[1045] Out Of My Mind

Let’s do an “all over the place” one.

Things are considerably less mysterious. That is, I see what it takes over time. I start to see how the dynamic is shaped and what compounds. I’ve reached a milestone, so to speak, in surpassing my “fun things” number from last year this weekend. I’ve been to 66. It is day 169 of the year. That’s 39%. What have I noticed? There’s no shortage of openers saying something like, “I can’t believe I’m on tour with so-and-so.” A good portion of artists are still psychologically arrested by 2020, and 3 years later, are so grateful to be touring again. Labels matter in getting exposure. Pockets of “different” companies profit from the entire chain they put bands on.

I’ve gotten, regrettably, considerably more jaded about the fame or money any given band may achieve. There’s an incredible amount of talented people who take the time to learn how to do just about anything with their instrument. Can they conform to a model that has them filling an arena? Can they box their creativity into something uniquely them, yet familiar, spontaneous, but in time for tour, rebellious, but safe for the radio? You know music is a business, but recently, the veneer of the work ethic or star power has worn off when fat little marketing trolls take the stage after Weezer to remind you the bars are still open! Can’t you help a humble promoter out and share your pictures with the right hashtags a little sooner too? Did you check out our meet-n-greet tent!? The only charismatic member of the band whose name you know won’t be there.

Shift.

When I hang out with one of my friends, the sentiments, “I just don’t give a fuck,” or, “People don’t give a fuck” are a common refrain. Why try too hard at work? The state doesn’t care. Your coworkers don’t care. You’re not getting a raise. You won’t get in trouble. No one notices half the shit you do or don’t do on any given day. It’s just reality, you, them, the fucks aren’t there, and you’re not wrong for not then insisting we infuse the space with fucks indeed. This will only serve to alienate, draw the wrong kind of attention, and highlight the overall no-fucks-given environment that your naivety wishes to lay at everyone’s feet.

At scale, you get essentially failed fascist states and wholly ambivalent corporate identities subbing in for any given right or obligation a mere mortal might’ve conceived in the way-back times. If you’re me, you make persistent flailing attempts to subvert the entire paradigm with quickly diminishing gains. I won’t stop trying, but I won’t pretend I think I’m going to ”win“ save plugging into a kind of network or thread of enthusiasm I’ve never personally encountered in life. I’ll be 35 in just over a month. The odds feel stacked against me.

I think of it like all of the creative types moving to creative cities. You know where you need to go if you have a certain drive to act or sing. Hell, you know where to go if you’re a solid engineer. If you’re just kinda smart or motivated or can pretty much learn to fit in anywhere, I guess you just drift. If your business is people, and not necessarily ones with money or connections, it’s your job to keep picking up the cigarette butts and old gum marring someone else’s picturesque landscape. I’m pretty much just a tumbleweed custodian in my field.

Rev.

We get hundreds, if not thousands, on the same page though. It takes crews to get these festivals set up and organized. It takes all those names on every one of your favorite movies. The drives to my different shows across the Midwest have hundreds of small-but-large-and-profitable companies across the landscape none of us have ever heard of. On my best day, I can get me and 2 other people in the same room. When I do so, are we talking hopes and dreams? In a sense, if the dream is to resolve the current frozen hellscape of our arrested lives and prospects.

The shows I attend so rarely ever have a ”that person is definitely here alone“ person. When they do, it’s the weird dancer, or bizarre hat wearer, or odd configuration of ill-shaved hair. So many people have friends. Don’t catch yourself listening to what they talk about all through any given performance though, or painful reminders will blast why you often prefer to be alone. My friends are busy. My friends are tired. My friends have obligations. I don’t know what’s going on with all of these people and their friends or family, but they must not be from around here.

This feels like the time to point out the disconcerting number of tattoos I noticed of state outlines, presumably where they are from, that people must identify with to a degree I feel as though were I so afflicted by Indiana, I’d likely kill myself.

One performance today stood out for how goddamn insufferably hokey it was. I was so uncomfortable. First, and I’ve said this a lot, I fucking hate ”hippie“ types. Every stunted thought experiment they never run gets answered by a pathological implementation of ”love“ or ”togetherness“ or some feel-good sentiment backed by nothing but the most inane pageantry available to the devout of any faith.

