spinning my wheels

I miss cigarettes terribly. It’s funny, the thought of missing cancer sticks. It’s not like there is anything redeeming about them…maybe that’s the appeal. I quit smoking in 1995, but I still get cravings now and then. To deal with these cravings, I imagine myself smoking a cigarette. I basically picture the entire thing—the ritual of lighting up (usually with a match), of inhaling the smoke, the taste of the nicotine. I imagine how the cigarette feels dangling from the corner of my mouth while I talk or type. I tap the ash to the ground. It’s pretty intense, this visualization. It’s basically a long con to fake out inner urges that are ultimately destructive. To placate the emotions while listening to the intellect.

I fucking hate listening to the intellect.

Lyrics from two songs:

It comforts me some that three beers suffice,
Its unnerving to think that ten more would be nice
But it kills off the loneliness, kills off the pain
And if I drink enough I won't remember your name
And I'm too drunk to feel,
And I'm too drunk to be seen
I'm just sitting here spinning my wheels,
But I'm not drunk enough to feel like I'm free
No I'm not drunk enough to feel like I'm free

--“Spinning My Wheels,” Star Anna and the Laughing Dogs

You’ve got to learn to live with what you can’t rise above.

            --“Tunnel of Love,” Bruce Springsteen

I’ve tried to write about the quiet darkness before. Failed. It’s a hard thing to pin down with clumsy tools like words. You get a sense of it in words like Star Anna’s above, but you really have to hear the grit and heartbreak in her voice to feel it. Raymond Carver captures it sometimes. I’ve tried to put a shape to it: words unsaid, the recognition that dreams don’t come true, the uneasy truce after the emotional battle, ten beers would be nice but they don’t suffice (spinning my wheels.) Snatches of old songs: one step up, two steps down. After the boys of summer are gone. These are all elements of the quiet darkness but they are not the quiet darkness in total. The coldest season is when spring brings renewal. Insights just make things harder. Continually reborn because you never get it right. Rebirth/flowering/disillusion/destruction/stillness. Hell of a cycle, that.

I had an idea for a story. I’m writing this instead. Maybe I’ll write the story. It’s not important either way.

There are stories and songs that appeal to my intellect. A lot of the art I spend time with falls into this category. This isn’t to say that this art isn’t emotionally engaging—it is. But, at the end of the day, it’s safe. Whether it’s myself or the art that is distant doesn’t matter, simply that there is such a distance. You can chuckle if you need to, or write a term paper, or crinkle your brows just so. Knock back a few beers and discuss the shape and contour and context of the work. Get passionate, but know you can park that passion back in the box if needed because it’s ultimately just a thing. A fine, fascinating thing. A safe thing. Makes ya feel good. Girl Scout cookies.

Then there’s the other art, the stuff that won’t win any awards for fancy wordplay or chord structure but it’s so emotionally real and so deeply soulful that it is dangerous. The art that gets at how life really is, how things really feel. This is the stuff that truly gets you through the day, that is there during the quiet darkness and long dark nights of the soul. Makes ya uneasy with its honesty. Gives ya hope, too, that others have felt this way (but makes ya despair at the human condition that we can’t stop going through these cycles. Evolution is a slow, slow bastard.) Look at those Star Anna lyrics above. They are artless. But when she sings them, the self-disgust and hurt and longing brings tears to my eyes. I’d link to the song but it’s not even on YouTube (aside from some not well-recorded live renditions.) That’s kind of nice, that some things aren’t in social media garbage land, but it leaves her words and my words to get this thing across I want to say, and I don’t think we are doing so well. My fault, not hers. Sorry, Star Anna.

Did I mention she’s got a song called Burn that’s even rawer? Jesus.

I move like a ghost, sometimes.

The worst thing I could ever write would be a book called The Oblique Strategies. It would overuse the word languid. That could be forgiven. It would not be a truthful book. That can’t be forgiven. Ever.

I had to stop writing this to go make dinner. As is true most nights, I had no interest in making dinner. But things have to get done. So currently in the oven sits a pan of tater tot casserole. Tater tot casserole is a sad and truthful dinner. Sad because it’s crap, but crap you had to actually do a little bit of work to achieve (cook the meat, mostly) instead of just buying fast food. Truthful because it is what it is, there’s no pretending it’s anything but comfort food, which is our way of saying “not healthy food and I shouldn’t eat it but it tastes good dammit and it’s just as busted up as I am.” Learn to live with what you can’t rise above. I made a double batch.

I got a beer while I cooked.

It dawns on me that perhaps what I wrote above suggests the intellect can’t be engaged if the soul is. This isn’t true at all, any more than cutting open your arm and dumping it on the page proves you’re a truthful--good--artist. There’s always some calculation in songs and stories. I’m sure Star Anna and her band rehearsed Spinning My Wheels a bunch and moved things around until they felt right. Bands that don’t do this are called jam bands and truly among the most wretched of Earth’s creatures. Raymond Carver wrote and rewrote his stories. But I’d like to think that they were focused on being honest and truthful and that this guided what they created. Star Anna lived that song and can sing it truthfully. Raymond Carver lived his stories and can tell them truthfully. Details are changed (artistic license, protect the innocent and guilty) but the soulfulness rings true. They paid prices, but don’t we all? Every one of us does. That’s why we relate. Some just have the talent to tell the truth (in their work—in their lives they are no different than the rest of us) rather than obscure it or dismiss it. Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies.

It’s all in how it moves you, I guess. Like I have any fucking idea. You’re still alone. That part never changes. I would have made a shitty academic, it’s probably a good thing that road was never open to me. I do love mythology. But only so far as it serves the story. The unconscious dream-making.

At work today a client was rambling on about how great a book called Mindset was. How you can change your mindset if you just want to. It seems kind of crazy that you need 200+ pages to state that. I mean, I don’t disbelieve it. But those books, they kinda remind of gurus and make me queasy. They suggest you can avoid the hard truths if you just decide you want to. Maybe that works and some of us just suck at doing so. We’ve devalued introspection, though, confused it with self-importance and narcissism. It’s just not that clean, you know? It’s messy. Really fucking messy, sometimes. I used to cry easier. Now the tears hide behind my eyes because they are scared they’ll be seen as the sign of something a book can fix. Just change your mindset and you won’t need to cry anymore!  (Sorry again, Star Anna.) That beer is…ok, maybe, but wouldn’t you rather have this fine Chianti, and just one glass at that? Wouldn’t want to get tipsy. (I’m not tipsy. I’m still on the first beer. I compromise too goddamned easily these days.) I honestly don’t remember the last time I cried. Well, I do, but I wouldn’t reveal it here. Tears are truly dangerous and this is not a safe place. There are no safe places, but this place, I mean, it’s really not safe.

Yeah, I miss the cigarettes. Jesus Fucking Christ, I miss them.

Somewhere up above I mentioned that insights don’t help, they just make things harder. I had one of those the other day, something about how I compromised my dreams and those dreams may be finally disappearing for good. Dreams are funny things, they hang about even when you think you’ve beaten them down hard enough they couldn’t ever possibly get back up again. But they eventually break too, realize this isn’t worth it and head off for greener pastures (or maybe just a nice rest in the cold damp earth.) It was a gradual realization but in a way I was thankful that the channels were at least open enough I heard it. Usually I blast those things away with white noise. Hey, I need to check the tater tot casserole! Don’t brood, man, don’t brood. It’s all in the mindset.

Too many lifetimes and not enough years. Thanks for that, Star Anna.