Right off the bat: I’m doing two songs this month.
I need to rest my neck from the art navel gazing, and will instead, massage my ego with an extended trip down memory lane. Although, this patch of road isn’t exactly a joy ride...
Content Warning: This post deals with the topics of depression and suicide. If those are things that you don’t want to be exposed to, right now, don’t feel pressure to keep reading.
If you ever feel like you need help, or just someone to talk to, you can call 988 for the Suicide And Crisis Lifeline, or text “HOME” to 741741.
You CAN get better, and you are worthy of love from other people, and most importantly, yourself.
There’s a certain subset of people out there — your Bill Mahers, your Joes Rogan, anti-woke crusaders, “free speech” perverts, basically dipshits that want to bust out the F and R Slurs like this was still the early 90s and they had all their hair — that feel like letting people know you’re going to punch them in the gut before you do it, is making our society weak. I guess because when people normally punch you in the stomach out on the street, they don’t give you a warning. They just do it.
But people that inflict violence on others out in the world are doing that because they want to hurt people. When you’re dealing in art and trying to connect with other people, hurting someone else is the furthest thing from your intentions. You may put your pain on display, but that’s a showing of vulnerability. That’s showing your underbelly to convey that you mean no harm.
Any pain inflicted is in the service of empathy, not malice. If you are someone who seeks out art, you are also looking for connection. And there may be something you don’t have first-hand experience with, but know that the people who have deserve to be understood and have their stories told. And sometimes an inoculation of perspective stings a little...
When I feel bad and want to listen to sad sack music or watch a depressing movie, I’m going into it with those intentions — knowing that I need to strap in for the ride. My loins are properly girded. The bog is filled with stuff that is the same depressing mass, meaning you should be able to float atop it.1 Sometimes, though, you don’t want to wallow in the darkness. You aren’t ready for it, you don’t see it, it’s more intense than you thought, and it can end up dragging you down.
That is what I believe the purpose of a Content Warning is for, and why I personally use them. There’s no virtue signaling or coddling intended. I’m not censoring myself or think that other people need to do the same thing in order to do the moral thing. It’s a personal choice and a way that I try to extend thoughtfulness, empathy, and kindness out into the world.
Oh yeah, there’s supposed to be a song somewhere around here...
When you don’t have anything you’ve got nothing to lose / I feel a breaking and it’s swelling inside
It’s not your fault. It’s not gonna stop. It’s not hindsight / It’s not “Just The Way It Is.” I just accept it
Like a little bird being shot down in the sky / I fall down to the ground and see crows peck out my eyes
I feel unafraid. I feel so alone. I feel expendable / I feel there’s nothing that I can do. I just accept it
Did you ever listen, the songs that needed singing? / No one will ever see anyone around me / I accept my failings
The unknown is all around and nobody can see it / Just one more lousy day that doesn’t end in a bang
I am nothing. I am a stupid joke. I am so empty / I am never gonna be anything. I just accept it
This was one of the first songs I ever wrote. Fooling around, I came up with the intro/chorus riff. Listening to the droning open E string as I played notes on the A up and down the neck. I liked the subtle dissonance of playing an F# and giving it a slight bend.
This is one of our rare songs that doesn’t rhyme. This maybe started off as a poem that I fit into the music. I could probably find out for sure, but there are a quite a few possible boxes in the garage that I’d have to dig through, and is it really that vital a piece of knowledge? I promise, this won’t be on the test.
A lot the the songs early in Pearl Jam’s catalog don’t rhyme either, so I’m sure that was partly an inspiration. The more I wrote, though, the harder it got to give up that safety net of rhyming. Logically, you would think that just using any old word would be easier and would contribute to what I want to say being clearer. But a lifetime of living in a world where the recipe for songwriting had to include rhymes, I just always found myself reflexively reaching for that spice.
However, that small limitation also pushes you to be more creative, in a way, too. It’s a boundary you have to push against. An arbitrary rule to try to skirt. Some secret third thing that you have to discover, so you can abide by the Rule Of Threes.
Plus, it’s easier to memorize lyrics when there are rhymes, too. We hung onto this song until the end, when we were pushing past hour long, 15-20 song sets. Not because people demanded it, but because we could.
