Ozymandias In The Basement Flat

 

If you were able to step back and look at it all objectively now, you might realize that your great enemy was the belief that there are rules to be followed in life. That simple idea was something you could never abide by, after all – not in the military, not in your relationships, not even while backing up the Isleys. Your abhorrence of rules, of structure, had, frankly, been your greatest asset in many ways. Now, though, as you’re suffocating to death, it’s proven to be your greatest enemy.

No one on earth can intake nearly two grams of a barbiturate in as short an amount of time as you just did. Combine that with a day’s worth of wine and cannabis and it’s no surprise that you’re lying in the bed of a basement flat right now drowning in your own vomit. People are going to wonder what were you thinking when you kept popping those pills, anyway. They were Vesparax, right? People are going to say you were suicidal, that those lawsuits – or even Monika - drove you to do it.

You know better, though. You know it’s your own sense of specialness that has led you to where you are right now. People who have suffered as you have are somehow gifted, you’ve always thought, with a differentness that magically makes the boundaries everyday individuals must adhere to null and void. Hence your personal biography.

Remember how you told that interviewer you didn’t practice so much as try to attain new heights? You admitted such a set of priorities led to mistakes in your playing, but you also knew full well they took you’re playing in unique directions. Indeed, you did some amazing things.

And you couldn’t even read music. Astonishing, really.

You won’t be creating anything new now, though. Those days are officially over. By the time Monika calls for help it will be too late. Maybe you’ll die after the paramedics get you to St. Mary Abbott’s. Or maybe you’ll be dead before the paramedics even arrive. Harsh as it may seem, none of it matters. For your life’s work has already started its journey towards that place where the lone and level sands stretch far away.

How the mighty once looked upon that work and despaired, though! Punching Paul after your house was broken into. Smashing Carmen in the face with that bottle during a drunken rage. Busting up the Opalen during that fight.  How everyone had to tame their impulses in the face of such actions. The work was your Berlin wall. You were impenetrable.

Yet now those actions, or rather the behavior which led to them, will be as much a part of your legacy as your talent will be. The humility you showed during that interview will, on the other hand, be largely forgotten. This is unfortunate, of course, though there’s no changing things at this point.

For yours is a story of appetites. Shoes. Clothes. Women. Booze. Drugs. Music. You have been a vacuum, a vacuum which has now exploded upon consuming too much. Little will be remembered of the child whose mother had left him. Little will be remembered of that driving seriousness.  Such things will remain hidden treasures, passed over by travelers through your antique land.