[1203] Same Page

It’s 3 AM and I’m home from day 2 of the Limestone Comedy Festival in Bloomington, Indiana. Earlier today, I was at St. George Serbian Orthodox Church in Schererville where I was a pallbearer for my 45 year old cousin’s funeral. It was close to 3 AM that I arrived to the area driving up the night before, and after a viewing, church service, burial, and lunch, I made the drive back, finding myself exhausted and briefly/uncontrollably drifting lanes just before the Lafayette exit I was looking to pull over on to take a nap.

 

For what my decision to buy a VVIIPP badge for the 3-day event might’ve suggested would be a flatly “fun” weekend packed with “comedy,” my cousin’s death being the most obvious wrench in my expectations is not even what’s mostly on my mind. I learned more about him from his obituary and eulogy than I had ever heard/remembered family talking about. As a basic human, it’s sad when people die and I’m not coldly dismissive of what my aunt is going through or anyone else in my family. Especially because I’ve gotten older, I just don’t play along anymore than I have to.

 

I suppose, again, we arrive at the notion of “playing along.” To be sure, I will never “forgive” nor “forget” the horrible things my family have done to both my dad and step-mom, grandmother, or myself. These are thieves. These are liars. These are greedy, insecure, and angry children who, as recently testified to in my cousin’s death, are willing to let those in their orbit suffer for their lack of accountability. My dad is 1 of 4. They all got the same parents, and he managed to be the only one who didn’t find a way to mock the examples my grandparents were trying to set.

 

At the same time, as I can already sense this is sounding incredibly judgmental or callous, I don’t pretend that anyone is anything less than an animal first. I had this moment as they were lowering the lid to my cousin’s coffin where I just looked around the room and felt this lightness about the terrible and inhumane or exploitative shit the people in my family have done. There was a useful narrowing of focus and forced perspective as the sickly mouse-like face of my cousin descended into his coffin and I looked at the congregates hold back tears or stare just past where he laid.

 

There’s a certain poetry to the idea that I go straight from comedy festival to burial and then right back to festival. There’s a certain highlight that I, in spite of my best effort, would find myself flirting with death on the highway. You really do want to believe something about the bigger picture. I couldn’t escape the thought that the reason we have this whole lengthy procession is to distract us from the responsibility that is begged in thinking death is the end. What if my aunt simply failed her son? What if she’s continuing to fail her remaining one who is struggling deeply with alcoholism? Now now, fuck all that noise, we’re gonna hang out soon in heaven!

 

The comedy festival is feeling feeble. There’s plenty of funny people, but I’ve never felt more like an afterthought in buying the highest-tier badge for something. Maybe the System of a Down “VIP” tickets once, but this is right there for considerably less money. You don’t feel the energy. You don’t get the sense the ones who have been doing it for…12 years…have figured out the rhythm. Did you know I get reserved seats right up front for shows that haven’t sold 1/5th of the room? If 30 or 40 people got invited to it, why am I seeing the same hosts and features multiple times? It’s very first or second year energy. They told me my badge would look the "coolest." It’s the exact same badge as the VIP.

 

I’m exhausted by what feels like perpetual unreality. My family isn’t real. The competence and “love” of comedy by whomever organized Limestone isn’t either. It’s so many people playing along with some idea of what they think the thing “should” be. At lunch, my surviving alcoholic cousin and I get along in a weird way. His energy and my fluid acceptance of it did not match the pleasantries vibe at the table. He shakes. You thought he was going to drop each bowl of food as it was passed around. I recognized how important it was to him that he wasn’t babied as he still managed to serve himself without spilling or breaking anything. He’s dealing with real shit, including recently diagnosed cirrhosis of the liver. I gather he clocks me as someone willing to meet him where he’s at.

 

The comedy festival is interesting if only because it’s a majority female comics, and younger people than me. It’s like this weird little microchasm into the broader fucked up world of lonely fascist men steering us to Handmaid’s Tale-opia. Tonight was karaoke, and by 1:30AM, when the songs were done, it was 30 girls in mom jeans and 90s dad sneakers talking too-enthusiastically to each other as people like me I assume felt reasonable in not even thinking about hitting on any of them. Tomorrow, we can get brunch with the comics. From what I’ve gathered, they’re mostly comfortable talking/working within their fellow comic cohort and marketing themselves or playing friendly with the locals wasn’t quite explicated in their contracts. I don’t blame them.

 

When I first started writing this I felt this desire to get on the same page. I was going to just list the things I “individually” felt and thought “everyone” could kind of support or understand. Instead, I’ll take one thing, like sneezing and saying bless you, to illustrate my frustration. I think we need to be saying “bless you.” I don’t think it has anything to do with religion. I don’t think you’re remotely sane if you find it offensive. At least half the times I sneeze, I don’t get a bless you. Every time I hear a sneeze, I say bless you. We need things like that to save us from the individualized algorithms. We need social norms back. 30 funny creative women should not be meandering about a bar in a college town during a festival because they can’t trust any man because “toxic” is all they’ve known and men are no longer being properly socialized.

 

The ideals live and die with each of us. My grandparents set examples. They died with 3 out of 4 of their children. To me, that says you need to work 4 times as hard as you might assume initially to maintain whatever it is someone was showing you is worth maintaining. You think you worship Carlin, Pryor, Williams, and Chappelle? Create something, in 12 fucking years, someone like them would want to play at. Stop “doing comedy business” and seek and celebrate those with the message. If you want family, don’t perform and pretend like mine, hold the line of standards and respect for yourself and what you contribute to the pot of wellbeing.

 

I think there’s like 5 separate blogs in here, but I had to say something. I have to say something because, whether it’s 40 comedians or 3 days or acquaintances who only see each other at deaths, no one else is saying what needs to be said or what I need to hear to suggest we’ll ever find each other again.

[1090] Chain Chain Chain

I'm in something of a somber mood. I want to expand on some ideas I've alluded to on a few posts or blogs over the last few weeks.

It happens often enough when I've too much time, but a pissing match online will ensue. This latest one over the immensely tired "controversy" of Dave Chappelle. Comedians serve as kind of a canary in a coal mine for me. You literally don't get a more immediate piece of feedback on where we are culturally than when someone, lauded for crafting humor, observes and reports the landscape, then everyone piles in afterwards. Sometimes they do so in a way that makes you think they believe the stage was really theirs and it's a sham that anyone would be allowed to take it and say what's been said, let alone laugh.

The person I reacted to, proudly, said they didn't even even watch the special. They called Dave a bigot who spreads hate and misinformation. They epitomized what I suspect a conservative thinker would describe as an angry "woke" cliche with arguments centered around ideas of "punching down," who does or does not have a voice, what even constitutes "comedy," and above all else how deeply they feel regarding, and this is key, the intent to harm. Words are still violence for these types of people. And any word they feel violently assaulted by, well, what kind of civilized society would allow that?

