Promised You A Miracle

 

He flopped back over onto his left side and let out a loud frustrated groan.  He thought he had gotten past getting pissed off when trying and failing to sleep.  After not being able to sleep for most of his life, he had finally let it go and accepted it.  He had learned to get out of bed, instead of fighting sleep, and try to be productive, or just zone out to the overnight news broadcasts to try to relax.  It was the spiraling thought.  It was his biggest sleep enemy.  Some sort of dreadful anxious notion that would repeat in his mind endlessly, keeping him from sleep and making him agitated.  Generally, when he was younger, these were about trying to solve some problem at school – not wanting to fall behind, or having to deal with a classmate for some reason.  Then it became work shit and sleep became that much more difficult – especially having a job that was never resolved – just a constant continuing cycle of chaos where no sense of accomplishment could ever be felt.  Yet, he had begun to feel better, once he realized that if he just accepted sleeplessness as a part of his life. 

The futility of it all is what made him so upset.  It all reminded him of his past experience with the Pain Management Clinic and the resulting overnight sleep study.  The bizarre study that took place on a Friday night one summer, where he was expected to go to sleep at about 7 in the evening.  They hooked about 500 wires to him and left him in a lightless room, with nothing to do.  According to the unbelievably handsome doctor who he consulted with the following morning, he did actually sleep some, but stayed in the first phase of sleep the entire time.  This is a phase, where the sleeper’s mind is still semi-conscious and they have incredibly vivid visions or dreams.  This phase normally lasts for less than ten minutes, but he laughed as he told Charles that he stayed there much of the night and never delved into the next phase.  He said, that it’s actually more tiring than not sleeping, again with a chuckle, as he looked to be practicing his golf grip on the pointer in his tan hands.  That was it!  Charles didn’t ask any questions either!  It was like six am on a sunny summer Saturday morning, he probably had a tee time too.  The good looking sleep doctor wrote him a prescription for Ambien, which Chuck had tried in the past and for which it had long lost any effectiveness.

Charles laughed to himself as he thought about the old Pain Management Clinic.  It had all started when his normal headaches were becoming so intense that he was struggling to function.  It was a few months after his kidney transplant, and his transplant doctor thought the PMC might be able to help him.  The clinic was designed to address chronic pain from different angles.  A patient was set up with a medical doctor to direct each case, a physical therapist, and a psychiatrist.  I met my team and they immediately referred me to a headache specialist who looked way too much like the early Law & Order detective Lennie Briscoe.  It’s amazing how little we as people know about the brain.  Treating sleep and headaches at that time was to prescribe a series of formerly antidepressant medications, of which none of them helped my headache nor my sleep, so, after a while Dr. Jerry Orbach sent me back to the PMC.  The four people I interacted with there was the receptionist, who was clearly in charge of the entire clinic and who was a voluptuous blonde named Jenna Jameson, who seemed oblivious that she shared the same name as the most well-known porn star at the time.  Charles would save the phone messages from her regarding upcoming appointments – hoping his roommates would listen to them.  His doctor was Dr. Miracle, who was eerily similar to the Orbit Gum spokeswoman with her sharp British accent and early 60s fashion sense, the psychiatrist was a creepy guy who reeked of cigarettes, had a tiny cramped office, greasy hair, and tons of cassette tapes which he had recorded of him saying things quietly over the sounds of a babbling brook or some such.  Chuck’s first and last session with him took place in a tiny windowless office crowded with stacks of file boxes, after it seemed the shrink had inhaled a tuna sandwich.  They were in facing desk chairs only a few feet apart.  Charles was incredibly uncomfortable, while the psychiatrist diagnosed him as needing sleep, so gave him a few of his homemade relaxation tapes.  Lastly, Charles would see a physical therapist each visit, who would generally employ Craniosacral Therapy on him, which would make him incredibly woozy for the rest of the day, and unsurprisingly, she was the one who diagnosed and solved his headache issues. 

 

He was now dreaming.  He could tell, because he was about four or five years old and there was his mom walking behind him.  She was wearing dark sunglasses.  Beside him was his childhood friend, Jon, whose family lived across the street in their old neighborhood.  They seemed to be at a carnival of some sort.  Dried and pressed grass beneath their feet, twirling rides all about, the smell of burned grease and oil.  He was wearing sandals with white socks and blue shorts.  He had a t-shirt on underneath the green cardigan sweater his grandmother had knitted him.  He was also wearing a blue bucket hat, which he had loved.  He spotted another kid nearby with an ice cream cone shoved up underneath his nose.  He immediately thought about asking his mom for one, but decided against it, when he realized that he was carrying something.  He had a scrapbook in his hands.  Within the context of the dream, he knew that it was his.  His soon to be Kindergarten teacher and his mom had started this book for him.  Inside were projects for him to work on.  It contained reading assignments, art to draw and color, things to read and places to write about various things.

His mom had not been around the family for a short while, and had taken this book with her, but now she was back and the book had some new pages.  The carnival seemed to be near the Hollywood District in Portland.  They had likely walked down the hill from their neighborhood to get there.  It seemed to be themed around movie and TV characters who were based in Portland.  There was a ride/exhibit that featured odd random characters from the old primetime cartoon the Flintstones, who were apparently Portland born.  Strange, but very Portland.  Our inferiority complex runs deep.  Our local news will report about an earthquake in Istanbul or somewhere and relate it to our quake readiness for “when the big one comes.”  They always find some reason to find a NW connection – no matter how loose – to any news positive or not

This was different from any dream he had ever had with his mom.  The only dreams she ever showed up in were the occasional dreams where she would re-appear in his life, such as it is now.  She hadn’t died.  Instead she had gone into hiding for all of these years.  In other words, she had chosen to leave.  These were disturbing, hurtful and very realistic dreams that he hated.  Over the years, he had worked to try to control his dreams, but in this light state of sleep, his influence generally just woke him.  In the case of disturbing dreams like these, he was okay with that.

His mom used to discuss various controversial subjects with him.  The first one he remembered was when Oregon passed a mandatory seatbelt law, but he remembered long discussions regarding hunting, clear cutting forests versus preserving them, the death penalty, abortion, and even daylight savings time.  She would let him come to his own conclusions, would never raise her voice or try to sway his decision, but would play devil’s advocate to test his newly found stances no matter the side he had chosen.  He learned a lot and always appreciated her approach.  It made him feel important.

