December 2002 Archives

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My mother is a brilliant painter!

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only she doesn't know it...because no one has ever told her; and besides creativity...well, who has time for that right?

What a damn shame!

In an era where melancholic feelings are essentially perceived as pathological I remind you that each era has its demons. In the 1950’s there were still gay men who willingly subjected themselves to electroshock therapy to rid themselves of their “pathology” even though the psychiatric profession could only deliver a 5% “cure” rate; and even those figures are extremely dubious.

In the mean time we have learned better. Perhaps we need to learn the difference between inconvenient, embarrassing, and socially stigmatizing, versus the pathological or we run the risk of making something sick that which is merely unfavorable in the context of our current zeitgeist.

During different eras there were different levels of tolerance for things like depression. Dorothy Parker sprang to prominence as a theatre critic and writer of depressive verse during the 1920’s for magazines like Vanity Fair and The New Yorker.

Resume

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

(Dorothy Parker)

Clearly, in today’s world Mrs. Parker would have been diagnosed and treated and she would have been as dull and useless as a hooker at Church and Wellesley (See Gay Guide of Toronto).

In this spirit I offer the following depressive song, a song about regret, a song about loss, and a song about endings. Don’t listen to it if what you are is a Goodtime Charlie looking for an even higher upbeat thingy. This song will not blow up your skirt or knock down your pants. Consider yourself thoroughly warned.

Dust to Dust

And so a new day begins…and an old year ends.

Narration (mp3 format)

And now a warning: This site is written by a self-expressive person for self-expressive people. If you personally find self-expression grandiose, narcissistic, self-important, frivolous or just a waste of your time…this site is definitely not for you. Please click the BACK button on your browser now. Thank you so much.

We live in a culture which on the one hand worships artistic genius and artistic accomplishment while simultaneously distaining the idea of actual adults engaging in anything so blatantly self-centered, time wasting, self engrossing, self-aggrandizing, frivolous, down-right selfish as an act of self-expression…oh, unless it makes a lot of money for everybody or at least has the smell of money on it, then, oh my goodness, you are worshipped and a genius, which in turn gives you the right to act as selfishly and self-centeredly as humanly possible. Ca-chingggg.

However, if this is not the case, who do you think you are, drawing, painting, sculpting, playing, singing, dancing, writing? Well it's just preposterous. Do you think you are Picasso, Liberace, Pavarotti, Martha Graham, or Walt Whitman? Imagine asking Picasso, “Who do you think you are…Picasso?

I applaud Leigh for her drawing and finding her way back to an original passion, and God bless her husband for getting her art supplies for Christmas, what a wonderful gift to encourage and support someone you love to use their gifts; a rare and beautiful event especially if you are past the age of eleven. But we need to stay aware of the dreaded “blank-out”, the lost years going by. I dare you to be prolific and then wait for the dirty looks, heavy sighs and the pressure to build; it’s all so cute and quaint until one pushes the envelope and really gets down to work. Suddenly you are grandiose and the unsolicited assessments of you will arrive like bullets to the heart.

“You think you are the center of the universe, don’t you!”

“No, I do not.”

”Are you drawing again?”

“Yes.”

“Well, isn’t there something real you should be doing?”

“Yes.”

“But you are drawing instead?”

“Yes.”

“Again?”

“Yes.”

“So are you going to just sit there all day and draw?”

“Yes.”

“Who do you think you are? Picasso?

“Yes…I think I am Picasso….and Rembrandt and Hitler, and Joyce Brothers, and the Smoother’s Brothers, and bloody EthelfuckingMerman!

My advice to any creative person who has forgotten who he or she is…Well, now I need to quote Julia Cameron because in my self-centered and somewhat bitter opinion, no one else has ever put it more succinctly or cut more closely to the bone, and this is what is unfortunately required:

“Create right at the bastards.”

Thank you Julia!

Now go draw something and be terribly self-centered about it, while imagining you are the center of the universe! I will be cheering loudly from the center of the universe on behalf of your self-aggrandizement, your annoying yet necessary grandiosity, and your barely beating heart…. just like Picasso, just like Beethoven, just like Billie Holliday…none of which got out alive. And if you think I'm mean or hateful, you should read yesterday's entry, the one I didn't post, now that was mean.

