For some reason, seeing potentially useful things being discarded has always bothered me, not just practically or morally, but also emotionally. This started when I was a kid. I was more naive about the facts then, of course. Some things break beyond repair, and while their parts may be good for something, the opportunity to use those may not come up quickly, if ever. It may be why I like thrift stores, salvage yards (which barely exist anymore, and are hard to reach when they do), and, spousal disapproval considered, dumpster diving. If I had more time, I could potentially make better use of discarded things.
There's an animist basis to this as well. It was there strongly when I was young, although more as a gut feeling, and a reasoned emotional response. Oddly enough, when I got older, after having discarded almost every animist leaning, I learned some things about objects which kicked a lot of those dismissals over, and caused the old animism to come flooding back. There's more reason to it now, and it has to do with our psychic and emotional creations taking on an existence of their own. You have to go deep, very deep, below the surface of everyday life to experience it, especially if you are an adult. Kids just automatically respond to it, but it's more a matter of belief than experience. If you actually experience this as an adult, in a way that is (eventually) rationally explainable, you'll never forget it, and the world of objects will never seem quite the same again.
But back to the usefulness of discarded items. For people like Reed Ghazala and Tim Kaiser, repurposing these things into musical instruments is central to their activities, using old electronic parts and various kind of objects for cases. This is creative and admirable and exciting. But for me extremely difficult to enter into without more time! At least, the electronics part of what they do. I do this with percussion, and that barely takes any effort. You pick something up, hit it, and if it sounds good, all you have to do is drill it and hang it up. Sometimes it's a little more complicated than that, but not much. Reuse of things for acoustic instruments is easy and offers a pretty wide range of sounds, you just have to be open to it and ready to experiment.
Reed and Tim pretty things up- again, admirable, creative, beautiful work. My objects are not quite so lucky. If they do what I need them to, good enough! They look just like what they are, repurposed objects, whose original identities are immediately recognizable. Aside from my laziness and/or lack of time, there's something I like about this. Their repurposing is blatant, the object in front of you says "Look! Did you know I can also be used this way?" It brings that idea directly to the front.
Why should a doll or a book or a tool or anything else made to please or help people, why should these things go unloved and unused? I was infuriated a while back when I went to "the bins", the last stop for thrift items, where things are sold by the pound. After that, it's off to the garbage. One day I went in there and found a whole bunch of crutches. What were they doing there? I asked what would happen to them if they weren't sold, and was told they would go in the trash too. There were more of those than walkers or wheelchairs, but those were there too. Why should those things be thrown away regardless of circumstances? Shouldn't there be somewhere they could be donated to, a homeless shelter or something? I asked that too. I was told that wasn't their problem. if someone wanted them they should come around and ask.
(mellow disclaimer:)
Here's where I'll have to ask you to pardon me for a particularly odd release of personal information. I don't expect you to buy it. I don't require or ask that either.
There's that island of dolls in Mexico, run by an old man who many people think is crazy. I don't think he's crazy. I get it. Maybe that's crazy. I don't know and don't particularly care. Dolls, especially, have a life that most people can't see. Why? Because they were once loved, the center of some kid's universe. This sounds too much like the Velveteen Rabbit, but that story is true in ways that most people cannot possibly accept. I also get that. And I wouldn't ask anyone to change their views. Just cut your kids some slack. And see if you can keep them from being too cavalier about these things. A loved object reflects what it's given, that energy becomes the center of its awareness. Yes that's right, I said awareness, and no, you can't see it with your daily perceptions, but it's there. And once that awareness exists, when it is ignored, it suffers, much as an abandoned pet or child suffers when shoved to the side, (as) if no longer needed.
(less mellow disclaimer:)
Yes, I know this is entering into wackyland, animism and magical thinking and craziness and bullshit. I'm not selling anything. I don't have a course to buy in six easy payments, or a club to join, I don't need anyone else to believe the same thing in order to keep faith in my experiences. They don't work on faith, they are experiences. They are what they are, take them or leave them in whatever way you choose. This is only the tip of the web of oddness my experiences have taught me. I will talk about them from time to time. If you find yourself disturbed by an area where my head is at, or has been, hopefully you can overlook it enough to enjoy the rest of what I do. They need not overlap.
This said: where strange ideas are concerned, avoid accepting anything anyone tells you as fact, unless you also have an experience of it and need that information. Keep it in the back of your mind, as you would trivia. If you are interested in trying to understand what I've talked about here, the exercise is simple: respect. Practice it everywhere, towards everyone and everything you can. The practice can only help, whatever you believe.
Monday, December 10, 2018
Thursday, April 26, 2018
A HANDFUL OF ASHES extended notes
This post refers to the album at the following link:
https://gregsegal.bandcamp.com/album/a-handful-of-ashes
DISCLAIMER. The following notes talk about several aspects of the album: The concepts behind it which inspired it; the creation of the music from a technical standpoint; the details of symbolism behind music and lyrics; and the arc of the concept, from start to finish.
These kinds of notes can make people uncomfortable. While intended to be informative, they can be perceived as pretentious, as an example of the composer trying to seem more intelligent or important than he is, as proof the music can't stand on its own without a bunch of mumbo jumbo to bolster it, and so on. So please note: IF YOU DON'T LIKE DETAILED EXPLANATORY NOTES FOR MUSIC, STOP READING NOW! Skip this and just listen to the music. That's fine by me. You won't hurt my feelings, I promise. If at some point you change your mind, come back and read 'em. No big deal. I don't feel the music, or the experience of it, is any less valid without these notes.They're here if you want 'em. End disclaimer.
Well not quite. This particular album requires more than the usual referrals to symbolism, is chock full of concepts most people would cross the street to avoid. There. Much better.
ORIGIN: While watching the Bill Moyers/Joseph Campbell show "The Power Of Myth", I listened as Moyers asked Campbell what he thought of the outpouring of sympathy over the death of John Lennon, and asked if Campbell thought he was a hero. Campbell answered that Lennon was definitely a hero, and that he thought the Beatles really connected with the public. Moyers then says: "Sometimes it seems to me we ought to feel pity for the hero instead of admiration. So many of them have sacrificed their own needs for others.
CAMPBELL: They all have.
MOYERS: And very often what they have accomplished is shattered by the inability of the followers to see.
CAMPBELL: Yes, you come out of the forest with gold and it turns to ashes. That's a well known fairy-tale motif."
This hit home with me, especially that last part- coming out of the forest, bringing back the gold, only to find that it's turned to ashes. On a personal level, it immediately reminded me of seemingly being led into music as my life's work by some higher intelligence, only to have nothing- or apparently nothing- occur.
I have covered the details of those events elsewhere. For the moment, we only need that basic premise, and I suppose for many, a suspension of disbelief. Let us treat it as real enough to influence my actions and leave it there, regardless of whatever the root cause ultimately was.
