Pearl

Looking into your eyes, I still see a scared and lonely child trapped inside the quicksand of an adult, an icon of an age.

And I am the double-edged sword that brought about your success and your destruction.

I saw you the other day on a television documentary. It was the fiftieth anniversary of Woodstock, and the film maker had clip after clip of the key performers, names that in today’s light are pillars of entertainment but at the time were not all household names.

I was listening with one ear when I heard you, and there you were just like I remembered. The cameraman zoomed in and I could see your eyes again, and that scared and lonely child looked right back at me. And in that instant we were together again.

Just like fifty years ago.

The moment I came into your life, I knew, and I think you did too, that our arrangement had success and failure written all over it. I don’t know how old you were when you found me. I can’t remember, and I doubt if you do either, but I’m sure it was somewhere in high school.

That wasn’t a good time for you, your pain crystal clear. The others made fun of you, teased you, bullied you, even tortured you with their malice. I wasn’t sure why. You didn’t deserve it. You’re good looking, maybe not supermodel quality but not bad. You had a fun loving demeanor, a girl next door sweetness, if only they would let you be the real you instead of something else they wanted you to be.

Society, however, doesn’t know what to do with people like you. Oh, today we say we have room for the square pegs that don’t fit into the round holes, but back then, that wasn’t the case. If you’re not Barbie or Ken, well, then something’s wrong. And the only way to fix that is to force that square peg into that round hole with a big hammer, or by whittling it down to the right shape. Sometimes, it took both.

You trusted me to make you happy, to bring you what you needed, and I failed you. You had your fame and your fans and your followers and your successes, that much is true. But with me, you also get something else, a dark and deadly parasite. It’s part of the package. I didn’t choose it. It's just part of the deal. Most discover it soon enough and work out ways to deal with it.

Some don’t.

When you embraced me as a friend and partner, home wasn’t where you wanted to be. You needed to see the world, to find other square pegs just like you. The world is a big place, filled with big ideas, and big people sculpting those big ideas. I feared that what you thought you would find, and what you would, might tarnish you. But I didn’t stop you. In fact, I fueled that. Because you believed I would pull you up, pull you so high you could touch the stars.

The problem was, the other square pegs, the ones you were sure would embrace you, could be just as mean and cruel as society. Ambition is like an acid. In the right hands it’s a tool, and in the wrong hands it’s caustic. And you were so young, so idealistic, I don’t think you knew the difference.

You used your talents and pulled yourself out of the pit society threw you in, pulled yourself up into the heavens to shine like a star. And for that, I was happy. Everything I ever wanted for you came to pass. It wasn’t perfect, not by any means, but to you it was heaven. You showed everybody around you were special, that you deserved a second look, their approval.

Just when I thought it was under control, though, that dark and deadly parasite dug in and wouldn’t let go.

I’m not sure precisely when it got inside you. But it did, and it had a feast because you were the perfect host: naïve, happy, giddy, and unable to say no. All you had to do was say no, and that would have killed the parasite dead. But you didn’t. So it took control. It romanced you with false hope and promises. It took your beauty and bled it dry.

There was a war going on, a war within a war, inside and out. The times were chaos, hurricane winds of change leveling the past. The old guard, they knew to take shelter and wait it out. But young ones like you were uprooted and blown across the land, scattered and dropped like seeds looking for fertile soil.

That old guard saw every tradition held near and dear torn down by ones like you, and they despised you. But to the new guard, you were the light and nourishment they needed. Oh, you were not alone. There were others just like you, symbols of Aquarius. But your life, your energy, your light, that was all you.

I tried to guide you, to make you see, but that parasite, he had your ear. You listened to him more than you listened to me. Maybe I should have shouted more, jumped up and down and waved my arms and screamed more. But I didn’t. And I live with that every day.

When I look back, I realize you didn’t have someone special in your life that would help guide you. Instead, you had shadows. You had those who would fill your head with false hopes and beliefs, to take advantage of you in ways I never dreamed possible.

At one point, the epiphany struck me and I saw you were a pearl, a beautiful, perfect white pearl, a rare beauty in this world. Not manufactured or cultivated, but a natural one. Something that nature produces so rarely that when you find one, it takes your breath away.

But that parasite, it took that beautiful pearl and peeled it like an onion, layer by layer, until the only thing left was the root of the pearl, a grain of sand. An ordinary, irritating grain of sand, ugly and mundane. And he made you look at that, made you believe it was the real you until you believed it right to your core.

I tried to make you understand, to see the lie for what it was. And for a while, you did. You pushed that parasite aside, closed your ears to his whispers and lies, and followed your true self, the true you. And that’s when you shone like a star.

You could take the sky and the heavens and paint them with beauty so pure it was intoxicating, captivating, invigorating. People would stare in awe, transported from this world into paradise at your touch, your voice, your beauty.

I still see you, standing alone, casting a spell over your generation. When you did it, you did so well they had no choice but to worship you. When you let me have your ear, when you listened, you were unstoppable. You were so good they didn’t know how to describe you. They couldn’t even find the right words. But I knew them, I knew them all along.

I read the newspapers and watched the TV and listened to the recordings and concerts and festivals. And even on days when that parasite was tugging at you, your light could paint the darkness away in everybody.

Even today, a lifetime later, I’ll hear your voice and I’m ushered back to the time when you and I were in the fight, reaching for the stars, touching heaven, even if only for a moment, and I long for that time again.

I've heard them describe you as a mix of rock and blues and folk and jazz and psychedelic and even some gospel, your inner light so unique, so powerful, that they couldn’t quite find the right words. If they ask me, I would tell them I don’t see you in terms of labels. Rather, I see that scared and lonely child as a lighthouse casting that inner light out over dark stormy seas to find and guide someone, anyone, to your harbor.

But, like that flame that burns so bright, I knew the end of the line was coming. They forged you in a time of war, a weapon that could change hearts and minds, inspire and invigorate. But even wars end, and the weapons, the people, the tactics, they all fall by the wayside as soon as the fighting ends.

And then what?

When you became obsolete, the war that defined you fading into oblivion, you turned to the one thing you needed, love.

Your voice spoke to us about many things, but the one I liked the most, the one that spoke the deepest about what that scared and lonely child wanted wasn’t about society or money or racial inequity. It was about finding your soul mate.

The square peg just needed to find another square peg and life would have been natural, normal, good. Oh sure, the road would have been rocky, but there would’ve been a road to drive on, to follow, to chase the elusive light we need in this life. Instead, there was only an abyss.

Instead of falling into a drunken rage or a parasitic coma, you would have laughed, looked around and saw the beauty that’s all around you. And you would’ve embraced it and made it your own. But you didn’t. And that was my fault.

When your attempts at love failed, the parasite, he stepped back into the ring, ready for another round. He poisoned you from the inside out and made sure he had your complete and undivided attention at all times. Even the times you didn’t want it.

He took you back down into the abyss, to the very bottom, to the place that’s so dark and so cold that you don’t even know who you are anymore. And then he toyed with you, played with you like a cat plays with a mouse.

Because you were all alone, abandoned by society, the world, even me, and you didn’t know what to do, you did the worst thing you could: you listened to that parasite and nobody else. That’s when I realized that in every Garden of Eden, there is a snake and an apple.

And when you fell, nobody was there to pick you up. Not even me.

So you never got up.