Silent but Deadly

"L-Għira, oħt il-ġenn! (Envy, the sister of madness!)" - Maltese proverb

"You can't spell Envy without NV" - unspeakable (as heck) motto

What makes a character flaw or weakness a sin?  What's more, what makes a sin deadly?  Pride and Greed aren't a problem for me. Gluttony I could do without.  But Sloth, Lust and Ire?  Where do I sign up?  I can't shut up about my affinity for any of them.   What I don't talk about is the one that embarrasses me the most: the green monster.  It's unbecoming to me to envy possessors.  But while it's never the person doing the possessing that seems worth it to me to squander virtue points on, it's the coveting of the possession that breaks down my resistance.  I don't cook at all, so why do I ache at the relentlessly unacquireable beauty of the pricey niche implements procured by Williams Sonoma?  The high end kitchen store's catalogue is something I consult for gift purchases for the wives and mothers in my life, but my spirit is rapidly depleted by the futility of desire in this economy.     Is it not the very unattainability of the copper salmon poacher, the horse hair mushroom brush, the fully automatic espresso machine that is the point of the beauty? I broil at the ostentatiousness of the lifestyles of the rich and the famous but I fantasize about having the discernment and the bottomless resources to accumulate every beautiful piece of merchandise that artisans construct to tempt me with, a warehouse sized mansion that I could store them in and a staff to organize them for me in a way that accentuates my having of them.  What's that about?  It's unseemly.

Fortunately there's a whole big world full of other things to secretly envy, covet and feel jealous about.

Empty Studios - As much as I envy the curators of museum worthy implements of everyday beauty, do I envy them more than those with no possessions and no thought of possessing?  Not by a long shot.  Far more than I envy aesthetic accumulation, I covet the beauty of emptiness.  Not far from where I live tucked behind an ivied fence stands a studio slash event space that someone converted from  a non-descript industrial warehouse.  The grey brutalist concrete was painted black; multi-story glass was added to the façade.  Before the iron fence was constructed, a view of the interior revealed white painted walls and sparseness.  From photos of the interior its clear that emptiness has been maintained.  My own house, after 30 years of residence including the inheritance of furniture and effects from relatives and friends shows signs of the beginnings of a hoarder's den by comparison. How fulfilling it would be to have a space like the studio slash event space to retreat to when the crampedness gets to me.

People who thought to make music their career - As a younger person, I never had the best luck with record purchases.  In my youth, in my family at least, I somehow got the message that a person's album collection was their identity but I never had the instinct that my brothers did for the killer album.  How did they do it?   For me it was possibly a song I heard on the radio, or a fantasy about how a band name or an album cover  would translate into juice for myself.  More often than not though, I would discover when I got my record store purchase home, the reality of songs so rank that even a clueless tween from the backwaters could smell it betrayed the fantasy.  For this reason, although I never learned to acquire better methods of discernment until deep into adulthood and music purchases remained hit or miss throughout my young life, and I always somehow managed to make my own lame music the whole while, my relationship to music was tentative.  YouTube is probably what tutored me because it added an element of chosen experience to the equation.  The net result is that the older I get the more important music seems to me-- and not just because it consumes so much more of my time, but because it feels like art that universally matters.  A collaborative project that is rewarding in itself to say nothing of the omnipresent potential it presents for fostering communal joy.  Revisiting only the best songs of my youth along with exploring new sounds, I'm able to recognize that I've had the key all along.  If only it had seemed more important to me sooner to find a way to have music making a primary preoccupation, like the lucky bastards who figured that out in time.

The Maltese - One morning before work in 2021 I saw a YouTube recommendation for a cover of Bittersweet Melody, one of my favorites, by "The Palace String Orchestra" featuring "Gaia".  Clicking on the thumbnail, I was transported to an elegant courtyard of some kind where men and women in  tuxes and evening gowns were seated at tables covered in white linen, being served an evening meal and refreshments by uniformed waiters while being entertained by a masked orchestra accompanying a rock trio led by a dapper gentleman playing bass while a beautiful young woman in a sparkling fur-fringed gown belted the Verve's storied hit.  According to the description, the performance took place just days before in Valletta, Malta.  As I mustered the wherewithal to tear myself away from my morning internet wanderings to relocate myself to the work computer, I found myself fantasizing about life on a Mediterranean Island-- your only neighbors Cabrino and Gozo-- not so much in the beam of contemporary events as steeped in history, having thoughts in a language spoken by no one but those in your day to day life.  A life that would surely be composed of unhurried sunlit days of straightforward survival followed by elegant starlit nights of music wafting over the waves in every direction. 

Non-humans - Do I really need to elaborate?

People of the past - I am drawn to kitschy movies-- the worse the better.  Not long ago I learned of one that I had missed in my childhood, a teen confection called Winter-a-Go-Go.  Was it as bad as its title promised?  I had to see for myself. Suddenly 1965 was evoked for me-- and a silly 1965 at that. A time when global warming was a dim blip on only the nerdiest scientist's radar; neoliberalism had not delayed history; I had not yet made whatever turn it was that got me here instead of making music in a Palace orchestra in Malta.

The Dead - It's never just another day when you learn at work, via mass email that a co-worker has died.  My time in the workforce has been long enough that I'm familiar with the feeling.  Usually it's a former colleague whose death notice informs me of a final struggle with illness.  But sometimes, the colleague was current and their death was a sudden surprise for all.  I always feel a little sadness.  And a little envy.  The struggle for my comrade is over.  The hurdle has been cleared. It's all void now. All meetings have been canceled. No more self-evaluations, no more reviews, no more reinventing the wheel for the thousandth time.  No more business lunches or pieces of birthday cake in the break room. No more potlucks. 

And yet, no more snow days either, or holidays or vacation or early dismissals.  No more Miller Time.  

And then there's the matter of paying for your deadly sins...