The album develops:
Returning to these events and their implications presented me with some problems. First, I did not want to make this an entirely personal story. The pattern it followed was true to a basic form of folkoric/metaphorical "hero's journey". This allowed me to keep the story personal, while enabling me to remove nearly all of the personal references. In this way, the emotions stayed real while the specifics all but disappeared. I felt this would make the album useful to the widest number of people, so that they could find themselves in it too. I would not have felt comfortable making the album strictly as a personal ego exercise, I would have shelved it.
The lyrics for the title track were written in 2006 during a period when I was in a greatly troubled state of mind. Say what you want, such states have been great for the arts! Not always great for the artists, however. The rather harsh line in the next-to-last verse comes from a recurring dream I had as a child, in which my family were religious monsters and I was some kind of royalty, who had somehow brought about the end of the world. I ran from all this through the streets, to find myself in an alley having a conversation with an old bum. He seemed to know me and verbally knocked me down to size, showing me or telling something horrible, which was always blocked out when I woke up right after, crying and terrified. His words right before were something along the lines of "You are nothing and no one". It was one of my earliest dreams and I had it frequently up to the age of 4. It happened one more time at age 9, and not again.
Not too long after the lyrics, I came up with the chords and melody for them. The chord changes were written above the appropriate syllables on a printed lyric sheet.I recorded a scratch version of just these parts as a means of remembering how I meant for it to go (since I don't read or write music notation).
And there it sat for a good few years, while first one and then another child was born, and raised to an age where I felt I could safely start concentrating some on my work again without detracting too much from their lives.
The lyrics for the rest of the album were written over that 8-year period. The music, in most cases, came after, primarily during recording. The album was actually recorded in sequence- A Handful Of Ashes, The Hook And The Point, Simple Answers, Laugh Gently, and finally At the End Of The Day.
"A Handful Of Ashes":
This starts off with a piano run, primarily single notes, introducing a main theme. The single notes have significance that can be explained later.
Stomping and banging a jingling cane onto the ground: the image of a fool with a story, perhaps like someone at Hyde park standing on a soapbox and ranting, or a carnival huckster inviting you to watch something obviously fake, despite his claims to the contrary. These two particular sounds were important enough to me that I built both the jingling cane (pictured with me on the cover), and a small wooden platform to stomp on, to get a resonant and authentic sound. Each took at least a day to make. But they were important to me, so I took the time and made them. They were used for maybe 30 seconds, tops.
The fool begins his story: "I have been on a journey, I have come back to tell"....and the basic idea is stated. A journey that leads to a treasure of nothing.
Production note:
The vocals, for the vast majority of the album, are dry- no reverb or effects of any kind. This was on purpose. I wanted it to be like you were sitting in the room with me, close enough to be sort of uncomfortable with the intimacy and immediacy and reality of it. I got this idea at a poetry reading David McIntire did back at BeBop Records in the '80s. He did it without a mic (not necessary for a solo poet in such a small venue), but also got right up close to you as he talked. I realized, despite him being a good friend, that the intimacy of the performance made me squirm a bit. Right away I started asking myself why, because it didn't really make sense to me. What seemed to be the truth to me, then and now, is that intimacy has become uncomfortable. We need reverb or room ambience added back in or some such crap in order not to be creeped out by the close presence of another human being. We have learned to need distance, even with those close to us. Now, maybe all of this was in my head. Maybe no one else is disturbed by this. But I was, and that's why the vocals sound the way they do. And not just the vocals, but the drums, and many other instruments too. The more immediate and raw it sounded, the happier I was going to be. This came to be a feature of most of the work I've done since.
Sidebar: a trip down Big Myth lane
Why the grandiosity of the concept? You need ego to do this kind of work, at least to an extent. But when you get, for lack of a better way to put it, a calling, you expect big things. There are many interpretations of what "big" might mean. When you're young and hungry for fame and fortune, especially raised in a place and time where little else has any serious credibility as success, that's what it means. Or bigger. I was not surprised to find out David Koresh was a failed rock star, for example. When people speak of being transformed from the inside by such experiences, the impatient young person says, yeah that's nice, that's really cool sure, but we all know that's not really big. JFK is big. Hitler was big. The Beatles and Elvis are big. Jesus and Satan are big, and when they come back to duke it out, with Jesus and the Antichrist going at it, that'll be the show to end all shows. If we're not talking mythical, what are we talking about? If it's not big, it's bullshit, it's lip service that sounds pretty and doesn't bring much but some smiles and nods from people who think they know things. I want to be on top, known by everyone, talked about for generations, for thousands of years, I want the world to move for me, even if just long enough for people to say I did it, and to remember it.
Dangerous thinking, eh? That's how monsters are made. And saints, and prophets. Sometimes I'm not entirely sure there's a difference.
So coming back down from those heady delusional heights, to something that resembles rational thought, takes a lot of work. It takes the will to even do it at all. Religious ecstacy, like many drugs, is euphoric, and makes you want to stay right there. Come back, to what? Look, I was called! I'm special, I'm chosen! Eh....yes and no.
The sperm that gets through to the egg might be said to have been "chosen". Probably inaccurate, but we can say it. Even if accurate, what can we infer? Destiny? Sure, but how many kids are born each day? Do they all grow up to make huge changes in the world? Everyone makes ripples in the big web of life, the butterfly effect and all that. But we can once again pay lip service to the uniqueness and ability to change the world, if we pretty it up and talk about little things adding up to big things. When you want to be something big, that's not what we're talking about. Not if you're convinced you have a destiny, in capital letters.
The world, with you in the center of it, then takes on a certain massiveness, an epic quality. All about YOU.
Of course, the truth is going to be closer to what you would expect if you weren't out of your head: you're a regular person who's had an unusual experience (or several, or many); but your shit stinks like everybody else's, and you need to get back down to earth and get on with things.
Now then, why have I taken this detour down Big Myth lane? What has this got to do with music? That's a complex story, but I'll sum it up as succinctly as I can. Things like "big dreams", or "visions"- things that come into your head and change your life- communicate in metaphors. They're not literal, and can be seriously difficult to interpret. Mine certainly was. And prior to this, I'd already had a feeling of "specialness", owing to supposedly unusual circumstances surrounding my birth, and the level of my recovery from what was then considered a very dangerous birth defect. Examined carefully, all of that falls apart, and I just got lucky. Combine that with a few misunderstandings, and I was raised with both the specter of death over my shoulder, and the sense of myself as somehow miraculous. Neither were true, but I didn't know it.
However, I had no interest in becoming a musician, and so this "vision dream" had to be referring to something else, and in fact becoming a musician didn't even enter my mind. I spent a year or so trying to figure out what things meant, without finding much that felt definite; until I found the broken guitar, and had a sense that "this was it". I didn't see how that could be the case, at the time, but a series of what seemed to be unusual events moved things forward; and I ended up moving away from my original goal of filmmaking, into the previously unthinkable territory of music-making.
After a few more years of trying to put my head back together, and nearly succeeding, I still believed that such a strong signal, strong enough to change the course of my life, had to mean success. Why else would I have had it?
