#186

Made use of my offensiveness yesterday, like I do sometimes. Let us all meditate briefly on how offensiveness is the most transparent defensiveness there is, then, meditate briefly on how important a tool it is to retain if you are to keep something of yourself intact in the extremely polite meat grinder that is getting the fuck by in society. Then, once our meditations are complete, we will be prepared to take the next step in our lives. Take my hand. Flying is as simple as missing the ground.

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Due to a combination of travel anxiety, guilt, free-floating stress, and a complex about the whole thing that would take several post's worth of narrative to unpack, I stayed in the house alone with the dog instead of going out to Chicago for my youngest brother's commencement ceremony. This was of course designed exactly to compound and add to my feelings of guilt, but I did a lot of math and this was the bearable outcome.

I see how some men are able to use their pride to overcome these problems that I allow to essentially rob me of life. This is a kind of pride I lack. Speaking hierarchically, that mode of pride is above my station; it is the pride of the noble, the father, the head of the clan. I have access to modes of pride that this type of man could never understand, but you would never in a million years stick me at the head of a parade, nor would I allow you to. 

The difficulty for me does not involve shame, though, which can be confused with guilt. My problems are manifold, but the main one for concern is that attendance at crowd-gatherings is entangled with a demonstration of love and filial feeling, which I have trouble with. My feelings on the matter are peripheral, of course; you show up for your people. That is basic. So if you don't, you did fail to show love, you shot down a window for it, you have to own that you put your wrecked nerves ahead of showing your love, you can call that selfish or call it self-care; I call it a missed opportunity, which I understand could be perceived as very trendy in the holistic psychoanalysis circles, but I am as usual thinking phenomenologically in order to protect myself (a useful defense against these practitioners, incidentally), like a coward, just as Heidegger taught me. I will learn from this missed opportunity and try not to miss the next one, and I will create an opportunity through action to account for, though not make up for, the missed one.

It is selfish, though. Rationalize away, by all means do not punish yourself, lie, whatever, but for my part, it is selfish. I admit this.

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Speaking of, I can't believe I wrote about "Bohemian Rhapsody" and talked a bit about its subtext and omitted that it also brings up the problem of being able to consider not having been thrown into existence after the fact. I listened to it again just now, with headphones on and my eyes closed. I hadn't done that in years. Gotta figure out this music trauma, gotta learn what has happened to me while I was trying to just survive and apparently missed it as things fell away from me, as dissolution had its way.

Also I cannot believe I wrote about "Bohemian Rhapsody" without talking about THIS ONE TIME AT BAND CAMP when five buddies and I whipped up a brass quintet arrangement of the song with a drum part and performed it for everybody in lieu of "Taps" at Senior Taps. One of the buddies was not just a buddy but my brilliant and longtime partner in distinguishing deeds ranging from something as completely dorky as what I am right now describing to sneaking beers into High School and totally drankin' before class. We considered ourselves gentlemen, and talked about James Bond a lot. It was him did the bulk of the arranging and editing, which I was more than happy to let him do because that writing that stuff down in my bad notation penmanship bores me to death and using computer programs to do it sucked really bad back then. 

Many laughs we shared and many terrible and crass names we called one another as we prepared the arrangement in dusty basement practice rooms, computer speakers hooked up to an iPod so we could replay sections of the song over and over to, sharing Blistex and telling lies and awful jokes as we hammered it out between us. The trombone players were assholes, of course. That's just something you live with in a trombone player; I love both those dudes, they were good dudes I had known for a long time and shared much with, especially as one of them was also a wrestler, but they are trombone players, and therefore pricks of a category all their own. The drummer was, as is proper and correct, hardly there.

Played the tuba that year (band directors have this skill for cornering me into playing the tuba for them though I kinda prefer the trumpet), so I got to do the bassline. It was definitely worth learning to play brass instruments and dealing with all the crap that being in a school band throws at you in order to have done this with some dudes, all breaking the rules and whipping out a banger in front of the director and four years of band geeks all ringing you round and loving every second as we did our thing full and complete start to finish, well-played and a good show rolling without a thought off your lips, easy under sure fingers, all huge smile on the director's face as he stands there arms crossed as the people (nerds, bless my people) went wild. 

A little later in life my brothers, attending the same band camp under the same director, let me know that the seniors always play "Bohemian Rhapsody" for Senior Taps; every year since they'd been there. My middle brother's first year was my last, and some seniors played out their class with "Bohemian Rhapsody" the year my youngest brother graduated, four years after the middle one did. Not just five horns and a percussionist on a snare, a hi-hat, and a ride cymbal; up to fifteen people, depending on the year, playing all manner of instruments, some of the drumline folks using the drumline shit, there is an actual electric guitar, a true Thing. My middle brother actually thought my friends and I were embarrassingly unmemorable, since obviously it could only go up from our humble breaking of the ground; neither had any idea that no one had ever played anything but "Taps" before we came along.

Dunno if they're still doing that, as it has now been four years since my brother left, but I don't at all care; that should be more than enough for any dude, I figure.

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Keep yourself alive! All you people, keep yourselves alive. The show must go on.


--JL