10/26/15

Full Correction



Today's the last day for my contacts. Tomorrow I change them. I need to get new lenses put into my glasses frames. My vision, my prescription has increased. Closer, I'm told, to my full correction. Full correction seems like something of a moving target though, right? What a nice thought.



WAKE UP and have a cute idea. ROLL out of bed. The first thing I saw this morning, I should clarify I try not to look at media/information before I meditate in the morning but sometimes (often) I fuck up and check my phone or facebook or something and this morning even before the sun came up I was reading press releases. I was the target of unpaid labor, emotional labor. Excitement, pressure. While you were away, the world tells me, your friends made money, got laid, had kids, etc. I wasn't away, I want to say, I was sleeping. I was sleepy. But I was right here.



Wake up and have a cute idea. Wake up and say the thing that everyone else was struggling to say. Think the thing we're all saying. I have several points of pleasure and pain in my life. Fear and excitement. It's not unbearable.



I don't exactly feel guilty for being different but I do feel a bit ambitious or frustrated. When people ask what are you working on? I have to say I have no idea.

My thoughts returning to Mary Heilmann. How cool, right?


Ground Control

I wonder if there's something else I'm supposed to be doing. Some superior application of my intellect, energy. I think of it as part of my mental disease but I am certain that there is always a more ideal way for me to be, in general, that eludes me. Which isn't to say I'm constantly striving towards this more ideal state; it's more that I often/eternally feel lacking, dysphoric or something.

I want to go to nightclubs and dance until my legs are sore but only sometimes. I want to gorge myself on pasta and cookie but only sometimes. I want to hide, shut myself up somewhere but only sometimes. I feel restless. And futile. But not as dark or urgently bad as I did the last time I posted. Just trying to make some progress.



Save The Last Dance For Me

Part of me wants to catalogue. To note. To keep recording, you know, the cool stuff that happens. I saw Cole's latest show, I went to see some bands play. I don't know. I ate or whatever. Felt things all over the place. Nothing seems interesting or worth remembering. No catalogues seem worth writing, keeping, reading.


Rosebud

Wake up and have another cute idea. Sleep through a calamity. Check your messages. Make yourself. Update your status. Let everyone know.
Like what's even worth writing about, right?

I'm desperately broke as I've been for months. Rich in some ways (not really) but broke beyond belief in others. I need to find a way to make some extra money. I need extra gigs. I need magick. I hope I can take care of myself. I need green candles. I need gods, angels, demons on my side. I need to make deals. I hate negotiating. I need to be there and also remove myself at all times. I want to fuck you and your room mates and your exboyfriend and your neighbor. I want to make dinner for everyone. I want to be noticed, to be the subject of a PR blitz. To be congratulated. Waited for, doted on. To see yourself reflected. To see yourself as an idea. As topical. Boy will become symbol. Person into icon. Would you rather be an idea or a human. I guess.

I'm just so tired of nerds or uptight people or more generously scared boys. I mean why do we keep having to talk about what you would do if you were there. You're not there. I'm there and I'm not doing ANYthing. Am I secretly super empathetic. Why do I have it in my head, as clear as day, that animals are far better than people. In a way they're both more and less cruel.

10/16/15

Silver Session

Deeply frustrating. To feel like I'm gaining a foothold, I'm making progress, things are going forward. So heartbreaking, even, to think that just as I'm starting to get the sense that I might some day be okay, that I won't always burn quite so often or so hot, that it won't seem quite so urgent every single moment, this self-hatred. So disappointing to fall backwards. To realize there is no escape. Taking pride in progress, stopping to enjoy a given moment, that seems like, unreasonably delusional. It's becoming another way to hurt myself: get my hopes up and then dash them.

It really doesn't take much. I mean it never did but now it's like the weather. Anything can destroy me. I have become paper, tissue. Flimsy. Weak.

All it takes is a gentle reminder that everything around me is golden but I am not. All it takes is the nagging sense that I have to come to my senses: No one wants me. I have nothing to give.

It's so hard. I have to work so hard to screw up my courage. To forget how worthless I am. To forget that nothing I do matters.



Thinking a lot lately about Sonic Youth's Silver Session for Jason KnuthA description of the project:



What's it called? Musical Thanatology. Maybe I mean an Elegy. I'm just trying to console myself by tricking myself into wonder. By catching myself rediscovering, among other things, records I had long overlooked.



What if we already had the answers we wanted? What if it was sitting in a dark corner somewhere, waiting to be rescued.



I know what that's like: waiting to be rescued. I wish someone would rescue me. Scratch that, I wish I could rescue myself. It's not about commercial success. It's not about being famous. It's not about attention, love, friendship, sex life. It's just that I want something.

I want a story. I want a fake story a happy story a boring story I want to find a way to feel like I am not a waste of space. Like I am not a foregone conclusion.

