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s-o-n-de-r · 7 years

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Years in transit: Against the Current in Boston and a reflection on music, moods, and seasons

Note: Rarely, I opt to publish personal pieces in place of sonder’s traditional editorial content. With this, however, I wanted to revisit a show I already wrote about in an expansive retrospective that deals with music journalism and auto-biographical elements. Thanks for reading - Andrew

If you’re a regular sonder reader, you probably noticed something out-of-place last November when, out of the blue, I published features from a show in Boston that pop-rock band Against the Current played. Boston? Weird, considering sonder is based in south Florida, and that’s where the majority of the site’s content comes from. Right?

Actually, despite being sun-soaked for the past 17 years, I have northern blood running in me. Massachusetts is my home; roots I can’t ignore. I grew up in a small town called Grafton, toward the center of the state. Grafton is the epitome of small town, pacified New England: Quiet, wooded, outskirt suburbia rolls over a few creeks bridged by old stone masonry to our town center, a picturesque square with a gazebo, new stores in old buildings, and one of the local churches.

The Grafton part of my life feels like a long time ago. It mostly just exists as dust and cobwebs filling rarely-explored corners in my memories. Scattered in those cobwebs are pieces of small town New England in the 1990s, a decade that already feels hauntingly distant, lost in the blurry whirlwind of time. My childhood home was a two-story house on a massive corner lot with a hill in the backyard. All that space and gradient land meant I got to have fun as a kid. When it was autumn, I’d sprawl across a pile of crunchy brown and orange leaves I had assembled from the side yard. When it was winter, I’d get to rocket down the back slope on a sled or build up little forts with the huge snow banks that would accrue. During summer, the air was so clear and refreshing. The family would go to Swirls and Scoops, the local ice cream place, or Art Bradish Snack Bar, the local cheap and tasty dinner indulgence. They still make the crispiest chicken sandwich I’ve ever had.

Summer was always so pleasant and mild, with rich greens cascading across lawns. There was a huge tree at the corner of our property, surrounded by a half-circle of piled stones (who knew who put these here?), and that was prime territory for hanging out with my friends. All these little details kind of tumble around in my head when I think of Grafton. I relish them. Chances are, you have your own set of memories like these, and once in a while you might come upon them and bathe in their familiarity and warmth. Because that’s what nostalgia does – it comforts you, no matter if it’s accurate.

“It's been a minute

Everything's the same, but different”

Against the Current, “One More Weekend” / a song about re-visiting things and people in your past and tapping the well of nostalgia

After being transplanted from the north to the south in the middle of my childhood, I rolled with the punches (”the punches” being Florida). When you move from a place like Grafton – or, as I imagine, nearly any town defined by rich, varied culture – to the endless sprawl of southwest Florida, it’s a stark change of scenery. If Grafton was authenticity, then southwest Florida was shtick. In Grafton, we celebrate colonial history. In Fort Myers, we celebrate developing condos.

The mental weight of these differences on me never really showed up until my trips back to my home town in recent years when I realized, almost all at once, how much I missed it. Of course, that’s unsurprising. I was nine when we moved, and as a kid, you’re generally not acutely aware of how huge life changes like that can affect you on a deeper level. I was just sad that I had to leave my small number of friends.

But, I realized later the old cliché of “home is where the heart is” screamed in my face. Cliché, as it turns out, is overused for a reason. Who would have thought? I didn’t realize until my young adult years that, while I have many pleasant memories of New England, I had next to no similar memories in Fort Myers. In Fort Myers, no matter how hard I tried, nothing felt as close and tight-knit as things did in Grafton. Most of my good memories in Florida are, rightfully, from concerts I’ve been to or photographed.

Despite the build-up, there isn’t some overly dramatic point to be made here. Florida is where sonder has been built. It’s where I run into people at shows who recognize me and chat with me. It’s where I’ve met all my peers in concert photography. It’s where you, my readers, have said you like what we do. It’s where everything happens for this site. There’s a couple blocks in downtown Orlando, stretching from The Social to Backbooth, where sonder has basically been nurtured. I could recite half the restaurants and bars in that area and probably identify which brick goes where. It’s where I’ve photographed and interviewed bands for years.

