Dairy of a Madman

I’m a big proponent of following your instinct. Reason and logic is a wonderful thing, but we’re outlived as a species by a billion others who have no concept of living like a Vulcan (and most of us laugh at the idea of living that far on the edge). The lizard underbrain survives inside our gray matter for a reason.

And yet, I find myself lately ignoring my gut. More of my usual second-guessing myself, I suppose. I’m telling myself that the things that I fear are paranoia, insane whisperings from the voices in my head, or perhaps just memories of another similar but different time rising to the surface.

There’s such a fine line between paranoia and gullibility, isn’t there? On one hand, they’re always out to get you, and people point and laugh. On the other, you’re a blind man; how did you not see this coming? And they point and laugh.

I’m not so concerned about the people pointing and laughing part, as I am the voices in my head finding more ammunition for their volleyball games.

What is it Ben has on his page? “There’s always a siren singing you to every shipwreck.” Something like that. And your gut, underneath, knows it’s a trap, but damn, that’s a beautiful voice that makes you feel so good inside…

God bless Neely, who takes the smallest moments to make me smile.

There’s a mini-film festival at Workplay tonight, the SHOUT! festival put on by Sidewalk. It’s the first of what I presume will be an annual event, a film focusing on gay and lesbian films. I’m venue managing the theater, which means that, just like I do every year at Sidewalk, I’ll get to see a mass of films in a row, without being able to pick and choose.

It’s a good exercise for me, to watch a list of films that someone else has picked out. It guarantees me some sort of variety, and keeps me from going after the things that I know I like, exposing me to some things that I might normally pass on.

This train of thought was originally supposed to directly follow my post on writing at the beginning of the week. It stems from a Sunday night conversation that Garth and I had about Cronenberg, Eli Roth, Tarantino, and lots of other filmmakers (including myself, and the mass of indie writer/directors you see at Sidewalk and SHOUT! and whatnot).

My argument about films has always been that they are, ultimately, nothing if they don’t have a strong foundation: a story, to be specific. Not to say that I don’t find merit in “artistic” or “experimental” films… Actually, that’s my way of defending the writers, who tend to be looked at as an unintentional part of the film process (if they’re seen at all — quick, name five non-directing writers…). And I still hold, to some extent, that that is true: without a strong story, and a strong script (well constructed, with good dialogue), your movie will fall to pieces.

But there’s the telling aspect, too — to prolong the architecture analogy, the blueprints and design and engineering of the idea are key, but shoddy construction of even the best plan will end with disaster. And this is where filmmaking becomes tricky, because you’ve got a thousand places of building where everything can go right or wrong: acting, cinematography, sound design, set, art direction, effects, editing.

So it’s not just writing. I’ll look at it as a two-stage process (although, the experienced short film director in me wants to split it into even more pieces than that). Story versus telling.

All the media of entertainment are set up like this, really. Books, movies, TV shows, documentaries, music… You’ve got the creations and the performances. The really gifted are those that can do both; those are the ones I’m jealous of. I’m not just speaking of directors who can also write (frankly, I’m not sure how many of those I actually believe exist: I would say Rodriguez, probably; Tarantino, to be fair, although I despise his writing after True Romance; the Wachowski brothers, maybe, if only for the first of the Matrix trilogy); though the list of those who claim to do both is long (especially on the festival circuit), very few good writers can actually direct, and one in a trillion directors actually has a story worth telling.

Yeah, I said it. And I’m the first to admit that I’m not meant to direct, and my storytelling tools in the film world are not so hot, but goddamn, all you talented filmmakers out there? Find a fucking writer to work with you, okay? You’re really not very good, no matter what your friends who want to be on film tell you.

Stephen King is a great example for me to use here. He’s one of the most amazing storytellers in literature — reading his books is, to me, what sitting around a campfire listening to a master of the craft would be if you captured it on paper. And for the most part, he’s had some amazing story ideas upon which to display his craft: The Stand, IT, and his Dark Tower series are all Shining examples (sorry). But there was a spot in the late 90s when the story ideas seemed to run a little dry, and for a few books, it felt like he was rehashing old tricks.

