The Expanse of Constriction

I remember June 29th like it was yesterday. it wasn't yesterday, actually, because as it turns out June 29th was literally one day over seven weeks ago.

Why is that day important? I mean, aside from it being the second day of my 42nd year of life - a fact, I should add, that utterly baffles me considering my past bent for self-destruction - it marks the last time I made a post for this my little creative baby of the electronic underworld.

That's a side-effect of something I have battled to function under for the entirety of my creative life: writer's block.

As a kid I developed an early affinity for drawing, and right on the heels of this discovery was a more insidious one. As comfortable as I feel expressing myself with pens/pencils/ etc ... , I am equally at home being crushed beneath the weight of self-doubt and second-guessing.

Joy.

Eventually, working on art became something that unleashed its rewards a little too slowly for this attention span-deprived young fellow. I needed an outlet that could dole out rewards like a morphine drip, one button push at a time.

Playing music.

The molester down the road was plugged in to the parental gravy train. When you have an overgrown pituitary abnormality of a bullying closet-case son, I suppose it might be easy enough to try and fix the real issue by plying the beast with any and all manner of distraction. Anything, really, to keep him from unpleasantly acquainting himself to solo-swinging youngsters stealing the remaining minutes of a waning afternoon. The spare bedroom in his house, previously occupied be his feather-haired, Gloria Vanderbilt jeaned older sister, when given to his juvenile desires, became a wet dream of Farrah Fawcett and Loni Anderson posters, and damn near the best musical gear money could buy.

I was relegated to drums. In his fevered ego, drums did not warrant the player the buffet of pussy that would undoubtedly come his way the moment word got out that he could stumble his way through the opening chords of Cat Scratch Fever.

Once I moved away from that neighborhood, I knew that drums were not a reality for me; and plus I already had an acoustic. Eventually I was given a Gibson Melody Maker and a Fender Princeton amp by a clueless uncle merely glad to unload the stuff that had gathered dust in a dark corner of his parents house long after he had joined the country club and sampled the joys of the "good life."

Thus began a love/hate affair with the guitar. I literally played one several hours a day, almost every single day, for many years. I joined a number of bands, recorded and released several albums, and easily pissed away the most creative years of my life agonizing over what wasn't working and why.

Then came the cold grip of my old friend. After literally two-and-a-half decades of fairly consistent playing ... nothing, or damn near nothing.

I pick it up now and I get angry. I begin to pick and I don't want to hear it. I force myself to play every few months, force myself to keep at it until it feels comfortable once more, and then put it back and don't care when I do it again.

I revisit both art and guitar here and there, easily more art than guitar nowadays, but neither one still keeps me in its thrall.

So what now? I am like a supremely fucked up ascetic in a number of ways. I will die without a form of creative expression, but it has become increasingly less desirable for me to entertain the idea of expending massive amounts of personal energy in order to give it away.

Why should I give it to you? You don't deserve it - one, and you don't really want it anyway - two. Copping out?

Maybe.

So I am writing a post because I want to write a post, because I have to move forward, like a goddamn shark, or I can't dredge the oxygen out of this ocean bottom that I call home. Yeah, that and I have to write this post because if I don't I'll write a post about cheese, or Yo Gabba Gabba, or whatever else it was I solicited and consequently got back in ugly spades.

And yeah, I am more than a little partial to the Unspeakable, but she's got a point. A post on the Juggalos is easily something I could see myself waking up to in the very near future. Because some things are so inexcusably bad, so unremittingly horrific, their endless litany of agonies lay out before you like a conga line populated entirely by one-legged, gassy, she-males, their rocks splayed through the sequined sides of their moistened leotards like a synthetic-diamond dealer on the very farthest edge of town; and things like that, well they need to be preserved. I am the taxidermist of your nightmares.

Here I am, ripe for the taking.