That’s a general rule of thumb, anyway. Sometimes, when I get bad wanderlust, I end up far away. The most extreme example of this was when I was traipsing around the east coast for 13 total dates of Vans Warped Tour 2012. Going to many Warped Tour shows during the same year means you get to explore the detail in what that tour does, and it was in Connecticut when I met up with a young band named Against the Current. They weren’t playing. They were just hanging out. And it was during their early days: They were still a five-piece and only had one song (“Thinking”) and a cover out under their own name (both released the same day). I met them all, but spent most of my time talking to singer Chrissy Costanza before leaving, knowing that, at the very least, it would be a long while before I saw them again. The debut song was good. Good enough to get a footing, anyway, although in retrospect, you can really tell how the band has progressed. But this is the case for pretty much any new band, isn’t it?

Despite those glitches in the Matrix, Florida is mostly where sonder operates. But Florida could never come close to the feeling I feel from Grafton, or from Massachusetts in general. I have a love for the whole region. The northeast. New England. Etc. Amazingly, though, I had never really been to the seat of what makes New England, New England: Boston.

I wanted to change that last summer when I was spending a lengthy amount of time in Massachusetts on vacation (and, incidentally, feeling intimately re-connected to my home). So, being the day tripper I often am, I got a ride to the local MBTA station (our commuter rail, referred to as “The T”) and took a train to the coastal metropolis for the day. I watched my home roll by me in a blur as I explored Paramore’s self-titled album, and now, whenever I hear the positive chords of “Daydreaming,” I think of that trip. Cheerfully apt. And now, cherished.

It was one of those pleasant New England summer days, right in the dead of tourist season, so there was a lot going on. I ate, had a beer in the oldest tavern in America, visited the Holocaust memorial, and took lots of photos, as I often do. I didn’t seek much out. Instead, I let the atmosphere come to me instead – a mark of the fly-on-the-wall behavior in me that’s part nature, part journalistic nurture. My goal for that day was to get to know the place, even just a little. It was just a day, though, and I didn’t think I’d be returning for a long time.

I went back to Florida. Summer ended, but before I knew it, a family emergency had brought me back up in mid-November – the first time I was returning during fall since I was a little kid. The first shock I had was at 5:30 a.m. in the parking lot of a hotel in Delaware. It was 32 degrees outside, I had my tank top on from the previous day (because it was around 85 when we left Florida), and I was dying just to get into the car and hit the seat warmer button. Brr. I blame Florida for thinning my blood. I always blame Florida. Smooth.

See, part of the chaos in my head that Florida has nurtured is inability to cope with non-sunny weather. Even in Florida, I’m the type of person who will be in the dumps all day if I wake up and it’s raining. I’m embarrassingly sensitive to this stuff. And it’s because I’ve lived most of my life in a place that, for the most part, just shines.

So you can see potential problems about returning to Massachusetts during the tail end of fall. Which, don’t get me wrong, I was enthusiastic to see. It had been 17 years since I had seen a proper autumn, with leaves falling off of the trees and forests turning into splotches of brown and orange. We were going up toward the end of the season, so the vivid colors were less common, but some of it was still around. And just this change of pace and scenery allowed me to reconnect more with my New England nostalgia, something I desperately wanted. As of late, I feel like I’ve been floating through a perpetual identity crisis, so feeling connected to who I really am was cathartic. And there is some innate soul nourishment in New England autumns, from going to apple orchards to feeling the crisp, cool air to finding a cup of hot chocolate the most relaxing thing at the end of the day.

Rural Massachusetts under the cover of late autumn

Florida is a land of perpetual daytime and perpetual bloom. Even in December, our days are long, hot and super sunny. Now, me and my sensitive little self were heading straight into color-drabbed cold bookended by perpetually-encroaching darkness.

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of seasonal affective disorder (the “S.A.D.” acronym is just life smiling down at us), here’s the crash course: It’s a psychological thing where the shorter, darker, colder days of winter basically hit the “on” switch for temporary depression. Now, remember those bits about how Florida doesn’t prepare you for different weather and how sensitive I am?

Yeah. Connect the dots.

The first day we got to Douglas (the rustic town where we were staying, not far from Grafton) after our drive up, I fell asleep at around 10 p.m., which is a record for a recovering night owl. I collapsed straight into a deep, blunt sleep, and when I woke up at around 9:30 a.m. the next day, I barely had any energy. H-E-L-L-O, S.A.D.

