The following text was what Matthew found.
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Hello...God?
The hours that passed today were full of empty mind travels and fruitless scavenger hunts. She asked me years ago to stop playing, to come and live with her, to imagine the love we could share. And it confused me.
It’s not like I never understood her, or that I didn’t want to be with her, I just felt she only wanted me...well...the way she wanted me.
She left. I stayed.
I buy magazines and papers now just for the chance that I might see her face...or the face of another that reminds me of her. I listen to the radio in silence so I can hear a song that reminds me of the night she stayed in my arms under that great giant sky of Oklahoma. Or was it Nebraska? Or Colorado?
So bad I wish to speak with her about love again. The love that doesn’t die. The love that I still got. The love that musta ended years ago for her.
Dust fell atop that love God and crop circles formed around our hearts. Her love, oh that magnificent-sweet love, spun me ‘round in circles. Badly I wish for that again.
Busy streets stopped as we hoped and skipped by. Our quarrels in the courtyard were filled with amusement, temptation, fright, lust, shame and fear. Remembering the times we tried to play those games of hide and seek, so to find the way to move onto that next level of emotion. Sadly, when we found it, there was no emotion there.
I sit now, four hundred and twenty two miles away, worrying about the song that I’m trying to write just to let her know that if she wanted, the door would be unlocked for her to come back through, so that I could hold her head up out of the toilet like I used to.
Or maybe it was she holding me?
This guitar ain’t gonna pay the bills for ever, but if it could, wouldn’t that be somethin’?
I’ve stowed away my love for her in a box in the closet, but I keep findin’ ways to re-open it.
She needs to be here. I need to be there.
Sweeping sensitivities blinded me years ago when I slit my tips with the strings. What would she say if she knew how I felt? Would there be one more shot to give? It’s all I can think about anymore, that love I had for her, this love I still got for her...and her with my heart in her hands.
I hold her tones and listen to the words spill from her mouth each day when I wake:
—I DON’T LOVE YOU ANYMORE—
Remembering the times we’d watch re-runs of Saturday Night Live on the old fold-out couch, followed with a lick of her thigh. Thinking over and over and over about how it might have been, how it should have been, how it never will be.
So sad.
What am I gonna do? Keep on keepin’ on? Stop traffic with a hop, skip and a jump? Follow Red Rover, Red Rover till Freddy’s sent over? Jack Flash ain’t jumpin’ and there sure as shit ain’t no Saints Marchin’ In any day soon without her.
I wish her the best to fix the mangled heart I’ve left her. Please hear me, don’t let her change her mind anymore, it’ll only lead to another episode of her heart being broken by the douche bag she doesn’t love anymore. It’s gotta die, she and I.
I still hear her voice over mine God, as I look at the eyes she left behind in the mirror. She always said she loved my eyes. I loved her everything.
I think.
I’ll search the world over to find her. Just to hold her. To kiss her. To show her how responsible I’m not. To not let go until she tells me to.
As I stand on stage, I see her in the crowd smiling at me, singing along with the words of my soul, without her actually being there.
Is this because I didn’t know enough, God? Or because I knew too much? Probably both.
Just to hold her hand, to take one true breathe, one last greedy gasp in the coolness of the night, without words, I’d fade away to the shadows and circles I call my life.
She started the count down for me, I didn’t launch, she removed herself from the situation...it was fair warning.
So faded, I am. So dark...and worn...and faded.
She will never know I’m faded from our love. The love she knew was there. The love that I neglected to show.
Strangers scream “I Love You” from the floor. Panties and bras are tossed. They buy me drinks and slide their numbers into the pockets of my faded Levi’s......
I really miss her.
Maybe she knew all along the way we were to eventually be. I feel she may have. Strange.
FADED LOVER IN THE SHADOWS, DANCING IN THOSE NEON STARS, A TRYST IN THE LOBBY OF THE HILTON?
