She loved to talk about how equal we were. "I don't consider you my possession," she said presumptuously the first night we were together. She accepted me and wasn't going to try to control me. I accepted her and wasn't going to try to control her. We would work out any disagreements amicably. We would compromise! We would always put each other first! It all sounds lovely, until you realize that she was talking only to me, and I wasn't looking to be persuaded of her egalitarian intentions - so to whom was it, exactly, that she was speaking with such dogmatic conviction?
It was only natural that she would take the lead when it came to our living arrangements; after all, I'd spent my whole life either as a minor under my family's care, or as a prisoner of the system. She had been married twice, raised four children. She was the one who wanted to go looking at apartments. She was the one who wanted to put in an application. She was the one who rejoiced without reservation when we were approved, and since she was so lovely in her enthusiasm - and none too pleased when I did dare to express my hesitations - I swallowed my own feelings and tried to cooperate as, like a whirlwind, she swept me out of my comfort zone and then some.
We had our first major argument after a visit to the furniture store. I hadn't wanted to go in the first place. I didn't have any strong feelings about couches or dining tables. As long as I had my desk and my bookcases, I'd be just as happy sleeping on the floor. Of course, when we actually got to the furniture store, I quickly developed a few tentative preferences. I wouldn't hear of a couch without arms, for instance. All of my opinions were impractical, or selfish, or just silly, yet she kept on soliticing them. Matters of décor were even more difficult, because I did some have some strong feelings about that. I quite simply fell head-over-heels in love with a certain collection of rose-patterned bathroom accessories. We got the shower curtain, but she wouldn't hear of the trash can or the soap dispenser or the toothbrush holder. She didn't want a matchy-match showpiece bathroom, something that looked as if it belonged in a Better Homes and Gardens photo spread. Overly polished and formal wasn't her style. Now don't get me wrong; I like a house (or apartment) that looks and feels like a home, not a catalog display - but I've always liked bathrooms with neatly coordinated décor. They feel luxurious to me. I didn't care about the kitchen or the dining room or even the living room, but I did want my pretty showpiece bathroom.
When my grandfather gifted me with a rather substantial sum of money to use on furnishings, particularly a refrigerator and microwave, I felt that I finally had something to contribute. There was some talk of my going to pick them out on my own, but I insisted on her coming with me. After all, I had never shopped for kitchen appliances before; I wouldn't know what to look for. And since what was mine was hers and what was hers was mine, this was going to be our refrigerator and microwave, and I wanted her to be as satisfied with them as I was, especially because she planned to do most of the cooking.
The year before, I had spent several months staying with my uncle and his family, who had a refrigerator that dispensed cold filtered water from the door. I'd always been content to drink tap water, but I had found this feature just as convenient and much more satisfying than drinking from the tap. I would have liked to choose a refrigerator with a water filter in the door, but for some reason, she put her foot down. I never understood what, exactly, she had against refrigerators with dispensers in the door, but she refused to even consider any models with this feature. I wasn't about to argue; her desire not to have a water dispenser was clearly much greater than my desire to have one. It was much more important to me that she be happy, so we found a very nice, very basic refrigerator.
What was ironic was that, unlike me, she wasn't content drinking tap water. One day, before the refrigerator was delivered, as we were walking in the heat, carrying our heavy bags home after a shopping excursion, I tried to inject a little positivity into the situation by reflecting how good it would be to get back to the apartment and enjoy a nice cool glass of water. "That would be true," she snarled, "if we actually had cold water to drink!" Wounded, I fell silent. If she wanted to be miserable, let her!
One of the first purchases she made for the apartment - even before we moved, actually - was a pair of water pitchers to keep in the refrigerator. With two pitchers, we could always be sure of having cold water available; when one pitcher was used up and refilled and the water was still getting cold, we could drink out of the other. Or at any rate, she could. Most often I just filled my glass from the tap. I thought it was quite cold enough; even on the hottest of days, when the water came out warm from sitting in the pipes, it was only a few seconds before it began to run cool, the warmth flowing over my hand chilling like the sudden blossoming of an ice-blue flower. What additional satisfaction I might have derived from colder water wasn't usually worth the bother of pouring it.
I knew she looked down on me for being content with tap water, as if it weren't just a matter of personal preference. I think it may have been guilt on her part, because I was the one filling her glass more often than she was. If I was up and she was sitting, or even if we were both sitting, she would ask me, so sweetly, if I would get her some water. Since she liked to have a glass of water at hand, and didn't like to touch water that had been sitting out even as long as a couple of hours, I was faced with this request several times most days. It was such a simple thing, such an easy thing for me to do to make her happy; of course I would do it. Sometimes I poured a glass for myself at the same time; more often, I didn't. Sometimes, if I was feeling lazy or rushed, I wouldn't bother to refill the pitcher when it got to be empty, or I would pour from the full pitcher even though there was still some water left in the other one. If she caught me doing this, or I never got around to refilling the first pitcher and we ran out of cold water, she berated me for being inconsiderate. I didn't bother to point out that if it mattered so much to her, she should be the one making sure the pitchers were full.
A couple of times I actually wondered if it was fair that she would ask me to fill her glass for her, whereas I always took care of myself - not whether it was fair to me, but whether it was fair to her! I thought of what a warm glow I felt when I handed her the glass and she smiled up at me and said "Thank you," and I wondered if I was being selfish, never giving her a chance to feel the same way. (I really was that fucking naive, okay?) A couple of times, then, when I was sitting and she was up and about, I asked her to please bring me some water. I very quickly learned that the response was the same every time, even if she was actually already in the kitchen (doing something other than pouring water) when I asked: "Get it yourself. I'm not your nigger." Then she would smile and explain that that wasn't a racist thing to say, because she'd first heard it from a black person.
(My mother was none too sympathetic when I told her about the chances I'd given her to do favors for me. "That's not love, doing every favor someone asks you," she said, as if it should have been obvious. Well thanks, Mom, now you tell me.)
Her intent to do most of the cooking, which she had stated before we got the apartment, quickly fell by the wayside. She did a lot of baking, but it seemed I was most often the one preparing our meals. (She later claimed she couldn't stand to cook with the inadequate pots and pans we had, and that was why she had me do it.) One day, several months into our relationship, when I'd given up hope of ever satisfying her and taken to staving off her fury as best I could, she wanted a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch, and she insisted I make one for myself as well, even though I wasn't hungry. When I brought our sandwiches over to the couch where she was sitting, she muttered "Thank you" and began to eat as I sat down beside her and tried to think of a way to clear up the tension between us. Suddenly I heard her sputtering and choking - clearly a bite of food had gone down the wrong way. Her distress cut through my seething resentment, and all I could see was the discomfort and pain of someone I cared for dearly. I leapt to the kitchen in a couple of quick steps, quickly filled a glass, and rushed it back to her, only one thought in my mind: to bring her relief without delay. During those few seconds that I was up, however, she got past the worst of it, and when I pressed the glass into her hand, she looked at me with disgust and rage and sputtered, "Why did you bring me tap water? You know I don't drink tap water!"
If I had been able to admit to myself then that our relationship was truly beyond repair, that whatever may have passed for love between us once was dead a thousand times over - if I had been willing to admit to myself what my life had become, and that it was only fear that kept me bound to her now, I would have done what I've ever since regretted not doing: I would have gone back to the kitchen, grabbed the fullest pitcher of ice water we had, carried it back out to the living room, and dumped it over her head.
It wasn't for another month or two that she threw me out. When she turned on me, she turned on me completely. She blamed me for the high blood pressure that had recently landed her in the hospital, claiming that my mere presence was enough to send it spiking. She didn't want to hear my apologies; she didn't want to hear my concerns. She knew she couldn't legally demand to have me out of the apartment - my name was on the lease - but she knew she had options and if I didn't go on my own, she'd find somewhere else to go and I wouldn't be able to afford to stay there anyway. If my mother hadn't been available to pick me up that evening, I don't believe she would have cared if I'd had to spend the night on the streets. Over the course of the next few days, we did speak on the telephone several times, to make arrangements for me to come back and move my things. I can honestly say that I took the high road during those conversations: I spoke gently, apologized for what I'd done wrong, and bit my tongue when she bombarded me with unjust accusations or hypocritical invective. "A soft answer turneth away wrath," according to a Biblical proverb, but my meekness seemed to inspire her to new heights of fury. She couldn't stand the thought of me coming to the apartment to pack my things, but she didn't like having to deal with my stuff all over the place, so she did a lot of my packing for me. When I told her I appreciated that, she snarled, "I didn't do it for you."
