[1000] Warped

As the year starts to feel like it’s winding down, and as I’m back home trying to recover from an immense amount of walking over the last few days in ill-equipped shoes, here we go on my (not-technically) 1000^th digression.

I would call my position in life extremely privileged. From small things to grand scheme, I can point to what I like about being me and, more important to me, what I wouldn’t like about being someone else. I can readily dream about becoming any number of things in manageable timelines and within different budget restraints. I’m almost always feeling healthy. I’m never hungry. I’m capable of learning new things, stepping back and thinking about difficult subjects, and confident in my ability to “go,” “do,” or “be” whatever example I wish to set in any given moment. I feel so powerful that I primarily worry about what happens if and when I let that power get out of hand.

Each thing I do to demonstrate that I’m more than under some debilitating delusion often serves as something that isolates me. Whether I turn on a capacity to, seemingly, over-indulge in seeing “all the shows” or dive into an interesting subject, I’m doing something I can’t really relate to others, or doing so in a superficial way. Take TV, where if I watch “everything,” and you have a favorite show you’re often quoting from watching it so often, I’m not watching it the same way, so even if we share liking it, it’s different. If we both work in the same field, I’m not haplessly trying to “help,” or make up for my childhood, or falling for the manipulations of the desperate and addicted. I’m trying to manage and hold accountable and utilize my perspective verses pray for mercy from it.

I like lists. I’ve posted my list of things I’ve been doing all year several times. Each thing I move to the “did that” category is a little dopamine rush. The lines on that list represent hours of driving, walking, singing along, laughs, money, good luck in weather and traffic, Instagram posts liked by the artists themselves, story reference points, food beforehand, solidarity, cultural appreciation, and inspiration. They, occasionally, represent a shared experience with anyone I’ve known for longer than a day. I have all the power in the world right up to the point after the invitation.

I try to be what I feel I don’t have. I’ll be very deliberate in how I speak to this. I have people who will invite me to things. I have people who will tolerate me. I have people who I think like me. I don’t have someone who would genuinely like to see me or extend an invitation to pretty much any show or activity like Cedar Point. I occupy a very specific place in people’s minds, and it’s not something “easy” that can just be around or part of whatever they’re doing. I, in an explicitly opposite manner, would think I’d died and found out I was wrong about heaven if any combination of anyone I’ve met or enjoyed were around in a reliable way to hang, meet each other, or otherwise buy-in to a series of life experiences that preferred togetherness verses being apart.

Jordan Peterson, his ongoing convoluted legacy aside, still delivers lines that keep me thinking, even if I find them more worth challenging than incorporating. He’s said to be the kind of person who is best for someone else as opposed to finding someone worthy of you. It was a sentiment offered to men who are struggling to find a mate. Peterson is a big proponent of marriage and recognizes a lot of the mental crisis space modern men occupy. I don’t share their plight, and I get what he’s getting at in offering the advice, but I also recognize how that would play out in someone like me. I, still, worry about persuading myself into being an unrepentant manipulator. The second I recognize what you need me to be, well, are we to disregard the details as long as we post smiling pictures and make an earnest attempt at an honest family?

Again, I try to be what I feel I don’t have. You don’t have to “discover” and “play to” what I freely offer up about what I desire or how I wish to go about getting it. You know I want companionship, honest companionship, built on a shared desire and individual perspectives drawing from and contributing what only we can. I don’t want to play you or spend our time together with me probing for vulnerabilities. I can’t really stress that enough, particularly because I’m so good at it, I fucking enjoyed being a DCS assessor. Playing on vulnerability, stress, ignorance, and with more power than damn near anyone should be trusted with is like checkers. You move in specific ways, hop here and there, but there’s only 1 of 2 ways the game is gonna end. I can’t figure out why people either pretend not to know the rules, get bored and give up, or don’t copy what I’m doing.

No one shares their intimate convoluted or seemingly contradictory and angry confused thoughts? Here’s my thousandth, one fucking thousandth, stab. It’s here I can iterate on how much I appreciate about my life in spite of what seems to come up short. It’s here I can explore why turns of phrase stay lodged or images from an endless ream of experiences stick out. The answer to “why,” is so often “for the record.” Just so I can record that I did so. I showed up. I saw. I invited. I tried. I’m still trying.

