The Beast In Me......

There is a beast in me, as Nick Lowe once said, and he is caged by frail and fragile bars. He was born with me, a deterrent to my better intentions. He wants blood, the sinew, the gristle. He wants to bite and break and chew until there's nothing but desecration and malice where there used to be some semblance of peace and harmony. The only way he stays at bay, a few inches from a breathing existence, is my admission that he exists. As long as he knows I know he exists, he has limitations. He can't just come crashing out of me in a rage. I've got my eye on him. But he knows, as the one in you and the one in all of us know, that once we let our guard down, hell will follow.

I have chosen, in my short lifetime, to use him constructively. His anger and hate are exhaled when I can get lost in a heavy metal song or when I can write a character in a screenplay that embodies his violent, nihilistic nature. My pursuit of literary art has satiated his need to be known. I feel as long as he has the idea that he can roam freely on the pages I write or get released in the sweat of a mosh pit, he has an illusion of the freedom he craves.

But when those outlets are not available, when I'm at the end of my rope, the fuse burned out and finite, he's there to take the reigns and steer me towards a crash no one saw coming. It's happened before and it'll happen again. It's like clockwork. It's the worst thing you said to your best friend, the moment as a child when you rebelled against the love of your parents, the drug, the man or woman you shouldn't have dated. It's all those things wrapped up in a metaphor. It's something we all war against....all of us.

This blog has no full intention other than being realistic. We all have a dark side, a unlovable side. It drives us, stabs us and it pretends to comfort us. What we do with it makes all the difference in the world. Choose wisely. There's only so much you can do with a wild, untamed beast that never gets fed.


"The Beast In Me" by Nick Lowe

The beast in me
Is caged by frail and fragile bars
Restless by day
And by night rants and rages at the stars
God help the beast in me

The beast in me
Has had to learn to live with pain
And how to shelter from the rain
And in the twinkling of an eye
Might have to be restrained
God help the beast in me

Sometimes it tries to kid me
That it's just a teddy bear
And even somehow manage to vanish in the air
And that is when I must beware
Of the beast in me that everybody knows
They've seen him out dressed in my clothes
Patently unclear
If it's New York or New Year
God help the beast in me