broken – Kelvin Wetherell

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

For well you know that it’s a fool who plays it cool / By making his world a little colder

– Paul McCartney, Hey Jude

Contempt. In the past few years, I’ve a few times come across something Nick Cave said in response to inquiries about his growth and perspective as an older chap who’s navigated deep grief in the last decade, having lost two sons. He talks about how he, for the better part of his early adult years, held the world and the people in it in contempt. This really stayed with me, as someone who, from an adolescent age, started to observe, with a questioning eye, the many stupidities of humankind.

Over the years, this awareness developed into a contempt of my own. One need only take a short look around to find deep lack in the way stuff gets done; our considerations toward one another, our blindness to our interconnection and shared suffering, summer road work in Toronto. We often live in disregard, usually, I think, unconsciously, while we race about making life happen.

This unconsciousness, for many of us, stems from trauma. For some us, the trauma is complex, wont to rear up without warning, reducing us, whispering self-hateful slogans into the raw spaces. The more I learn and experience, the more I see that this is most of us. We are generations of humans learning to express our vulnerabilities and what’s there in the dark corners of our internal experience.

My own inner world has lately been an amplified, fitful landscape, with my friend Contempt shouting righteous indignation from the rooftops. This isn’t new. Anytime the black dogs rear their heads, I stop seeing the beautiful bits. Things get fucking ugly. The world, the method, the person in the mirror. Standard self-hateful fare. And how on earth did that become standard fare? Through years of damaged practice. Through experiencing in my formative years things no one should experience.

The grace in the current crisis appeared through radical acceptance. I’m apprehensive using the term. It’s been overused in new age lingo, when at the root it’s accessible to everyone. Accessible but difficult. It’s hard to take the things that hurt us most and let them in. They’re strange friends to sit next to. I’m aware that this thing that’s followed me around forever needs a hug. I’ve known for years that we don’t necessarily get rid of the fragmented parts. It’s only through this current wave of struggle that I’ve felt a dawning surrender. That I’m broken and that’s okay. There are good bits, too. Love and Hate springs eternal.

I came across today’s quote a few days ago. It hit hard and clear. I’ve been listening to the confessions of my own character and not digging the sound. My lens is dirty. Yes, there are so many aspects of the world that are completely messed, but the vehement distaste I’ve felt, that’s informed so much for so long, has been a major player in stamping out trust and good things. It’s a fear-based exercise. Creating false safety by tearing down externals.

I’ve spent years trying, like all the King’s men, to put myself back together again. To mend the scattered parts. It hasn’t worked all that well. Sounds like it’s time to let the satellites wander…

As always, thanks for reading.

K. xo

The Silent Accord

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”

– Jiddu Krishnamurti

Sitting here in the window at the local. It’s a rainy Saturday morning. The studio is whispering to me from a few blocks away. Urging me in. Urging me on. I’m in a weeks long cycle of pain, illness and procrastination. I am one guitar track and one vocal track away from finishing Stereophile, my new record. I am mustering the courage, the heart, to lay them down. To breathe it all out and elevate out of this hard place. I’m aware that, while I moan about the delays, I’m afraid to finish. Afraid to release this work into the world, these bits of soul made digital, and see it mostly ignored, if my previous work is any measure. I’m at once hopeful, while feeling the cold whisper of the voice of ridicule and shame trickling down the back of my neck.

I drink my coffee and watch the people go by. I think of a better world. One where we are not so pressed and dented. Where art is not reduced to content. Where the substance of our silent accord is lived, rather than its loss bemoaned as a symptom of modern life. A place free of our Post Pandemic Disconnection, the cortisol coming in waves as we panic for breath, for a short reprieve.

I think I may be in the wrong lane. It may be time to hang up my modest public presence in the world and beat a retreat. I’m sick of the spiritual shithole we’ve made of this place, with all its potential for greatness and kindness. I’m tired of the helpless, hateful rage I feel towards our politicians, and the corporate world, who continue to refuse accountability for the widespread damage born of their relentless pursuit to hoard and boast. These for whom money has replaced the hardwired neanderthal idiot male need to compete and dominate. The depth of this greed is an uncommon stupidity in this day and age. For those of you feeling like this is a finger wag, make no mistake, I see myself in these people. I see all of us in each other and everything else. We all have the potential to shine or shit the bed.

Coffee is almost done. Time to head over to the studio and get embryonic, while my heart longs for more real time connection, to be among a group of souls. Maybe that’s what’s missing. Maybe, instead of retreat, I need to get out more. For me, and everyone I know, having the energy and making time for something as simple as seeing a friend has, due to the relentless hustle to make ends meet, become elusive.

We are fragmented. The societal machine we continue to allow to run is sickly and wrong. The silent accord I mentioned earlier is the feeling we all get, in the quiet moments, where Love comes in and fills us with its amber glow. That light is in all of us. It is the eternal, fixed point, like lights along the landing strip at night’s most impenetrable hour.

I’ve been sitting here for a while now, thinking about a succinct way to wrap this one up, but I can’t find one. This is an ongoing trip. One without end. We are Divine Misfits made flesh and bone, each with our own story, each flawed and returning, missing home and looking for the runway lights…

K. xo