There are plenty of musicians, too, who are tremendous performers, masters of the telling aspect, but whose songwriting skills lack … well, they just suck. Yeah. And there are great songwriters who can’t perform, too. Great actors that have no story to tell, but can channel and bring someone else’s tale to life like no one’s business. There are even writers who have nothing to say but the best telling voices you could ever imagine, and people with stories that would melt your brain but lack the words.

And this all comes back to me, of course. Do I have something to say? I have, before, sure, and I will again, I’d bet. I don’t know if I’ll ever have something that will change the world, as much as I would like to hope otherwise. I don’t know anymore if I’m destined for anymore greatness than I’ve already tasted (for which I am grateful, mind you). I’ve got my own voice, most of the time; it’s not as resonant as Chuck Pahlaniuk or Warren Ellis, or as comforting as King’s, but it’s mine, and it’s reasonably unique. I’m certainly not a filmmaker, much as I might like to be; I can participate in storytelling when music is involved, but only as part of a team. And in each of those areas, I’ve had some stories that, even looking back, I think are worth telling, with a creative edge and a meaning underneath.

Ultimately, the quality of both my voice and the stories it tells — no matter what form it takes — are up to others to decide. I just hope that more people learn to recognize the distinction between the voice and the story, and swallow their pride enough to find someone who compliments their strengths and weaknesses; I think there are a lot of brilliant voices who go unheard because they have nothing to say, and a lot of amazing stories that never get told because the medium doesn’t open itself up to the creator.

And I hope that someday, I can find a good director to film my stuff. And an artist to collaborate with on a few shorts I’ve got in mind for a graphic novel…

But most of all, I hope that those people who I have chosen to surround myself with, and who have chosen to stay in my life, will be honest with me when my voice starts to go, or when what I’m saying isn’t worth hearing. Ultimately, it’s up to me to decide when to stop — I write largely to help myself, after all — but I don’t ever want to be the guy who rails and rants about his own very nature without having a clue that he’s doing so.

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

The human species has spent several hundred thousand years sorting through which emotions and marginal neuroses to keep under control and which to release. Now, with a keyboard, people overnight are “free” to unburden and unhinge themselves continuously and exponentially. One researcher quotes the entry-page of a teenage girl’s blog: “You are now entering my world. My pain. My mind. My thoughts. My emotions. Enter with caution and an open mind.”
- Daniel Henninger, OpinionJournal, “Disinhibition Nation”

Henninger makes a few salient points, most of which are about the new lack of repression that has come with the blogging age. Hell, I’m guilty of it myself; I’ve used this space for self-therapy more than once. Last night, in fact. If no one wants to read about my insanity, then there are plenty of other sites (and growing!) that they can surf instead of mine; and I’ve gotten some good feedback from both friends and strangers, not just about issues involving my bipolar disorder but my writing, my music, my life.

A large chunk of the article deals with something that I see as a false connection: the use of language. Language — I’m in the realm of the four-letter-plus variety — has been getting looser and freer as I’ve grown older, and I clearly remember a time before microwave ovens, MTV, remote control and home computing, much less blogs. The fact that you’re apt to hear “fuck” has less to do with blogging and a freedom from the constraints of face-to-face society and more to do with a sign of the times, I think.

Though my elders would just blame that on the fact that I run with a bad crowd. So there’s that possibility, too.

I do think the anonymity of the Internet is propelling us toward a darker time, at least socially. Blogs are a big part of this, with their loosening of the shackles of conventional behavior. Even someone like myself — with a full name, photo, and contact information attached to their every word, without the need for sleuthing — remains anonymous to a large extent. Even taking these words at face value, assuming that I’m not a big act or charade or exercise of writing (much less brilliantly executed AI with a sense of humor), you still don’t know me, any more than you know Al Franken or Stephen King or any other writer, famous or not.

And that knowledge, especially for those who are not so real-world bridged to their blogs, allows people to be whoever they want to be, or worse, whoever they think people want them to be. Look at blogs and the “half-naked thursday” meme (if you haven’t seen it, click around, and you’ll bump into it soon enough), or just about any MySpace page. More and more identities online are becoming a part of the popularity race.