He sat next to her on a park bench.  Jon, and his older sister Michelle, were waiting in line to ride a Merry-Go-Round made up of Portland based cartoon dinosaurs.  He was looking at his scrapbook.  His mom had added some pages about accepting death.  He turned to her and asked her what these were for, and she said that it was time to get back home.  All of us kids were due at our elderly neighbor’s house, the Kimberly’s.  The childless elderly couple often took care of the young kids in the neighborhood and they spoiled all of us.  We were always welcome to come in for cookies or candy, or play basketball in their driveway, or watch their television.  They were super nice.  He tried to ask his mom again regarding the death pages in the scrapbook.  His semi-conscious self wondered if these were a warning years too late?  This was before his grandmother had passed and all of the dying began.  Were they preparing him for an upcoming loss of someone close in his life now?  Were they for his own life?    His attempt to control the dream stirred him to wake up and feel more exhausted than before he laid down.

Keep on Working

 

Every September for the past several years, I have posted hyper-enthusiastic posts regarding my annual vacation time spent attending the annual visit to Portland by the LPGA (Ladies Professional Golf Association).  Except for last year.  Last year, I was hobbled too much by my medical condition, the tournament was moved to a terrible location and it was mostly rained out.  I did try to attend one day, but the course was simply too hilly.  It was upsetting, but I kept telling myself: next year.

Everything started falling in to place.  The tournament is set to return to its usual location at Columbia Edgewater CC and return period.  A new sponsor has signed on (AmazingCre – whatever that is), and the field looks to be loaded with stars.  However, I am not ready.  Generally, I get involved for the entire week.  I have volunteered to caddie for the two Pro-Ams and attend from dawn until near dusk all four rounds of the tournament.  I genuinely love it.  Perhaps too much!  Every year, I realize that I feel truly at home out there and feel great!  It makes me giddy!  I have always been able to overcome my physical limitations and push through and walk those hills repeatedly in the sunshine.  I had considered buying what they call Champion’s Club tickets (which are like luxury box seats in an arena (food and beverages are provided), but these seats overlooking the final hole are now too expensive for me to consider, even though I have bought them in the past.  I most enjoy following and rooting on my favorite players as they make their way around the course, but had considered the Champion’s Club seats as an alternative due to my current disabled state.  Unfortunately, they priced this particular riff raff out of the market, and the realization that the walk from the adjacent field parking lot to the golf course would likely be too difficult.

Now, on the eve of the tournament, I find myself truly lost.  I don’t carry cable TV anymore, so I will miss the TV coverage and I won’t get to see the golf and the trials and triumphs that take place everywhere on the course.  It is depressing.  To most, it likely sounds silly.  Yet to me, it’s emblematic of where I am now.  So much of who I am and what I do, or have always done, is gone.  Live music?  Gone.  I know there are ways to make some of these things happen, but it is all just too much for me to handle at this point.  I’m in mourning for what I used to be able to do and have not yet figured out what’s next.  I find myself sinking deeper and deeper into depression and this event that I always find so important and so rejuvenating has slipped through my hands for a second year in a row.

Next Year.  There’s always next year.  Gotta keep on working.

Lonely is an Eyesore

 

Remember the band Danny Wilson?  They were around during the late 80s and a true one hit wonder.  Danny Wilson was not a person.  It was the name of the band.  I remember that much.  I kind of remembered their one minor hit, “Mary’s Prayer.”  It was the only song of theirs that I ever consciously knew.  For some reason, one that I do not understand, I’ve been thinking about that song lately.  Sometime last week, I dialed up YouTube and looked up that music video.  I couldn’t remember ever having seen it before, but it has been 33 years since it was in my consciousness.  It had been so long that the song hadn’t found its way into my head, because I honestly couldn’t quite remember how it went.  It was simply inexplicably in my thoughts as a thing.  It turns out that it’s a pretty good song, which is surprising since I so often can’t seem to prevent songs that I do not like from repeating in my head for weeks on end (this means you Cher and your “If I could Turn Back Time” and “Believe,” Live and your “Lightning Crashes,” and your horrific “Lovin’ Every Minute of it” by Loverboy, among many others).  After watching the video, which is very fashion conscious, I crawled into the rabbit hole and watched several videos from Swing Out Sister and Alphabet City era ABC, during that period during the late 80s when the UK was pumping out endless streams of lite jazz/pop hybrid artists that were later coined as sophisti-pop.  They emerged from the shadows of the Style council, Spandau Ballet, Sade and eventually morphed into forgettable things like Curiosity Killed the Cat and Johnny Hates Jazz.  Luckily my journey morphed as well.  I stopped with ABC and veered toward the 80s Liverpool bands I loved so much back then.  As a long awaited rain fell down outside, I got chills listening to old Julian Cope, Echo and the Bunnymen, and the Wild Swans.

 

I ended up listening to all of Bringing Home the Ashes, the long awaited debut album from the Wild Swans, which was easily my favorite album of 1988, and really one of my favorites of all time.  The stunning guitar work from Jeremy Kelly is absolutely immaculate.  His clearly plucked dreamy melodies and solos are the kind that my ears still seek from music to this day.  The album is also layered with a disconcerting background howl, like the sound of a distant warning horn calling out through a dense fog or smoke.  These wonderful guitar sounds blend perfectly with band leader Paul Simpson’s romantic and poetic lyrics, which are dripping with powerful imagery, heartbreaking snapshots of life amongst the downtrodden, and yet they’re filled with optimism for a better future.  The Wild Swans created a cohesive LP that begs to be heard from start to finish and, at least in my case, listened to over and over again, as I have continued to do. 

This album captured my ears at a time when my passion for music was growing exponentially by the week, and was a massive part in setting the stage for music as my go to companion for all occasions, especially those dark, inconsolable moments of heartache and heartbreak when it is most difficult to reach out.  Music is more reliable and present than any friend or family member ever could be, but, as I’ve learned this year, it cannot replace human companionship.  As this pandemic has continued on for month after month, I have found that not even music has been able to fully lift me up above the oppressive current of bleakness that keeps washing over all of us.  Isolation is hard enough to take, especially while still fully aware of the barrage of bad news happening to the planet, to people in our communities, people afar, and to those close to us – all while feeling absolutely helpless.

