| 7.7.07 Travelling
__________________ I am quite the seasoned traveller lately. I don't particularly feel very restless, but somehow I've manage never to be in the same place for very long just the same. I've noticed this over the last few years. I don't know why, but I just can't seem to settle down. So I move from city to city, year to year, and watch the seasons changing. Sometimes I draw small pictures of where I am. Or, sometimes, where I want to be. Or where I imagine I belong. Little smudged snapshots in a Moleskin journal. Sometimes I write little amusing
poems about nothing. Sometimes I play music. But I'm not always productive;
sometimes I do absolutely nothing at all. Some time last Christmas I got completely sloshed at Caleb's apartment and launched into a big, emotionally charged (and completely unprovoked) diatribe about how the doctors thought my depression was merely the result of the synapses in my brain firing incorrectly, which I apparently took a sort of theological and aesthetic offense to. The trouble was, I was so sozzled out of my mind that I kept mistakenly replacing the word "synapses" with the word "synopsis" in my rambling ranting, effectively changing the entire meaning of what I was saying. The confusing effect of this was that I appeared to be very angry about the notion that emotions were nothing more than "brief summaries or general surveys" in one's brain -- according to the dictionary's definition of "synopsis." "Oooh, you're not really sad," I mimicked, "It's just the SYNOPSIS in your brain telling you that you are! Oooh, you're not really in love. It's just the SYNOPSIS in your brain telling you that you are! Oooh, you're not really, um ... sad ..." Strong argument I was making, as you can clearly see. I'm a very biting satirist when I'm drunk. My steadfast friend Caleb looked at me in sad perplexity, tired and drained since I was essentially conducting a whole argument entirely with myself. Which I often do. He said: "Zach." "SYNOPSIS!" "Zach." "CHEMICAL IMBALANCES!" "ZACH." "Yes? Caleb. Yes? What is it?" "What . . . in the fuck . . . are you talking about?" I trailed off, temporarily dismayed, and had another bleary-eyed gulp of whiskey. I surveyed the spinning room and tried to balance myself in my chair while attempting to light what turned out (to my great amusement) to be an already-lit cigarette. "WHERE ARE OUR DOSTOEVSKYS?" I then yelled randomly, flailing my arms and mispronouncing the author's name. Caleb got up and went to bed. He said: "Zach, I love you. I love you deeply. But you exhaust me." I was sure sozzled alright. But I didn't have anything more to say. I had, I thought, made my point. So I looked through my phone for a few minutes, trying to remember people and wondering if I was friends with them. I poured another glass of whiskey. I started to cry. I took a piss and then I looked at myself in the mirror for a long time. * * * * * Anyway, I also spent a good
deal of time laying in my bed this last summer, and sometimes I would
stay there so long that the afternoon would turn into evening without
me. When I finally would get bored of just laying there and doing nothing,
I would put on my clothes and come upstairs, where I would drink cups
of coffee and smoke cigarettes on the front porch, resigned to being
awake. If just doing that sometimes seemed too depressingly unproductive,
I would borrow a car and drive over to the Starbucks on Youngfield.
Then I would sit down and drink cups of coffee and smoke cigarettes
there instead. I finally got so sick of myself that I packed a bag and drove out to Palm Springs for a few weeks to work ten-hour days in 120 degree heat, installing Custom German Windows. What are Custom German Windows? I'm not entirely sure. One night at a bar, after a long day of work, one of my bosses was talking some girl up about our job, and she said, "So, like, what exactly are Custom German Windows?" I was just drinking my beer, watching the conversation with some sad amusement. He said, "Um, you know. They're windows . . . custom windows . . . um . . . imported . . . from . . . Germany." She smiled blankly, all teeth and no eyes. I looked down and grinned into my beer. And I walked away and lit a cigarette, leaving him to fend for himself. I saw her leave the bar a few minutes later. Anyway, Meredith and I also started talking on the telephone a good deal around that time, which made me happy. How did I make it through exhausting weeks of hard manual labor in stifling heat, considering the atrophied condition of mind and body I was in at the time? I talked to Meredith on the telephone when I got home from work, and then I went to bed early and dreamed of her. I dreamed of her vividly almost every night during those few weeks in Palm Springs, and in my dreams she calmed me down. You the reader might think that that is fairly corny. But it is true. And it is sort of nice, too, don't you think? I do. Except for the nightmare that I had one night. * * * * * In the nightmare I had been pressured to murder and dispose of a mongoloid child. It was his family who had deemed this murder necessary, and who had convinced me to carry it out, for reasons that I cannot now remember entirely. Maybe it was money. I do know that the nightmare was set in some haunting time-period, somewhere between the superstitious dark ages and the clinical, sanitized present; and the mongoloid child, shushed up and hidden away in an addict since his unfortunate birth, was thought to be some sort of monster -- some damning indication of evil. Disposing of the child, I remember, would seal off some horrific family secret about his conception, forever entrusting it only to the family's depraved and wretched memories. I remember this, but forget how I was connected to the family, or why they had such apparent sway over me. Maybe I was just soulless. I was of these people, of this haunting time period: I knew it somehow, and if this other world unsettled me, sickened me, it was yet not strange to me. I try to remember. I try to describe this otherworld. Yes - yes, cars were invented, but the dark houses of the town were primitively lit with torches, the ghostly yellow light flickering sickeningly across the sallow, hollowed faces of these gaunt people. Shadows moved always in the rooms, and rats scurried endlessly to hide themselves in the dark recesses of the corners. And here, deep into the night, the family plotted the murder of its child while I looked on, preparing