Things Have Changed
It has been a while, at least for this blog. I’ve been focused on Hoxsie and VinylDistractions, on Instagram posts, on establishing multiple Twitter accounts with which my daughter and I troll each other in good fun. A journal/blog didn’t seem necessary. And the things we have been going through were things I would likely not have been able to write about with any candor – the stories are not entirely mine to write.
But, let’s say this: we’ve been through some stuff. We know more about mental health issues than we ever did . . . especially how hard it is go get help for them. We’ve learned new vocabularies, new ways of thinking, new ways to accept and support and deal with suffering. Mercifully, that suffering has been alleviated. Along the way, we met many others who were dealing with much worse situations than we were, and found, for a time, great support in their company. I think we found that everything is easier to deal with if you can just name it, and that the secrecy and shame around mental illness needs to be banished forever, and we have taken great comfort and advice from those who have had the strength to do that.
We’ve endured the slow descent and loss of a parent, including a long period of isolation because of the COVID lockdown. We were fortunate enough to have come out of that long enough to have some final time together before the end, but that entire journey, which took about two years, was endlessly wearing on my incredible wife, and not having her was wearing on me.
As for COVID and everything associated with it . . . well, the forces who want to prove government can’t work by destroying its workings are getting their way. The insurrection isn’t over. The tyranny of the stupid isn’t over. These fucknuts like school shootings, because it makes people afraid of education. This IS the Taliban. I couldn’t be sadder. We could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, but simply chose not to. On the other hand, we never have to listen to those who cry about the sanctity of life again. Like all their other cries, it’s not true, it’s just manipulation. Fuck them all.
And that deep sadness is one of the reasons I haven’t been able to write. I can’t deal with that every day, and it’s worse every day. But if I come back to this, that can’t be what I focus on.
So much else has changed since that last entry. Somehow, I have turned into a musician. Not a good one, not a talented one. Like with much else that I do, it doesn’t come easy and I have to work at it very hard to do the simplest of things. But work at it I have, and over the past couple of years I have gained a certain confidence on stage, and have taken up singing, something I never imagined having the will or ability to do. Excellent teachers guided me to something I didn’t even know I wanted to do, and suddenly I’m singing out loud in front of an audience. Hesitantly at first, uncertainly, but over time (and with the unexpected upside of being able to do it from my own home studio during the pre-vaccine period) have gained not only comfort, but an actual desire to sing. With all the limitations of my voice, when it clicks, when I find that space between feeling and sound, it is amazing.
After several years now learning piano, I’m suddenly branching out into bass. I saw a mysterious, beautiful sounding bass ukulele in a Mona Lisa Twins video and it was lust at first sight . . . which registered with Lee, who enlisted others in a secret mission to cross state lines and bring me back a Kala U-Bass for my birthday. I’ve been playing it for two months now and I’m not a prodigy yet, so I definitely want my money back, but man, is it a fun instrument.
2021 began so bleakly and has since been filled with a deep, renewed appreciation for all our friendships and even for the small connections we have made with so many people in the past few years. As it ends, we are returning to the empty nest lifestyle, as our amazing younger child, who found themself stuck with us first by circumstance and then by pandemic, has found a job in their field and is moving to a new apartment close to where they work. It’s in an adorable little town only 24 miles away from us, but here in the Philly area that’s somewhere between 35 minutes and a week away, depending on traffic, and not having an in-house professional baker to fill the house with delightful scents is going to leave a definite void. Tremendously overjoyed at all they have accomplished, but I’m also grateful for the extra time we had together.
So . . . will this continue? Let’s see. I may use it, if for nothing else, to post my occasional caterwauling. I mostly put that up on Instagram now, a suitably temporary medium where nothing is searchable. Maybe I’m thinking of making a bit more of a permanent record again.