So much enters my mind at this juncture. The overwhelming ego and narcissism of modernity creeps in. The perfect ambivalence to using, about as simple of words as we get, like "violence" incorrectly. The absolutely exhausting compulsion to exude a flood of feelings to circumvent even the concept of a coherent discussion. It's the lack of irony or self-awareness. It's the energy spent functionally barking as though you're unwilling, incapable, and indignant about the prospect of being responsible and accountable to context. It's a perfect engine for feelings of hopelessness.

That posture. The confidence those who are "right" have is shaping up to be my capacity for emotional well-being's nemesis. I can't wrap my head around it. It manifests in so many ways. My trial-by-fire introduction was arguing religion. As I've gotten older and spent time in places I hardly imagined I ever would, I've seen it manifest constantly.

You don't lie to a judge about the health of someone else's family unless you are "religiously convinced" of your own righteousness. 

You don't get intractably indignant at your caseworker for your failure to protect a foster child from your son molesting her unless you were under a powerful delusion about what the picture of Jesus on your wall really meant about the likelihood of said molestation.

You don't sacrifice every waking minute of your life to work unless you've adopted unshakeable notions of nobility that comes with being exhausted, away from family, devoid of hobbies, friends, or a perspective on anything that doesn't pertain to that work.

You don't blithely accuse strangers of every terrible sin or behavior imaginable, without evidence, in precisely the opposite forum, like a comedy show, for your perspective to make sense.

You don't do things like "I know you are, but what am I" when someone challenges you with your own quoted words in disbelief that you seem unable to see what you've said.

You don't stay in abusive dynamics unless you are absolutely convinced there's something "greater" or "nobler" in trudging through a practically miserable existence whitewashed by the words "family," or "love."

You don't ignore and bankrupt efficient accountable means to fix problems to preserve your power or sense of control.

You don't cheer fascists and vote down measures to help the poor unless fundamentally, you and yours, by whatever means necessary, are correct.

It's not a "want" or "need." It just "is." Jesus is. Muhamed is. The power of crystals is. The inevitability of markets and capitalism is. The power of the state is. You being powerless is. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and fucking over is there someone there telling you how it is. This show is good. You want to buy this. You have to work. People are this or that. Your attention belongs here. My side is obviously right. It all has to be and is always about sides. You are the extent of my judgement, and my judgment is based on my judgment, so let's spin-round, vomit, and repeat forever.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a blog titled "Dead Kids." The main idea, if these ever have one, is that you don't care about dead kids. I don't consider that speculation or a moral judgment upon you. I consider it a practical fact. I don't care about dead kids either. Intellectually, of course I do. Emotionally and practically? They're not dying at my front door. I'm not dropping the bombs. I don't exert an immediate control over the circumstances under which children are dying. They are less important to me than my next meal. There are billions of people, living and dying constantly, and none of us really care about that until it's personal.

We ignore this at a our perpetual peril. As we ignore it, we allow ourselves to believe a story about our inherent righteousness. We start to think we're the good ones. As anyone who has genuinely attempted to do something good can attest, your intent, when it doesn't align with practical reality, doesn't matter. You get ignored. People don't care. Neither you nor I am a good person. We're just people. And people are animals. And animals don't give a fuck.

"Human" is a scientific intellectual construction. You don't get to be human by default. You have to learn and adopt rules. You have to sacrifice "merely animal" instincts and habits. To the extent any one of us is pulling off "human" versus "ape" can be fairly well assessed. We build what we seemingly aspire to in our mythologies. We carry on like a "godly" standard is flashing its naked ass in front of us at all times. We've built incredibly complicated systems of laws and bureaucracy to deliberately slow down our impulsivity and propensity for violence. The less you concern yourself with the hows and whys those systems operate, the less we should be obligated to consider you as anything but a noisy animal.

How we decide to treat that animal says a lot about us, but to treat it as an equal to those who work to actually practice the values of being human? Our cultural psychosis is so entrenched, we literally mythologize sacrificing those people and crown their martyrdom as a peak achievement.

While writing this, I got a response from the person in my latest pissing match.

"Touché. You have my respect. Please appreciate that my assertion that you were trolling was based on my perspective that a nameless, faceless, and apparently 98 year old man was, unprompted, attacking my expression of my views on somebody else, because I am assuming that you aren't Dave Chappelle himself, and I felt it necessary to defend my position because historically I have had to justify my very existence to what at times feels like everybody when the media and politicians are pushing a transphobic agenda on the initially largely-apathetic public, and as such I am naturally incredibly defensive.

When I can gather the emotional energy to do so, I will sit down and watch The Dreamer, make notes, and pass them on to you, it's only right for me to do so." Exactly. Green Day's, "Know Your Enemy" plays in my head. I'm not their enemy, and neither is Dave.

Wherever you find yourself on any position, when you occupy "have to justify" space, you're doing it wrong, noble intentions or otherwise. The less you concern yourself with the motivated reasoning of justification, the better the chance you have for understanding the multi-faceted, indeed infinite, nature of everything. You can take the fire out of your belly by honestly observing and evaluating. It's not actually a fight with anything, ever, but yourself. And, barring consistently demonstrated evidence to the contrary, you probably have a miserable idea of what you even are.

I can describe myself in less than admirable terms because I'm looking for who I am. I'm not convinced. I am every single example, good and bad, rolled into this ongoing moment. That can operate as the power of perspective, or it can be an infinite sea of obscurity to hide behind and justify whatever comes next. Who I am has been on my mind as I continue slogging through trying to be my own boss. I'm not the same person that started the coffee shop. I'm not the teenager who was readily primed to fixate on a singular agenda or idea until I got my way. I'm not that old, but I can certainly distinguish myself from younger people. My motivations have changed. My priorities have shifted. It's impossible to say to what degree any of it is good or bad. It obligates me to explore and reassert what needs it and let die what doesn't.

I remark on my relative wealth a lot. I don't know if I've heard half a coherent conversation about "priviledge," but I do know pretty much everyone I've ever met has had access to nearly everything we could ever need to live a decent life together. My cohort is educated. They were born in a, barely, still free country. They're fed. They have, most often divorced, but homes nonetheless. They are their own worst enemy. They are up against competing narratives or individual pathological behavior or particular illness.

I'm gathering that it's dangerous to acknowledge this. You don't just do so and then die having completed the game. You have to carry on the rest of the day doing whatever it is you do. Maybe that's a job you hate for not enough money. Maybe it's spending time with family who don't recognize you or you can't trust. My ego likes to believe it's getting antagonized by me and what I suggest we do with all of our time left and debt. We have an incredible amount of time to suffer or celebrate our circumstances.

