Hallucinations

I am not schizophrenic. I have been hearing inexplicable noises and seeing things that aren’t there my entire life.

Throughout childhood, I sporadically heard a sound not dissimilar to voices being fast-forwarded by a cassette player. I could never discern what was being heard, but would catch random words, especially my name, within the high-pitched frenetic jumble. As an adult, I’ve heard coherent sentences being said and have been legitimately confused as whether anybody spoke them. For example, I once heard a female voice ask if I had a flashlight. I turned behind me to the only girl in my vicinity and she gave me a “What are you looking at” face. Since there was no reason why she would be asking for a flashlight, I left the comment unacknowledged. I still don’t know if she said it or not. Today, when I turn on a vacuum, I often hear music clearly enough that I can notate it playing in the background that stops when I shut the vacuum off. I have long since stopped sticking my head out of the shower curtain and trying to talk to the audible voices I hear during my shower.

Mouskie was the first imaginary friend I ever saw. I might have been three; four at the oldest. Ironically, he didn’t look at all as I had imagined him; he was about twelve feet tall, was bright sky blue and had big ears that came out of the sides of his head. I continued to see creatures as a kid. Zork mysteriously appeared twice from under the same tree in our front yard. I tried futilely to talk to him. Sergeant appeared on the back deck years after I had thought he had been killed in battle. Even as a kid, I easily understood that these were projections of my overactive imagination. But they were as visible as the witch that floated outside my bedroom window at night. My dad assured me that creatures would stop appearing when I became an adult.

The first time I remember vividly hallucinating while drumming I was uncharacteristically playing along to Steppenwolf. The autumn of 1997, when little people straight out of The Gnome-Mobile appeared hopping along to “Magic Carpet Ride,” was an emotionally tumultuous time for me, and I began regularly seeing auras on people. I attributed it to stress, but did not dismiss the experience outright. The next semester I began exploring with inducing visions while drumming, and I got pretty good at it. They always appeared in rather random and unpredictable ways and forms, but I could turn them on and shut them off quickly. Years later, in California, I conducted recording tests to see if I could perceive an aural difference in my drumming at times hallucinating and not, but never found one, save one occasion where I played an interesting duet of sorts with my own independently moving shadow.

I have never tried a hallucinogenic drug. I would not want to deal with what I’ve seen for eight hours until the drug wears off. You people that do that shit have a crazy idea of fun.

Once, while drumming, a long, blue dragon flew in through my front door and turned towards me, spewing blue flames in my direction. I threw my drumsticks at it and dived under my drumset. It disappeared, but I decided to immortalize that experience in ink. (Sweet Cicely at Cyclops Tattoo in San Francisco did the artwork and tat.)

Parents

Technically, our parents are two random people who neglected to use proper birth control. But their genes as well as the temperaments, values, social class, etc. of those who raised us play a large and confusing role in our lives.

All but the oblivious and tragic are eventually confronted that the epiphany that our parents don’t know anything either. We are stuck with dealing with and sorting through the intentional and unintentional garbage they instilled in us. The self aware do this in an effort to make sense of the interplay between ourselves and the world that surrounds us. The rest just try to cope. Either way, those who get this far inevitably end up trying to figure out, “Who am I?” and, “What do I want to do with my life?” Once you realize you are what you do with your life whether you want to be doing it or not and finding what you want to do is a crap shoot, you are ready for life’s Master Class.

It is impossible to separate or distinguish yourself from those who have and currently surround you. Humans are intensely social creatures, and nothing raised without human contact will ever have anything that resembles humanity. The gestalt of everything that is our being can never truly be broken down into its component parts except at a very superficial level (i.e. you got your mom’s eye color). I do think it is important to recognize our personality habits. While finding things to blame our habits on leads to a comfortable delusion that we’re not responsible for the actions we feel guilty about, I am of the minority that does not value blame over guilt.

The advantage of determining the cause of an error is to decrease the chances of the error being repeated. The problem with blaming others is that we can’t do much about them. My life alone gives me enough to worry about. My parents had their chance to try and make my life turn out right, and now it’s my turn. And since I only have my own life to worry about, I have a far easier job.

Persevere

I was not born with an intuitive sense of rhythm. I was, however, born with a stubborn streak a mile wide. When I decide I want to do something, I attempt it to the degree that luck and forces within my control allow. Like Antonio Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, when I see, hear, taste or feel something beautiful or profound, I search for the drawstring to the curtain so that I can pull it back and attempt to understand the mechanism behind the magic.