To me, success, as mentioned previously, could only be considered as such if you got big, or at very least were able to make a decent living at it. As time went on, and efforts yielding nothing of the kind, I found myself becoming very frustrated, angry at the universe, wondering what the hell happened. And here we are, back at the song.
AND NOW BACK TO THE SONG
The main body of the song starts; it is dusk.
"Now I'm older and cautious": looking back on the events that led to this point; the journey and what was learned, and the rude awakening that you've got ashes instead of gold for your trouble.
There are lots of vocals, both for the purpose of harmony, and standing in for all of the people you had to be to get to this point, all of them tired, disillusioned, and pissed off.
The music that follows represents those feelings and ideas, and again, everything it took to get there, including things bigger than one person. There's still a kind of epic and cosmic cloud hanging over everything.
It's now about 10 p.m.
A rush of frightening things, suddenly ending in the start of the jazz/fusion section: depression gives way to anxiety, fears of circling the drain, of being used by larger than human forces for everyone's betterment but your own, fear of succumbing to delusion and sliding into insanity, of being lost without a trace to show you were even here, meanwhile your head doesn't really function well enough for most everyday things because you're lost in some kind of mental vortex... (eat that, Bulwer-Lytton)....
Anxiety crashes back to earth, as it always does, giving way to exhaustion, and quiet contemplation of the very same things, but from a calmer perspective. Not a happier perspective; more like a resigned one.
This proves to be true as the lyrics come back in: there's an acceptance of things as they are, or at least as they seem to be, which is at a very low point. Ego has been vanquished because the proof is there:
"you are nothing and no one, you've been outside for years/there is no point pretending you mean anything here"
And royalty falls, no different than the low man, and as Spike Milligan said, "All men are cremated equal."
"The Hook And The Point"
It is midnight.
A procession of monstrosities loudly passes. Bizarre creatures: some are only parts, moving on their own, others are stitched together in sometimes crude, sometimes elaborate ways. Hybrid creatures, pieces where symmetry was forced, or imagined, and then forced.
These are the cobbled-together pieces of beliefs, philosophies, and ideas used to make the intrusion of the unknown palatable. They're held together with hope, necessity, ego, blind faith, and rationalized bullshit. Without them, "the hero" wouldn't have even made it this far. But having arrived here, they can be seen a bit more clearly, and they're not what they at first might have seemed.
"Why lead me here and not deliver?" If this was real in any sense, was it a trick? Have I been discarded? Have I been following nothing but delusion all this time? I know what I experienced, but am I right to continue thinking there was anything to it at all? Maybe it was about something else, and this was just a way to get me to learn some things along the way- "Maybe that was the hook, but it wasn't the point."
Trying to desperately to hang on to something, some reason to believe this wasn't all for nothing. "Things may still mean something after all." And then there is a crash, as things fall apart. A bell tolls, as though something has died.
"Simple Answers"
It is morning, around 8 a.m.
We are in the garage of an old mechanic. We have had to be towed, when the vehicle of our beliefs finally fell to pieces. We are in a kind of limbo, where we can't go back the way we came, have no idea where we're going, and don't know what to do about it. When asked if "the fix" for this will take long, the mechanic replies: "Well, it's hard to say. You'll have to have a period of contemplation...that can take overnight to.....40 years."
"WHAT?"
"Well", says the old man, barely chuckling, "you can always walk." Translation: there's no easy way out of here.
And here we come to the paradox of "answers". The "simple answers" of minimalist philosphies are both true and false. Crowley once pointed out that any philosophy can be argued to the point where it refutes itself. Having seen this myself, I agree. This does not mean there is no truth available from them; but it does imply a relativity, a need for context, an open mind, a rejection of the kind of rigidity that forces black and white, yes-and-no answers on things which are in a perpetual state of flux and ambiguity. Taoism works well here, because it refers to things always in process.
How the music ties in to all this:
First we have the customer and the mechanic, and right away we know the album has changed. The dialogue seems to have nothing to do with what preceded it, and has a comedic tinge. And then the music comes in and seems like a joke as well, because instead of complexity, we have something that sounds more like a library of congress folk music track. But the lyrics are still about the same kind of things, only...simply presented, folksy. It doesn't jibe with what came before it, it's jarring, it's odd.
Why did I do this?
When your impossible constructs fall apart, built painstakingly from many pieces gathered over your lifetime, you're stuck. You don't know where you're going, but you can't start over completely, and you can't go back the way you came. You're left surrounded by those who don't know and don't want to know. That was the case before, but the arcane nature of it made it all seem special. It's not that special any more. You still have what you know, but you're stuck in Hooterville with Mr. Haney and Eb. Or are you?
You try to think it through in this setting, but it seems to mean everything and nothing all at once, it balances out to zero.
And now the music goes to the strange and the confused. Time to think through this and take stock and make sense enough to act.
How the hell do I get out of here? I asks meself.
Try simple answers, I sez.
Simple? I don't know nothin' 'bout simple. I'm a complex sensitive artist type.
Maybe, I sez. But you didn't know nothin' about that other stuff before you started either. You're stuck here and you've got to try something or stay here, which to you is nowhere. I know us, and we can't do it. So what are we gonna do?
OK, I sez, though I don't know nothin' about 'em it's time to learn. I can't do complexity no more, mine's broken and I can't ride it anymore anyway. I could just walk away from all this, but who am I kidding, no I can't. Simple answers it is.
And the song portion resumes, this time embellished. Also, one line is changed, or augmented, from the first time through. It had said, "Watch as all points cancel all other points", which is nihilism talking- nothing means anything. But the second time around, the voice on the other side of the speakers says "Watch as each point cancels its opposite point"- not ready to give up nihilism yet, and this point isn't much better- but it's a start.
"Laugh Gently"
Late afternoon through closing: bar hours.
This is the punchline of the album. If there is one bit of practical advice to be taken away, it's here. You may think all this is weird and funny. You may have wandered down some bizarre paths in your life. You may have gone on some long journey to find yourself, and meaning, and come back only to find that you were there all along, what you were looking for was always with you, and the treasure was in the journey. It seems to make the entire trip silly. Maybe you should have known better. Shrug your shoulders, laugh, and move on. And maybe, you really did learn something. Meanwhile, if you're outside of this and want to judge, be careful...laugh gently. What you need to know may not be as weird as my journey, but you may need it just as badly, maybe more. The truth you need could be right under your nose too, and you may have been unable to see it for a long time. Maybe you still don't. This could easily happen to you.
And the music?
I wanted it to be anti-prog, and something like a Rolling Stones song came to mind. There's a sort of partying feeling about it. Simple, straightforward, pub humor. Small Faces came to mind too. So that's what I did. This continues to take the album in the direction of simple and basic but this time with more vitality and power, self humor and acceptance. I sometimes with I had made it longer, but the brevity of it continues the point, so I accept it.
