Category: Uncategorized

I realize that very few people I know have been to my apartment. What the…? I guess when Steve was living here with the dogs and so much Chinese furniture, I honestly did not feel much like it was my space. Then, Ryan moved in last December, and slowly, slowly, it’s become much more a place I want people to feel comfortable in. So, yeah, I suppose a party is in order. I just need to get a few more things on the walls and that pesky rug for the living room… In the meantime, you get these snippets:

How about that view from the bathroom, eh? When you take a bath in the old seafoam green porcelain tub, this is what you can gaze at. Or, if you prefer, you can see it from the toilet, too:

First off, understand this is a two-story, two-bedroom apartment built in the 1930s with old French windows, hardwood floors, and lots of airflow (thankfully, since there is no A/C). The upstairs hallway is now tastefully decorated with a skull, books, and plants:

Specially for Kathleen: My newly acquired 1940s waterfall dresser is topped off with my old bunny bank. Why yes, it does have eyelashes and a fake fur boa around its neck, thanks for asking. Most people are freaked out by it. Ryan saw it and just said, “That is so cool.” First sign he was a keeper. Oh, and those are flax weavings I learned to do when I went to New Zealand. A cool Maori woman fed me fresh fruit as we sat on her floor of her rural house on the North Island and she tirelessly showed me what to do; it poured down rain outside the entire time.

Slowly but surely we’re collecting some taxidermy. Here’s something tame in that dept.–a cool butterfly display Ryan found in Palm Springs. Also in the main bedroom.

The dining room. Not seen: the 1970s Danish dining room table. Seen: the 1970s light fixture, wall of antlers, and the painting of a boy and his banana. You can take from that what you will.

Sitting on the windowbox sill in the kitchen, we have a sampling of the objets d’art that are tastefully arranged there, including Ryan’s bird salt and pepper shakers and the measuring spoons Nicole gave me oh so long ago…

And what house is complete without a Garfield fish tank (the fish will sit in his belly), a reclining glamorous woman figurine, and a coconut mailed from Molokai (thanks, James!)?

I could, of course, take room shots and let you see how pretty it really is. But why would I want to do all that? Then you’d never come over for dinner, drinks, or cards.
You know who you are. An invitation is forthcoming.

xo-M

Not that you asked for them, but here they are anyway!

First up: A trip down memory lane… or Sandy Boulevard, at least, home to the Hollywood Theater, where I worked in a variety of jobs from ages 15-17, including as a projectionist, where I ruined such films as “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” and “The Land Before Time”:

The obligatory Mt. Hood shot (by Ryan, who snickered every time someone said “Mt. Hood”). When it’s clear, the view of the mountain from so many parts of the city is really breathtaking. I’d forgotten that…

The obligatory Mt. St. Helens shot, done in a not-so-obligatory way. You can get better shots of the slumbering volcano but Ryan opted to take this from Forest Park northwest of downtown, looking out over the industrial part of the city:

The third “mount” image, this time, part of Mt. Tabor park–an extinct volcano in the middle of the city. Also scene of numerous days and nights for me in high school, sometimes sober, sometimes not (again by Ryan):

Mt. Tabor graffiti that makes no sense and yet made me laugh anyway:

I’d forgotten the dappled effect of sun through the giant fir trees. I know I’ve been in California too long when these trees seem so awe-inspiring. The nice thing is that they kept the sun off us in the near 100 degree heat…

Of course, Portland is not all natural beauty and sun filtering through trees. In fact, it’s not even always about good food. Then again, there could be good food here. We didn’t find out (and I couldn’t believe it was still there):

But the real fun was seeing everyone I hadn’t seen in a while, including (in order here): Jill, Susan, and Kathleen, with whom we both look shiny and hot, since it was 100 degrees and we’d had beer…

And, of course, Ryan… who so graciously posed next to this tavern in (as we like to say) “Deep Southeast”…not far from the estate sale that had room after room of clown art in it:

But I wouldn’t want you to think that Portland is all about clown art, bad diners, and worse taverns. What would The New York Times write about if that was true? So, here, here’s some more prettiness to cap it off:

Yes, my trip made me miss Portland. No, I’m not sure if I want to live there again.

Until about 20 minutes ago, I wasn’t convinced I’d write much about this too short vacation. But I just realized I have been feeling totally nostalgic for 1991 after seeing a bunch of old high school friends. Simultaneously, Portland brings out something maudlin in me. It also makes me want to run into the forest and disappear. I am not entirely sure this is such a good idea, so I tend to stick to the city proper.