This is all a little gloomy and is partly exaggerated for the sake of narrative. But, you know, if I can deal with Florida for 17 years, I can deal with some blues for the week I was there. That week, by the way, happened to criss-cross with the touring schedule of Against the Current, who would play their very first show of their latest headlining tour in no place other than Boston. I didn’t even realize the coincidence until I was already up in Massachusetts, and if I wasn’t catatonic, it probably would have excited me more.

As you know, I first met them in 2012, and here I was four years and some months later, ready to see them headline a tour in support of their first album on a label. A lot happened in those four years – again, I knew I wouldn’t be seeing them for a while after my first meeting, but it was in late 2014 when they finally came down to the sunshine state.

I brought my camera to that show and have since managed to see them at every show in Florida they’ve played – sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident. But always happily. There’s a decent amount of bands who receive repeat coverage on sonder, and generally it’s because I have a sense of admiration for those bands, but Against the Current are a little different. The combination of being there at the beginning (or nearly the beginning), having met and spoken to them enough times, genuinely enjoying their music and keeping up pace with photographing their shows, has instilled a sense of stewardship in me. And they were part of the inaugural class on sonder – sonder had existed in several different forms over the years prior to 2014, but 2014 is when it really coalesced and defined itself. At this point, having photographed them at nearly every Florida show (including a non-show – a standalone meet and greet), plus up in Boston, I feel the part of a documentarian, at least partially, and that compels me to follow them through to wherever they go. When I see the band playing to festival crowds in the U.K., or opening to 20,000 people on One OK Rock’s bill, or surrounded by thousands during a Q&A in the Philippines, I think back to that first meeting and bubble with pride.

With all this in mind, the opportunity to cover them in Boston, on opening night, was something I just didn’t want to miss.

So, on a dreary Thursday, I found myself once again on the T heading to Boston, again watching Massachusetts roll by.

Eastbound to the coast

Getting ready every day of that week was an effort. I woke up each morning in a gray catatonia, and that Thursday was no different. I let the hot water of the shower toast me because it was nice insulation against the encroaching cold outside. I slowly packed my bag because the blues were making me run at about 30 percent efficiency, and I had to zone in on every little thing I was doing to make sure I didn’t run out of energy halfway through. On the way to the Grafton T station, I got a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, which is basically the state drink of Massachusetts. I sat there, relatively calm, and learned that the train was delayed, which didn’t cause as much anxiety as I thought it would.

Almost instinctively, I reached for Paramore when it arrived and enjoyed the tunes again. But this time, it was cold, bleak, and I had a lot on my mind. The weight of the seasonal depression acted as an emotion inhibitor, stripping away the intense anxiety I typically have before a concert and rendering everything neutral. A few ups. A few downs. But I felt way more level than I normally do. And level is a bizarre state of mind for me, as my mental states usually aren’t restrained; they usually catapult wildly from one spectrum to the other without apology. And feeling level is striking considering my struggle with anxiety and that I had no idea if I would even make the last train home – something that, in previous years, I wouldn’t be able to reconcile and would have shut the whole trip down.

Much of my mental workouts earlier in the week revolved around processing all the bleakness that was swirling around. There was one particular day that I stared out at a dark, rainy Worcester through a crying hospital window and saw all the naked trees and cars sloshing through puddles. I don’t think there was a single time that week that I felt a bounty of energy – even when I drank coffee, it was more like “whatever, this is caffeine.” I’m helplessly in tune with metaphors manifesting themselves in real life – I can probably partly blame all the literature courses I’ve taken in my life, but more likely it’s about the lens of extreme emotionality I experience life through, feelings that I’ve never really been able to properly convey or dial back. So, for example, summer in New England is a time of liveliness, vividness and in my recent case, adventure. But fall is about that life and vigor petering out, settling down. I think about stuff like that religiously, and it’s probably a contributing factor to why I’m susceptible to S.A.D.

Regardless, what eventually poked through that shell of the seasonal depression that day was realizing I was photographing a band I admired on their opening night, in my home state, surrounded by my personal nativity, during an actual change of season.