Has this bled over into the waking world? I might be in the wrong age group to answer that, as I was in my pre-teens when hacking and personal computers and War Games were all the rage, and just out of college in the early nineities when getting online was finally a possibility for the masses. I can draw a hard line between my parents’ generation and my baby sister’s, with me and most of my peers sitting uncomfortably on the edge of one side or the other.

I think certain behaviors are changing, though I won’t make a better/worse judgement call on them. More and more communication is taking place in email, which is a huge plus for me. The world, in some sense, is opening up before us; ten years ago, I had a broad base of connections and contacts throughout Birmingham, but not much further, unless friends had moved away; now I have a network that crosses continents, all thanks to bulletin boards and forums. I even met Kasey online — she’s largely a homebody, and I doubt we ever would have crossed paths without the Internet.

But I think we’re also starting to see an isolation among people, sort of an electronic retardation of social skills. Face to face encounters look different to me, as a long-time observer of people; Friday and Saturday nights in the bar don’t really look anything like they did when I was in my early 20’s, for all the surface similarities. Maybe that’s just me getting older and grizzled, but I don’t think so; not yet, at least. More and more, though, I feel like I’m watching a bunch of home-schooled bubble children let out into society for the first time, dealing with other humans with the techniques they picked up from The Real World and Jackass.

We’re definitely, as Henninger points out, becoming more and more of a warts-and-all world, at least those of us that open up like this online. And I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. On the one hand, the more we open up, no matter in what medium, the more that honesty is encouraged between people. On the other, there’s a desensitization to the ugly things in the world that comes with being human: the more you are exposed to something that is distasteful, be it language, gory movies, naked women, death — whatever the thing is, you grow numb to it.

It can’t possibly be good that what used to be too much information is now considered a tasty hors d’ouerve. Eventually, the search for greater stimulation leads to the edge of morality: the sadist eventually goes from fantsy to hurting someone to get his kicks. The cat torturer becomes the serial killer. It’s addiction; you up the dosage until the craving is satisfied. Look at extreme sports, or porn, or any number of escapist rituals available to us, and track how they’ve (d)evolved over the past ten, twenty, hundred years. It’s not hard to see.

But what is the presumed “natural conclusion” that I’m hinting at? Where does this tangled path of anonymity and fantasy and showing the world your most naked (perceived) self lead? An even more complicated question, when you consider all the other factors and variables at work in the equation, the progression of other areas of the world, the changing times in which we live, the polarization of the haves and have nots…

…

This is point at which I pause, reread what I’ve written, realize that I’m headed toward a really bad headache (or, at the very least, a lengthy post that wanders so far from the topic that I can’t possibly bring it full circle), decide that I’m not having nearly enough drunken conversations about philosophy with my regulars, and finally settle on the good idea of turning off my computer and heading somewhere that sells alcohol.

the days go by
and nothing brings me joy
the glow was strong
when i was a boy
but it’s gone

I’m hesitant lately to write posts like this. Maybe it’s because I know what I sound like, and it’s a whiny, irritating, broken record. Maybe I don’t want this side of me to exist, and putting it in print, in public… maybe acknowledging it like this is just making it more real.

But I’ve never been one to admit when I’m really down. I don’t want to appear weak. I don’t want to burden people with my troubles, especially imagined as they often are. In my head, if you’re having a good day, then I don’t want to bring you down, and if you’re having a bad day, then you sure don’t need any extra weight on your shoulders. So I keep so much of it inside, internal, where it sometimes works itself out and sometimes grows into an ugly cancerous beast that eats away at me.

Garth and I have talked a lot lately about how I’ve got a lot more going for me than I know. But it’s not that; rationally, I know. I’m aware of my faults and weaknesses, but I’m also in keen view of the things that I possess. In reality, the problem is much deeper than that: at the end of the day, I’m not entirely sure who or what I am.

There’s a very meta component to all of this, in that what I’m about to delve into says a lot about who and what I am, and that awareness (at least, according to Neely) puts me miles and miles ahead of most of the population. And maybe I should give more weight to that. But it ultimately doesn’t provide me with the answers that I’m looking for, and so perhaps, I think sometimes, I need to rethink the question…

I do have a fair grasp on my ideal self. The values and behaviors that I’ve espoused in my words to friends and my words here pretty well sum up a lot of that: a strong sense of accountability, honest, fair, objective, relaxed and unshakable (at least by the things that commonly stress people out). I’m not where I want to be on any of those levels, but I think I’m on my way, at least.