Her main concern with me at that point, other than extricating all traces of me from her life and apartment as quickly and completely as possible, was the refrigerator. The microwave too, to a lesser extent, but primarily the refrigerator. For me, the issue was cut-and-dried: although I knew my family specifically wished it otherwise, I had promised her months ago that I would leave the refrigerator with her if we ever broke up. She was the one who loved to cook, and if I took it she would have to replace it immediately, whereas I would be living indefinitely with my mother, and the refrigerator would only be in storage if I did take it. And really, I didn't want it. It wasn't my refrigerator in the first place. It was the model she'd wanted.
For any number of reasons, though, "you keep it" wasn't a good enough answer for her. She was afraid I would change my mind. (Of course she was. She'd told me in the beginning that my bed was mine to keep no matter what, but she changed her mind about that when she threw me out. It was important to her that she and her new roommate have matching beds. Why wouldn't I follow suit, just for spite?) She wanted me to sign it over to her legally. She had it all worked out: if she and her new roommate weren't able to make the rent, which was a very real possibility, she would have to find new lodgings and pay a $1200 break-lease fee. If I signed the refrigerator over to her, she would consider that to be my part in paying the fee.
I was flabbergasted. She didn't have any immediate plans to give up the apartment; she'd done the calculations before she threw me out and had every reason to believe she and her new roommate could get by. She was asking me to sign over a real asset against a prospective debt - and it was her debt! She was the one who'd thrown me out, against my will, and she was more eager to have my name removed from the lease than I was. Any further financial obligation attached to that apartment would be squarely on her shoulders; I had no obligation to pay a single penny of that break-lease fee! When I pointed this out, she lost her pretense of reasonableness and threatened to take me to court over it. It was my fault, she insisted, if she had to pay that fee, because I'd forced her to throw me out in the first place! I'd misrepresented what living with me would be like - I'd broken a verbal contract. I'd told her that I wouldn't sit around the house all day, that when I felt truly comfortable and settled-in to our new life together, I would enjoy expanding my sphere of acquaintances and experiences - but after six months living with her, I was turning to my books and computer games more eagerly than ever. I'd promised to try to bring my night-owl tendencies under control, but I'd found it difficult to do so, and at one point had tentatively proposed a two-week experiment to see if a more "unconventional" schedule of sleeping and waking might better suit my body's needs. In the early days of our relationship, we'd talked about what we imagined our future together would be like, and now she was threatening to use vague promises I had made about "someday" - promises I had made to please her, and not from any great desire of my own - against me in a court of law.
In that moment I decided: there wasn't a power in heaven or on earth that could make me sign that refrigerator over to her. No, I didn't change my mind about letting her have it. But for the first time in nearly ten months, she would have to take or leave what I was offering on my terms.
She wasn't there the morning I went back to the apartment to pick up my things. While I waited for the movers to arrive, I drifted around this space that was so intimately familiar, yet was clearly my home no longer, puttering uselessly in a haze of pain and tears. On the coffee table, where I couldn't miss it, was a statement she had drawn up on notebook paper, something to the effect that I, Truth Unleashed, acknowledged that I had broken a verbal contract, etc., etc., and that in signing over the refrigerator I would understand that my debt would be, in the eyes of all parties, considered to be paid in full. I set it back down without signing. Also on the coffee table was a paper that looked to have been torn from a magazine, one of those nauseating "inspirational" quotes she loved so much: "You can never truly please another person; you can only please yourself." It was an odd message for her to have left me amidst all these accusations of selfishness. Maybe it was her way of saying she was through trying to make me happy, but I'd never considered her to be responsible for my happiness. Whatever it was that she meant, it struck me like a dagger in the heart, and all I could do was collapse on her ugly green couch, the one I'd spent six months pretending wasn't a perfect eyesore, and give myself over to a plaintive, primal wail.
Maybe she would be furious when she came home and found I hadn't signed her little contract, but I didn't care. I was so desperate and broken I might have abandoned my resolve and signed a simple statement that I relinquished any claim I might have had on the refrigerator, but she'd gone too far. I wasn't going to let her recast a gift freely given as an admission of blame on my part. If she wanted that refrigerator, she would have to accept what came with it: the knowledge that I had been the bigger person, that I had chosen to put her first and act from a place of love while she was spewing curses and threats. She could have the refrigerator, but it would forever put the lie to whatever she was telling herself about me.
She would complain to me over the telephone later about my not having signed the paper, but there was nothing she could do at that point. Even she would have to admit that, if I hadn't taken it when I already had the professional movers there with their van, I wasn't likely to change my mind and come back for it now, no matter how spiteful I happened to feel. She couldn't afford to replace it and wash her hands of it (and me) altogether. If she tried to take me to court, she'd be laughed out on her ass and probably required to pay my legal fees if the suit wasn't dismissed outright. She had the refrigerator. The only thing she wanted from me that she didn't have was an undisturbed image of herself as a moral person. And I wasn't going to give her that.
"I walk out of this darkness / With no sense of regret," Kelly Clarkson sings on her first album, "And I go with a clear conscience / We both know that you can't say that." I'm not sorry I stayed true to myself at a time when I was hurt, forsaken, and angry. I'll never be sorry I chose to stay right (ironically, "stay right" was one of her catchphrases), to take the high road.
I do wish I'd taken that pretty rose-patterned shower curtain, though.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
The End of Everything Before
There are a few jobs less appealing to me than that of President of the United States, but not many: working the incinerator at the animal shelter, for example, or peddling my ass on the streets. I hate politics with a passion that really ought to be incompatible with my utter lack of interest. Moreover, I have more than enough trouble managing my own quiet little life without worrying about, say, tax legislation, or who should be the ambassador to Peru, or what everyone's so upset about in the Middle East.
Strangely enough, however, when I was riding in an ambulance for the first time, staring out the windows in the back doors at places I'd just been, on my way to the hospital, the thought that kept coming to the forefront of my mind was this: Well, there goes any chance I had to become Leader of the Free World.
It had happened the way these things always do: all of a sudden, out of the blue, and inevitably. It was just about a month earlier, on my eighteenth birthday, that I'd taken my first dose of antidepressants. I still remember placing my thumb over the scoring in the middle of the little powder-blue pill, pausing for a moment before breaking it in half, lingering for a moment before swallowing one of the halves, a tiny thing, barely perceptible really, compared to the great mouthfuls of big pills that would soon become my daily regimen. I had become a user of psychotropic drugs, the same day that I had become a legal adult. It was a sober moment, a drizzle of gravity in a day marked by the triumph of having survived childhood.
I was a savvy consumer, of course. I started devouring everything I could find online about the medication I was now taking. Strangely enough, however, I didn't immediately recognize the side effects for what they were. It was only after several days of persistent insomnia, combined with an ever-mounting restlessness, that I put two and two together and realized that this was something the powder-blue pill was doing to me. I hadn't had any side effects at all to start with, but after the first four days, I stopped breaking the little pills in half. When I realized what was going on, I was stunned: how could something so tiny and inanimate have such immense power over me? I fought for control in the only way I could: through knowledge. I spent hours online, reading about my new prescription and the conditions it treated. And little by little, empowered by knowledge, I began to forget that I was a promising student at a prestigious college and lost myself into a new identity as a person with a frazzled and fragmented brain.
It's not as if I could have done homework, anyway, all those awful sleepless nights. My mind and body felt by turns fuzzy and frenetic, and sometimes both at once. I didn't want to disturb my roommate, so I either went down to the computer lab to putter around online or just lay miserably in the dark. A couple of times, I went to the infirmary to spend the night. The staff there were kind, professional, and friendly; to this day I am grateful for their patience and matter-of-fact cheerfulness. The infirmary was closed over the Thanksgiving holiday, however, and so for four intense nights I was left to my own devices. My roommate was gone, so at least I could putter in relative privacy. I spent hours taking personality quizzes online; I catnapped uselessly in the afternoons, wrapped in the heavy stickiness of uneasy sleep; and at night, when the restlessness possessed me like a fire in my veins, I put on one of my more energetic CDs and danced. It was a graceless, artless dance, a pure kinetic frenzy. Habitually sedentary as I was, I found myself quickly exhausted. I kept dancing. I brought my heel down hard on a tiny bit of lead that had come from one of my mechanical pencils and jammed it up under the skin, and kept dancing. I worked myself up into a giddy and discontented euphoria; into the night I danced like burning, and when I woke the next afternoon it was all I could do to stumble down the hallway to the bathroom. One night I left campus and walked down the road a ways, to CVS. I didn't know if they were open all night or not, but if they were I was going to buy a big bottle of sleeping pills. For the insomnia, of course. I don't know what would have happened if I'd gotten them, because the store was closed.