It seems to amaze a number of people that I am still in touch with so many people from high school. I mean, it’s not like I send emails to everyone in my graduating class, but I still stay in touch with about 6 people, which I guess in some circles is 6 too many.

What was so fascinating to me on this trip is that it coincided with so many pretty significant moments in my friends’ (and my own) lives: Susan’s birthday, Jill’s getting herself back on her own two feet after a divorce, Kathleen celebrating completing her doctoral dissertation in Indiana, back in Portland to have a party with family and friends. This doesn’t even take into account my seeing my entire family, including my brother, whom I’d not seen since he first got sober back in 2006 after being missing for nearly two years.

Throw me and Ryan into this mix and you can begin to imagine the swirl of activity. Five days was hardly enough time to do much of anything but drink some great beer, eat some fantastic food courtesy of Lissa and Tom, on whose floor we were crashing, and try to escape the insane heat that didn’t break almost until we left.

Stripping away the day-to-day excursions and estate sales we perused (oh how I wish I could have taken pictures of the house in which there was almost nothing but clown paraphernalia like paintings and masks EVERYWHERE–not to mention a giant koi pond; Belle claims she had no idea I really hated clowns that much before she took us there), I was left with a fair amount of amazement at these people I’ve known for 20 years who have grown into such funny, smart, engaging adults. There’s an aspect of it that’s completely terrifying. None of them ever knew my dad, for example, as he was already dead by then. They know a segment of my life that feels like it’s still unfurling.

I was especially cognizant of this the second night I was there. It was still hot out, even though it was nearly 10 p.m. and the sun had finally set. The full moon was rising and Kathleen, myself, her girlfriend, Amy, and their two friends were hiking up to the top of Mt. Tabor park, a nearly 700 foot tall hill in the middle of Portland that was once a volcano. It was the scene of many nights in high school, including one memorable January evening during which I parked my 1974 orange Ford Maverick in the rain in the park and Kathleen drank a bottle of champagne while I downed bottles of beer. Our friend Geoff was there as well, as drunk as we were. At one point, the cops came driving down the park road and we panicked, the windows of the car more fogged up than they already had been. So, in our 17 year old minds, the best thing to do was simply lay down across the bench seats, alcohol still in hand, and hope that they didn’t get out to look.

What they did do was slow way down and scan a spotlight across the length of my car, twice, while the three of us held our breath, whispering to each other to not move and trying not to completely freak out. Maybe it was only because it was pouring rain, they did not stop, and we sat up, petrified, drunk, and wet with perspiration. And then what did I do? Drive home? Why, yes, I did. Oy.

Kathleen was telling our assorted audience members about this as we trekked past the exact spot, which was within spitting distance of her parents’ house and she said, “Mikel was so cool in high school.” Which made me choke on the water I was drinking.

“No, I wasn’t,” I protested. “I had bad clothes, a near 4.0 GPA, and horrible hair. Not to mention I was a flaming homo who couldn’t come out of the closet!”

What could she possibly be thinking?

“But you smoked,” she countered. “And drove an awesome car! And your mom sometimes let us drink in your house!”

We caught each other’s eyes and cracked up, again perspiring on Mt. Tabor, nearly 20 years later, under totally different circumstances.

“I’m glad someone thought I was cool,” I said. Then, to everyone but Kathleen: “But I really wasn’t.”

And it’s true. But despite the bad hair and geeky drive to be perfect in school, I had friends like these–when I was both drunk and sober, I might add. Looking at Kathleen, then, the two of us older, a bit grayer in the hair, yet still able to laugh with each other, I figured things have to happen for a reason, right? Without her and the rest of them I’d never be where I am now, that’s for sure.

This is making me entirely too happy today.

No News Is Good News

More once I’m back from the Pacific Northwest.

November 1995

I began life in New York as a squatter of sorts.

Back in June, panicking right before college graduation, I had been trying to figure out where the hell I was going to live. I hadn’t yet bought a plane ticket to go back to Portland. I didn’t want to commit to that. I knew I could pack my suitcase and throw as much crap as possible into Barbie’s car and hope I made it as far as Milwaukee. In fact, I considered moving there, too–anything to keep me from taking a step backward, metaphorical or not.

As if she’d heard my tossing and turning in the night, Aryn inadvertently saved me by asking me if I wanted to move to New York with her. Her stepmother was going to be in L.A. for six months, working on a movie. I could live with her in the apartment and figure out what to do next. The thought made me instantly tense. New York and I had tangled only a couple of times and it seemed so overwhelming and oppressive in the still-somewhat-abstract. But would moving back to what was left of “home” be better?

I remember little of how my stuff and I even made it to the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Nor did I realize I’d be living in a pretty cool pre-War apartment that was, by New York standards, gigantic. Within two weeks, I was working at Starbucks. I had a “life” of some sort, headaches from the smog, bad skin from the smog, and I smoked more than I did back in Vermont.

The luster wore off quickly, with no air conditioning in June, July, and August. The panic came racing back in. I forced myself to make the effort and started working as an intern at Out Magazine, where I went on my 2 days a week I had off, schlepping down to SoHo to work in an office without windows and learn about publishing.

By November I was nearing the end of my grace period in Aryn’s stepmom’s apartment. I was making all of $7 an hour and couldn’t begin to figure out what I was going to do with myself. Until I managed–by some absurd twist of fate–to land a job at St. Martin’s Press as an editorial assistant.

To celebrate, I did what I always did when I had any leftover cash: I headed to the Village to buy music. There was a circuit of places between St. Marks and West 4th that I would haunt–snatching up whatever I could find that was tangentially related to what I loved. At that point, it was the girls with guitars on the 4AD label. Throwing Muses. Belly. The Breeders. The squall of an expertly played electric guitar that sounded like it might almost fall apart in the player’s hands was the sound I craved. I felt like I was the personification of the concept–a tightly wound ball of twine that could unravel at any moment.

Flush with all of $30, I entered a store in the West Village, the last on my list. I scanned the bins for an old Breeders single and then looked up to see a handwritten note: “Kim Deal’s (Breeders, Pixies) new band…” An orange cover with a plug on it. All it said on the front in simple, sans serif font: The Amps.

Yes, please.

December 1995

I have “Tipp City” stuck in my head. Kim Deal’s on the stage in front of me and I’ve been drinking beer. I can’t afford to buy new shoes, but I can afford to be at Irving Plaza with Megan, with whom I am now living in Park Slope.

It’s an apartment we’ve found by waiting for the Village Voice to come out every week at Astor Place, dashing to nearby pay phones to call about whatever listing we can afford in a place where we may actually want to live. A 2-bedroom in Park Slope for $1,100 is about the best we can do, considering our lack of real incomes. I make $527 every two weeks at my “glamorous” publishing job, where I’ve already given up trying to dress up. Instead I show up in overalls, smoke with my boss in the office, and work too hard for too little money.

Megan indulges me when it comes The Amps. I get up. I put on The Amps. I come home. I put on The Amps. I get depressed about something. I play The Amps. I want the gentle wooziness of “Pacer,” the barely controlled party rock of “Tipp City” and the utter punk insanity of “Empty Glasses” to mash up in my head. I want to feel like the stoner I am not.

It’s partly, of course, because I am finally feeling halfway decent for the first time in six months and my emotions are running all over the place. I feel like I may have finally beaten New York into submission and this album follows me like the cold winds now whistling through all the buildings I navigate on my way to and from work.

On stage at Irving Plaza, Kim Deal is plump, shiny, and bad-ass, a rocker chick who drinks and talks like a guy who claims he likes to go hunting. She plays some Breeders stuff, but most of the people there seem confused by the Amps songs. But not me. I’m the dork singing along, bouncing up and down, screaming “woo!” when “Tipp City” is finally played and I can feel myself let go, just for a couple of minutes. It’s a cathartic exercise. I sweat. I jump around and almost dance. When they get to the line “Peacock, caught looking in the mirror…” Megan and I scream the rejoinder: “STOP DRINKING MY BEER!” (I am so good at being a completist that Megan can even sing along with me to “Just Like a Briar,” a b-side on the “Tipp City” single–UK-only, natch.)

It doesn’t matter that I work in a job that barely pays more than Starbucks (where I still work weekends). It doesn’t matter that I haven’t had sex in months. It doesn’t even matter that I have a hacking cough from smoking too much. Instead of feeling beaten down, I actually don’t want the party to end.

January 1996

The bone-cold has come. So has the “storm of the century.” It’s a blizzard of two feet of snow. Nothing is moving in the city except the subways. So Megan goes to the gym. She knows she can make it to the train and get to Manhattan easily enough. Though I secretly wish she’d stay so we can go play in Prospect Park, I stop at telling her she’s crazy only a few times and stay home to drink coffee and stare out the tiny back windows at the gray and white cityscape.