Thoughts of her crawl into my head everyday. Now, unlike the cockroaches that yell they love me, she hates me. Please don’t let her hurt anymore. Make her hate me in silence. Please, I beg of you God, her hate, don’t let me see it, or feel it or hear it.
All the compliments for this or that wont get me to my desired destination. Please, see what’s good for her God, and make her let go completely. No more chances. I’ll only devastate her again.
All the things I couldn’t or wouldn’t do for her have caught up to me. And I feel that it’s good that they have. I can finally see that I was never the man I pretended to be. And that she’ll never be my wife, I, never her husband. There will be no baby boy showered with love. No Christmas trees. No carved pumpkins. Without cranberry sauce and canned hams.
Love. Love. Love. Love.
Gamblers of life and fate, we musicians are. I’ll finally listen to her and put this old guitar down. Just send her back home to me so she can tell me that she hates me. I’ll know she doesn’t mean it. Unless this time...she finally does.
Thanks for listening God.
Amen.
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As I placed the notebook back down on the table in front of us, Matthew began to tell me the things he had decided the collaborator of the words was saying:
“You know, you’ve always told me I will never be able to understand the words of another by relying on some other persons beliefs. But I’m going to explain to you what this text means through the ideas held by Michael Foucault.”
“The author of this, and the female friend he is writing about, were in the middle of a power struggle to decide who it was holding the majority of the power in their relationship. I feel the man did because he denied her requests to stop playing the guitar and chasing other women. He wouldn't come and live with her and love only her. He exercised his power over her by doing whatever, and whoever, whenever he wanted, like in this passage here:
‘FADED LOVER IN THE SHADOWS, DANCING IN THOSE NEON STARS, A TRYST IN THE LOBBY OF THE HILTON?’
“He goes on and on about how much he loves and misses this woman, but at the same time, he is driven, in spite of himself, by the somber madness of sex itself. He constantly contradicts himself line after line. I believe he may love this woman, but he loves his freedom to do whatever he wants more than he loves her”.
“But with a power struggle entitles a person, or a group of people, as the dominator. Though it may seem hard to believe, domination is often an indirect happening. She wanted him to stop playing he guitar and partaking in trysts with these other women. He wanted to do what he wanted, but still have her to love. He may have felt she was trying to dominate him by asking him to stop playing. She may have felt he was dominating her by having the power to bring her back home to him each time she left. But domination can only happen when one or more parties involved lets themselves be dominated. The people who say, ‘No, don’t do that’ feel as if they are the dominant party involved. In a way, they are the dominant power. But they have the Negative Power, or the ‘power that says no’. But the people who are being told not to do something will try even harder to do it if it is something they truly enjoy. In this case, she asked him not to have relationships with other women and to leave the guitar alone. She thought she was the dominant party. But he couldn’t do it, at least wouldn’t let himself do it, so he took over control of the dominance. But it all changes. It is he who is begging for her return. He knows what he has done isn’t the right way to live. He knows he loves this woman. She has the power. She is the dominating group. Even if she isn’t there to see it, she has dominance over him. Realizing she is gone from his life, he now probably doesn’t have relationships, sexual or otherwise, with anybody. He sees his ideas were an errors and he wants nothing more than to show her how he has changed. That he hasn’t changed for himself. That he has changed for her, to prove his love.”
“Don’t get me wrong, this woman he writes about, he love her. He loves her because it is she he gave his virginity to perhaps. Listen:
“He goes on and on about how much he loves and misses this woman, but at the same time, he is driven, in spite of himself, by the somber madness of sex itself. He constantly contradicts himself line after line. I believe he may love this woman, but he loves his freedom to do whatever he wants more than he loves her”.
