7/26/16

shitlist

I trick myself into feeling I'm having a conversation.

I was talking to my Analyst this week about how there are some people or some incidents that upset me at the time, but were too painful to really experience, so I kind of take pride in being able to repress something. There are people who I'm totally fine with, who don't bother me and who don't upset me and who I'm past and have almost forgotten, and mostly don't care. And like I said I'm totally fine with them, unless I have to run into them or think about them or see them or be reminded of them, in which case everything comes flooding back and I flip out. I don't like this about myself.

It seems to me, I was telling my Analyst, that I've been asking the present moment to account for the past, to fix the things that happened before. Lately it's felt quite clear to me that something upsets me, and it connects to other things that have upset me before. But that connection isn't working for me. I want to bring the accumulated wisdom of my past experiences to bear in making the present moment bearable. In making the future possible.

My Analyst: It sounds like you have a long shitlist.
Me (stunned): Wow... You're right. I totally do. I don't like to think of myself as holding grudges, per se, but I do totally have a shitlist. Oh my god.

I was horrified. I don't want to be doing that. I want to feel the thing, get mad or get sad or whatever, when it happens, and then move on with new understanding. But I can't go back, I guess. Later that night, I came home and ate a big salad while sitting on my floor and listening to Sunn O))) and then PLD and I went out for happy hour.

Me: I was talking to my Analyst tonight about, like, anger and stuff, and he said it sounds like I have a long shitlist. And I realized, like, 'Oh my god I totally have a shitlist.'"
PLD: Yes. Everyone's on your shitlist.



My Analyst said that it might help to write or make art about revenge fantasies. I mean I'm not gonna make the world read more revenge fantasies of mine. But I'd been telling him (and anyone else) that I don't have fantasies. That I don't have a fantasy life, or goals, or dreams. I never remember my dreams. I never cry. But the point he was trying to make is that I often feel like I don't have a fantasy life, like I don't have hope, and maybe it might feel good or be good to explore the fantasies I wish I was having.

Another thing from that session was that I was saying that I so often feel like I'm not invited. I feel like I don't have a place at the table. Analyst encouraged me to make art about that -- to make art in which I imagine myself at the table. That, I thought, sounds like a fucking fantastic idea. So fantastic, in fact, that I feel like I had that idea and then forgot or abandoned it.

Remember: THIS IS FAG CITY. I'm pretending that we're here, that we can all be here whenever we want. I mean it's not just pretending.

I think back to the period in my life when I was happier, making more art work, being more successfully or whatever, and it seemed to be about that phenomenon; making something up that other people like, or want to be part of. Tell a story that other people want to hear. I disagree with that Joan Didion quote about how "we tell ourselves stories in order to live". It's not that I'm trying to survive by telling myself a story that feels good or rekindles my interest in the world. I can't convince myself. I don't believe myself.

I need to tell myself a story in which I'm not sad. I need to tell a story in which I'm invited. I'm trying to tell a story of a better possible world. It's like utopia, maybe. I'm trying to imagine a better future. This feels different than the Joan D thing.

It's frustrating in a way, because for the last few years (several years) I've felt like that's not a story worth telling. I feel like I don't want to reward people for being hopeful. I've felt so bad and I thought that I needed to figure out how, or why, in order to make it stop. The answers are not so forthcoming.

In many aspects I feel like I am running towards a cliff, but stop right at the edge. And then retreat. And then do it all over again. I need to cry. I need to move through. On one hand it's recovering something I lost: I need to get back. On the other hand it's finally admitting that I have needs and desires that aren't being met: I need to get out of here.

Is it possible to be hopeless and hopeful at the same time? That's what I think I am. Someone recommended that I look at Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis. It was excellent but it hit too close to home. I feel like this blog has become something like that. In the litany of "no hope" etc.

I spent the last month mostly off of social media, and I'm back. But it's boring, in a way. This exhibitionism. I've made myself into an effigy so that I wouldn't have to live. I turned myself into a flag.



I spoke with my Analyst once recently about how all of it, the social media, the blogging, the performance, the outwardness, the exhibitionism, the state of emotional nakedness, it's all part of a master project of hiding.

I've been hiding for so long that I tried to convince myself that I didn't exist.
It hurt!

There's this tension between being and feeling and I don't think I can do both. It's like I this pressure have to make all these specific and fatal choices, none of which are easy, some of which are totally impossible. But I don't. I think maybe there're some false distinctions I'm making and I guess I understand why and how I make them. Subconsciously.



Thinking of another ukulele show I wanna do. More songs written by angry women. I feel like these two songs are kind of the same chord structure, right?




Magician revealing her secrets. I wanna sing a very tenor growly version of both of these songs. I think it'd be sexy. I mean I think it'd feel good to do. I mean I think both. I guess I feel like it's a thought worth having. Hello in there.

I don't have any shows coming up, that I know of. Nothing on the docket. I realize how sad and pathetic of a story that is. I saw some shows today (on, thanks, Facebook) and it made me living. I wish I was invited to play these shows. I wish people wanted to see me. Not even me, a sexy press photo version of me. I wish that was the real me. I wish there was a real me.

Urgent and Ancient; unresolvable self. Nothing would fix this, anything would fix this. I should book my own shows, but you wouldn't come, would you? Does it matter? Even here, even writing this here, is a kind of exercise in a sort of Zen calligraphic futility. I want to find purpose in meaninglessness. I want to make peace with the fact that no one cares about me; that I'm unloveable, but I buck against this at the same time. There's a part of me that wants to use my voice to say something important. There's a part of me that I think is worth loving. There's a part of me that I use to love other people and I don't want to keep acting like I don't have it.

I let my guard down. I took off my guard and I threw it away.

It's not so bad. It's just, like everything else, temporary.

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