Everybody's gotta learn sometime

© A. Bottarel - All Rights Reserved

Goodbye, my almost lover
Goodbye, my hopeless dream
I'm trying not to think about you
Can't you just let me be?
So long, my luckless romance
My back is turned on you
I should've known you'd bring me heartache
Almost lovers always do

A Fine Frenzy

There are times when others wrote the words you wish to say, so all you really need to do is listen. There's nothing about love that hasn't been experienced already, although we all suffer in our own, very personal way. 

There's a part of us we can put in words, even written by someone else. There's a part we cannot express, because it wouldn't be in any comprehensible language. Maybe a picture. The winter of love. A heart carved in snow that will eventually melt. I tried to be cold enough to preserve it, but in the end nature always wins.

Fearful Frail Faith

© A. Bottarel - All Rights Reserved

It's about you and the sun
A morning run
The story of my maker
What I have and what I ache for

Röyksopp

Fragile, our faith. Transcending reality but strongly depending on it. 

That's what people call either acts of God or karma, isn't it? That's why we need something real to hang on to, no matter how strong our creed is. With no sun, this place looks dark to us, and we don't really seem to care for what's in it, as long as there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Not only we need people to push us, we also need possibilities to pull our tired bodies towards the goal. 

One glance at the sky. Is it still cloudy? The last ray of light can't be disappearing. Not now. Funny how in a movie I find a decent answer to an important question. What is faith? Faith in something is a choice we make again and again and again. Well, sometimes it's just hard. You wish it's some kind of atonement for something you've done, so it will be over, at some point, and you'll never have to deal with it again. 

Fear is behind the corner, waiting to grasp your hands and drag you into some kind of weird, hypnotic dance. Raise your head, try to keep it high. No matter what, look at the sky. Something may fall from it, after all. Rain, snow, a ray of light. Isn't that a proof that there's something else out there, after all? You can't really pretend much more. 

I'll tell myself a little lie, for a while. Everything will be fine. Because, after all, that's what F also stands for. 

Fine.

There's a light that never goes out

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Take me out tonight

Where there's music and there's people

Who are young and alive

Driving in your car

I never, never want to go home

Because I haven't got one

Anymore

The Smiths

Dedicated to N. 

Piling up bricks. Working with my bare hands. Unexpected result of what should have been a geeky weekend. N sounds almost relieved when I tell her what I'm doing. Part of me is relieved too, some other part is kinda pissed, but maybe this will help me having less stuff to throw in my own face later on. 

It's amazing how we manage to find incredible ways to get along with other people and we never really learn how to deal with ourselves. This song, this post is for her and for me. Because that's what we really have in common: a deep inability to deal with ourselves, with the place we live in (I'm not gonna call them "home" for a precise reason), with our own emotions. 

But that's not uncommon, on the contrary. We are social animals, always reaching for something different. Those of us who don't feel the need to are blessed with peace of mind and ignorance.

You can choose whether to envy or pity them. 

So we can live on our own, can't we? But there's a light that never goes out. And it burns, and it keeps us thinking, casting the shadow of our thoughts on the walls inside our skull. There's no real peace for the open minded, guzzling down inputs from the outside world like candies. And we want more. And it's never enough. It's a good thing, but sometimes we just fail to handle our addiction. 

Home is not a safe place. Home is not a dark place, 'cause there's a light that never goes out.

Shout out loud

© A. Bottarel - All Rights Reserved

Lately there’s something I miss

And maybe it’s not just the bliss

Lady, I don’t need your kiss

No one seems to care

I just want to shout out loud

TO SHOUT OUT LOUD

Take me to the cave of your broken dreams

Sing loud ‘till your voice is all I can hear

‘cause I never knew it could take so much

Getting so close to some human touch

The feelings you hide will slip away

These stupid mistakes make me want to shout out loud

Face me, I won’t close my eyes

I need to see through your disguise

‘cause I don’t think that you realize

That you missed your chance

And you want to shout out loud

TO SHOUT OUT LOUD

And once again

© A. Bottarel - All Rights Reserved

And once again you stand there

Alone with your thoughts in a crowd

You can barely touch them, can you?

