The Apotheosis of Solitude

PART II: Solitude & Peregrino

Of the whirling blur of days that followed, I remember little.

I returned to the gloom of that bar on three consecutive nights, but there was no further performance by Solitude. I learned from a dog-eared poster near the door no more than her full name ~ Solitude Macready ~ and that she had been there that night. There was no further indication as to her performing schedule in the venue. Had it been a one-off?! Would she now move onto another bar, another city, another land far from my yearning?? Would I never again see her; hear her voice?! Twice I resolved to ask the barman the questions I so desperately needed answering and twice my resolve deserted me at the crucial moment. The first time I ordered a drink; which I could ill-afford: instead of an answer. The second time my voice merely died in a guttural death rattle before I could get a single, coherent word, much less a sentence out.

The rest of those days, I paced a bald path through the carpet of my room; dreaming, yearning, planning: all for nothing.

Eventually, I hit on the idea of using the net to find Solitude; surely a struggling singer-songwriter had a website, an email address, something?!? How it took so long for me to think of this I shall never know. Perhaps a part of me did not want to find her? Maybe that same part wanted the image of Solitude to remain unsullied by the disappointment of a second encounter, a second performance.

But a stronger, more insistent part of me needed to see and to hear her again. It needed another perfect night; sitting in the dark, staring transfixed at the sun.

I searched the net. I found her site, her page. I found her address. I set to work.
Quickly, I manufactured a new email address for myself; using my own name was, at this point, an impossibility: I chose a name I thought was appropriate.

I wrote nine drafts of an introductory email; I created premises and pretences under which I could request a formal (business) meeting with her: all fell flat.
after which, I wrote an honest letter describing how I’d come to see her perform that night and asking if, when and where she’d be performing again soon and if she would allow me the pleasure of furnishing her with a libation thereafter (I actually used those words! The fawning flatulence of a fan-boy!!).

Nothing I wrote to her satisfied me; nothing would be good enough to capture her attention, much less her…heart.

At the end of my wits; at the end of another sleepless night tossing and yearning: I wrote another sonnet. I typed the poem into the window of my newly created email account…and pressed Send.

Sonnet II ~ Simulacra

“Who is this?” was her singular response. Nothing else, just those three words. No word of thanks, praise or even indifference about the poem; no indication that she recognised the quote from Dante (did I really expect her to recognise the quote from Dante?!). Who is this? That was all she wanted to know. As if I hadn’t said more to and about her in those two short sonnets than anyone she knew had said to her in the last year! As if knowing my name; mere random nomenclature: would tell her more about me than the sonnets already contained. Surely the very fact that I had written them for her told her more than she needed to know?!

In the darkness of that bar room, as I listened to her songs and to the manner in which she performed them, I thought I’d heard some hint, some tiny glint into the core of her being, into the very nature of her soul: if I were a dualist and believed in such things.
Yet, I am an artist. And surely all artists, on some level, are dualists? Surely everyone who listens to and loves music must be a dualist! Because music, true music, comes from a place other than anyplace we can see or touch. It speaks of a place we cannot see or touch and, however briefly, transports us there.
The night I listened to Solitude, I heard true music; I heard the echoes of a true music mind. A subtle mind whose inner architecture resonated in her music. And now all I get from this same mind is Who is this? Surely I’m worthy of more than this?! Surely she is?!?

End of Part II.