It's been a year since my mother passed. She preferred mum to mom, Nietzsche much much much more than Rand, enjoyed Anais Nin and Marquis de Sade in equal measure; she had little love for classic American literature but greatly enjoyed the work of Byron, Wilde, and Camus. Madonna over Abdul and later Gaga over Perry - forever and always loved David Bowie and Prince. More than that, she always encouraged what could be called my art and interest; and she definitely took immense joy in my oddities and promoting every strain of thought that could possibly make me more odd. Mostly though, despite her mistakes, she did teach and encourage me to always engage in a slightly more than healthy level of self-absorption, because the world is not always worth taking in, even less so if a person can't find themselves interesting enough to merit an interesting world. I am enough like her and enough like her favorite Camus protagonist to not miss her, but I do miss someone always getting the jokes in my music. The last album I wrote before she passed was written for her,."Idiot Shaped; Spit Death" had several super esoteric references in it and I never even had to explain the joke behind the character Dr. Ag to her. She helped me punch up bits of the story so that it was slightly less dour even though she knew that it was a story that had been in the works for over a year, and was now a story colored by the current situation. I guess I will listen to The Stranger by Camus and work on this new album, she would beat my ass if I fucked around any longer abstaining from music.