 

Listening to these songs from so long ago brought back a memory I haven’t considered since they were still fairly new.  Sometime during my high school years, I began to post excerpts of song lyrics from many of the songs that were impacting me at that time.  Making mix tapes for people, DJing School dances, babbling endlessly about music, and wearing concert t-shirts nearly every day, apparently, was not enough.  It was simple, I would take a blank sheet of paper and write out the lyric quote with blue and/or black Bic pens and attribute the words to the band, and at the start of the school day I would tape a sheet to the outside of my locker.  It didn’t happen every day, I do not remember what year it began, or how long I continued to do this.  The Wild Swans were well represented, as were the Smiths, the Cure, Depeche Mode, Sonic Youth, Husker Du, the Replacements, Swans, New Model Army, the Go-Betweens, Pixies, and many others.  There was a lot of Joy Division as well – a lot of Joy Division.  I think the first one I ever posted was from Throwing Muses from their song “Fish”:

“Lonely is as lonely does

Lonely is an eyesore” 

There was no particular reason for these sheets, other than possibly a lame advertisement attempting to get my classmates curious about the sources of these cryptic words.  I think what kept me doing it is that no one really ever said anything about them.  One time, after a Morrissey quote had been set in place, Mrs. Boyden, the advanced level math and French teacher told me that she thought the words were too whiney.  Fair enough.  I’m pretty sure I replied with a chuckle and a “Yah!”  Otherwise, it was radio silence.  Often times, the posting would disappear sometime during the school day, or get damaged – torn, shredded, and stomped on, as if it (or I) rubbed someone the wrong way.  I was never alerted as to why in either case.  Again, no one ever approached me to find out what the hell I was doing.  The silence only encouraged me to continue mildly bemused, until I eventually got bored and the whole thing petered out.

Hearing those old tunes may have been an unconscious attempt to rekindle that love and passion for music (cue “If I Could Turn Back Time”) that has been dwindling rapidly from my life.  Starting from scratch.  It has helped a little.  I’ve actually turned my stereo on a few times since to listen to an album or three since that rainy afternoon last week, after going several weeks without doing so.  It’s fascinating to consider the massive fire that ignited in me back then which has burned relentlessly all of these years.  Music has taken me on many adventures, down many different roads, and has exposed me to so much. Many of my friendships have been earned through a shared passion for music.  I have learned more than I could have ever imagined.  It has expanded my very small world.  It’s difficult for me to imagine all of that in tatters like one of those lyric posters that I used to find scattered across the floor of the high school hallway near my locker.  To be honest, I don’t have a plan B.  I know a lot of us are struggling dealing with this pandemic.  Personally, I went in already really depressed.  I'm used to crawling out of the darkness through music.  Without the electric infusion I’ve always received from the music I love, I do not know how to face life.

Don't Give Up

As a kid, curvy roadways used to make me violently ill.  There’s something about the constant turning, causing the stomach to shift from side to side.  It seems like every time my family took out on a winding road trip, it would be either burning hot outside, or damp outside, so the car interior was always warm and muggy, so the nausea of the rocking back and forth - sliding a little along the vinyl back seat – unsecured by a seat belt, came along with uncomfortable sweats.  Recently, I drove through Newberg, a small town about 25 miles southwest of Portland.  I will always associate Newberg with car sickness.  When my family moved from Portland to the Oregon coast, we passed through and I asked if we could stop, because I thought that I was going to throw up.  The deep breathing my mom suggested was not working.  We stopped off at a donut shop.  It was a rainy and humid mid-morning.  A common rainy Oregon day: wet and gloomy and strangely warm and humid.  The kind where you need a jacket to keep your clothes dry, but you don’t really want to wear more layers.  The four of us sat inside the donut shop with a few plain round cake treats in the center of the table.  My dad seemed to have a thing about ordering the plainest donuts in the world.  If I think back on it, his decision was likely partially based on the fact that they were the cheapest option, but it’s just as likely that his decision was to not offend anyone’s tastes, which always had the opposite effect.  My brother and I each had a half pint carton of milk and my parents had styrofoam cups of coffee.  My stomach was mildly better, but my head was still spinning and I felt like I was burning from the inside, which I remember because my dad was getting impatient and wanted to get back on the road.  I chewed the same bite of that donut for what seemed like hours, until it became a viscous goo that wadded up in the crevices of my gums with no intention of going anywhere near my throat.  I felt like I would feel years later when I experienced my first tragic hangover and every one after that.  I stared at the milk.  I hate milk.  I always hated milk.  I was always being given milk and I could not figure out why.  My mom had opened it for me, so I was afraid I would get lectured about waste, but luckily my bother chugged it down with his strangely amplified swallowing noises.  Glug Glug Glug.  Welcome to Newberg.

Why was I passing through Newberg?  I’m not really sure.  I have made reasons that take me to or through Yamhill County four weekends in a row.  This most recent trip, I took a route I haven’t used in years, after having driven back and forth through there countless times as part of that two hour trek from Lincoln City to Portland and back.  Not far from where I remember that now long gone donut shop, I turned right onto a highway I don’t think I’ve ever noticed before.  It was a narrow two lane road that immediately began drifting back and forth needlessly.  Though I no longer seem to get car sick, I still don’t appreciate these types of roads.  I don’t have a particular affinity for driving, beyond the convenience it provides, so it all feels like too much work.  Yet, here I’ve been spending parts of my weekends driving through the countryside.  I suppose it’s a way to get out of the house responsibly during the Covid lockdown.  It’s also been a place I’ve imagined as an escape over the last several years.  I explained this a couple of years ago in the post Jennifer She Said.  The rustic Yamhill County has become a wine connoisseur hotspot since those days of plain donuts and car sickness, yet it has retained its quiet rural time capsule aesthetic.  It is still sprinkled with tiny towns with broken streets often slowed down by commuting tractors creeping past small local markets, dive bars, tiny schoolhouses, and now the occasional fancy tasting room for a nearby vineyard.  The escape daydreams started popping into my head with the image of living alone in some small house, working evenings at a small local pizza shop pouring pitchers of beer for parents after a local high school game, sharing odd philosophical notions or inventing on gossip to the locals.  I’d imagine I’d spend my days writing – believing that I actually had the talent and the will, and possibly hosting a local radio trade show, trying to sell or trade off Orville’s rusty back hoe or Thelma’s old claw foot bathtub that’s been sitting out back for the past 20 years and maybe spinning Shoegaze records for the farmers to enjoy.  Of course, these ideas hinge on some alternate reality where towns of less than a thousand people would have a radio station, the pizza place was still in business, and that I could survive on minimal wages, no healthcare coverage, or a nearby massive medical staff of specialists to manage my wonderful genetic syndrome.  The alternate vision?  That one involves going out to some random field at the edge of a forest to die in that peaceful setting.  I suppose it could be considered alarming that I keep finding myself returning there every week, but I have no plan.  No plan at all.

