The Engine Sputters Ghosts

and the radio is on
and the radioman is speaking
and the radioman says
women were a curse
so men built Paramount
studios
and men built Columbia
studios
and men built
Los Angeles

it is 5 am
and you are listening
to Los Angeles

-Soul Coughing

So, it's late in the evening and I've been thinking about folk superstition while holding a guitar and failing spectacularly at finishing a song. Oh boy, multi-tasking. By the way my name is Willie and I'm the bassist/lead vocalist of Sonicate, and yes, this will be a depressing late night blog post. Boy howdy.

Anyway. While trying to complete the aforementioned song I started kicking around the idea of ghosts, and how western culture has taken a really interesting concept and flattened it into an easily dismissed caricature of its former self. The abstract concept of a ghost, namely an echo or piece of a person lingering on after their departure, contains some intriguing thoughts about the soul and the self. After all, echoes of every person abound throughout the world, not just sound but reflected light and action. Each one of us leaves a trail of shed skin and heat. What an echo really is, is just pieces of the past bouncing around in the present. Everyone leaves a trail of pieces, of ghosts lingering after themselves no matter where they go. Everything you do takes a little bit out of you. Some of you gets left behind. Your ghost. And each trail leads back to a moment in time when you struck the placid surface of life around you and caused a ripple outward. But if waves of heat can radiate away from their source, what about thought, intent? Indeed, thoughts come not in segments but in waves, each receding as the next crashes upon the shore. And thus at each moment in time a wave of intention emanates from each person forward and outward in their lives.

Ghosts linger. They hold on. It makes sense. After all, your ghost is you, in the past, being dragged into the present. You can understand why a ghost might be upset, stretched across moments until it rips apart and dissolves into aether. Some ghosts stay longer then others, thoughts that keep crashing in upon you, shed pieces clinging to you, echoes that persist. Some ghosts leave in a hurry. Some get trapped. Every time someone takes a picture of you your ghost is sucked into the camera, crushed flat onto a tiny piece of film, static and smiling. Every time you write your name your ghost hovers around the words, a remnant of a moment of you lingering by its own epitaph. There are people whose names are advertisements for baked goods or clothing, whose pictures exist to sell liquor and cell phones. People who live by being seen or heard. Pieces of these people will litter shelves and screens and minds long after they themselves pass on. These are people who have saddled and harnessed their ghosts, and make them work to pay rent. There are also people who think that a camera can steal a person's soul, and sometimes I believe them.

There are people who believe you can sell your soul, or give it away or lose it. I think you can only lose yourself. Because what is a soul after all, but you? What is your ghost? It's you. In different times and places, you. Because any piece of you is you. An echo, a reflection, a picture, it all points to one place. The only thing you can leave behind is yourself.

-Willie