I don’t know where to begin. Thoughts flow in a disoriented sort of way. Making it difficult to form them. Arrange them. Extract meaning out of them. Or its just probably because I’m in half a daze. My mind focusing in and out of clarity.
The only thought I manage to gauge from this whole mess is that I don’t fit in here. I can’t believe I’ve never realized that before. I guess I was just content in my own sphere of reality that I didn’t realize I was indeed in a sphere. And that this sphere was suspended in a universe which I always knew existed, but of whose true nature remained alien to me.
Until now of course.
Now, the bubble has broken. And instantly, I am thrown headlong into a space unknown and known at the same time. The matter, I’m familiar with. Its something that has seeped in the innermost me. But it’s the unfamiliarity of the environment in which it breeds that shook me. The environment towards which, it seems, I’m the only one who’s not adapted. Or might I say, refuses to make an effort to be adapted.
Its difficult to explain what I was going through at that time. What I am at this instant. Suddenly I felt like I didn’t belong here. I had a whole definition of what it meant to be a musician. To be a rocker. But this! This was like knowing to swim, but not able to because you are in the dead sea or in the middle of a stormed ocean. The matter didn’t change. The environment did. And this minute tilt turned everything upside down.
How am I supposed to enjoy music if the air in which it is being produced is polluted every single minute by a fag or a joint? I mean, what is the principal interest here? Music or Dope? Can these two words exclude each other anymore? Before my passage into this smoke filled cube, the thought of this bizarre question would never even have occurred to me.
But now, it makes me wonder. Makes me question the motives behind the decision of young kids to play music. Seeing a 16 year old smoke a joint is not funny you know. It made my head explode with anger. Not that I was unaware that these things do happen. I always knew that rockers were as synonymous to dope as fish to water. But I guess reality really hits you dead on when you experience it yourself. It doesn’t store it like a piece of information, but transforms it into an experience which makes a greater impact.
That is exactly what hit me today. The full blow of the knowledge of dopers and smokers around music turned into an experience. And it was not pleasant. The only black pawn surrounded by millions of white ones. Questions sprung in my head. Why am I the only one who’s having difficulty in tuning myself in to this environment? Does it make me any less of a rocker if I don’t smoke a joint? Because believe you me, these kids doing drugs are one heck of musicians. Talented even. But equally disgusting. And just cause breathing in this room is potentially endangering my life and making me uncomfortable does not mean that I should be kept from what I love to do.
And then again, there are rockers who are clean. Who jam just for the love of jamming. I know that is like a drop in the ocean. But I know them. I am a part of them. And I don’t need to get used to things I don’t want to get used to. They somehow restore my belief that music created by a daze-free, drug-free head can also de darned good! And I’m lucky enough to belong to the bunch. The majority can do what they feel correct. It really is none of my business. As in the end, it all comes down to one tiny, powerful word. Music!