I am not a passive observer.

When I was a kid, my favorite book was called, My Side of the Mountain. It’s about a kid who runs away from home and lives alone in a cave with a falcon he finds wounded and nurses back to health. He gets discovered by a wandering literature teacher who dubs him “Thoreau.” Upon asking my mom who Thoreau was, she pulled a book called Walden and Other Writings off the bookshelf and handed it to me. Walden was too arcane and tedious for my eight-year-old self to get through, but determined to try, I read and re-read the first couple chapters of it many times. When my mom bought me a set of encyclopedias and dictionaries one at a time every visit to the grocery store, I never divulged that I really just wanted to know what “economy,” the title of Walden’s first chapter, meant. By the time I finally got through the book in junior high, it had already become a seminal influence on me.


Excerpts, in chronological order, from Economy, the first chapter of Walden, by Henry David Thoreau:

I should not talk so much about myself if there were any body else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me.

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he remember well his ignorance- which his growth requires- who has so often to use his knowledge?

It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What every body echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke and opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do you try and find that you can… Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have had faith left which belies that experience, and that they are only less young than they were.

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

…I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have more fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.

In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.

Man was not made so large limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow his world, and wall in a space such as fitted him.

Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think they must have such a one as their neighbors have.

I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the window in disgust.

It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow men to have an interest in your enterprise. The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it sharper than I received it.

I never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple and natural an occupation as building his house. We belong to the community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer. Where is this division of labor to end? And what object does it finally serve? No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.

The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful. “But,” says one, “you do not mean that the students should go to work with their hands instead of their heads?” I do not mean that exactly, but I mean something which he might think a good deal like that; I mean that they should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?

Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month,- the boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this,- or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institution in the mean while, and had received a Rogers’ penknife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his fingers? To my astonishment I was informed on leaving college that I had studied navigation!- why, if I had taken one turn down the harbor I should have known more about it.

A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince.

In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial.

I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account; for, beside that before he had fairly learned it I may have found out another for myself, I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father’s or his mother’s or his neighbor’s instead. The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do. It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course.

The only cooperation which is commonly possible is exceedingly partial and superficial; and what little true cooperation there is, is as if it were not, being a harmony inaudible to men. If a man has faith he will cooperate with equal faith everywhere; if he has not faith, he will continue to live like the rest of the world, whatever company he is joined to. To cooperate, in the highest as well as the lowest sense, means to get our living together…. Above all, as I have implied, the man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait til the other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off.

As for doing good, that is one of the professions which are full. Moreover, I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution. Probably I should not consciously and deliberately forsake my particular calling to do the good that society demands of me, to save the universe from annihilation; and I believe that a like but infinitely greater steadfastness elsewhere is all that now preserves it. But I would not stand between any man and his genius; and to him who does this work, which I decline, with his whole heart and soul and life, I would say, Persevere, even if the world call it doing evil, as it is most likely they will.

At doing something,- I will not engage that my neighbors shall pronounce it good,- I do not hesitate to say that I should be a capital fellow to hire; but what that is, it is for my employer to find out. What good I do, in the common sense of the word, must be aside from my main path, and for the most part wholly unintended. Men say, practically, “Begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought go about doing good.” If I were to preach at all in this strain, I would say rather, “Set about being good.”

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life, as from that dry and parching wind of the African deserts called the simoom, which fills the mouth and nose and ears and eyes with dust till you are suffocated, for fear that I should get some of his good done to me,- some of its virus mingled into my blood. No,- in this case I would rather suffer evil the natural way.

Be sure that you give the poor the aid that they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them. We make curious mistakes sometimes.

I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.

Don Quixote

Don Quixote is a satire about a motivated ignoramus who thinks he’s acquired all there is to know about life by reading books. Specifically, Mr. Quixada has been inspired by books venerating the Christian Crusades. He is convinced the actions of the Christian military (the Knights) demonstrate all that is decent, true, right and good, and resolves to demonstrate moral excellence in his own life by unquestioningly and uncompromisingly following their example in every way.