In the Vitalogy liner notes, there are extra writings and poetry that aren’t lyrics, but maybe at some point were meant to be. Who can tell? In my teens, I was fascinated by this ephemera. One of them mentions birds pecking at your eyes, and so I added something to that affect in this song. More eye irony (eye-rony?), watching the removal of your own eyes as it happens.
Perhaps this reoccurring theme of not being able to see is about not being seen. Feeling invisible. The line in the bridge, “Did you ever listen, the songs that needed singing?” is about having something to say — writing these songs — and no one listening to them. A tree falling in the woods to the soundtrack of a million teen aged garage bands that never made it out of their hometowns.
I don’t know what I was thinking with the bass and guitar after the bridge.2 I didn’t have the ability, nor creative vision at the time to successfully accomplish what I was going for there. Which — you got me. I’m just shrugging over here listening to it almost 30 years later.
We kept this song around until the end. We even re-recorded this with better technology, and I’m considering uploading that whole later session when I’m done with REJECT. My vocals are a whole lot better, because I’m not trying to keep my voice down in my mom’s garage. I didn’t really feel like trying to explain that final chorus to her if she overheard me, as well as the implied double meaning of “end with a bang.”
I guess they’re choruses. I don’t repeat any lines throughout the song, but the riff is the same and the lyrical construction of each follows the same structure. “It’s not.” “I feel.” “I am.” “I just accept it.”
It was my belief for the longest time that I was going to have a miserable life. The only variable was how many years it was going to last.
My earliest memory is a depressed one. Another early one is, I think, after school on Valentine’s Day — at least I’ve told myself it was Valentine’s Day. Probably first grade, because we were still living in California.
I was walking up to my grandmother’s house after school, and she and my mom were both standing in the driveway waiting for me. I was really sad. Lonely. I felt unloved. I don’t know if I started crying before or after my mom started hugging me, but the embrace was something that I needed. And I think in that moment, a bad wiring connection was made. I thought to myself, that feeling sad must be how I get attention from people. That people will only care about me if they see I am not doing good.
And, I don’t know, maybe this isn’t a real memory, because it’s not something I’ve been carrying around in my front brain pocket like that earliest memory of mine. I mean, I’ve always remembered the being sad and the hugging, but the putting it together of getting attention because I was sad may have been in processing this memory after I finally started trying to deal with my depression in my 30’s.
Before that — like I said — no hope. I had to accept the misery. Embrace it, because there was no escape. I had to be the saddest sack of shit on the planet. A world renowned depression.
But I wasn’t going to be a punk and weakling and take myself out. No! I’d be a little pain piggy. Ooooohhh, gimme that ennui! Yum yum yum yum!
Because it seemed like this was the way it always going to be, so how could I imagine anything different for myself? Depression had closed and walled-up and painted over all the doors of possibility for my life, so only a long hallway of dread lay before me. And no amount of positive thinking or love from other people was going to fix that for me.
But then again, sometimes you just can’t make yourself change until you hit rock bottom. The band had fallen apart around 2005, and sort of got glued back together a couple years later, in a fashion. Except we were just playing cover songs, now, and I was only playing guitar and doing some back-up vocals. No more emotional release and creativity and artistic expression. Everything was being held inside and being tamped back down again.
Sure, it was fun to play music and be with my friends. But this just felt like a placebo — I was feeling something, but it wasn’t the real juice like when we used to play. However, we were playing more often, in bigger venues, to more people, and making more money than we ever were when I was up front singing my songs. The variable that seemed to change the outcome of this equation was my diminishment. Less me.
No one wanted my feelings and creative attempts. My pain and depression didn’t sell — no one was buying it like they were in the early 90s.
I was the one holding onto the darkness. I mean, it was in my brain and not just a “just look on the bright side, mate,” like the only thing wrong with me was just how I thought about things. I was the one making the decision to not get help. To keep living like this.
There wasn’t a switch that needed to be flipped and everything would be grand. But there were steps that I could take — things I could do to get pointed in a better direction — I just had to start the process.
And wouldn’t you know it, the next song (sort of) connects to the next step in this story.
-bcp
I could have also used this picture, but needed the setup to make the Never Ending Story call back.
Because, again, this was another song that was just Kevin drumming and me doing everything else.
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