to carry it out. The dream petrified me for days, even though I ended up refusing to kill the child at the last minute. Why did it fill me with such fear, even after I had awoken from it? A chapter later, the child was riding in the passenger seat next to me -- I remember now -- and I was driving fast, frenzied and sweating. I was going to throw his dying, deformed body from the automobile, down a steep, forgotten ravine, after shooting him in the face. And God, how the wet, continually autumnal roads streaked beneath the car, a trail of sinister dead leaves rising in my wake, spreading into the air like tattered black crows. How the wind howled through the dead trees which trembled against the fading evening sky as the car hurled by. My hands shook, but my eyes were dark holes in the rearview mirror, my skin unfamiliarly stretched across my bone structure, grey and decayed. The face was mine, but as if I were a dead man, revived as a vacant reaper of others' transgressions. My dark lips curled upwards in my haunted reflection a moment, but then I could not bear the image, and jolted my head to the side to look fearfully on the victim. At this moment I froze with horror: the child slowly turned his ugly, misshapen head to look back at me. Was he the result of some incest? A violent rape? An attempted but failed abortion, the mother having purposely thrown herself down a staircase, to no avail other than this terrible deformity? The child, in that nightmarish moment, was the innocent but damned result of all evil humankind had ever hidden away in closed-off basements, in shuttered attics. He was horrific to look upon, grotesque enough to bear the stain of humanity's own evil; but then -- I could not tear my own bloodstained eyes away -- his bright blue eyes, the one the larger than the other and bulging, were watching me happily, open wide with trusting innocence. And I could not escape it, could not reason it away with superstitions; he was only a happy child -- Oh God, a child -- ugly, yes, but pure. I was the monster. And for a brief moment -- I remember, oh God, I remember too clearly now -- I knew I was Evil itself, full of a vomiting remorse that has come too late, a bloody expanse of shame so dark that it must compulsively renew itself with more and more death, more and more agony, to blot out all damning, exposing light. I saw the Devil, and the Devil did not laugh. At that moment in the dream I decided I would kill myself. I would save the child, but there would be no redemption for my soul. Then I woke up. Then I went to work. * * * * * In the classic movie White Christmas, starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, Crosby's character at one point says that the kind of food you eat before going to bed affects your dreams. Then he sexily offers his lady friend a ham sandwich or something. Then he sits down at a piano and sings a pretty lullaby to her in a romantic ski lodge while they sit by the fireside. It goes: "When you're worried And they eat their pastrami sandwiches and kiss and stuff while the music magically keeps going and swells, even though he's stopped playing the piano. Anyway, the reason that I bring it up, is I've been thinking that whatever I ate the night I had that nightmare must have been some seriously fucked up shit! * * * * * But I was originally talking about being displaced, was I not? I was. About moving from city to city these past years, always with the vague suspicion that I've somehow gotten dreadfully lost along the way. Does everybody get out of highschool with a fairly respectable 3.6 grade-point average and some fairly mild manners and some high ambitions, and then decide to go completely monkey-shit crazy? I really might be starting to think so. I'm starting to think that there is a shortage of good synapses in my generation. There has evidently been a recent epidemic of shit-poor synapses being procreated in random beds. Watch the girls in an episode of MTV's "My Super Sweet Sixteen" if you don't believe me. Monkey-shit crazy, every one of them. No wonder, too. Look at their parents: Monkey-shit genes, monkey-shit synapses. It goes back generation after generation, a bunch of monkey-shit piling up. And now here we stand, putting up photoshopped MySpace pictures of ourselves to make friends, buying new phones so that we'll never be alone, and doing things like eating shit on TV for money, in order to show everyone just how monkey-shit crazy we can be. That's true, too. I watch a lot of TV, so I know. * * * * * Anyway, last year I lived temporarily in so many cities that I began to lose track of where I ever was at one point. I cannot remember all of those places now. I try to think. Pittsburgh, Chicago, New York, Boston, Madison, Philadelphia. There are many more, but I just can't remember the rest; the sensation is gone. I was touring the country with my band at the time, and there was something wrong with my head (my synapses, as you'll remember, do not always fire correctly, and are faulty indicators). So anyway, I felt depressed a lot of the time, and usually behaved towards my band more or less like a perfect asshole. And this is what made it worse: I am an amazing drummer! That's right. I am an amazing drummer. You ask what that has to do
with anything? It has to do with everything. Listen to this craziness:
This is actually what I would sometimes tell the band when they were
honestly hurt and dismayed by my apathetic and bitter attitude towards
everything. Someone would voice a valid complaint about my behavior,
and I would tell them how great of a drummer I was. "I am an amazing drummer!" "What?" "You heard me!" So there it was. I was an amazing drummer. Whooptie fucking shit. And that is why it has to do with everything. I confuse myself. I am like a man divided, sometimes kind and sometimes horrible, sometimes arrogant and sometimes self-loathing -- talented but always fighting an insidious, completely uncalled-for feeling of entitlement. And this is what I put to you: What good is a brilliant drummer if he is too lazy to show up to practice on time? I answer: Well, not much good, but no different than any other drummer. Ha! That was my own version of
a drummer joke. It only came to me just now, after I had meant to pose
a serious question, but I simply could not resist putting it down. I
like drummer jokes. I have to, because even though I have always loathed
categorization, I must admit that I usually fit within the drummer stereotype.
Which turns out to be pretty amusing. "What do you call a drummer without a girlfriend?" The answer is "Homeless," but Mrs. B offered: "Masturbating?" before I could deliver the correct punchline. Which, I have to give it to her, was a funny punchline too. It was also awkward as shit. She turned red and covered her mouth with embarrassed horror right after she said it, apparently trying to put the words back in her mouth, and I just sort of stood there. Apparently she had meant to just think that one. Anyway, Meredith and I have been living with her parents in Chicago for the last month or so, after spending eight weeks sleeping on other people's floors and in other people's vacated beds in New York (and one afternoon sleeping on a stairwell, now that I think about it). With all of this in mind we have since added on to the classic drummer joke: "What do you call a drummer without a girlfriend?" "What?" "Homeless." "Ha." "What do you call a drummer with an actress for a girlfriend?" "What?" "Homeless." "Ha." "No, but seriously. Can we stay here for a couple of nights?" My band's manager, Chris Jacobs, would always do this thing after somebody told a joke. In the midst of everyone else laughing, he would be silent a moment, suddenly guffaw, and then gleefully report to the rest of the band: "It's funny because it's true!" So what do you call a drummer with an actress for a girlfriend? Homeless. Defeated. In love. Trying as hard as they can. Join me, Chris Jacobs! It's funny because it's true! * * * * * I should point out that sometimes,
not often, I will get slightly offended when other musicians are relentlessly
making drummer jokes at me. After all, telling just one drummer joke
in a room of musicians can have the same effect of pushing over just
one domino. ME: "What do you call a guitarist?" GUITARIST: "A guitarist who does what?" ME: "Just a guitarist in general." GUITARIST: "What?" ME: "A fucking idiot." * * * * * But enough about drumming jokes. I have gotten sidetracked again. What I was trying to begin delving into -- before, when I was talking about being, as far as an artist goes, a very promising asshole most of the time -- was that sometimes I confuse my identity with what I can create or produce. This is a problem for me. Maybe sometimes it works out okay, but more often I cave under my own expectations and go for long periods of time without doing anything at all. In these states I can become heavily depressed, and all of the pressures inside of my brain become debilitating. Then I begin sleeping all day and spending the evenings drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes on my porch. Or drinking whiskey heavily and alienating friends by yelling, "Where are our Dostoyevsky's?" randomly before sobbing like a baby. Then, in a few weeks, I leave town. My oldest brother Nathan has
had some very serious conversations with me about my self-esteem, which
I know have been frustrating and even painful for him at times because
I'm usually intense and argumentative in a discussion. What makes it
worse is that I actually ask for the help that I then, in a fit of misplaced
passion, bitterly refuse. I ask for the advice that I then fiercely
try to dismantle. I mean, it would be one thing if I was a stoic or
something. Well? Who knows! I want to believe him. * * * * * Anyway, this year I have all of my shit spread across four cities: New York, Chicago, Boston, and Colorado. I am on a plane right now, in fact. I am going to pick up some of my shit, and some of Meredith's shit, to send to Chicago, where we've accidentally moved, before I get on another plane and continue on to Hawaii to join my family for Christmas break. This shit collecting mission will be conducted in New York, over the span of three nights and two days. Meredith, who I have been with for almost twenty-four hours a day over the last twelve weeks, just dropped me off at the Chicago Midway airport, less than two hours ago. And now I will not see her for eighteen days. There is a song somebody sings. "I'll have a blue Christmas So I'm drinking bourbon on the plane. And this is what I am thinking: "-------------------------" * * * * *
6/26/07 LOUSY WEEK ART I've been having a lousy week. I don't know why, as usual. Because I never know why anything is happening. On the other hand, Mer and I were driving to class or something the other day, and out of the blue she started singing a song which went like this: "Do you know the muffler man?" Which was funny. Because it's supposed to go: "Do you know the muffin man?" I pointed this out, and she laughed and said, "Says who?" Singing to herself is this thing that Mer sometimes does, which is funny because she's often sad, and because she usually gets the words wrong. But sometimes we'll be sitting on the couch, having a few beers, smoking cigarettes and playing SuDoku or something, when suddenly from her side of the couch will come "What could you do with a drunken sailor?" Or, if she's in a hip-hop mood, "This is why I'm hot,
hot. Then she'll usually give a huge burp, and in a dainty little girl voice say, "Excuse me." And then she kicks my ass in SuDoku, loudly announcing "Done!" while I've yet to complete a single box. Then I want to kill her. She's recently added on to her "drunken sailor" song. Now it goes: "What could you do with a drunken sailor . . . if he was fifteen?" And then she gives me a very seductive, pedophile sort of grin. Like she maybe has a few ideas of her own. Anyway, things like that make my day better. Once my friends Isaac and Anna were having me over to their apartment for dinner and homemade limeade. I was crazy about Anna's homemade limeade. Partially because homemade limeade rhymed. Anyway, they'd recently gotten married and were probably feeling very romantic or something (I don't know) because Anna suddenly asked me to write down a list of reasons why I was so in love with Meredith. I thought that sounded like a fun thing to do, so I brought a pad of paper outside, punched a cigarette between my lips, and wrote "Reasons Why I Love Meredith" in big block letters at the top of the pad with a permanent marker. I wrote a few reasons about her being beautiful inside and out, and how she's always protected underdogs, and boring shit like that, but then I gave up and went back inside. I drank more limeade. I didn't know what to write, or how to write it without it turning into a novel. So I ended the unfinished list with that it was probably mostly, as far as I could tell, because Meredith's ass is so hot. Anyway, I guess I'm in love with Meredith because she sings "Do you know the muffler man?" to herself when we're driving around and I'm feeling like hell. I mean, I don't know if that makes any sense, but it's like if somebody asked me why I was a Christian, I'd probably give a huge exhausted sigh, say I wasn't, and then take it back and say that the only reason I'm a Christian is because God is such a major pain in my ass. Then I'd tell them to fuck off. I don't really know if that makes any sense either. Anyway, do you know why I think
I've been feeling so sad lately? I think it's because lately I've been
trying so hard to feel happy. I don't know about most people, but trying
to feel happy always makes me feel like fucking shit. Things can be
funny that way. Hilarious even. Then my professor showed us a really famous and respected work that was done by one of Picasso's contemporaries, which was a urinal installed in a museum. This was done by the idiot who painted 'Nudes Descending a Staircase.' Which was also shit. I'm supposed to say "In my opinion" after that. Because art is subjective. My apologies. Anyway, I've decided that I really like Impressionism lately. That's a big step for me because I didn't used to like hardly any famous painters or art movements. Once I was having a discussion about art with Sarah and Caleb. My general position was that most artists ever were shit. It was hard to defend. "Just who is your favorite artist, then, Zach?" Sarah finally said. I thought about her question for a moment, and replied, "Me." Then I took it back. Because that's ridiculous. "No, wait -- Rothko," I said. "Then me." Sarah just gave me one of those looks. But that's not true anymore. I'm not my own second-favorite artist in the world anymore. At the moment, actually, I'm pretty far down the list. Look what college does to your great unfounded opinions of yourself. Jesus, it's depressing. Mer took me to the Art Institute of Chicago museum last week on a date, which was nice. We held hands and looked at paintings and she told me about them and I felt happy. It was beautiful. I liked Monet and Van Gogh and Turner the best. I didn't used to like Monet, but that's because all I'd ever seen were his water lily paintings. I like his bridges and his cities. I like his suns reflecting in water, and his lousy-day snowscapes. Otherwise, waterlily-wise, I can't help it: when I see those late paintings, I'm always pretending to be fascinated and secretly wondering, "Who gives a shit about water lilies?" I guess Monet and Jesus. "Look at the lilies of the field," Jesus once said, talking about how people shouldn't worry themselves about the future too damn much. It's a metaphor. I don't know. Then he added something else. It's been awhile since I've read the Bible. I guess he wasn't talking about water-lilies anyway. But anyway, Monet's really good. And maybe some day I'll like water-lilies. Maybe some day buildings and trains and bridges and people will cave my head in, and then I'll start liking water-lilies. But (moving on) I also think Turner is fantastic, and Van Gogh is incredible. Everyone already knows this, but I only just discovered it recently, thanks to Meredith taking me to the Art Institute, and also a late-night PBS documentary I watched on Van Gogh a couple of months ago. Also, my uncle Stark (whom I'm proud, by association, to report is a doctor), once said something to me which stuck with me, after hearing me say that I didn't particularly care for Impressionism. He said, "But think about it: When you view the world, you don't see everything in equal clarity, which is Realism's main shortcoming. You see impressions, and your eyes light in on certain focal points of interest, on certain irregularities, fleeting images that inspire memories; and, if the moment is right, the rest of the world becomes a brilliant backdrop of quick brush-strokes, brilliant dabs of color and light, gracefully serving to enhance that one moment of captured time, that one point of interest which has arrested your attention and ignited your imagination. Give Impressionism a chance. It paints the world as humanity sees it." Or he said something like that. He wasn't trying to be that inspirational or anything, but he said something along those lines. Then he went to check on the burgers he was cooking, because a bunch of us were over at him and his wife's house for dinner. Anyway, Picasso's shit, though. In my opinion. And (in my opinion) the worst artist in the word is Dali. I can't stand people who like Dali. They are always confused that I hate his paintings, and this is what they tell me in order to convince me otherwise: "But Dali's paintings are so . . . surreal." That's really what they say. Dear God, I want to punch those people in the head. Art, art, art. I'm getting myself down by even discussing it. I mean, I don't agree with this, but at the moment, when thinking about of all this goddam Art and how I'm supposed to fit into it (and apparently I am, because I display "great talent and promise," and "could be great" if only I would "show up to class once in awhile"), I just feel like shrugging and saying: "Who cares? To hell with it." When I go to class and paint a pretty portrait of Meredith, and then my teacher sees it and says to paint something brave instead of something pretty, I just feel like saying, "Fine. To hell with it." And generally I do. I say "To hell with it," paint over the pretty portrait with white gesso, then spread paint sloppily over the canvas for a few minutes -- enough minutes, basically, to justify my then going outside for a cigarette break. The whole time I'm thinking, "God, I'm never going to get away with this shit," but then my teacher drops by my desk and says, "Leave it! That's brave! That's art!" And I think, "Great. Shit. To hell with it." And I go smoke that cigarette. Which, by the way, is by and large the main problem with artists today in general, whether they've learned the attitude in schools, or imposed it on themselves as a matter of vague principle. They're always the ones saying "Who cares? To hell with it," about their own craft. And that is why we are privileged to get such great masterpieces as the urinal installed in a museum. So that artists can convince the rest of society to agree with them that art is shit. Of course, then artists get all mad when some innocent civilian (who used to really enjoy art) sees some piece of shit work and says, "Well I could do that." Then artists get defensive. They've spent all this time saying "To hell with it" (and proving that they really mean it), but when somebody else finally agrees and says, "Okay, okay . . . to hell with it." -- then artists get all pissed and defensive. "Maybe you could fucking do that," they say, "but I fucking did do that. I thought of it. I did it. You didn't do it!" And then they start making statements. You can tell, because they say, "Goddamnit, people -- It's a statement! Obviously!" And then, getting somewhat lost in their discussion, they repeat: "And I did it! You didn't! You could've, maybe--I doubt it. But the point is irrelevant, because I did it!" As if some second-rate painting depicting Jesus sucking a cock on the cross with human feces spread all over the canvas was really such a big fucking accomplishment in the first place. I do have to hand it to these brave artists, though. They did do it. Everyone saying their twelve-year-old daughter "could've painted that" must admit that she did not, in fact, paint that -- even if she could have. Because probably she was busy doing something else really pedestrian and useless, like