Apollo and I have had a troubled relationship lately, of which I’m beginning to question the integrity. It seems like, little by little, my feelings for him have deteriorated, died, and decomposed, as I break him down further in the process.

It’s not my fault, though. At least, not fully. I truly believe there was some great impetus for this, something that really caused this to happen, that set everything in place to lead to the demise of our affair. I’ve yet to honestly identify it, but I’ve got the horrid feeling that it was that damned course I was so excited to take.

Sure, it was, for all intents and purposes, a good idea at the time; it would provide information about a subject which, I knew, was of common interest to Apollo and me. Of course, I should have known he never cared about the subject–music, that is–quite in that way. You see, before I elected to take that course, we had been on just about the same wavelength when it came to music. It used to be like this:

I love music for what it is, for what it can be. I want to listen to it, absorb it, immerse myself in it, and I just want to feel it with every living cell. Whether I understand it or not, I need to know that I can depend on it, that it is there all the time for any reason.

And that was okay. It worked for me, for Apollo. I mean, I suppose music depended on him as much as he it, but the point remained: music was an ever-present entity, as much a god as Apollo himself. And just like any deity, we did quite well not to question its motives.

Yet I did so anyway. I questioned its motives, I analyzed them, I picked them apart and absolutely disintegrated them, just like that course taught me to do. With that, I did the same to Apollo’s. When I attempted to fit both his and music’s motives back into the larger work or the greater good or what-have-you, I found I could not. They were the ruined pieces of something that should have never been a puzzle in the first place.

Our relationship, I am certain, is one that can never be recovered. We had built far too much, Apollo and I, upon a simple foundation. This was okay, actually; it held up faithful and kind, for years, dependable as the music Apollo and I so loved. It was when I had the audacity to demand complexity, to demand something to be analyzed and not just enjoyed, that things fell apart. Apollo insulted and I disappointed, we have turned our backs on each other and I doubt I will see him again.

Though, in an unfortunate, twisted manner, I will continue to listen to his works, assessing them all the while. They are everywhere, and so this is my fate: to prohibit the music from affecting me, and, instead, discover all the ways it would.

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Exaggeration of how I'm starting to feel lately. But I'm also realizing how impossible it would be for me to turn my back on music, I guess. Written 7 Feb 2009 for Thing-a-Day 2009.