HOLLOW
I usually average around two to three songs a month. The muse has left me, now my average is one. If am lucky.
God has left this godforsaken town:
”He packed his bags two weeks ago, fled up the dusty track
Took the first train outta here and never once looked back
His shoulders crumpled in they say, eyes fastened on the ground
He left us high and dry that day in this godforsaken town
God doesn’t live here anymore…”
(Some lyrics from “Godforsaken Town” by J Hartley)
Sometimes when I drive to town, the country roads are so lonely. There is not one other soul in sight. I feel like the entire cadenza has happened and I am the last person left in the world.
I’ve never been frightened of being alone before, but loneliness is a numbness I can’t shake. I try to latch on to some universal energy, but it seems there is none. There is a collective numbness. It feels like quicksand. I find the strength to pull myself out, only to fall back into the murky mush again. I long to leap into the flow of the river and gain momentum in the currents. But the currents are never there. Perhaps they have gone away forever? I want to jump in, if not to catch the flow, to drown.
I have very dark thoughts now. I am a burden. Have I been irresponsible putting all my finances into a dream? I wonder if I should give up Glee? If I search my mind’s eye, there is no place in the world I would rather be. This is the planet of my dreams. Still, I feel like I am living in a bad Sci-fi movie and my planet has turned hostile. Nothing is familiar anymore, except the endless isolation. I have wished it in too vehemently and successfully and this is where the magic has stopped. Nothing happy comes in anymore. It is all just stagnant slush at the bottom of the river.
I had so many dreams for Glee. Reams and reams of paper full of squiggles and play, of diagrams and to do lists. They are shadows. I do not even want to look at them anymore. They taste like defeat.
I have been here before. In 2014 I fractured my neck in a riding accident. I was a laugh a minute at the hospital, but when I got home, when the real healing was meant to begin, I crashed. I discovered my own mortality. Instead of acknowledging my good fortune to be alive, I just sank to the bottom of the river. Now it feels comforting, a pleasant memory of the last time I was here. I like to lie here in the dark with the pressure on my chest from the weight of all that thick inky water. I do not wish to see the lights of the night sky twinkling their false promises up above.
What was I thinking dreaming impossible dreams?
Poor Cinderella’s dress is in tatters and she will not be going to the ball.
HOLLOW
Composer and Author: Julie Hartley
Vocalist: Petro De Villiers
Arrangement: Heste De Beer
Mixed and Mastered by Big Tone Productions