reading a book or going rollerblading with her friends. I'm sort of joking, by the way. Because I love Rothko, and sometimes I hear people say, "Well I could do that," when they see a Rothko painting. And I respond, "But you didn't. He did." I wish I knew how to defend him better, but the point is that Rothko's actually really good. I mean, Rothko, in all of his simplicity and complexity, is a fucking genius. And nobody else, even the thousands who mimic him (including myself) can paint quite like he did, or evoke as much emotion, or make such incredible use of color and form and composition to describe life as he did. In my opinion. Anyway, enough of my opinions! (I'm putting my foot down now.) Enough is enough! I have this friend, who is Meredith's mother's best friend, and also Meredith's friend, and this woman became a friend of mine when I recently met her. She came to Chicago to visit Mer's mom a few months ago, and she was full of joy and cynicism (in equal, complimentary parts), and she would always say this: "Opinions are like assholes . . . everybody has one!" And I mean she would always say this. Like every ten minutes. Seriously. Whenever somebody voiced an opinion. She would say that. She thought it was fucking hilarious. Anyway, I'd heard this saying before (when I was, like, five), but I liked this woman so much that I eventually began to think that it was hilarious too. She got such a great kick out of saying it. So, out of respect to her, enough of my opinions about art. She, Diane, was an artist herself. So, tipping my hat, I borrow her quote, because it bears repeating, and then repeating again, and probably (once more) again. Like a David Letterman joke, or (if you've been lucky enough to hear it) the "Moose Schlong" joke, it apparently becomes more hilarious every time it is told: "Opinions" (I repeat, finally starting my retreat) "are like assholes . . ." And so here, instead, are the facts: I started my art classes this semester like I start anything, all piss and vinegar. Exactly how I approach a character-building summer construction job, working roadside and pretending to be Cool Hand Luke. Like I'm really going to be great or something. Like I'm going to make a difference in art, or -- (almost equally important) -- like I'm going to sweep some fucking garages, install some fucking windows, and dig some fucking ditches -- with God as my witness! ("I'll never be hungry again!" I cry against the pink landscape, and the film cuts to intermission.) But now, late into my college semester (if I even get out of bed to go to class, which normally I don't), I mainly spend the three requisite hours sitting outside the building with a borrowed book of Monet's most famous, most notable paintings (and a sturdy cup of coffee), paging through the pages (his paintings changing through the ages), studying and smoking cigarettes. Then -- (a cigarette only lasts so long) -- I return to the classroom and paint something or another (or nothing but color) for a little while. These usually turn out to be shit, so I look at what I've painted and then, mildly depressed, I go back outside and look at Monet paintings again. And I smoke cigarettes and drink my goddam coffee. Today I looked for a long time at one of Monet's earlier (surlier) paintings. I simply sat outside of my classroom, chain-smoking. And I drank lousy cold cafeteria coffee, and I looked over this early Monet painting that I had stumbled across, and I studied the hell out of it. Now I forget (or didn't check) its name, but it was (attempting a description of Monet's subtle depiction): a green sea, with some grayish-green and dull black strokes -- suggestive strokes, suggesting boats dimly afloat, outlined by ropes of pure white strokes -- of white, like smoke; white plumes, white foam against the frightened hulls of boats lulled by night's warnings (cloaked in lulls proceeding storming, soaked with rainfall, thunder roaring), and then the sea forms: waves are torn, the ship's ropes' worn, an ocean's scorn;. then night turns cold, the foam unfolds against the hulls, its streams unfurled in bold white strokes, oils' drying coils, the story's told -- black boats in raging seas. It was a beautiful painting. So obviously it made me feel sad. It made me think of lots of things that I didn't want to think about, and I didn't even know why. So I lit another cigarette. And I continued looking at this painting for a long, very long time. Then I returned to class and painted some piece of bullshit in five minutes that my professor called "Brave." And then, against my principles, I thought, "To hell with it," and, in five minutes, painted another one. And, Christ, that's just my
painting class. I'm failing my drawing class completely. I have a bona-fide
F for the first time in my life, and it's in my best subject. I'm very
good at drawing -- the professor said I was the best artist in the class
-- but the class starts at nine in the morning. So I don't attend. (Which
is apparently why the professor also added that I was also the worst
student in the class.) 1/5/07 A LETTER FROM VILHELMINA
Last year, as some of you are aware, I settled down (somewhat uncomfortably) in Boston, Massachusetts, in order to tour with my band, The Cinematic Underground. We brought the live show of our concept record, Annasthesia, to a bunch of cities across America, and probably amazed the shit out of a ton of people. Anyway, part of my responsibilities in the band were to write the official blogs for the website, in part because I was considered (wrongly) to be something of an amateur writer, but mostly because I was thought (rightly) to be hardly contributing at all in any other areas. And, as is often the case when work is being assigned, somebody had to do it. So being the renowned avoider of anything remotely resembling work that I am, I came up instead with a genius, probably foolhardy, and rarely successful plan to excuse me from having to chronicle the band's adventures: I started posting relevant (or sometimes completely irrelevant) letters to a friend of mine on the website instead. This friend of mine is a Swedish model who had taken some great interest in the band the previous year, having heard the record (and subsequently stolen it) while doing a fashion-shoot in London, where she happened to make the acquaintance of one of Nathan's old friends, who played it for her. We became pen-pals of a sort, her and I, and since I was often writing to her about the band anyway (she was always inquiring about Annasthesia), I thought it would work perfectly to reproduce publicly the letters I sent to her pertaining to anything our fans would find interesting. I didn't ask her permission to do this, which resulted in a somewhat hilarious argument down the line. But I digress. If you want to know the whole story, there exists a long, detailed, and quite stunningly boring introduction on my band's website, which I wrote a year ago to explain the "Band-Blog," or lack of one, to the readers. If you're at all interested in what I wrote to Vilhelmina about touring the country with my band, you can find my letters to her at www.TheCinematicUnderground.com, under, predictably, the heading which reads: "Letters." Some of what follows (which, admittedly, might only be of any interest to me) would be made at least more clear by seeing an example of our correspondence, but I'm not going to post my letters to her here, for lack of space, and possibly lack of interest, as I've already disclaimed. Anyway, whether
