We All Should Care

Accept the call for a deeper purpose.

I notice the things that so few do.
I go about my daily life in a plethora of emotions because I can honestly almost feel what others do. I call it extra empathy, in reality, I have no idea if there is a name for it.
I know that there are so many people that are perceived incorrectly by society.
They are thought golden, untouchable, happy, simply because they hide behind a facade. A mask of smiles, though it never truly reaches their eyes. You never see their soul, because it’s dark.
I know that look because I have that look.
That “empty, longing, soul searching, I’m never going to be fixed, but I wish I had someone that could relate, and accept me no matter how many neuroses I may have” look.
Sometimes, it isn’t a matter of being fixed, but merely, of having someone hold your hand in the dark, and walk quietly alongside you, to quiet the shadows, if only a bit.
Sometimes, we just want someone to hear what we aren’t saying, but we’re silently screaming.
I think Charles C. Finn can sum it up better than I can, so I’ll let him:

“Please Hear What I Am Not Saying”

Don’t be fooled by me.
Don’t be fooled by the face I wear
for I wear a mask, a thousand masks,
masks that I’m afraid to take off,
and none of them is me.

Pretending is an art that’s second nature with me,
but don’t be fooled,
for God’s sake don’t be fooled.
I give you the impression that I’m secure,
that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well
as without,
that confidence is my name and coolness my game,
that the water’s calm and I’m in command
and that I need no one,
but don’t believe me.
My surface may seem smooth but my surface is my mask,
ever-varying and ever-concealing.
Beneath lies no complacence.
Beneath lies confusion, and fear, and aloneness.
But I hide this. I don’t want anybody to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weakness exposed.
That’s why I frantically create a mask to hide behind,
a nonchalant sophisticated facade,
to help me pretend,
to shield me from the glance that knows.

But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only hope,
and I know it.
That is, if it’s followed by acceptance,
if it’s followed by love.
It’s the only thing that can liberate me from myself,
from my own self-built prison walls,
from the barriers I so painstakingly erect.
It’s the only thing that will assure me
of what I can’t assure myself,
that I’m really worth something.
But I don’t tell you this. I don’t dare to, I’m afraid to.
I’m afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance,
will not be followed by love.
I’m afraid you’ll think less of me,
that you’ll laugh, and your laugh would kill me.
I’m afraid that deep-down I’m nothing
and that you will see this and reject me.

So I play my game, my desperate pretending game,
with a facade of assurance without
and a trembling child within.
So begins the glittering but empty parade of masks,
and my life becomes a front.
I idly chatter to you in the suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that’s really nothing,
and nothing of what’s everything,
of what’s crying within me.
So when I’m going through my routine
do not be fooled by what I’m saying.
Please listen carefully and try to hear what I’m not saying,
what I’d like to be able to say,
what for survival I need to say,
but what I can’t say.

I don’t like hiding.
I don’t like playing superficial phony games.
I want to stop playing them.
I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me
but you’ve got to help me.
You’ve got to hold out your hand
even when that’s the last thing I seem to want.
Only you can wipe away from my eyes
the blank stare of the breathing dead.
Only you can call me into aliveness.
Each time you’re kind, and gentle, and encouraging,
each time you try to understand because you really care,
my heart begins to grow wings–
very small wings,
very feeble wings,
but wings!

With your power to touch me into feeling
you can breathe life into me.
I want you to know that.
I want you to know how important you are to me,
how you can be a creator–an honest-to-God creator–
of the person that is me
if you choose to.
You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble,
you alone can remove my mask,
you alone can release me from my shadow-world of panic,
from my lonely prison,
if you choose to.
Please choose to.

Do not pass me by.
It will not be easy for you.
A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.
The nearer you approach to me
the blinder I may strike back.
It’s irrational, but despite what the books say about man
often I am irrational.
I fight against the very thing I cry out for.
But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls
and in this lies my hope.
Please try to beat down those walls
with firm hands but with gentle hands
for a child is very sensitive.

Who am I, you may wonder?
I am someone you know very well.
For I am every man you meet
and I am every woman you meet.

Charles C. Finn
September 1966

If you feel this way, even if you never contact me, understand, that when nobody else does, I hear what you’re not saying, and I see YOU, not your mask. I try not to pry, but oftentimes I can’t help what I see without looking.

