Who Is This For, Even?

I want people to like me, I think that's the crux of the whole thing. Possibly because I'm a middle child...

I don't remember childhood all that well, and high school was a fairly pleasant blur where I had enough cool friends to also feel cool. University was fine, and I had some friends. But I always felt like I was just on the periphery of things, experiencing them but not really. Kind of in on the joke but there was something I was missing.

It wasn't until I started as a singer songwriter that I felt the true appeal of mass appeal. I sang at my brother's stag and doe party, and it was the first time I'd had the mic for more than just one song (I was never the lead the singer in my high school bands). The crowd ate my shit up, and could not stop telling me how great my show was afterwards. I was instantly hooked on the attention, and spent the next 15 years chasing the "trying to make strangers like me" dragon.

I plunged headlong into singer songwritering, hit the local open mic circuit, and when I felt confident enough in my act I sought out gigs. I was lucky enough to have been taken under the arm of a local legend, who helped me get gigs at his regular spot and I played there a bunch of times. I put a backing band together, we recorded a $100 demo and shopped it around to local bars for gigs. 

I was very good at self-promotion, I figured out the trick to make the local newspaper write about your show: give the show a theme, even if the theme was bullshit. Just give them something to write about.

We built a mild local following, started seeing a lot more strangers than friends at our shows, started playing on the road a bit, tried and failed to organize a cross country tour. People really dug this band because we were different, in the sense that I was (in retrospect) playing country music wrong. Think "shitty acoustic guitar run through a shitty amp, with heavy metal drums"... but it seemed to work. We put out an album and pushed it really hard for a year or two, but I eventually broke up the band due to what became the theme of all my future bands: I felt like I was doing all the work and therefore didn't like it when my ideas were challenged by the band-mates who weren't pulling their weight. I know this is more of a "me" problem now...

Anyway, my next band was also a hit, with good local draws and a great live show. I had also started an indie festival/showcase that ran for 8 or 9 years all told. Between the two I was in the newspaper a lot, I was on TV a couple of times, I was DJing a show on college radio, people knew who was I was around town, it was great. 

This was around the time when Internet 2.0 was just getting off the ground, and I thought "Hey this is my ticket out of just being local-famous". I couldn't figure out how to YouTube (still can't) so I took writing for a spin. "I'm so witty, my blog will be famous!"

It was not. I mean duh, no one's blog was famous, but this was the first time I could put hardcore numbers to my output and it was bleak. Why is no one reading my blog? Why is no one sharing my amazing blog posts on social media? It was kind of breaking me. 

Around the same time, my band's draw was getting smaller and smaller at every show, including a couple where we barely had enough to pay the sound guy and opener. My festival was getting less popular, based on how often I struggled to pay the bands what I thought they deserved. I had a stroke of "luck" because I accidentally shot my mouth off on my blog and got sued by a very childish person. The lawsuit was settled for literally 1% of what he initially sued for, but in the meantime I got a huge bump in the press and on the socials... I was in the spotlight again! Me me me! But the rush didn't last and I ended up folding the festival because I just couldn't anymore.

Not long after I was singing in my third band, and we were having fun and playing loud and fast and it was great. We played a few road shows, got some good feedback, but at this point I was wholly obsessed with turnout. Why are the numbers getting so small so quickly? Why does no one like this band? It came to a head right before our last gig ever. We were booked to headline the local cool club for the first time, and I was overcome with anxiety for weeks leading up to the show, all I could think about was that it would be dead like our previous show was, and we'd have blown our chance at ever getting re-booked. It was dreadful.

The show came and went and it was actually a great turnout, but I wouldn't allow myself any credit because one of openers, from Toronto, had lots of friends and family in the area, so fully half the crowd was there for them. 

The realization that I was back to playing for friends and family was accompanied by the fact that my friends and family were old and didn't want to go out anymore. Heck, I didn't want to go out anymore. I was tired all the time. Then my drummer fell off a ladder and we had to take a 3 month break while he healed. It was during that time that I made up my mind that I was going to break up the band. The relief of not having to deal with the stress was my new addiction. So I told them the band news and that was that. It was a shitty thing to do but I couldn't band-lead anymore. I had hit my wall and I was done. 

Funny thing, at the time I was pumping out some of my best work. My now-soon-to-be-wife was my biggest fan, whenever I came up with a new song I'd sing it for her and she'd hang off my every word and then I'd catch her singing the song the next day and she'd curse me out for getting the song stuck in her head. I realized that, while it's nice to have a room full of strangers screaming for more, I was happy to settle for an audience of one very appreciative superfan. 

I've struck a happy medium now, I'm back to open mic night, which is a very low-pressure "gig" - show up, sing my three songs, receive applause and handshakes, rinse repeat. I dig it. I'd like to play full sets at a concert again, don't get me wrong, but I kinda only want to do it as an opener. There's still some pressure to fill seats, but it's not nearly as high, hence the shitty pay.

So who is the blog for? Sorry for the abrupt about-face, imaginary reader who I hope doesn't exist... I started writing again for me, to help unscramble my brain. I don't know if journaling is exactly write for me, but I did always enjoy writing my blog back in the day, so after several years away I'm back. This time I'm not sharing the blog on socials, and I do not give a single shit if anyone reads it. I don't want anyone to read it. I'm still publishing it, and I don't know why. Whatever.