“Bragging Party” is on the CD player. It’s got a strong drumbeat, insistent and forceful, but the guitars fuzz out around it and the few lyrics float across the sound: “You are all that I need to hear, so fill the air with memorized breaths.” It’s wistful, happy, dreamy, the total antithesis of what’s happening outside as the snow tries to smother millions of us in one fell swoop.

The apartment has almost nothing in it. The ancient, gigantic TV sits on a milk crate. I have an armchair from the Salvation Army. I sleep on the futon I somehow acquired at Bennington. Megan has a table that doubles as a place to eat and have dinner. We barely have chairs to sit on. Thank god she has a French press and a kettle or we’d just walk in circles in the living room bumping into the empty cardboard boxes that double as furniture.

I sing along with Kim, not even sure of most of the words to the song as they blend into the fuzz. Later, I will call my friends on the West Coast and brag a little about the snowstorm. I will make myself sound a tad more superior, wanting them to kind of, sort of see me as a tough, if converted, New Yorker. And for a little while, cocooned here, that’s exactly how I feel. The snow continues to fall. I sip deeply of the thick, sweet coffee and wonder at the last couple of months. I’ve made it this far, haven’t I? I am here. In New York. Living. It’s more than I thought was possible six years prior. And I don’t want to be anywhere else–shitty Brooklyn apartment and all.

“Self-Discography” is a series of essays on seminal albums and songs re-reviewed, recalled, and reimagined via the lens of my memory. It is said that smell is the sense most closely linked with memory. For me, it is sound.

Was it the crazy heatwave over the weekend that did it? I fear it melted my brain–especially the parts that help me concentrate, keep me from telling people what I think when it’s inappropriate, and also those that control the ability to sleep.

I go through periodic bouts of insomnia. Usually, it’s obvious stress causing it; sometimes it’s a complete mystery. I’m not sure what, exactly, that stress is right now, aside from some work stuff. But it’s nothing major. So why do I feel like my brain’s been replaced by some kind of motor and my eyes are stuck open?

When I was a kid and couldn’t sleep, I would go downstairs, where, inevitably, my mother had fallen asleep on the couch–a book propped up on her chest. I’d watch her sleep. Sometimes the TV was still on. It looked so much like a photographic still life, slightly dim, slightly out of focus due to the fact that I was tired but couldn’t be made to sleep.

Sometimes it lasted weeks. Other times it was only one night. I wonder now, sitting in the spare bedroom at midnight, if insomnia is genetic. I never thought it weird that my mother would constantly sleep on the couch while my dad fell into a deep, rumbling slumber in their bedroom only 15 feet away. They never commented on it. In fact, sometimes it was my dad on the couch, coming home at 4 am after work.

Maybe we were a family of insomniacs: my sister feverishly worked until late in the night many days, my brother was often out carousing, not wanting to be home. In the summer, especially, I’d stay up until 4 or 5 a.m. on a regular basis with my friends Amy and Leslie, who lived in the neighborhood. We loved to see the strata of color in the sky in the east, even though we hated it when the birds started to chirp. They were so loud we would then never fall asleep until the sun was already up.

I am always keenly aware on these nights, though, how much my brain seems to suffer the consequences of what it seemingly does on its own. By tomorrow, if I haven’t had a full night’s sleep, I’ll be a babbling idiot. And yet, perhaps also more entertaining than I’ve been lately.

Ryan seems a bit mystified by all of this. He can fall asleep anywhere. He can fall asleep while in the middle of a sentence. I’ve watched it happen. I always sigh wistfully when he falls asleep so easily. He has that magical “On/Off” switch I wish someone could implant in me. He used to always ask what he could do to help me sleep. To which I quipped, “Don’t ask me about it. That will help.”

I probably just sabotaged myself by talking about it here, didn’t I? Time to grab a book and head to the couch. Why not start the family legacy now?

So, we all had bad hair here near Lancaster, CA, on Sunday. The wind was fierce, but the poppies were in full bloom and it was a gorgeous day. Glad Ryan, Tim, and Justin were brave enough to drive the 75 miles to the middle of nowhere to see it all with me. (Thanks to Ryan for the extra pics, too.)

“They gave you life and in return you gave them hell.”

I am sitting in my room after school–a day like all the others, in which few if any people have spoken to me. I am concentrating furiously on my homework, choking down any thought of the predicament I have found myself in, or perhaps helped create myself. I can’t be sure of which.

The radio is on. Z100 in Portland is, at that point, my trusted source for new Top 40 music, and I take it as an escape from school, from any sounds coming from outside of my room. At nearly 12, I’ve already become an expert in compartmentalizing. Music often seems to be the only way I feel like I experience mental release–even if I am not making it myself.

