Metal Regression

I was born today 32 years ago. But before I go into the thoughts, mood and growth of the previous year I want to tell you how my day went. I always take my birthday off, there’s no force on planet earth that will convince me that I should ignore this day. If you know me then you know I hardly lack reasons or excuses to celebrate and yet in practice today is the most socially acceptable day in which I can wax poetic about myself and indulge in the obsessions that have driven me this year and all years. So like every year I was poised to have a self serving adventure through my laundry list of peculiarities. I watched Halloween Ends on Friday, did cheese tasting on Saturday, had the family party on Sunday and today (Monday) would be for my own brand of entertainment. I was all set to watch Tar, a film about the worlds greatest conductor and composer (a fictional one or else this movie would be called Williams). As you know I love music compositions, classical, film, or even video game related. So this movie was a great film to kick off the events of today.

I was sitting at the Alamo, which is one my favorite theatres to visit in the heart of DTLA because of their reverence for the act of watching a film in addition to the film itself. But of course I also go for the ever rotating selections of food, spirits and beers. Yet today I was sandwiched between two film goers enjoying a pizza and fries respectively. But to my nose it smelled like the olfactory dimension of a junk yard full of rotting corpses (to keep these metaphors topical). I knew something was wrong as my stomach began to churn and a cold clamminess swept over my body. The munching sounds my neighbors were making were calling into question my own reliance on my ears as sources of pleasure, and the damned smell haunted me every minute that the film played, needless to say I could not pay attention. Finally as the waves of nausea seized me I scurried to the restroom and sat upon the throne of shame.

I couldn’t help but connect the dots to the novel I had just finished reading, amusingly entitled Nausea. In it the protagonist feels a feeling he can only describe as nausea as he dissociates with the essence of things around him, entering into a realm where the universe is contingent, threatening to change at any second. I found it hard to philosophize over the feeling that seized me (at the time) but I can definitely say that in the blink of an eye my being was fractured into the various parts that make up my sense of identity. My body asserted itself as the dominating force of my existence, and my mind was left to try and rationalize what was happening. And it did, very quickly I knew I had some sort of food poisoning, and I mentally flipped through the decadent courses of birthday feasting I had done over the past two days and couldn’t pinpoint the culprit. Of course that was merely an exercise in passing the time as my body seized all my senses, forcing me to retreat inwards as I lay doubled over in pain in the physical realm. Its hard to believe in the mantra of the athlete, mind over body, at a moment like this for there was nothing I could do to cease the black dread that coursed through my innermost chambers.

Was this what 32 promised to be? It was as if my body pulled in the leash I was on, reminding me that I am a prisoner in this fleshy vessel and lest I forget, it is a slave to time and the condition of aging. Somewhere in between the mind and the body lay my spirit, quietly crying out in the desperation of knowing the problem but being able to do nothing except let it run its course. Though the rational, scientific reason for my ailment was food poisoning, spiritually I felt that I was paying the price for the Dionysian way I chose to celebrate the weekend. Both reasons are true simultaneously in the way that that your favorite movie can be the best thing ever and also complete trash.

I eventually employed the oldest trick in the book, the one I use to bicycle up GMR or up to Mt Wilson, I tried to ignore the pain. That’s a two way street though because if you’re not looking at the monster, you don’t know what it will do next. As I lay there trying my hardest to cross into the astral plane I felt the final lurches, the sudden cotton mouth, the radiating goosebumps where I knew my end lay. I got on the floor, hugged the toilet and waited. If it only it were that all my problems could be solved by simply expelling them with extreme prejudice from inside of me. The social anxiety that comes from being in a room full of strangers? Hurl it into a trashcan on a way into a party. The fear of death? Leave in the restroom of the nearest funeral parlor. The despair that your favorite breakfast burrito place has irrevocably changed its burrito? Loosely wrap it up in yellow parchment paper and toss it into a gutter.

A cold sweat gripped me and where before I wasn’t able to even stand without feeling the gravitational pull of the earth drag me down, I was made whole again as the inner dimensions of my self corrected course. I couldn’t go back into the movie after this episode, the whole world had changed. As I walked the streets of Los Angeles I realized that my favorite indulgence, that which I would have reveled in today: the delicious phenomenology of eating a pastry, of sipping a cocktail, of drinking a coffee had been robbed from me as my stomach made painfully aware as I tried to drink water on my way out of the theatre. In this state of un-jaironicity I was forced to accept that mind over matter is not true, but perhaps this was an omen to follow other pursuits.

The streets of downtown reminded me that the city is not a luxurious place. The luxury sits atop it, floating over the apartments of the middle class and the poor. Like a well made cappuccino: the rich, white foam floats above the coffee, and the grounds which have had their very essence removed in service of the drink have been unceremoniously tossed aside. If you are so unlucky as to find some inside the cup, at the bottom of the drink, who among us is hearty enough to enjoy them as the basic building blocks of your coffee. More than likely you spit them out and leave them on the sidewalk with the grime, and the dirt of those who the city is built upon.

Which brings me at last to my recap of 31, it’s the year I rediscovered my voice which lay dormant, and nestled in a web of films, books, and music hoping that the sheer volume and variety of them would impart some knowledge of my self to the universe. The more I read the less likely I knew this would be and even though these words exist in an imperfect format, one perhaps even more vulnerable to the ravages of time than good old paper, let no one say that I did not try to at least write some of my thoughts down to be handed down through the generations to those who wish to know an insane amount of useless trivia. I have found a titillating fountain of writing in the works of great western and eastern philosophers and those who wish to know what truly shapes the world and our times should start there. Learn about the introduction of the rational into the collective human consciousness, it’s never ending battle with faith, and at last its rejection in favor if the irrational at least when it comes to the question of “Who Am I?”. There’s nothing rational about being a person, we each exist as a separate and distinct entity, our mere act of living corrupting any overarching hypothesis for the explanation of mankind. Here I am sipping on a cocktail in defiance of my earlier bodily episode, knowing full well that I might re-trigger the stomach pains, but I (the philosophical I)exists first and I make the rules when it comes to how I shall suffer.

Eddie Munson reminded me of what pure love of metal is, perhaps it’s not a lifestyle as I always believed, perhaps it’s a philosophy or perhaps it’s a religion. The individual’s battle against the tyrannies of the universe, the proclivity to unearth the skeletons under the bed, the altar of worship: the stack of amps, the darkly lit stage, the ritual sacrifice of sweat and energy. There’s much to be written about and my brain can only remain focused for so long before chasing the next croissant on my bicycle down a badly paved road on a hot day. Yet the smattering of traveling I’ve done this year made me aware that the wealth of context, history, and information out there will outlast and outlive any one person’s attempt at stitching together the whole of human existence. So in light of the impossible my goal is to do the improbable and stitch together the whole of mine own existence every hour of every day for as long as I can. Maybe 32 is an age where I am increasingly in service to my body but perhaps I can sharpen the mind, and the resiliency of the spirit as well.