The suffering is familiar. We've learned how to glorify it. We are slaves to the imposed narratives trying to stuff a bored, confused, angry ape into a human construct. This builds that inherent tension and "contradiction" into what it means to exist or why you should even bother. You're not actually a contradiction. You're an ongoing sum total and set of probabilities. We may never understand the mechanism that predicts this word or that word comes next, but I acknowledge that I'm doing something peculiar, specific, and different in relationship to my experience by writing and slowing down than in the moment I scream at someone who pulls a dangerous driving maneuver.

That's the terror of staying alive. Every moment there's someone poised to run you off the road. If they were exhausted having worked themselves to death for years in an exploitative and unforgiving environment or if they were distracted texting, the result and dramatic consequence for you remains the same. Either of the causes, or any imagined one that doesn't involve wildlife or the environment crashing in, requires the same obligation towards taking responsibility and exploration on comprehensively accounting for how to lower the probability of it happening again. You can have that discussion upside down in a ditch, or somewhere in the years before a predictable seemingly inevitable tragedy takes place.

This is often my counsel with my clients. You don't practice crisis management in the throes of a crisis. No professional waits until they meet someone choking to see if their understanding of the Heimlich maneuver works. If you're not practicing in the meantime, when the crisis hits, you'll default to whatever coping mechanism you discovered along the way, if that involves a deadly drug or other form of self-harm, that's what you'll do. Agency has left the equation. Choice is an ideal. The situation actually "is." To the extent you suffer your experience of it is what you can learn to navigate.

Humans can see things coming, prepare, project a series of consequences into the future, and do better exactly right now. Animals project their incomplete and irrational feelings onto every possible future in every single moment, pretending to have done the same work, finding conviction to double down and destroy whatever potential exists right now. They conserve their opinion into a dense weapon used to knock you out.

A lot of my behavior, and for the matter what I can gather from Hussain's, is driven by a sense of helplessness and anticipation of suffering. That's what was physically beaten into me. My baseline disposition is disproportionately informed by my abusive upbringing. I can't completely erase, reconfigure, or deny how stomach-dropping, shivering, flinching child is the foundation. I didn't have a choice in that. I suspect no matter how old I get I will resonate at an "irrational panic" level as though I've actually done something terrible or that the principal is going to expel me. It's a simple choice to acknowledge that, joke about that, write about it, or talk about it in a way that doesn't leave me perpetually victimized. That doesn't mean we're not victims or that we can't victimize. That doesn't mean we're not still at the mercy of forces that bring us to our knees. As intimately as you might eventually understand yourself, it doesn't mean you have someone else perfectly nailed in turn.

I find my life fascinating how much I've achieved in a relatively short amount of time. When I really sit in how much I've invested in learning to play instruments, how many books and shows I've consumed, how many projects i've completed, how much crap I own, and how much I'm looking forward to, it's impossible to take that exercise seriously and claim anything but the most naive sense of despair or hopelessness. What is debt when you have the capacity to pay it off? What is "stuck" when your fingers, feet, and voice aren't broken?

Every year you're alive is a smaller and smaller percentage of your existence. But every year your potential grows if you're acknowledging, incorporating, and moving with the changes. Staying defensive, quiet, and reactionary is shameful if you profess to be human. Burrowing into self-imposed guilt predicated on someone else's dogshit narrative is shameful too. You may not have all the words or even close to the best ones. You either own the life you're leading or we stay trapped in this place that pretends tomorrow will get better in spite of ourselves instead of because of it.

[1079] What A Day For A Day Dream

I feel like a whiner. I don't know if what I'm about to write will come across that way, but I want you to know what I already feel like. I'm going to try to explain by way of the exceptionally random examples that have been swimming around my head the last few days.

When I was working to start the coffee catering van, I recall doing some of the paperwork from the bank. One day, I was introduced to a new form. My really cool banker guy Adam handed it to me, wished me well, and went back to his office. I sat down, took approximately 5 minutes to fill out the form, walked back to his office, and him, genuinely surprised invited me back in and we completed that portion of what needed to be done.

Why does this story stick out? It highlights the contrast between me and how other people engage and experience the world. Adam had probably given that form to dozens of people, most of whom left the office, maybe got to it later that day and maybe when they found the time later that week turned it in. I recognized 3 to 5 minutes of my time I could move beyond now so I could focus on the next thing. That, alone, brought surprise and mild delight to my banker's face.

I've hired a few free lancers to research and apply to grants. One seemed more suited for a consultant role or more appropriate for after I became a non-profit. I asked her how much it would be to just hire her to do all of the "non-profit stuff." She needed to get back to me after consulting with her partner. She came back 3 days later with $3000. I did what half of it I could do while I wait on the IRS in 3 hours, told her my progress, and she responded, "That's amazing!"

It's not, but, to the normal regular world it may as well be a miracle. I did the bare qualifying minimum, read a couple government pages with step-by-step instructions, weeded out the bullshit, and plugged the things into a spreadsheet. That spreadsheet will one day save myself, or anyone else who wishes to incorporate in Indiana 3 hours of their life, and apparently $3000 if they want a high-end non-profit writer.

When I think about the shows I've been going to. I've been to 127 things. The only reasons I've been late to 2 are an incredibly blind-sided stupid parking surprise. (No, I'm not paying $40 to park at Rock the Ruins, an already shitty venue experience.) And my brother. I can not only attend that many things, but do so in a timely and safe manner. When I record the feedback from most people about even coming to 1 thing every 1 to 3 months it's. "I can't," "I don't have the money," "I don't know what I'm doing," "I'm tired," "I don't know the artist," "I can't get off work," "I would, but."

I'm not suggesting people don't have legitimate reasons to not come out. I'm suggesting that I occupy a universe that is steadfastly about the possible, the potential, and the opportunity, and others are stuck wherever they are.

I still hear people pipe-dream about their farming aspirations or green and isolated living fantasies. My neighbor, just because he wanted cows and still doesn't know what he wants to do with them, got 3. No one I know is getting cows or asking me for the room to start experiencing the practical realities of their desires.

I talk about clients in counseling a lot. Every single spot I left has resulted in 0 people continuing their counseling with me. This is in the face of, no exaggeration, dozens, often several per week, of professions about the "good" I'm doing and impact I've had. No more texts, no emails, no follow up from the ones who went out of their way to say, "No no, I'm serious, I'm definitely going to reach out." I don't think I'm being cynical when I tell you that I know they won't. Just like during group, the ones who "got the most out of it" could often not bring themselves to show up every week.

Meanwhile, when I discuss how earnestly I hope to provide affordable and flexible counseling, even when I get people who seem to be a good fit, they don't last more than a couple weeks. The accountability and structure isn't the priority. The obligation to answer for what they've said or thought is too much extra "with everything going on." I'm, still, offering to provide what I have been for $5 and would move most of my schedule anywhere it needed to go to ensure we could keep the conversation going. Nope.

I think a lot about the things I've tried to invest in. I think a lot about the times I've been burned. It's not in an obsessive way, but because I find them sources of perpetual confusion.

I would never just abandon you to a lease or to functional homelessness because I was unwilling or unable to discuss my living plans.

I would never pick a fight every single day.

I would never scrunch my nose and criticize you spending money on me.

I would never allow a novel's worth of gossip and bad blood prevent me from trying to have a conversation with you.

I would never expect you to drive an hour to my house almost every day for months and then leave you to work on my project only to turn around and stiff you.

I would never surprise you with some new judgmental and serious tone because I'm old and mature now and you've offended me, but I won't explain how.

I would never steal your inheritance.

I would never turn what's good about you into something bad.

That's the line. That's what I'm feeling. I feel like the things that are borderline spectacular about me register as bad things. I think I'm regarded as a bad friend. I think I conjure an incredible amount of negative feelings and thoughts about what I'm doing or trying to do. I think literally every single attempt I make to grow or celebrate or experiment or explain is met with whatever that wall is that normal people push and crush you under. The fake politeness. The empty words. The silence.

I find almost nothing about the world is straight-forward, yet with that perfect irony, it's as demonstrable and predictable as anything I could hopelessly continue to bare witness to.

I had a "friendly" conversation with some people in the bar line before Penn & Teller. One offered to buy my drinks, as the show was beginning and it was taking a while. Actually, what he wanted was to speed up the line, but after the girl in front of us got cross thinking we were attempting to cut the group smashed in next to her, we ended up waiting, and dude made sure to clarify that he was sorry he wasn't going to cover the drinks anymore as I ordered and motioned back for them to say theirs. We'd talked and joked for probably 15 to 20 minutes. He called me handsome. It was all fun and games, but it was fake. Illuminated by 3 whole extra minutes.

Meanwhile, on the off chance I go out or get to drinking, I can't tell you how many drinks I've reflexively bought for people I've just met, guy or girl or group, particularly on deal nights, or just because I'm in a good mood. I'll bring the booze for the whole party if you're feeling strapped.

I have that part of me because of my dad and grandma. There isn't a day in my life I've thought my dad was trying to take advantage of me. I learned to cover the drinks or lunch or ticket because he still does that for me. I never talked to my grandma and thought she was looking for an angle or keeping a secret in asking me about my day or interests.

Are people just the worst products of what they grew up missing? Because, while I feel like I'm about as giving and sacrificial a person as you can find without it getting pathological, I'm also the biggest potential asshole and enemy you've ever met. I learned that from my mom. I don't wish to be that person. I don't wish to occupy the space of prefacing and justifying everything I do or say via the intensity of my feelings. I don't demand respect and allegiance, I demonstrate what they mean to me. I pick up the phone. I answer the text or facebook message. I'm 99% of the time the first one to reach out. And, for some reason, I feel wrong or bad that that's who I am.

I drove 3 hours to Louisville yesterday (it's 5:13 AM and I've yet to go to bed). I waited in the line outside for 1.5 hours. I waited against the stage for 1 hour. I waited through the openers and the set up for Kingfish another hour. Between the openers and Kingfish, a lady stuck her beer-clad arm between me and another guy who had been waiting just as long as I had. She leaned on me. She tried to squirrel her way against the stage. I've been grumpy all day and weighed my options. I decided to just focus on watching Survivor on my phone and moving centimeter by centimeter to close the gap. I won the day.

I would never not put in the time or work, show up at the last minute, lean on you, and expect you to get the fuck out of my way to reap the best standing seat in the house.

These frustrations and sense of betrayal all contribute to my overall sense of hopelessness when it comes to starting a business or just doing anything remotely worthwhile in a "professional" capacity or that relies on the ambivalences and negligence of the way we do capitalism. I'm offering a service that people don't want, desperately need, and the only way I know this is because of how much I've personally witnessed over years combined with how they praise my effort or work done so far. That's a crazy-making sentence. And we have a system designed to prevent me from even making a realistic attempt. It's the $1500 for rent College Mall wanted for my coffee shop in the dead space that malls are after an attorney told me their contract was "standard."

So I spend a lot of time just thinking I'm ambiguously wrong. Wrong for trying. Wrong for speaking. Wrong for spending money, not spending money, seeking help, going it alone, or implicating anyone in my plans or ideas. I try to hire help, they somehow create more work and stress. I try to do myself, I find myself spiraling into ways I might escape the whole idea of working altogether. Maybe there's some "online niche" scam or way I sell my land to a shady entity that needs a place to dispose unmentionables.

I try to not get trapped by the words "could" and "should." In my head, we all should recognize the 5 minute form, do it, and move on to tackling the real or bigger issue. In my head, it should be easy to fill out your first and last name, phone number, address, name of your company, and sign at the bottom. It could take 3 minutes to say, "Hey, I'm planning to move next year, so take the next 3-6 months to search for a non-batshit roommate." It should be "obvious" if you're single and rich and you've got younger family members who are regularly demonstrating their worth and values, you'd try to enable them.

I'm trying not to resent the amount I've attempted to give in service to what I need for myself and what people have claimed to need from me. It's getting incredibly hard not to think about what I should take instead. Once you get past stealing office supplies, it escalates dramatically. I could have taken the girl's arm off at the concert, spilled her beer, turned around and left her feeling dead or afraid after some mean shit I might say. Because that's the worst thing I take from people. Their illusions.

Dave Chappelle's line/story about manifesting his dream and feeling humbled when he recognizes he's just a piece in someone else's has rubbed me the wrong way since I heard it. It got me thinking about "The Secret" and other bullshit that blissfully ignores statistical analysis and historical trends when discussing who tends to succeed and who doesn't. No, Dave, you didn't just will yourself to your levels of success, and it's not humility to notice there's another rich douchebag at the club you're in as you presume to know what his dreams are.

It seemingly impossible to not fall under an illusion when you get that famous. Who do you think is telling Dave "no?" Uhhh, are you sure you want to have a 4 hour show with 7 openers and a musical number afterwards? "I've transcended comedy and Method Man has transcended Wu Tang Clan, of course." Okay, Dave! Are you sure you're still mining the "funny" from trans related material? "No, actually I'm transitioning to yes." Hell yeah you are, dude! Hannibal rapping about his fake teeth? "Put. It. On. Stage." Of course, of course! We just have these lists and I wanted to cross all the boxes and check all the Ts! "Where's my cigarettes?"