Michael Franti not only asked you to turn and hi-five or say hi to your neighbor, but to form giant circles together and have someone dance in the middle. He insists you hug the friends you came with, a lot. He knows that no matter how confused he gets or divided we are, love wins! Include strangers in your general jubilation! Doh-see-doh the entire park! Then, everyone gets a turn on stage, the main one or the mini ones set up in the crowd and visited every other song. Let’s hold a small child and encourage it to sing, through 9 increasingly excruciating false endings to 1 of a dozen songs that felt like the dog from Blue’s Clues or a Teletubby were poised to step on stage. It was gross and insincere, and I was happy to deny and annoy the drunk mom who poked me in the stomach to say, ”You have to do it“ in beckoning me for the dance circle portion. I’m only here to get a better spot for Jason Isbell 2 hours from now…the fuck I do.

A good faith steel-manning of that behavior would be entertaining the idea the he actually believed what he as saying, there’s nothing wrong in democratizing the space and inviting people who were clearly eating it up to stuff as much as they could fit. It’s fine for that to not be my vibe, kind of people, and there’s no harm, right? I’m not so sure, but I don’t wish to keep revisiting my trauma.

Hussain asked me what I was doing yesterday. I sent him a picture of a stage. His response: ”Fuck“

Shift.

I’m thinking of going approximately 20K in debt. It would be for the supplies to finish my fence, garage/wood shop, solar panel pergola, driveway, wood-burner set up, and above ground pool. That’s estimating another 7k. I’m not entirely sure if it’s because I’ve grown so ambivalent to debt, or because I actually want to shift into doing a ton of big fun expensive things at once, and am sick of hearing the excuse that I don’t have the money, time, or help.

Ultimately, I have “the” job to lose in the broadest context. This begs an entirely different question of that “comfort” one shouldn’t get comfortable with when you’re plugged into a space where no one gives a fuck, but I’ve found myself willing to suspend getting so antagonized by that thought with new performances pounding through my head every few days. Make no mistake. My job is easy. My job is placating. My job is not what I want to do with my life, does not bring me fulfillment enough to ignore what’s wrong with it, and does not pay me anywhere near what it nets them. Fuck my job and the harm they cause in the name of “harm reduction.”

Shift.

I have so many tools. Music tools. Tool tools. technological tools. Crafting tools. Massage tools. I can only use one at a time and in service to the most haphazard ideas or projects. I have as many books as I have tools. By now, I’ve forgotten why I was so interested in getting half of them. My book shelf, slowly bending forward like an arthritic spine under the weight of so much wasted potential and initial enthusiasm. I used to be so smart. I still am, but I used to be in a way cooler way.

I want a “thing.” I want to turn down the dial on the “mutli-potentiate” bullshit and just have a thing. I know so many families are miserable thinking that was going to be there thing before it sunk in families are made of fucking people. You’ll hear that sentence differently if you’ve worked in child welfare or had a slutty step sibling. Turns out, just like you can’t actually dance or sing the pain away, you can’t “love” your manipulative immature ignorant and petty family into a place of mutually prosperous mental health states. Go figure.

You get a tool to fix a problem. This presumes you’ve accurately diagnosed the problem, know how to use the tool, and care to fix the problem in the first place. I think I have a lot of tools for an incredibly hard problem to diagnose. I think it’s a multi-faceted problem to do with my relationships, or lack thereof, my willingness and capacity to focus, learn, and do in spite of any meaningful spirit animating the behavior, and my existential concerns regarding time, will, and ego. When I say something like, “I’m not ready to die,” I think my behavior overtly suggests as much over highs and lows and long periods of time. I try to exude less desperation and more indulgence. I try to ask more questions and run new experiments. I recognize the next level and continue to explore. Thankfully, I know I’m in charge of my sobriety and need to put myself first or I might have a tattoo of a state that sends 10 years to Indiana for abortions. I suspect that person can’t diagnose their problem anymore than I can mine.