I'm nuts about Meatloaf.

No, don't be silly: I don't capitalize food, generally speaking. I'm talking about the musician who goes by the unlikely name of Meat Loaf. I have no idea what his real name is; I'm sure I could find it on the net in a matter of minutes. It's not particularly important.

I am not the sort of person who pays a lot of attention to music and musicians and who does what style of music. My sister has the ability to name virtually any artist, any song, any album, with little more than a gesture and the question, "Hey, who did . . . ?" She seems to be able to draw all the relevant information out of a person's head, and instantly Name That Artist.

Me, I'm the bane of a friend's existence because I'm so utterly clueless about music. (He once made what was obviously a joke about some band, and while I could tell it was supposed to be a joke, I simply had no frame of reference for it to make sense. That was pretty much the point at which he stopped talking about music to me.)

So the fact that I can recognize Meat Loaf's music is fairly significant: it means I must Really Like his stuff.

I do. I'm not sure why. A lot of it is depressing. He sings songs about growing up and loosing friends and choosing between lovers and friends and lost romances and broken dreams. It's stuff that everybody goes through. That's probably the crux of why I like it: I can relate.

Usually, though, even if I relate to depressing stuff, I don't like it. I'm pretty much a The Glass Is Half Full person, and I'm very good at closing my eyes to ugliness.

That's not something I'm particularly proud of. I wonder if everyone's like that, and that's basically how we get through our day to day activities. And if it is, how do people who deal with that sort of thing daily -- I'm talking about paramedics and human rights activists and cops -- how do they deal with it? What is it that they've got that I don't? Is it just a general desire to help people that overrides the fact that it's awful, or is it something else, less noble, like a fascination with death or trouble, that leads them into that sort of job?

I've never been in a real emergency situation. I don't have the foggiest idea how I'd deal with it. I'd like to think I'd keep my head and wouldn't be one of those useless screaming ninnies you see in the movies, but I really don't have a clue. I'd probably be just as happy to never find out. For one, that would mean I'd have to be in an emergency situation, and that probably wouldn't be particularly fun, and two, I'd really hate to have my illusions shattered and discover that I really am a screaming ninny at heart.

That had absolutely nothing to do with what I'd planned to write. That's the thing about free writing, I suppose.

I was talking about music. The song I'm listening to right now is "Objects in the Rear View Mirror (May Appear Closer Than They Are)". It's about an abused kid whose best friend died when they were sixteen, about his loss of innocence.

My god, that's so fascinating. The loss of innocence, the vulnerabilities of a human being. One of my closest friends has a gift for learning things about people. He does it in a very sneaky way: he asks. People will confess damned near anything, if asked. Tom knows things about me nobody else does, which provides a hell of a reflection for me sometimes.

That's Tom's thing: he finds vulnerabilities to be intensely interesting, and he's entirely right. It doesn't matter what the knowledge is used for, or if it's used at all. It's our vulnerabilities that make us different, maybe.

That's probably part of why this sort of music appeals to me. It's a baring of a soul, even if it's a fictional soul. Reality is generally easier to deal with if it's couched in fiction, I think -- I can listen to this song and use it to view the deaths of my own friends, borrow somebody else's metaphors and lyrics and pretend that they were written so I'd have a way to cope.

Nah, that's total bullshit. I like borrowing those metaphors and it's easy to get lost in the music when it's a familiar story, but most of the reason I like it, I think, is because it's tragic.

Comedy is good and fine, but well done tragedy -- the exposure of the heart, the motivations for doing things, whether cruel or generous -- /ah/! Now that's magic. That's what really makes people tick.

Gods, how depressing. No, I'm not really discovering this just now -- Tolstoy said it in big letters: "All happy families are the same."

But isn't it a bit sick, that what's fascinating is what's depressing? Sure, your heart gets over-full and your eyes tear up when you hear of a particularly noble event, but people really get into it when there's been a twelve car pileup on the freeway.

That I don't like. I don't find that fascinating; I find it horrifying, and I hate whatever it is in human nature that makes poeple slow down and take pictures when there's been a wreck.

How utterly peculiar. I hate it, and just like everybody else, I'm obsessed with it. Else I wouldn't be listening to this music. I'd be listening to . . . Winny the Pooh, or something. (Though Eyeore is pretty depressing, actually.)

I think that juxtaposition is part of what makes me want/need to write. It's something in me that's trying to understand the different aspects of myself. Billy Joel's another one of my favorite musical artists, and he does rather a lot of depressing stuff, too. (I do not reccommend sitting alone listening to Billy Joel for four or five hours in a row. It would drive the weak-willed to suicide.) My favorite authors are ones who write not just tragedy, but high tragedy, stories in which not only do people die, but the wrong people die, just like in real life.

And that's how I want to be able to write. I want to write stories that make you ache to read, but couldn't happen any other way. I guess in order to do that, I have to either understand or at least have a grasp on my opposing forces, the side that closes my eyes to ugliness and the side that studies it to see how it can be used to make someone cry.

Or maybe I just have to keep writing in order to try to get that handle on those feelings. I'm not sure.

Then again, if I knew, I wouldn't have to write, would I? (And then again, if I didn't write, I'd probably feel it necessary to go to a pshrink to find out why I have all these deeply conflicting emotions and get a label to make myself feel better. Thank god I'm a writer.)

Very well. Tragedy is the reason I like Meat Loaf. Exposure of heart and soul in music, something I'd like to do on paper.

I think the next piece I put up will be a re-write of an essay I've done . . . .