December 2nd, 2020
I like to dig deep.
When I’m dead and gone, you may force yourself to read or listen to something I did to try to understand why people are calling me “a unique talent who was taken too soon.” (I don’t really know what that is or how that doesn’t describe every human being on this planet, but it sounds good and saintly and I’ll give you permission from the afterlife to say it.)
And maybe, when you read or listen to that thing, you’ll remember this post about what I said about digging deep. When I create things, I make them like an everlasting gobstopper. I make the outside blue. The outside is the part of the candy that everyone understands. But then, below, there’s yellow and pink and, if you keep at it, colors that nobody else will ever discover.
For example: I have a song called Rerun. It describes a break-up, a bender, and the day after, nursing a hangover with television reruns. The lyrics are jam-packed with sweet references, but my favorite one is probably:
“Two of a kind’s ironically a full house.”
Blue layer — Generally, when two people become a couple, any more people can be too many. This is a concept most jealous humans inherently understand.
Yellow layer — It’s a poker reference. It describes two hands that only a person familiar with the card game would get. This is the layer that makes the lyric “ironic.”
Pink layer — My favorite: Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were on a mega-popular television program called “Full House.” When it ended, the twins tried to recreate that same magic on a show called — wait for it — “Two of a Kind.”
I guess all I’m trying to say is that when I’m gone, I hope I’ve given enough of who I am to what I’ve done that people are finding layers forever, layers that I hadn’t even consciously built, and that it gives them joy and sadness and a sense of being.
This is an absolutely awful photo of my beard phase that my sister found and I just know that there’s damn layers here.
The Den 