Revolutions / Sun
I used to write letters to this ex of mine. Long missives about all the things I was learning as I navigated thru life without her by my side. Casual observations I thought she might find interesting. As the days and years went by, those letters decreased in frequency. But when I did write them, when I couldn’t not, I’d start like this:
“Dear _____, I have completed another revolution around the sun.”
The revolution was metaphor. It referred to the fact that no matter how far I got in life, no matter the amount of personal growth I believed myself to be experiencing, I always somehow landed back in our relationship, in all of its trauma and glory. I couldn’t escape it, no matter how much I tried to escape it.
At some point, half a decade later in 2023, looking up at the stars and moon, light reflecting off the Aegean Sea in the Cyclades, I remark to my new girlfriend that there seems to be something at play in the movement of everything spinning about itself, always in the orbit of some other center of gravity. The moon orbiting the earth. The Earth orbiting the Sun. The Sun orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Intersecting circles. Revolutions stacked. Revolutions nested within themselves.
She likes to say, “Everywhere’s a cult. Everything’s a scam. Everyone’s a whore.” Then she’ll say, “Ride the loop.” And I love her when she says that and it’s all we can ever really do is love each other completely as we each circle ourselves in this dreamscape dystopia. Neither heaven nor hell, simply the legos of creation from which all paradises and purgatories and lakes of fire are born unto themselves.
As a millennial, I’m told one of the greatest TV shows ever made was The Wire. Not just for it’s realistic portrayal of the complex power dynamics and hierarchies of municipal government against the backdrop of the collapsing post-Reagan social welfare state but also because there was an intrinsic undeniable hard fought and worldly wisdom to a number the characters, their keymost insight being that most things… kinda just are what they are. Nowhere is this made more clear than in one of my favorite youtube videos ever, the Wire Tautology Supercut.
Merriam Webster defines a tautology as the needless repetition of an idea.
Tautologies become currency in a world governed by revolutions and the orbits that guide them. To be forever coming and going, landing in the same place over and over is to be forever circling the same ideas, the same places, the same people or their archetypal analogues. Here we go again and there we went again. All at once. Always chasing. Always escaping. On a circular path you can run away from yourself and towards yourself simultaneously. As artists we are condemned to say the same thing over and over again. Well, some of us. The message, minimal artistic merit, just heartbreak that demands to send itself across the universe in coded unbreakable waves. Again and again. Always and forever.
Last year I recorded an album. I found myself in the studio with Craig saying the same things over and over again. Somehow after all that time had passed, literally decades, I was back in my bedroom. Teenager again. Same ass emo heartbreak ballads, this time about a marriage, or maybe a girl I dated high school. But don’t we get married every time we love someone? Unless you’re getting married for tax purposes, the beating heart in love can’t tell the difference. A local art market still offering the same goods it did as a teenager; same same but different.
A local heart market.
After recording the album, I sat on it for awhile, wondering if it wasn’t all just needless repetition of idea. Ancient archaeological artifacts. But alas it seems all things desire their own completion.
Dear ____, I’m still revolving around the sun, which recently found itself in Gemini, as I find myself in Gemini, which means it was my bday this week. Some of these songs I wrote last year. Others I wrote when I was 15. Not sure I can tell the difference. Perhaps you can? Ride the loop. Or something. Whatever. Miss you.
Anyways, thanks to Craig for helping me record these tunes and kudos to George for his ripping guitar solo on Iceman. Album is New Tautologies, link is below: