The 27 club is a list of talented artists/celebrities who pass at the age of 27 either by suicide or drug abuse. Think the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse. These figures are part of a mythos that paints the picture of a tormented artist. A talent snuffed out of too early because it could not handle it’s own brilliance.
To be honest, part of me wishes I could join this club. A non-insignificant chunk of my soul wishes I had the talent people would think wasted upon my demise. Maybe at least then I would have something to favor about myself. But I am not worthy of this. If I were to pass in the coming year, the only tragic thing about my death would be my age.
These tortured souls found one thing that made life easy. The same vulnerability and passion that made life hard also made their artistic expressions easy. In the end, life boiled down to either the thing that gave them pleasure and meaning, or everything else. So far, it seems everything else eventually overtakes the one thing. And I wonder if that would be the thing that denies me entry to the 27 club. That I never found my craft. At this point, I am not tortured. Not having a purpose has provided me with enough bandwidth to sail on through everything else.
If I was to join the club I would have to find that one thing and spend the rest of the year perfecting it so that when the end comes, the skies would open and I would be welcomed to the hallowed halls of immortality.
A better writer would end this with an optimistic outlook of how if I acted like this would be the last year of my life (which it well could be), I would be better off by the end even if it wasn’t. However, you’re stuck with me, and despite all my pride and skill, writing may not be my thing.
364 days remaining…..
That summer some years ago 