After the Thanksgiving weekend, I was so far gone that my psychiatrist ordered me confined to the infirmary, allowed out only to go to class. I usually went; going to class provided a brief oasis of sanity in the midst of what my life had become; a taste of recent routines I had almost forgotten. It was my only remaining pretense at being a student. I'd started missing class regularly in mid-November; I'd been struggling for the most part to keep up with the assigned readings, and the prospect of researching and writing a paper quite simply reduced me to tears. I spent about a week in the infirmary: sometimes trying to write in my journal, sometimes reading a bit; there was a computer there that I was allowed to use, and I spent hours at night reading up on urban legends or playing Snood; amusements in which I took no real relish, but which served as a flimsy barrier between me and the immensity of my chaos and despair.
It was too late, though; the real barrier, the one I'd carefully constructed all those years of increasingly severe depressive episodes, had already crumbled away. I couldn't pretend anymore. I couldn't conceal the truth from myself or anyone else. In daily conversations with my psychiatrist and psychologist, it all came pouring out, all the dark ugly reality, or at any rate more than anyone had ever heard before. And after several days with no sign of improvement, there came the morning when all the staff came to surround my bed and my psychiatrist told me I was going to be sent to the hospital. They seemed to appear from all corners at once, before I even knew they were coming, like a flock of birds. I was later to learn that this happens all the time in the mental health system; if they're doing anything they know you won't like, they don't give you a chance to respond to reason rather than force, no matter how docile and cooperative and sensible they've always known you to be. It's not just a formality, either; they have steel in their eyes and look right through you without seeing anything more than the trouble you have the potential to be. I've seen it happen many a time since then, to me or to others, and it never gets any less frightening, the feeling that you've already lost a fight you never meant to put up in the first place.
There wasn't a thing in the world wrong with me physically, but for some reason they wouldn't let me walk out to the ambulance. They pushed me out on a stretcher. For weeks now, I had felt myself slipping slowly out of control of my life, and as I lay on the stretcher watching the walls of the infirmary slip past me without saying goodbye, I felt that these people had come to finish the job.
It was then, in the ambulance, as the shadows of sparse-leafed late-autumn trees flicked over the back windows, that I realized a line had been crossed. I wasn't just a bright college student who had to swallow a pill every day. I was going to be a mental patient. For the rest of my life, I'd never be able to shake that part of my history. I would never be able to look in the mirror and see someone who hadn't been locked up with the crazies. I remembered an extremely dull book I had read a year or two earlier, about the 1988 presidential election. The stability of Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis had been called into question when rumors surfaced that he had been treated for depression in the past. (Dukakis and his personal physician denied the rumors, which there had never been any real evidence to support; later his wife, Kitty, would go on record about her own struggles with alcoholism and depression and become active in mental health education and advocacy.) It wasn't that, as an aspiring writer and academician, I imagined having many relentless and well-connected enemies in the future who would stop at nothing to bring me down. It was more that, if I ever did, the ammunition was there, packing a wallop whether anyone ever used it or not. No matter where I went or what I did in the future, I would always have the knowledge deep within me that many, if not most, of the people around me would look at me, not with admiration and respect, but with revulsion and pity, if they only knew.
A more immediate and concrete dread was the anticipation of what lay ahead for me at the hospital itself. In my senior year of high school, I'd taken an evening psychology class offered by a local community college, and the professor told us about his experiences working in a large state mental hospital. It was some scary stuff that he told us. I remembered one story in particular about a patient smearing feces on the walls. Could I really be going to such a place? Did these professionals whom I had trusted actually think that I belonged there?
The first thing they did in the hospital was take me to a private waiting room. I'm not sure how long I was there, but it was long enough to read a whole magazine cover-to-cover, including the boring articles I had no interest in reading in the first place. Then the interviews began, with bored clinicians whose role I didn't quite understand. One of them inquired about my family mental-health history, and I told them my paternal grandfather had suffered from depression and committed suicide in the early '80s, before I was born. Eventually he left, and fifteen minutes or half an hour later another came in and greeted me with, "So, I understand you're having some trouble getting over your grandfather's death?" It was my first taste of just how garbled beyond recognition my life could become in the hands and charts of the mental health system.
I think it was then, during those interviews in that waiting room, that I began to lie. It was simple honesty that had gotten me into this mess in the first place. These people didn't want to help me, and I didn't want their help. I was tired of fighting this uphill battle called life, and what could I possibly have to live for now? Whatever might once have provided some flimsy hope to cling to was surely ruined now. This hospital full of frowning professionals wanted to keep me alive, and I wanted to die - and if they weren't with me, as the saying goes, they were against me, and what right did they have to the truth if they were only going to use it against me? At first I didn't so much lie outright as just soften the truth as much as my conscience would allow. Once they took me upstairs to the adult psychiatric unit, however, I began to prevaricate in earnest.
They told me it was for legal reasons that they had to transport me in a wheelchair, but in my mind it was a symbolic crippling. The power of self-determination was out of my hands, even to the extent that I wasn't trusted to walk on my own without - what? Falling, or running?
I remember the moment they opened the doors to the ward. I didn't hear any screaming. I didn't smell anything foul. There was something almost sinister about how sinister it wasn't. I remember doors and generic artwork on the walls and a pukey pink everywhere that I later learned was supposed to be soothing. They wheeled me to the nurses' station, where I was handed over to a woman I would later learn was one of the least warm and personable staff members on the unit. She showed me to one of the regular rooms, but when I learned I would have a roommate, I went into a panic. So far I hadn't seen any of the other patients. I imagined myself alone with someone wild-eyed and delusional, and I wouldn't even step over the threshold. The nurse simply said "Come on then" and led me back through a door on one side of the nurses' station, to what I would later learn was the ICU section of the unit. Ironically, had there been any patients there prone to unprovoked violence or the smearing of shit, this was where they would most likely have been . . . but the rooms were private. The four regular patient rooms were taken, so I would spend my first few days in the seclusion room - a narrow, windowless chamber with no furniture but a metal frame bed with a mattress, where patients who had lost control of themselves were taken to calm down.
It would be nine weeks before I was released. Over the course of the next week, I would put up a valiant effort to act "normal" and convince them I didn't belong there. I would have to figure out what on earth to say when a nurse asked, as a routine part of the intake, whether I would rather be restrained face up or face down, if it came to that. I would be asked to name the presidents in reverse chronological order as far back as I could (I tripped up somewhere around World War I, but my psychiatrist told me I'd made it farther than any patient he'd ever had) and given a list of three items to remember, to see if I could recall them five minutes later (a shiny new penny, a red rubber ball, and a tall oak tree). In the weeks to come, I would have nurses ask me on a daily basis if I was "feeling anxious," because I was pacing, which is something I've done almost from the time I learned to walk, having discovered early on that it liberates my mind and encourages my creative process. I would form relationships with some of the staff and other patients that would make an impression on my heart forever. I would learn how easily figurative language can be taken literally by those who are more used to dealing with psychotics than poets, how easily a timid appeasement smile can be taken as evidence of insincerity on one hand, disconnection from reality on the other, based on what it is that the observer is looking for. I would read, write, color pictures, get a member of the staff to take me walking in a blizzard, and celebrate the coming of a new millennium. I would bang my head in frustration and melt ice cubes in my hands just for spite. I would follow in the newspapers the story of a man who murdered seven coworkers and claimed that his antidepressants made him do it. I would be tested, diagnosed, doubted, believed, and dismissed, and ultimately I would make the decision, for reasons of my own, to take the medications and give life a try.
For the moment, though . . . my first moment alone on a psychiatric ward . . . all I could do was shut myself up in the seclusion room and curl up on the bed, closing my eyes against the light that came through the reinforced glass window in the door. It was a place beyond tears. It was the end of everything before. Making myself as small as I could, I wrapped myself around the refrain that was pounding in my head, the one that had been with me a thousand different ways since the ride in the ambulance: Nothing is going to be the same ever again.
Strangely enough, however, when I was riding in an ambulance for the first time, staring out the windows in the back doors at places I'd just been, on my way to the hospital, the thought that kept coming to the forefront of my mind was this: Well, there goes any chance I had to become Leader of the Free World.
It had happened the way these things always do: all of a sudden, out of the blue, and inevitably. It was just about a month earlier, on my eighteenth birthday, that I'd taken my first dose of antidepressants. I still remember placing my thumb over the scoring in the middle of the little powder-blue pill, pausing for a moment before breaking it in half, lingering for a moment before swallowing one of the halves, a tiny thing, barely perceptible really, compared to the great mouthfuls of big pills that would soon become my daily regimen. I had become a user of psychotropic drugs, the same day that I had become a legal adult. It was a sober moment, a drizzle of gravity in a day marked by the triumph of having survived childhood.