And so a new day begins…

I had a “moderately” horrible Christmas, and if I would have known what I know now, I would have followed my first and initial gut instinct…to skip it; to bow out and say enough is enough. I’ve walked into this particular booby trap once too often in my life. Old habits die hard, but die they do, and this old habit is in desperate need of a cremation or a swift burial.

I am delighted to hear that some people had a wonderful Christmas but I'm unfortunately not surprised to hear that my Christmas was not the worst. Of course not, after all my Christmas was only moderately horrible. This should bathe those of you in relief, who adhere to the simplistic yet dogmatic philosophy of moderation. Yes, it was only moderately nightmarish and moderately devastating; with equally balanced and moderate levels of inauthenticity and insincerity mixed together.

The proponents of this certain belief system (do not count me among them) insist that, one should always be moderate. But isn’t saying that one should always do anything, at all times, in a certain way, an extreme stance to take? It sounds pretty extreme to me. How much more extreme can one get than embracing the idea that one must always be moderate? How fascist is the absolute rule of moderation?

It is my belief that proponents of “moderation” are substantially more interested in the mechanisms of control than the actual appreciation of things moderate. They like excitement and extreme pleasure just as much as the next person. What they really desire to keep moderate is you and what they really mean by moderate is sedate.

I offer the following bromide: Simplistic catch phrases and bromides should be avoided at all cost lest one find oneself spewing nauseating tripe. Secondly, if you think that moderation is a virtue, I suggest you first make entirely certain that you have completely and utterly mastered authenticity before you go putting a lid on something that wasn’t very interesting to begin with.

And so a new day begins…with only moderate levels of bile and scorn.

Up until the last moment I was running around doing my Christmas shopping. Every year I ask myself, why do I do this? Hypnosis? Habit? Brain Washing? It’s colorful and I like colors? Ya. This year I felt more stressed and removed from it than usual, as if looking into someone else’s window. Who lives here? I don’t know this person do I? Nope.

Stephen is in New Jersey with his family, so I miss him.

Gifts were bought, gifts were wrapped, food was prepared and eaten, pictures taken, gifts exchanged and unwrapped. More pictures were taken. I should be grateful, I should be counting my blessings...I know, but it all feels as if I am counting someone else’s blessings...whose life is this? Mine?

And there are so many people missing.

I miss my Dad...Christmas number three without him. It doesn’t get any easier does it? In fact, it gets harder, more permanent year after year. I sometimes feel as if...OK, this business trip he’s on has lasted long enough ...it‘s about time he came home now. I guess this is denial. I need a hug, but he is never coming home; I will never see my Dad again. Only in images from the past. And this is supposed to lessen over time right? So far I still find it entirely incomprehensible.

So this is Christmas? Very interesting. Merry Christmas then, and whatever else blows your shirt up.

And so a new day begins...

I wake early. It’s still dark outside. Willi and Stephen are still asleep. An inner voice has been stirring deep within my brain. “Save yourself”, it says from the recesses of my consciousness. From what?

When I feel abandoned it’s usually because I have abandoned myself. How is it possible to abandon oneself? Easy…lose sight of your gifts and you will be adrift in a sea of possibilities; other people’s possibilities.

Last night I was invited to a small Christmas get-together at Yvette’s place. I had a good time…a very good time. I had an enjoyable conversation with Yvette’s friend Benjamin; a simple, straightforward conversation. What a kind and magnanimous person he is. Our conversation left me feeling uplifted. Thanks Yvette for inviting me.

After everyone went home for the evening Yvette had my Christmas CD playing in the background just low enough so I couldn’t consciously hear who was singing. Hey, that guy can sing…he’s got a nice voice, I was thinking. And then…Oh, that’s me. I was a bit taken aback. And then I felt sadness again. What was wrong with me? My spirit fell again and I felt the full weight of my regret for not having found a home for my voice in this world.

Having a gift or talent can be multi-edged. It can cut through things and communicate but it can also be like catching a falling knife that has been dropped from a very high place in your direction. Our greatest responsibility in this world is to be happy…And one way we can do this is by honoring our gifts. When will I learn this in my bones?

Save yourself… the very deepest most essential part of yourself.

And so a new day begins…

Ok, things are getting serious. I wake…I write…I confess…and just when I think things can’t get any more…odd, I find myself inadvertently singing “Bye Bye Blackbird” in Rosemary Clooney’s voice, one octave lower but before the weight problem, circa 1957ish.

