Easter Sunday promises...

Fleet Foxes
“Helplessness Blues”
[various formats] / Sub Pop / 2011

Have a listen to this sweet little song from the Fleet Foxes.

Lyrics:

“I was raised up believing
I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes,
unique in each way you can see

And now after some thinking,
I'd say I'd rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery
serving something beyond me

But I don't, I don't know what that will be
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see

What's my name, what's my station, oh, just tell me what I should do
I don't need to be kind to the armies of night that would do such injustice to you
Or bow down and be grateful and say "sure, take all that you see"
To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls and determine my future for me

And I don't, I don't know who to believe
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see

If I know only one thing, it's that everything that I see
Of the world outside is so inconceivable often I barely can speak
Yeah I'm tongue-tied and dizzy and I can't keep it to myself
What good is it to sing helplessness blues, why should I wait for anyone else?

And I know, I know you will keep me on the shelf
I'll come back to you someday soon myself

If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm raw
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore
And you would wait tables and soon run the store

Gold hair in the sunlight, my light in the dawn
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore
Someday I'll be like the man on the screen”

* * *

This song speaks to me because I am seeking hope, redemption, and direction in life.

As for “snowflakes” and fierce originality:

I was one of those emotionally troubled kids who grew up labeled as “G/T” (“gifted and talented”) in Montgomery County, Maryland.  Throughout my public and private schooling, “gifted” kids -- particularly artistic & expressive ones -- were often encouraged to forge a fierce alloy of individuality within themselves.  From an early age we were exhorted to develop a strong and original sense of identity.  We were pushed hard to cultivate our various talents and métiers in uncompromising and heightened ways.

Those purported “gifts” became ever-heavier burdens to me as I unraveled time and again during my childhood and teen years.  I was a highly unstable youth, struggling to stay together while I joylessly shuttled between an intensely demanding school life and a wildly turbulent home life.

I was also competing with very impressive high-functioning kids from seemingly stable, nurturing homes, relative to mine (and a few others’).  These kids were formiddable rivals.  They were brilliant, intrepid, amazing individuals with ferocious and well-disciplined minds.

On the surface at least, many seemed exceedingly self-assured about the paths that lay ahead.  They also appeared to much more fully experience the sweetness of their youth and didn’t seem to know or understand the sourness of premature defeat and despair.

These winners were better “coached” and prepared to navigate social situations, school, work, and beyond.  They still are today, even as parents and professionals, coaching the next generation of winners.

While I struggled at home, battling with my raging authoritarian parents, at school I grew quietly envious and resentful of those whose “gifts” were more consistently nurtured and sustained (even as I began to academically crash and burn), those beautiful, smart, capable golden boys and girls who unwittingly tormented me in my youth spent in their shadows.

I sometimes imagined what their home lives were like, ultimately concluding that most couldn’t be having the kind of near-nightly knock-down drag-out fights with their dads that I was dealing with.  Most didn’t seem to be struggling with suicidal flirtations and persistent demons of self-hatred.

(An aside:

I couldn’t listen to Nirvana in high school because I knew it would have pushed me over the edge into the abyss.  Cobain came to represent the Pied Piper of Hell to me.)

Yes, I was a Faustian striver, a secret drive-deprivation jockey (sleep, food), but ultimately I had little to show for it.

By eleventh grade my mind was fast unraveling.  I was entering a terrible secret madness, a cycle of nightly manias followed by daily frenzies under a descending fog of numbness.

I tidily binged and purged history on quizzes that tested my wild eidetic memory, consistently scoring 19/20 and 20/20 grades on Mr. Early's textbook quizzes.  Then I'd turn around and vomit fact-fixated incoherence all over the mid-terms.

(I was a teenaged history anorexic and lived to tell.)

* * *

I still remember the pretty kids in the plaid uniforms parading the hallways, buzzing about going to Lollapalooza.

Yes, when it came down to it, many of my peers seemed to be teens for whom rebellion was merely just another adolescent pose to try on, not a soul survival strategy.

Over time I grew more and more arrogant and bitter.  (To this day, I struggle with this defensive posturing, often bristling with irritation and impatience at the apparent smugness of many cool, self-confident professionals around my age.)  I was conceited and defensive about my ever-more-questionable “talents,” vainly clinging to the ones I still believed that I had.  Every day I sought small self-affirming demonstrations of my self worth, shreds of dignity and promise in a life that seemed to be shot through with endless humiliations and hidden torments.

Meanwhile I was growing up in a household where my spirit was being pushed down by angry, miserable, exhausted old tyrants.  (I deeply hated my parents and also came to much more virulently hate myself.  I’m ashamed to say that I transferred some of this loathing to my most domineering teachers and thoughtlessly cruel peers.)

* * *

After multiple psychiatric hospitalizations during my teens and twenties and thirties, I have finally had it at the ripe old age of 33.

I am sick and tired of wanting to escape from my life and self.

I want a détente with God.

I want to be warm and at peace with myself — no longer cold and arrogant and at war with the world.

I want peace and grace and strength so that I will not crack again.

