David Bronson

I don’t know where it began. I couldn’t possibly.
Before college
before Exile on Main St.
before Boston
before high school
before songwriting
before Kubrick, and Bukowski
before Blade Runner
before comics
before Labyrinth
before VHS
before walks after school with my buddy Ev,
under the leaf shadows of suburban NJ
talking about it

they say a life without drama creates drama
It seems that all life has drama
I’ve witnessed the deepest, heaviest dramas of all
unfold without any actual cause, per se
Life is not blasé as long as we’re thankful
And what are we fortunate for?
The people in it? Any degree of predictability?
And what’s so good about appreciation anyway?

(I will pause momentarily, because,
serendipitously,
the Sticky Fingers version of Wild Horses just came on where I’m writing this.
Truly amazing.
One of the too many songs that strikes me with the painful realization
that there will only be a finite number of times I’ll ever hear it.

Which segues back nicely)

What’s so good about appreciation?
Is it mainly because it takes you out of yourself? Release?
Like how we say it’s actually selfish to give? Because you’re the one who receives the good feeling?
Personally, I think it goes a lot deeper.
But I can’t explain it logically.
I think it just is good. And good is good. So it feels good (but not the other way around).

And finally, appreciation is connection – the heart of the matter.
It’s reaching upwards, backwards, forwards, next to you – and acknowledging that connection,
And realizing, truly feeling, that your being the beneficiary of the many good things that existence gives us
(via people or via radio stations) is the natural way of things, is as it’s supposed to be.
It should be a foregone conclusion.
And yet the appreciation is still there, naturally.
And we don’t give to others only to make ourselves feel good, but also to make them feel good.
At the same time.

And maybe appreciation is also acknowledging that there is not, and never could be, a real end,
or a real separation
No cessation
of movement
of attempt
of love
of life

So, happily, I say
thank you.

(To all that’s good, but mainly to my loving parents)