Alex Stangl - Sherbrooke Sessions

For three years I have been here, quietly in hiding, thoroughly pondering what, exactly, I have accomplished with the previous chapters of my life. The drama has vanished. There is no longer a plot line working itself out. There is no place left to go. Everything contained within me is merely a form of history, tucked away somewhere in my mind, a history that is more fiction than not.

I sit at my kitchen table, smoking cigarettes, gazing out the window at the vast sound stage, not knowing if, when or where I should enter into the play. Cars speed by the house in both directions; people who have a purpose and reason to be moving, (I have to assume). I envy their need to be somewhere else other than where they are in this moment. What propels people to keep moving? Was I not propelled at one time as well? Yet, here in this place, for three years, I have been quietly in hiding, trying to figure out what my next move is, on some imaginary chessboard I call "my life".

This place is littered with musical trophies, puzzles, compact discs, vinyl records and books. Postcards from faraway places cover the refrigerator like monarch butterflies after a long migration, held aloft by souvenir magnets sent to me by friends as they moved around the world. And still I do not move...the guitars, for now, are silent.