I did these shows this summer, I worked really hard on them and basically no one came.

People keep saying oh you're so busy you're everywhere you do so many shows. Let me explain why this isn't good: these aren't people who see my shows, have read my work, or know what I do. It's a way of saying "I don't want to see you." People keep apologizing for missing things I've done. People keep asking for copies of my writing but then not reading it.

People just want me to introduce them to other people. No one wants to meet me.

People just want to hurt me. People just want me to die.



I'm not even really being hyperbolic, really. It's deeply scary to feel like these things which are so plain to me are "made up". When people say it's not that bad, I don't need to be so dark, it's not as bad as it seems, I'm making a big deal.

As if I'm making this up, right? As if this is all a fantasy and I'm an asshole for dreaming it up.

As if I'm doing this, thinking this on purpose. As if I could just think a different thought. Instead of thinking "I'm worthless" I could instead think "I'm a person." As if it were that easy.

I'm stuck, man. I have been looking high and low for years. I have enlisted the help of several professionals, several medications, several friends, many many strangers, philosophies, science, art, sex, patience, etc. Nothing works. I cannot find any evidence to the contrary but that I am entirely worthless. That I can't do anything that matters. It sucks.

Even moreso because I want, really badly, to not be in pain. I wish I could change but I don't know how. I so badly want to feel like I make sense somewhere. Like I'm not just an unwelcome intrusion. But instead it becomes either disappear, be a mirror, or be worthless. Stay that way.



10/5/15

What's Eating Billy

So, last week I met Grace Jones.



My brilliant and very sweet friend Michael, who wrote a brilliant profile of Grace (including the only interview she's giving as part of the tour for her memoir), brought me as his guest to a book party she did last week. She didn't make it until quite late, after Michael and most of the parties had left. I stayed. I was very drunk. I met Grace. It was surreal.



We took photos together and she chastised me to look at the camera. I kept wanting to look at her.

I really can't. I want to explain more but maybe it's better to save it for real life. Suffice it to say that it was literally a dream come true, an amazing gift I cannot fathom, and I feel if not let down, a certain curiosity. There is no one I would rather meet than Grace Jones. I feel a bit like... well, what else? I mean I met Baby Donut and asked her to write PxRxDxCxTx on my tummy when I was a go-go boy and now I've met Grace Jones, she snapped her teeth at me and we had our arms around each other's waists I mean really. What else is there?

Could not have come at a more perfect time either. A tiny white spot of light in an otherwise interminable, long, dark, cold and black night.



The day after I met Grace Jones I got a rejection for this fellowship I really wanted, and have been rejected for a number of times.

I'm having a hard time socializing.



I did my show, Mad Girl, on Saturday. A couple of friends came, it was good. I mean it was okay. I feel like I needed to get through that. I went to a party that night and all weekend, really, people kept asking if I am okay. Some people kept asking. I feel like it's a lie to say yeah I'm okay but I don't know. Maybe not. Everyone's okay. I think I feel better than I did one week ago.



I woke up this morning and I meditated and I made breakfast and it was quiet and calm and I felt kind of optimistic. At some point this afternoon though some icy draft blew through my mind again. Why does it matter. I picked at an emotional scab. And I'm glad I'm going back to shrink tonight but honestly, it feels like hopelessness, like sadness, is the real me. That is the real me. The me that goes to parties and makes art and fucks your friend's room mate and gets drunk and always has cigarettes-- that's the passing fantasy. The real me is the boring me. The sad me.



I feel like I have been falling down the side of a mountain (and I am still falling). I feel as though I am at a remove from the rest of the world. From the world of the living. I feel like no one wants to be with me or be my friend or hang out with me. Like no one misses me. And I miss so many people. Including me.



I want to think movies are fun. I want to remember the possibility that something exciting might happen. That I might feel good. That desire might be sort of, I don't know, interesting. But right now (and by right now I mean the last year) everything feels dangerous. Precarious. Threatening.

Why bother going on a date with someone when it is certain doom. Why bother feeling when the real feeling, the true feeling, is pain.



Why bother with humanity.  What is actually eating Billy Cheer? What is his problem? What's wrong? What are you so upset about?

Feeling sort of stupid because I wanted or I thought I wanted something. A bunch of things. Closeness. People. Space. Time. Something, and not only do I not deserve it but I feel as though I am being punished for my desire. For having unrealistic expectations.

People keep telling me that I'm overreacting or I'm being paranoid but it is hard not to feel like everyone is on some level (whether they know it or not) out to get me. It is hard not to come to the conclusion that no one would like me, if they really knew me. That I am having to keep my worst secrets, and, being unable to, am being slowly and endlessly killed over and over again. I feel kind of incredibly, surprisingly lonely.