For everyone else? Please, do everyone a favor, never place anyone on a pedestal. We are merely human, no matter how pretty and golden we are, we are not made of marble, we cannot sit still for an eternity, and we will fall.
The higher the pedestal, the harder the fall.
Remember that the one hurting, may atypically be you, but genuinely wounded will be the one you chose to deify.

I chose Spencer’s “It Wouldn’t Be So Bad”, poem for the inspiration for this post today,for several reasons.
You can see it in it’s entirety here: It Wouldn’t Be So Bad
A huge part of it, is that it touched someone very close to me, and I absolutely love that I was able to introduce her to Spencer.
Jode Platz ia a musician herself, and she loves music to the point of distraction, so she really relates to this piece in a personal way.
I think another part of it, is that I adore music myself, there have been times, when I wasn’t hiding in a book, I was hiding in music. (Strictly on a listening level, unless you’re referring to my ability to dance around the house, singing into my hairbrush, or singing loudly along with the radio).
So, I too, can relate on a smaller scale. I tend to also apply the mentality to my passions, if I were to slip away while writing or reading, perhaps that would be a smooth transition for me, because it is such a big part of who I am.
If you’d like to know more about Spencer, please visit here: Spencer Bell Memorial, and/or, if you’d like to make a donation to the Adrenal Cancer Research fund, please go here: DONATE! Every contribution is deeply appreciated.

[[image courtesy of google.com/images]]

I was reading quotes today, admittedly one of my favorite things to do, because I’m a cool dork like that, and I happened upon a quote that my best friend, and I thought would fit Spencer Bell perfectly:

In art as in love, instinct is enough.~Anatole France

He had an artists instinct,and by some token, you also have to be an attentive lover of sorts, to your works of art for them to become masterpieces. To breathe life into anything, there has to be time, affection, and heart.
Each piece of art, is a product of something that has been etched on one’s soul. You have but to read Spencer’s words to know that to be true of him as well.
If you’d like to experience his works for yourself, then please visit his Legacy site here: The Music Lives On and just as importantly, if you’d like to make a contribution for research of Adrenal Cancer, please go here: DONATE. Every little bit helps, and is sincerely appreciated.

[[Art courtesy of ]]

I’ve been writing about Spencer Bell daily, since I “met” him, and today is no exception.
Spencer has really caused a renewal of the spark that I had for writing.
He has been an amazing inspiration, and I hope that if he were with us, it would bring a smile to his face to know that.
So, in keeping with that spirit, I’ll post a piece of my prose, and dedicate it to Spencer;an incredible writer, and a very talented young man.

Soul Starvation

Dismal facts spun at me, quickly, yet I catch them all.
Filtering through the nonsense, I hear what they don’t want me to.
My entire being not created to have sunshine pumped through my veins.
Adapatable, they say, but merely physically I think, chuckling darkly.
A black hole,mind numbing void born from shallow, narrowmindedness, eating anything extraordinary in it’s path.
Leaving behind nothing of any consequence, or any sustenance. Fighting it may seem impossible, useless, some may say.
Why go against the grain?
To give us all a reason to breathe, to exist. So it isn’t all pointless.
If it must feed on something, bring to it sacrifices of bigotry, hate, indifference.
Don’t let it eat your passion, joy, bliss,or devour your creativity, your vigor your zest.
Hold fast to them, never relenquishing the reins.
Never back down from man, nor beast, nor endless nothingness. Change will only come, if we push on through the night, as one, to see the rising of the sun.
My eyes cannot wait for that day, and victory then, will have never tasted so sweet; Possibly for the sacrifices made, possibly because while waiting on the world to change we didn’t merely stand, but we moved it by sheer will, shoulder to shoulder. Refusing to back down.

By: Willow Raine

If you’d like to read about Spencer, see his work, see videos, listen to his music, please go here:The Music Lives On And just as importantly, if you’d like to make a donation to help fund the research about the disease that took him from this world, please visit here: DONATE Every contribution is sincerely appreciated.