“But with a power struggle entitles a person, or a group of people, as the dominator. Though it may seem hard to believe, domination is often an indirect happening. She wanted him to stop playing he guitar and partaking in trysts with these other women. He wanted to do what he wanted, but still have her to love. He may have felt she was trying to dominate him by asking him to stop playing. She may have felt he was dominating her by having the power to bring her back home to him each time she left. But domination can only happen when one or more parties involved lets themselves be dominated. The people who say, ‘No, don’t do that’ feel as if they are the dominant party involved. In a way, they are the dominant power. But they have the Negative Power, or the ‘power that says no’. But the people who are being told not to do something will try even harder to do it if it is something they truly enjoy. In this case, she asked him not to have relationships with other women and to leave the guitar alone. She thought she was the dominant party. But he couldn’t do it, at least wouldn’t let himself do it, so he took over control of the dominance. But it all changes. It is he who is begging for her return. He knows what he has done isn’t the right way to live. He knows he loves this woman. She has the power. She is the dominating group. Even if she isn’t there to see it, she has dominance over him. Realizing she is gone from his life, he now probably doesn’t have relationships, sexual or otherwise, with anybody. He sees his ideas were an errors and he wants nothing more than to show her how he has changed. That he hasn’t changed for himself. That he has changed for her, to prove his love.”
“Don’t get me wrong, this woman he writes about, he love her. He loves her because it is she he gave his virginity to perhaps. Listen:
‘Busy streets stopped as we hoped and skipped by. Our quarrels in the courtyard were filled with amusement, temptation, fright, lust, shame and fear. Remembering the times we tried to play those games of hide and seek, so to find the way to move onto that next level of emotion. Sadly, when we found it, there was no emotion there.’
“He’s talking about the stages which help to begin a sexual relationship:
“He’s talking about the stages which help to begin a sexual relationship:
1.) ‘Hoped and skipped by’ has to mean the stage of constant flirting with one another that all have endured before while trying to begin a relationship.
2.) ‘The quarrels had in the courtyard’, I feel, were the times that the two of them were trying to make the other person, either he to she, or she to he, realize that it was time, that they were both ready, to take that next step to new levels of sexual experimentation.
3.) ‘Tried to play those games of hide and seek’ can only be his repeated attempt at sexual intercourse with her, failing each time until she finally felt he loved her, and then after he finally did accomplish the goal set for himself, it made neither he or she feel any closer to the other.”
“These are nothing more than the words of a man who didn’t realize that he was in love with this woman until it was too late. He knew he loved her, yes, but he never knew he was in love with her. And if he did know, he didn’t make her see, make her know or make her feel, that he was in love with her. And it seems that this wasn’t the first time she has left. As he says,
‘...don’t let her change her mind anymore, it’ll only lead to another episode of her heart being broken by the douche bag she doesn’t love anymore. It’s gotta die, she and I.’
“He has cheated before, maybe with other women, maybe by telling this woman that he would stop playing, be it playing around with other women or playing that guitar, which probably led to him cheating with other women, for her, the woman that loves him. But he never did. Now, she’s found out about all those times, and reflected back on all of her pain and misery caused by his straying ways and has decided to leave him for the last time. She has left him before, it seems, but has changed her mind and decided to give him more chances to prove his love to her. But time after time, he has disappointed and failed to reach the goal that she has set for him. He had the power to get her to return to him so he could prove his love for her in the past, but now, as he sits wherever, she is gone and taken that power with her.”
“The man was engulfed with aphrodisia, the unity of sexual acts, pleasures and the desire of such acts. This intensity caused the relationship, the sexual relationship, to become problematic. There may have been no problems sexually between he and she, but the fact that he was constantly engaging in sexual relationships with other women, that is where the problem lied. It wasn’t the desire to have a plethora of sexual partners, but that he continually slept with other women while this woman was trying to make him feel her love. He had no enkrateia. Enkrateia is the power one must have hold to control themself and use aphrodisia correctly. If one doesn’t have control over themself and their aphrodisia, they will never be happy with the sexual partner, or partners, that they have. They will constantly be looking for more. To try and find out if there is better than that which they have out there. These people without this control will constantly seek to please themselves before all others.”