you choose to glance over my letters to her or not (some are, in my
opinion, quite funny), what follows is a letter from her to me, which
I've taken the liberty to reproduce here verbatim (with one personal
detail blocked out for the purpose of keeping Vilhelmina's identity
somewhat anonymous -- there was a slight problem last year with a few
male friends of mine trying to contact my "Swedish supermodel friend"
after I had given in and pointed her out to them in a popular fashion
magazine). I didn't post any of her letters to me last year because
I didn't want to betray her privacy, but I've asked her if I could reproduce
this particular one, and she's gracefully given her permission. That she also gives me a bit of a run for my money in it entertains me to no end. There is a funny thing that sometimes happens between friends, where one suddenly feels the overwhelming need to write a long, loving letter, given to huge, sweeping statements about life, which is also absolutely chock full of admonishment and disapproval for the other's behavior. I'm a big fan of these particular sorts of letters, and I've written a few of them myself (in one case writing what amounted, more or less, to a twenty-seven page sermon to a friend I hadn't seen for years, who had received some amount of international fame; it took me weeks to finish, and was filled to the brim with unqualified speculation and unfair condemnation. In essence, it was twenty-seven pages of pure crap. I thoroughly enjoyed writing it, and wisely decided not to send it). I don't know if you've had the pleasure of being able to single-handedly obliterate a friend's character with one long swipe of the pen, but I can assure you that it's almost as much fun as when they return the favor. As iron sharpens iron, so one friend ought to write a pissed-off letter to another. And one night in Boston, I received my very own. I'll refrain from offering my own opinions as to whether or not she was right in what she said about me because, whether she was right or wrong, it's probably really none of my business. It went, on
twelve pages of hotel stationary:
Swanky Hotel Room, Hello from London! I've been here a week, doing a shoot for M------- magazine the first two days, and laying out near the Thames River, exactly as if I were lounging on some tropical beach, for the rest. This, I'm happy to tell you, is in spite of the indisputable fact that it's been raining nearly straight through, sunrise to sunset, since shooting ended and my extra time allotted for vacationing began. And although I know you would probably love the dismal weather here yourself, as I assure you I am doing, the difference between you and I (you and me? English is a dirty bitch of a language) -- is that I suspect you would relish the rain here in the mopey way that you decide to relish life as a whole: imaginably by walking around in it with a perpetual scowl on your face and a wet cigarette lodged permanently between your drawn lips. Oh, the image you maintain! Occasionally you would duck into coffee shops, no doubt to write bitching emails to your loved ones about how lousy everything is; because, after all, there is a small, lively little bunch of people, my dear boy -- almost saintly in their patience -- who care about you endlessly; and if my suspicions are correct, this is one prevailing fact which has not entirely missed your attention, and which you've not forgotten to take advantage of, now and again, for your own satisfaction and gain -- or, at least, for your own particular brand of satisfaction, which I must say is often very exhausting on others and which, more curiously, hasn't even proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to provide you with any substantial, lasting joy, or even really any gain. This is an odd and curious condition of yours, my stupid friend, and the reason I'm writing you today is to say a few, I think necessary, things about it. You'll forgive me, I hope, for jumping into the subject matter of this letter so quickly and maybe even artlessly -- I know how you like to dance skillfully around any real issue at hand, indefinitely postponing the concrete resolution of what you consider to be the much more romantic and interesting tango leading up to it. And you might even be right in this -- perhaps a little something is lost by getting too quickly to the point, and maybe we could all do with a little more procrastination. I don't know, but I am at least sure that even if you were wrong, dear Zachary, in wanting to speak in circles whenever anything important was being discussed, you could make some long, convincing, esoteric justification for why you were right, doubtlessly unable to resist bringing God and the Devil and probably Rilke into it as well -- But as for myself, my dear boy, I'm afraid I've been thinking about this all day, since first receiving your last letter, and I've been literally chomping at the bit these past two hours to get back to my cozy hotel room and write it down for you, whether you want it or not! (And, God, before you stop reading this and dismiss me out of hand for having just misused the word "literally," please settle your enraged self down and give a little thought to what I'm actually going to say -- and I mean the content, buddy, not the way in which I say it. I have reason to believe that many a good point has been lost on you, Zachary, because whoever had the bravery to say it to you made some grammatical stumble along the way.) (And so I'll just admit right now that you're the cleverer of the two of us -- I'll admit it only too happily if it will give me the little, much needed elbow-room required for anyone to say anything to you that doesn't automatically sound positive and glowing. A little criticism from someone outside of your family will not, I repeat, will not kill you, so DO NOT BE DISMAYED!) (Yes, yes, I know I've just done three parenthetical statements in a row. So what? Fuck you.) So, Zachary-the-drummer, what is it exactly that I'm going on and on and on about (and so defensively, as you'll please note that I've noted, and taken into due account -- Oh, how I can anticipate your attacks)? It is, Zachary, your grieving insistence that you should be allowed to enjoy this world in your own way: namely, by thinking it's a terrible, miserable, no-good rotten nasty place. Now, before you throw your hands up in defense (or abruptly laugh with glee, as you might be more prone to do at such a suggestion), let me say that I know you do this (get a real kick in the pants by hating the world) with a certain smirking, ironical suggestiveness that's meant to imply: 1.)