"At The End Of The Day"
This is an epilogue. It's very late at night, everyone but you is asleep.
So, we've had the punchline. But after the return party, when we're through laughing at and justifying ourselves, what's left? Where do we go?
When you've finished with putting trophies and ends at top of your needs pyramid, you see something else: you need the basics, and the rest will fall into place, or at least be easier to get. For some people, this means having kids and living a "normal" life (which like all stereotypes, exists as a statistical abstraction rather than anything concrete). I tell you, honestly, that I came out of the whole thing with no answers to questions outside of this, and I'll I've got are ways to keep going. And with the bringing of new people into the world...the cycle continues. Every life represents some kind of quest. Maybe you just need to find a way to survive and get through. Maybe you need something more. Maybe you'll actually find something that works for you; many people find religion. That didn't work for me, but it works for many. Meanwhile, life goes on.
Musically, it's as simple as its concept. Piano and vocal. The vocal was recorded as a note to keep track of the melody; I had a chest cold and partial laryngitis at the time. But the tired quality of it appealed to me and matched the lyric, I thought, so I kept it. As for the piano, it stays completely simple until the lyric ends. Then it multiplies and branches out like a geneology, until the numbers overwhelm the sense you can make of it. It becomes too much to take in clearly. And then that fades down to a very simple exit, which winds down slowly- the personal view- and ends on one note. That note is important and there for a reason. It's the individual point of view. Even if everyone takes their own journey, that's just it- we all take our journeys, our experiences, our point of view, alone. And when we leave, we take it all with us. We make our single note, and fade. This may sound very sad, but it's only meant to be bittersweet, because that's what I think it is. We're here, we go "ding!", and we're gone. That's just how it is. But there's beauty to it, and in the end, there's a feeling that it's OK.
This post refers to the album at the following link:
https://gregsegal.bandcamp.com/album/a-handful-of-ashes
DISCLAIMER. The following notes talk about several aspects of the album: The concepts behind it which inspired it; the creation of the music from a technical standpoint; the details of symbolism behind music and lyrics; and the arc of the concept, from start to finish.
These kinds of notes can make people uncomfortable. While intended to be informative, they can be perceived as pretentious, as an example of the composer trying to seem more intelligent or important than he is, as proof the music can't stand on its own without a bunch of mumbo jumbo to bolster it, and so on. So please note: IF YOU DON'T LIKE DETAILED EXPLANATORY NOTES FOR MUSIC, STOP READING NOW! Skip this and just listen to the music. That's fine by me. You won't hurt my feelings, I promise. If at some point you change your mind, come back and read 'em. No big deal. I don't feel the music, or the experience of it, is any less valid without these notes.They're here if you want 'em. End disclaimer.
Well not quite. This particular album requires more than the usual referrals to symbolism, is chock full of concepts most people would cross the street to avoid. There. Much better.
ORIGIN: While watching the Bill Moyers/Joseph Campbell show "The Power Of Myth", I listened as Moyers asked Campbell what he thought of the outpouring of sympathy over the death of John Lennon, and asked if Campbell thought he was a hero. Campbell answered that Lennon was definitely a hero, and that he thought the Beatles really connected with the public. Moyers then says: "Sometimes it seems to me we ought to feel pity for the hero instead of admiration. So many of them have sacrificed their own needs for others.
CAMPBELL: They all have.
MOYERS: And very often what they have accomplished is shattered by the inability of the followers to see.
CAMPBELL: Yes, you come out of the forest with gold and it turns to ashes. That's a well known fairy-tale motif."
This hit home with me, especially that last part- coming out of the forest, bringing back the gold, only to find that it's turned to ashes. On a personal level, it immediately reminded me of seemingly being led into music as my life's work by some higher intelligence, only to have nothing- or apparently nothing- occur.
I have covered the details of those events elsewhere. For the moment, we only need that basic premise, and I suppose for many, a suspension of disbelief. Let us treat it as real enough to influence my actions and leave it there, regardless of whatever the root cause ultimately was.
The album develops:
Returning to these events and their implications presented me with some problems. First, I did not want to make this an entirely personal story. The pattern it followed was true to a basic form of folkoric/metaphorical "hero's journey". This allowed me to keep the story personal, while enabling me to remove nearly all of the personal references. In this way, the emotions stayed real while the specifics all but disappeared. I felt this would make the album useful to the widest number of people, so that they could find themselves in it too. I would not have felt comfortable making the album strictly as a personal ego exercise, I would have shelved it.
The lyrics for the title track were written in 2006 during a period when I was in a greatly troubled state of mind. Say what you want, such states have been great for the arts! Not always great for the artists, however. The rather harsh line in the next-to-last verse comes from a recurring dream I had as a child, in which my family were religious monsters and I was some kind of royalty, who had somehow brought about the end of the world. I ran from all this through the streets, to find myself in an alley having a conversation with an old bum. He seemed to know me and verbally knocked me down to size, showing me or telling something horrible, which was always blocked out when I woke up right after, crying and terrified. His words right before were something along the lines of "You are nothing and no one". It was one of my earliest dreams and I had it frequently up to the age of 4. It happened one more time at age 9, and not again.
Not too long after the lyrics, I came up with the chords and melody for them. The chord changes were written above the appropriate syllables on a printed lyric sheet.I recorded a scratch version of just these parts as a means of remembering how I meant for it to go (since I don't read or write music notation).
And there it sat for a good few years, while first one and then another child was born, and raised to an age where I felt I could safely start concentrating some on my work again without detracting too much from their lives.
The lyrics for the rest of the album were written over that 8-year period. The music, in most cases, came after, primarily during recording. The album was actually recorded in sequence- A Handful Of Ashes, The Hook And The Point, Simple Answers, Laugh Gently, and finally At the End Of The Day.
"A Handful Of Ashes":
This starts off with a piano run, primarily single notes, introducing a main theme. The single notes have significance that can be explained later.
Stomping and banging a jingling cane onto the ground: the image of a fool with a story, perhaps like someone at Hyde park standing on a soapbox and ranting, or a carnival huckster inviting you to watch something obviously fake, despite his claims to the contrary. These two particular sounds were important enough to me that I built both the jingling cane (pictured with me on the cover), and a small wooden platform to stomp on, to get a resonant and authentic sound. Each took at least a day to make. But they were important to me, so I took the time and made them. They were used for maybe 30 seconds, tops.
The fool begins his story: "I have been on a journey, I have come back to tell"....and the basic idea is stated. A journey that leads to a treasure of nothing.