“In this relationship he writes about his relationship, and love for, both, this woman and his guitar. The guitar itself, yes, but more importantly, the females that he meets and has sexual relations with through the playing of his guitar, is very problematic. It seems that he understands that love is indeed a binary system (The History of Sexuality, 83) that allows for love to happen in a certain way, or on the contrary, not let it happen at all. He continually writes that he wants this woman to return to him so that he can show her how much he loves her. But he contradicts that each time when he writes about his on-goings with other women. He may have a different idea about what love is compared to the woman he wishes to return. It seems that he does, but now, he realizes that what he thought to be true, is a blatant lie that he has told himself for far too long.”
“Maybe he has changed since she has left. Maybe before she left, he was far worse than what it seems to us. Maybe he has cultivated himself, improved his way of life to better the relationship that he wishes to have again with this woman. Perhaps he has thought about his life, the things that are, were, included in it and removed the things that he felt needed to be removed. Perhaps he has undergone a ‘cultivation of the soul’(Care of the Self, 43) and now understands what it is, exactly, that he should or should not do to keep the love of this woman.”
“It seems that the love he held, or that he still holds, for this woman was/is indeed real and he could have lived and loved with her as his only woman, but because he has seen, or has been told, by other people, about the way he should live his life, he has the belief that everything with the same label, in this case a musician, needs to act the same way as everything else with the same label, which would be other musicians and their discourses of life,.To him, these discourses are seen as the practices of obeying certain rules (The Archaeology of Knowledge, 138). Certain rules that are imagined by himself. There is no hand book of rules for musicians to live freely. I’m sure that while he was growing up, he heard or seen, famous musicians had all the women that they wanted. And he heard about groupies and all other types of women that are so drastically drawn to musicians. And because of what he had heard growing up, or seen, he assumed that he would never be thought to be a true musician unless he acted like the other “true” musicians he has seen his entire life. This is a type of discourse formation. I don’t agree with this train of thought. Everything labeled as being the same, is not really the same, but we feel that it is, or should be the same, by the habit of thought. In this case, we think that all musicians have sexual intercourse with whoever they want, no matter if they are married or not. But we have no real evidence that what we believe is true. We just assume that it is true because it is what we, as well as a majority of others, feel to be true.”
“That’s another thing, this truth. He tells the truth about the things that she wanted, the things that he wanted, the things that he did do, the things that he should not have done and the things he would not or could not do. Did he speak these truths to her whole she was with him? No. He did, however, tell her with the songs that he wrote. The songs that he sang. Now, this is just speculation, but I’m almost certain that the songs her wrote were about the other women he had known or maybe the events that he had with these other women. Western man has become a confessing animal. (The History of Sexuality, 59) The obligation to confess is now relayed through so many different points, is so deeply ingrained in us, that we no longer perceive it as the effect of a power that constrains us; on the contrary, it seems to us that truth, lodged in our most secret nature, ‘demands’ only to surface.( The History of Sexuality, 60) He, like all men everywhere, and woman I would assume, no matter what deep sark secret it is that they try to hide from the masses, always feel the need to tell somebody what it is that they have done, or what they are planning to do. Some people will go to confession at Church. Others will write letters to themselves and hide the envelopes away so never to see them, or remember those thoughts again. He, most likely, did it through the songs that he wrote.”
