Spent the evening watching people “sing” on The Voice.  Both myself and my wife auditioned, and, yeah, I’ll say it: we’re amazing.  And, no, neither of us were selected to be on The Voice.

I’ve started and trashed several blogs in the past few days.  I want to say something but I don’t know what to say.  So, here’s a set of lyrics I wrote for my band, Moosejaw.

“Well-meaning, self-serving hands extended towards me

Most days I’m far too tired to laugh

Seven hundred channels of processed shit, you know it often bores me

I’ve got a date with a photograph.

Painting the walls, painting the walls, painting the walls with a colostomy bag

Painting the walls with my inability to understand

Painting the walls, painting the walls, painting the walls with a colostomy bag

Painting the walls with my inability to coexist.

I apologize for breathing all your air when given the opportunity

I’ve got one bullet and so many enemies

If I remove myself it would be easier for all involved or affected

I’ve got a date with a photograph.”

-“Sinanju“, Moosejaw

The song is about growing old gracelessly, something I’m fairly certain I’ll do quite well.  Dementia, Alzheimer’s, Brain Cancer: these things scare me.  We take our faculties for granted, I feel.  I’ve chastised myself for it on many occasions.  I am healthy, possessing twenty (one) digits, and more often than not, smart.  But it won’t always be the case.  Eventually I’ll grow old and the athleticism and mental jiu jistu that I enjoy every day will start to slip away.

Meredith and I were shopping this past Saturday and got trapped behind an old couple in an aisle while trying to get to the Macaroni-n-cheese.  (Don’t keep me from my mac-n-cheese; you wouldn’t like me without my mac-n-cheese.)  I eventually slipped past them (using my youthful litheness) and got the Precious, and in the process got to get a big whiff of the decrepit couple.  Both smelled like they’d just emerged from the smoking section of a coffin, and the patriarch’s breath smelled like a perfect blend of Saturday night in a Florida bingo hall, the Goodyear factory, and liquefied pickled innards.  I think his organs had been removed and replaced with found art; hearts and kidneys and livers made from cigarette butts glued to a coarse piece of construction paper in the vein of macaroni art.  And don’t get me started on their voices.  If you could give voice to a boulder falling down a crag, it would be the woman’s.  I snuck back to Meredith, pointed at the old couple, and said “That’s why we’re quitting smoking.”  I don’t want to end up like that.

Or I’ll get lucky and just die.

Wow, that got dark fast.