Someone that I absolutely adore, knows how much I love Spencer Bell, and so she surprised me with something very touching.
It brought tears to my eyes, and melted my heart. Now, it resides on my desktop as my background, and my phone as well. (Replacing Jackson Rathbone, no less *laugh*)
You can see it below:

If you would like to have one just like it, either email me here, or go to her blog site JODIE PLATZ and comment her, letting her know.

Thank you again JoJo, it is amazing, and I love it.

If you’d like to know more about Spencer Bell, see his work, then please go here: THE MUSIC LIVES ON, and if you’d like to donate to the research of Adrenal Cancer, then please, go here: DONATE. Every contribution is appreciated, together, we CAN make a difference.

[[Image/Background provided, and created by: Jodie Platz]]

I decided, that today, I am going to let SPENCER’S words speak for themselves:

My name?
Not that it’s of any formidable consequence.
It is Spencer,
son of William.
Scholar of many crafts
and traveler of many lands.
A vagabond of sorts
with an affinity for poetry and lager
and many things carnal.
A Dreamer
and gazer of stars.
Both fire and earth by the zodiac

and dispositionally aerial.
A connoisseur of kisses
and chemicals
and philosophy.
though I claim none as my own.
A finger in most every pie
within my reach
and a hand in many
unknowing puppets.
A discusser of Shakespeare,
though a modest reader.
A Heretic by many rights
and a demon in the eyes of the law.

Content, but somehow so empty.
Missing so much
yet satisfied to watch the world
turn below my feet.
A critic of most everything.
Harsh in my judgments,
but gentle in my casting of them.

Aimlessly lost between thestatic and the history books.
Dabbling in the first
but always looking for a way to sneak into the latter.

Quite complicated for such a simple fellow,
or perhaps just very simply complex.
I walk with the step of a man who knows his mind,
but write with the blindness of a deeply lost spirit.

My soul, I know, is old.
Perhaps amongst the oldest.
But my naïveté never seems to flag.
I question what I know,
and often times don’t know what I question.
I listen for answers, but quickly lose attention
in them if they aren’t particularly compelling.
I’m potentially a waste of humanity
as I’ve wasted much of my human potential.

My fear of death is minute, though it makes itself
abundantly apparent.
I know not what to expect after this life,
though I am positive that there is something.

My eyes, I’ve heard are deeper than most,
though I see this world as being terribly shallow.
I am simultaneously hasty and lazy.
My aspirations are little,
so as not to disappoint myself when I don’t meet them.
I’m honestly not sure where this life is going
and I just as honestly do not care.
So long as I can love
and be loved.
So long as I can inspire
and be inspired.
So long as the sun keeps sliding through the sky,
and the rain still falls on occasion,
I’m sure that whatever supremely awaits me
shall come.
And when finality brings itself to me,
I will not run and vainly avoid the inevitable.
I will cast my arms out and blindly
embrace my end
Just as I have always embraced whatever
Has come with the wind.

Spencer Bell – September 2003 journal entry

There isn’t anything I can add to this,or say about it, without taking away from it and that is the last thing I would ever want.
Please go check out his other art at THE MUSIC LIVES ON or donate to research in his honor: ADRENAL CANCER RESEARCH Every donation is sincerely appreciated. Together, we can make a difference.

[[The original work is the creation of, copyrighted, and owned by Spencer Bell, courtesy of spencerbellmemorial.ning.com]]
[[Image courtesy of google.com/images]]

I have read Spencer’s words so many times, yet each time I do, I either happen upon a piece that I identify with, or that I finally just “get” if that makes sense.
The one I read today, that I want to post about is WHEN I PAINT (Click on the name to read it).
He talks about how he really doesn’t over think his pieces, but they make sense to HIM. I feel that way a lot, but also for me, when I’m writing, I tend to not think much at all. I let my soul do the writing, and basically what happens is a kind of beautiful magic.
Because the piece conceives and births itself.
After reading Spencer’s words, I get the odd sensation, that he felt the same way at times.
If you’d like to read more of his prose, please do! And tell a friend!
Go to THE MUSIC LIVES ON!
If you want to donate to help fund the research of the disease that took him away so young, please visit: ADRENAL CANCER RESEARCH. Any and all donations are appreciated.

[[Image courtesy of spencerbellmemorial.ning.com]]