Bye Bye Blackbird

Pack up all my care and woe
Here I go
Singing low
Bye Bye Blackbird

Where somebody waits for me
Sugar’s sweet, so is he
Bye Bye Blackbird

No one here can love and understand me
Oh what hard luck stories they all hand me
Make my bed and light the light
I’ll arrive late tonight
Black bird bye bye

(Words by Mort Dixon, Music by Ray Henderson © 1926)
See what I mean…God I hope it’s Friday.

And Jeff, let me reassure you, because I could sense that there was some genuine concern on your part that I might have come unhinged or unglued from my foundation garment. The fact is…I have always been, ever so slightly, more or less, but most definitely a tad, shall we say…melancholic. But in the event that we find ourselves somehow inelegantly drawn to the need to assign blame, I can assure you, with all confidence, that it was SINATRA…not SUMATRA that was behind “it”, whatever “it” is...Also Rosemary Clooney, God rest her beautiful soul in heaven. And so, with nothing more than just a few loose nuts...

A new day begins.

I wake up. There is a scratchy feeling at the back of my throat. I head for the kitchen and make a pot of Sumatra decaf. I go into the basement and fold the whites and stick a load of dirty colors into the machine. I randomly and haphazardly feel sorry for myself while I am folding.

Back upstairs I pour myself some decaf and sit down at the dining room table and write my flotation device…three morning pages. This morning I jump recklessly from one thought to the next as if strung from a bungy jumping cord. Boing! Boing!

No singing this morning…not a good sign. Intermittently I find myself muttering something unintelligible…”you idiot something or another”. In no time at all and with no apparent effort on my part, I have become the quintessential grumpy old man. Just shoot me.

If you are under forty and reading this…then likely none of the above makes any sense to you. Fine. If you are forty or in the neighbourhood…remember that stupid saying…Life begins a forty? Well, what I want to know is, if life begins at forty, why am I not excited…I should be thrilled right? In fact soon I will be forty-two…I should be ecstatic by now. Hot diggity dog!

And so a new day begins...asymmetrically and daggling from a bungy.

I wake up and immediately head for the shower. This is odd...I find myself singing Winter Wonderland as the hot water sprinkles down upon me. What is going on here? I have been taking St. Johns Wort for three days now. Could it actually be having some effect on my brain? I haven’t been singing for weeks. Well, I’ll just keep taking it. Who knows, maybe it really does something.

Also, last night I sat down at my music workstation and started tinkering on the keyboard. I’ve have been wanting to record a new version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” to add to my previous versions of the song, but each time I have approached the keyboard, it's all just been too much for me. In short I’ve been blocked musically because of my depressive mood. Last night I broke through the gloom a bit and started plunking out the chords and melody. I decided to radically lower my expectations since having expectations hadn’t helped. Suddenly I was six years old again, sitting at my piano, playing by ear. The exact thing that made me an impostor in the eyes of my first piano teacher is the only authentic thing I can muster.

Suddenly the melody and bass line were emerging…haltingly at first, but most definitely. I am not entirely a musical fraud; I have learned something… not much, but something. This brings me back to what Julia Cameron says, “You take care of the quantity, and let God take care of the quality.” In all honesty, I have not been taking care of the quantity. It means that I should just show up at the page, or at the keyboard and putter. For me it’s in the puttering that the music starts to come through. The minute ambition enters the picture...forgetaboutit!

Music is as much about what you leave out as it is about what you put in. When you try too hard, the whole thing shuts down. There is a doorway in, and once I’m through it everything works, it’s finding the doorway that is the tricky part. I have to act as if it doesn’t matter… have to allow myself to tinker and putter. I fall into music the same way I fall asleep, it’s somewhat accidental, and it’s mostly unconscious.

And so a new day begins…

I remember a time when sleep would wipe the slate clean, completely refreshing me and I would wake up feeling slightly drowsy and cozy under the blankets. For years now I wake from sleep with a stiff alertness, as if part of me is standing guard for intruders, while another part of me is filling out tax returns in my sleep. I took a couple of sleeping pills…nothing strong, just over the counter stuff, and so I wake up late and feeling drowsy. Drowsy is good, vigilant is bad.

I make some Sumatra Decaf. I sit down at the dining room table to do my daily morning writing. I don’t recall what I wrote this morning because mostly it was a chaotic stream of concerns and thoughts. Keep the pen moving…keep the words flowing…doesn’t matter what they are. If it’s total gibberish just keep moving the pen. And move the pen is what I did. It’s nice to know that there is something I can do in my life which is impossible to screw up.