I was a savvy consumer, of course. I started devouring everything I could find online about the medication I was now taking. Strangely enough, however, I didn't immediately recognize the side effects for what they were. It was only after several days of persistent insomnia, combined with an ever-mounting restlessness, that I put two and two together and realized that this was something the powder-blue pill was doing to me. I hadn't had any side effects at all to start with, but after the first four days, I stopped breaking the little pills in half. When I realized what was going on, I was stunned: how could something so tiny and inanimate have such immense power over me? I fought for control in the only way I could: through knowledge. I spent hours online, reading about my new prescription and the conditions it treated. And little by little, empowered by knowledge, I began to forget that I was a promising student at a prestigious college and lost myself into a new identity as a person with a frazzled and fragmented brain.
It's not as if I could have done homework, anyway, all those awful sleepless nights. My mind and body felt by turns fuzzy and frenetic, and sometimes both at once. I didn't want to disturb my roommate, so I either went down to the computer lab to putter around online or just lay miserably in the dark. A couple of times, I went to the infirmary to spend the night. The staff there were kind, professional, and friendly; to this day I am grateful for their patience and matter-of-fact cheerfulness. The infirmary was closed over the Thanksgiving holiday, however, and so for four intense nights I was left to my own devices. My roommate was gone, so at least I could putter in relative privacy. I spent hours taking personality quizzes online; I catnapped uselessly in the afternoons, wrapped in the heavy stickiness of uneasy sleep; and at night, when the restlessness possessed me like a fire in my veins, I put on one of my more energetic CDs and danced. It was a graceless, artless dance, a pure kinetic frenzy. Habitually sedentary as I was, I found myself quickly exhausted. I kept dancing. I brought my heel down hard on a tiny bit of lead that had come from one of my mechanical pencils and jammed it up under the skin, and kept dancing. I worked myself up into a giddy and discontented euphoria; into the night I danced like burning, and when I woke the next afternoon it was all I could do to stumble down the hallway to the bathroom. One night I left campus and walked down the road a ways, to CVS. I didn't know if they were open all night or not, but if they were I was going to buy a big bottle of sleeping pills. For the insomnia, of course. I don't know what would have happened if I'd gotten them, because the store was closed.
After the Thanksgiving weekend, I was so far gone that my psychiatrist ordered me confined to the infirmary, allowed out only to go to class. I usually went; going to class provided a brief oasis of sanity in the midst of what my life had become; a taste of recent routines I had almost forgotten. It was my only remaining pretense at being a student. I'd started missing class regularly in mid-November; I'd been struggling for the most part to keep up with the assigned readings, and the prospect of researching and writing a paper quite simply reduced me to tears. I spent about a week in the infirmary: sometimes trying to write in my journal, sometimes reading a bit; there was a computer there that I was allowed to use, and I spent hours at night reading up on urban legends or playing Snood; amusements in which I took no real relish, but which served as a flimsy barrier between me and the immensity of my chaos and despair.
It was too late, though; the real barrier, the one I'd carefully constructed all those years of increasingly severe depressive episodes, had already crumbled away. I couldn't pretend anymore. I couldn't conceal the truth from myself or anyone else. In daily conversations with my psychiatrist and psychologist, it all came pouring out, all the dark ugly reality, or at any rate more than anyone had ever heard before. And after several days with no sign of improvement, there came the morning when all the staff came to surround my bed and my psychiatrist told me I was going to be sent to the hospital. They seemed to appear from all corners at once, before I even knew they were coming, like a flock of birds. I was later to learn that this happens all the time in the mental health system; if they're doing anything they know you won't like, they don't give you a chance to respond to reason rather than force, no matter how docile and cooperative and sensible they've always known you to be. It's not just a formality, either; they have steel in their eyes and look right through you without seeing anything more than the trouble you have the potential to be. I've seen it happen many a time since then, to me or to others, and it never gets any less frightening, the feeling that you've already lost a fight you never meant to put up in the first place.
There wasn't a thing in the world wrong with me physically, but for some reason they wouldn't let me walk out to the ambulance. They pushed me out on a stretcher. For weeks now, I had felt myself slipping slowly out of control of my life, and as I lay on the stretcher watching the walls of the infirmary slip past me without saying goodbye, I felt that these people had come to finish the job.
It was then, in the ambulance, as the shadows of sparse-leafed late-autumn trees flicked over the back windows, that I realized a line had been crossed. I wasn't just a bright college student who had to swallow a pill every day. I was going to be a mental patient. For the rest of my life, I'd never be able to shake that part of my history. I would never be able to look in the mirror and see someone who hadn't been locked up with the crazies. I remembered an extremely dull book I had read a year or two earlier, about the 1988 presidential election. The stability of Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis had been called into question when rumors surfaced that he had been treated for depression in the past. (Dukakis and his personal physician denied the rumors, which there had never been any real evidence to support; later his wife, Kitty, would go on record about her own struggles with alcoholism and depression and become active in mental health education and advocacy.) It wasn't that, as an aspiring writer and academician, I imagined having many relentless and well-connected enemies in the future who would stop at nothing to bring me down. It was more that, if I ever did, the ammunition was there, packing a wallop whether anyone ever used it or not. No matter where I went or what I did in the future, I would always have the knowledge deep within me that many, if not most, of the people around me would look at me, not with admiration and respect, but with revulsion and pity, if they only knew.
A more immediate and concrete dread was the anticipation of what lay ahead for me at the hospital itself. In my senior year of high school, I'd taken an evening psychology class offered by a local community college, and the professor told us about his experiences working in a large state mental hospital. It was some scary stuff that he told us. I remembered one story in particular about a patient smearing feces on the walls. Could I really be going to such a place? Did these professionals whom I had trusted actually think that I belonged there?
The first thing they did in the hospital was take me to a private waiting room. I'm not sure how long I was there, but it was long enough to read a whole magazine cover-to-cover, including the boring articles I had no interest in reading in the first place. Then the interviews began, with bored clinicians whose role I didn't quite understand. One of them inquired about my family mental-health history, and I told them my paternal grandfather had suffered from depression and committed suicide in the early '80s, before I was born. Eventually he left, and fifteen minutes or half an hour later another came in and greeted me with, "So, I understand you're having some trouble getting over your grandfather's death?" It was my first taste of just how garbled beyond recognition my life could become in the hands and charts of the mental health system.
I think it was then, during those interviews in that waiting room, that I began to lie. It was simple honesty that had gotten me into this mess in the first place. These people didn't want to help me, and I didn't want their help. I was tired of fighting this uphill battle called life, and what could I possibly have to live for now? Whatever might once have provided some flimsy hope to cling to was surely ruined now. This hospital full of frowning professionals wanted to keep me alive, and I wanted to die - and if they weren't with me, as the saying goes, they were against me, and what right did they have to the truth if they were only going to use it against me? At first I didn't so much lie outright as just soften the truth as much as my conscience would allow. Once they took me upstairs to the adult psychiatric unit, however, I began to prevaricate in earnest.
They told me it was for legal reasons that they had to transport me in a wheelchair, but in my mind it was a symbolic crippling. The power of self-determination was out of my hands, even to the extent that I wasn't trusted to walk on my own without - what? Falling, or running?
I remember the moment they opened the doors to the ward. I didn't hear any screaming. I didn't smell anything foul. There was something almost sinister about how sinister it wasn't. I remember doors and generic artwork on the walls and a pukey pink everywhere that I later learned was supposed to be soothing. They wheeled me to the nurses' station, where I was handed over to a woman I would later learn was one of the least warm and personable staff members on the unit. She showed me to one of the regular rooms, but when I learned I would have a roommate, I went into a panic. So far I hadn't seen any of the other patients. I imagined myself alone with someone wild-eyed and delusional, and I wouldn't even step over the threshold. The nurse simply said "Come on then" and led me back through a door on one side of the nurses' station, to what I would later learn was the ICU section of the unit. Ironically, had there been any patients there prone to unprovoked violence or the smearing of shit, this was where they would most likely have been . . . but the rooms were private. The four regular patient rooms were taken, so I would spend my first few days in the seclusion room - a narrow, windowless chamber with no furniture but a metal frame bed with a mattress, where patients who had lost control of themselves were taken to calm down.