Production note:
The vocals, for the vast majority of the album, are dry- no reverb or effects of any kind. This was on purpose. I wanted it to be like you were sitting in the room with me, close enough to be sort of uncomfortable with the intimacy and immediacy and reality of it. I got this idea at a poetry reading David McIntire did back at BeBop Records in the '80s. He did it without a mic (not necessary for a solo poet in such a small venue), but also got right up close to you as he talked. I realized, despite him being a good friend, that the intimacy of the performance made me squirm a bit. Right away I started asking myself why, because it didn't really make sense to me. What seemed to be the truth to me, then and now, is that intimacy has become uncomfortable. We need reverb or room ambience added back in or some such crap in order not to be creeped out by the close presence of another human being. We have learned to need distance, even with those close to us. Now, maybe all of this was in my head. Maybe no one else is disturbed by this. But I was, and that's why the vocals sound the way they do. And not just the vocals, but the drums, and many other instruments too. The more immediate and raw it sounded, the happier I was going to be. This came to be a feature of most of the work I've done since.
Sidebar: a trip down Big Myth lane
Why the grandiosity of the concept? You need ego to do this kind of work, at least to an extent. But when you get, for lack of a better way to put it, a calling, you expect big things. There are many interpretations of what "big" might mean. When you're young and hungry for fame and fortune, especially raised in a place and time where little else has any serious credibility as success, that's what it means. Or bigger. I was not surprised to find out David Koresh was a failed rock star, for example. When people speak of being transformed from the inside by such experiences, the impatient young person says, yeah that's nice, that's really cool sure, but we all know that's not really big. JFK is big. Hitler was big. The Beatles and Elvis are big. Jesus and Satan are big, and when they come back to duke it out, with Jesus and the Antichrist going at it, that'll be the show to end all shows. If we're not talking mythical, what are we talking about? If it's not big, it's bullshit, it's lip service that sounds pretty and doesn't bring much but some smiles and nods from people who think they know things. I want to be on top, known by everyone, talked about for generations, for thousands of years, I want the world to move for me, even if just long enough for people to say I did it, and to remember it.
Dangerous thinking, eh? That's how monsters are made. And saints, and prophets. Sometimes I'm not entirely sure there's a difference.
So coming back down from those heady delusional heights, to something that resembles rational thought, takes a lot of work. It takes the will to even do it at all. Religious ecstacy, like many drugs, is euphoric, and makes you want to stay right there. Come back, to what? Look, I was called! I'm special, I'm chosen! Eh....yes and no.
The sperm that gets through to the egg might be said to have been "chosen". Probably inaccurate, but we can say it. Even if accurate, what can we infer? Destiny? Sure, but how many kids are born each day? Do they all grow up to make huge changes in the world? Everyone makes ripples in the big web of life, the butterfly effect and all that. But we can once again pay lip service to the uniqueness and ability to change the world, if we pretty it up and talk about little things adding up to big things. When you want to be something big, that's not what we're talking about. Not if you're convinced you have a destiny, in capital letters.
The world, with you in the center of it, then takes on a certain massiveness, an epic quality. All about YOU.
Of course, the truth is going to be closer to what you would expect if you weren't out of your head: you're a regular person who's had an unusual experience (or several, or many); but your shit stinks like everybody else's, and you need to get back down to earth and get on with things.
Now then, why have I taken this detour down Big Myth lane? What has this got to do with music? That's a complex story, but I'll sum it up as succinctly as I can. Things like "big dreams", or "visions"- things that come into your head and change your life- communicate in metaphors. They're not literal, and can be seriously difficult to interpret. Mine certainly was. And prior to this, I'd already had a feeling of "specialness", owing to supposedly unusual circumstances surrounding my birth, and the level of my recovery from what was then considered a very dangerous birth defect. Examined carefully, all of that falls apart, and I just got lucky. Combine that with a few misunderstandings, and I was raised with both the specter of death over my shoulder, and the sense of myself as somehow miraculous. Neither were true, but I didn't know it.
However, I had no interest in becoming a musician, and so this "vision dream" had to be referring to something else, and in fact becoming a musician didn't even enter my mind. I spent a year or so trying to figure out what things meant, without finding much that felt definite; until I found the broken guitar, and had a sense that "this was it". I didn't see how that could be the case, at the time, but a series of what seemed to be unusual events moved things forward; and I ended up moving away from my original goal of filmmaking, into the previously unthinkable territory of music-making.
After a few more years of trying to put my head back together, and nearly succeeding, I still believed that such a strong signal, strong enough to change the course of my life, had to mean success. Why else would I have had it?
To me, success, as mentioned previously, could only be considered as such if you got big, or at very least were able to make a decent living at it. As time went on, and efforts yielding nothing of the kind, I found myself becoming very frustrated, angry at the universe, wondering what the hell happened. And here we are, back at the song.
AND NOW BACK TO THE SONG
The main body of the song starts; it is dusk.
"Now I'm older and cautious": looking back on the events that led to this point; the journey and what was learned, and the rude awakening that you've got ashes instead of gold for your trouble.
There are lots of vocals, both for the purpose of harmony, and standing in for all of the people you had to be to get to this point, all of them tired, disillusioned, and pissed off.
The music that follows represents those feelings and ideas, and again, everything it took to get there, including things bigger than one person. There's still a kind of epic and cosmic cloud hanging over everything.
It's now about 10 p.m.
A rush of frightening things, suddenly ending in the start of the jazz/fusion section: depression gives way to anxiety, fears of circling the drain, of being used by larger than human forces for everyone's betterment but your own, fear of succumbing to delusion and sliding into insanity, of being lost without a trace to show you were even here, meanwhile your head doesn't really function well enough for most everyday things because you're lost in some kind of mental vortex... (eat that, Bulwer-Lytton)....
Anxiety crashes back to earth, as it always does, giving way to exhaustion, and quiet contemplation of the very same things, but from a calmer perspective. Not a happier perspective; more like a resigned one.
This proves to be true as the lyrics come back in: there's an acceptance of things as they are, or at least as they seem to be, which is at a very low point. Ego has been vanquished because the proof is there:
"you are nothing and no one, you've been outside for years/there is no point pretending you mean anything here"
And royalty falls, no different than the low man, and as Spike Milligan said, "All men are cremated equal."
"The Hook And The Point"
It is midnight.
A procession of monstrosities loudly passes. Bizarre creatures: some are only parts, moving on their own, others are stitched together in sometimes crude, sometimes elaborate ways. Hybrid creatures, pieces where symmetry was forced, or imagined, and then forced.
These are the cobbled-together pieces of beliefs, philosophies, and ideas used to make the intrusion of the unknown palatable. They're held together with hope, necessity, ego, blind faith, and rationalized bullshit. Without them, "the hero" wouldn't have even made it this far. But having arrived here, they can be seen a bit more clearly, and they're not what they at first might have seemed.
"Why lead me here and not deliver?" If this was real in any sense, was it a trick? Have I been discarded? Have I been following nothing but delusion all this time? I know what I experienced, but am I right to continue thinking there was anything to it at all? Maybe it was about something else, and this was just a way to get me to learn some things along the way- "Maybe that was the hook, but it wasn't the point."
Trying to desperately to hang on to something, some reason to believe this wasn't all for nothing. "Things may still mean something after all." And then there is a crash, as things fall apart. A bell tolls, as though something has died.