Every depression will eventually lift…that’s what they say. To medicate or not to, that is the question….or is it? Nothing is guaranteed, everything has a risk. Antidepressants tend to lobotomize my emotional life, but depression does the same thing. Take your pick; a bleak shade of grey with a suppressed sense of joy, or a perky, slightly manic up-do which is routed in nothing more than an over abundance of certain neurotransmitter activity, of which the long term side effects are unknown.

Some research now indicates that there might be a slight possibility that prolonged boosting of the serotonin and dopamine levels in the brain, induced by such antidepressants as Paxil or Prozac, can lead to Parkinsonian type symptoms, some of which might possibly be disfiguring and irreversible. What would happen if millions of people, who faithfully took their antidepressants to stave off another depressive episode, awake one day to find they have developed a tremor or a facial tick that does not respond to any kind of treatment? Hmmm. Now that would be depressing.

And so, without another single pithy little phrase in sight, a new day begins…

I wake. It is dark. I can’t sleep anymore. I grab my reading glasses and journal and head to the dining room where I do my morning writing practice. I make Sumatra decaf. I write three long handwritten pages of absolutely anything and everything. That gives me a bit of relief. I go from morose to merely miserable…I decide to run with it.

This all leads me to reflect on a conversation I had with Rob last night.

“I might just be coming to the realization that my chances of having a career as a singer are over, that it didn’t happen, and it’s never going to. I mean, I’m forty-two years old, did you ever hear of a forty-two year old person suddenly becoming successful as a singer?”

“Well maybe it’s just not going to happen the way you thought it would”, Rob says. “I think you are on to something with your website.”

Then Rob read me something that Martha Graham said:

There's only one of you in all time.
This expression you make is unique.

Martha Graham

And I agree wholeheartedly with Martha…always have, and so I try not to block it, but what I am left with is a queer dissatisfaction. I guess I am missing divine, but I am fairly willing to wait around for him to show up.

And so a new day begins…

I wake up. It is morning…always a good sign.

I am confused. I feel as if I am stuck in an intersection which has a quickly alternating red and green light with an occasional yellow light thrown in for variety. Alternatively, I feel like sorting things into piles, but the thought of how many piles I would wind up with overwhelms me. Piles are cumbersome.

My mind does not co-operate…it instigates in the background, plotting. But what frolicking mayhem will I be invited to next? Is it wise to just sit up and take notice, or is it more prudent to remain in a somewhat reclined position and nibble on some rich, dark chocolate?

Clarity at last?

I dream that my five hundred dollar reading glasses have fallen on to the pavement and now have a rather large scratch on the left lens.

Willi is restless at 6am. It seems like he needs to go outside. I sit up and reach for my watch in the dark and knock over a drinking glass on my night stand and it shatters on the floor. I turn the light on and head for the kitchen to retrieve a broom to sweep up the shards of broken glass.

Willi is whining now, like he’s in some sort of discomfort.

“Do you need to go outside Willi?” Willi barks “Yes, yes!”

I put the shards of glass into two doubled up plastic bags and then put the whole thing out into the garbage.

I go downstairs to get dressed, Willi follows me down. He is whining in discomfort in a way that I have rarely heard from him. “I’m going as fast as I can!” I tell him. I put on my jeans; I put on a jersey, and head back upstairs to put my coat and boots on. Willi follows me up, whining. I tie up my boots and Willi throws up on the floor in front of me. His stomach is off. He refused to eat anything yesterday so he only throws up some yellow bile. I grab a paper towel from the kitchen and wipe up the bile. It is 6:05 am when we head out the door. Willi is the first one out the door. Any bets as to how this day turns out?

And so a new day begins...

I am in a box. No, I am in a hole and there is a very small distant light at the end of it. What that light may or may not be is anyone’s guess.

And there are things that are buried here
Bones and worries
Not to be dug from their places
I hear music
How faint the tune…

Rob got himself a puppy from the Humane Society…his name was Elvis. I suggested “Kisser” since he loves to slip Rob the tongue. Rob has chosen the name Oscar. Oscar is a ten month old Fox Terrier. Good boy. Sit! Eat! Live! I would give anything to be a dog right now.