But there are a lot of things that I’m still trying to figure out. I’m a reasonably non-materialistic person, but I think that’s either a way of feeling better about my current financial situation, or maybe something that I strive to be based on things I’ve heard all my life (that money complicates things, for instance). I’m certainly not anti-money, but I think that if my position in life one day improves, I’ll certainly embrace it.

It’s a lot of things like that that fill my box of pondering. Paradoxical sides of coins: I want to have my nights and weekends free, but I don’t want to be a day-walker. I want to stand out in a crowd, but I want to be invisible. I want to live a normal life, but that’s the last thing in the world that seems appealing to me. A lot of that is my constant desire to have what I do not, something that has always been a part of me. The grass is always, always greener on the other side of the fence. I’ve come to accept that it’s not greener, that the other side not anything-er. It’s different.

But I still try to insist that I can have it all.

Even at the age of thirty four, having been through all I have, I’ve developed little more than a core idea of self. I have always had a tendency to absorb personality traits of those around me, especially those who have what I do not, what I covet. To some level, I see the innate talent that I have, for spotting the traits that I want to pick up and knowing what they’ll get me, without consciously thinking about it; but beyond that, I wonder how often I come across as a cheap imitation. Of course, it’s possible that I never do — that each new trait that I pick up is combining with all the others in a new and wondrous way to behold. But the wonder is still there.

Melissa told me a long time ago that I was never going to be happy until I learned to love myself. She was speaking about being one half of a couple, and she was right, but not entirely there. One, I can’t really love myself until I know myself, yeah? And don’t get me wrong: I don’t hate myself. Far from it. I just happen to doubt myself, to question myself a lot. Maybe I do love myself, like I think I do, but it’s not unconditional as I need it to be.

As a sidenote, I think it’s odd, the notion that you can’t love anyone else without loving yourself. The exclusivity there doesn’t work in my head. If you don’t think you’re a very good person, but you think someone else is, why can’t you?

Two, though… two is that I think sometimes that I’m never going to be happy until I let myself be happy. Things in my head are just never right; some part of me is striving for perfection. And I’m sort of proud of that; it’s uncompromising, it refuses to settle, to accept that what we’ve been told all our lives is the best we can have is really it. It’s the dreamer, on some levels. But it’s also a serious pain in my ass, because there’s always the nagging voice at the back of the crowd in my head that is telling me that hey — maybe everyone was right, that there is a limit to what you can have in this life, and oops — you just tossed it out.

Oops, indeed.

Is this search for self something that we’re all going through, or is it a sign that there really is a reason that I look so much younger than I am? I’m open to being somehow developmentally stunted, to still being a child by refusing to let childish things go. I’m also, however, open to the idea that this is okay, exceptional even, because it’s not taking the easy way out.

The problem with exploring the idea of perspective as much as I have is that sometimes you can’t fix on one.

if you knew the man i used to be
please hold me under the sea
or scratch my arms till they bleed
save me
will you help me to feel the glow?

I don’t know that I’ve ever really felt, for more than short stretches of time, that I am stably who I am. Constantly shifting, depending on what is expected of me in situations or on who I am around and what they have that I currently don’t. Wade or Kevin could probably confirm or deny this; they’ve both known me for twenty years or more, and I suspect that they have a more fixed perspective on me than I do.

I look backwards and see parts of me that I let fade but want to reestablish. There’s a lot of passion that I’ve lost over the years, and while a lot of negative ways of thinking were left behind with the passion, I think that maybe there’s a balance that can be struck. I’ve started feeling more of my old thoughts — the ones that were best left forgotten — as I reached back to allow myself to feel again, and it’s not pleasant, but I don’t think that the two are necessarily untanglable. I can see a lot of strength at moments in my past, a lot of determination and objectivity without self-recrimination that I want back.