They're neither impressed nor displeased

Safe behind the barricade

Your roots are deep 

But your canopy still trembles in the wind

Almost hoping that someone will come

To take you down as a Christmas tree

Certain that they won't, 'cause in the end

They all go for the good looking one

Every

Single

One 

Of

Them

Jealousy

© A. Bottarel - All Rights Reserved

And so you two will dance again

Like shadows in the distance

While I wither in denial

Trying to remember

What your skin was like

Trying not to think

What it looks like now

You cross my path

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 I don't think you quite know who I am

I am the son of loyalty

I hope you understand

Charlatans UK

Too soon, we parted too soon. 

No time to get to know each other, no time to find out what you might have loved about me and what I would've died for. Because, let's face it, no matter how things went, I would have been the over-dramatic one. But still, it's unfair, so unfair that I just can't let it go. It was just a glance, a frame of someone sitting in the window seat of a moving car caught from another car. An idea, a blurred vision of something. 

Is that hope shaping reality the way you'd like it to be? Hell yeah. What is it there for, if not for that? Is there any other reason to go on, if not hope? Purposes are not certainties.

We can't turn back time or chase ghosts down an empty highway, but we do have to send out signals, paint our faces with visible colors, scream loud or play funny instruments so that our peers could catch a glimpse of what we are. 

It's like the shining. Few people can feel that, but I do believe that there's something more than words to know each other. And talking about The Shining, here's what Stephen King once said about his movie: "What's basically wrong with Kubrick's version of The Shining is that it's a film by a man who thinks too much and feels too little."

That's exactly what I'm talking about. 

Feelings are not about time or reason. 

If you end up embarking on a pointless quest, waiting for reality to match your thoughts, well, you better be lucky. It's the other way around. It doesn't really matter if he/she crossed our path by mistake or God or karma wanted this to be so. It's what we feel about it that makes the difference. 

And so you crossed mine, on a cold and damp autumn day. In the crowd, everyone else looked like dust in a desert, plain and pointless to my eyes. There you stood and still you stand, and nobody else knows. 

Well, I do. And somehow, I believe you do too.

Getting lost into oneself, and suddenly being a wreck.

 © A. Bottarel - All Rights Reserved

My body is a cage that keeps me 

From dancing with the one I love 

But my mind holds the key

I'm standing on a stage

Of fear and self-doubt

It's a hollow play

But they'll clap anyway

Arcade Fire

Does my mind really hold the key? I sit and wonder. Because that's what one does when one has nothing else to do. 

As you bid farewell to places and people you're familiar with, every mistake you made sits in front of you, staring hard into your eyes. Are you ready to let it go? All the things you never said suddenly seem to matter more than the ones that really happened. And this is something we all know. The real matter is: is it worth trying to rush back, trying to salvage what you can from the wreck you left? 

I think so. Although it may sound greedy to chase memories that don't belong to us, it's also our right to fight for what could be ours. It's so damn romantic, isn't it? Romantic in the proper way. Hopelessly against reason and individual. It's like burning fuel, it keeps going on until everything is consumed, and nobody really knows why. Don't answer with chemistry, because each and every question could go back to something no living man can give an answer to.

You'll run out of fuel sooner or later, so what's better? The roads are so many and you can get lost easily. 

It's your life.

It's your brain.

Follow the white rabbit. Was it just a vision? Never mind, turn around and go back. 

Why should we consider desperate the chance to go back and do something right for a change? I'm not talking about silly dreams of alternative realities or parallel universes where we're all happy and shit. I'm not even talking about second chances. I'm talking about chances we never took and that might not be too late to take. 

Because, as you keep looking at the road running beneath your feet, you're focusing on something else, something you left behind, and there's a good chance you're gonna crash into something anyway. You got lost into yourself, and suddenly you're a wreck. 

It's not shameful to go back, whereas it's perfectly stupid to go on if you have no idea where you're going to. 

Long story short, we are not the key to our own success, but we definitely are the key to our potential. The cage is built of all the theories handed down by previous generations who didn't have the chance to see the world for what it really is. But this is a whole other matter. 

This whole metaphor of getting lost reminds me of an anecdote a shaman once told me. She said her "teacher" put blindfolds on her and some other people, and told them to find their way out of a maze. She overheard a noise coming from a certain direction on her left and found her way out pretty quickly. When asked how she did it, she told the truth, so one of the other "disciples" complained that she cheated. 

The shaman replied that it was not cheating, that it was our need to give a moral implication to each and every pointless action that stopped us from being useful to our lives most of the times. How was that cheating, after all? She didn't point her friend in another direction, or made him trip. She had the chance to do something good for herself and she took it, using her bare senses. 

So, before it's too late, here's the tip: use your senses to come to your senses.