My Most Awkward Years: Musically Distilled

This is a mash-up of a bunch of songs from the 90s brought to my attention by a fellow wild child of those halcyon days—days that are just as bleak even veiled by nostalgia.


Nineties FTW (Wick-it's 90's Rock Nostalgia Overdose Mashup) by Wick-it the Instigator

If somebody with ProTools was able to similarly condense my existence spanning the years this music was made, the resulting song would entail a machine-gun staccato of crying, masturbating and taking Accutane for my acne. It would sound akin to a Joanna Newsom live album.

This summer went by quickly. I know that sentence makes me sound like a schoolteacher lamenting the return to the classroom, but I am not a schoolteacher because: a) what if anyone found this treasure trove of closet skeletons? and b) I do not like children. All of a sudden it's fall in New York and the sun is setting earlier and I am getting crankier but also reorienting myself with some direction. The blurry summer passed, a shot of methadone focus is definitely in order. Primarily, I am resolving to eliminate negativity (and sources of negativity) and only fight for and with that which fulfills me. My first thought after writing that sentence is to sell all my belongings, quit working and eat cheeseburgers and fried pickles every day until my heart explodes with joy and hypertension. Although that's one path to a greasy form of enlightenment, and Buddha is always depicted as a chubby fellah, it isn't really what I meant. I aim to seek out good people who appreciate my talents, encouraging and inspiring me, and not waste any time with or for those who do not.

Two quotes from one story by the incomparable Southern writer Barry Hannah struck a chord today:

Wretched hesitation ... is what embalms our lives, and that was what age demanded of you more and more, to get less and less life.

I've seen peers accept "less and less life" for the past ten years and it's a been a terrible thing to witness. People who used to seem so full of life are both aging toward boredom and personifying it. Their unnatural progression makes me want to quit Facebook. Ten years ago we flung ourselves toward excitement both haphazardly and erroneously without care or regard for the consequences, only a yearning for escape from suburban drudgery. I only assumed that my partners in crime would just grow older and choose wiser ways to get our fun, our "adult" kicks; instead of sneaking past our parents with a flask of whiskey we'd be vaulting past the rubes trading years of fluorescent office imprisonment for a chance at eventual freedom—retirement at 65, provided they live that long—with a freewheeling jaunt toward success without boundaries. And it hasn't happened. And as much as I'd like to think that they're the only ones who've given up, I must admit to my own struggles with "wretched hesitation."

Another:

I was desperate and would have been throbbing in shame but I was still drunk enough to ignore it and was majoring on the theme Whim of Fortune, and I believe trying to attach myself to a woman of such low estate that the two of us would destroy ourselves in spontaneous combustion at an impossible diving speed.

Now this quote is not quite as introspective as its predecessor, but knowing Hannah's life I think it's more than semi-autobiographical. He's at the pulse of a feeling I've had once or twice or ten times in the past, and evoked with the dexterity of a F-15 fighter pilot, fingers flying Mach-1 over the keyboard. As a young writer, Hunter S. Thompson typed the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald to get the flow of his hero's writing. To get his rhythm. I only hope that typing Hannah's words can move me in similar ways.

So was that mash-up above the soundtrack to my most awkward years, or have the songs to that time in my life even been written yet? I don't know. But after surviving my first earthquake (yes, in Brooklyn) and a hurricane that shut down all public transportation in the city and called for evacuations in the same week, I biked down to Greenwood Cemetery for a few hours of wandering mental clarity.

And then I grilled cheeseburgers. Everyone deals with mortality differently.

I Mowed The Yard In My Sleep, And I Failed

I spent a long time on the phone last night, talking to my parents, who are currently very occupied with kitchen renovations. My house, changing. I have never felt emotional about alterations made to my childhood home until now. Or, that is to say, until I woke up this morning. When I was on the phone I just tried to envision the new layout, offered advice when it was requested, let them talk. Yes, them: My parents both pick up the phone when I call home because my mom thinks I will tell my dad things I won't tell her (true) and doesn't want to "miss anything." But I talk to her about things I don't tell my father, too, so I don't really know understand that argument; in the end, I guess it's nice I don't have to repeat myself.

I had a dream later that revolved around cutting the grass in my backyard, and I was failing. I had mowed the yard to perfection for years and now everything was wrong. I was pissing myself with green inability and yet certain in my head that what I was doing had to be right even though I knew it wasn't. Standing out there, for some reason putting the blade setting far too low and doing one stripe around the perimeter of the yard, almost scorching-the-earth short, bald even, my dad looking down from the deck with a look that mixed shock and disappointment, he himself knowing that I was better than my performance. Dreams often don't make sense but I woke up disappointed in myself anyway, because I know what it was: I know it's a subconscious metaphor for the sometimes overwhelming inadequacy I feel as I try to write this book about my grandmother's childhood during World War II. It brought tears to my ears briefly this morning; it is again now.

And you want to know another reason why? I love cutting the grass and I take pride in it. I would cut it every week for my dad and also for my neighbor, and I even sometimes helped my friend Blake with his lawn mowing business. And I had style, too, nobody did it better than me: I had always made two passes around the outside — and never with a change in grass height — before doing either vertical or diagonal stripes across the inside bulk of the yard. That little bit of creativity and focus, vying for perfection in those stripes, was part of what made the mundane sublime. I would have done it for free, so the extra cash I made was a solid deal.

It's the smell, I think, that I like the best. Two-stroke engine fuel, the little bit that spilled while filling the tank wiped on my T-shirt, mixing with sweat and dirt and grass; the exhaust hangs heavy in the humid summer Georgia air that's already sweetened by flowers full in bloom. Gasoline, especially the oil-gas mixture that is two-stoke, is such a narcissistic odor, just like permanent markers and rubber cement and your own farts in bed: you know it's bad and you have to smell it anyway to satisfy yourself.

clip-art adds credibility to my glue addiction

But the noise is nice, too. It's fulfilling, that droning engine, a small muffler barely hushing the violent processes powering that sharpened fan blade whirring inches from your feet. I've heard some quote that I'm not going to bother looking up, but it's something along the lines of "meditation is the art of automating the body so the mind can work." The combination of droning sounds, intoxicating smells and physical focus provided me with this wonderful alone time, completely within my own head, nothing to shape my thoughts but the direction they took on their own, and a feeling of blissful contentment I yearn for on a daily basis. I get a taste of it from a long, purposeless walk through the streets of New York, my thoughts wandering like my feet, but it still isn't the same. 

That's why on days like today, overcome by wind and rain and gray dreary insanity, deprived of my walk of serenity, I write crazy stuff like this around midnight. I feel nostalgia for a hot July Georgia day. I recall being ten years younger, home from college for the summer, working for my friend's uncle doing custom woodwork and renovating rich peoples' homes, working myself to physical exhaustion through the day, taking a quick shower and heading off again to sit in lawn chairs in somebody's driveway at night with beers and girls and music and fireflies.

I had forgotten that dream over the course of the day as I worked hard on the book, researching and writing and doing. And then I read this and it all came rushing back. I need to get back to work now, to prove I can.