Into the Void

And just as the sun must keep on seeking the west, everything you love, will always be leaving…

Notes from the last day of March, 2014, somewhere along Highway 14, Washington:

It should go without saying, but the idea of artists being crazy, dysfunctional beings is passé and unfair. For every Van Gogh, there’s a Chagall just trying to get on with his day and create something meaningful. That being said, I have struggled with depression since I was fifteen. I don’t write this because I seek sympathy or absolution or anything really. It’s an explanation, not an excuse, and frames where this post is coming from.

Sometimes everything is wrong.

Sometimes the bottom falls out of a distorted world. Unable to sleep or compel myself to eat, I cut myself off from the outside world. Talking to family or friends becomes impossible; there are so many streams of thought firing off in my head that I can’t focus them into coherent ideas when they come out of my mouth. They are awful thoughts that frighten people, so tangled around my own self-destruction, so buried in my own unhappiness. I can’t bear the thought of sharing that with others; the care of others is painful and becomes like a stab in the gut.

To stave off the slide into dark places, it helps to head off into the wilderness on my own, hitting the road with a full iPod and a bagful of camera gear. New air and a campfire can clear the destructive voices that cling. Getting away was already planned, but as I left the city behind for the smell of wood smoke and the cold starry night and to try a little night sky photography, I was also trying to leave behind my own selfish sadness.

As I’ve talked about in previous posts, landscape photography is not my forte, so a lot of these fall into the ARAT category. I did collect a lot of images for the new project, including my first attempts at night sky photography, laying the foundation for a longer trip into the desert in a couple of months.

words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup, they slither wildly as they slip their way across the universe…

oh my lord, how have I offended thee, wrap your tender arms around me, oh lord…

you’d kill yourself for recognition, kill yourself to never ever stop; You broke another mirror, you’re turning into something you are not…

und dann, ja dann und wann, Zuckt auf ein Blitz aus heiterem Himmel…

I wish I was like you, easily amused; find my nest of salt, everything’s my fault…

will you save me, from drowning here along with you?

funny how my memory slips while looking over manuscripts of unpublished rhyme, drinking my vodka and lime…

situations get fucked up, turned around sooner or later; and I could be another fool or an exception to the rule…

it better work out, I hope it works out my way, cause it’s getting kind of quiet in my city’s head…

it’s the sweetest thing I know of, just spending time with you; It’s the little things that make a house a home…

now I’m naked, nothing but an animal, but can you fake it, for just one more show…

 

An aside: And death shall have no dominion…

A friend once told me, using physics as a starting point and flowing out to human experience, that humans are unable to comprehend infinity, the endlessness of space, forever.

I don’t believe that. It may be egotistical, but I don’t have a problem comprehending physical space without end, or existence transcending dimension, or a love that lasts forever. It simply is. How strange as I worked in the dark and cold, focused into the infinite, I should also see the ends of things, absoluteness, the loss of what might have been, and beauty in the terrible. It simply is.

o Yoshimi, they don’t believe me, but you won’t let those robots eat me…

take another shot of courage, wonder why the right words never come, you just get numb…

got lost in the places that I’ve been, I should go out with my friends…

love, confession number one, impossible and sorry; And judge, can you look the other way, some things are best unsaid…

thick, heart of stone, my sins my own, they belong to me…

time hangs like a noose before me, time stills to a crawl and grinds so slowly…

see what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world,
see what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world…

river to the ocean goes, a fortune for the undertow, none of this is going my way,
there is nothing left to throw, of ginger, lemon, indigo, coriander stem and rose of hay…

but oh, my heart was flawed, I knew my weakness…

what have I become, my sweetest friend, everyone I know goes away in the end
you could have it all, my empire of dirt; I will let you down, I will make you hurt…

 

On the iPod (credit where credit is due): Independence Day by Floater; Across the Universe, Beatles; Oh My Lord, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds; High and Dry, Radiohead; My Way, Nina Hagen; All Apologies, Nirvana; Into the Sun, King Black Acid; Hazy Shade of Winter, Simon and Garfunkel; Say Yes, Elliot Smith; Teenage Riot, Sonic Youth; Back Home Again, John Denver; Bullet With Butterfly Wings, Smashing Pumpkins; Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Flaming Lips; Tequila Sunrise, Eagles; Evening Kitchen, Band of Horses; Ruby Falls, Guster; Broken Crown, Mumford and Sons; Gloria, Patti Smith; Far End of the Night, Grant Lee Phillips; Sweet Old World, Emmylou Harris; Find the River, REM; Hurt, Nine Inch Nails