Listening...

How much of what I think is happening around me is truly real, is arguable.

Very one-sided, but arguable nonetheless. I couldn't explain it to anyone else, not unless they could crawl into my head and see through my eyes, and I feel crowded enough in here as it is.

Don't stop reading here because you think you've heard all this melodramatic-ethereal-aloneness-difference-mindless-confusion-clarity nonsense before, you have, and I know that. I just think that if we throw enough individual perspective into the mix the collective finished product will reflect a lot more long-lost true faces and souls than it has ever been given credit for sustaining.

I would love to see my own amongst them, don't I know how every mirror-eyed beholder in my world distorts me like I'm being convinced to buy ill-fitting and unflattering clothing. It may be the same in your world too: I don't know since I don't live there. But I'd like to see it sometime. I'll be your honoured guest for as long as you read this. Just tell me if you find I'm overstaying my welcome and I'll be forgotten straight away, I promise.

I started writing a song, many months ago, and like so many flashes of inspiration it fizzled after the first verse and faded into wisps of smoke on the chorus:

I've been taking notes and watching close
And I think I understand
The hopes and dreams of drama queens
Are much better than my plans
Now when I close my eyes at night
The pantomime begins
And all I do is lie back
And record all of their sins
Chorus: It's like making movies
Like having the spotlight here on you
Don't darken my doorway with imagination
Don't dampen my thoughts with dreams come true....

...such a tragedy, it was so young...

I may go back and try to breathe life into it later, I may not. I was looking to capture a sensation I knew was too insubstantial for mere words, and still I looked. And it's funny because when you don't find what you're looking for, you still hold your breath in anticipation until the whole world turns blue.

I had briefly seen something that awakened the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction; somewhere where real people crossed the lines between stereotypes and storylines and proved that realistic character development is a flawed concept beyond the power of the mightiest pen. We all knew that before. We read novels, we watch movies, we listen to music, we draw on frosty glass and we write streams of existential poetry. We're all voyeurs on a quest to find the perfect idea of a person in a perpetual play of fictional what-ifs. Once we do, I suppose we must look the other way to find true humanity.

I have a theory that everyone becomes the way they are because of how they are exposed to two elements: difference, and distance. We learn what we will accept and what we will reject by comparing it with our expectations and attempting to integrate it into our lives, and how the difference is handled makes the distinction between the monotonous and the dynamic.

Distance is harder to comprehend. We look at the stars, we know they're millions of miles away. But have you ever felt that distance? Can you raise your eyes to the sky and not think twice about the physical separation between yourself and the universe? Because there are people out there who can look at other people and not think twice about the distance between them, never once experiencing the awe of the realisation that every person in the world lives in their own universe and in that universe, everyone reigns supreme.

But can we truly catch that, in fiction or in reality?

"Milton caught the devil, could I ever catch the sun?" (myself, bored in preparing for a very long English class on "Paradise Lost".)

As always, we define ourselves in fiction, or rather through our creations. There are musicians, writers, artists; scientists, poultry farmers and panel beaters who suffer rejection and criticism of their work in the attempt to make their universe count. The signs of life are everywhere you look: there are people who plant cotton and there are people who fight wars. There are friends who laugh together in the streets, there are friends who turn on one another over soon-forgotten trivialities. There are people who confidently tear holes in tradition, there are people who desperately tear holes in themselves. There are people who set buildings on fire, there are people who rush into the flames to save the unknown lives others would see destroyed.

If we look for true humanity, we will find that the moments that defy it are the moments that define it. We will find mothers nursing their children to sleep beside soldiers gambling in an alley in the early hours of the morning. We will hear screams of laughter, screams of terror, and whispers of secrets that no living soul can repeat. We will see elderly couples still holding hands, children pointing knives at others' throats in the playground, ordinary people with heads bowed in prayer, teenagers on rooftops wondering if they can fly, motorists stopping for strangers in distress, pianists in evening wear playing to crowds of enthralled listeners, vaguely familiar faces on the bus discussing a life that will never cross with your own, arguments in the supermarket over which brand is best...the great dramas go on, unannounced, unrehearsed, largely unseen.

My guiltiest secret? I like to watch.

So do you, or you wouldn't still be here reading this.

What do you think?