"Simple Answers"
It is morning, around 8 a.m.
We are in the garage of an old mechanic. We have had to be towed, when the vehicle of our beliefs finally fell to pieces. We are in a kind of limbo, where we can't go back the way we came, have no idea where we're going, and don't know what to do about it. When asked if "the fix" for this will take long, the mechanic replies: "Well, it's hard to say. You'll have to have a period of contemplation...that can take overnight to.....40 years."
"WHAT?"
"Well", says the old man, barely chuckling, "you can always walk." Translation: there's no easy way out of here.
And here we come to the paradox of "answers". The "simple answers" of minimalist philosphies are both true and false. Crowley once pointed out that any philosophy can be argued to the point where it refutes itself. Having seen this myself, I agree. This does not mean there is no truth available from them; but it does imply a relativity, a need for context, an open mind, a rejection of the kind of rigidity that forces black and white, yes-and-no answers on things which are in a perpetual state of flux and ambiguity. Taoism works well here, because it refers to things always in process.
How the music ties in to all this:
First we have the customer and the mechanic, and right away we know the album has changed. The dialogue seems to have nothing to do with what preceded it, and has a comedic tinge. And then the music comes in and seems like a joke as well, because instead of complexity, we have something that sounds more like a library of congress folk music track. But the lyrics are still about the same kind of things, only...simply presented, folksy. It doesn't jibe with what came before it, it's jarring, it's odd.
Why did I do this?
When your impossible constructs fall apart, built painstakingly from many pieces gathered over your lifetime, you're stuck. You don't know where you're going, but you can't start over completely, and you can't go back the way you came. You're left surrounded by those who don't know and don't want to know. That was the case before, but the arcane nature of it made it all seem special. It's not that special any more. You still have what you know, but you're stuck in Hooterville with Mr. Haney and Eb. Or are you?
You try to think it through in this setting, but it seems to mean everything and nothing all at once, it balances out to zero.
And now the music goes to the strange and the confused. Time to think through this and take stock and make sense enough to act.
How the hell do I get out of here? I asks meself.
Try simple answers, I sez.
Simple? I don't know nothin' 'bout simple. I'm a complex sensitive artist type.
Maybe, I sez. But you didn't know nothin' about that other stuff before you started either. You're stuck here and you've got to try something or stay here, which to you is nowhere. I know us, and we can't do it. So what are we gonna do?
OK, I sez, though I don't know nothin' about 'em it's time to learn. I can't do complexity no more, mine's broken and I can't ride it anymore anyway. I could just walk away from all this, but who am I kidding, no I can't. Simple answers it is.
And the song portion resumes, this time embellished. Also, one line is changed, or augmented, from the first time through. It had said, "Watch as all points cancel all other points", which is nihilism talking- nothing means anything. But the second time around, the voice on the other side of the speakers says "Watch as each point cancels its opposite point"- not ready to give up nihilism yet, and this point isn't much better- but it's a start.
"Laugh Gently"
Late afternoon through closing: bar hours.
This is the punchline of the album. If there is one bit of practical advice to be taken away, it's here. You may think all this is weird and funny. You may have wandered down some bizarre paths in your life. You may have gone on some long journey to find yourself, and meaning, and come back only to find that you were there all along, what you were looking for was always with you, and the treasure was in the journey. It seems to make the entire trip silly. Maybe you should have known better. Shrug your shoulders, laugh, and move on. And maybe, you really did learn something. Meanwhile, if you're outside of this and want to judge, be careful...laugh gently. What you need to know may not be as weird as my journey, but you may need it just as badly, maybe more. The truth you need could be right under your nose too, and you may have been unable to see it for a long time. Maybe you still don't. This could easily happen to you.
And the music?
I wanted it to be anti-prog, and something like a Rolling Stones song came to mind. There's a sort of partying feeling about it. Simple, straightforward, pub humor. Small Faces came to mind too. So that's what I did. This continues to take the album in the direction of simple and basic but this time with more vitality and power, self humor and acceptance. I sometimes with I had made it longer, but the brevity of it continues the point, so I accept it.
"At The End Of The Day"
This is an epilogue. It's very late at night, everyone but you is asleep.
So, we've had the punchline. But after the return party, when we're through laughing at and justifying ourselves, what's left? Where do we go?
When you've finished with putting trophies and ends at top of your needs pyramid, you see something else: you need the basics, and the rest will fall into place, or at least be easier to get. For some people, this means having kids and living a "normal" life (which like all stereotypes, exists as a statistical abstraction rather than anything concrete). I tell you, honestly, that I came out of the whole thing with no answers to questions outside of this, and I'll I've got are ways to keep going. And with the bringing of new people into the world...the cycle continues. Every life represents some kind of quest. Maybe you just need to find a way to survive and get through. Maybe you need something more. Maybe you'll actually find something that works for you; many people find religion. That didn't work for me, but it works for many. Meanwhile, life goes on.
Musically, it's as simple as its concept. Piano and vocal. The vocal was recorded as a note to keep track of the melody; I had a chest cold and partial laryngitis at the time. But the tired quality of it appealed to me and matched the lyric, I thought, so I kept it. As for the piano, it stays completely simple until the lyric ends. Then it multiplies and branches out like a geneology, until the numbers overwhelm the sense you can make of it. It becomes too much to take in clearly. And then that fades down to a very simple exit, which winds down slowly- the personal view- and ends on one note. That note is important and there for a reason. It's the individual point of view. Even if everyone takes their own journey, that's just it- we all take our journeys, our experiences, our point of view, alone. And when we leave, we take it all with us. We make our single note, and fade. This may sound very sad, but it's only meant to be bittersweet, because that's what I think it is. We're here, we go "ding!", and we're gone. That's just how it is. But there's beauty to it, and in the end, there's a feeling that it's OK.
Saturday, January 20, 2018
Expecting to Fly
Dishwashing disc today was "Bufallo Springfield/Retrospective". When "Expecting to Fly" came on at the end, it took me back to a dream I had, shortly after moving to Portland.
The move had felt a bit like crash-landing; we'd made it but now we had to keep making it, and there wasn't much to work with. We were broke monetarily, and somewhat broken psychologically. All three of us had extensive baggage, if you know what I mean. And I believe at this point, my physical and psychological ailments had hit me very hard, and I was in a fight, and I was in trouble.
I try not to play "the blame game" with other people. "If they'd only done (x,y,z), they wouldn't be in this position." It's hard not to sometimes. But the person I've usually hit hardest with this is myself.
I have spina bifida. It's a birth defect, you're born with a hole in your spine. Many people with it are paralyzed from the lesion down, some are brain damaged, the list of concurrent ailments is considerable and unpleasant. I got lucky, and was not hit with many of those, and for the most part, it wasn't even visible. This is good, but there are drawbacks. People can expect more of you than you may be capable of. If you're me, you try anyway, and do everything possible not to show any difference.