Perhaps life is simply wearing me down. I find myself in a place at my age that I never imagined I might, the result of years of missteps and choices that were so subtly bad that only their cumulative effects revealed them for what they are. Maybe a lot of the things I was fall by the wayside because I am, plainly, tired of the uphill struggle. But I don’t think it has to be that way.

I think maybe that I need to remember my own words, that dying is for those who don’t have any more living to do. And thanks to the Exhibit(s), and to Kasey*, and to a billion friends and acquiantances, I have much more living that I want to do.

Anyone out there that wants to drop me line about figuring out who I am — whether you can help me answer my question with observations about me, or your own experiences — please drop me a line. The info’s in the CONTACT ME link at the top of the page. Or leave anonymous (or not so anonymous) comments. Whatever you please. Ofttime, I’m writing here just to hear myself think, but there are occasions (this one, for instance), where feedback would be most appreciated. Rewarded, even.**

* Kasey, for anyone that isn’t aware, is the honest to goodness real-world name of Red. In the interest of protecting the not-so-innocent, I gave her a pseudonym, but she asked last night when I was going to call her by her real name. So there you go, love. Everyone can track you down now, and make fun of you for hanging out with a wretch like me.

** Probably not, unless you’re one of those suckers who believes that helping a fellow human out is reward in and of itself.

Red has a few sayings that she pulls out all the time. “You have no idea…” is the one that I’m trying to curb; what’s stuck in my headmeat today is, “We all have our things.”

She says this in reference to our quirks and eccentricities — both between the two of us, she and I, and in other people. It’s her way of saying that things that people do that are a little off (my bipolar disorder, for instance [you should see what I define as majorly left-of-center]) are completely forgiveable, because who among us doesn’t have issues?

But I started thinking about “our things” in the context of talents, abilities, gifts. It’s a little bit of hearing Red say that, a little bit of talking to Garth about movies and filmmaking, and a whole lot of hallucinogen residue from my youth.

I don’t know that for sure, to be honest, but odds are on the side of the flashback.

I write. I write a little every day, to stay in practice, to keep my brain cleaned out, to give you guys something new to read while you’re buried in the flourescent light slave-pits of whichever company you’re currently employed by. I don’t write to get better, necessarily; I’ve had a strong grip on the rules and conventions of the English language since high school, so I’m not so concerned about grammar or punctuation, and I’ve always had a large vocabulary. Similarly, I don’t force myself to adhere to strict standards (for instance, note the sentence-ending preposition a few lines above), nor do I agonize over every last word choice and structural gamble. These words that you read, generally speaking, come tumbling out, and then the entire thing gets a final read from me to spot typos. Sometimes. Some entries just get written and turned loose on the world.

I make no aspirations about being a full-time professional writer. I’ve been published in local newspapers and national magazines (check your newsstands this weekend for the May-June 2006 issue of mental_floss), so I don’t need the validation. I get compliments often enough. But my heart’s not entirely in it.

(Note to hiring editors: my heart can be in it for the right price, of course.)
I know a lot of artists, a lot of creative people. Filmmakers, actors, musicians, writers, artists — I’ve surrounded myself with them all my adult life. And they’ve all got talent, in some form or fashion. I’ve been fortunate enough to know some of the very best in their areas: my ex-wife Melissa Bush is a phenomenal actress, as is my friend Mia Frost. Wade is one of the most able writers I’ve ever known. Fellow Exhibit Eric McGinty is easily the most natural musician I’ve ever known.

There are people out there that would argue any or all of these points with me, and that’s fine; these are just opinions (though like my t-shirt says, you can agree with me or be wrong). And that, I think, is why I approach writing, music, filmmaking, etc. with very few expectations of success: said success is based entirely on the whim and interest of the masses. Talent may help you get noticed, and talent can allow you, maybe, to read what the people want, but in the end, it’s not about gifts but about giving them what they want.

Only a select few people have ever been able to find financial and creative success while offering the public something that they didn’t even know they wanted: Steve Vai springs to mind. Chuck Pahlaniuk. I’m sure there are people in all the other creative disciplines so amazingly talented that they could create art on whatever edgy fringe they wished, and a sizeable fan base would seek them out.