Mr. Quixada retrieves his great-grandfather’s rusty armor and sword. The helmet he finds lacks the face-guard which is always associated with knights, so he crafts one out of papier mache and attaches it. He then swings his sword at it to test its strength and obliterates it. He fashions another one and decides it is superior to the first, although he refrains from testing it. This is our first glimpse of the major theme running throughout the book; Don Quixote lives primarily by faith, and not by works alone. He buys a horse, and, after agonizing for four days over what to name it, decides upon Rozinante; and liking that name so much, he decides to rename himself as well. After eight days of pondering, he settles upon Don Quixote de la Mancha. Finally, he decides he should have a lady for whom his services will be performed, and rather randomly chooses a prostitute from the next village he finds attractive named Aldonsa Lorenzo. They have never met and never do, but regardless he insists on changing her name, in his mind anyway, to Dulcinea del Toboso.

Don Quixote decides to follow the example of his heroes and the commandments of the Bible by traveling the world as a knight and impart upon it goodness, virtue, righteousness, etc. He quickly finds the real world wanting, however. He distresses over its mundanity, which he quickly solves by stubbornly insisting upon viewing his environment with the grandeur and idealism with which it is described in his precious books. It is important to recognize that through all of his subsequent travels, Don Quixote never roams more than a few days journey on horseback from his home, and much of that time is spent avoiding people. He refrains from engaging in the real world as much as possible.

When Don does meddle in the affairs of others, always in an attempt to prove his superior strength and moral code, the results are unwaveringly disastrous. One of the principle things Don Quixote has learned from his books is that evil often disguises itself as good, so he constantly chooses to see one as the other. Denouncing the inhumanity of keeping people in chains, he frees a convoy of criminals, who promptly beat him up, rob him and escape. Even when he prevents a master from beating a servant, it only results in the servant being beaten more after Don withdraws. I was impressed by the similarities of Don Quixote to George W. Bush.

Sancho Panza is Don Quixote’s poor and greedy neighbor who accompanies Don in hopes of getting rich, believing Don’s promise that he will give him an island to rule over at the end of their adventure. Don enjoys the fact that Sansho is so much a coward that he views Don as brave and so much a moron that he deems Don wise. Don frequently shows off to impress Sancho in the same manner that I used to entertain my younger sister as a kid. (One of my favorite childhood games was the one in which I wrestled an invisible monster out from under the bed and through it down the stairs while my sister nervously clutched her blankets.)

Don Quixote is not as virtuous as he pretends to be. When the innkeeper’s daughter trips and falls into his bed, he mistakes this as an advance and justifies that having sex with her would be the right thing to do. This theme that morality is best kept by having no opportunity to be immoral resurfaces later in the form of a story read while Don sleeps. By the halfway point of this long ass novel, even the author has gotten bored with it and begins segueing into several alternate stories. There are literally hundreds of pages in which Don Quixote never appears. The novel is divided into four books, and the second half of book two and almost all of book four are superfluous. Apparently this book was written before the invention of editing. Cervantes overtly assumes his audience is as dense as his main character, and insists upon beating this horse long after it is, if not dead, really, really tired.

I personally think the book should have ended after book three, chapter XII, at the brilliantly ironic moment when Don Quixote, inspired by a man he stumbles across in the mountain who has been driven mad over the betrayal of the woman he has secretly eloped with and his best friend who get publicly married behind his back, decides he will pretend to go crazy. He cites several knights who were driven mad by unrequited love. He sends Sancho to retrieve Dulcinea and brag of Don’s insanity, so that when her arrival cures him she will be overcome with joy and they will be married. Don wants to do some crazy things, especially run around naked, so that Sansho can vividly describe his condition to Dulcinea; but Sansho hilariously insists that he’ll be able to come up with sufficiently convincing stories of Don’s lunacy. At this point, Sansho could have gone home, fucked the hooker and died of AIDS; the end. If you don’t like my ending, try reading the book all the way through; I dare you.

Random

Sorry for the lag in posts. I'm actually being productive. Here's some misc. thoughts that ran through my head last Saturday:

Attempting to find out what you want to do with your life is worthwhile. Expecting to find out what you want to do with your life is futile.

No matter how much you enjoy stouts, red wines and cognacs, never drink all three simultaneously.

The depths of my weaknesses seem directly proportional to the sum of my strengths.

“Our children are our future” is probably the most obvious thing anybody has said as if it were somehow profound.

The only mistake greater than having not learned from it is having not recognized it.

I make more mistakes than most people, which is probably why I get more right.