If you’d like to check it out, here’s a link. I’m sorry I’ve hopped around on the internet so much and I do appreciate you if you’ve followed me around.

http://recordbinsocial.club/

Many years ago when I was on tour with another artist who had a bus and allowed me to be on it for the duration of the uncomfortable and dark tour (my road mate was in the throes of a horrible addiction, and I most likely was too) I woke up on the first day and walked around. I’d never been able to wake up in the town I was playing, having been delivered by essentially a house on wheels. I didn’t know what to do with myself, and I went to a coffee shop with my book and notebook. After about an hour, the barista asked if I wanted another coffee. Yes, I said, and he asked if I wouldn’t mind taking it to go. I was no longer wanted in the establishment. I wondered if I stank, or seemed unwell. Maybe I just needed to buy a cookie.

I feel unwanted constantly at the moment, and I don’t want anything. No matter how many times people tell me I am welcome to stay there, I feel strange in another person’s house, using their shower, their couch. The heaviness of my heartbreak hangs over everything, and my conversation skills offer nothing. I am not wanted as a musician to work with, nor as a lover or a partner. I am floating through life in so much pain that I feel transparent. All the things that made me me dumped out. I sit on my couch, trying to read, and then think of all the emails I need to send or respond to. The taxes that need filed before October. The catch up calls I need to have with people who are only trying to help me get my music out. But I’ve lost my zest for everything. All I wanted was for people to call me back, now I want to ignore the phone. I read essay collections, and a book of my friend’s poetry. I find tales of people living in small towns and picking apples and beets or writing freelance, living in places they can be anonymous. My version of “giving up and disappearing” though of course, it’s not giving up at all. But I am not a freelance writer and I can’t operate a forklift so I’m on Instagram, telling people about myself, this shell of me that I can’t stand. New music coming I say, in October or December or February. Here’s soup I made. Me, me, me. I think of how cringe and trashy the past few years have been for me, then I delve deep into my redneck childhood, and I realize: This is who I am. Instead of flaunting it for display, maybe try to mold it into something useful.

When I look up from the poetry book, I see that the sky has gone a sickening yellow-black color. The wind is howling, like a train, and my cat from across the room widens his eyes in fear. The rain is not coming down but sideways, completely sideways, pummeling all the road dirt off my van. Chairs fly by, branches, I think I see a car tip onto two wheels. I am terrified of tornadoes, typically fleeing to the nearest basement or bathtub, but I feel nothing. Everyone told me as a kid to get in a ditch if some strange weather even happened upon you when you were out and couldn’t find shelter. In many ways, I’ve been lying in a ditch all year.

Heartache is relentless, to be told you’re not wanted anymore, to be unfollowed on the internet and to know how stupid it is to care about such things at 35. To see the friend that gets to spend days with someone who once lit up like they were plugged into electricity when they saw you, the one that now sags and shrugs you off, and to lash out about it. The internet. “I don’t use social media that much. I don’t like to post personal things,” he says, but you see the comments from girlfriends far and wide. “What a nice day we had,” one woman writes.

“You can use it to interact with your geriatric girlfriend, though,” I say, and immediately wish I could take it back. Seemed funnier in the head, the jealousy over a fucking internet comment. What a nice day we had together. It is completely acceptable for two humans to have a nice day together. But I am unfollowed, unwanted. So I lie on the couch crying and hugging my knees to my chest, trying to make myself smaller until I can no longer feel anything, feeling like a psycho in a movie who can’t just let go. It’s absurd to make myself feel this way. You can’t drink, it’s not good. You can’t watch a movie, because it will not distract from the pain. Listening to the thunder and the sideways rain is all there is. If I could just get to a show. If I could just prove that I can be good. I wail and retch. People make records out of this stuff.

Every single day for years I have made lists of things I Must do to improve myself. Yoga, lifting, walking, reading a hundred pages, clean the house, don’t drink. If I haven’t achieved it all by 10 am, I feel like shit. It’s compulsive. About a decade ago someone who was trying to be helpful told me to make a list of things before I go to bed, and crossing them off will feel good. They underestimate how much my thoughts wind and twist and spiral, sucking me into endless fantasy and always looking to the future when I’ve done xyz. I just want to wake up and feel like enough. Not lie in bed at night, this enormous and stupid canopy bed I bought for my partner and that I thought would keep us safe, and that I’ll never be able to move by myself, doing math of what I can afford. “I don’t know how to make enough money,” I quip to a friend at the coffee shop and he responds with, “Try exchanging services and goods. It’s what everyone else does,” before turning back to his laptop where I assume real work resides. And I know my worrying, relentless stress is fucking annoying. I walk back to my house, safely alone to hate myself, just before the skies open up and unleash hellfire on Columbus again. Yesterday at practice, I commented that practicing is my least favorite part of playing music. I don’t like setting up, and once we’re practicing, nothing sounds good to me, and I end up hating myself. Every quiet nod in between songs tells me people agree, that my songs are no good.

“It’s not laziness, it’s trauma,” says my bandmate, agreeing that practice sucks, “I saw it in a video. Some guy was explaining it.”

He never explains what the video exactly said, but I nod happily and say, “Yeah, maybe it is.”

“I hope so,” he says, “Because I’m running out of excuses.”

The reality is: I went on the road, and I survived, and I cried in college student houses in the Catskills like Greta Gerwig’s version of Odysseus. And I felt good and I stayed mostly in check. I got home in time to start band rehearsals for my upcoming shows, driving the 13 hours in one fell swoop of insanity, listening to episode after episode of Behind the Bastards interspersed with sad love songs from years ago. I feel like an alien, like I don’t quite know what I’m doing, but I’m on the cusp of knowing, right at the edge of it. Maybe it is just as simple as getting in the car with a box of CD’s and a guitar. I want to believe that. I want to live in that reality for a while. I have a million things I want to write about right now that aren’t this sadness, what an acupuncturist once called The Dampness when I went in complaining of a complete lack of ability to feel anything. It turned out I just needed to get a divorce then, but right now, I don’t have anyone to divorce. I just have tiny crumbs of pieces of something to put back together and eventually, maybe, I’ll have a cake. For now I just try to make it funny, try to make it into something else.

I’m really trying to be funny.

Shows upcoming:

With Reilly Downs:

August 14-Chicago house show 1732 N Kedvale Avenue Chicago IL (8pm)

August 15-Alternating Currents Fest Davenport IA

(Raccoon Motel 930 pm)

August 16-Welcome Back Lounge Chicago IL (Donation at door)

Full band shows:

Sept 1- Asheville NC TBA

Sept 2- Deadbeat Club Athens GA w/ Jay Gonzalez Duo

Sept 3 - 5 Spot in Nashville with Cha Cha Heels and She Returns from War

Sept 4 - TN Caverns with Murder by Death and Ha Ha Tonka

September 5 - MOTR Pub with Liteweight Champion (EARLY SHOW)

September 6- Lydia Loveless BIRTHDAY BASH @ Rambling House with Steve Tabatowski, Crazier (Athens GA) and Brian Damage

Read more

As rent goes up all over and places all over America start to feel like you could be air dropped into them and not be able to tell where you are, it’s harder to feel like living anywhere is that great. I have to say though, I really enjoyed visiting my own city. On the fourth of July, we went to the zoo, something I would never consider doing on the hottest holiday of the year. Recently, I’ve mentioned wanting to attend activities at the zoo to friends only to be met with scoffs of “I would never support a zoo” or “How can you go to a place like that?” I am naive or possibly stupid, but I have always found the Columbus zoo to be more of a sanctuary than a place to gawk at miserable living things. Everywhere you look you see plaques about protecting the environment, saving the manatees and rebuilding the red panda population. It is not, say, the Lincoln Park zoo, where I once had a complete existential breakdown and left feeling disgusted with myself after watching a lion pace in a literal cage that was like something out of a cartoon about animal abuse. At the manatee exhibit, my friend and I both started crying listening to the employee tell us about Stubby, the manatee who had been there since 1995, and pointed out her scar ravaged body, her missing fin. “She’s a foster mom to all the newbies that come in and feel scared.”

“Oh, Stubby….” I muttered to myself throughout the rest of the day. Every day I am cursed with a phrase that I have to repeat over and over again, and that was the one on that day.

Next up was the Franklin Park Conservatory, a place I haven’t been in ten years. I recall the day vividly because it was the first day I went out in public without my wedding ring after my separation. My friend took a photo of me on the day and I stared at my hand in the picture for a long time, thinking of the possibility of the future. Good thing I didn’t look ten years into the future, where I stood single and sad again, staring down a corpse flower on the verge of bloom. “When it opens, it will smell like dead meat and draw pollinators to it.” Me too, my guy. In the butterfly room, I braced myself for terror. I am not a fan of flying bugs, no matter how beautiful and important they are to the ecosystem. But on this day I was able to appreciate the little guys.

My friend, grieving the sudden and recent death of her partner, was ready for rest after these two activities, and I walked around the neighborhood her Airbnb was located in. I used to live in the area for a long time until I was priced out, as I soon will be priced out of my current neighborhood. I walked around aimlessly and dreamily in the 96 degree weather, puffing on an indica dominant vape pen I had picked up for my friend, a sack of edibles in my hand. I stopped at Jeni’s and bought myself a 9 dollar ice cream cone and licked it furiously, the contents quickly dripping down my arm in the heat that felt like getting a hug from a post-match Mick Foley. I joined my friend at the house where we ate pizza from Slammer’s while we watched Real Housewives of OC, a show I hadn’t watched since my first real bout with depression at 17. That night, I fell asleep to a video titled I’M BEGGING YOU TO IGNORE YOUR REALITY, where a man told me that the way I speak about myself is ruining my life. Speak your reality into being, he told me. Speak it as if it’s already so. I sent it to my sister in the morning.

Over the days we went to Otherworld, the Bookloft. Nothing too crazy. I brought her a bottle of dry white wine from my job which went mostly untouched.

It’s the height of the hot times here and I’m dying for a pool, but haven’t gotten myself to one just yet. I’m waiting for my ex to visit for a few days, where we’ll work things out or we won’t. I’ve learned not to expect instant results in anything these days. Everything is a long slow process, not much fun. 10 boring, meditative Turkish get ups a day is better than nothing. 1 hour long walk with sweat pouring out of your tits is better than giving up on a 30 minute jog you planned in your head. Playing your guitar every single day does more for your life than daydreaming of accepting your award for Best Musician of All Time to soothe yourself to sleep while your label ghosts you again.

Little things every day. Watching how I speak about myself. How I speak about my life. I picture a muscly, well-manicured man just over my left shoulder saying he can tell me everything about my life just from listening to me complain, so I don’t complain. I go to work. I schedule band practices. I make elaborate French bread pizzas. I try to shut up and listen.

I read my Tom Petty biography by Warren Zanes, then I think about how I’d like to get more into birding, so I order that from the library. The bird calls in my yard this year have called my attention away from the construction sounds that enrage me. I listen to a Sean Bean podcast about birding. I order Read Like a Writer, too and then I order some food essay collections just to feel something.

I am wealthy and prosperous, I say, and, I am happy.

As a child, I was so bored it was a physical pain at times. The few people who have seen where I grew up look at me with aghast horror in their eyes. My choices were limited to which rock in which field I would sit on to contemplate existence, which cat I would pet as I did so. I thought a lot about death. There were very few adventures to be had. On the days my family would venture out it was usually to do something like take the Amish neighbors to the market, something I’d probably do as an adult for a quaint good time but as a child made me feel like all my blood was slowly being drained out of me. This is where I developed a healthy imagination, I guess, and a longing to write things down. It is the best escape, writing. But where is there to escape when everything is pulling your attention towards it? It’s embarrassing to admit that I struggle maintaining power over my own mind against our evil overlords, man. I also developed an overpowering fear of one day being imprisoned, wishing only for my time and decisions to be my own, which used to seem irrational until today’s America made it clear that one can be imprisoned for just about anything. Actually, probably all of America for all of time, it just seems more glaringly obvious now.

Then there’s the guilt other grown adults will heap on you. “You’re just going to sit at home today?” They’ll ask. Well, yeah. All my stuff is here, and I pay so much money to have a house. I feel like I should spend time in it. “You’re going to bed at 8pm?” Yeah, I’m tired, and if I don’t go to bed at 8 pm I stay up til 4 am trying to learn the Charleston. It’s hard to explain, that’s just how it works. The fear that grips me is that by protecting my boredom, I become boring. In a neighborhood that feels like Sesame Street, everyone popping out a window or door to see what you’re up to, that can be overwhelming. Yes, I am just taking a walk. Just walking. No I don’t have plans. Sounds expensive. No, I am not wearing a bra.

In that muddy, murky zone between making a record and putting it out, I don’t feel a yearning to write songs right now. I feel a yearning to get better as a performer, because that’s the most pressing need. For a long long time, I simply got in the van, drove to the next place, drank beer, and got onstage. Things evidently don’t work that way now. People are canceling shows left and right for having fewer than a hundred presales. Nobody wants to see a boozed up troubadour. So I sit at the piano and run my scales, I practice my bass, and I am taking guitar lessons to be OK at fingerpicking. My teacher Phill (Stripmall Ballads) is patient despite my lack of ability (despite my 20 years of playing guitar). At times I wonder, does he think I’ve made it all up? Does he wonder if someone else has been playing my parts all along? Surely someone this bad at guitar couldn’t have accomplished what I have. But the second the zoom call is over, I improve at whatever we’ve gone over. There’s some sort of magic spell that comes over me when I’m showing someone what I am capable of. A spell that makes me suck really bad. I’ve long been insecure about my solo performances and the lack of excitement of my playing. I also have the fear that I’m going to have to do this on my own forever. So I rotate through the instruments and whichever grabs my interest most that day I sit with the longest. I’m learning about Sir Walter Raleigh, because I may be writing some songs about him for a project. Not my project. Right now my only project is me.

For the first time in my life, I am alone and not seeking to be not alone. I am seeking how to sustain being alone, or at least living alone. Shit, it’s hard. Gone are the days of the 500 dollar apartment. But I don’t want anyone in my house, man. My garden didn’t really make it this summer, and I’m gonna try again. I refuse to go out like this. I used to be resilient, convinced I could survive the apocalypse. Growing food is an act of resistance, I say to the single pea that made it out of the dirt. And I’m just like that pea! Boring as shit, pale green, and constantly struggling to stay alive, of course.

Recently, a new friend asked if I wanted to hang out, mentioning they wouldn’t be in town much longer. Sure! I said, giving out my phone number like it was a piece of gum, of no consequence. I thought, I can show this person around town, the cool bookstores, coffee shops, venues. A few days later, my friend who had witnessed the exchange teased me about it, asking when our date was. No way, I said. It’s not a date. Then a cold chill of realization passed over me and I realized that it very much was a date. When they texted me a few days later, I told them (honestly) that I had just picked up another job and I really didn’t have any time to do much at all that week, feeling guilty for accidentally roping someone into getting their hopes up. Hadn’t they listened when I told them I was recently heartbroken? Anyway, I am better at taking rejection that giving it out, unfortunately. I need to remember this the next time someone asks me to “hang out.”

“Are you kidding me? That’s far too dangerous.”

Still reading about Zevon, not sure why such a simple book is taking so long? I fell into a hole for a couple weeks. I’m not proud. I feel ready to read just about anything and I want to move on. I’m rewatching the Americans (I practice my guitar while I do so, OK). I was really sucked into it back in North Carolina, around 2019, and then I fell off because while it is a great show, I just couldn’t believe people were still falling for these wigs. It makes me wonder how much I myself could get away with if I just wore a wig. Is that the problem? Listening to a lot of Okonski, Kelsey Lu, Olivia Rodrigo. I think I suck at both my jobs. I feel like a weirdo in every social situation. I choose to go forward with confidence and self-love, this is my promise to myself this week.

I am so tired. I feel like I’m constantly at work or reading a text message thread about something I’m supposed to be doing at work. But today my record is finished being mixed, off to mastering it goes. I am so relieved. It’s the first real happiness I’ve felt in so long. I try to think about what it will be like to have music out again. Every time, things are different and there’s some dumb new thing you have to do. “Don’t forget to post a Dingledoo on PlopaDop for the new single.” I watch my friends make reels of themselves talking, which is my fucking nightmare. Hence why I’m hiding over here on substack talking about my relationship problems, right? Much more normal. I’m excited about making little videos. I’m excited about maybe getting better at expressing myself outside of songwriting. When someone asks me the theme of a record or a song I immediately sputter something along the lines of “It’s like, like, about you know. What I was feeling then. Does that make sense?” Maybe I can do it better this time. As much as I love to overshare, I’m not that great at digging deeper in conversation. I also feel like this record contains my best lyrics so far, and I want to do them justice. Same with stage fright. My technique used to be to tip it back a little bit. But that’s never made anything better. I read today about changing the dialogue around stage fright. “I’m terrified to be up here, but I’m willing to take the risk because it’s so important I be here with you all!” Something like that. Why not just admit it? It scares me if I have to take a pause to tune my guitar or switch to my acoustic or piano. That dead silence can kill you, and some jackass will at times fill it with “Come ON! FUCKIN’ PLAY!!!!” But who cares? I don’t have anyone to tune my guitar for me. I gotta do it. Does it really matter if I pause to make the show better?

I tell myself failure doesn’t have to be 100%. You can fall down and get up. These are things I tell myself. “I never have to drink again,” I say in the morning in my bed, and I feel immense peace. I was going to yoga most mornings, taking walks again, starting to feel comfortable in my body. Then comes the crash and you’re googling “Chinese food near me” again, squinting into the glow of the phone for relief. Depression. Resentment against my part time jobs that have become more like full time careers. I was told by a loved one that my self-loathing and low self-esteem will kill me faster than drinking. That the words I say about myself have affected me, changed me. And they’re right. I took it to heart. What else can I do? I don’t enjoy being in a constant battle with myself. The racing thoughts to which I whisper “Shuthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckup.” I talked about it with my very close friend who just received a sizable scholarship to music school, how we view ourselves so poorly, but when we are out in the world, we get very different feedback. At work, I am considered dependable with a great attention to detail. At home, I laugh hysterically at this. My friends describe me as kind and loving, while my inbox is filled with messages from fans about meeting me ten years ago finding me dismissive or stuck up.. I’ve spent my entire life telling myself I’m bad at math and too dumb to fucking live, until a math tutor told me that not only am I good at math but I seem to really enjoy it. OK. Sure. “I’m just an idiot,” I say. “I don’t know what I’m doing.” “I’m not that good.”

“I hear you’re a country star,” a customer said the other day just I was thinking to myself how mediocre I am at everything, having made a lemon twist that would get the business shut down by Bar Rescue.

“Sometimes I am.”

I am listening to Jessica Simpson’s memoir, a random and spontaneous decision. I’d forgotten she struggled with drinking. She also got married young and had a pastor stage dad. Call me, Jessica! I think we’ve got some stuff in common. Two days ago, I fell into a hole reading about Columbine and became unbearably depressed about American culture and its inability to nurture. I cried for the first time since I could remember, after crying and crying for weeks and weeks. Then I started my period.

I went to yoga with a friend yesterday and then walked through the park. I’m trying to lean into socializing as the weather becomes nicer and I observe my unhealthy habits. On our first lap around the path we saw a group of people looking for an object. One of them was on his hands and knees. I asked if we could help find something as we approached. “I’m looking for silver pilot’s wings,” he said, “They were on my dog’s harness. Please, Universe! Let me find them!” We looked for a while, but no luck. We wondered later if it was a social experiment when my friend said she saw someone with a large camera filming the whole thing. I, about as observant as a rock, did not notice this. We wondered what the purpose was if it were a social experiment. Was it about time estimates? I said we looked for ten minutes, my friend insisted it wasn’t even five. I asked if we could help, my friend said she possibly wouldn’t have if she’d been alone. I told her I wasn’t sure I would have even noticed the people looking.

I’ve started my second job and my body hurts all the time, but it doesn’t get me in shape. I just feel like I’ve been thrown down the stairs, in one instance I actually did fall down them the other day. I’m not an excellent employee. I’m somewhat stupid and socially anxious. I don’t slip into character easily. I’m just desperate to get out of debt and have more money to spend on my art. I need to do my laundry. I want my house to be clean. But I also just want to rest today, read and write. My friend gave me a very thoughtful tarot reading this morning. She told me to meditate on the combo of Death and the Queen of Wands. “Forgive me,” she said, “but it looks like the old Lydia can’t come to the phone right now, because she’s dead.” I agree. I’ve made, without a doubt, the best record (Double EP!) of my career. I don’t care to listen to naysayers, half-assers or people who tell me to be fucking realistic. I’m tired of it. I’m a good songwriter! On a scale of 1-10, my interview skills are maybe a -5. I am not lithe or beautiful. I do not know how to bow to the industry and I don’t churn out songs like a fucking dairy cow. But when I do, I am OK at it. I think a lot about what success looks like lately: It seems to me right now, it’s being someone I can believe. It’s being someone someone can believe in. It’s actually picking up my guitar, not being afraid of not writing a masterpiece, but finding joy in the act. I practice scales every day for 15 minutes on the piano, and after that I can do as I please. I want to be boring. I want to put in the work.

I’m still reading How a Little Becomes a Lot, and it’s maybe the first self-help book I’ve taken to heart despite starting many. Self-compassion and consistency don’t come easy to me. I am also reading I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon. I slept on Zevon for a long time, but his darkly funny (sad) lyrics really speak to me. I think it’s what I try to achieve in my music. Sometimes I get there. I’m listening to Jerry Reed and Terry Reid, two people I sometimes confuse for no damn reason at all. I am debating back on forth whether or not I will attend school this year, knowing full well community college isn’t the end all be all of anything but would be a nice jumpstart to the more academic and disciplined life I’d like to live. I think about the artists around me who inspire me: My friend Steve Tabatowski, who played a packed show at my job last night. He’s a great lyricist and grew up close to where I did, in a town called Zanesville made famous by a man who had a slew of exotic animals on his property, when one day he opened all the cages and allegedly shot himself. Animals roamed the town and the police, having no plan for what to do if a bunch of legally owned exotic pets were to escape a hillbilly zoo, shot them one by one, the roads littered with dead lions and tigers. I think about Brando, the poet who comes to open mic and recites furiously about gender, carnivals, traveling the world, cops. People are captivated every time he takes the stage. I think about Liteweight Champion, Xenia Shulman, local folks with new tunes out, and I feel lucky to witness it. I spent so long isolated, on the road, trying to scrape every last dime out of every day, every note played. Now, I see, the art will get made if we make it.

I don’t know what I’m talking about here really, but I said I’d write and so here I am. I’m starting to wonder how wise it is to overshare here as the world gets creepier and weirder. Today is a day off and I will read, nap, and eat. I will finish up my album artwork credits. I will daydream about tour buses, forest writing excursions, playing songs in the studio with friends, delicious meals on the road.

I am here in Memphis finishing one side of my double ep. It feels like we started so long ago. I know it matters. I try not to tell myself it doesn’t matter. The truth is I’m still just so heartbroken. Not only by the breakup but by the music business that I so desperately want back in. I feel completely unlovable and as though I have no good qualities. I can’t believe someone who once told me they’d never leave and they’d love me forever won’t even answer my call when I’m in agony. But that’s the way it goes; we aren’t together anymore. If someone doesn’t want to hear from your ass, leave them alone. In Nashville, I stop at the turnip truck because we went there a lot. I picked him up with my best friend on tour and when we pulled into the lot, he said “hi, it’s me” very sweetly like I wouldn’t recognize him even though at the time I saw him everywhere. Every man with curly hair morphed into him before my dreamy eyes. My friend insisted we go to Olive Garden, a funny memory. She is dead now, and I often forget she is dead and remember again. I need her. She’d let me go on and on about this in a way no one else will, and she’d tell me when she did not want to hear anymore. She’s the only person I could see myself living with. I don’t want to talk to anyone because they are over it, more for their sake than mine. At work last week, a man told me not to look so cheerful. He said it very aggressively, and I almost cried. “Hey, are you ok?” He asked. I was so shocked I said “well no, I’m not ok, I’m at work” and I am relieved nobody in authority was there to hear me.

I’m not ok. I am reading a book about how to have a good life, I guess it’s self help. In one chapter the author talks about values and living your life by them. It has never occurred to me to write these things down. But I do, and I feel like I have a clear path. Creativity, partnership, travel. I don’t know if those are values. I’m still working my list. I only know I hate being home all the time, my happiest memories are from the studio, and I love to love someone with my whole heart. I love to be wrapped up. I probably won’t do that again because it seems pointless, and trusting someone would be a fool’s errand. But I love to do it.

I drive and drive the 9 hours. I see a burning semi, enormous black cloud of smoke. People stop to rubberneck and I brace myself for the explosion, the flames. I’m scared. I cry almost the entire drive, my chest hurting. I love you, I say to myself, like a lifetime movie character. I listen to modern love, page 7, my algorithmic playlist. I try to enjoy music, but I don’t want to hear happy or sad songs. I sing you’re so vain. My voice is in bad shape, maybe from the crying. I resign myself to working as much as I can so I can get out of debt, get a new van (I need one badly) and not lose my house. I want stability more than anything, and I also want to live in a car. A van. I want to go to Lake Michigan and write an entire record this summer. I want to throw my phone in the frigid lake and just play my guitar and my drum machine until it’s all out. The pain is relentless. What is happiness, anyway, I ask as I drive. He always said nothing made me happy, but it’s not true. The world just hurts all the time.

I think of Ethan hawke, (he’s on an episode of modern love) smiling on the red carpet, saying the one who loves always wins. He’s probably never been rejected in his life. He is very charismatic. I want to be in movies, I think, and I daydream about that for a while, and it’s the only time I feel happy all day until I get to the studio where Matt tells me to play a keyboard part. I do, and I realize we’re already back in it. This is the real me. Before I play the keyboard though I walk all the way around the massive building looking for my room, sweating under my boobs and carrying my heavy bag and guitar and water jug and book and journal. I brought my kettlebell and laugh at the thought of it now. I got plenty of exercise searching for my room, all the numbers odd when I was looking for an even number. My room is bare bones and I promise myself I’ll write a song. I open my journal and write, and the pain twists in my chest. I cannot see beyond it. I’m not ready. But I am here, I make myself available. I don’t want to go to work at 9 am on Friday. I want to keep going. I want to keep being a rockstar for a little longer.

When I was a child, my family prayed before meals and at bedtime. There was a morning prayer in there too, I think, but it was never led by my siblings and I. That was parent territory. At dinner and before sleep, though, our parents encouraged us to do it ourselves. I remember vividly praying every night, “Please help us to be good and not bad.” It was all I wanted out of life, to be good and never bad. Someone would always chuckle at that part, and it stung, because it was so earnest. Make me good, and not bad, dammit! And my siblings, too. I don’t want them cast into the depths of Hell either, now that I think of it!

I was raised to believe that thoughts can make you very, very bad. I still feel that way, which is hard for someone who hardly feels like they have any control over their thoughts. Everyone around me as a child was seemingly angry, my dad calling someone in the household an idiot on a nearly daily basis, and yet nobody would ever fail to tell me how shameful it was to think bad things about others, about ourselves, about anything.

To be clear, I’m not thinking anything too wild. I don’t have bloodthirsty or sicko thoughts. Just your standard lust, sarcasm and Schadenfreude. Most of these fall under the category of humorous, like the other day when someone almost pulled out in front of me and I thought to myself, “Watch where you’re going, you Rip Torn looking motherfucker!” Or when I described my ex’s ex as so ugly that she could make a train take a dirt road, and someone mentioned to me that it’s not very nice to make fun of someone’s looks.
“Well, I wouldn’t, but she’s not a nice person. I don’t really even think of people as ugly.”

“But it’s ok if it’s funny?”

“Well, yes….”

Complaining is my love language, I often joke. It’s not that serious! Until your partner leaves your ass, I guess.

I’ve been praying again, not in a desperate way and not in an AA way. I just need somewhere to focus my energies at night. I fall somewhere on the spectrum between the self-righteous atheist and the born again loon, so I don’t know who I am praying to. My image of God as a child was of a large looming figure in a robe and sandals, with stringy greasy hair in his face, hunched over his knees in sadness. It made sense to me God would be sad, knowing everything and hearing everyone’s thoughts all the time. I would lie awake thinking of the concept of no beginning and no end and my head would hurt. As a teenager, maybe 14 or 15, I dreamed I went to heaven and it was a padded cell where on the ceiling floated God, portrayed by a young Elliot Gould dressed all in white. This made an impression on me as the dream was very vivid and disturbed me for some time. I don’t think I am praying to either of those. Maybe I’m just talking to myself.

I ask to understand why this is happening, I ask to be strong. I ask for my family and all my loved ones to be happy and fulfilled. These are very selfish prayers, I realize. Why not pray for the whole world? So I float off into that, and then I get lost. These are the urgent, “hey man can I get on the guest list!!!” Type of prayers that I try to avoid. If everyone I loved could find something or someone they love, I could understand this. Please give my father hope and purpose. And end all wars, and let no one go hungry, and I’ll never shop at Wal-Mart again. And I’m sorry. For everything. So I turn back to meditation, too, and maybe they’re the same thing, except you have to catch your mind when you meditate. When David Lynch died I took a Transcendental Meditation course because it was right down the street, even though I think paying for meditation guidance is a bit against my principles. The TM folks demand you never speak of what goes on in there, so I’ll just say I was told to bring fruit for my mantra ceremony, and I was allowed to keep the mango, something I would never buy for myself. My teacher was shocked that I walked there all by myself, saying the neighborhood is very dangerous. I didn’t tell him I was more concerned with being in a locked apartment with a strange man than I was carrying a sack of fruit down the street in broad daylight, because I didn’t want to be cynical. I wanted focus, success, creativity and all the things promised to me by so many practitioners of TM. And then I fell off after a few weeks.

The real secret is, you have to be a devoted person already. You have to actually put in the work. In prayer, meditation, relationships, as a writer and a musician, as a friend. I’ve realized this only a moment too late. Of course I can still turn it around, I’ll just never get back the things I’ve lost along the way.

It’s easier now on Day 12 without alcohol where I’m hardly even counting days anymore. It’s easy to avoid if you avoid socializing. So many times I’ve been drunk were because I was simply somewhere I didn’t want to be. Sometimes it’s because I’m somewhere I really do want to be, I’m just afraid. And sometimes it’s truly out of camaraderie and fun. I’m not feeling much of that right now. How long do I get to feel this way? Already people tell me, “I’m going to make you take walks with me,” already the happily in love tell me there is another side to it, already my mother has said, “Someone will come along!” But someone did come along. This simply isn’t like the other times. If my divorce were a 2 on the grief scale, this is a 45. I’ve been on the other side, too. Wanting someone to just get over it. Stop putting themselves through it. But I hadn’t lost what they lost, and they haven’t lost what I have, I guess. I know this is self-pity, to find myself thinking not “I am so lucky people love me,” but “Everything is horrible because one person does not love me.” Taking time to oneself is fine, but I don’t actually believe the point is to just be alone and be strong. I don’t want to therapy myself out of loving hard.

There are bigger problems in the world, worse things people are going through. So I stay in more for their sake than my own. And I play my guitar more than I have in years. And I read, not very well. And I’m not really that worried about it. I’m not disappearing forever. I just need time.

Next week, I will travel to Memphis and finish up my record. Well, one half of my double EP. Then my life will begin again, a new cycle, a new personality to figure out, interviews where I probably don’t say what I meant. But right now I have a chance to get ahead of all that, somehow. I’m proud of these songs, prouder than maybe I’ve ever been of any, and I’m sure there are more to come.

I started this project in a state of emotional distress, and now I’m worried it’s too disjointed and too much. But I want to write a book and I never learned very well how to write essays, so I have to make a start. I’m sorry you’re along for the ride.

Is This Thing On?

Content warning for gnarly references to bodily fluids and functions. Don’t read while eating or at all maybe if poop grosses you out.

This is the lie I tell myself when I need to feel OK:

The person I love will come back. If I keep being good, and taking care of myself, and making an inventory of all my faults, and actually repairing them instead of shrugging and saying “That’s just how I am!” If I am vulnerable. He will see who I really am underneath the complaining, shit talking, arrogance and sloth. It will be just like in the movie Is This Thing On? (Based on a true story!) which we watched together just a couple weeks ago. “That was cute,” he said, which wasn’t quite how I felt about it. Moving, hopeful, bittersweet, yes. In it, the leading man separates from his wife of 25 years. One night early on in their separation, he stumbles into a comedy club where he riffs his way into healing, becoming a better parent, and finding a deeper, truer understanding of his wife. He sleeps with another comedian casually (it’s ok if the Person I Love does this, too, as long as It’s just self-discovery and not falling in love) and as a result, starts fooling around with his wife again! They date each other for something like a year and a half, getting to know each other again gently and kindly, until finally (spoiler alert) they Get Back Together. That’s what’s going to happen to us. If I give him space and allow him to miss me, and I start doing standup comedy, and let him fuck another woman just once, he will fall in love with me again.

(I thought “I’m not in love with you” were the worst words he ever said to me until he said “I’m moving out”.)

This is the other lie I tell myself, but this one’s more indulgent, like sticking your tongue up in a sore tooth all day long:

He does not miss me at all. Who could? I fucking suck. He’s out right now, dancing the night away with a beautiful soft freckled girl with no gender identity issues. They’re drinking and he doesn’t have to monitor how much she’s having, because she just keeps getting more fun and beautiful and horny. They’re making out in the car right now, and flowers are blooming all around. “I hate my bitch ex,” he says, and she says back “Me, too.” They become a couple, and I see them at the music festival he’s playing next month, where I show up nearly 2 months sober, and I see them dancing, probably on LSD or something. I die of a heart attack. Everyone cheers and dances on my corpse under the stars.

I think the truth is somewhere in between. He is not coming back, and he is going to move on. But I will get better and I will be the person for him. The one he couldn’t wait to see or just get on the phone with. Bless the telephone. I’ll be ready this time. Slowly, I will become someone I can stand to see in the mirror. Someone who can take a compliment. Someone who, when asked to do something, can say “Yes, I can do that,” with honesty.

The person I love doesn’t think I’m an alcoholic. He thinks I’m a jealous person with an anger problem. Most of my friends say I’m not that bad, because they don’t know that even though I’m not shaking, chugging glove compartment Kamchatka, I am by every stretch of the imagination a drunk. The only person who ever truly confronted me about it was my friend Reese, who is dead now. We went to lunch one day, and out of the blue she told me I should go to rehab, as though she were suggesting I take a trip to the Grand Canyon. “I think it would be great for you. I would take care of Catterson. I would love to do that for you! And I bet your boyfriend would pay for it! So, what do you think?” She smiled expectantly.

“I’ll think about it,” I said awkwardly over my midday flagon of wine, “But I am really busy with tour. I don’t think I’d have the time.”

Most people don’t see me on the days where I can’t leave my house because my alcohol induced anxiety is so bad I literally feel like I am going to explode like something out of Hellraiser. They don’t see me shitting on the toilet, leaning over to puke in the shower, sitting back onto the shit that didn’t quite make it into the bowl, lying prone under the running water and then attending my friend’s wedding an hour later. They don’t see the crosseyed boob scrolling endlessly on social media, finding things to be mad about and then commenting clownish horseshit (I deleted my instagram after almost posting “HE’S ALL YOURS SWEETIE!” Under a comment on his page) only to wake up gripped by terror, wondering what I said. They don’t see the person who played the same song four times in Sweden, with their shirt off, and had to be told they weren’t getting paid the 4 grand that was supposed to pay for the entire tour. And that was a decade ago.

I wouldn’t talk about this stuff if I thought I were going to drink again. If I drank again, then iit would just be a gross, meaningless anecdote that’s neither funny nor cool. I say it because I am so filled with shame and fear that I will never be OK with myself, or able to look in the mirror and say, “I trust you.” How many times have I promised people: I won’t fuck this up. You can count on me. I won’t do it again. I won’t show up to my mom’s birthday dinner drunk off my ass, and order more drinks to get through. I won’t ruin your show, honey, please let me come. Please let me be near you.

I like that I’m not on tour right now, but I miss performing. “The Landscape” has changed so much, and I have changed so much in my ambitions and personality. I am, primarily, a songwriter. I have recorded songs that are as of yet unreleased, and I do not want to face the pain I am in right now and turn it into songs. I do not think everything should be a song, actually. I listen to Arthur Russell, and practice scales on the piano.I am grateful to have a job, where I am respected and believed in and I like all my coworkers. Would I rather be playing songs with my band all day? Sure, I guess. It’s not like I’m doing that right now. I’ve been so blinded by Weltschmerz I forgot to do that. I forgot to make the time to ask how my partner was doing. To say hello, I love being around you. To say you’re my favorite person, let’s do something fun today. I don’t want to be strangers. I don’t want to be friends.

