Burning From the Inside*

"I ran to the devil. He was waitin'...I cried 'Power!'" - Sinnerman, Nina Simone

Boywich and I used to have conversations about feeling that we were beings placed out of time, or into the wrong time.

Mostly we would talk about being Renaissance people - built to do a variety of creative things, none of them fitting very well into this century's model for gainful employment. At times, the conversations were also about being built along more Romantic lines (as in Romantic poets, not romantic holidays, which I deplore) than is currently fashionable.

I blame rock n' roll. Rock n' roll made it cool to be, well, cool - detached, devil-may-care, nothing could get a rise out of me. Ever since the 60s, it's been de rigueur to wear a cool, unmoved, unruffled veneer in social (read: romantic) situations.

I don't fit so well into that mold. And yet I try to practice it. And what happens is that: a) my face flushes like beetroot and gives me away and/or; b) there is a disconnect between what I say I am feeling or doing and what I am actually feeling or doing; and c) if the person on the receiving end of that is even halfway awake, they notice a) and/or b) and draw their own conclusions from that.

It's a problem. I really ought to either come to terms with the fact that I am a furnace in a world that values the walk-in fridge or find some other way out of the dilemma.

But I've been so well-schooled - at, well, school - that it's hard to leap into some unknown alternate future in which I display my furnacelike tendencies openly with no fear of being mocked, crushed, or otherwise mauled in emotional vice grips.

Boywich used to chide me for hiding things and letting them "squish out sideways," and I knew he was right, and yet I couldn't help doing it. He's still right. I'm still doing it. I'm trying to be cool. It doesn't work for me. I'm hot. So very, very hot.

* Note: The title of this post is also the title of an excellent live album by Bauhaus, which was not made during the 60s.