drunk mouth kitchen smile
I was washing dishes at the end of the day, which is how my days (nights really) usually end at this point in my life, and I was drinking a little, not hard, not DRINKING drinking, just sipping on something for the taste, and I was watching TV to pass the time. I’m in a lifestage where a lot of my time is spent passing the time - not to mention the fucking pandemic, fuck, man - and trying to get out of responsibilities, bullshit, burdens, hassles. I don’t like to own that (and some days I have urges to make angry mistakes, to be a little more honest).
Anyway I was passing the time watching some TV show about lawyers. They were getting drunk and making mistakes and I thought, fuck it that looks alright, so I stopped sipping and started drinking, deliberately too much. Been a minute, man. Used to be a real life priority, back when I had priorities not entirely set by socially imposed necessity - shit, back when I had any priorities at all instead of just treading water and floating downstream pushed by the stupid fucking current (“following the path of least resistance is what makes the river crooked!”). So I got drunk and I ended up listening to some old punk songs, and feeling like an old punk. I ended up on American Steel’s record Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts.
I like to think I’m a dear friend - though who doesn’t call anyone often enough (man this life gets lonely, aging is hard, and too easy) - and I’m sure as shit a gentle heart. An old friend, one of many who I don’t call often enough, haven’t for years (hi Nick! Love you man! And sorry!), told me recently I’m one of the gentlest people he knows, which is funny cuz I’m constantly fucking furious.
So I’m getting drunk in the kitchen and listening to American Steel and remembering seeing them play at the Triple Rock and having big nostalgia feelings - big nostalgia feeling, big regret feelings, and big fear of the future feelings are the three flavors of middle aged emotion - and it occurs to me that they’re filed in my mind under new band and this is their new record, so I check and that record came out in TWO THOUSAND AND NINE. Twenty oh nine, that’s a new time, apparently. The fuck is this life, bro?
The record’s on and they’re singing about the importance of bands, and drunkenness, and I am really feeing it. Here’s my pet theory: some of us never learn how to be a person (Marianne, you told me that phrase - they don’t know how to be a person - and I see it a lot now) in various ways. How do you express emotions? What even are emotions, like specifically what are the feelings we feel in this life, and which ones should we keep to ourselves and which should be communicate? And for the communicable ones, like, um, how? I think when I was young I relied a lot on alcohol and music as an excuse and maybe as a mediator.
With that thought I began drunkenly teetering between tipping into negative feelings and into positive feelings, between feeling ashamed and just wrapping myself in it, like, fuck it, flaws and all this is me I guess (but tbth not too drunk to keep leaving the headphones up too loud; don’t wanna hit the finish line deaf, just hard of hearing enough to underline the weird, awkward situation), and it occurs to me that for some feelings I don’t know how to express them, and frankly I feel pretty, like, bad sometimes in ways that I think are more than I have words for, and part of why music is so important to me is that it articulates feelings that I feel very strongly and yet about which I experience myself as deeply, paralyzingly inarticulate. I think part of why I’m a fan specifically of so much music defined by bravado and a wall of sound aesthetic is that this music encourages an impulse to stand tall even when doing so feels undeserved, and encourages actions, like drunken I love yous which are simultaneously embarrassing and something to proud of. (I sent one tonight and by the way I regret living in a social world where my communications are “sent.”) I think I live a lot within duality, being simultaneously embarrassed and proud of the same shit.
As I’m getting lost in thought an American Steel line pushes itself from background to foreground. “We’ve been workin’ all the time! I’m tired and sick to death of it now. We’ve been trying to build some kind of life, but fuck all that tonight.” These moves - express a deeply felt feeling, then dismiss it: fuck all that; live through a bunch of hard shit and not know how it’s going to work out but shove it aside through force of will, friendship, and alcohol: fuck all that; then embrace a powerfully felt emotion in a singular moment, right now, tonight - speak to me deeply. Shame and pride in equal measure, flaws felt from the heart as simultaneously bug and feature. Fuck you, yet, also sorry, so sorry it hurts. Too midwestern. Who made us this way?
Where was I? Right, object-mediated relationships to people and emotions. Those drunken I love yous I sent (god to escape from a life and relationships reducible to sending) get at how the music and booze open up things that need opening, and in a deeper sense at the limitations in my capacity to feel and communicate unaided. So I’ve resorted in part to alcohol, though to be very clear, I go day, weeks without drinking any booze at all let alone enough to feel it, and, far more frequently and more importantly to the reality of who I am, to music. Maybe all human interaction is mediated by some third term, rather than directly experienced, person to person (skin to skin? mind to mind? heart to heart? how would I know). Do not look directly into the feeling, not that you (I) could even if you (I) wanted to. “Shield your eyes from all this misery.”
Between two or more overheated inarticulate hearts there has to be a word, an experience, an object, and one that’s a bit colder that the heat of the feeling, and one that can express, and can stand in for the lack of knowing how to express the most important feelings (the product of being still semi-feral, raised by the feral - too young, too midwestern, too busy keeping a roof over everyone’s heads).
American Steel again, “let me be clear, I’ve a mean streak my dear, everyone that I meet I want to stab in the ear, except you… I like you, cuz you’re like me, we both act miserably, must make us happy.” It must. It does. Does it? That’s not worth considering. Dear Landlord now - “I’m not crying, I won’t think about it, won’t think about it again… It’s whiskey and records again.” Drink a glass of water. Cool, calming. I know I’ll feel it in the morning but I think just one more small drink and a song.