I forgot to even listen to music, for a while. Today, I watched Olivia Rodrigo perform on SNL, looking like an actual angel. The words to the song were too painful to hear today, so I only made it halfway through. Then I stood up, got in my car and drove to work where I tended bar for Sad Hour hosted by Mery Steele. Mery is one of those people who’s seemingly good at everything. They have IT, musically, whatever IT is, and it’s wonderful to witness. I didn’t think I’d make it through an evening of sad songs, discussions about trauma, and everyone putting sad thoughts in a jar to be read out loud at the end. “The love of my life left me, and won’t speak to me,” I wrote, “I used to be a hopeless romantic, and now I don’t believe in love at all.” I didn’t cry when I heard my words read aloud. It was therapeutic, though, and I made it through. I didn’t just make it through, I enjoyed myself, and I thought the whole time of Scenario 1, where I get home one day from work and the Person I Love is there, and we are healed. We eat dinner, and smile at each other, and play Yahtzee for hours. We are home.

On day 2 of not drinking, my neighborhood pal Kayla brought over her lawnmower and weedwhacker in response to an Instagram story I had posted asking to borrow some lawn cutting equipment. My yard was so tall I was afraid to walk through it for fear of tripping in a groundhog hole or carrying bugs into the house. Kayla is soft-spoken, beautiful and sweet, with a warmth that draws people to her. I don’t know her extremely well but she is always quick with a cigarette, an accountant recommendation, or to pull up with a lawnmower shoved into the backseat of her car.
“I’m so excited!” She told me as she yanked the tools out of the car. “I love yard work!”

After a few false starts she took to the backyard with the mower while I hacked at the front, wondering if the flecks of greenery flying into my eyes contained any poison ivy. We both ran out of gas at about the halfway point.

“I’ll run us to the gas station,” I offered meekly, but Kayla said no, someone in the neighborhood was bound to have a can. She shot a text to my landlord Jim, also the owner of the bar down the street, and he said he’d be down in 30 minutes. We decided to wait at the bar. As I stood waiting for the bartender to get to me, I mulled over doing a shot. Or drinking a beer. What harm could one do? But I’d just told Kayla how important it was to me that I get on the wagon, and would’ve been embarrassed for her to immediately see me chugging down a Miller Highlife. I ordered a soda water with lemon. My head started to spin as people I knew trickled in. I didn’t want to tell them my boyfriend moved back to Oklahoma. “Where’s John?” Is usually the first question anyone asks me. Sometimes, people approach me just to tell me they met John and he’s so nice/sweet/hot/wonderful in every way. “Good job landing that guy,” someone said to me last Tuesday, when I was drunk off my ass and trying to think about anything else. A few minutes later, they wandered back over to me and told me how sorry they were for saying that, having been filled in on our recent breakup by my coworker.

We smoked cigarettes out back while we waited for Jim. In the meantime, our friend Travis joined us and offered to help us gas up and join in on the yard work. I’ve known Travis for over a decade and the last time both our relationships had ended, we went to see Summer of Sound together in the middle of the day so we could escape our emotions. When the preview for the movie Coda came on, we both wept silently.

It was nearing dark when Jim finally showed up and seemed in no hurry to facilitate the gassing up. He slowly walked around the patio, taking a photograph of a raccoon in a garbage can and asking me to hold the end of a tape measure while he backed up into a pole.

“What does this have to do with gas?” Asked Travis.

“Oh, yeah!”

Finally we were off. When we got back to my house none of us could figure out the gas can funnel, so we poured it through an old rolled up electric bill. The mower roared back to life and Kayla’s eyes glinted in the sunset as she ran over 3 feet of horseshit and weeds, the machine dying and starting up again and again.

“Can I do some?” Travis asked. I’d never seen two people more excited to mow a lawn. I stood by stupidly, not sure what was happening. This was a tremendous kindness two people were doing for me and they seemed to be getting more out of it than I was. I was so touched, but felt a bit useless.

Finally there was only one row left, and Travis offered it up to me.

“Wanna take a swipe?” He asked. “I didn’t mean to take all the good parts.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” I said and grabbed the handle and blasted over the last patch.

“Get between the houses too!” Kayla cheered, and I practically ran through, hoping not to anger my neighbor with the sound.

It was dark then, and the silence in the absence of the lawnmower felt powerful. The moon was enormous, and we admired it and wondered if it was full or just almost-full. Either way, it felt like something was bound to happen. I said goodbye to my friends and went inside to take all my clothes off, grateful for this feeling of being loved and having done something that needed done. I got into the boiling hot bathtub and cried until I choked.

I am on day 3 without alcohol again. I always get to day 4, feel good, and slip up again. It’s embarrassing to write about. Alcohol has been in my life for a long time. When I was a kid, it meant my parents would be in a good mood, celebratory. When other households drank, it was far more reserved. Wine with dinner, more than a glass would elicit the same response as a plate of cookies often does in a room full of women- “I’m naughty!” But nothing got broken, nobody said anything weird or dumb or regretful. Just giggled a little more and maybe sang along to the dinner music.

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