I want to give back to the people who have helped me, the people who have somehow seen through the mess on the outside to find a person with some wisdom and, yes, a few small leftover gifts.


(If for some reason you’ve gotten this far, thank you for reading this little essay.  It was almost as rewarding to write as the few good ones that I remember writing in high school (now forever lost to me).)


Happy Easter.

* * *

"And I don’t, I don't know who to believe
I’ll get back to you someday soon you will see"

I misheard the second line as, “I’ll give back to you someday soon you will see.”

I will, though.  I’ll find a way.

I just have to stop taking so much away from you/us first.

Please leave feedback below, friend or foe.  (I miss school and feedback from English teachers.)

A Fairy Tale: The Ten Year Spell

Once upon a time there were two kids.  The boy was nineteen and the girl was seventeen.

They grew to love each other and began to share their dreams together.  They sometimes talked late into the night, when the warm July darkness enveloped them.  The boy and girl would make each other laugh and forget their teenage awkwardness and isolation.

The boy and girl had one long magical night when they danced and laughed and shared wild stories and forgot about their teen loneliness.  They never forgot this beautiful night, and treasured it for all their days.

Years passed, and the boy and girl grew into adulthood.  The brightness of their dreams had tarnished a little and a slow, quiet fear had crept into their lives.

The girl, now a young woman, suddenly went mad and then came to her senses.  Then, some years later, her mind went into a still darkness.  She emerged into a thick foggy white light.  The woman had to take many cures to banish the madness and darkness, pastel pills of all different hues.  Her body grew heavy and thick with the cures.  Her mind dimmed and she often looked absently around her, forgetting herself.

The boy, now a man, took care of her and loved her just as he had loved her when she was seventeen.

Suddenly they were much older and the world was also suddenly much too old.  The world now seemed to be crashing down as if in the enactment of a bad dream.  Two tall towers fell swiftly as if under a dark spell.

The man and woman looked at each other and decided to run away together and elope.  Time was suddenly moving faster, and a strange fear and uncertainty had crept into the world.  Life suddenly seemed shorter.  The glittering towers of the cities around them shimmered in a strange new fragile light.  Terrible storms swelled up, first crashing debris on the land and then moving across the warm waters.

Many people around them seemed to be under a growing frenzy.  They sought gold and comforts and cocooned themselves with riches and multi-gabled palaces.  The man and woman watched this in wonder, not understanding the meaning of this strange frenzy.

Then one day the man and woman found themselves growing older and colder and stranger to one another.  They lived in a neighborhood called Slumburbia.  The neighborhood had seemed beautiful and placid at first but over time began to turn horrid and grotesque.  Loud klaxons sounded, and a terrible loud careening music often filled the air.  The gutters were filled with filth and discarded mattresses.  The people nearby began killing the beautiful, oldest, most majestic trees, turning them to rotting firewood.  Screaming children ran through the dirty streets, laughing cruelly.

The woman began to turn mad again.  Slowly over time she began to assumed the likeness of an old ogress.  Her dark youthful hair began falling out of her head.  Then her hair began to turn gray and wiry and her eyes turned fire-bright then chalk-dull.

The man was horrified at first, but then came to love her tenderly in her new form.  One day, in her dark madness, the woman breathed in a gaseous poison, seeking darkness and blissful stillness.  She was not overtaken by the gases, and was shocked into a new life and sense.

The man and woman knew that they had to flee Slumburbia before the madness consumed her under its terrible spell.  They roamed the county, looking at beautiful little houses filled with enchantment.  After a time they moved to a new house, a sky blue house surrounded by greenness and tall trees.

The couple was happy for a time.  They dreamed about fixing up the house and having a child.  The woman began to feel younger and less grotesque.

Then a strange thing happened.  Bones began raining down from the sky.  The woman looked up and said, “It can’t be an omen.  There must be an explanation for this odd event.”

But things did not look good.  Time was still racing forward like a swift arrow.  The years were crowding upon the couple.  Their plans were unraveling and they could not seem to have a child.  Everywhere around them in the neighborhood there were beautiful glowing children.  The woman despaired, feeling that she was under a terrible curse.

One showery day in April the woman said, “Husband, I think we are under a spell.  You have been a good husband to me, but this madness and darkness is too powerful for us.  You have loved me and cared for me with tender love and devotion for many long years.  I have also loved you well.  But I have been like a spoilt child, wandering in the darkness and fog.  I have even become a hideous old ogress at times.  And yet you still love me.  But my soul’s sickness makes me love words and songs and pictures and sweet illusions more than life itself.  Husband, let us free ourselves from this marriage promise.  This October we will have been married for ten years.  Liberate yourself from me.  Free yourself, husband, from my dark curse.  Let us break the spell this October.  Ten years of love and devotion is a good long spell.  Let it be enough.”

The man looked at his wife and sighed.  Lately he had been tired and sad and lost and too wanted to be free of this heavy spell.  She smiled at him and they laughed softly together, relieved at this slow realization.  They dreamed of their new liberated lives, freed of the spell.

Later that night she shed lonely tears, weeping for the two happy kids they had been on that warm May evening so long ago, dancing together in the soft darkness.

(To be continued...)