The day before, I was at the work office when a full on panic attack struck me.  I suddenly could not catch my breath, I became light-headed, and an overwhelming feeling of alarm surged through me like a lightning strike.  I do not blame my job directly, though I’m pretty sure it was triggered by a flash flood of the usual insane vague emails I so often receive, full of demands that I rarely have not been provided the proper tools to address.  These messages tapped into the incredible weight of anxiety that is already in place and has become intolerable.  A lot of us are dealing with anxiety, uncertainty, and isolation during these past few months of pandemic lockdown, and I have not been immune.  I honestly thought when this all began to disrupt our lives, that I would manage fairly well, since I have spent most of my life in a kind of self-imposed lockdown.  I could not have been more incorrect.  I have been battling depression for the past several years, made more acute after my 2015 Halloween hemorrhagic stroke, and these past few months have absolutely exacerbated all of my greatest fears.  I have been mostly cut off from my small group of loved ones who I rely on for support and therefore am spending way too much time dwelling on the emptiness that I feel.  Consciously and logically, I know that I can make decisions to choose to see the positive, but my brain will not allow these things.  Instead, I am left terrified, hopeless, and listless – powerless to affect change.  When any additional challenge passes my way, like the work emails, the bottom drops out and I feel like I’m free falling.  The only option that is to surrender and allow the inevitable crash to happen.  

About six miles in to my journey along this recently discovered highway I turned onto, I had my window down, and I was trying to feel relaxed by the breeze whipping into my face.  The music of Russian trio акульи слёзы (Shark’s Tears:  https://sharkstears.bandcamp.com/music ) was loudly enveloping me like a mournful blanket of melancholy.  As I approached an actual fork in the road, I veered to the right and up a slope into a forested stretch – away from the open fields of the previous couple of miles.  It was there, along the roadside, at the end of a tiny gravel driveway, I spotted a plain white campaign style yard sign with block letters reading “Don’t Give Up.”  I began gasping for breath again.  Would I begin to hyperventilate like I had the day before?  I could feel blood rush into my sinuses pressing in like a punch to the nose.  The sign brought to mind memories of the Frankie Goes to Hollywood “Frankie Says” slogans that they so brilliantly used to promote their music back when I was first beginning to spend all of my money on records.  I’m not sure if this flashback was the cause of the sudden emotional reaction, or because the sign was so unexpected, like a cosmic message placed there along my unplanned path to put my mind at ease.  I began to think about the Peter Gabriel / Kate Bush "Don't Give Up" duet.  It was a song that I adored when So was first released.  It tugged at the heartstrings and shone like a beacon of hope.  As close as I possibly could, I identified as a young teen with the Peter Gabriel character of the song, and longed for the soothing, comforting voice of the Kate Bush character to guide me back from the proverbial ledge.  The older and more jaded I became, the less effective the song.  It was too contrived, almost to the point of pure cheese - but that bass-line is impeccable.  Sort of like Depeche Mode’s “Blasphemous Rumours,” which is so heavy handed that when the life support machine sound effects come in like Darth Vader having an asthmatic attack, I can’t help but laugh, despite concurring with the song’s message that there is no such thing as fair and that there is no spiritual grand plan.  There is no plan at all. 

Soon I was back onto a bigger and straighter highway heading back to where I live.  Knowing that I was going back, pushed my thoughts far from the hopeful encouragement of the "Don't Give Up" sign, or is it an unrealistic command?  The realization that nothing is changing for the better only began to fuel my urgent desperation for escape and the inability to know how.  I began to feel completely exhausted.  The lids of my eyes began to linger against each other when I blinked.  The image of driving off the road into the strange swampy field adjacent to the road passed through my thoughts, but instead I pulled onto the shoulder, got out and leaned against the car, and was again overcome by uncontrolled panic.  Erratic breathing, nausea and pressure built up from within so quickly that I thought I might burst.  This was a new kind of car sickness.  I stayed there for a long time, as I began to calm down.  I fought off the urge to lie down on the blacktop next to the fog line and drift off to sleep.  Instead I checked my phone.  No messages.  

Why has this time now been so difficult to deal with?  I have been through a lot of challenging times, I have always found a way to battle through.  When my life has been in the balance with a myriad of emergency health struggles, I have been a fighter.  I have refused to give in.  I have never worked harder, than I do when I have had to recover from devastating surgeries and debilitating medications.  During my three years of dialysis, I was defiant and challenged myself to continue to live life as if I was healthy and wasn’t spending 4-5 hours every other day being tortured.  I was not going to give up.  Perhaps, during those times, the struggle was tangible.  I had something in front of me to deal with directly.  I had timelines and goals.  Relearning what once were simple tasks, allowed me to take heart in seeing progress.  I feel none of that promise anymore and I do not know what to do.  This is like trying to fight my own shadow.  How do people turn this around?  It does not seem possible?

I want to thank the few folks out there who know that I am in a dark place and have reached out to offer support (I hope you know who you are).  It means more to me than I can ever express.  I also want to apologize for being a burden.  I would not have made it this far without you.  I do not wish to push my problems onto anyone and would rather be a positive part of your lives.  I’m just unsure of how to get there.  

It Isn't Forever

Several years ago my friend Mindy offered both of us a writing challenge.  The topic was making a mix-tape for a person one doesn’t know.  We both wrote fictional stories around this notion, and even though they were fictional, I believe the seeds of both stories contained nuggets of tragic truth.  I know mine did.  Creating mix tapes, especially during my teens and twenties was a passion for me.  They were important for personal use and for connecting with friends.  Plus, they are legendarily supposed to be some sort of powerful romantic audio love letter that can and will win the heart of a crush.  It makes for a magical idea, but I’m not so sure of its actual effectiveness.  It never stopped me from daydreaming about this possibility. 

