling. A ghost. Do I?

A mosaic. That one was very me. Or was it a fractured mirror? Which crumbled into a million pieces. Peacefully, one might say. In a way, it did. In another sense, that was piercing damage draining the very souls, years later.

What a cliché, dude!

What’s a soul to you? I asked that night, the hurtful, crushing nocturne. Well aware we’re centuries apart sharing sheets, cloudburst, hunger, and the deafening silence pressing in on our eardrums. I felt like saying anything. Any thing. Any think. I wondered anyway – I’ve never asked you just for the act of asking, for shouting down mere existence. Never needed to speak for the sake of noise.

None of us really knew. Low tide of words. At least we were honest. I still am at least.

That shallow spectacle, a masquerade, you unveiled. Tolerated. No crampons anchored deep within. No icefall collapse. No black summer. No Mallory and Irvine.

Still.

I thought that syllable would only resonate in distillation.

De Stijl.

A promise of the absolute. Of the flawless.

I recall facing the imperfection in Amsterdam. Mondrian. Knew him from books. Wishing I weren’t there, dodging that blunder. Trembling brushstrokes, faltering perhaps. I recall a chocolate sphere later that day, rolling back and forth on a train while I was too high to duck down. Stoned in fact. Fuck. Still better than Piet.

Pietà.

Supported by angels. Stabat Mater Dolorosa.

Yet never dolorosa.

Yet never a ghost to me.

It's #threetunetuesday by @ablaze !

And mine’s going to be ghost-themed, as you might have guessed from the prose poetry above. And who else could possibly kick off this #ttt but Brian Molko and Stefan Olsdal? Of course, it's Placebo and Sleeping with Ghosts.

Hush
It's okay
Dry your eyes
Dry your eyes
Soulmate dry your eyes
…
Cause soulmates never die

Feels like a lifetime ago now. Nick Cave mourned his late son on Skeleton Tree, and carried that grieving, melancholic mood right into the next album. Who would've thought that the yobbo from The Birthday Party, and later the Berlin-based junkie who roamed that city of blue (as I still see it, sorry @llunasoul!) scribbling on loose pages that would eventually become And the Ass Saw the Angel (seriously, read it if you haven't!), would ever become so… meditative? Contemplative? Tamed, even? Yet, here we are with Ghosteen.

If I could move the night I would
And I would turn the world around if I could
There is nothing wrong with loving something
You can’t hold in your hand
You’re sitting on the edge of the bed
Smoking and shaking your head
Well there’s nothing wrong with loving things
That cannot even stand

Last but not least, here's a track that’s less about ghosts in general and more about the act of becoming one. And who else could it be but Thom Yorke, one of the very few guys who can write and sing a song like this and make you believe every single word. Radiohead, How to Disappear Completely.