Good morning. Hello. How are you? I am doing a bit better, thanks. Thank you to all my middle-aged friends who dropped a line yesterday to try and cheer me up or, more commonly, commiserate. Really thought I was gonna avoid this “midlife crisis” thing but no luck. Yesterday Emma at lunch said “you’d think I’d know you’re depressed before the internet does,” and I explained that she kind of knew, it was the usual signs. Getting cranky and critiquing every approach the Mythbusters use to bust myths (or, just yelling at the TV in general), general crankiness. She mentioned depression needs to last ten days, and I thought that was an interesting point and said it depended on how you looked at it: on the one hand, it’s lasted my whole life, and she’s certainly known about that. On the other hand, this particular bout has only lasted a day or two, and it almost certainly wasn’t going to last ten days, because I generally have this thing under control these days, but if it did last ten days, she would certainly know about it, and we would talk about it. But generally, when a bout comes these days, I’ve learned to deal with it, and they usually pass.
And I do feel a bit better today, thanks. Probably not coincidentally, a monstrous headache came on yesterday, massive tension in the top of my head and base of my neck, extending down into my right shoulder, thanks to my three fused vertebrae that will never be happy, no matter how many stretches I do. But they are definitely happier when I do any stretches, so after a long evening of watching Jane, taking loads of Advil, many, many neck stretches and pounding the hell out of it with the Theragun, the headache started to get under control, and with it my depression lifted measurably.
I still wrestle with the fundamental concepts at the core of it: acceptance vs ambition, charity vs the self. I don’t think they’ll ever be resolved. Of late I’m feeling a bit resentful that my, imagonna say ten-plus years of working to be more on the zen side of things has yielded so few results. No, that’s not accurate. I’m probably a better person for it — a coworker yesterday even said “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you mad.” All you ex-Barbarians can have a nice laugh at that. The anger bagel is no more. But it hasn’t made an iota of a dent in my ambition. Ambition is fucking insane. I am realizing that in spending a decade trying to lower my ambitions, focus them more on a reasonable level, all that has accomplished is that I haven’t chased my ambitions, thus I’ve not fulfilled them. They didn’t actually temper or mute at all for all that effort and that feels like a bit of a raw deal.
I remember it was 1993 or so, I’m gonna say it was when I watched Scorsese’s Age of Innocence. And, aside from that extraordinary fade to cadmium yellow, I remember it was the first time I seriously considered the possibility that a human being could and should just abandon all ambition, all plans for their life, and just “give up” and accept their fate — in love or work or whatever. The movie I now use in my head as a mental model of this is Louis Malle’s Damage, where, by the end, Jeremy Irons has ruined his whole life, lives in some sad bungalow in rural Spain, a complete failure, with his giant print-out portrait of Juliette Binoche on the wall. And I remember thinking that, well, yeah, abandoning his MPship and sitting in Spain moping about Juliette Binoche is a perfectly reasonable plan of action for Jeremy Irons in that situation.
When I first went to Portsmouth, Maine, I thought “if I were in a situation like Monica Lewinsky at the height of her infamy and I needed to suspend my life and hole up somewhere non-urban for a year or two, I could do it here.” I’ve since realized Portsmouth is not the best town for that, these days I’d chose Ceret, France. But that image of having to give up your life, having to bolt and lay low. It lingers in my subconscious.
This notion of not exactly giving up, but realizing this was the thing your life was going to be about, whether or not that worked out, whether or not that succeeded, and accepting it. And what happened for the next, ima gonna say twenty-five years or so is that I often felt comfortable seeing that, recommending that, endorsing that in other people but I personally felt exempt. I mean, if I had to physically do it, I could do it, but it would be awesome. It was a fantasy, really. Because the exile released me from my ambition, and I could turn my attention to other interests. I’m not sure how, I’m not sure how it plays into this exactly but it’s definitely related. OH. Because if you were in that situation you’d be giving up your main ambitions. You could find pleasures in the rest of your life, but your main ambitions would be…. negated. You would be free of the tyranny of ambition. And I see obvious parallels with that and quarantine life, combined with this saga of ambition-negation I’ve been pursing these last few years.
But I’m coming to realize that was just a fantasy and I’m not really like that. Were I Jeremy Irons, my life devastated by my unhealthy love of Juliette Binoche to the point where I ruined my family life and career, I would not give my life over to it, I’d just do something else. Become a sand dealer or start an anonymously-led online company or something. Dedication to a single thing in one’s life was for other people, not for me, I thought, smugly.