And then there it is, a creepy synthesizer groove underneath minimal percussion and that opening line. It’s a blatant call to arms to simply scream and yell about everything that’s wronged you: “Shout, shout, let it all out/These are the things I can do without/Come on, I’m talking to you/come on.”

In a pop song? On Z100? I didn’t know anything yet about therapy. But I knew, instantly, that this was some form of release.

“Find out what this fear is about.”

I make my mother take me to the store and buy me “Songs From the Big Chair.” She’s heard one of the songs from it on the radio and so she feels like she knows what it is she’s purchasing. That makes my entreaties less necessary, even though she seems to begrudge spending money on the record.

Ensconced in my bedroom that night, I slip the record from its sleeve and put it on. I drink in “Shout” and then recoil from the jazzy saxophone opening of “The Working Hour.” I remove the needle from the vinyl and slide the record back in to its sleeve, disappointed.

“There’s a room where the light won’t find you, holding hands while the walls come tumbling down.”

But as the months roll on, anytime I am having a bad day–and, as my mother says, I seem to have a lot of them–I slide the record from its sleeve and put it on the turntable, letting the rolling drums of “Shout” and now the frenetic “Broken” and wry humor of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” fill the room–the latter a song that sounds sunny but is really more like a backhanded compliment, if you listen closely, which I do.

“It’s not that you’re not good enough, it’s just that we can make you better.”

I’ve discovered “Mothers Talk.” It’s a big, mean song. It’s brash. It’s forceful. It’s full of odd stops and starts and a twisty bass line–a sonic fit that I want to turn into my own theme song.

And though I am getting angrier, I am also getting more adept at stuffing the anger back down my throat. In addition, I don’t sleep much anymore. I have horrible nightmares in my room when I finally do drift off to sleep. I can feel heat from a fire outside my door and I can smell smoke, but I am trapped inside, the giant storm windows glued into the window frame, and I am too small to break it open and escape. I’ve been having the same nightmare almost every night for years. I’ve taken to sleeping in the hallway or stealing into my sister’s room and falling asleep on her floor. I believe my room is haunted, but I don’t say as much.

I get called sensitive at home and in the neighborhood. At school I simply get called a faggot. I both know and don’t know what it means. I know now, as puberty has reared its head, that there is something alluring about any man in a Jockey underwear ad with hairy forearms. But I am blocking that part of my mind that puts two and two together. It’s 1985, after all. AIDS barely has been named, and everyone I know casually assumes two guys having sex means they will die.

So, the word “faggot” is, to me, almost a way of people telling me I’d be better off dead. At first, I don’t agree. Instead, I seethe. Every day, as I walk home from school, I invent scenarios in my head about the horrible deaths that will befall these boys. I know most of them will lead status quo lives and be boring and unimaginative. I know I don’t want to be anywhere near them. I know I want to hold them by their ankles over a bridge and enjoy the sight of them falling hundreds of feet into the foment below.

“I believe that when the hurting and the pain has gone, we will be strong.”

This song is jazz.

It’s slow and woozy, as if this is the last song I might hear 20 years from now in a New York City bar where I happen to find myself on a rainy night.

I invent the scene in my head and then begin to write a short story about a man living in an unnamed metropolis whose only solace is going to watch a piano player at a bar.

It’s boring and badly punctuated, but I fixate on the escape–of a completely safe place where a person can hide.

It’s a common theme in the lame stories I write. I show them to my friend Tina, who is maybe, just maybe, as miserable as I am. She loves them, but often has odd critiques to offer: “Why don’t you make that character a book editor?” “I’m not sure I believe this is New York.” I may think “Well, yeah. I’ve never lived there,” but I take her comments seriously, and I break out new notebooks and pens and try to figure out how I can make New York real without knowing it. Often, I end up making Portland the setting because it’s just easier.

It’s fall now and I am feeling more defeated. I want school to end, but I know I have to make it through six more months. I am not sure I can.

I am now being followed home on occasion by a boy from school who likes to walk 20 feet behind me and tell me how he is going to kick my ass, kill me, make me sorry I walk this way to and from school. I begin to loiter after school for no reason, watching for him to go home, or I bolt from the grounds as soon as the last bell rings, walking blocks out of my way so I can avoid him. I want to reason with him, but I know that won’t work, so I often stay quiet. I think of the worst that can happen. I make it home unscathed. I listen to music. I do my homework. I don’t sleep.

“Broken. We are broken.”