Mix tapes (or the modern equivalent – CD, or more likely, streaming playlist) were always important to me.  I have always made them. It has been going on for even longer than I’ve been buying music. They used to come along fast and furious. I could and have cranked them out for myself to listen to in the car, or Walkman or to simply catalogue a moment in time.  In 1986, on a school night, for no apparent reason, I created a tape for my own enjoyment titled October 18, 1986 (the rainy evening it was born), and it included three songs named “Shame.”  This became an annual tradition for a few years – all containing at least one song titled “Shame” (that’s a lot of shame), and then was reborn as a CD series after receiving a kidney transplant on an October 18^th.  Mostly though, these mixes have been made for friends, co-workers, classmates, and relatives. I’m not sure why, other than my near psychotic need to share my love of music. What better way is there than sharing the actual music?  It’s much more effective than my efforts to write about it.  Perhaps all of this has been practice for the dream scenario mentioned above (and sadly rarely ever implemented) – the mix tape for a crush or a girlfriend.

During this Covid-19 pandemic home time, like so many, I’ve been purging junk that is taking up space around my place.  I’ve been browsing through a giant stack of old spiral notebooks, mostly dating back to 1991-93, full of writing - old record reviews, short stories, several drafts of a mission statement of sorts for the fledgling This Wreckage ‘zine, a disturbing number of lists of personal single and album rankings - my own strange version of Billboard countdowns, and a few sketched out song lists for potential mix tapes.  Unfortunately, there is no sign of a playlist for a particular mix tape that I made that has become legendary in my mind.  It’s a mix I made for a girl, where I laid everything bare.  A collection of songs that were able to break my heart and thrill me with shivers.  If only I could hear that collection again.  Sadly, I do not remember what exactly wound up on that Maxell cassette.  I have some ideas and some pretty sures, but with too much alone time on my hands, I have become obsessed with the notion of recreating this long forgotten mix.

Nineteen Ninety One was a really difficult year for me.  I had to drop out of college and move back home to the isolation of the Oregon coast, due to my mom’s serious health issues that would lead her down the road of undergoing long distance kidney dialysis (the closest clinic was at least an hour away from our home) and seriously declining health, leading to her unfortunate passing nine months later.  Plus I had my own related health problems (genetics!) that landed me in the hospital for about a month, due to a botched surgery.  Let’s just say that recovery was slow and painful.  It felt like the table my life resided on had been flipped over suddenly, leaving me blindly searching for some sort of solid ground to stand on.  So, I did what I had mostly done up to that point in life, I shoved all the pain, fear, and uncertainty down into my gut and tried to rebuild some sort of foundation to stand on.

The following year found me back at my High School-era job making pizzas, shuffling through life, creating a handful of Xeroxed ‘zines with Wil and trying to get them some exposure, and then eventually returning to a different school in Seattle that fall for three months.  Why three months?  Well, in December, I found out that I needed another surgery, so at the end of 1992 I packed everything up and moved back home, which honestly didn’t feel like much of a home anymore.

For much of my late teenage years and into my twenties, I battled depression.  I always chalked it up to the tumultuous times that young adults are always told about, you know, never fitting in, not cool enough, no love life, no taste for partying, spending most of my time alone, etc.  No big deal.  Swallow it down.  Rinse and repeat.  Hold onto my nature of being quiet and even keeled.  Yet, this time, after dealing with another major surgery, things were different.  I began to talk more, I began sharing my thoughts, and my insecurities.  I became an open book.  Once I returned to work at the old pizza joint, I remember being a 21-22 year old, working with a lot of 15-16 year olds, and I felt like a complete and utter failure.  Many of my friends were closing in on their college graduations and here I was in the local teenage hangout asking about the town gossip from a boy who was still a year away from shaving once a month.  That kid became a proxy therapist for me as I blabbered on and on about how life sucks and why.  I could no longer hide my depression - my total sense of loss.  Everything bubbled up to the surface. 

Now that I had become an open wound, a raw nerve, I began to yearn for my life from two-plus years prior.  I missed the idea of possibility, potential, and hope.  I started to reach out to the few people I knew from school, which included a young woman who, during my dark years away, had become to mean the world to me.  I couldn’t get her out of my mind.  She became some sort of ideal who inspired me to become a better person.  I can see it in those This Wreckage mission statement rough drafts I tossed recently.  There was a desire to broaden my horizons, connect with people, and to offer a place for open expression.  It was about this time the mix-tape plan hatched in my head.  I would mail it to her and it would be a compilation that laid out the story of my scrambled emotions and yearning heart and to let her know how important she is.

 

This is where things get hazy.  I have a feeling that I opened the tape with the solo live rendition of Mark Eitzel’s “Firefly.”  I had been obsessed with that whole album (Songs of Love Live), and that song in particular for a nearly couple of years by that point.  Though, Eitzel’s sad sack “Thanks for coming” that opens the song, or the “I’m always fucking this part up” apology during his guitar bridge, have become repeated jokes over the years within the small circle of my friends.  It’s the warbles and imperfections of his soaring repeated howls over his loss (“Where did you go?”) of a loved one has made people I’ve shared it with laugh, albeit uncomfortably.  It’s a heart wrenching song that never fails to send debilitating shivers down my spine.  That temporary notion of fireflies was strong in those times, and I think I likely bookended things and closed the tape with the Magnetic Fields’ beautiful “100,000 Fireflies.”  Long before Stephin Merritt graced most of his songs with his droll baritone, and every album would be based on some sort of gimmick, his songs were sung by the folk-sounding Susan Anway, whose voice managed to infuse the words with a simple melancholy.  I purchased the 7” single for this song during the height of my love of loud, fast, abrasive music (industrial, hardcore, noise).  However, this quiet, fragile, unique sounding song about the bittersweet nature of love couldn’t have been a more perfect representation of my mindset.

“I went out to the forest and caught
A 100, 000 fireflies
As they ricochet 'round my room
They remind me of your starry eyes
Someone else's might not have made me so sad
But this is the worst night I ever had"

 

Elsewhere, I’d like to imagine that I put on something by the Field Mice whose plaintive uncomplicated songs are the type that no one is supposed to like, because it's too hard to admit their sheer vulnerability have such much emotional power. I’m afraid the spare plea for physical contact of “It Isn’t Forever” was the choice I may have made for this collection.  It’s a song that begs to be heard, while alone, late at night, when the last thing in the world you want is to be alone.  “It Isn’t Forever” alternates quiet verses of longing with loud abrasive instrumental passages that, like the title, display the all too often fleeting nature of intimacy.