It would be nine weeks before I was released. Over the course of the next week, I would put up a valiant effort to act "normal" and convince them I didn't belong there. I would have to figure out what on earth to say when a nurse asked, as a routine part of the intake, whether I would rather be restrained face up or face down, if it came to that. I would be asked to name the presidents in reverse chronological order as far back as I could (I tripped up somewhere around World War I, but my psychiatrist told me I'd made it farther than any patient he'd ever had) and given a list of three items to remember, to see if I could recall them five minutes later (a shiny new penny, a red rubber ball, and a tall oak tree). In the weeks to come, I would have nurses ask me on a daily basis if I was "feeling anxious," because I was pacing, which is something I've done almost from the time I learned to walk, having discovered early on that it liberates my mind and encourages my creative process. I would form relationships with some of the staff and other patients that would make an impression on my heart forever. I would learn how easily figurative language can be taken literally by those who are more used to dealing with psychotics than poets, how easily a timid appeasement smile can be taken as evidence of insincerity on one hand, disconnection from reality on the other, based on what it is that the observer is looking for. I would read, write, color pictures, get a member of the staff to take me walking in a blizzard, and celebrate the coming of a new millennium. I would bang my head in frustration and melt ice cubes in my hands just for spite. I would follow in the newspapers the story of a man who murdered seven coworkers and claimed that his antidepressants made him do it. I would be tested, diagnosed, doubted, believed, and dismissed, and ultimately I would make the decision, for reasons of my own, to take the medications and give life a try.
For the moment, though . . . my first moment alone on a psychiatric ward . . . all I could do was shut myself up in the seclusion room and curl up on the bed, closing my eyes against the light that came through the reinforced glass window in the door. It was a place beyond tears. It was the end of everything before. Making myself as small as I could, I wrapped myself around the refrain that was pounding in my head, the one that had been with me a thousand different ways since the ride in the ambulance: Nothing is going to be the same ever again.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Journeys
It was an impulse purchase in the spring of 2000: a CD from the counter display by the cash register at the music store. The title, Journeys, intrigued me, and when I flipped over the album case to examine the track listing, I noted with pleasure several songs I knew and liked very much, as well as a couple of songs I wasn't familiar with, by artists I admired. I concluded that this was an album worth owning, and handed it over to the cashier with the rest of my purchases.
I don't remember how much I paid for it, but I do know that I got my money's worth. It wasn't the first multi-artist compilation I'd purchased, nor was it to be the last - but it was, hands down, quite simply the best. There wasn't one bad, or even second-rate, song in the mix. I listened to this album repeatedly as I struggled to reclaim my identity after my first hospitalization nearly ten years ago, and found the powerful melodies and poignant lyrics by turns soothing, inspiring, and reflective of my own unspoken yearnings.
The CD that I bought on impulse ten years ago is long gone, lost, along with so much else that was precious, during the years I was shuffled around indifferently by the mental health system. I never thought much about it until recently, when I decided to look it up online and see if I could find it again. The album itself is long since out of print (is that the correct term? - would "out of burn" be more accurate?), but I found it mentioned, with the full track listing, on several music websites. From there it was a simple matter to individually purchase or otherwise locate the songs I didn't already own.
Journeys lives again for me as a playlist in iTunes - and I for one believe it is a playlist worth sharing. Some of the greatest names in contemporary music are to be found here (John Lennon, Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon, to name a few), along with some artists perhaps less familiar. Although the songs are drawn from several genres and span almost three decades of musical history, they suit each other remarkably well (in fact, many of the artists on the album have turned to each other for collaboration and inspiration: Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush have recorded a duet together; Roxy Music has covered "Jealous Guy"; Sarah McLachlan has covered "Solsbury Hill"; Sinéad O'Connor and Peter Gabriel have both performed with Afro Celt Sound System; Over the Rhine toured with Cowboy Junkies) flowing together into a harmony that is earnestly pensive, and often bittersweet - truly a journey for the spirit and heart, as well as a treat for the ear.
TRACK LISTING:
Solsbury Hill (Peter Gabriel)
Building a Mystery (Sarah McLachlan)
Back in the High Life Again (Steve Winwood)
Graceland (Paul Simon)
Avalon (Roxy Music)
Running Up That Hill (Kate Bush)
Jealous Guy (John Lennon)
200 More Miles (Cowboy Junkies)
Nothing Compares 2 U (Sinéad O'Connor)
Falling in Love with You (UB40)
Amber (Afro Celt Sound System)
Dante's Prayer (Loreena McKennitt)
All I Need Is Everything (Over the Rhine)
These Dreams (Heart)
Don't Dream It's Over (Crowded House)
American Pie (Don McLean)
And now, just for you, my dear readers, something that was never included in the original album - Truth Unleashed's personal liner notes.
Solsbury Hill - This song was written about Peter Gabriel's decision to split from the band Genesis and embark upon a solo career, but its poetic spareness makes it an appropriate anthem for the soul-searching that accompanies any major life decision. Some folks perhaps read a little too much into the song. Check out some alternate interpretations for a laugh: Gabriel's actually singing about alien abductions, the life of Christ, the inner world of a mental patient, or - my personal favorite - "a sniper on solsbury hill [sic] preparing to knock someone." Because everyone knows the British countryside is just teeming with snipers, and the top of a hill is a great place to conceal yourself - right? right? Spurious explanations aside, the lovely opening riff, increasingly complex instrumentation, and vivid imagery mark this deceptively simple song as a classic.
Building a Mystery - As a great fan of Sarah McLachlan, I was especially pleased to see her included in this compilation, even though I already owned the album, Surfacing, on which this song first appeared. One of her most memorable songs, "Building a Mystery" is a haunting portrait of a beautiful, tormented soul. I can't listen to it without falling just a little bit in love with the complex and enigmatic man she describes: "You're so beautiful / With an edge and a charm / But so careful / When I'm in your arms . . . You feed off our fears / And hold back your tears . . . You're building a mystery."
Back in the High Life Again - This irresistably optimistic song is perfect to listen to when life has landed you in the doldrums and you're planning your comeback: "I'll be back in the high life again / All the doors I closed one time will open up again . . . All the eyes that watched me once will smile and take me in / And I'll drink and dance with one hand free . . . And have the world so easily." Listening to this song always makes me feel as though that "high life" might be waiting for me just around the next corner.
Graceland - Is there anything not to love about this song? The music is irresistible, the lyrics simultaneously witty, melancholy, and desperate. Inspired by the end of Simon's marriage to Carrie Fisher, "Graceland" tells the story of a road trip to Elvis Presley's famous Memphis estate in the aftermath of a breakup, and treats the narrator's heartbreak with frankness and compassion: "She comes back to tell me she's gone / As if I didn't know that / As if I didn't know my own bed . . . And I see losing love / Is like a window in your heart / Everybody sees you're blown apart . . . And I may be obliged to defend / Every love, every ending / Or maybe there's no obligations now."
Avalon - One thing I love about Roxy Music is their ability to consistently produce music that's worth listening to, even as they venture into a variety of styles and genres. "Avalon" is a taste of their soft-pop side. This is a song about a man who, dancing with a somewhat enigmatic companion at a party, finds himself experiencing one of life's rare sudden magical moments, transported into an altered state of sorts. The lyrics are sparse, but their subtle poetry and the haunting music create the tone perfectly.
Running Up That Hill - Somehow, I managed to get through the first seventeen years of my life without ever hearing a song by Kate Bush. This was my first. Perhaps it's no surprise I remained unaware of her for so long; she's a serious artist more focused on producing good music than on mainstream success or self-promotion, and her lyrics have a serious intensity that wouldn't fit in with most commercial radio stations. At any rate, I'm glad I found her. In this song, she applies her powerful voice to an exploration of the struggle of men and women to understand each other. "If I only could," she sings, "I'd make a deal with God / And I'd get him to swap our places." As long as the genders lack this intimate understanding of each other, she implies, we'll go on "tearing [each other] asunder," unawares. Heady stuff, but to her credit the song doesn't feel at all heavy.
Jealous Guy - I'm not going to insult the readers of this blog by asserting that John Lennon was a great songwriter. There are some truths that just don't need to be stated in the presence of intelligent people. (Even his most famous solo song, "Imagine," which makes me want to stick a fondue fork through my eardrums, must be acknowledged to succeed splendidly in its purpose, which is half the reason I detest it so thoroughly.) I will, however, happily hold up "Jealous Guy" as evidence of Lennon's songwriting genius. If you've ever acted out your insecurities and hurt someone you cared about, you'll recognize yourself in this song. The lyrics are spot-on, the perfect combination of remorse and self-pity: "I was feeling insecure / You might not love me anymore / I was shivering inside . . . I didn't mean to hurt you / I'm sorry that I made you cry." Lennon's voice is just right, too: simultanously straightforward and plaintive. Like many great songs, it didn't make much of an impression on me the first time I heard it, but it's quietly grown on me, and still manages to move me with its nuances.
