The ‘AI Portrait’ filter is all the rage on various social media sites, and while I typically abhor a filter, this one has proven especially ridiculous in all the ways it distorts and translates a photo into a completely different image. It sent me down a rabbit hole of possibilities – is this how the world views us? Is this more in line with how we appear to others than how we appear in the mirror? Is this how I should have been wearing my hair when it wasn’t so gray? Lots of questions, lots of musings… and speaking of musing, my new musical muse Mia just sent over a few songs of inspiration, including this one entitled ‘One More Hour’ which posits themes of time and love and all the good stuff that goes along with a properly-examined life.
Just a moment, right before all the song and danceWasn’t brave enough to tell youBut there ain’t gonna be another chanceIt’s not long until all that I have and everything’s stillThe minutes are racin’
Whatever I’ve done, I did it for loveI did it for fun – couldn’t get enoughI did it for fame but never for moneyNot for houses, Not for herNot for my future children
The music is a challenge – as much as the images are – as much as any piece of art can be. The ideas of time and love, and hurt and pain, and how many times we get up and do it all over again – it all mashes together as the cacophony of this song winds its way along a wavy trajectory.
How could I love again?How could I ever ask for more?And to the road aheadInto a life I can’t ignore, how could I love again?(Move on) how can I walk this path for sure?(Lose her) with no more time to spend(Move on) I know the answer more and more
As long as I can, Long as I canSpend some time aloneAs long as I can, Long as I canBe the man I am
The funk of the past few months is something I have acknowledged. A little rut, a sunken stretch when the distance of friends suddenly aligned, as if someone simply switched off my light and no one saw me anymore. I didn’t fight it, didn’t rage against the quiet onslaught of being left to my own devices, with just Andy by my side. Part of me actively encouraged it, reveling in this alone time, daring to hint at the sort of friendship drama not seen since ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ (without all the bloody appendages).
Oh, life is strangeFor one more hour, I can rageFor one more hour
As long as I can (lose her)As long as I can (move on)Spend some time aloneAs long as I can (lose her)As long as I can (move on)Remember who I am
As long as I can (lose her)As long as I can (move on)Spend some time aloneAs long as I canAs long as I can (how could I love again?)Be the man I am
At the end of the day, setting the alarm on my phone for three separate times, ten minutes apart, I curl up in bed, a pillow between my knees to bring sleep as soon as possible. My mother once told me that was a trick the hospitals used for overnight patients who couldn’t get to sleep. When the days are filled with quiet rumination, it sometimes makes for nights that begin in sleepless fashion. I stare at these silly AI creations and lose myself in characters I never was but perhaps wanted to be, in days that I thought I spent well, even if they were mostly filled with the wasteful abandon of youth. I listen to this song, suggested by the daughter of two good friends, and I think of how she is just beginning her journey, on the verge of entering those years where we become who we are going to become. Those years, and that person I was, feel as intimate and foreign to me as these photos. It’s like seeing myself in a strange new light, as when someone captures an angle of you in a photo that you didn’t realize was being taken, and you see what others see for the first time, and it’s jarring and disturbing and wondrous – it shifts perspective, it alters the interior image.
Just a minute, fella, right before you go out thereAll your voices said you wouldn’t last a minute bareOne more hour and you’ll know your life is one to shareJust a minute, baby, right before we go from hereAll those people said we wouldn’t last a minute nearI’m with you and I could roll into another year