 

I must have also put on the majestic and invigorating love song “Sunshine Smile” from Adorable, because it was this girl’s electric eyes that captured my initial attention, dropped my jaw, froze me in place, and placed about 100,000 fireflies ablaze in my stomach.  I cannot hear this song without thinking of her.  Speaking of which, I would’ve been remiss if I hadn’t have placed Ride’s crashing single “Taste” onto this tape.  Again, the chaotic burst of pure energy that drives the song, Laurence Colbert’s unbelievable rollicking attack on the drums, and the ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ that come in about 30 seconds into the song make for the exact representation of what was going inside my mind and body every time I was anywhere near her presence, and for long after.  It doesn't hurt that "Taste" was released not long after that first time I was awestruck by her.  It became my constant adrenalized soundtrack to guide me through her presence.

 

There’s a chance I may have doubled down on the Mark Eitzel pain, when he moonlighted for a few songs as the vocalist for the creative instrumental band Toiling Midgets.  The turmoil and self-flagellation that he goes through in the searing “Golden Frog” can only end with a repeated conclusion to himself “you were weak.”  A feeling that I often felt of myself then and now.  The anthem of someone who is often too afraid to take chances in order not to disrupt whatever tiny fragments of comfort remain. 

A good balancing follow-up to that abasement could’ve been “Awesome Sky” from Boston punk rockers Moving Targets.  I'm about 87% certain that this amazing instrumental was near the end of side A of the mix.  Despite being absent lyrics, this song may have encapsulated my emotions better than all of the other soul-baring lyrical songs included.  Its restless energy, its earnest search for that glimpse of an 'awesome sky' that keeps getting momentarily obscured by something. Once we reach that triumphant sight (what a chorus!) the song reaches incredible heights like a stellar sunset poking out between clouds or over a magnificent horizon.  Yet like the sun disappearing, the song quietly runs out of steam and disappears.  Gone for good.  Leaving us astonished and inspired.

It’s difficult to know how I filled all 90 minutes of this tape.  Could I have gone for it and crammed it entirely with spirit shredding content?  Was I that willing to be exposed?  Perhaps I threw on something such as Concrete Blonde’s delectable wizened cover of Leonard Cohen’s remarkable “Everybody Knows,” to keep the thread alive but not so damn direct, or the surprisingly groovy and tender love song to planet Earth: “Living in the Rose,” from the normally political and intense New Model Army – a song that would’ve been brand new at that time.  I had to have included something from the Sundays too.  They were and are one of my all-time favorites who wrote a ton of the types of songs to fill this brand of mix-tape.  I imagine that I would’ve snuck the stunningly beautiful and brief b-side “Noise,” an ode to silence and solitude on there as a tasty set up for their second album highlight “Goodbye.”  The first single to follow up their flawless debut is indescribably pretty as it builds to a satisfying and dramatic climax, before ending with the inevitable cold send off to her now former lover.  A dose of reality crashes into the dreams of heaven.  That was it.  A goodbye wasn’t needed in this case.  It was over before it had a chance to begin.

 

These songs I’ve mentioned are merely educated guesses as to what made it onto that tape.  I remember dubbing it on a lazy music filled sunny spring afternoon.  I distinctly remember being abuzz from the emotional impact the lovelorn songs had over me after completion.  I remember feeling completely despondent, yet alive with an unidentifiable sense of accomplishment.  This recorded cry for attention was likely a terrible mistake, but I knew I had to do something.  I was bursting with love to give and utterly incapable of believing the notion that I could ever receive that kind of love in return.  I could not and still cannot imagine it, so the whole thing was an exercise in futility. 

 

By the time autumn of that year came around, I had gone back to bottling everything up.  I nearly stopped speaking entirely.  An overwhelming sense of loss and emptiness swallowed me.  A callus formed around me creating a numbness that still encompasses me to this day.  I have been smashing frustrations, disappointments, sadness, and illness into my gut for so long that there is no room for anything else.  The bubbling over anxiousness, excitement, passion, and most important, anticipation that filled that mix tape and the reason behind it stand as a symbol for everything I feel I’m missing.  I think the idea of recreating that grouping of particular songs, despite the sorrow attached to them, is a tiny spark of life buried deep within my clouded mind fighting to get out.

I’m not sure it can.

Withdraw

Fresh

Withdraw

(Specialist Subject)

There are a few album covers in the music collection I’ve been amassing for the last 35 years or so that are photographs taken from inside a home looking toward a window or two.  There is something so appealing and intimate about this.  From the get go, one feels invited and welcomed.  As I listen to Withdraw for the 400^th time this week, I find myself getting lost in the cover photo.  I feel like I’m visiting an old friend, sitting in a comfy chair looking out the windows towards the setting sun.  I’m admiring how the plants’ leaves turn toward the light and wish I could absorb it’s nurturing power in the same way.

Withdraw is the second album from UK four piece Fresh, and once again, I am catching up with another band (debut album ordered!).  Not only is this album as inviting as the cover suggests, with its sharp, short, bright pop songs, but songwriter Kathryn Woods’ lyrics are as intimate and personal as a conversation with your best friend.  It all feels very real and powerful.  A lot of bands have the upbeat/happy albums, or more accurately, happy and or sad songs, or there’s the very serious depressing songs that sound upbeat and joyful, but Fresh cram all of these things into two minute songs without sacrificing melodicism.  The clearest example of this is the exciting and momentous sounding “Nervous Energy,” where the first verse feels triumphant (“giving hi-fives out of a moving van / trying to soak up every moment I can”), but then we quickly learn in the second verse that maybe this move is not so welcome (“wishing things we back to what they were / feeling suicidal nobody cares”), and that something is deeply wrong.  There is a sense of uncomfortable transition and of low self-esteem throughout this brief album, along with a strong determination to overcome these issues that make Fresh defiant and powerful, instead of pitiful.  A move is again tackled in the endlessly catchy “Going to Brighton,” but this time Woods tackles the notion with a positive tenacity (“I feel a fire inside me” / “I refuse to be let down”).  On “In Over My Head” Woods admits that she’s looking for security, despite the move (“I just wanna feel safe in my own bed / the rest of my life beckons up ahead / I’ve just got to embrace it”).  On the other hand, in “New Girl,” Woods is restless and doesn’t want to stay put as her depression sets in (“woke up last night / with tears in my eyes / because I am fundamentally unlovable / packing an overnight bag / wish I could never come back”).