I'm reading a book. You should try books, they're fun.

I used to be a voracious reader. As a kid, it was escaping into fantasyland, blah blah blah. As an adult it was more about smoke breaks, of which I had a lot - I was up to 2 packs a day when I quit.

My jam has always been old-school sci-fi and mysteries. Jules Verne, HG Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mary Shelley... Also Stephen King, but everyone reads Stephen King. Later I got turned on to Kurt Vonnegut Jr and fell in love. It was the first time an author truly spoke my language, aka "weird".

When I got my first smartphone, books almost immediately went out the window. I had other things to read! Current things! Written by living people! All of a sudden my dusty used book collection started collecting even more dust. Every once in a while I'd pick up a book and re-read it. Rarely did I try something new. Now they just sit there, moving from apartment to apartment to house, put on display for no one to care about.

Fast forward to the first of several pandemic lockdowns. I was bored out of my mind and decided to pick up a book I hadn't read yet: Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World". It was... fine. I mean it was good, but didn't age well with its gentle racism. But there was a phrase that stuck with me, it was part of the narrative describing the tribal drums being played by the natives as the explorers drifted along the river... the drums beat the message over and over: "We kill you if we can... we will kill you if we can...". At the time, I was reading this, people the world over were super pissed about racism, and I was seeing a lot of angry white people with golf shirts and tiki torches yelling and screaming about... family values? Anyway it got me thinking about Homo sapiens' inherently protective mean streak and the phrase "We will kill you if we can..." began playing in a loop inside my head. It was literally making me crazy. So I grabbed my guitar and went out in the woods and wrote a kickass song called, wait for it, "We Will Kill You If We Can". At least now there was a melody to the chant inside my head... and there you go, reading a book was great! It kickstarted a stalled songwriting "career", filled me with fuel and helped me explore a new songwriting voice. Now, in addition to my usual novelty songs, I have an equal amount of songs about death and killing and destruction and the end of the world. A nice balance, I think.

I didn't read another book until this week, aka 3 lockdowns later. This time the circumstances were different. It was partially to escape boredom but more to escape anything that might trigger a negativity landslide inside my head. The pandemic really got to me, and now I'm kinda fragile as shit. I also have to give credit to my daily cannabis use, which has the delightful side of effect of exacerbating depression and anxiety. I was too scared to stop smoking it because weed was (so I thought) the only thing keeping me sane, but it kind of ended up being the thing that made me insane.

I love weed, don't get me wrong, but it's common knowledge that you can't smoke it all the time or the high stops being "fun" and starts being "normal" and every sucks without it . I willed myself to take a January break, and stick to beer and whisky (responsibly). The effects were almost immediate - I was so full of piss and vinegar I didn't know what to do with myself. But at the same time I started getting tired of my go-to time killer - playing dumb games on my phone (Candy Crush and the like) was really starting to annoy me. I would get mad every time the game cheated,  every time I fucked up, every time I encountered a level that was just too dang hard... I know it seems silly but that would be enough to trigger me into a rotten mood that would spiral quickly out of control. Normally when I'm in a rotten mood I can just go smoke some weed and it's magically gone.  Now that's not an option, and I didn't know what to do. Reading the news makes me sad, playing stupid video games makes me mad, and then  I remembered "Hey! Books exist". I went downstairs where my books are hiding, with the intention of re-reading something again, but nothing jumped out at me. 

So I grabbed a book from my wife's shelf. It's great! I mean the book itself is great too, but I mean the act of reading is great! I'm enjoying just sitting on the couch, drinking a coffee and reading in silence. The world has gotten very loud, and the quiet of reading is speaking to me right now. I look forward to reading more, this time for real I think.

Free at last (of guilt) (I hope)

Today I sign my divorce papers. It's a weird mixture of excitement and dread. In late 2019 I asked my wife of 15 years for a divorce. It was out of the blue for her, but not for me. I had spent several years trying to convince myself that I didn't want a divorce, and it slowly ate away at my sanity until I couldn't take it anymore. 

I have been overwhelmed with guilt the entire time, and have taken all of her subsequent misfortunes on my shoulders, as if I am to blame for everything wrong that ever happens to her. That's not fair to me, I've known that the whole time, but YOU try telling a feeling to go fuck itself... those things are harder to get out than chewing gum in a carpet.

I'm so lucky that the separation has been amicable. Right from the get-go we have tried to remain friends, as hard as it can be. No kids, thankfully, and not a lot of assets to fight over. The delay has been thanks to our old friend COVID-19, which hit 6 months after we split up. 6 months after I left her, more precisely. I avoid saying things like that because it helps assuage my guilt, but the fact is that I left her, and she has felt jilted ever since. 

If not for the pandemic we would have wrapped this divorce up sooner, but I'm not so sure it would've gone as amicably as it did, because time heals all wounds yadda yadda. Since everything was shit during the pandemic, we both agreed without even saying it out loud that we were in no rush to finalize the divorce. Why invite more worry? I'm happy that we waited. She's moved on somewhat, and that makes me feel happy and less guilty. Once these papers are signed I look forward to more days of less guilt. I'll always feel somewhat guilty for not trying harder to save the marriage, or for not leaving sooner, but hopefully that wound will heal over now I've stoppeded picking the scab.