Everything was different from Florida.

And that is powerful. Even with the S.A.D., I felt things that hadn’t stirred within me for a long time or just not at all. Being in my mid-20s, the fervor of the late teens and early 20s has died, and it’s easy to fall into relative normalcy and consistency. Which is fine, but sometimes you don’t experience things raw as often. On this day, everything was basically flying at me raw: I overdrank on coffee (and could actually feel it), so my bones felt electrified, and when I spend enough time outside in cool weather, it naturally energizes me. I ended up walking all the way from the center of the city to the Cambridge area because I had just downloaded Uber, had no idea how to use it, and couldn’t get it to actually call a ride. So as I walked, my mind raced, and I thought a lot about things in my life that had led up to that moment. I was taking in a part of the city I didn’t make it to last time, so it was new to me, heightening the sense of discovery. And in the back of my head, I prepared for the tone of how I would write about Against the Current for the fifth time and reflected on their youthful exuberance and open pushback against systematic norms, a message preceded by a long line of punk ethos – even if Against the Current’s musical style was glossier than your traditional punk band.

Walking through the city during autumn was different – for one, the scores of tourists were far less pronounced, and it being a Thursday afternoon, it was much quieter than my last venture. During that week, I was on a mission to find at least some vestige of colorful autumn vibrancy, and it hit me out of nowhere. I rounded a corner into a plaza, and suddenly, what I was seeking leapt out at me. No holds barred, either – rich reds, browns and yellows. Even the park grass was vivid. I took in for a few minutes because, in all likeliness, it will probably be many years before I see it again.

And I got a really nice view when crossing the Charles River into Cambridge – these views invigorate me and make me feel like just a small cog in our beautiful world, a feeling I embrace. I like insignificance. It keeps me grounded and objective and nurtures the fly-on-the-wall instinct.

Pretty much every normal circumstance I knew whenever I photographed a concert was replaced with something new, with the slight exception of the band itself. But even then, it was different, as Against the Current were touring in support of their debut LP, In Our Bones, for the first domestic, non-festival headlining tour of the record cycle. I felt a rush of life on my walk there, ironically born underneath the thick shell of temporary depression. For the record, the melancholy really tried to bring me down, but little did it know that I’m too good at discovering meaning in misery.

One thing that helped this night is the whole “addicted to travel” thing – interestingly, I’m the happiest when I’m tired and at the end of a 13-hour drive. That was, by the way, part of my reality when I first met Against the Current those years ago, and it’s why I never balk at long-distance anything. Not that an hour-long train ride is harrowing road travel, but I was pretty far from home and on my own. If something went wrong, I would have been stuck in the city overnight by myself. For the record, going for a day trip on public transportation by myself is something that, years ago, would have stirred up such violent anxiety that I wouldn’t even dare. Anxiety is one of those things that you suffer through that either gets marginally better over time or just bowls you over. More likely, both, at different times, but that’s not really here.

Like I said, it was dreary all day, and the days were short, so it was dark before it made sense to be dark. One of the luxuries of going to shows at 24 is being over 21, so to kill time between sundown and doors opening, I had a few beers. An hour later, I was there in line freezing (because I underdressed and have thin blood, i.e. the “I Blame Florida” thing), but it was then that I realized, “Hey, I’m cold, depressed and a little tired, but I’m somehow still quite happy.” The irony is that a mixed tempo like that is not what culture generally props up. People like to talk about highs and lows, but as if they’re separate, not existing in the same space. Because it’s easier to qualify. But I’m obsessed with the gray that exists between black and white, and the tendency toward exploring subtlety is what drives my passion for this very site. It made sense for me to be both melancholic and happy in that moment – in fact, it made more sense than a lot of other things that go on in my head. By this point, cognizant of what was happening (again, I’m painfully self-aware), I let the feeling steep within me because I knew it would be helpful in a weird way.

The show was a textbook example of a good time. It took place in an almost literal den of comfort, a basement under a bar where the shared body heat of everyone kept the space toasty and insulated from the brisk autumn on the ground level. When I close my eyes and remember that night, I relish in the community of music and how comfortable I felt even though I was there by myself and far from home. I knew no one there except the performers, but I had been “there” before, absorbing the atmosphere and culture that comes with club shows. This is one thing you will never feel at an arena show, even if every single person in that basement room was there with you.