The money is in keeping with the charade. Make them feel good. Tell them what they already know. Excite the feelings waiting for a license. There isn't a crowd in the world as loud as they can be on the first ask to make some noise. We want the usual and familiar so much we literally marry people about the same size and shape as us. Does it have anything really to do with them? Do you like Dave Chappelle's stand up anymore, or have you romanticized his TV show and yelling that you're Rick James?

In all sincerity, I wish I could find a way to be mostly left alone. That's hard to do when you're in debt, and will always be in debt. It's hard to do when the things you enjoy are in public. It's hard to do knowing you're carrying a loaded weapon of charisma and intelligence and cool hair and a big smile, and you feel it's wasted on people handicapped in what they can see of it.

Let's take it one step further and then try to bring it home. Privy to so many lives and how people talk about them, I know of an endless stream of terrible relationship patterns. I see people stay together for years with one bailing the other out of prison almost as a matter of routine. I know husband's who gaslight or straight lie to their entire families. I know wives who put up with years of verbal abuse. I know moms who shell out thousands to the most ungrateful or violent adult children or hapless "friends" the world has to offer. I know the amount of bosses strangling your, just like me, desire to "do good" or "cover" even as it exhausts you or takes you away from your family and sleep. I know the horrible, horrible things you've done in the darkest corners of your addictive behavior and can only speculate (hardly) what it says about the people who eventually take you back.

I can't imagine. In an effort to try to save money I got a ride from Hussain to the airport and back. I filled up his tank. It was about what it would have cost me to park the whole time I was gone. Would I expect gas money from someone I drove to the airport? No, but it'd be nice to see that they had the same awareness about it that I did. Expecting a friend, or partner, or spouse to not only put up with me abusing them, lying to them, getting in trouble and needing their money, and just carrying on each day like it's all normal and tomorrow will be more of the same? There's someone for everyone, they say.

What I need can't be bought. I'll never have enough money to survive in relative isolation. I suspect I could circle the globe and meet a small number of autistic-types that still just don't quite measure up. I don't need new friends. I needed the ones I thought I had to actually be friends. I need people who don't need me to explain to them how you treat people you care about. I need people who I don't have to second guess whether or not they care about me. The proverbial world certainly doesn't, but it also doesn't seem to care much for itself. Where do you suggest I go then?

[1053] A Little Stroll

Let’s meander a bit. It’s 12:33 PM. I’ve been awake since 9, up around 10, and beyond coffee and scrolling, haven’t locked into a precise drive or motivation. I’m headed to The Comedy Attic tonight for Ron Funches. I don’t even really want to write this, as I immediately clicked away and began searching through the club’s website.

I think there’s few thoughts that are more reoccurring than how often I’m by myself. I think I antagonize this by being extroverted and going out. When I have creative energy it’s the absolute worst. I get to tell myself the jokes, which still makes me laugh, but isn’t the same. I really need to up my game in finding new connections or spots. It’s not a problem to let compound.

At the same time, I know people are shit. I have to get a ahead of what will be an increase in the other pool of thoughts that accompany doing things alone. I'll never be the one getting invited. I’ll hear about how busy and poor people are. Inevitably the particularly off-color joke won’t land and the chasm that opens up will mean I’ll want to ensure there’s several pots cooking at once.

If I had any sense, I’d focus more on cleaning up the yard and getting trash thrown out. It’s quite hot. I’ve gotten more of my inside environment organized and rearranged. All that’s left is maybe 20 minutes of making dish storage more coherent. I’m staring dead into the heart of my guitars, sax, and piano. I have approximately 7 hours to kill before I need to be in line to not get a shit table.

There’s so much time. I always have the time. Why do I always have time and so many never have any? Why take on debt for things that only bring you stress instead of fun or growth? Why am I able to answer my phone or text you that I saw the call? I’m flatly irrationally conceiving of myself in this wholly unintentional bubble where my sense of what’s possible or worthwhile appears completely detached from the people…are they even in my orbit?

What if you never bothered to take these little strolls? What if you were so desperate for companionship or solidarity it never occurred to you what aspects were worth setting a boundary to protect? I haven’t lost my ability to make insta-friends. I’m not shy. The existential barrier to getting what I want is that so many people conduct themselves like so many interchangeable bodies. The ones that don’t get subsumed by their solipsism. Is there not a spectrum with decently aware, fun, individuated personalities worthy of exchange?

I tried calling Hussain. He didn’t pick up. I got two tickets originally for this show as, in my mind Ron Funches isn’t a run-of-the-mill comedian so whatever extra effort might be made to trap someone for a couple hours should occur. I haven’t really spent any time talking to the friend who I bought it for after the kid gun waving incident, yet he’s supposed to go. I don’t have a strong instinct as to whether we’ll even sit together. We’ve not-gotten drinks together the last 3 times he’s suggested, and then bailed or ignored. He’ll call when I might be of service to him and his professional obligations.

I’m looking forward to Seattle. I’m thankful I get messages from Brandy where we can continue intellectually stimulating conversations. My dad continues his cooler-than-you reliability in surprising me for my birthday and being down to see people like Dave Chappelle in Chicago without needing an insulting explanation. I’m wearing a Sick Sad World T-shirt, and I kind of don’t ever want to take it off.

[1047] Curses

It’s late at the tale end of July 4th. I have no real sentimentality or ideas to offer around patriotism or the status of this country beyond thinking we’re still on the decline and on the way out.

I wanted to write about how I think it’s been getting harder to write.

I’ve been contemplating writing music. I listened to Ethan Hawk riff on poetry. I’ve written 1,046 things, not counting what I’ve deleted or designated “blog adjacent” with an “xx” in the title. Where I’m at is less in the analysis and trying to parse the players and response or responsibility. I want a riff. I want a phrase. I want a wall of sound that reverberates as good as any that I’ve put onto my playlists.

I went to a party tonight. I stopped being the person to invite and get to know everyone, but I’m still friends with Pat Patterson who has his eclectic group of creatives and weirdos. I belonged. It’s people who will look you in the eye. It’s people doing as unique a thing anyone could be doing that they’ll pass off as any ‘ole thing. I was told I could join the invite-only group to know about the semi-regular events.

Part of me has eschewed looking for fitting into a crowd like that. Sort of like with getting a girlfriend. There’s an inevitability that my weirdness or perspective is eventually going to turn someone off or against me. It’s not so much that I don’t enjoy them or don’t with to maintain a dynamic, but whatever it is that I perceive I’m getting from the relationship is heaps different from the artifice the other players were attuned to that I wasn’t.

We’re not in a play. We don’t have a set of lines and cues and lighting configurations to tell approximately the same story for however many weeks we’re popular. Each time you have your individuated stress or trauma or hopes and dream overlaying why you do or don’t engage the gathering one way or another. If you’re always “on” and looking to have your kind of fun or conversation, if you’re me, your confidence and comfort is going to navigate considerably less tactfully the conversation about whether or not Dave Chappelle is transphobic.

I think a big reason I don’t think too much about “expanding my network” is that I know I still have those connected people. I’m one text away from 25 people I haven’t met who are as close to “my people” as I’m going to get. But that’s not what I want to explore.

I feel like I’m running out of words. I need sounds and rhythms and noises modified to analogize a tight neck and wretched gut. My anger isn’t as honestly relayed in a thousand blogs as it might be channeled through Chester Bennington on stadium speakers. My previously-conceived-of angst or anxiety is deeper than that. Quieter. More encapsulating. I didn’t feel right trying to occupy “annoyed” or “angry” or “ungrateful” space walking a couple miles to return my umbrella to a car or staying extra late to a terrible baseball game. I still need to express and create though.

I texted my ex that the garden shed blew over. She sent back, “Ok.” I don’t want to assume she’s functionally abandoned the space, but I don’t really know what else to think. It’s like, of course she did though, right? Nothing I try to enable or support is actually felt or appreciated, so if I saw anything but overgrown bullshit with a blown over shed for all of the time and investment, joke’s on me.

I stopped myself from buying $500 worth of T-shirts last night. I had all the carts at check out. I did the math on time I’d need to spend at work with the extra groups I’ve taken on. I stopped when I considered all the the shirts I’ve already bought. I can go two weeks without doing laundry. I’m still going to shows this year with some of the bands I want merch from. I found it incredibly tempting to buy because of how many were sold out. There are thousands of small shirts many bands I enjoy can’t sell to their fat fans.

Spending money isn’t going to fill the hole. Pretending I need some kind of empathetic or affirmative response from my ex isn’t either. Getting enmeshed with the creatives has points of potential and light, but there’s often a reason those types find their collectives and version of the pageantry that I find reason to violate as quickly as any other.

It’s fucking Tuesday, man. I still have to work tomorrow. My concert schedule slows down considerably this back half of the year, so I have more time to either fight with projects on the land, or drink with creatives. The writer’s strike has helped me catch up on so much TV. I’ve tinkered on my piano and guitars. I even read a chapter in The Boys which I’ve been delaying until I felt I had the proper focus for the better part of a year. 

What do I really want? The insurance to impanel us. The ability to take off. To be out of debt because the debt is laughable, not inevitable, or a several months slog. I want to be able to host my own parties for parties of 1 or 2. I still want to go to bed when I please and wake up the same way.

Every day it feels closer, irrationally so or not. The sum total of my effort and perspective continues to compound and accumulate. I just need these last few pieces to fit.

[991] I'm So Sick

Before I let my brain get too woken up…

It’s safe to say that I live in a fairly perpetual state of disorientation. It isn’t that I don’t have a direction or ideas of the directions I want to go. I feel like I’m trapped. I’ve written about how often I feel “stuck.” Whether I’m citing the practical limitations around a budget or physical limitations of my body, I find myself envious of those who appear to be moving freely about the world. I don’t mean celebrities or rich people. I mean the people who conceived of, built, and began operating the new hospital in town, and every new building on campus between me graduating and today. I mean Jonny Kim who’s the viral Navy Seal, doctor, astronaut by the age of 37.

So much of my self-conception was fueled, innocently enough I’m sure, by my time in school. I don’t think I was particularly “exceptionally” smart, but doing well in school kept me safe, got me praise, money, and like a lot of kids in my era I was told I could grow up to be whatever I wanted. When I “turned it on,” there was little I couldn’t understand or get an A, and when the psychological gains of doing so began to wane, I settled for As and Bs and still way more often than anyone should think about the circumstances for the 4 Cs I got in college.

I was told often, well before I had any concept of what it meant, that I was a “leader.” I don’t know if my parents were just trying to reframe my general obstinate posture or if they recognized a capacity I would later use for the party house and entrepreneurship. Either way, it is deep in my core conception of myself that I don’t just follow along. I don’t “just believe” things. I don’t deny myself a differing view or the opportunity to put my voice to it.

I’m shaped by dozens of formative phrases and incidents of my life. I’m perhaps moved to discuss them because I recently watched Dave Chappelle talk in 2020 about his history and contract issues. He was also full of confidence and potential that was recognized early. He’s at the point in his career where he’s functionally transcending his medium and giving more Carlin-esc speeches-necessary, wise, and still funny-speeches verses doing sets. He was stuck too, in his contract, and then parlayed his fame and love for him into a credible threat and escape.

I make a lot of superficial movement in the world. At bottom, it reduces to spending money. I have money to spend-ish, when I do, it allows me access to the city, parking, venue, restaurants, and less-than-cultivated or prettied-up  picture and video montages of what I’ve been up to. I get a third of the way through any project before the rain starts, budget dries up, heat cranks, or time gets crunchy. It’s become easier over time to notice more psychological gratification in taking an extended lunch or settling in for a show and Candy Crush. Things that started out as pacifying go-go-go anxiety and stress turned into “enjoy it now while you have it.”

I find myself reflexively comparing myself to people like Jonny Kim. Whether or not I’m actually capable of being, or have any genuine desire to be, anything like him. In the least disingenuous way I can say it, fuck the military lol. I still hold respect for doctors, but perhaps ones in different countries who haven’t been co-opted by our corrupt and ignorant system. And I can barely ride several roller coasters back-to-back without feeling pukey, let alone pass the tests NASA requires. Do I want to be like Jonny Kim? No. I want to own myself to the degree of analogous effort and distinction. I want the story of doing so to be a compelling and persistently meaningful personal narrative that helps drive my behavior and focus.

The amount of sacrifice is under-appreciated when it comes to being “high-achieving” or “exceptional.” You don’t do a lot of other things because there’s always a new nuance to incorporate or responsibility to rise to. It doesn’t mean you can’t have, say, a family or hobbies, but it does mean you’re probably feeling like they don’t get the attention you’d like or they might require. It means you now have plugged into the “advance the species” project more than “prioritize me and my life” one. Consciously or unconsciously, you have to believe we can “advance” at all. You have to remain steadfast in your dedication to “helping people.” You have a driving faith-claim that as a source of inspiration and demonstration “things” or “the world” will inch forward and be better overall.

Perhaps this is where I don’t have faith. I appreciate Charlamagne tha God’s recent discussion with Stephen Colbert. He’s persistently that matter-of-fact voice about the chaos and ever-analyzing his in-the-moment experience that only those with the same kind of anxiety can appreciate. We’re on the precipice of losing the country. He gets it. I get it. Noam Chomsky gets it. Historians and some of the more inflammatory voices of commentators and observers do too.

