THE DEATH OF ME
BY VIVIAN DOYLE
MWC DEATH
There’s a song for every decade in one’s life, a Soundtrack if you will, that evokes and accompanies whatever is occurring in your life at the time. For the last 11 years Don Mclean’s American Pie has become an anthem of life and death for me. The singer himself described this enigmatic song as a lament, devoid of hope….and this is why I have chosen the song because it personifies the death of my creative life.
So permit me a little poetic license as I indulge in Lyrical story telling here to tell you how a late-in-life move led to my unproductive existence.
When my husband decided after a stressful 40-year career to abandon city life for a quieter life on a remote island on Florida’s west coast I was game. The two of us had lived in Asian and African cities and had wanderlust to experience and to explore this new phase of our life. Taking on a fixer upper was one challenge I passed.
But what I didn’t expect or anticipate was the sheer terror I would experience discovering that the picturesque lake behind our house was teeming with hungry alligators and that darkness takes on a whole new meaning when lights are forbidden in this nature preserve and animal sanctuary. “Bad News at the doorstep, I couldn’t take one more step.”
The first several years I became a shut-in overcome with rabid anxiety.
I am a city girl through and through so why did I think that I could handle such an abrupt and radical change? I had been writing and working as a home stager in Miami with trusted friends and a robust social life. All that ended when we became Island bound residents and had to start over.
I have failed miserably to adjust, always mourning the old me, my old life. Stuck in a creative and an emotional rut. Some people may read this and think I’m spoiled and privileged. Can’t one woman’s paradise be another woman’s hell? “A long- long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile…And I knew if I had a chance I could make those people dance maybe they’d be happy for a while.”
But by far the hardest thing that haunts me to this day is the soul crushing quiet — the relentless day and night tomb of silence that has robbed me of my creativity and killed the proverbial music within me.
As a music connoisseur I always prided myself on my music acumen and how it enhanced my feeling of well- being and contributed to my productivity. But you learn quickly in this inhospitable landscape that anything with volume is considered Verboten.
Listening to music you are made to feel like a heathen for introducing “joy for joy’s sake”, unprompted by a pastor or ruckus congregation. I silenced myself and my music because they made me feel subversive which in turn led to a diminishing of flow followed by a permeant writers block. This is the first time in 10 years that I am attempting to put into words my sorry creative crisis.
“For ten years We’ve been on our own and moss grows fat on a rolling stone but that’s not how it used to be.”
The energy and cacophony of city streets always fed me and they still beckon me for there is no tyranny of Peace and Quiet in a city, just loud voices and loud music living gloriously out loud and proud.
So as I stopped listening to Music my creative life died. It’s as If my muse had packed her bags and “headed for the Coast…” while Don Mclean’s words echo in my mind. I speculate that my Muse grew despondent watching me wither on the vine and fled leaving me behind and “out of luck” just like Miss American Pie, when the Music died.