Even better, it was a photographer’s dream – never before have I experienced such helpful and bright front lighting. You could see people’s faces! Amazing!

I fly-on-the-wall’d myself pretty hard, keeping quiet and getting a sense for the venue and eventually just sticking toward the side of the stage for Against the Current’s set and taking photos for the entire hour or so. That photo above, by the way, is one of the very few I have framed to capture both the band and their fans. I like to look at photos like those and scan faces, try to get in the heads of people through their expressions. There’s admiration and excitement. And it’s a reminder of when I was that kid, right up in the front row – music journalism was always a natural segway from me, to transition from being in the crowd to trying to explain why it matters. Because that’s 100 percent something I believe in: That the alternative music and community matters, and that belief is pretty much the foundation for sonder.

More to the point (an interesting choice of phrasing considering we’re thousands of words in), as I discussed in the premiere feature on the night, this was one of the finest times to see Against the Current because In Our Bones really got to breathe. There was also this interesting moment when the band broke out into a cover of “Teenagers” by My Chemical Romance and reached backwards in music history to a song off an album that defined a generation. I found myself singing along to this one more than the band’s own songs, not because I’m a massive fan of MCR or not that familiar with Against the Current’s songs, but because the song is that catchy and significant.

Anyway, as the star of the night, they played most of In Our Bones, which is good pacing for the band. I’m a perennial hipster in this regard – in all the years I’ve been watching music, I often yearn for the earlier days of bands’ careers when they get to play most of their catalog. This is because it’s so more likely they’ll explore deep cuts, and anyone that’s a well-versed fan of a band knows the deep cuts are often what give you your sense of relation to the group. For Against the Current, deep cuts mean “Fireproof” (from Gravity), any of their older covers or a song such as “Something You Need” off of Infinity.

This would be one of my favorite live concert shots if the focus wasn’t off ever so slightly. That being said, it’s still a photo I enjoy a lot. I love catching performers lost in what they’re doing, when the true enjoyment really comes out. It’s a rare example of an on-stage shot that captures both the essence of the performance and a sense of intimacy.

Infinity, for the record, is the defining moment for my own experience with Against the Current. Infinity was the product of years of waiting. When the band released “Thinking,” I gave it some coverage and waited for what felt like forever for the band to get an actual record out. Then, oddly, I didn’t even pick it up at first. When I did, it hit me like a blockbuster. Infinity is one of my favorite collection of pop-rock songs in existence – it really shows the cohesion of Against the Current’s individual members. It goes for a big, booming, almost arena-ready sound and hits it out of the park. Will Ferri’s drums are explosive. Dan Gow’s guitar work is crisp, and he has a knack for delicious, spirited hooks and leads. Chrissy is youthful and owns the poppy nature of these songs. Vocoder effects and layered secondary instruments are drizzled into these songs and give them a shot of depth. These songs reek of penultimate youth and love; in my initial review of it, I said that they would be the perfect choice for a contemporary remake of Fast Times At Ridgemont High, and I still stand behind that. The classic and timeless nostalgia of things such as summer break and young love are embedded into Chrissy’s intonation and lyrics. And the duo of Dan and her aren’t just cohesive – they positively feed and flow from each other; the two detonate together, guitar leads blasting to uppity choruses that she soars into. I listen to and cover many bands for sonder, and it’s only once in a blue moon that you find debut records cut so skillfully, even rarer that they’re instant classics. Part of the magic was also the cooks in the kitchen: Zack Odom and Kenneth Mount, who are responsible for some of the most timeless pop-punk records ever (Mayday Parade’s A Lesson In Romantics, Cartel’s Chroma, All Time Low’s Put Up Or Shut Up), were the production brains for this record. Infinity was an awakening for me, a collection of songs that lit a fire in me, something not too common in my music consumption as of late.

Some years ago, I had a Nissan Altima (my first car) that my brother and I installed a sound system in. It had an amp and a sub that really kicked, and it was around the time when Infinity first came out. I would drive around town and crank it almost to the max, relishing in the explosive tones, bass, and energy in these songs. Just five songs, but I had the album nearly on repeat. It was a pleasant getaway to peter around town taking in these songs that felt eternally vibrant.