Elsewhere, the beautifully touching acoustic “Nothing” breaks hearts with the repeated refrain “everyday I tell myself that I am nothing,” yet again, Woods fights this with the hope that one day she will tell herself that she is “glowing.”  For those of us with that negative self-opinion, this is easier said than done, but you can sense her determination to make it happen which feels incredibly encouraging, as does that lovely soothing trumpet at the end.  In the breezy “No Thanks,” we find Kathryn taking a firm stand regarding her resiliency and strength (“I am fire and light / I am fine on my own”), despite her insecurities.

I find this all so damn relatable, because even though I feel a strong sense of doom and gloom weighing me down pretty much all of the time, I find that I can still laugh and find moments of joy and functionality.  I’m sure I’m not on my own with this and it is incredibly refreshing to encounter such vibrant music adorning these nakedly honest lyrics.  Withdraw is a fun album to crank up the volume out in the summer sunshine, and it can also keep you company with understanding through those moments when you’re having “dark thoughts again.”

I’m tapping into the lyrics here, perhaps too much, because these kids bring the tunes!  There is a tangible joy in their performances that infuse these songs with electricity.  Myles McCabe’s guitar work is stellar throughout, while the rhythm section of George Phillips (bass) and Daniel Goldberg (drums) are tight.  The opening title track feels like a crashing mess – not far removed from flirting’s psychological dramas, while “Willa” begs for frequent repeated listens at high volume, and I can’t get through this without acknowledging the “Summer Nights” (Grease) referencing pop song “Punisher.” 

I cannot recommend Withdraw enough!  Meanwhile, I will continue listening to the album, as I gaze out the windows on the cover and wait for my copy of the first album to arrive in the mail.

(https://freshpunks.bandcamp.com/)

Fresh "Going to Brighton"

Jennifer She Said

During the summer of 2014 there was a big local news story about a woman who went missing.  A late 30s wife and mother of two young kids.  The story was riveting as it unfolded.  She was last seen buying a few small items at a pharmacy and filling up her car’s gas tank.  If I remember correctly, there were some clues that she might’ve been spotted in the San Juan Islands area.  Every day, each local news channel had reporters on the various scenes with updates – treating this as a likely abduction.  Then, a couple of weeks later, she was found near her car on a secluded country road in Yamhill County not terribly far from where she went missing.  She had committed suicide.  Because of the personal nature of suicide and the media’s strange way of covering suicides, the coverage abruptly ended the day her body was discovered.  The media generally chooses not to cover suicides of everyday people to protect the rest of us from getting any untoward ideas and the privacy of the people involved, yet they don’t seem to have any problem sensationalizing celebrity suicide.  I’m not certain that I can be critical though, because it’s a tough and touchy subject. 

All suicides are sad.  It is horrible that someone reaches a point where that becomes the only solution to what is ailing them.  There was something about this woman’s suicide that hit me in an especially profound way.  Her disappearance was sad and scary, but learning that she was the cause of her own disappearance filled me with a surprising empathy.  Almost a jealousy.  I’m not sure why her particular story resonated with me, nor do I know much beyond the superficial coverage that was provided via the local news outlets, but it hit me deeply at the time and continues to this day.  I mean, she seemed to be living the dream, right?  By all accounts, she came from a solid family, had a husband and two young kids and apparently were financially stable.  I will not speculate as to why this was not enough to keep her from taking her life.  I know from the results that it wasn’t.

There’s a part of me that feels a kinship with her.  Every few months I drive through the country roads of Yamhill County and though my childhood self would’ve never believed this, I find a certain solitude there as I pass through on my way to and from the coast.  Every so often, I take different roads to see different sights and explore the landscape.  Every so often, I pull off at one of those mom and pop highway mini marts that sells live fishing bait to see if they have three foot long pepperoni sticks, and fresh homemade jerky.  Sometimes I stop somewhere to get out and absorb the quiet solitude of the tall fields, the rolling hills, and the hum of the breeze blowing through them.  My mind drifts to thoughts of moving to a small house on a small lot in one of the small towns like Yamhill, Carlton, Dayton, or Sheridan and becoming some sort of writer by day (HaHa!  I know, right?  One can dream.) and maybe pouring pitchers of beer and soft drinks at the local pizza joint a few evenings a week.  I think the idea of running away from my daily reality is what makes this so appealing.  Sometimes the mental and physical pain reaches a point where the idea of lying down to sleep a deep never-ending sleep in one of those remote fields on a warm sunny day to never be found again feels like the only acceptable option.  There’s a peace in the idea that I struggle to find anywhere else.

The devastation to this woman’s family has to be overwhelming.  It is impossible to recover from such an intense and unexplainable loss.  Like so many out there, I have lost friends and acquaintances to suicide.  Suicide is characterized as a selfish act where the victims are the survivors.  In this case, one wonders how her husband and children have coped and continue to manage.  She had people in her life that rely on her every single day and she left them.  Perhaps from her perspective, she saw no better way.  Her internal pain may have overcome her need to fulfill her obligations.  I am not one to cast judgements about her decision.  I am familiar with a self-hatred so intense that you feel like a dark cloud in your loved ones lives.  That they are better off without you.  At least in my case my life has been lived so much in isolation, there is no one that relies on me.  At most, I am someone who is okay to hang out with on occasion.  Let’s grab a beer.  Let’s get some din-din.  Let’s go see a show.  Otherwise, I’m a bit of a burden with my history of health issues and the resultant help I need sometimes financially or day to day care taking, because I am incapable of managing on my own.

We’re all only here for a relatively short time whether we choose to end our lives at a particular point or not.  Why do so many of us live lives that make us unhappy?  Why are so many of us wired to be unhappy no matter what the circumstance?  I found out while typing this that today is World Suicide Prevention Day.  I realize that this is not a ringing endorsement for staying strong, but please, if you are not feeling like you can go on.  Believe me.  I understand.  There are lots of people who understand and are willing to listen.  Please reach out for help, instead of making a decision you cannot undo.  Let’s all try to figure out ways to make our lives better.