200 More Miles - If you can't help thinking there's just something wrong about a song by John Lennon appearing in such immediate proximity to a song by a group called "Cowboy Junkies," you have only to listen to this haunting, lovely song for a reminder that you can't always judge a band by its name. Guitarist Michael Timmins's poetic lyrics and his sister Margo's breathy, sensually earthy vocals combine perfectly into a song about a lonesome journey and the pursuit of dreams: by turns a lament, an inspriation, and a lullaby. In this song, it isn't the realization of a dream that brings true satisfaction, but the sometimes arduous pursuit: "I've got 200 more miles of rain asphalt in line / before I sleep / But there'll be no warm sheets or welcoming arms / to fall into tonight," the singer acknowledges repeatedly, before proclaiming, at song's end, "I've got 200 more miles of rain asphalt in line / before I sleep / But I wouldn't trade all your golden tomorrows / for one hour of this night."
Nothing Compares 2 U - The songwriter Prince may be best known for his sometimes raunchy lyrics and eccentric antics, but in this song he proves his ability to capture a simple slice of human experience and turn it into art. Last year, I compiled a playlist of songs that exemplify the famous "five stages of grief" as they apply to the end of a romantic relationship. Had space on the list been at a premium, I could simply have tossed out three or four of the stages and replaced them with this song, which dips into each of them in turn and intertwines them masterfully into a neat five-minute landscape of the broken heart. Music-lovers who share my contempt for over-the-top videos that have nothing to do with the actual song will find this video to be a refreshing change of pace. Shots of Sinéad O'Connor on a pensive, solitary walk around Paris are occasionally interspersed into what is otherwise a single-shot close-up of the singer's face. To the best of my knowledge, O'Connor has never attempted to branch off into acting, but the emotional range she displays in this video, via head movements and facial expressions alone, would put some Academy Award winners to shame. She is by turns anguished, wistful, defiant, pleading. She truly lives the song. I challenge anyone with a heart to watch this video and not be moved.
Falling in Love with You - It takes a lot of moxie to cover a song that was a huge hit, in an entirely different style than the original, and release it as the first single off your album. UB40 did just that when they recorded this classic Elvis tune. They made what was originally a soulful ballad all their own, as an upbeat reggae number, in a way that pays genuine tribute to the original without overwhelming or diminishing it in any way. The song deals with love unexpected and perhaps contrary to plan, but whereas Elvis lays his heart on the line with wistful melancholy, UB40 revels in this overwhelming love and finds triumph in it. Which version you prefer will be a matter of personal taste, but it would be hard to call one or the other the more definitive version.
Amber - I'd never heard of Afro Celt Sound System before I bought the Journeys CD, and I haven't happened to come across any more of their music since. Of course, they aren't exactly mainstream. The fusion of Irish, African, and modern dance beats and styles sounds more like an interesting experiment than a formula for good music - until you hear it. In a world where "multiculturalism" too often means either keeping the "other" at a distance while making a big show of tolerance, or assimiliating beyond recognition, there's something beautiful about Irish lyrics sung harmoniously over a distinctive African beat.
Dante's Prayer - Loreena McKennitt's haunting voice is perfectly suited to these ethereal lyrics, creating a mystical song of timeless yearning. This is a deeply spiritual song about looking to have a meaningful life and a connection to something higher, even when hope is hard to find. "I did not believe because I could not see / Though you came to me in the night / When the dawn seemed forever lost / You showed me your love in the light of the stars . . . When the dark night seems endless / Please remember me."
All I Need Is Everything - In this powerful song of spiritual longing and material reality, nothing comes easy and contradictions are inherent in every pursuit: "Time to get up off my hands and knees / 'Cause if I beg for it, it won't come . . . This voice calling me to you / It's just barely coming through / Still I clearly hear my name . . . Feel the slip and the grip of grace again." Every time I listen to this song, it strikes me in a new way - and I don't think there's a single line in the song that doesn't take my breath away with its poetry. I love the raw honesty in Karin Bergquist's voice. I think I'm going to be downloading some more Over the Rhine before very long.
These Dreams - This song, which I've loved from childhood, was one of my reasons for purchasing the album in the first place, and it's one of my favorite tracks. In light of my lifelong interest in oneirology and dream analysis (as well as my experience as a vivid, occasionally lucid, dreamer), I'm truly impressed by how accurately this song captures the experience of dreaming: the almost overwhelmingly intense details ("Figures up ahead / Moving in the trees / White skin in linen / Perfume on my wrist") and vague sense of unreality ("The sweetest song is silence / That I've ever heard / Funny how your feet / In dreams never touch the earth"), as well as anticipation or unrest ("In a wood full of princes / Freedom is a kiss / But the prince hides his face / From dreams in the mist").
Don't Dream It's Over - The theme of this song is a relatively simple one: the struggle to maintain a strong bond with another person in world of pressures that often make it difficult. What makes this song so special is the pure poetry with which it treats its subject, making it alive and immediate, yet with slightly blurred edges that leave plenty of room for personal interpretation. It is a song about relationship, and yet the verses speak of freedom and priorities rather than emotion: they are almost as detached and impersonal as the world that makes it so difficult to keep love alive. "There's a battle ahead, many battles are lost," the singer muses philosophically, then adds the declaration, all the more powerful for coming as such an offhand surprise, "But you'll never see the end of the road / While you're traveling with me." The tenderness in this song is more implied than stated, but all the more powerful for being hard-won.
American Pie - Not many pop songs can get away with being over eight minutes long, without feeling at all gratuitous or excessive. This is one of the few that can. The lyrics are famously enigmatic, a history of classic rock 'n' roll peppered with religious references. (McLean has always declined requests to provide an official interpretation of the song, but DJ Bob Dearborn's thoughtful analysis has never been surpassed.) Perhaps the most impressive thing about the song is its timelessness: ultimately, this is a song about coming of age and watching the world change, a young man watching everything he once held sacred done away with or corrupted by time, and the sense of confusion and wistfulness is powerful enough to speak to a generation of listeners who have neither personal memory of, nor emotional investment in, the evolution of the rock music scene in the 1950s and '60s.
It occurred to me once that the mark of a truly great pop song is simultaneous versatility and depth: you can play it in the background at a party and it adds to the mood without calling too much attention to itself, yet at the same time it rewards the attentive listener with an insightful and emotional experience that only gets better with repeated listenings. By that standard, every track on this album could be considered a great pop song, deep and yet accessible, speaking to a variety of human experiences in a way that simultaneously provokes thought, recognition, and the desire to nod your head to the beat and sing along.
I don't remember how much I paid for it, but I do know that I got my money's worth. It wasn't the first multi-artist compilation I'd purchased, nor was it to be the last - but it was, hands down, quite simply the best. There wasn't one bad, or even second-rate, song in the mix. I listened to this album repeatedly as I struggled to reclaim my identity after my first hospitalization nearly ten years ago, and found the powerful melodies and poignant lyrics by turns soothing, inspiring, and reflective of my own unspoken yearnings.
The CD that I bought on impulse ten years ago is long gone, lost, along with so much else that was precious, during the years I was shuffled around indifferently by the mental health system. I never thought much about it until recently, when I decided to look it up online and see if I could find it again. The album itself is long since out of print (is that the correct term? - would "out of burn" be more accurate?), but I found it mentioned, with the full track listing, on several music websites. From there it was a simple matter to individually purchase or otherwise locate the songs I didn't already own.
Journeys lives again for me as a playlist in iTunes - and I for one believe it is a playlist worth sharing. Some of the greatest names in contemporary music are to be found here (John Lennon, Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon, to name a few), along with some artists perhaps less familiar. Although the songs are drawn from several genres and span almost three decades of musical history, they suit each other remarkably well (in fact, many of the artists on the album have turned to each other for collaboration and inspiration: Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush have recorded a duet together; Roxy Music has covered "Jealous Guy"; Sarah McLachlan has covered "Solsbury Hill"; Sinéad O'Connor and Peter Gabriel have both performed with Afro Celt Sound System; Over the Rhine toured with Cowboy Junkies) flowing together into a harmony that is earnestly pensive, and often bittersweet - truly a journey for the spirit and heart, as well as a treat for the ear.
TRACK LISTING:
Solsbury Hill (Peter Gabriel)
Building a Mystery (Sarah McLachlan)
Back in the High Life Again (Steve Winwood)
Graceland (Paul Simon)
Avalon (Roxy Music)
Running Up That Hill (Kate Bush)
Jealous Guy (John Lennon)
200 More Miles (Cowboy Junkies)
Nothing Compares 2 U (Sinéad O'Connor)
Falling in Love with You (UB40)
Amber (Afro Celt Sound System)
Dante's Prayer (Loreena McKennitt)
All I Need Is Everything (Over the Rhine)
These Dreams (Heart)
Don't Dream It's Over (Crowded House)
American Pie (Don McLean)
And now, just for you, my dear readers, something that was never included in the original album - Truth Unleashed's personal liner notes.