The “Is For Lovers” festival I went to is one of the several that have spiraled off from the ending of Warped Tour. I almost want to call the force that was that tour a “movement.” I think it’s as large a unifying marker of a certain style and sensibility that most of my cohort has and there’s a reason it’s having a cultural resurgence. All that angst and anxiety didn’t go anywhere. All the emotionality turned into fascism, and the still-arbitrary directions we’re headed have at least turned into a little extra in the bank after 15 years to “splurge” on an hour or 3 drive and $100 or less ticket to scream, “I’m just a kid and life is a nightmare,” in your 30s.

Ironically, the music starts back up after the pandemic, and you can still feel the hesitation to turn the numbers in any direction outside of the circle pit. Where do you want us to go? Up off our feet! Side to side! Along the wall of death! I will not be able to shake the dissatisfaction of attending female-lead shows where abortion or voting don’t make it through the mic after Roe. It’s not just girls who need to be speaking up, of course, but the only show I’ve been to that’s made even slight mention to the veritable pending dystopia, I forget, because it was almost in passing before firing up the next song. The viral Dropkick Murphys video trumps anything I’ve encountered in person.

We’re scared, or more specifically, you’re scared. You’ve been scared, for many many years, and you’ve been quiet for even more. Just like you don’t think to speak your mind about me until I’m months or years-removed from the picture, and then of course not actually to me, you don’t speak to the raging dumpster fire in real time. You don’t locate a hose, bucket, or even bother to spit at it. You grow psychologically “conservative,” trying to protect your precious concert, idea of family, or “empowering” opinion in spite of literally everything else. I call myself a spite engine, but what I’m contradicting is the fundamental existential spite that works to kill everything I try to be. I want the testimony to affirm, not struggle through choking and tears to defend and excuse the indefensible and inexcusable.

I’m not complacent about not having the kind of connection or solidarity I seek. I’m still sensitive to the resentment it conjures when I’m prepared to sacrifice in service to it. I’m mostly just confused, because time still feels illusory to me. I don’t know why you’d wait until tomorrow to do something better that doesn’t cost you anything. I don’t know why you’d prevent yourself from coming to the show or keep antagonizing yourself with my presence. I’m 34. You can’t tell me, “When you get older you’re gonna realize!” as though I don’t appreciate the use of my limbs or made a certain kind of peace with my impending heart failure. Like I haven’t been in relationships or worked consistently or been responsible for people’s lives.

We’re not really together, right? Like hundreds of isolated anxious bags of feels all at the same show, but finding no genuine peace or resolution as they bang their head or throw themselves against the pit.

I don’t really believe I’m ever going to find what I want. I know what I want is a process, and I’m practicing my process, and I’m making bets on ways I can turn that process into something capable of processing more. It’s not a “thing” or “person” to find. It’s not a few years away or “over there.” It’s no more lost than it is a secret to anyone who isn’t practicing the same thing as faithfully as I try to. I’m honestly sad that in all the years since college we haven’t figured out anything about what brought us together that would bring us back. I’m terrified that I could hold in such high regard people who won’t speak or answer back. I don’t think the insecurities or drama of this era are unique in the choices on offer for how to live and orient in the world.

I know the power of doing things poorly, with deception, or in secret. I know the insane impact of even one extra hand to help in doing something better or the right way. We’re not choosing the right way. We’re not fighting to put our energy into things we believe are worth the time and money. We don’t believe in each other, because we’re not speaking to each other, and even when we get the stage, we’re scared and unwilling to say what needs to be said. I don’t really see us getting better nor think the music will save us. I don’t think the lives you’ve cut out for yourselves thus far will have any more room for me or what I’m doing than they have so far. I don’t really think you know what I’m doing though, anymore than you know how to play checkers.

I’m sure you’d just tell me you don’t like checkers and tell me I can’t expect everyone to play my game like I invented the fucking thing lol on your way to blissfully ignoring the point.