Tina is probably my best friend outside of Amy and Leslie, whom I’ve grown up with and who function more like sisters, though I haven’t been seeing much of either of them. We’re both enamored of “Songs From the Big Chair” and “The Breakfast Club” and we’re both totally melodramatic. We both write stories and have mothers whom we cannot stand. In essence, we are just like any number of working-class white kids across the country, though probably we have more aspiration and imagination than a large percentage. We also seem to have a lot of insight into our particular form of pubescent depression and she runs hot and cold. I feel like I am sliding downward as a result. I can’t stand the “we’re friends today but I am mad at you about something now” dynamic that seems to dominate between us. I take it seriously. I get offended easily. I alternate between really needing a friend and being completely pissed off by what I perceive as slights.

“I made a fire and, watching it burn, thought of your future.”

“Head Over Heels” is ostensibly a love song and yet I can’t interpret it that way. The line “Don’t take my heart, don’t break my heart, don’t throw it away” pierces me because I hear in it everything I want to tell some of the people around me: “Do not take me for granted.” And now it’s now a huge hit. And that’s exactly what they seem to do.

Maybe because I am so miserable, maybe because I only sleep four hours a night, maybe because I don’t know what to do, the only logical exit strategy I have is to simply erase my existence. It seems to free my mind. I now debate this calmly, wondering bout the ideal ways to commit suicide. I make a list of preferred methods but I don’t have access to a gun or prescription medication. That leaves my wrists. I begin practicing the motions of slashing them in the bathroom late at night, teasing the skin with the edge of the blade, thinking it’s like any other skill–you must become comfortable with it and learn how to do it and then you can be successful.

“Found a brave new world.”

I can’t go through with it. I can’t really look at myself in the mirror, but with a razor pressed into my flesh and forcing me to decide, I realize I have to see more of the world. I have to get out of this bathroom, out of this moment in time, just get out. This moment cannot last forever.

Right?

I don’t cut that deep, really. There is blood, but there’s barely a scar later. But I still wear a long-sleeved windbreaker every day to school afterward, both because of the weather and because I knew that if word gets out it might make me look crazy to everyone else–and therefore I’ll probably get left alone. I like this idea.

Word, of course, gets out. My mother is called to school by my counselor to talk to me about suicide and depression. She is visibly upset, but, of course, completely clueless as what to do with me. She takes me home and talks to me for a while, never really digging too deep. We can’t afford counseling of any sort, though it’s recommended.

What hurts more is seeing how everyone in my family knows that I am in pain and yet remains unable to talk to me about it–as if we are a group of actors stuck in a play with no lines to utter. Only my sister has the will to tell me that I can talk to her about whatever is bothering me. In that moment we begin patching the adolescent tear in our relationship–she, almost 17; me, only 12. She’s old enough to be able to articulate to me that she is not a fairweather friend, and that she knows what it’s like to feel like there’s no way out. But there is, she tells me: “You aren’t going to live here forever.”

I return to my notebooks and my stereo in my haunted room. Months on, “Songs From the Big Chair” still occupies the turntable. I will only learn much later that the title of the album is a direct reference to therapy, to “Sybil,” to the many pock marks in the mind. But I recognize how weird it is that this quite dark album has become an MTV and Z100 staple.

The album closer, the mostly instrumental “Listen,” is a song I’ve come to love. It doesn’t seem to have a literal meaning aside from the few decipherable lyrics. It’s simply about the song’s atmosphere; for me, it is otherworldly. It floats between rock opera, Muzak, and film score, evoking a sense of closure, of moving onward, soaring up and out of the present.

At night, I lie awake in bed, rubbing my wrists lightly with my thumbs, and hum it to myself. It doesn’t make the pain ebb, but it’s become a form of meditation. I don’t make myself any promises. I simply say that I will wait and see if this gets any better before I plot my next move.

“Self-Discography” is a series of essays on seminal albums and songs re-reviewed, recalled, and reimagined via the lens of my memory. It is said that smell is the sense most closely linked with memory. For me, it is sound.

Just a little note to say hello and welcome to Nice Limbo version 2.0. Thanks to some tricky maneuvering on Wayne’s part, the blog looks a lot nicer and is easier on the eyes (at least I hope you think so). Shortly, I’ll be posting some additional fun things to help kick off the makeover. But, for now, you’ll just have to look at the weird color field at the top of the page until you’re hypnotized.
Love, Mikel

On my way to the gym today to go swimming, I passed a guy wearing an ankh necklace.

Really? People still wear those?