Music is How We Decorate Time

I’ve spent a lot of my life waiting for my brother to show up as a brother.

And it’s a shame because I think we would have gotten along and liked each other if we were just given the time.

I’m not saying that out of conceit but as I’ve gotten older, I’m discovering more and more that we have in common. We like a lot of the same things, we have a similar dark humor, he’s a professional drummer and I really, really love to play the drums.

There’s something that clicks in my brain, something about the rhythm, the pattern, the music, the flow. The way you can surf through time in this full body mediation, consumed by whatever soundtrack you’re playing to. I love that I don’t have to talk and how when you play it right, when you get in that flow, you’re bigger than yourself. You’re one with the life around you. This primal thing, music, rhythm, you are wholly in sync with. It’s amazing. And we’ve literally never talked about it.

I’m so devastatingly interested in who he is and I will never know him.

We are both some of the best and most annoying parts of our mom and I can count on one hand the times I’ve felt like we connected in some way.

The burden I can feel for being born because the relationship my parents had ruined the one his parents had. And objectively, I am the byproduct of why his dad moved out of his house when he was in middle school.

With all the similarities between who he is and who I am, I live in a state knowing that I will never know him. With all our similarities, maybe I wouldn’t want to know me either.