But these are a select few, people who are either so frighteningly gifted that a look into their thought process would be the equivalent of waking up next to Cthulu after a night of binging on Rumpleminze and Xanax, or so disciplined that they have been able to shape and mold their natural talents into the absolute pinnacle of what they can be. These people are few and far between, rarer than the savants that can tell you how many M&Ms hit the floor seconds after your bag rips.

Not necessarily as entertaining at parties, though.
Talent — even above average talent, with hard work to go along with it — doesn’t guarantee you shit in the world. I’ve grown so tired of hearing other musicians complain about how they’ve got more musical ability in their pinky fingers than Pink, so why are she and Britney and N’ Sync resting on the beach in Cabo while the rest of us work for tabs and (when we’re lucky) a little extra money?

Because they’re what the people want, and we’re not.

Once in a blue moon, a Van Halen or a Nirvana or a Beatles come along — talented, gifted artists whose creations happen to fill a need in the greater portion of the listening world (transpose your own artists and field for other media). And they — and we — are luckier for it. But for the rest of us to expect that, to feel some sense of entitlement to the same good fortune, is foolish.

Yes, that’s a music story in a diatribe about writing. My talents are too many for a single medium.

Back to the written word:

I’ve never edited my own work. I rarely even reread my own writing — I couldn’t even begin to tell you about the contents of this blog over the past four years, outside of a few entries made under intense cirtcumstances that happened to find the magic that I was hoping for. I’m not disciplined enough to work on applying what gifts I might have to the craft, and I’m not terribly concerned with it. I’ve certainly not made it to the levels that I might have liked to, and may never, but I’ve had more ’success’ than most ever dream of, and that’s enough for me.

To those of you who have read my work — whether this blog, screenplays, short stories, whatever — and let me know that you like it, thank you. To those who continue to read, thank you a little more. It’s for me that I write, to practice, to get some things out, to work through others, but it’s you that give me the rewards, no matter how silent they may be.

We all have our things, and this is one of mine that I’m glad to know other people enjoy sharing.

Warren Ellis needs help. Or another round, if you’re buying.

I like hearing people say that change is on the horizon.

Of course it is. Change is always right there, directly in front of you. You can choose to ignore it, sure. You can wrap yourself in the lukewarm blanket of today, and you can stay right there, forever if you want. Or you can step forward, one foot always on the edge of the cliff, the steep drop into nothingness constantly to one side, and walk headlong into the change, smiling as you go.

Perhaps those people are referring to change that is outside of the boundaries of your control. Things like people leaving you (through choice or death), or jobs disappearing, or war, or famine. That kind of change is always on the horizon, too, as regular as sunrise if slightly more unpredictable. But a butterfly flaps its tissue wings in Nebraska and suddenly you’ve got the Seventh Trumpet being played somewhere in the sky, and a plague of boil-infested first born locustfrogs is falling on Egypt.

If there really is a god, you’d think he’d have given butterflies brains enough to realize how much power they have.

Or maybe god’s just a big fan of chaos theory.

Change is scary. At worst, it’s a leap (or a hard push from behind) into a dark and cold unknown. You have everything you know and are familiar with ripped away from you, and you are shoved headlong into a place where, if you’re lucky, you speak the same language as everyone else. At best, change is an opportunity to reinvent yourself, to redefine who and what you are, to shape your world in whatever way you see fit.

Very rarely in life are we faced with either extreme. Most change falls somewhere dead in the middle of this - half promise, half-scary. From there, it’s all perspective - one man’s C6 is another man’s Am7. It’s up to you to focus: look for what you gain, ignore what you lose.

Sia says, “It has to end to begin.”

Richard Bach says, “The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly.”

Richard Bach also says, “Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.”

It’s easy and simple to give in to your fears, and it can be unreasonably hard work to focus past that to your hopes. But work, whether now or in the distant future, pays off — at least, it has in my experience.

Regardless of the “for better or worse” of it all, change is good, because it signals another step forward. Isn’t motion preferable to stagnancy? There’ll be plenty of time for staying still when you’ve no more life within you; for now, keep moving, and keep living.

Peanut Butter Terror With a Baseball Bat, even! (via Bitter Old Punk)

ELEVATED.