An Ode to Disremembrance (Story and a Song)

Salve!

Well, it is that time of year again-- and (at least in the midwest) summer is the busiest season for moving. U-Hauls barrage the streets, and new neighbors abound. This time it was our turn-- to be both a barraging U-Haul driver and a new neighbor, all at once. This is something of a shame, because I rather liked my old neighborhood. We’ve had some good neighbors and good memories.

But onward. Upward. All that jazz. This week has been something of a stressful situation for both me and the girls. (In case you’ve never really read my introductory post, I’ll just get the awkwardness over for all of us and admit that I live with two wonderful women. We’ve been in an ambiguously-poly-esque relationship for the past year and a half. We all live with one another, support each other, and share the godforsakenly-burdensome weight of life with one another.)

Actually, I need to spend a little more time on this subject for my own satisfaction. I’ll get back to the move in a few minutes. Grace me with patience, for my attention span has all the fortitude of a goldfish:

I think that when everyone hears about our relationship, I’m either maligned as some sort of sexual-deviant/control-freak, or applauded as some sort of low-key pimp. But, alas, I’m afraid that I’m neither prurient or pimp-- they completely did this to me. What kind of narcissistic, delusional, schizoid would willingly put himself in such a precarious position, unless all other recourse had been denied?

* giggles *

Anyway, all jokes aside, we have a great relationship full of love, thoughtfulness-- and most importantly-- a willingness to participate in life. Too many people are so preoccupied with criticising their own lifes, or the lives of those around them, that they forget to act, to do, to realize that participation is three-fourths the task and imagination can usually drag you the other quarter. My gals are both hands on and creative, and sincerely, it’s a lot of fun in this house. None of us want children, and this is a way for us to still have a family... albeit, sans les enfants.

_{(Lauren left, Lucy right)}

By the way, I totally Googled how to spell that fancy saying up above. I just thought if I used a bit of French at the end of that sentence, it would make me sound a little more refined and affable. I’m actually none of those things. Also, the women team up on me, and I’m sorry if the preceding paragraphs sort of romanticized this violent gangbang I live in, but please, send help.

I'm just plaaaaaayiin'.

So, back to my move. We got the keys at the beginning of the month and have started the process of making our new home quasi-habitable. I am not one to have my household a mess and disorganized. I’m something of a neat-bee //AKA OCD// and need access to all of my things at all times. Usually all at once. I’m spastic like that. Thankfully, twelve days later, we are mostly settled in. Being as Lauren suffers from a concerning mold-sensitivity, we had to find a place a little more modern, where we could be sure there wasn’t any water damage.

We found a new place only about four miles from our old place, on a better side of town. It had a lot of the features we needed for both ourselves and the dogs, and things are shaping up pretty quickly.

_{^ The semi-finished living room.}

Yes, that’s a dead cow on the floor. Don’t worry though-- it was killed humanely, with tribal reverence, leaving this world to the smell of burnt sage and the sound of a child’s laughter.

I’m pretty sure.

Fairly confident.

No clue.

There is a huge basement (which is mostly unfinished) that I’ve started to work on. We enlisted the help of a couple friends, (okay, quite a few friends), and began the process of framing the space in preparation for it being used as a music studio and gaming/Twitch-streaming area:

_{^ Basement, finished area about 35 x 18}

_{^ My buddy, Curtis helping install the electric outlets.}

_{^ My friend, Chris, pretending to work, but forgetting he left his shoes upstairs when he ran away to watch cartoons with Lucy. Millennials. Le sigh.}

_{^ Some kind of odd flirtation between my buddy Mason who is a builder, and my guitarist, Rob.}

You guys like how I’m super possessive about MY stuff? My buddy, Mason. My guitarist, Rob.

I tend to speak in the possessive sense about most things-- not for any nefarious reasons-- it’s simply because I’m a selfish piece of shit and tend to entitle people by their use as opposed to their actual name.