Ambition. Hell of a thing. I just can’t quit you. I’m starting to think that most Zen masters were maybe just kind of lazy to begin with. I’m starting to think this whole “ambition is toxic” thing might be… kinda BS? Except it’s obviously not, tons of people do a ton of fucking terrible stuff because of their ambition and it’s so inextricably tied to hubris and people just wreak havoc on our planet and our psyches because of ambition. But maybe the whole thing is more about surgery than negation. You don’t kill off ambition, you make yourself a better person so pursuing your ambition doesn’t fuck everyone else up. Ha. Yeah. Right.
I am still inherently skeptical of ambition. But I’m still very ambitious. Crapola.
Anyway.
Programming note: I did not mean for the insertion of that meme about dogs and fireworks yesterday to be construed as an endorsement of scaring dogs with fireworks. It was a joke. I apologize for offending anyone. Not that anyone said anything.
What else, what else. Trying to maintain productivity. I am still writing these, still writing my 750 words, so at least that is productive. Did a bunch of work yesterday, things are moving nicely. Had a good idea about where and how to do more work writing, because I need to do more work writing. Talked to David a lot about one of our big initiatives, did some contract stuff for a giant client we’ve been chasing for two years. I did not send the GMHHAY book to Lisa, but I promise I will do that today. Japanese Trek Translator guy picked a font for the book, so I will maybe work on that a bit. Not today, but this weekend maybe.
I gotta fix my MIDI controller because the last MacOS update broke it somehow. Lots of things broken in the house: The June oven (replacement oven is in the mail! In the end, I give props to June’s customer service. They had me send a little video of the oven not working at all and they agreed to send me a brand new one). Our dehumidifier was breaking, but we got that replaced yesterday. Jane is currently fascinated with the notion that things break. Every morning, we get to the kitchen and she says “we have to use the toaster today because the June is broken.” Then we get down to my studio where the MIDI controller is broken so she can’t “play piano next to daddy” and she says “how many things are broken?” Then the HVAC guy came and I explained we needed to get the dehumidifier fixed and she said “so many things are broken!”
You ain’t kidding, kid.
Oh! I started working on the rock shows book again. Do you guys know about this project? It’s a good one, will probably last the rest of my life. A few years back, inspired by my friend Conrad, I compiled, to the best of my ability, a spreadsheet of every rock gig I have ever seen. My brilliant friend Doug then imported this list into a custom Rails app he built for me that is basically a URL you can hit and it gives you one gig, along with the date, venue and any quick comments I made in the comments field in the spreadsheet. It gives you a giant text field. I then write my memories about that gig. Then hit submit. It saves the data to a github repository I’ve been paying $7/mo for forever, and when I’ve gotten through all 3,800 of them, voila! I will have a book. This week I picked it up again, and I made the URL my start page in Safari so I don’t forget about it. I already did ten. At this rate, I’ll be done in under eight years! hahahaha.
Today’s is a good one, that was a great gig:
Good news! There’s a “Conservative Climate Caucus” in congress now. Bwahahaha. God. They think it’s a mistake calling the Climate situation a crisis. They “won’t endorse specific legislation to solve the problem,” and they’re “not yet on board with carbon pricing,” a decade-plus-old approach that was too little even back than. I feel better already.
Speaking of weather, There’s a tropical storm headed our way. The other rim of Elsa is just hitting us now. Should be here in 3-4 hours it looks like. Which is nice, because these things usually come at night, which makes them a lot scarier. Looks like 30-40 mph winds, 4-5 inches of rain. My plants are probably toast but otherwise shouldn’t be too too bad. I will try and move some of the plants, but, god. That’s a tall order. There are a lot of them and not a lot of shelter.
But I should probably get going.
Let’s do a mix! Gonna do an ambient mix today. I was thinking of my old friend Bruce and how much he liked Holger Czukay, and it reminded me that this mix has been almost done for ages, so I just finished it up. Forgive the Verve track. It is a joke. An ambient compilation joke. I have an ambient compilation from, oh, 1993 or so, that decided that Verve track should be considered “ambient.” It’s not. It’s close, though, and a beautiful track, so it goes on here anyway. Other than those two, most of this mix is new, or at least new to me. Thanks again to Bill for introducing me to Black Wing, they really are fantastic.
Oka I have 30 minutes until Jane wakes up. Guess I’ll go do a little storm prep. WOOOO. Wish me luck. Have a lovely Thursday.
Joan Robison needs a biopic.
Love that comments/memories idea about your concert history - gonna start doing the same
you should use your 750 words to start the robison biopic