This Wreckage

Recently, I finished reading Mark Baumgarten’s 2012 profile of Olympia, Washington’s venerable K Records Love Rock Revolution: K Records and the Rise of Independent Music (Sasquatch) and Mike White’s 2015 book about Bristol England’s Popkiss: The Life and Afterlife of Sarah Records (Bloomsbury) and they got me to thinking.  Not only did they both bring back a lot of memories of my nascent explorations and discoveries of the so-called indie music scenes around the US and UK in the late 80s.  I was still young and exploring my tastes in music, books, movies, and culture in general, but what encountering these two labels, learning about the early punk and post-punk histories of the burgeoning “college rock” bands I already loved by then, as well as San Francisco punk labels and mail-order services such as Shredder, Tupelo, Communion, Allied and Blacklist did for me is teach me about independence and the spirit of doing things for one’s own.  Sure, this idea is old-hat now.  There’s even a TV channel named D.I.Y. that’s been around forever, but it’s not the D.I.Y. part that intrigues me as much anymore, because these days it’s all so much easier.  As Calvin Johnson, founder of K Records and that guy from Beat Happening with the deep voice, is quoted as saying in Baumgarten’s book: “(People) don’t need the record store or a record label.  They can just do their song on their laptop or their ukulele, and then it’s available instantly, all around the world.  It’s really the most basic form of punk rock revolution.”  It is really more the sense of community and connection that these labels (and others), bands, and zines created.  There was a true feeling of involvement by being engaged as a fan – one that feels oddly absent now that worldwide connection is just a device tap away with the omnipresence of social media.  And I’m not exactly sure what it is that’s missing.

 

When I first started ordering records from small labels and distributors directly via mail in the late 80s and early 90s, I began to not only receive the great music, but personal notes and correspondence.  Usually, it would be a “Thanks for the order” note on the back of a release schedule inserted into the record sleeve, but sometimes it would be more in depth and personal, like the now famous letters from Sarah Records founders Matt Haynes and Claire Wadd.  I remember directly ordering the very first SpinART Records 1992 compilation release “…one last kiss” and soon after even started to get occasional postcards in the mail from Lancaster, PA band Suddenly, Tammy! who had the second song on that compilation (indie version of sharing mailing lists?).  Or there’s the time I ordered PoPuP’s CD combining Magnetic Fields’ first two albums and received the disc along with a letter from Claudia Gonson wondering how I learned about the band.  Who would’ve ever thought I’d be carrying on casual correspondence with the artists from all over that had become my personal tastemakers.  I guess what I’m saying is that these direct contacts with bands and labels and zines tore down walls that went far beyond what I had ever understood before.  These people were doing stuff that was cool and that I admired, but they were clearly and tangibly real people.

As long as I can remember, I’ve always been the type of person, good or bad, who gets so fired up about the stuff that excites me – the stuff that gets me going – that I’ve always searched for ways to share those things with anyone and everyone.  Of course, with me, it’s pretty much always been music.  I was that guy who made mix tapes for friends (still do an annual summer mix!), wore concert shirts, left random lyrics on my school locker, created a fake radio station with its own music charts, did music for a handful of school dances, and finally a zine and this thing.  I’ve shared this before, but my friend Wil and I were inspired to start a zine named This Wreckage.  Like so many of them before, we wanted to revolutionize, if not the world, our little town.  We wanted to create an open forum for people to make something that is normally done by professional writers and visual artists.  It was meant to be freeform, and then, of course, at the end I would add a few poorly worded music reviews.  What we found is that most people don’t care.  Most people don’t read.  Most people couldn’t be bothered to actually take part, because they have their own lives and interests.  However, when people did decide to engage, we found it could be really powerful.  We received cool music from new bands that I still love to this day (and new music almost always spawns more discoveries), we had a few fun adventures, and believe it or not, met some really great people – one of which is a dear friend to this day.  Though we were small and misunderstood and really didn’t put forth a massive effort, and didn’t last very long, we still managed to reach a few people out there who tripped over the scrap paper littering the ground that were moved enough to say hello. 

I’m not 100% sure where I am going with this, but even though we now have unlimited access to pretty much all things we think are cool at any time we want, maybe it’s just me, but that personal engagement doesn’t feel as strong.  Even though it goes against so much what I have always believed about how everyone should have a forum to express themselves, perhaps things were better when there were more curators sifting through everything in order to present us with the cream of the crop.  Maybe it’s because I’m old, but for me, it’s too much.  It’s all too much.  Everyone’s social media account is like a mini zine based on their likes.  In a random five minute perusal of my Facebook feed I am presented with vacation and food photos (lots and lots of photos), news of a friend’s recent misfortune, two new bands I should check out, an old music video, some political statement followed by a lot of agreements and a few dissenters with little actual reasoned debate.  What I often get is overwhelmed and frustrated and I’ve become one of those people mentioned above: no longer engaged with anything beyond the tip of my nose.  I don’t want to be like that!  I don’t want to be the one who tells people to not freely express themselves in any way to see fit.  If I get involved with social media I want to feel connected and interested and inspired, but instead I simply feel exhausted.

It brings me to this position, where I feel like I either need to re-engage and try to connect again and push for a This Wreckage-type revival, in order to regain that feeling of community, in addition to the amazing music, that once was such a lifeline, or to simply withdraw like I’ve done the past year and not continue to muddy the waters with yet another voice (this blog) that no one needs to read, really wants to read, or frankly won’t spend the few moments to read anyway.  That’s when I remember the frustration and feeling of futility that Wil and I felt when trying to find an audience for This Wreckage twenty plus years ago, which was a big reason we gave it up.  We lost the fun.  That’s what I miss most: the fun.  This all feels like the complete life re-assessment and makeover that I’ve been mumbling about for several years now, but never seem to make happen.  It has to happen before I completely lose myself in the dreaded “life on repeat” – working a miserable job just to stay alive (only to hold onto health insurance), something I addressed here, sadly, over three years ago.  In that piece, Apathy and Exhaustion, I concluded that “This (turning around the downward spiral) feels an insurmountable task.”  It still does.

This Wreckage art by Arlon Gilliland