[990] Slaphappy Birthday

Even though time is an illusion, it looks like I’m 34, at least, at 10:58 PM. I’ve just woken up, made coffee, and wanted to explore how I spent the last few days. I got home this morning after driving all night, and I think I discovered the secret to falling asleep immediately. As soon as you get home from driving through the night, put on the podcast “The History of Philosophy Without any Gaps.” I ended my trip the way it began, considerably more prepared and awake on the drive home than to Cleveland. Cleveland, by the way, does rock. I see myself going back there.

I decided, because Facebook’s targeted ads are working, to see the band Anberlin play 3 nights, each night an old album. Anberlin, though celebrating their 20^th anniversary as a band, is one I came to relatively late. They have songs that are familiar-enough and an overall style and tone that, the moment I recognize it’s an Anberlin song playing, I’m almost-never skipping the track. I tried to “study” by playing their albums on repeat so I wouldn’t be a poser standing right up front against a stage only as high as my ankle. It really highlighted how hard it is to memorize songs in my genre that don’t make the vocals crystal clear. I’m not going to stay hunched over lyrics like I’m about to perform.

The venue was located in what I understood as a historical “hang-out” area with several quality places to eat and get smoothies or coffee. It had its Leftist book-store and on Saturday an artsy street fair with little booths and jazz band. Cleveland gives you a very palpable sense of its busy history as the old buildings weave throughout the new and the renovations attempt to keep basic features intact. I caught an article on the wall of the Grog Shop commemorating the first edition of Altpress which I didn’t know started there. The band was funny, engaged, and did great each night. During the last song on the first night the lead singer invited everyone who could fit on stage to dance, sing, and position themselves to catch him as he hung upside down from a beam lining the ceiling.

I had good food, a comfortable Airbnb room. I got to sleep on a big bed and really lean into a normal shower and bathroom setup. I was able to get my remote-work job done, desperately tired, but meeting my obligation. I read a book. Unable to get the nagging sense that I was incredibly close to Cedar Point out of my head, I decided to put the jewel in the crown of my time away, and got in 5 of the top roller coasters in the country before making my way home. It hit me, for as much as I loved going there, I don’t think I had been in 15 or 16 years. I listened to most of a book on the history of The Daily Show on the drive back.

While at Cedar Point, and while tucking myself into bed, and while standing in line or amongst the head-banging crowds, it may not be the first thing I notice, but it is persistently in my head that I’m alone. I want to make pains to distinguish “alone” from “lonely.” I have what I take to be an incredible capacity to enjoy myself, by myself. The roller coasters aren’t any less fun. I’m not less likely to sing along, eat to my heart’s content, or wander about a space. I can make the drives. I don’t have to concern myself with being entertaining enough during all of the down time that comes with arriving early so you can be up close.

In the crowds at the show, I listened to people. You think I’ve been to a lot of shows? A girl behind me knows the intimate lives of The Academy Is… and has seen them 120+ times in different countries. A couple shared, several times to new people, how this is the first time they’ve gotten away from the kids, and they were celebrating their anniversary in Cleveland. Cleveland has a robust rock/punk rock scene and groups shared who they saw and when, their opinions on albums, and their histories as it pertained to this world they felt they belonged. I was never moved to engage. A big part of me doesn’t feel sincere in my “scene cred.” My identity isn’t rooted in black clothing, lyrics, or being able to recognize and name each band member. That’s not a prerequisite for engaging those conversations, but you feel this pull to live up to a certain archetype. It’s akin to adopting office cliches, but for music.

At Cedar Point, you can really forget that we’re in a country bordering on full-blown fascist overthrow. Tens of thousands of people eating over-priced theme-park food, hitting the water park, or waiting in line. These are either people who live close and this is their primary occupation of time, or people who can afford the pilgrimage. It almost feels like a micro-country with every kind of American represented proportionally. I can’t say in that sea of people I saw anyone there by themselves. I saw family groups. I saw, perhaps divorced, parents with their kids. I saw packs of teens. I saw polo-shirted high-thigh khaki types. I saw couples. I didn’t see ANYONE sitting alone, walking alone, or standing alone who wasn’t wearing a park uniform or clearly waiting for their unit to return.

Did I want to be there with a family? Well, no, not really. Do I want to be a rich “business guy” with his pack of other business guys who talk more about our hobbies than how we’re integrating our wealth into a survivable future? More than I want to be carting kids through a park, but that also comes with its disappointing and unfulfilling details. When I speak to how “different” or “weird” I perpetually feel, not “bad” mind you, it’s because I’m noticing how often the space I occupy isn’t literally shared. The conversation is most often with myself, and I talk to people for a living.

I don’t know when or how it hit me, but I know it was around the time I was in college as I was attempting to set up weekend get-togethers and finding little beyond exhaustion and confusion. The impetus to be very deliberate and energetic about what might today be understood as “self-care” is not lost on me. Incidentally, the books I read and listened to on my trip are about the relatively recent past. The themes that we are suffering as budding fascism today have been drumbeats hammered-out by historians and satirists alike since I was a child. We haven’t been getting better at acknowledging and combating them deliberately.

We arrive at the different space I occupy. I allow the genuine and ongoing concern for my broader context to enter the conversation even as I’m having a good time. I’m looking for the joke. I’m curious about the practical steps it will take to alleviate the problem before it becomes life-threatening. I’m paying attention to the aching back as I’ve stood in place for hours on end, and then feeling myself wise and undeterred as I utilize my new back-roller balls to press kinks as I drive. That’s not what people do. People want to share vacation photos, collect souvenirs, and sing as though songs weren’t inspired by anything than a desire to populate tongues.

My space is different mentally, physically, and in the story it tells about what I think is important or what I believe about my options. Facebook is reminding me that 3 years ago is when I took my first “real vacation” to California with my “real job” money. That could have been yesterday. A year, with each year that passes, can be a rounding error in the proportion to the rest of your life. How many times in blogs would I repeat to myself how old I was? I was trying to hammer in how to pay attention. The time may be illusory, but the entropy feels real. Now, I’m 34. I’ve seen dozens if not a hundred bands, read hundreds of books, played as many video games, typed hundreds of thousands if not a million words. I have more stuff than I know what to do with. I have hobbies I enjoy and engage regularly. I have professional goals I’m working, maybe slightly less-diligently on than I should, but working on nonetheless. I don’t have a 30-year mortgage or car loan and my job will pay my debt in 4-5 months if I could bother to stop spending. I’m healthy. I’m full. I have people who will occasionally join me here and there. But in a significant and meaningful way that I wish wasn’t the case, I’m alone.

I don’t wish it because I’m lonely, I wish it because I feel like I have something valuable and honorable and worthy that I don’t know how to translate or share. Why can’t you pick up and come on a trip or show with me? Why can’t you feel comfortable pairing your day-to-day work or mental preoccupation to the larger narrative? Why can’t you find a sense of purpose or belonging in honestly engaging and doubling-down on the things you enjoy? Why don’t you feel obligated and responsible to talk about how your mind works or how it perceives your corner of the world? Why aren’t you practicing with the urgency that respects impending death?

I feel like I’ve earned what I have, in time, money, or right to say and share what I think. I feel like I have an appreciation for the difference between the fun of spending money and indulging oneself and the fun of helping people through utilizing real power in consequential ways. I think my life is as much a reflection of the infinite things I can’t control as it is infused with my intention collapsing the infinite sea into a conscious choice to pay attention. I’ve worked to push the direction of my life one way over still-probable others. I don’t need my will to be “free” more than acknowledged for its existence at all and recognized for what it’s manifested in service to our shared experience.

We are sharing experience, right?