The Soul of My Suit

Ive spent the past week and a half obsessing over Marc Bolan - poring over YouTube and consuming every snippet of video, every documentary, every newsreel about the fateful crash.

At first it seemed a weird renaissance - "Dear, I've fallen in love with T.Rex all over again!"

Repeated playings of "Raw Ramp" seemed novel at first.

But it's been a week. A hell of a week.

Why Marc? Why now?

Marc Bolan was the sole reason for my existence between the ages of, say, 15 and 17.

Those of us who truly enjoy the aural pleasures experience a journey, and Marc was a big part of mine. Bolan, like the Ramones, gave me the confidence to just be me, and made it evident that being "different" was more than just okay, it was desirable; a thing of beauty and pride.

But that was over 20 years ago, and while I have always carried a fond appreciation for Marc and his music with me over the years. Sure, I had, over time, moved on to other things, other people and places in my life. Old goals were replaced with new ones, which, once attained, were replaced with even more. Looking back on it now, a lot of those goals were never even my own - they were more or less obstacles placed before me that I felt challenged to overcome. And so it went; a life, a career, a marriage - all presented to me and chosen out of assumed desire, and perhaps a little cowardice.

Funnily enough, I pride myself on all that I have accomplished in the face of perceived adversity.

Left home too young.

Sometimes used food stamps to eat.

Sold drugs to pay for school.

Started at the company answering the phone.

All of these things can be ticked off on my imaginary report card and quoted as the battles I won in order to be where I am today.

Strangely, I recite them all with pride, perhaps a little too enthusiastically so that those who know me will also be fooled into beleiving of the passion of my convictions.

I fought so hard for these things.

Didn't I?

Or did I choose the easy way? Did I choose only to fight for the things that were placed in front of me - dangled like a proverbial carrot - yet always well within arm's reach? Did I ever really go after what I truly wanted? Did I ever have the balls to acknkowledge that "good" isn't good enough?

No, I didnt.

The hard way would have been walking away. Choosing not to pursue a career that was clearly mapped out for me - the only thing I ever did to earn it was bust my ass for close to 10 years "proving" myself to other people. Stupidly, I felt a small victory every time I was rewarded with a morsel of praise and small bump in salary. Christ, I should have mourned each promotion for the hollow victory it was, and the vauable years blindly given to acheive it. How did I not see that every progression moved me further away from where I want to be as a person?

I just want to do something that makes me happy and has purpose and meaning. I want to do something that changes the world for one person, even if that one person is me.


But here I am, a mere two weeks away from my 36th birthday; my professional and personal lives are nothing short of a disaster, and I somehow have a real need to connect with something other than the reality of where I am now.

Am I really so fucking cliched that I am turning to the music of my youth in a vain attempt to recapture it somehow?

God, I had hoped I was more complicated than that.

I always thought that my love of music, specifically the foundations of my collection stemmed from a sort of similarity between myself and the music I loved. I always thought that it mattered so much to me because each record was like a little vinyl snapshot of a fragment of my person - captured far more elegantly and eloquently than I ever could have done - and spewn back out at me in a way that allowed me to pick and choose who I wanted to be that week, that day, that hour or even that moment.

A robust collection made it possible to sort of take all the messy pieces of myself and spread them across the floor to be enjoyed at my discretion. Rather than having to deal with all of myself at any given time, I could use Bolan or Bowie (for example) to channel the greatness I was sure lurked inside of me somewhere and broadcast it to the world.

I guess I feel a little disappointed in myself because I sought out some very special artists, and used them to change my life and then I did absolutely nothing with it. At the end of the day, I feel like a collector of books who covets first editions and then sells them on eBay.
I have devalued the very thing that I love through my inability to make it relevant to my life.

Never mind the pretentious dust sleeves.

I chose the path of least resistance.

Me, of all people.

Bolan changed my life for the better 15 years after he died.

His entire contribution to music was less than a decade.

Yet my eyes well up with tears when I see the homeless, and I do nothing about it.

In life and in work, I've continuously chosen the pre-packaged option placed before me rather than done the work and taken the chances and had the balls to love who I love, and be who I am and do what I want to do.

And I have made all of these choices out of fear.

Fear of failure, fear of abandonment, fear of letting go of who I want others to think I am, and fear of being who I really am. Maybe I thought that acting out the charade would be a good diversion from the truth; certainly no one ever expected me to be so "successful" on their terms, and maybe I thought it would be punk rock of me to become something I never thought I could be. Maybe something in me felt the need to be "normal' in order to be different. Maybe I needed to go through the stages of it all in order to know what I don't want. Whatever the reason, whatever the logic, I am here in it now and wondering how the hell it happened to me.

The good news is that the answers are out there, and probably not contained in anything known as "The Secret" - I just have to start looking again for that source of inspiration, and suspect it's buried in a stack of vinyl somewhere in the basement. And there may be a few beers involved.