We don’t have people in power who represent us. I’ve watched the country, not just “struggle,” but defy notions of accountability and growth. I don’t make more money each year. I don’t find new friends with more time and opportunities. I find myself escalating my indulgent side. I find myself “wishing” for someone to give me a call to finally release me from my mockery of obligations. I don’t feel as though I have the power to lead myself out of the largest context and consequences.

I can spend a year of my life making phone calls and sending emails and waiting and waiting and waiting and I still can’t find a way to do literally the job I’m doing, but for myself? That’s a beyond-broken system. It’s defying the essence of self-determination, value, and individuality. Then each step you take to “fight back” becomes another self-defeating mockery. How do I discard my observations about addicts and addiction and then with a straight-face tell other professionals, “We don’t take insurance?” Every practice that doesn’t started with taking insurance, and after filtering through hundreds found their reliable self-payers, and closed the door to Medicaid. How do you “speed up” an office that loses your paperwork, an agency that lies to you or has an axe to grind, or follow ever-differing instructions from people not qualified to offer them?

But that’s just my smallest sliver of experience. What if you’re a Florida teacher being told someone observing your classroom for 12 hours is tantamount to your time in school, debt, and professional experience? What if you’re the half of the country or minority group watching the systematic obliteration of your rights? What if you’re a fat kid being told there’s nothing to see or worry about, just keep eating and loving yourself and things will turn out alright? What if you’re a kid with a bullet-proof backpack? What if your small sliver of experience is equally exhausted, desperate, confused, and unable to lead a kind of life that doesn’t suggest futile and pointless struggle as the raging fire dictates the context?

That’s the heart of my restless and distracted soul. I’m not okay. “Things” aren’t good. I feel threatened. I feel sick. I feel immense hatred. And no amount of good books or TV shows are going to make me forget. No amount of skill I demonstrate on an instrument is going to put out the fire. No nerding-out on the history or rounding-out the context is going to erase the ever-present threat stabbing away at any remote confidence I have for our collective survival and understanding of what’s going on. We are not built for it. Individuals can cut paths that peacock a certain respect or intelligence, but “we” don’t exist and the animal that is human is as dumb and annoying as my cat resting on my armchair staring at me, expectant, selfish, ignorant of its motivations and mine.

I’m not okay. “It’s” not okay. “Things” aren’t okay. “We’re” not a thing. The country, if not literally a good portion of the world is on fire. I’m over here doing what? Haphazardly “counseling” those instinctively dosing themselves into oblivion to help cope with the pain? Because being numb with rotten teeth is preferable to medical debt and a big smile as they come to destroy what you’ve worked for or love? We’re not brave enough to even SPEAK!

We won’t even speak. We won’t talk about the big and obvious fucked up things. We won’t do it, ever. Not just for years, but ever. We won’t talk about how we’ve fucked up. We won’t talk about what it will actually take in actual work to change something today, right now, let alone in 10 years. The only people talking are the psychopaths, just as miserable and small and pathetic as we are, but with more fluid motion to exercise their greed and disdain for existence. And we won’t call them greedy and disdainful, we’ll celebrate how much they’ve “earned” and “innovated.” It is forever opposite-day in the mind of the damned. No story will sweep in and account for the deliberate ignorance or sacrifice itself on our behalf.

“Everybody knows there’s a party at the end of the world.”

The fact that I have this perspective and don’t know what it “means” is of ongoing concern. Do I pack up and leave the country? Do I power through my home projects? Do I double-down on the party? Do I make a more concerted effort to recruit and bolster physical or financial defenses? Right now, by default, I’m just playing along by ear. Things certainly “look” normal, as they have in every society the day before shit went crazy. We’re already crazy. It’s already happening, and has been, and we never talk about it. We never share anything but a meme. We don’t vote, we don’t fight unless it’s with a Russian bot, and we don’t really feel more than an overall foreboding that’s best not explored.

The vast majority of the world informing my experience is on some level suicidal. I have a friend actively disengaged from the larger political and historical context and conversation. I can’t blame her. I have professional connections that, even in places of power and relative comfort, can’t or won’t organize or find a momentum of sustained prosperity. I’ve been offering no-rent and creative expression for 3 or 4 years now, and not a single person has been able to enjoy or play with that for longer than a year without the greater anxiety or unaddressed nature of our problems winning the day.

The communication gets resented. The trust never exists. The real work and sacrifice go unacknowledged. The concept of how or why to connect reduced to social media pageantry or compulsion of your genes and cultural expectations. When I talk about being “alone,” it’s that singular lines of blogs like these would occasionally show up on the tongues of those I felt closest to after they were ridiculously drunk. Then, hush. Then, race away and get very busy before turning defensive and angry.

I will never forget when one of my friends said, “I think it’s going to have to be for Trump, man” when we were discussing politics and who to vote for before he was elected. This friend was intelligent, kind-hearted, and just an outsized positive presence on any occasion, but he fell under the spell of the malaise and inarticulate fog. He was, of course, busy and a professional and comes from a “normal” middle-to-upper-middle class background with an extended family and series of things on his mind a million miles away from the word “fascism,” which he’s perfectly capable of understanding intellectually.

But “we” aren’t wise enough to contend with how we aren’t intellectual. We don’t make the time to develop robust systems for determining what information is going to be used in service to our decision making. We watch people like me struggle endlessly to determine inches of movement, and figure it’s a lot easier to plug into the streams of consciousness that already presume to have figured something out. We’ll suicidally sacrifice ourselves with proud demonstrations of how little we appreciate what we’re actually worth. It’s routine. It’s normal. It’s, “Trump, I guess” because he “seems” to resemble the anger and confusion you haven’t been practicing putting better words to.

Barring a black swan event of currently inconceivable means, it’s not getting better. I might have a year or two to escape the country. I might have enough money to buy my way into a graduate program or immigrate to the country somewhere with a home-rehab immigration system. That fucking sucks. That’s fucking despicable. That’s something I’m talking about now, 1 or 2 years early, so when you’re mock “horrified” that coked-out Don Jr. is burning a 10-year-old who had an abortion at the stake in primetime (how “hyperbolic” can I get when the standard is already mass child slaughter?) I don’t fall under your spell.

Purely as an automatic predilection for survival, I complain about clenching my jaw or simple logistics.  I act like there’s a greater nobility or efficacy in attending to day-to-day details. The effort needs to be spent fighting or speaking to the problems dictating my greatest context, but who am I speaking to? What am I fighting against? Should I punch my friend until he comes to his senses? I can’t really help myself from continuing to scream into the silent abyss. Is this how I’ve transformed my conception of “the fight” into a series of indulgences and doing “regular” jobs? I do those jobs just long enough to flirt with getting fired as the microcosm demonstrations of our larger failures of leadership and imagination become too much to bear.