“This entire relationship between the two was a power struggle; who had it, who holds it and who has the stronger hand. She tried to stop him from having relations with other women, like the vast majority of people would make their partner do. He felt this to be a bit forbidding. Maybe he felt that she couldn’t tell him what it was that he should do. That he was the only person that could do that. She wanted him to obey her wishes, her being the dominant party at the time, and he wouldn’t adhere to them and kept doing what It was that he wanted to do, the power switched hands and he became the dominant party. But because he wouldn’t change for her, she extinguished the relationship, and as we see here in these pages, he wants her to come home to him. Never mind what I said at the start of this about him having the power in the relationship because he would not listen to her and love only her. She is the power. She has all the power now. He can only get that power back in two ways. First, he can make her see that he has changed his lifestyle for her because he loves her immensely and uncontrollably. That he will not continue the relationships that he has had in the past with other women and that she will be the only woman that he loves. That he has seen what life was like without her by his side and that he would be a shattered shell of a man without her to love, and without her love, for the rest of his life. Secondly, he can think about all the times when she asked him, when she begged him, to become a better man and love only her. That all she wanted was his love. That all she needed was his love. That his love for her, and only her, would make the two of them, as a couple, stronger than either of them could be on their own. And realize that he had the best things in life with her; her heart, her soul, her everything, and he let it all slip away because he was too simple minded to realize that everything doesn’t need to be the way that it is assumed to be. That he lost the love of his life because he thought he needed to do this, to do that, or to do the other thing, to make himself feel like more of a man.”
After Matthew finished his long and tiring reflection about what the text meant to him, I sat back and thought about what it really meant to me. What it meant to me now after Matthew had explained it to me. Not just what I thought it meant the day I wrote it.
“These are nothing more than the words of a man who didn’t realize that he was in love with this woman until it was too late. He knew he loved her, yes, but he never knew he was in love with her. And if he did know, he didn’t make her see, make her know or make her feel, that he was in love with her. And it seems that this wasn’t the first time she has left. As he says,
‘...don’t let her change her mind anymore, it’ll only lead to another episode of her heart being broken by the douche bag she doesn’t love anymore. It’s gotta die, she and I.’
“He has cheated before, maybe with other women, maybe by telling this woman that he would stop playing, be it playing around with other women or playing that guitar, which probably led to him cheating with other women, for her, the woman that loves him. But he never did. Now, she’s found out about all those times, and reflected back on all of her pain and misery caused by his straying ways and has decided to leave him for the last time. She has left him before, it seems, but has changed her mind and decided to give him more chances to prove his love to her. But time after time, he has disappointed and failed to reach the goal that she has set for him. He had the power to get her to return to him so he could prove his love for her in the past, but now, as he sits wherever, she is gone and taken that power with her.”
“The man was engulfed with aphrodisia, the unity of sexual acts, pleasures and the desire of such acts. This intensity caused the relationship, the sexual relationship, to become problematic. There may have been no problems sexually between he and she, but the fact that he was constantly engaging in sexual relationships with other women, that is where the problem lied. It wasn’t the desire to have a plethora of sexual partners, but that he continually slept with other women while this woman was trying to make him feel her love. He had no enkrateia. Enkrateia is the power one must have hold to control themself and use aphrodisia correctly. If one doesn’t have control over themself and their aphrodisia, they will never be happy with the sexual partner, or partners, that they have. They will constantly be looking for more. To try and find out if there is better than that which they have out there. These people without this control will constantly seek to please themselves before all others.”
“In this relationship he writes about his relationship, and love for, both, this woman and his guitar. The guitar itself, yes, but more importantly, the females that he meets and has sexual relations with through the playing of his guitar, is very problematic. It seems that he understands that love is indeed a binary system (The History of Sexuality, 83) that allows for love to happen in a certain way, or on the contrary, not let it happen at all. He continually writes that he wants this woman to return to him so that he can show her how much he loves her. But he contradicts that each time when he writes about his on-goings with other women. He may have a different idea about what love is compared to the woman he wishes to return. It seems that he does, but now, he realizes that what he thought to be true, is a blatant lie that he has told himself for far too long.”
“Maybe he has changed since she has left. Maybe before she left, he was far worse than what it seems to us. Maybe he has cultivated himself, improved his way of life to better the relationship that he wishes to have again with this woman. Perhaps he has thought about his life, the things that are, were, included in it and removed the things that he felt needed to be removed. Perhaps he has undergone a ‘cultivation of the soul’(Care of the Self, 43) and now understands what it is, exactly, that he should or should not do to keep the love of this woman.”