That you actually do love the world, and But, Jesus Christ Almighty, that's just it, Zachary -- don't you see that that's positively it? Your entire outlook on life is a big joke on those who you consider inferior and simple. Besides being judgmental and presumptuous (which I'll go into later, if I have the strength to go into it at all), this position, or non-position, essentially gives you a sturdy wall against ever having to really be sturdy in anything that you do in your life. You, my dear child, have somehow developed a way to have your cake, and eat it too, and although I think this does make you deeply sad in a way, you must admit to taking a perverse sort of pleasure in exploding the old adage as well; even, perhaps especially, if maintaining its suspended collapse is slowly killing you. The adage of not being able to have your cake and eat it too is not impervious to being exploded, Zachary -- not if someone has the mind and sheer dedication to do it, which is easy enough to conceive of with you ghastly adage-resenting Johnsons -- but it is there, it is an adage, for a reason. Everything, as Paul says, is permissible, but not everything is beneficial. And I know -- I'm only too well aware -- that you've got your bag of problems with that most famous and misquoted of apostles, but you have got to admit he's got a point there, Zachary. I mean, you're being a really testy shit if you don't admit that. And meanwhile, you're not even playing fair. You want to be Ivan Karamazov, only you don't really want to have to put up with late-night visits from the crummy old Devil. You want to be Cool Hand Luke, only you don't really want to get shot after sarcastically delivering your line about "a failure to communicate." I know the difficult position this puts you in, and maybe even understand some of why you want to continue in its agonizing limbo, but could somebody for once just tell me what's so horrible about wanting to be Alyosha Karamazov? Dostoyevsky himself considered him the goddam hero of the novel, for Chrissake, but instead of wanting the strength to emulate someone like him, you'd rather just have someone like him in your life who you could lovingly adore while you, in the meantime, go happily to shit. And don't tell me I"m wrong, buddy, because, for Christ's sake, your whole list of literary heroes come with their own bona-fide stamp of heartrending tragedy. There's your treasured Ivans, your Cool Hand Lukes, your Steppenwolfs, your Holden Caulfields, your One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nests (I forgot his name), and your Strangers. And don't go on to claim someone like Seymour in your defense -- he is the most generous and spiritually minded of all the Glass family, I know, I know -- but you know damn well that Seymour committed suicide. I mean, if we're being entirely honest here, the only reason Christ Himself doesn't make it onto your list of literary heroes is that he had the audacity to rise from the dead after he was crucified! And so, Mr. smarty-pants who is so depressed in Boston, I want to know just what it is that makes you think it's so horrible, so unforgivable, to be someone who makes a concerted effort at being happy, and who maybe -- God have mercy on them -- even succeeds? Just how is it, Mr. "Woe-is-me, I'm-a-fucking-artist," that you would lose all credibility, within a snap of a finger, if you just so happened to accidentally put on a clean shirt once in awhile? Why, really, can't you enjoy a few hours of watching Sex in the City some afternoon without having to make some elaborate, ironic lecture about the "State of Humanity These Days" afterwards? Most pointedly, why is it that you are being such a big, goddamned bore? So you're touring with The Cinematic Underground, doing what you love, and yet here again you've found another way to be unhappy. Now listen, I know you're dismayed by yourself in this -- I know you truly are -- but God knows the Band is equally confused and dismayed; and they do have to suffer the consequences as much as you do, which I know you resent the hell out of, but how could they not? When you're in a foul mood, everybody in a ten-mile radius is punishable by death and dismemberment. I mean, you're a goddam maniac when you get going. And, look, I know you could probably say all of this better than I am doing here -- that you could analyze it to death, and spin long theories as to why it is, all the while carefully avoiding anything that looks too much like cheap psychology -- and you probably already have; But have you really given it the thought, the hard clear thought, that it deserves? Do you have any real aim at all of fixing it? Or, buddy, are you just content to complain about it -- happy to claim it as your own individual stamp of tragedy, turning a real dilemna into another of your three-ring circus acts of Despair and Triumph and Loss, heartrendingly imagined and featuring a cast of devastating tightrope-walkers, damned for their beauty, high-minded elephants reduced to walking around in circles, with you yourself in the middle ring, the very picture of the modern existential man at war with himself, torn between Spirit and Body, Heaven and Hell? Come on. Everybody knows that shit's old! I'm sorry, but I have to go on, with as much loving reproach as I can muster, because you've been writing to me, Zach, despairing in your own half-humorous, half-depressing way for months and months. And it hurts me, believe it or not. You've been complaining about the band, the pressures of being an artist, God's desertion of the world, and just about everything else you can hit by swinging your arms grandly -- and just because you usually remember to fit in a few cynical jokes along the way isn't going to stop me from putting this down. I'm goddam saying it because somebody has to. You want the recognition of being a talented, promising Actor, and yet you don't want the responsibility of fulfilling your potential, of actually entering the big pool of other promising, talented Actors. You're happy to stay safely out of the messy fray (and don't even get me started on The Fray), so long as you've convinced some people along the way that, really, you could be successful if you really wanted to -- I mean, if you weren't so charmingly lazy and everything. Buddy, you really are a fuck. I go on. Yes, you've become a great musician, but you don't want to work any harder at becoming a better musician -- certainly no exertion that would ensure any success, because success would be so god damned demanding on your soul and everything. So you want to make your living by being an artist -- you'd be quite happy to be "discovered" and rolling in money -- but you absolutely refuse to take any practical (you would say pedestrian) steps towards making it your career. And why? Because you think career is a banal-sounding word. That's it. That's actually why. You're just