My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

So, I  watched Magnolia earlier, I really forgot its complete brilliance and beauty. It’s a long movie that doesn’t feel long, basically a series of interconnected stories, themes like, the past repeats itself, mistakes and regrets aren’t unique to the individual. It’s a fast movie in that the cuts between stories are quick, it doesn’t linger on one character’s life for too long. There’s also a lot of camera movement, not shaky Cloverfield camera, just lots of panning, zooming. The cuts and the camera give Magnolia a very fast-paced frenetic feeling, even though its thirty minutes shy of three hours long. It’s also a movie about really fucked up people, people dying physically, emotionally, people whose stories do and don’t work out. I was watching with a friend and she asked, “Are people really like that?” I didn’t feel like putting down the words, I just eyebrowed a “yes.” There’s a scene with Philip Seymour Hoffman, he’s a Hospice nurse trying to track down this dying fellow’s estranged son, trying to fulfill a final request. His son, played by Tom Cruise, turns out to be a pretty famous, pretty vile, motivational speaker, teaching loser guys how to have lots of sex with lots of women. So, Seymour Hoffman’s on the phone talking to one of Cruise’s underlings and says something to the affect, I know this is something like a scene from some movie, but I think movies have scenes like this because this actually happens. I mean, that’s so much of why we go to movies, because we identify with what we see, or we want to do or be what we see. I answered my friend with a “yes” because my experiences have been so much like the characters we were watching. Depression, loneliness, addiction, loss, regret, I know those experiences, felt them, feel them, been drowning in them. Yes, people really are “like that.”

Magnolia’s soundtrack is another reason I love it so much, Aimee Mann contributed most of the songs, specifically written for the movie. One particularly unusual, very moving scene, cuts to each character singing Wise Up. My favorite line, “You’re sure there’s a cure, and you have finally found it. You think one drink will shrink you ’till you’re underground and living down, but it’s not going to stop, it’s not going to stop, it’s not going to stop ’till you wise up.” It’s very surreal, but the scene totally works. It hit me really hard, I broke-down, sobbing. I breakdown quietly, nobody ever notices. Almost nobody. Listening to Aimee’s lyrics, crying, it reminded me of something.

It was four years ago, I was with Sara, my girlfriend then, kind of. We’d broken up, but started finding each other again toward the end of shooting our This American Life episode. So, she wanted us to go see a Chris Isaak concert, and I just wanted to go anywhere with her. The trach was still a little fresh back then, I’d still get nervous going out sometimes, so I’d have wine or brandy before getting into the car. Not the best way to cope, but it worked awhile. I didn’t want to not take her, I didn’t want to be weird and nervous, I just needed the crutch to get there. It wore off and I realized I was okay because I was with Sara, everything was always okay with Sara. So, we’re leaving the concert, which was great, we’re walking back to the car under a summer night-sky. I look up at the stars, bright beautiful stars. I didn’t want to be anyplace else, just right there, under those stars, with Sara. As we’re walking she takes my hand and out of nowhere starts singing Aimee’s You Do, off the Magnolia soundtrack. And you do, you do, you do, you really do… I never thought I could love her any more, but holding her hand, listening to her sing under those stars, I did, and I felt so completely loved. I quit the pre-outting drinks after that night. I didn’t need them, and we went so many more places together. We held each other and sang so many more times. Losing her hurt so much.

I never thought I could find again what I felt with Sara, but I did, so intensely, so beautiful, but that’s gone too. Losing Monica hurts so Goddamn fucking much. I don’t know how to be okay.

I’ve said that I admire Elliott Smith as a writer, I think he was a genius. He’s a writer whose level of brilliance I aspire toward. He captured human experiences so perfectly, told these perfect little stories of love and loss and sadness and loneliness and addiction in just a few hundred words. Theres’s a special skill in that, no less brilliant and beautiful than the tens of thousands of words that writers like KJ Bishop, or Michael Cisco, or Jeff VanderMeer put into their stories.  It’s not easy to capture how it feels to lose someone you love, to capture it in a way that is universally accessible, in just a handful of words. Smith’s Sweet Adeline off his fourth record, XO, is a gorgeous example of describing the end of love and the aftermath of that ending.

Waiting for sedation to disconnect my head, for any situation where I’m better off than dead.

He felt that, put it into words, perfect words. It’s how I feel right now, and a thousand times before right now, and probably a thousand times after right now.

Tattoo by Fish, Doc Dog's Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

This is my first foot tattoo, it’s from one of my favorite Elliott Smith songs, Angel in the Snow, off his posthumously released collection, New Moon.

I’d say you make a perfect

Angel in the snow

All crushed out on the way you are

Better stop before it goes too far

Don’t you know that I love you?