“It seems that the love he held, or that he still holds, for this woman was/is indeed real and he could have lived and loved with her as his only woman, but because he has seen, or has been told, by other people, about the way he should live his life, he has the belief that everything with the same label, in this case a musician, needs to act the same way as everything else with the same label, which would be other musicians and their discourses of life,.To him, these discourses are seen as the practices of obeying certain rules (The Archaeology of Knowledge, 138). Certain rules that are imagined by himself. There is no hand book of rules for musicians to live freely. I’m sure that while he was growing up, he heard or seen, famous musicians had all the women that they wanted. And he heard about groupies and all other types of women that are so drastically drawn to musicians. And because of what he had heard growing up, or seen, he assumed that he would never be thought to be a true musician unless he acted like the other “true” musicians he has seen his entire life. This is a type of discourse formation. I don’t agree with this train of thought. Everything labeled as being the same, is not really the same, but we feel that it is, or should be the same, by the habit of thought. In this case, we think that all musicians have sexual intercourse with whoever they want, no matter if they are married or not. But we have no real evidence that what we believe is true. We just assume that it is true because it is what we, as well as a majority of others, feel to be true.”
“That’s another thing, this truth. He tells the truth about the things that she wanted, the things that he wanted, the things that he did do, the things that he should not have done and the things he would not or could not do. Did he speak these truths to her whole she was with him? No. He did, however, tell her with the songs that he wrote. The songs that he sang. Now, this is just speculation, but I’m almost certain that the songs her wrote were about the other women he had known or maybe the events that he had with these other women. Western man has become a confessing animal. (The History of Sexuality, 59) The obligation to confess is now relayed through so many different points, is so deeply ingrained in us, that we no longer perceive it as the effect of a power that constrains us; on the contrary, it seems to us that truth, lodged in our most secret nature, ‘demands’ only to surface.( The History of Sexuality, 60) He, like all men everywhere, and woman I would assume, no matter what deep sark secret it is that they try to hide from the masses, always feel the need to tell somebody what it is that they have done, or what they are planning to do. Some people will go to confession at Church. Others will write letters to themselves and hide the envelopes away so never to see them, or remember those thoughts again. He, most likely, did it through the songs that he wrote.”
“This entire relationship between the two was a power struggle; who had it, who holds it and who has the stronger hand. She tried to stop him from having relations with other women, like the vast majority of people would make their partner do. He felt this to be a bit forbidding. Maybe he felt that she couldn’t tell him what it was that he should do. That he was the only person that could do that. She wanted him to obey her wishes, her being the dominant party at the time, and he wouldn’t adhere to them and kept doing what It was that he wanted to do, the power switched hands and he became the dominant party. But because he wouldn’t change for her, she extinguished the relationship, and as we see here in these pages, he wants her to come home to him. Never mind what I said at the start of this about him having the power in the relationship because he would not listen to her and love only her. She is the power. She has all the power now. He can only get that power back in two ways. First, he can make her see that he has changed his lifestyle for her because he loves her immensely and uncontrollably. That he will not continue the relationships that he has had in the past with other women and that she will be the only woman that he loves. That he has seen what life was like without her by his side and that he would be a shattered shell of a man without her to love, and without her love, for the rest of his life. Secondly, he can think about all the times when she asked him, when she begged him, to become a better man and love only her. That all she wanted was his love. That all she needed was his love. That his love for her, and only her, would make the two of them, as a couple, stronger than either of them could be on their own. And realize that he had the best things in life with her; her heart, her soul, her everything, and he let it all slip away because he was too simple minded to realize that everything doesn’t need to be the way that it is assumed to be. That he lost the love of his life because he thought he needed to do this, to do that, or to do the other thing, to make himself feel like more of a man.”
After Matthew finished his long and tiring reflection about what the text meant to him, I sat back and thought about what it really meant to me. What it meant to me now after Matthew had explained it to me. Not just what I thought it meant the day I wrote it.
