A year ago, I started my Substack community A View From Within with quite an intimate view on my otherwise pretty private and personal life … as I openly shared about my primary home demolition status, a gutted sensation if there was one for me to expose. The shock factor was definitely in play for you all to see, or so I thought… But 1 year later, not only has my home not been fixed yet, but the extensive scope of devastation the water pipes caused is now in full display, and it’s a disastrous state of desolation for me to fathom, to say the least.
In fact, if someone would have told me that this would be the condition I’d eventually find my home in, a year after I initially foresaw the catastrophic situation I would have to navigate through, I wouldn’t have believed it. I would have wondered how it could get worse than what I was actually witnessing, as I thought it was already too much of a surreal vision to accept considering the magnitude of the damages and their widened dimension... And it was basically everywhere I could set my eyes...
So no, I wouldn’t have believed it. I was entirely speechless, especially as I was completely unaware that I wasn’t even looking at what I thought was phase 1 of the whole process at the time. So I don’t have to explain just how profound the emotional implications have been for me when I started to seize the heart-wrenching nature of the house-wrecking measure itself.
Nothing has been spared. No room, no space, no walls, no ceiling, no floor, from its original woodwork to its plastering, all dating back to the moment the house was built in 1919. Nothing could be saved, let alone preserved from the total catastrophe that befell my house. Pianos, guitars, vintage studio equipment, my massive collection of vinyls, books, and artwork are mostly all ravaged by days of uninterrupted water pumping from all the broken piping systems, which are basically at the center of the whole house’s functionality.
But what has been the most gut-wrenching for me has been the loss of priceless elements from my souvenirs, both intimately personal and associated with my creative journey, all destroyed or too damaged to salvage. And while objects can always be bought back, or almost so, absolutely nothing can replace what has value only to my heart, which is the most tragic thing there is for me, given that large parts of my memory have been erased during my life-threatening surgery in 2023.
Therefore, losing those physical pieces of my lifetime voyage is like being violently deprived of invisible parts of my existence, forever lost... And that, for me, is the true nightmare I have to compose with and what I’ll have to accept the ineluctable reality of if I ever want to be able to let go and keep on serenely evolving from it all in the end. And I know I’ll have to make peace with it all. Well, I’m honestly not there yet, but I’ll eventually be, in my own terms...
What I’m presently feeling could resemble grieving. Mourning something that couldn’t be revived, while having to cultivate the hope in rebirth, may it be associated with my house, the only place I ever felt home in my entire life, or the faith that no matter what has been lost from within, fragments of my former self, everything that’s made anew is part of the miracle of my second chance at life.
That’s the reason I’m not “crying” over my circumstances. Why would I? I am not a victim here — never was, even when I acted as one. We all have our fair share of destruction to manage. But I guess what’s different now is that instead of pretending I’m alright, that it’s all cool, that it’s no topic for me to stop, I’m allowing myself the blessing to say that I’m heartbroken, that I need to process what needs to be fully experienced to live it through before being able to contemplate the possibility of purging it all over in order to build back up again… Whatever it means at this point.
So they told me, from my health specialists up to my home contractors, that sometimes, when it’s truly worth it, it needs to get much worse before it can start getting better. I understand a little more what it means, at least the implication involved beneath it. I’m certain that no matter what’s coming for me, it will be a colorful renaissance, so bright, so real, and so free that it will shine through my own darkness. And this all has surrounded me for so long. We aren’t made to live in obscurity, my precious friends and loved ones.
Life creates life
Your brother and friend,
Alex