If someone tells you that you are somehow "lesser than", even if it's through no fault of your own, you only hear that first part. You can be told over and over, as I thankfully was by my family, that I could do anything I put my mind to. But there's always a subtext traveling beneath the words, showing through eyes and posture and slight nuances of vocal tone: "believe that because we love you, we think you are great, but something really is wrong, and we know it. You know it, but hopefully we can help you not to focus on it." You can't get away from that. Also, if your body malfunctions in a nasty way on a daily basis, you can't get away from that either. But you can try.
So I spent a lot of my life refusing to let a birth defect define me. To call it an uphill battle doesn't cover it. It's a case of compartmentalizing, splitting off the part of you that deals with it every day from the part that won't dwell on it except in the most mechanical way. On the surface, you can make this work. Beneath, it's a war every day, with your psyche as the battleground.
When I was very young and still believed in God, I would wonder why I was made this way, was there a purpose, was it a sick joke, etc. One day- and a bad day it was- I started cursing to the ceiling, and suddenly realized that was exactly what I was doing. I was at the end of 6th grade, 11 years old.
After that, I went through a period of internal drifting, being sad, trying to figure out what I was going to do because my way of dealing with my disability was coming to an end, and I had no idea what would come next, or if I could deal with the suggestions that finally did come. There came then a period of stubbornly refusing to move on, a halfway return to a sort of arrogance I'd had a year or two earlier when I had succesfully been cruising on the belief that I was some sort of superior kid. It didn't last the year, and when it finally came crashing down and I was left scraping bottom, I had to fight my way out. That took a couple of years, and the method I hit on was a kind of self determination. It was a decidly psychotic, mutant self-determination for a number of years after that. I was about 16 before I fully realized my progress was up to me, and nothing beyond that. And I still wonder.
But: enter the the late '70s, early '80s, and all the self-help everywhere stressed: you are the captain of your ship, it's up to YOU! I'd already been on that road for a long time, although my head seemed much clearer by this point. But things kept going wrong. I couldn't handle college, I dropped out. Job after job made me feel like I was losing my sanity, depressed me, made me feel useless. But it was always MY fault that this happened, you see; the weakness was mine. Other people did these things every day. So what was wrong with ME? I'd heard that far too much where my disability was concerned, and I wasn't having it: nothing was wrong with me, or if there was, I wouldn't let there be something wrong with me, I had to fight it and win. If I lost, it was my fault and that was that. If I couldn't make it in the world, then I was too weak to be here. Every failure in my life, everything I'd ever wanted and didn't get, was down to my own weakness. I had talked myself into this and couldn't see any truth outside it.
But after moving to Portland and trying to get a new life going here, I hit a wall hard, and I couldn't get around it. And I was having to deal with finding another way to make it, and I felt very, very weak, and very "lesser than". And there was no way I could feel otherwise, at least not consciously. I'd been reduced to asking for help. That sat very badly with me.
I'd skirted the law when I was 15 to get my first job. (You're not legally allowed to work in the States until you're 16.) I'd paid, ultimately, for my own musical instruments, sometimes working dirty and even dangerous jobs so that was possible. I didn't ask for help. And yet here I was having to do it.
The circumstances that led me to this are probably best left as a story for another time. But I had reached the point where if I didn't fight for some kind of relief, I would make it permanent. One night I sat with a sharp piece of my father's bones, which had somehow survived his cremation. While divvying up his ashes in summer, I took it for myself. Here I was in winter, maybe six months later, and was about to slice my wrists with it. And then I thought, there's one more thing I hadn't tried- asking for help. It was not an appealing thought, but it kept me alive. Meanwhile, the bone was still mine, and if it failed, I could always come right back to this and finish the job.
Nonetheless, I couldn't escape feeling really lousy about myself- weak, without any qualifiers. I couldn't make it on my own and it was my fault. It had to be, there was no other reality.
And then, one night, to bring us back to the song that started these words off, I had a dream. It was a flying dream, or should have been. I'd had them before. Your body becomes airborne, you can rise into the air and fly where you like. I kept trying to take off, and every time doubt crept in, I fell. And after a somewhat visible start, I simply couldn't do it anymore. And I blamed myself, I was angry at myself. And then suddenly, this song was everywhere, coming in on one line in particular. I thought about my spina bifida, as though from the outside, and all my head troubles. And it came through: you've been trying all along, but you couldn't have helped these things. They are not your fault. Forgive yourself, you did nothing wrong. And the line in the song was, "I tried so hard to stand, as I stumbled and fell to the ground". And there wasn't a drop of falsehood I could discern in what was coming through to me. I couldn't argue with it, it felt undeniably true. It said, Look! Take a good look! These are things you did not choose. These are things you could never be at fault for. You cannot be to blame for this. Accept that. It's true.
This is something I'd never wanted to see, because of its negative side. I'd run from it because I'd never wanted to take the easy way out. "I couldn't help it". Because then, I'd be defined by it, "the poor little handicapped boy", and I couldn't stand that. Can't do it? I'l fucking show you what I can do. So I shoved that all into the background until I could no longer recognize any validity to it, I would not allow it. And yet it was still real and it was still true. And I suddenly knew it was all right to forgive myself for not having done better, I really did have some seriously heavy shit to deal with that others did not. Even typing this now, I find the idea hard to accomodate. But in that dream, it was undeniable and real. It comforted me as only a truth you cannot face consciously can do, when suddenly it comes and insists you see it. I felt a lot better in my sleep. I woke up with tears on my face and the feeling was still there. It wasn't all my fault. It was a relief I deserved to feel. It was OK.
If I told you not only what I dealt with on a personal level, the kinds of things I saw as a kid, many of them on a daily basis, I suppose I could make a better case. In my elementary school, I saw almost every birth defect you can imagine, disabilities from parental abuse, or from horrible accidents. Or kids simply not showing up one day and you didn't know if they were transferred, got better, or died. Then there was all the family stuff- so much, a parade of stories with harsh lessons. There were really things in my life that I had no choice but to experience, truths I learned early whether I was ready for them or not. There were genetic time bombs all set to go off in my psyche as soon as I hit a certain age and certain types of stressors triggered them- my father suffered with these terribly. Again though, these are other stories for other times. Now we're talking about a song and a dream. I can't hear the song without thinking of this, even though I know that's not what it was about. The experience was a bit of wonder, a valuable gift, maybe from one part of me to another, whatever the case, I don't know. But I'm glad it came when it did. I'm glad it came at all. Because I'm still here, and that might not have happened otherwise.
The move had felt a bit like crash-landing; we'd made it but now we had to keep making it, and there wasn't much to work with. We were broke monetarily, and somewhat broken psychologically. All three of us had extensive baggage, if you know what I mean. And I believe at this point, my physical and psychological ailments had hit me very hard, and I was in a fight, and I was in trouble.
I try not to play "the blame game" with other people. "If they'd only done (x,y,z), they wouldn't be in this position." It's hard not to sometimes. But the person I've usually hit hardest with this is myself.