Sometimes i feel like only a cold still life

That fell down here to lay beside you

Don’t you know that i love you?

Sometimes I feel like only a cold still life

Only a frozen still life

That fell down here to lay beside you

It’s such a beautiful little song, and sad. Falling so hard, feeding so… apart.

So, I listen to the New Yorker: Fiction Podcast. Every month, a writer from today chooses a story to read that was previously published in the New Yorker, then there’s a discussion about the story. I’ve been listening for awhile, but the one story that really sticks out for me is Day-Old Baby Rats by Julie Hayden, published in 1972. It’s a short-story about a day in the life of a young woman in New York City. She’s an alcoholic, we’re there for her first drink in the morning, we see the city through her eyes, we hear her thoughts on everything she sees, and doesn’t see. It’s a gripping story of a woman, stricken by loneliness and anxiety, surrounded be millions of people.

Julie Hayden created a beautiful story in Day-Old Baby Rats, but Julie Hayden’s personal story is also sadly moving. She lived in New York City, had a story collection published, did regular writing for the New Yorker, she was doing things just about every writer aspires toward, definitely what I aspire toward. Still, today you can barely find a trace of her on google, by the time of her far too early death in 1981 her work was largely out of print, largely forgotten. Anxiety and phobia fueled her own alcoholism, she’d carry a flask, taking nips to numb her worries. Cancer ended her writing and her life. forever. She did these great things, but she still slipped and fell and ended badly. Her sad writing mirrored the sadness in her head, people found it beautiful, compelling, and yet for some reason, she died pretty much unremembered. It scares me how that can, and does happen. We all want our stories to end well, but sometimes, no matter what, they don’t. They just don’t.

I worry about my story.

Well, now that I know of her, I’ll remember Julie Hayden, and maybe this post might put her work in some new minds. It’s not much, but it’s something. She, and her work, are definitely worth remembering.

I could put down a bunch of words, but they wouldn’t do anything, or mean anything, or change anything. Or I could put down a bunch of violets. Violets violets violets violets violets violets violets violets violets violets violets violets violets violets violets violets violets violets violets. Either way, it’s the same affect, no matter the words. Whatever I put down is passionless, pointless.

Tattoo by Colt, Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, this tattoo… The lyrics are from an Aimee Mann song, King of the Jailhouse, which is off her record, my second favorite, The Forgotten Arm. If you listen to the record in order, the songs tell a story about this alcoholic, washed up former boxer, and his girlfriend, and the arc of their relationship from beginning to end. Few albums are perfect, there are always a few songs that are just “meh,” but I think The Forgotten Arm is as close to perfect as an album gets.

As for the tattoo, well, I’ll just say that if I’m stressed enough, and lonely enough, I’m guaranteed to do something stupid. I’ll do the worst, dumbest thing possible, and I don’t know how to fix that about myself.

So, I got this tattoo some months back, while I was in Cincinnati. I got it my first few hours in town, we arrived and by nightfall I was having these lyrics etched into my leg. The lines are from an Alanis Morissette song, Flinch, off her record, Under Rug Swept. The song is really a story, six minutes of flash writing about this connection between two people, this consuming, unrelenting connection. These two lines, they’re my favorite, I’ve thought similar thoughts so many times.

These lines always remind me of someone, this person who’s always with me, even when she’s not. I was thinking about her that dusk in Cincinnati, thinking about how she has this deep affect on me. It’s like she has a key to everything in me, and I couldn’t change the locks even if I wanted to. The affect is beyond reason, and even when it hurts I cannot make it stop. It’s so like the way breathing affects me, the way a lack of air feels miserable, terrifying, and there’s not a Goddamn fuckin’ thing I can do to quell that lack, or change the way it makes me feel. I missed her so much when I woke up that morning, I missed her before I even left Tampa, and it hit me, it really hit me when Flinch popped up on my iPod just as we crossed that line into Cincinnati, it hit me that this one person means everything to me, that no one else holds so much sway to render me so completely happy, and so perfectly lost and melancholy. It amazes me how lyrics can pull so much out of a person, like some sort of magic spell that make the world clear as a pane of glass.

That’s all I care to say about tattoo #41.

(Oh, the grammatical error in the tattoo was done to match the way the lyrics are written on Alanis.com.)

Well, December’s not going to be perfect, post-wise. لعبة الحظ الحقيقية I fucked it up yesterday. This is okay, I accept it. I need to get back to quality, I’m so far from quality I barely remember it. Still, past all the anxiety, and stress, and nightmares, is me. I’m in here somewhere…

I wonder how much longer I’ll be stuck in this rut..