I am writing from a place of anger today. I think anger is healthy to recognize and to express and so instead of spinning my wheels about it in bits and pieces here and there until I explode, I want to put it all down in the attempt to expel some of it. I’m in a place right now where I feel guilty after every interaction I have with another person because I feel inaccessible, stuck behind a wall of stubborn frustration that I can’t seem to break down no matter how many bricks I think I’m removing (one by one by one by one by one and on and on and on). I don’t want my mood to be contagious, and while I’m trapped in it I don’t want to be blind to what other people are saying or experiencing.
Moments before opening this window I had the realization that a lot of this anger is probably due to the fact that this pandemic hit the two year mark this week and life still doesn’t feel even a little bit normal. This week I’ve been contending with the fact that I no longer think I remember what life felt like before covid, the muscle memory of how I liked spending my time before quarantining and working from home for 2 years is absent. I am impatient to live a life without masks and without rapid tests and without the concept of a “pod” or a “bubble” and without having to cancel all of my plans or just not make plans in the first place out of fear for myself, my friends, my community, etc. I’m sick of getting dirty looks on the street when I’m not wearing a mask on a walk and I’m sick of getting dirty looks on the street when I am wearing a mask on a walk and I know that all of this is the surface level frustration that glosses over what I can’t even begin to process, that almost a million people in the US alone have apparently died from covid in the last 2 years, and in the meantime that hasn’t been the only existential threat to our lives every single day.
Today I was on a long walk through the neighborhood, the park, the cemetery, and back while on the phone with my dear friend Katie, and I saw a wild fox. It was much larger than I would expect it to be, especially in a populous city, it was about the size of an australian cattle dog, and was running through the mist, weaving around headstones until it disappeared behind a tree and then over a hill. Through my headphones I could hear Katie continue down her train of thought, we were discussing how grateful we are that we’ve both largely left our former lives of Onlineness™, especially in the midst of the crazy-making empty liberal virtue signalling of solidarity with Ukraine at this time (see photo for just one example). I paused in my tracks and felt like I was no longer in my reality, but a broken fictional landscape. This feeling has been sneaking up on me frequently this week, the feeling of being caught in a simulation that seems to be reaching the end of its functionality. Katie is a Weimar scholar, and it both helped and didn’t help to realize we’re on the same page in feeling like we currently occupy a chaotic liminal space peppered with disaster and tragedy, but that the bookend that looms in our future, the event that will put a boundary to this era, will be much worse than the absurdity that we’ve normalized as part of our reality.
I think that the turn in the weather this week for the better actually woke me up and jolted me into a place where I’m able to feel things, which is both really cool and really terrible HA. Last week I went to a show at the Unitarian Church in Philly and I saw Phil Elverum perform as the Microphones, which is something he hasn’t really done for like 20 years. I squeezed into a back pew, standing room only, and strapped in for what I knew was going to be a soul-baring experience. About halfway through I was surprised but relieved to check in with myself and notice that I was feeling happy, entertained, and largely fine, grateful to be there basically. That all changed on a dime! For those of you not acquainted, “Microphones in 2020” is the single track 44 minute and 44 second epic that Phil released in 2020 and just got to tour in 2022. It’s autobiographical, cycling between instrumental sections, reflections on Phil’s own youth, the years leading up to and through the early years of The Microphones, and then sections of reflecting on what his life is now compared to what his younger self expected his life to be.
I had an episode of sorts at this show, it’s very difficult to explain in words without sounding like a petulant child (I’m not very nice to myself in this way), but there is a section in this song reflecting specifically on the year 1995, which is the year that I was born. Phil Elverum is 17 years older than me, and his recounting of 1995 dealt largely with being a teenager driving, listening to hand-dubbed cassette tapes, listing off musicians and artists who were influential to him at the time, and living out a youth that was in many ways specific to growing up in Washington state. This section ends with, “Kurt Cobain had died. I had my driver’s license and a girlfriend and we’d cling to each other and dream that anything’s permanent.”
Somewhere in this portion of the evening I was struck with what felt like a physical blow to my gut, just under my heart. I felt sadness and then I felt distinct anger and bitterness. I felt nauseous and I felt dizzy and I had to sit on the floor of this church to catch myself from passing out. I’ve had fainting spells when I’m hungry or dehydrated or overheated or all of the above, but this felt different. I remember having the specific thought “I have been robbed of an authentic human experience”, which I, in that moment assigned and attributed to the ubiquity of technology, cell phones, the internet, and social media throughout my youth and full adult life. When I explained this to Daniel out loud upon exiting the show and taking to the sidewalk, he understood exactly what I meant and that felt good. I then made the fatal mistake of trying to explain this in a text message, and immediately regretted it. This was not the fault of the people I sent this message to, but entirely my own. I was feeling incredibly fragile, and unable to clearly communicate what I was feeling, and I felt like a spoiled brat looking at what I had written, it was nothing like what was bursting out of me.
It’s not hard to feel like we are living in the worst of all possible worlds or the worst possible timeline or however you want to put it. Maybe I’m just depressed, but shit is really bad, and it has been the entire time I’ve been alive. The thing is though, that shit has always been terrible, we’re just so acutely aware of every single moment of it now, it’s hard not to feel like the 24 hour news cycle and twitter aren’t just designed to be long-term slow-burn torture devices until none of our brains work any longer. One of the first visceral memories I have from my childhood is 9/11, I was 6, everything since just feels like a continuation of that neverending story.
I have a hard time not spiralling. When I have a bruise, an emotional bruise, I want to dig my finger into it. When something feels so painful to face I want to stare directly at it and learn more about it and feel justified in my pain and my anger, and then I want to scream. I want to scream right now but instead I’m sitting in my room blasting “Microphones in 2020” and writing this. Does anyone need to read this? Does anyone need a reminder of how deeply damaged everything around us is? I can feel the rolodex of global tragedy spinning in my brain and I’m resisting the urge to start pulling out cards, because what good would that do? I’ve spent countless hours of my life making lists out loud and on paper of everything that comes to mind in that moment that makes me feel terrified and powerless. I’ve spent countless therapy sessions on the phone with my therapist talking so quickly I have to stop to gasp to catch my breath, leaving no space for his input, until my hour is up, because it feels like pulling a thread and when you start pulling you can’t stop until someone makes you stop, but then you don’t even really stop you just continue silently to yourself, and then an unsuspecting bystander asks how you’re doing and the floodgates re-open.
The fact that this fixation is a product of my anxiety and that the very specific way in which I process anxiety is through derealization means I am constantly breaking my own reality, assigning my own weight to things, subtracting it from where it cannot be and moving it all to where I can handle it in that moment. I pick fights because I need a semblance of control, I hide, I isolate, I avoid, I sleep. I let things pile up.
I am trying desperately these days to remind myself that everything has always been terrible, and that the only thing to do is focus on your little corner of the world. I will attempt to take care of myself and I will attempt to allow others to take care of me and I will actively seek light and love and comfort and joy for myself and for my people, and eventually I will be able to cry and then I will be able to breathe.
Here’s a list of things:
Reading this back I am reminded of the song “My Little Corner of the World” by Yo La Tengo that always makes me feel full of love.
Go take a walk and soak up the sun, I have been saying “soak up the fun” as a nod to Sheryl Crow, a woman who always reminds me of my mom.
Through the genius of autocorrect “voice memos” has become “voice mommies”, and are a great way to talk to your friends, especially your friends who live down the street, it feels like adult walkie talkies. Daire and I the other night sent each other back and forth all the different ways we could think to express “ooh ooh” out loud after seeing it in text. Giggle city!
I bought a bedside table lamp that looks like a shiny pink clamshell with a large, glowing pearl. It reminds me of the iconic “shell phone” from It Follows, and I want it to flood me with warm light until I forget about any of my worries.
Guava São Paulo La Croix — to me it does not taste like guava, but it does taste like if you were able to translate a crisp, juicy apple into a beverage without going “sour green apple” with it.
I had a vision for a film that maybe I’ll make. I probably won’t, but it’s still fun to have fun ideas and remember you’re capable of making jokes.
Sometimes a good sandwich can turn your whole day around, or at least it can be a nice thing on a hard day.
Thanks for reading, sorry.