I KID, I KID.

Kind of.

But all of my malapropos jokes aside, I am super thankful for all the friends who lended me a hand during this transition. The weekend felt like an early 19th century barn-raising-party with cooler power tools, and I had a lot of fun. Learned a lot too!

I can’t wait for this new studio area to be finished so I can start sharing some of the awesome new music me and Rob are working on. We have chosen to call ourselves, “Nepenthe”-- a name I had thought of quite a long time ago. I actually thought of the name while in solitary confinement, remembering a passage from The Raven:

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee – by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite – respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"
Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

I was probably eight months deep into an extended year-long solitary confinement sentence when this particular name came to mind. There is a certain mania that sensory deprivation brings after the days have melded into months, and every tick on the imaginary clock becomes less profound, less meaningful, less urgent; a silly way to count away your life, bury your soul, and pretend that the next day will be better.

But at some time, some night, (per usual), a strange smell came lofting down the hallway-- probably a mix of unwashed sweat, and unflushed toilets (who really knows), and I kept envisioning some cheeky seraphim in the hallway, spreading “respite and nepenthe.” Kinda caused me to giggle-- it literally smelt so terrible, the only thing I’d be forgetting anytime soon was the scent of fresh air. But, the word “nepenthe” stuck with me.

I was still writing music, despite my incarceration-- and at that time, it provided a certain solace, that, while, not offering me the remedy of forgetfulness, certainly allowed me to find some sort of comfort in the chaos. At the very least, it gave me the chance to view myself as something other than the victim-- but rather, as a person who had the good fortune to stumble across some excellent stories in life.

In the end, that’s all we really are. Every organic cell in our body decomposes, every synapse is lost to the great ether, and all that lives on to see the endless comedy of human-posterity, is our stories. The ones we tell ourselves, the ones we tell to others, and, sometimes, even the ones we tell to no one at all-- the ones that worm their way into our own private narrative to set the pitch, tone and pace for every new scene in the series.

One can tell themselves over and over how much of a victim they are, and how woefully fate has marred their hand, or they can view themselves as the protagonist in need of suffering-- in need of that great and universal pain which makes things grow.

Things can happen to us whereby we feel afflicted because of impotency, or whereby we feel emboldened by the newfound depth and refinement to our character, brought out through the unsubtle coaxing of our own personal tragedies.

This is the story you tell yourself, the story that matters. It is both good to forget and to remember. Forget your hatred, forget your bitterness for life and all its causal apathy, forget the story you’ve been told (and have told) where you are a just a thing caught in the winds of fate-- remind yourself, remember, that you are merely a memory, a litany of things you tell yourself.

For some of us, there is a stronger need to forget, to let go. Art has always been something spiritual, something quintessentially therapeutic: something which allows all of us to transcend our normative experience and be lifted into place where even our pain is beautiful, where even our anger has meaning, and where even our loss can produce a certain magic out of the madness.

Music, for me, does not alleviate my pain, but rather, it elevates it. Gives it a new meaning, I suppose. Allows me to forget the pain in raw form, but see it, instead, take on the form of art. The form of a story, with a character I hope is somewhat close to my own.

And as I sit one last time in this house I’ve lived in the past three years-- the closest thing to a home I’ve had since childhood, I’ve decided to leave it with a final song. Now, I’ve packed up most of my good recording gear, so all I have left is my little Helicon Voice Live 3 I use for live performances. So, nothing special, probably won’t sound as polished as some of my other tracks, but that too I believe is apropos. For years while incarcerated, when allowed to have access to an acoustic guitar, I would write and sing all of my songs into the wind, not a recording device in sight. And now, as I move to the new place, and build my studio for this mammoth of a project ahead of me, I think it’s only fitting I grab my acoustic guitar and send this old house out properly with a sad song about moving on.

This song is called “Don’t Follow” by Alice in Chains. Hope you enjoy, and thank you for reading!