Back to the show: Even as it was happening, that nagging feeling of woe that had been wafting inside my head for the week kept at it, regardless of stubborn pockets of resisting happiness. In what’s perhaps a desired curse, such melancholy intensifies my fly-on-the-wall instinct. Sort of like this: Oh, wow. Look at everyone enjoying themselves. That would be nice. But I know I couldn’t fully immerse myself in that feeling, so I’ll just document it.

Actually, regardless of hilariously inept mental state, I generally purposely distance myself from being in the middle of fandom because it helps sharpen my editorial eye and maintain subject/journalist separation. But I love seeing others experience fandom. Of course I enjoy concerts. But I also flirt with classic objectivity, so I try to observe more than engage. At the same time, considering the long history I have of observing Against the Current, it’s hard to not feel some sort of wistfulness, to root for them. I find this to be a fundamental paradox in music journalism, kind of in the vein of the observer effect in science: By covering a band, you naturally draw closer to them. After all, when music comes across my desk to review or cover or take photos of, something about it needs to be an experience I enjoy or, at the very least, is something I can convince myself others will enjoy. But it’s so much easier to do good music journalism when you care about what you’re covering, least of all because the closer you get, the more intimately you know the music and will be able to talk about it better.

This conundrum reflects part of the core experience of music – the fact that, at base level, it is an emotional experience, and the more you cover a particular band, the harder it is to divorce yourself from that emotion. Covering a press conference is fairly straightforward. Covering music is wading waist-deep in the emotion of the moment and trying to come out without feeling heartbroken, happy, enthused, motivated, or any of the very emotions the musicians are trying to convey. How is that a sensible process? I mean, I just spent a whole paragraph raving about the band’s debut album. How would I have reviewed that music without getting in the weeds and not getting grass shavings on my socks? I’m not saying it’s impossible or that it’s even hard to take a step back from an emotional experience with music in order to write objectively, but I think there’s room for thoughtful, impactful music journalism that is both informative and emotive.

If you haven’t realized it, the concept of internal conflict is wreaking havoc throughout this piece. Happy v. sad. Past v. present. Childhood v. adulthood. Objectivity v. emotion. But, like I said earlier, it isn’t actually stark, distinctively separate differences that define our experiences. It’s often the nuanced in-between that makes actual sense. We yearn for the distinct, so it is often hard to confront the gray area that’s actually behind most things. This is, at its core, one of the uplifting thing about music – it has this ability to override things and dunk you into environments, sort of like the memory triggers I talked about in the beginning of this piece. Theoretically, anyway. Have you ever had a really bad day, but masked the negativity by reminding yourself there’s a show you’re going to see soon? That thought is merely a root. Dig it up, and it leads to so much more. This is part of the magic of music. It’s a reverberation of some of the psychological phenomena that defines the human experience, and most of the time, this effect can be in full blast, and we don’t even realize it. Music reaches so deeply into the human experience in an animalistic way. It floods into you. Remember: I can listen to “Daydreaming” and somehow, in my mind, be transported back to that train to Boston, even though I’m physically in my room thousands of miles away. I’m sure you have a song like this. And chances are, if you listen to a song you heard a lot growing up, you’ll feel traces of a memory from your childhood. This is why it seems so difficult and nonsensical to strive after true objectivity in non-hard news music journalism, and this is also why people who make the effort to be actively negative about bands seem pretty dull.

Part of the mission of sonder has been to bring the inward reflection that has made this piece (and all of music) possible to your brains in a percolated way, to try to unravel the machinations of why bands make you feel certain ways. As far as Against the Current goes, despite writing about them half a dozen times, I still haven’t fully grasped what it means to hear them. I’m confident I can bring a piece of them to you every time I write about them, but I’m not sure if that piece is even a fraction as meaningful as what it’s like to be in the room. To be in that Boston basement where the sonic energy is floating around the room, rushing through everyone, making strangers into friends. It’s kind of like that blunt feeling you get after a good movie when the credits roll and you walk out awash in the emotion of what you just saw. It’s non-transferrable, but other people who were there get it.

Probably my best photo of the entire band all in the frame at once. Unfortunately, it’s tough to get everyone in focus when you’re dealing with long focal lengths and the wide apertures used for dark settings, but this is genuine Against the Current.

