SHORT ESSAY: How I learned to stop worrying and love the gong

I have a hard time experiencing anything directly. All data received must be filtered through my automatic de-sensitization machine, where all information will be packed, stored and ready to be viewed as memory a month or two later.

I suppose this is a case of process vs. product. I was always more a fan of the product. The process was too much work. This stood for all things. If I were making music, I’d much rather listen to the finished cassette. Analyzing it; getting lost in it; discussing it with friends ad nauseum. Same thing goes with relationships. Most of my relationships have been arduous and about as much fun as pulling a garbage truck uphill with my cock. However, I enjoy ruminating over the detritus of a failed campaign.

Product vs. process.

I suppose when I’m on my deathbed, I’ll enjoy the experience of watching my life flash before my eyes much more than having actually lived it. It’s pretty pathetic when you think about it.

Still, I do remember in my youth, living in the moment, experiencing things to the utmost – actually feeling. Maybe as you get older you become desensitized, or maybe after years of cutting myself off from the world, the only way I can experience anything is second-hand. All this is not to say that I’m completely incapable of having a good time, I can, it’s just that I never feel like I’m fully ‘getting’ everything. Maybe it’s a sense that the sand glass is always turning over on me; that I’m fighting a losing battle against time.

Nowadays, it feels like life is whistling by me as if I was some panicked dog with my head out the window of a moving car, tongue flapping in the wind. Whenever I’m out doing something interesting, I’m already thinking ‘how much time do I have left?’ or ‘what do I have waiting for me at the office tomorrow?’ I’m never able to fully relax and enjoy myself. That’s why memories are so great. I can lie down and think about things, fall asleep, and maybe I’ll have nice dreams.

If only things could slow down…just ease off the gas pedal a bit. It’s the opposite though, everything’s speeding up and I feel like I don’t have control over the wheel.

Twenty years to me used to seem like an eternity. Now it’s all whizzing by in a blur. I’m getting older and soon I’ll be old – what have I got to show for it? I didn’t enjoy things enough, hell, I don’t even have many solid memories as I’ve suppressed most of them. All I have is now and it all seems to be slipping away from me…just out of my reach. I wish I could make it stop…catch up….just so I can get back on the trolley. It wouldn’t take that long…

…give me 10 minutes.

When I was younger, I was always looking for the answers just below the surface; the elephant in the room that no one talked about, some sort of hidden pathway to enlightenment. I felt that through art, these avenues would open up and show me the way. Now, I wasn’t thinking along some sort of ‘new age-y’ pseudo spiritual line, I’ve never been one of those types; it was more of an instinct…something innate. I’ve always felt it, even as a young child.

I have a very early memory, it might’ve been before I was even two years old. I had made my way out of my crib into the corridor, when this bright light started buzzing around my head. It looked like the ‘Raisin Bran’ sun, you know – all jaggedy.

It talked to me.

It had this strident, insistent, slightly aggressive voice. From what I could tell, it was giving me life lessons. I felt anxiety and paralysis. It was directing me, giving me – ‘the answer’.

For years I believed I had it too.

In my 30s, all belief has faded into hardnosed, dispassionate, black and white existenz. I spent a bunch of years coming to terms and closing doors. Now I live alone in the attic of my noggin – the smallest room in the life of the mind. It took a while to get here, to this precise moment…but here I am. The funny part is, I’m not sure I’ve ever been more creative than I am right now. The cold, dispassionate mind is apparently a breeding ground for ideas.

I was discussing this with a friend of mine who I used to play music with, and he agreed with me. It’s only when you let everything o…TRULY let everything go, that you can ever create something real. There are no answers hidden below the surface of things. There are no secret pathways. Clarity comes with clearing away.  It wasn’t until I threw out all my hopes, dreams and beliefs that I finally came to this realization. It was like a GONG went off in my head.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t recommend clarity for everyone. I’d much prefer to have the wherewithal to delude myself into thinking there’s some sort of end game; that there’s such a thing as ‘enlightenment’ or ‘salvation’. With clarity all you get is the understanding that you’re just a dot on the map, and that dot is you…and the map is you – so just deal with it.

Still, I find some level of cold comfort in the truth. Absolute truth, subjective truth, relative truth, paradox – they’re all slices from the same pizza pie.

This quote from Karl Jaspers sums it up for me:

“Every form of truth must be shipwrecked in the world, and none can substitute itself absolutely for the truth”

 Or to put it more succinctly in the words of Alfred E. Newman…“What me Worry?”