I can’t look away. More importantly, I don’t wish to. I don’t wish I’d stop talking, I wish someone would talk back. I wish I could trust anything about anyone that didn’t reduce to self-protection or indulgence. I can’t. I’m fighting to thrive in a world built on so many lies and confusions to do much of anything but pull out and run is going to feel like a futile mockery. It’s going to keep me as isolated and alone as it’s proven thus far. I can stay angry, or pretend hopeful, or I can make a better escape plan. I can engage the mockery with the ambivalence or play that seem to compete with my best notions of how I’ve conducted myself in the past. I need to start saving.

[984] Dance Monkey Dance

I don’t know that it means anything, but it feels worth mentioning. Today, in two of my groups, two members expressed they were feeling suicidal. They gave full-throated explanations of either the extreme guilt they felt about the people who have been hurt, or their overwhelming depression and anxiety that was making it so they couldn’t get up or out of the house. Neither, mind you, is on the brink of suicide, but both were trending poorly and needed some redirection, questioning, and encouragement. Both looked focused and like something clicked when I told them to put everything on their mind on paper and we can parse through each thing until we get to smaller and smaller bits that feel manageable. Then, I went to see a band who has a famous song that goes, “I wish you would step back from that ledge my friend.”

Seeing so many concerts back-to-back or in relatively quick succession is provoking another series of thoughts. The Third Eye Blind frontman invited the crowd to turn to their neighbor and introduce themselves, and later to put your arm around the person next to you and sing together. One of the HAIM sisters from a few weeks ago said something akin to, “I want you to have the best night of your life!” Few bands not located deep in the metal genre aren’t going to encourage you to clap your hands as the band pulls back and riffs on what an amazing tour it’s been, how strange covid lockdown was, or the privilege of rolling with their supporting acts.

Both scenarios are a show.

In the first show, I play counselor. I use my genuine connection to a hopelessly embittered and resentful existence and certain enthrallment with death to hit a tone of voice, type of word choice, and borrow from my earned experience dealing with a lot of sad people to turn you from desperate chaos into littlest productive or uplifting bite. It’s unfortunate I don’t feel a certain way about that ability. I just know I’m playing my part. These people need healthcare, money, and individual therapists. I’m so much duct tape.

In the second show, there’s a degree of custom and lack of options. Instead of clapping, what? Squawk? I could see the likes of Steaksauce Mustache eliciting a raucous parrot chorus, but that’s not most bands’ vibe. I find encores generally bizarre. There’s the suggestion that, because we all know some or most of the words to a song that’s been playing on the radio for 20+ years, we’re all connected by something real and meaningful as opposed to merely familiar. I did not take a stranger in my arms, for several reasons before implicitly rejecting the premise.

Music is personal. I can sing along to hundreds of songs. I might have a few dozen that have conjured any real excitable or puncturing feeling. If I thought too hard about that, it might be less. But my experience of music isn’t why hundreds of bands I’ve never heard of in genres and languages I don’t listen to can still greatly succeed. Put out 300 songs over 20 or 30 years, keep touring and advertising, and buy off a radio station, you’re likely to get a plurality of people just working the playing field.

Your experience of your feelings is personal. This is why when you tell us you’re feeling suicidal, we don’t panic and try to get you committed, we run you through a few questionnaires. You have the language of “not feeling” or “thinking about suicide” in the manner that you have the songs on the radio or words you’ve been taught in how you relate to the world.

Why am I thinking about this? I’m not searching for anything more or less from my job or the concerts I attend than the money, the “I did that” points, and the ability to talk about new facets and patterns of my experience. My experience of music is not necessarily diminished the more I feel like a scene head or find the live renditions of favorite songs lacking. Nor am I less likely to try to keep someone alive and moving just because I can.

I think I’m attempting to illustrate once more how I’m after that “real” shit. I want to go to a concert where I’m feeling so good and the music is so moving that the crowd starts spontaneously hugging each other. Is that going to be your typical show? Are most people going to be sober? If you’re being honest, is even your favorite band pulling that off? (Okay, maybe Jacob Collier.) You know why I don’t feel like hugging my neighbor? I live in Indiana, and there’s a decent chance they’re a fascist. Because the venues I go to, for their thousands and thousands of people, aren’t a collection of diverse agreeable people singing in unison. It’s people with money, and free time, and sometimes an infuriating degree of ambivalence and entitlement with regard to those around them or what’s happening on stage. I’ve counted like 6 black people and 2 Indians in the 20 thousand I’ve encountered the last few months.

We’re not all in this together. The ones pretending to are sitting down and chatting away through any song released after 1999. Maybe this is why raves and DJs got so popular. You can all take molly and bounce around without even having to pretend to mouth the words to engage in the pageantry.

On the drive, I was watching The History of Comedy. I appreciated Dick Gregory talking about how he knew he was not going to turn the racist tide of America by telling jokes. They discussed Chappelle experiencing the wrong kind of laughter at one of his skits. So many comics discuss their pill regimen or addiction history and the ones who died too young. We’re unified in laughter! So goes that genre and familiar lore. Or, we gravitate towards what we already agree with like we listen to preferred genres of music. Not everyone is in on the jokes or appreciates the art form, but if you’re first to a niche, and you grind, if you don’t ascend to legend, you certainly fit like so many opening bands.

You’re not struggling through the music you like. They aren’t doing you a favor. Insofar that you share networked radio stations or shaky fond memories associated with an album or track is the extent of the connection. There is no shared sacrifice or journey together. You may cling to certain bands as the soundtrack for your whole life, but I’d start speculating something weirder was going on there. I just find myself thinking I’m not going to like the song or artist anymore or less the harder they sell or more completely explain what they think they’re doing or signifying.

You wouldn’t find me crass for claiming to save people’s lives every time they don’t die after saying they want to? For how much time we spend and words we dedicate to describing our experience as some kind of way, we work to ensure it actually is that way so little. You know how you get depressed no matter how much you affirm your love for your kids as the reason you’re still alive? You don’t work to love yourself, so onto entertaining the idea of death and gambling on what that example will set for them. Brilliant.

Listen to your music. Sing your song and tell your jokes. Feel your feelings, and if it helps you find or move on from them, you can write like me. You know what my blogs aren’t doing? Rallying us around thoughtful actionable coalitions working to discuss and move on the ideas nor discuss the themes. You know what you can’t be? The first to say anything you’re soaking in word for word from those around you. You know why we don’t know what really brings us together? We don’t accurately identify, let alone actually try to do the work to share and receive or mutually sacrifice in service to a greater end. It won’t be the bandleader, your counselor, nor Jesus who can do the work for you despite so much of our experience acting incredibly thirsty for so many mythological scapegoats. All you have to do is cut ties with all the lies that you’ve been living in.