I wouldn't want to be a cat though. According to the Humane Society, last year a cat was skinned alive and pictures were taken of the murder by the criminals who committed it. I think they should be the ones skinned alive. What a fucked world we live in.

And in this cloud…there is a ticking clock noise. Click, Click, Click. I hear my own brain talking quite pleasantly to itself, making effervescent promises, seducing me with all that potential crap. Cut! Print it, what happens in the next reel? Do I get dragged off screaming into the snake pit? (Margo Channing, “All About Eve” 1950)

Probably not, but one can always hope.

And so a new day begins…on this side of that.

There are days when I have only one neurotransmitter left, when my soul hurts from worry. There are days when I would rather just stay in bed and hope that no one notices. No one will notice, I think.

There are days when I get so tired. And I don’t care anymore, and I know that my sensitivities are eating me alive. My mind dreams up horrors out of the blue. I am walking along the street with my dog, I hear a car approaching from behind; I imagine the driver losing control, violently slamming into us at full speed. No one can do a thing; every bone in my body is shattered. I am dead, or even worse I am still alive and I hear Willi howling in horrible pain and I cannot move, help or comfort him.

Things like this happen to good people. Why not me I think? It seems that most people walk around thinking that bad things will never happen to them. I wish I could be like that. Unfortunately I remember, in excruciating detail, horrible things that have never happened and probably never will. I have had thousands of life-maiming automobile accidents; I have crashed in more airliners than I have even set foot in…all in my head.

“It’s all in your head Mark”. That’s comforting, when and how do we commence with a successful amputation? I cannot afford to lose my head so I am stuck with its imaginings.

Mark is an extraordinarily imaginative child. Mark is very creative and delights the whole class with plays he writes and then stages: Grade three report card.

There are worse things but I can’t bring myself to write them. Why relive what was not right imagining in the first place? As a teenager I started having nightmares of terrible things. As an adult the nightmares come to me while I am awake, while I am walking; daymares. No one will notice, I think.

And so a new day begins…

I actually thought I still had it in me to watch a DVD last night. Not so. After I finished working on the website, it was after 10pm. I went to bed and read for about half an hour before I could no longer keep my eyes open.

The leaves are all gone now. I had raked them to the curb Saturday before last and the clean-up crews came by on the weekend with a big leaf sucking machine and sucked them all up. My studio window rattled from the noise they made. And at the same time I was sweeping away the beautiful leaves from the website because they could not compete with the holly-jolliness of what comes next.

The front lawn is sprinkled with last night’s snow. No real accumulation, but damn it’s cold out there, so whatever snow fell...stayed.

I have lost my talent to sing. It has been so long since I have worked on a piece of music, or sung in my studio that I am beginning to forget who I am. Who am I? Who do you think you are! I don’t know anymore. Maybe if I were to sing or record a Christmas song then I would find out again. When will I make the time for that? Always an interesting question.

At least I am back to writing again, I’m glad that something works. The new website also works, not completely yet, there are still some things in the back end that are not running yet, but I’ll get the kinks out eventually. You won’t notice a difference though.

And so a new day begins…

Well, here we are poised for holiday mayhem. I have my decorations up. Well at least here at thatmark.com I have them up. Today the wind blew in from the north and the temperature fell well below freezing, and I became entirely ready for snow.

Still no word from the Volkswagen dealership about the Jetta. It will be two weeks tomorrow since I took it in for repair. Let’s not even go there. I will address the issue tomorrow in the friendliest of manners, and then I will yell at someone. “You call this customer service! Give me a car!”

I spent most of the Saturday researching new web providers, and then most of today rebuilding the site. Thanks DRW for wrecking my website two times in a six week period. How exhausting! Hopefully my new web host provider, Imhosted.com will offer a more stable solution. One is allowed to be optimistic in the face of real change. I have to admit I’m quite cranky about the whole lousy customer service thing these days.

Last week was hectic. Stephen and I drove down to New Jersey last Sunday. His Grandmother’s funeral was on Tuesday. When we were there we decided it would be best to extend our stay until after American Thanksgiving since driving back Wednesday would have been impossible. We drove back Friday in 9.5 hours…very little traffic until we hit Oakville. We sure were glad to be home again with Willi, the best West Highland Terrier in the world.

And so now, I am tired and cranky and am in need of a bit of relaxation, since I haven’t done that yet this weekend. Think I’ll go watch a DVD and then call it a night.

And so a new day is almost over…