I sit under the warm glow of the lamp, listening to a song a girl sent me earlier tonight. Suddenly, from nowhere I can put a finger on, a question flies into my mind and starts to flap its wings around like the pigeons who will soon be on the balcony—it is past midnight, after all. How would I have turned out if I never became a writer, had never written the terrible poems I began with, had never picked the pen up to write something other than whatever was required of me? I don’t have a proper answer. Who could? Something tells me it would have been a life as great as this one I have, but differently.
I think we tend to think in extremes. If a happy person imagines another life, it is not uncommon for them to imagine one where they were not as happy, and vice versa. But I have always seen it differently. It would have been a different life, but why paint it in any colour?
Perhaps, another me sits contemplating the same question with the same neutrality as I have extended him. A fool’s inquiry, I reckon. There is little I can say or think of that would rest this case and push the question back into a pile. All I can be absolutely sure of is that I would have looked at life, at people, at everything else very differently. All these occupational hazards, this sensitivity for the arts, this highly opinionated self, would have been absent. On some days, like the one I had today, I wish this were the case. I wish I could turn it all off and be like the others.
The music would play regardless, but I would not focus on the lyrics as much, not think of the rhythm, and not enjoy it as much as I do right now. I would think of it as a song, nothing more or less. It must be nice that way at times, I’m sure. It would be like how someone reads these words, if anyone does. It’s funny to be an artist of any sort if you truly believe in it and are in touch with it. It is all so important to you. But to the others, to the audience, it is just one work out of many. Your heart bleeds on the display; they glance at it, move along and never think of it again.