I have spina bifida. It's a birth defect, you're born with a hole in your spine. Many people with it are paralyzed from the lesion down, some are brain damaged, the list of concurrent ailments is considerable and unpleasant. I got lucky, and was not hit with many of those, and for the most part, it wasn't even visible. This is good, but there are drawbacks. People can expect more of you than you may be capable of. If you're me, you try anyway, and do everything possible not to show any difference.
If someone tells you that you are somehow "lesser than", even if it's through no fault of your own, you only hear that first part. You can be told over and over, as I thankfully was by my family, that I could do anything I put my mind to. But there's always a subtext traveling beneath the words, showing through eyes and posture and slight nuances of vocal tone: "believe that because we love you, we think you are great, but something really is wrong, and we know it. You know it, but hopefully we can help you not to focus on it." You can't get away from that. Also, if your body malfunctions in a nasty way on a daily basis, you can't get away from that either. But you can try.
So I spent a lot of my life refusing to let a birth defect define me. To call it an uphill battle doesn't cover it. It's a case of compartmentalizing, splitting off the part of you that deals with it every day from the part that won't dwell on it except in the most mechanical way. On the surface, you can make this work. Beneath, it's a war every day, with your psyche as the battleground.
When I was very young and still believed in God, I would wonder why I was made this way, was there a purpose, was it a sick joke, etc. One day- and a bad day it was- I started cursing to the ceiling, and suddenly realized that was exactly what I was doing. I was at the end of 6th grade, 11 years old.
After that, I went through a period of internal drifting, being sad, trying to figure out what I was going to do because my way of dealing with my disability was coming to an end, and I had no idea what would come next, or if I could deal with the suggestions that finally did come. There came then a period of stubbornly refusing to move on, a halfway return to a sort of arrogance I'd had a year or two earlier when I had succesfully been cruising on the belief that I was some sort of superior kid. It didn't last the year, and when it finally came crashing down and I was left scraping bottom, I had to fight my way out. That took a couple of years, and the method I hit on was a kind of self determination. It was a decidly psychotic, mutant self-determination for a number of years after that. I was about 16 before I fully realized my progress was up to me, and nothing beyond that. And I still wonder.
But: enter the the late '70s, early '80s, and all the self-help everywhere stressed: you are the captain of your ship, it's up to YOU! I'd already been on that road for a long time, although my head seemed much clearer by this point. But things kept going wrong. I couldn't handle college, I dropped out. Job after job made me feel like I was losing my sanity, depressed me, made me feel useless. But it was always MY fault that this happened, you see; the weakness was mine. Other people did these things every day. So what was wrong with ME? I'd heard that far too much where my disability was concerned, and I wasn't having it: nothing was wrong with me, or if there was, I wouldn't let there be something wrong with me, I had to fight it and win. If I lost, it was my fault and that was that. If I couldn't make it in the world, then I was too weak to be here. Every failure in my life, everything I'd ever wanted and didn't get, was down to my own weakness. I had talked myself into this and couldn't see any truth outside it.
But after moving to Portland and trying to get a new life going here, I hit a wall hard, and I couldn't get around it. And I was having to deal with finding another way to make it, and I felt very, very weak, and very "lesser than". And there was no way I could feel otherwise, at least not consciously. I'd been reduced to asking for help. That sat very badly with me.
I'd skirted the law when I was 15 to get my first job. (You're not legally allowed to work in the States until you're 16.) I'd paid, ultimately, for my own musical instruments, sometimes working dirty and even dangerous jobs so that was possible. I didn't ask for help. And yet here I was having to do it.
The circumstances that led me to this are probably best left as a story for another time. But I had reached the point where if I didn't fight for some kind of relief, I would make it permanent. One night I sat with a sharp piece of my father's bones, which had somehow survived his cremation. While divvying up his ashes in summer, I took it for myself. Here I was in winter, maybe six months later, and was about to slice my wrists with it. And then I thought, there's one more thing I hadn't tried- asking for help. It was not an appealing thought, but it kept me alive. Meanwhile, the bone was still mine, and if it failed, I could always come right back to this and finish the job.
Nonetheless, I couldn't escape feeling really lousy about myself- weak, without any qualifiers. I couldn't make it on my own and it was my fault. It had to be, there was no other reality.
And then, one night, to bring us back to the song that started these words off, I had a dream. It was a flying dream, or should have been. I'd had them before. Your body becomes airborne, you can rise into the air and fly where you like. I kept trying to take off, and every time doubt crept in, I fell. And after a somewhat visible start, I simply couldn't do it anymore. And I blamed myself, I was angry at myself. And then suddenly, this song was everywhere, coming in on one line in particular. I thought about my spina bifida, as though from the outside, and all my head troubles. And it came through: you've been trying all along, but you couldn't have helped these things. They are not your fault. Forgive yourself, you did nothing wrong. And the line in the song was, "I tried so hard to stand, as I stumbled and fell to the ground". And there wasn't a drop of falsehood I could discern in what was coming through to me. I couldn't argue with it, it felt undeniably true. It said, Look! Take a good look! These are things you did not choose. These are things you could never be at fault for. You cannot be to blame for this. Accept that. It's true.
This is something I'd never wanted to see, because of its negative side. I'd run from it because I'd never wanted to take the easy way out. "I couldn't help it". Because then, I'd be defined by it, "the poor little handicapped boy", and I couldn't stand that. Can't do it? I'l fucking show you what I can do. So I shoved that all into the background until I could no longer recognize any validity to it, I would not allow it. And yet it was still real and it was still true. And I suddenly knew it was all right to forgive myself for not having done better, I really did have some seriously heavy shit to deal with that others did not. Even typing this now, I find the idea hard to accomodate. But in that dream, it was undeniable and real. It comforted me as only a truth you cannot face consciously can do, when suddenly it comes and insists you see it. I felt a lot better in my sleep. I woke up with tears on my face and the feeling was still there. It wasn't all my fault. It was a relief I deserved to feel. It was OK.
If I told you not only what I dealt with on a personal level, the kinds of things I saw as a kid, many of them on a daily basis, I suppose I could make a better case. In my elementary school, I saw almost every birth defect you can imagine, disabilities from parental abuse, or from horrible accidents. Or kids simply not showing up one day and you didn't know if they were transferred, got better, or died. Then there was all the family stuff- so much, a parade of stories with harsh lessons. There were really things in my life that I had no choice but to experience, truths I learned early whether I was ready for them or not. There were genetic time bombs all set to go off in my psyche as soon as I hit a certain age and certain types of stressors triggered them- my father suffered with these terribly. Again though, these are other stories for other times. Now we're talking about a song and a dream. I can't hear the song without thinking of this, even though I know that's not what it was about. The experience was a bit of wonder, a valuable gift, maybe from one part of me to another, whatever the case, I don't know. But I'm glad it came when it did. I'm glad it came at all. Because I'm still here, and that might not have happened otherwise.
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