Solsbury Hill - This song was written about Peter Gabriel's decision to split from the band Genesis and embark upon a solo career, but its poetic spareness makes it an appropriate anthem for the soul-searching that accompanies any major life decision. Some folks perhaps read a little too much into the song. Check out some alternate interpretations for a laugh: Gabriel's actually singing about alien abductions, the life of Christ, the inner world of a mental patient, or - my personal favorite - "a sniper on solsbury hill [sic] preparing to knock someone." Because everyone knows the British countryside is just teeming with snipers, and the top of a hill is a great place to conceal yourself - right? right? Spurious explanations aside, the lovely opening riff, increasingly complex instrumentation, and vivid imagery mark this deceptively simple song as a classic.
Building a Mystery - As a great fan of Sarah McLachlan, I was especially pleased to see her included in this compilation, even though I already owned the album, Surfacing, on which this song first appeared. One of her most memorable songs, "Building a Mystery" is a haunting portrait of a beautiful, tormented soul. I can't listen to it without falling just a little bit in love with the complex and enigmatic man she describes: "You're so beautiful / With an edge and a charm / But so careful / When I'm in your arms . . . You feed off our fears / And hold back your tears . . . You're building a mystery."
Back in the High Life Again - This irresistably optimistic song is perfect to listen to when life has landed you in the doldrums and you're planning your comeback: "I'll be back in the high life again / All the doors I closed one time will open up again . . . All the eyes that watched me once will smile and take me in / And I'll drink and dance with one hand free . . . And have the world so easily." Listening to this song always makes me feel as though that "high life" might be waiting for me just around the next corner.
Graceland - Is there anything not to love about this song? The music is irresistible, the lyrics simultaneously witty, melancholy, and desperate. Inspired by the end of Simon's marriage to Carrie Fisher, "Graceland" tells the story of a road trip to Elvis Presley's famous Memphis estate in the aftermath of a breakup, and treats the narrator's heartbreak with frankness and compassion: "She comes back to tell me she's gone / As if I didn't know that / As if I didn't know my own bed . . . And I see losing love / Is like a window in your heart / Everybody sees you're blown apart . . . And I may be obliged to defend / Every love, every ending / Or maybe there's no obligations now."
Avalon - One thing I love about Roxy Music is their ability to consistently produce music that's worth listening to, even as they venture into a variety of styles and genres. "Avalon" is a taste of their soft-pop side. This is a song about a man who, dancing with a somewhat enigmatic companion at a party, finds himself experiencing one of life's rare sudden magical moments, transported into an altered state of sorts. The lyrics are sparse, but their subtle poetry and the haunting music create the tone perfectly.
Running Up That Hill - Somehow, I managed to get through the first seventeen years of my life without ever hearing a song by Kate Bush. This was my first. Perhaps it's no surprise I remained unaware of her for so long; she's a serious artist more focused on producing good music than on mainstream success or self-promotion, and her lyrics have a serious intensity that wouldn't fit in with most commercial radio stations. At any rate, I'm glad I found her. In this song, she applies her powerful voice to an exploration of the struggle of men and women to understand each other. "If I only could," she sings, "I'd make a deal with God / And I'd get him to swap our places." As long as the genders lack this intimate understanding of each other, she implies, we'll go on "tearing [each other] asunder," unawares. Heady stuff, but to her credit the song doesn't feel at all heavy.
Jealous Guy - I'm not going to insult the readers of this blog by asserting that John Lennon was a great songwriter. There are some truths that just don't need to be stated in the presence of intelligent people. (Even his most famous solo song, "Imagine," which makes me want to stick a fondue fork through my eardrums, must be acknowledged to succeed splendidly in its purpose, which is half the reason I detest it so thoroughly.) I will, however, happily hold up "Jealous Guy" as evidence of Lennon's songwriting genius. If you've ever acted out your insecurities and hurt someone you cared about, you'll recognize yourself in this song. The lyrics are spot-on, the perfect combination of remorse and self-pity: "I was feeling insecure / You might not love me anymore / I was shivering inside . . . I didn't mean to hurt you / I'm sorry that I made you cry." Lennon's voice is just right, too: simultanously straightforward and plaintive. Like many great songs, it didn't make much of an impression on me the first time I heard it, but it's quietly grown on me, and still manages to move me with its nuances.
200 More Miles - If you can't help thinking there's just something wrong about a song by John Lennon appearing in such immediate proximity to a song by a group called "Cowboy Junkies," you have only to listen to this haunting, lovely song for a reminder that you can't always judge a band by its name. Guitarist Michael Timmins's poetic lyrics and his sister Margo's breathy, sensually earthy vocals combine perfectly into a song about a lonesome journey and the pursuit of dreams: by turns a lament, an inspriation, and a lullaby. In this song, it isn't the realization of a dream that brings true satisfaction, but the sometimes arduous pursuit: "I've got 200 more miles of rain asphalt in line / before I sleep / But there'll be no warm sheets or welcoming arms / to fall into tonight," the singer acknowledges repeatedly, before proclaiming, at song's end, "I've got 200 more miles of rain asphalt in line / before I sleep / But I wouldn't trade all your golden tomorrows / for one hour of this night."
Nothing Compares 2 U - The songwriter Prince may be best known for his sometimes raunchy lyrics and eccentric antics, but in this song he proves his ability to capture a simple slice of human experience and turn it into art. Last year, I compiled a playlist of songs that exemplify the famous "five stages of grief" as they apply to the end of a romantic relationship. Had space on the list been at a premium, I could simply have tossed out three or four of the stages and replaced them with this song, which dips into each of them in turn and intertwines them masterfully into a neat five-minute landscape of the broken heart. Music-lovers who share my contempt for over-the-top videos that have nothing to do with the actual song will find this video to be a refreshing change of pace. Shots of Sinéad O'Connor on a pensive, solitary walk around Paris are occasionally interspersed into what is otherwise a single-shot close-up of the singer's face. To the best of my knowledge, O'Connor has never attempted to branch off into acting, but the emotional range she displays in this video, via head movements and facial expressions alone, would put some Academy Award winners to shame. She is by turns anguished, wistful, defiant, pleading. She truly lives the song. I challenge anyone with a heart to watch this video and not be moved.
Falling in Love with You - It takes a lot of moxie to cover a song that was a huge hit, in an entirely different style than the original, and release it as the first single off your album. UB40 did just that when they recorded this classic Elvis tune. They made what was originally a soulful ballad all their own, as an upbeat reggae number, in a way that pays genuine tribute to the original without overwhelming or diminishing it in any way. The song deals with love unexpected and perhaps contrary to plan, but whereas Elvis lays his heart on the line with wistful melancholy, UB40 revels in this overwhelming love and finds triumph in it. Which version you prefer will be a matter of personal taste, but it would be hard to call one or the other the more definitive version.
Amber - I'd never heard of Afro Celt Sound System before I bought the Journeys CD, and I haven't happened to come across any more of their music since. Of course, they aren't exactly mainstream. The fusion of Irish, African, and modern dance beats and styles sounds more like an interesting experiment than a formula for good music - until you hear it. In a world where "multiculturalism" too often means either keeping the "other" at a distance while making a big show of tolerance, or assimiliating beyond recognition, there's something beautiful about Irish lyrics sung harmoniously over a distinctive African beat.
Dante's Prayer - Loreena McKennitt's haunting voice is perfectly suited to these ethereal lyrics, creating a mystical song of timeless yearning. This is a deeply spiritual song about looking to have a meaningful life and a connection to something higher, even when hope is hard to find. "I did not believe because I could not see / Though you came to me in the night / When the dawn seemed forever lost / You showed me your love in the light of the stars . . . When the dark night seems endless / Please remember me."
All I Need Is Everything - In this powerful song of spiritual longing and material reality, nothing comes easy and contradictions are inherent in every pursuit: "Time to get up off my hands and knees / 'Cause if I beg for it, it won't come . . . This voice calling me to you / It's just barely coming through / Still I clearly hear my name . . . Feel the slip and the grip of grace again." Every time I listen to this song, it strikes me in a new way - and I don't think there's a single line in the song that doesn't take my breath away with its poetry. I love the raw honesty in Karin Bergquist's voice. I think I'm going to be downloading some more Over the Rhine before very long.
These Dreams - This song, which I've loved from childhood, was one of my reasons for purchasing the album in the first place, and it's one of my favorite tracks. In light of my lifelong interest in oneirology and dream analysis (as well as my experience as a vivid, occasionally lucid, dreamer), I'm truly impressed by how accurately this song captures the experience of dreaming: the almost overwhelmingly intense details ("Figures up ahead / Moving in the trees / White skin in linen / Perfume on my wrist") and vague sense of unreality ("The sweetest song is silence / That I've ever heard / Funny how your feet / In dreams never touch the earth"), as well as anticipation or unrest ("In a wood full of princes / Freedom is a kiss / But the prince hides his face / From dreams in the mist").