aesthetically against it, and you claim this as if it's some great religious revelation that you've discovered through living a long, hard life of toil and devastation and searching. You're TWENTY YEARS OLD, you pretentious fuck! Look, I'm sorry -- I'm half-kidding -- but it's almost as if you've taken this stance that the only pure art is art untouched by success or ambition -- that the greatest performances were never recorded; the greatest songs sung in the privacy of a living room. And this in itself might be alright, if a little romanticized -- I don't know, and I don't claim to know -- but with you it comes with such a bitterness, such a resentment, that you effectively kill off any of the innocent purity that ought to go along with such a saintly-fool stance in the first place. Or, at least, you kill it off half the time. The rest of the time you're too busy being tongue-and-cheek about what an unrecognized goddam genius you are. And don't argue with me, buddy. I know you'll feel the need to defend this all (or worse, accept it but make disclaimers), but try resisting it for just a little while, a few minutes even, just to see if you don't actually melt from blocked up, righteously burning indignation. Because I'm not done, not just yet. So you want to be allowed to enjoy your life by grumbling and bitching about it as much as you want. But my question is this: Does any of this really, as you claim it does, give you any enjoyment? Do you feel free to actually love life by doing this, by constructing this semi-autobiographical, semi-serious projection of yourself, or have you not imprisoned yourself, and damned yourself to misunderstood isolation, by making joy out to be such a sacred, precious, and untouchable thing? Is joy really so breakable a condition of mind and body as that? Is it so flimsy, that it must be covered up, shrouded beneath an interestingly conflicted persona, so that nobody surrounding you can ever even imagine it's there enough to touch it? Is that the secret joy you've managed to save up for yourself, protected away from society's ignorance and pettiness? But that's for you to think about. I don't know the answer, and of course none of this is even my business . . . which really does make it all the more fun to say. What I do, however, have to seriously put to you -- and you'll hate it, you'll resent the hell out of me for it, but I'm going to say it anyway, and I want you to listen -- is this: Whether or not living perpetually in this conflicted way is fair or beneficial to you, and whether or not you even really would care if it wasn't, it's certainly not fair to your family and your other loved ones. And you need to consider this. Because since they love you, they have to take your apparent misery a little bit seriously, even if you don't -- you require it of them in the lengths that you go when you're being, or pretending to be, all Vincent Van Gogh. They cannot think it's the hilarious joke that you sometimes do, Z, because they are the people who you call crying when you happen to be in a place which you don't consider to be so very funny yourself. And so you can't treat them like an audience. Not unless you want them to start treating you like an actor. You must be very careful, buddy, about mixing reality with drama, about mistaking what you create with who you are. Be careful about living out the ideas you want to explore in your art. You could very well wind up in a harrowing situation -- you might actually get your tragedy -- and if you get in too deep, there might not even be any redemptive Art to come of it (assuming you're of the mindset that thinks such art born from pain really is so goddam redemptive -- which I know you irritatingly are, and which is a separate issue that we can argue at length about another time, as I'm sure we will). It still stands that at the present you're making things perfectly miserable for yourself, and, I'm sorry, for a good many people around you, people who care about you and believe in you. And I think even you are somewhat weary of the inevitable valley you've recently found yourself in. Redemption is a powerful thing, and it is a theme I know you love, but don't you see that it is a blessing to not be in need of it all of the goddamned time? Trust me: it is. A lot of people's lives are a hell of a lot worse than yours, and it's a wonderful thing to not constantly be in need of redemption. And for you, as blessed as you are, to try to create this need for redemption is insulting to those who have had it thrust upon them. It is a wonderful thing, essentially, to be able to enjoy a rainy week in London for its happiness, and not just for its melancholy beauty, even if you are a goddamned artist. There's certainly nothing wrong with a little melancholy beauty here and there, and I'm not suggesting you dance in the streets like me, but what I am suggesting is that you be a little more careful in the way you're moving through life at the moment, as your melancholy can often take a bitter turn into depression. Look -- and I'm near the end here, so I want you to listen close: It is true that Joy may be put into a sharper relief when accompanied with sorrow, but don't make the common artist's mistake of thinking that Joy by itself, without some overshadowing sorrow, is somehow negated or made meaningless. A positive may be made to appear more dramatic by its negative, but it is the negative that cannot exist without its positive counterpart, and not the other way around. Be careful, then, while you are still so young, about making the fashionable assumption that being a great artist means also being a lousy human being -- that the former is somehow attained only by becoming the latter. This is a disingenuous way to live, not as deep as you think, and I promise you this: being disingenuous, or fashionable, never leads to creating great art; worthy and showy art, perhaps, but only that, and at what cost? You'll have sacrificed your joy for mere trickster art, when if you had taken the pains to search out real Joy -- to develop Love, which is hard, Patience, which is elusive, and Faith, which is damn near impossible -- you might possibly have succeeded in also attaining the generosity and depth of spirit -- the goddamned exuberance! -- needed to create really Great Art! And
to sacrifice that, Zach -- that would be a real tragedy. I'll only continue to say that I admire and (sometimes) look up to you, dear Zachary, despite my constant naggings and urgings that would suggest the contrary. As I'm a good seven years your senior, I feel it's only right that I display a little maternal care for you every once in awhile. Anyway, my hand is tired and I should run, so give my regards to the band, and especially to that brother of yours, Nathan. (and stop telling him that I have a crush on him. I do not have a crush on him. I respect him as an artist. Jesus, Zach.) All
affections,
|