Don't Dream It's Over - The theme of this song is a relatively simple one: the struggle to maintain a strong bond with another person in world of pressures that often make it difficult. What makes this song so special is the pure poetry with which it treats its subject, making it alive and immediate, yet with slightly blurred edges that leave plenty of room for personal interpretation. It is a song about relationship, and yet the verses speak of freedom and priorities rather than emotion: they are almost as detached and impersonal as the world that makes it so difficult to keep love alive. "There's a battle ahead, many battles are lost," the singer muses philosophically, then adds the declaration, all the more powerful for coming as such an offhand surprise, "But you'll never see the end of the road / While you're traveling with me." The tenderness in this song is more implied than stated, but all the more powerful for being hard-won.
American Pie - Not many pop songs can get away with being over eight minutes long, without feeling at all gratuitous or excessive. This is one of the few that can. The lyrics are famously enigmatic, a history of classic rock 'n' roll peppered with religious references. (McLean has always declined requests to provide an official interpretation of the song, but DJ Bob Dearborn's thoughtful analysis has never been surpassed.) Perhaps the most impressive thing about the song is its timelessness: ultimately, this is a song about coming of age and watching the world change, a young man watching everything he once held sacred done away with or corrupted by time, and the sense of confusion and wistfulness is powerful enough to speak to a generation of listeners who have neither personal memory of, nor emotional investment in, the evolution of the rock music scene in the 1950s and '60s.
It occurred to me once that the mark of a truly great pop song is simultaneous versatility and depth: you can play it in the background at a party and it adds to the mood without calling too much attention to itself, yet at the same time it rewards the attentive listener with an insightful and emotional experience that only gets better with repeated listenings. By that standard, every track on this album could be considered a great pop song, deep and yet accessible, speaking to a variety of human experiences in a way that simultaneously provokes thought, recognition, and the desire to nod your head to the beat and sing along.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
To L--------
Today marks the 202nd anninversary of the birth of the poet and short-story writer Edgar Allan Poe. I have always considered Poe a literary soulmate of sorts; his dark worldview, drenched in tormented passion, resonates deeply with me. His work may not be everyone's cup of tea, but his ability to evoke a perfectly constructed atmosphere through his selection and arrangement of words must surely be an inspiration to all writers of any genre. I wrote this poem several years ago in conscious imitation of Poe's style. It's obviously quaint and a bit of a novelty, but I'm satisfied with the effect.
That day that troubles overtake thee,
And thou hast none to defend thee,
Though every man alive forsake thee,
I attend thee.
Should bitter grievance ever crush thee,
Any cursed foe offend thee,
I pray that heaven's angels rush me
To attend thee.
Whatever plague (alas!) dare harm thee,
Heart's blood shall I shed to mend thee.
Than this no pleasure more could charm me:
To attend thee.
May burdens never break nor bend thee!
Yet if sorrows here must send thee,
To thee I offer still nepenthe:
I attend thee!
That day that troubles overtake thee,
And thou hast none to defend thee,
Though every man alive forsake thee,
I attend thee.
Should bitter grievance ever crush thee,
Any cursed foe offend thee,
I pray that heaven's angels rush me
To attend thee.
Whatever plague (alas!) dare harm thee,
Heart's blood shall I shed to mend thee.
Than this no pleasure more could charm me:
To attend thee.
May burdens never break nor bend thee!
Yet if sorrows here must send thee,
To thee I offer still nepenthe:
I attend thee!
Monday, January 17, 2011
Tree
These are the lyrics to a song I wrote over ten years ago, when I was in high school. It is the song of an all-consuming love that "does not seek its own." I always had a certain special fondness for it, though I never shared it with anyone, thinking the sentiments a bit too abject, the excess of devotion almost pathetic. Last August, I shared it with a friend, and she told me it was beautiful and I should blog it. I told her I would, as soon as I got all my old writings out of storage. This is the fulfillment of that promise.
You're the tree that grows in the center of my garden
My stately source of shade and pleasure
Your loveliness is constant through the passing of the seasons
The least of your leaves is my treasure
I'm a flower that blooms in the bounty of your garden
One blushing rose among your many
That you love for their colors soft and fragrance sweet
Without truly cherishing any
And I wish I could be your tree
Though I know that can never be
But out of all the flowers in your garden here arrayed
I'll be the first at dawn to open, the last to close at nightfall
And this flower is never going to fade
You're the sun that burns at the focus of my heavens
Vitality every ray giving
I shall turn my face forever to your radiant light and warmth
Sustaining everything living
I'm a star that shines in your vast expanse of heavens
One among too many to number
Too plentiful to matter but who guard your night
Watching over your slumber
And I wish I could be your sun
But I am what I am, and what's done is done
Yet out all the stars in the evening sky displayed
I'll be the first at dusk to greet you, the last you see at daybreak
And this star is never going to fade
Yes, I am your flower
And you are my tree
I am your river
You are my sea
I'm a pearl in your necklace
You're my diamond ring
I'm just another passerby
But you're my everything
Well, I wish I could be your tree
Though I know that can never be
And I wish I could be your sun
But I am what I am, and what's done is done
But even one flower can bring delight
One star can be a guide through the long and lonely night
And as long as you may need me, I'll be standing here unswayed
For my love for you is never going to fade
You're the tree that grows in the center of my garden
My stately source of shade and pleasure
Your loveliness is constant through the passing of the seasons
The least of your leaves is my treasure
I'm a flower that blooms in the bounty of your garden
One blushing rose among your many
That you love for their colors soft and fragrance sweet
Without truly cherishing any
And I wish I could be your tree
Though I know that can never be
But out of all the flowers in your garden here arrayed
I'll be the first at dawn to open, the last to close at nightfall
And this flower is never going to fade
You're the sun that burns at the focus of my heavens
Vitality every ray giving
I shall turn my face forever to your radiant light and warmth
Sustaining everything living
I'm a star that shines in your vast expanse of heavens
One among too many to number
Too plentiful to matter but who guard your night
Watching over your slumber
And I wish I could be your sun
But I am what I am, and what's done is done
Yet out all the stars in the evening sky displayed
I'll be the first at dusk to greet you, the last you see at daybreak
And this star is never going to fade
Yes, I am your flower
And you are my tree
I am your river
You are my sea
I'm a pearl in your necklace
You're my diamond ring
I'm just another passerby
But you're my everything
Well, I wish I could be your tree
Though I know that can never be
And I wish I could be your sun
But I am what I am, and what's done is done
But even one flower can bring delight
One star can be a guide through the long and lonely night
And as long as you may need me, I'll be standing here unswayed
For my love for you is never going to fade
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
The Hope Chest
All the first part of her life she spent stitching at linens
for a man she had not met, whose face she did not know.
Handkerchiefs at first, then tablecloths; nightgowns,
when she had attained a woman's height, and knew her size;
aprons and draperies, folded with hesitant and measured movements
and laid in a box redolent
of cedar and a future she could always imagine well
but never comprehend. Some had a drop or two
of blood folded invisibly into a seam, where she had pricked herself
with the needle.
She worked for hours sometimes, tearing out stitches
until she got them even and precise, rising from her cushion only
to put more oil in the lamp. One evening at a dance
a man took her hand, the same hand she used to thread the needle
the next day to sew the batting and the backing of her very first quilt
to the top she had pieced together out of scraps.
Suddenly she knew that it was his.
Tonight, she lies with him on crisp clean sheets
she made years ago, unfolded from the box with tenderness
and reverence. And tomorrow he will go to work
with a handkerchief over his heart that she made when she was a child,
and she will spend his absence gentling his home
with the labors of her lifetime.
for a man she had not met, whose face she did not know.
Handkerchiefs at first, then tablecloths; nightgowns,
when she had attained a woman's height, and knew her size;
aprons and draperies, folded with hesitant and measured movements
and laid in a box redolent
of cedar and a future she could always imagine well
but never comprehend. Some had a drop or two
of blood folded invisibly into a seam, where she had pricked herself
with the needle.
She worked for hours sometimes, tearing out stitches
until she got them even and precise, rising from her cushion only
to put more oil in the lamp. One evening at a dance
a man took her hand, the same hand she used to thread the needle
the next day to sew the batting and the backing of her very first quilt
to the top she had pieced together out of scraps.
Suddenly she knew that it was his.
Tonight, she lies with him on crisp clean sheets
she made years ago, unfolded from the box with tenderness
and reverence. And tomorrow he will go to work
with a handkerchief over his heart that she made when she was a child,
and she will spend his absence gentling his home
with the labors of her lifetime.
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