The discomforting thing about this is that writing about music is impossible. You know how the very notes and structure of instrumentals (let’s not even talk about vocals and lyrics) can make you feel something intense, something that, despite your best efforts, you just can’t relate to another human being? As in, “the tone of this guitar lead makes me remember the feeling of when I was 16 in Ohio in July falling in love” or “this keyboard riff puts me right back in downtown Orlando seeing a friend I haven’t seen in years and laughing at his joke” or whatever other combination of specific emotions you get from music that you can’t relate? Writing about music is like sticking your fingers in your ears and saying “la la la” to that; to boldly be stupid. But I try anyway because it’s so unifying, and because it means something to me, too. Again: Why fully divorce yourself from the emotion?

This story wouldn’t have been as cohesive if even one part of the situation was different – if it wasn’t Against the Current, if it wasn’t Massachusetts, if it wasn’t autumn. Which is a little weird because, on the surface, none of those things seem integral to the narrative, until you acknowledge that these things are all influenced by my emotional interpretation of them, and that this interpretation is part of the same human experience that makes music so intense. The seasonal fluctuation of New England, if you haven’t realized, is the absolute catalyst going on here, not because it has some sort of intellectual significance, but because it goes straight to the core of who I am as a person. It’s something I experienced in my youth, didn’t experience for 17 years, then was suddenly dunked back into. It sounds silly, but I was surrounded by who I am. And then the band was the topping to that because, damn it, I haven’t managed to maintain objectivity about them, and I personally care about them and their career. How couldn’t I? Has this ruined a sense of objectivity? Does this make my words here cheaper?

In March of 2015, the Nissan Altima, with its nice sound system, became a heap of twisted metal after a reckless driver pulled right out in front of me despite having a blind spot. I crawled out of the wreck with, luckily, nothing but a broken clavicle. Later that year, after I was healed up but still didn’t have another car to drive, I posted an article on sonder highlighting bands we wanted to see on Vans Warped Tour 2016. Chrissy randomly replied to it and asked if I was going to be at their upcoming Orlando show. When I responded and told her I had gotten in an accident and wasn’t sure if I could make it, she sent her well wishes and said she hoped to see me there. It was out of the blue, appreciated (during a time when my mood was in the gutter) and one of the things that cemented the bond I feel for the band.

Chances are, you have your own version of Boston or Against the Current, something that means something to you because it intertwines with your history in a meaningful way.

I did not manage to slow down very much for most of that day. The only way I made it back to South Station for the very last train back into Grafton was thanks to leaving the exact second Against the Current finished playing “Gravity” and getting into an Uber, since the app actually decided to cooperate. At that point, I got to see Boston float by at night, gleaming under the rain, and there was this tune that crept into my head – a tune I first became familiar with a few years ago, a tune that I have a deep emotional connection to. It’s a connection that I can’t explain very well, for the reasons I’ve outlined. No – it’s not Against the Current or Paramore or a band from years ago. It’s by a band named Transit (an apt name for this story).

It is “Young New England,” and it has become a part of how I filter and process my past. It’s managed to bring me closer to my home, even when I’m in Florida. It’s a folksy drinking song, but it’s not just that. A few lines repeat through the song:

Oh, Young New England.

Over and over again, Young New England.

New England, in a photo.

When I first got into this song, I played it on repeat like people often do when they find a song they like. But I didn’t get bored. I kept playing it. I was driving home once from a show in West Palm Beach. It was the dead of night, and I was taking the roads through the middle of the state, so I was basically alone on the roads, creeping through Florida’s desolate, sad sugar roadways. And I must have played “Young New England” 10 or 15 times in a row. I have heard those notes so many times, and over time, I attached part of myself to them, part of my youth and love of New England. So now, those feelings are inseparable. Go listen to it. You won’t feel those feelings. You might not even like it. And, that’s part of the struggle of what I do on sonder. I listen to the song when I want to feel at home. It’s a cradle. But you probably won’t get that.

I was exhausted by the time I got back home, but unlike earlier in the week, I had re-gained some motivation and mojo. I was wiped out, but it was underscored by being fueled by doing what I love to do. It helped that I got some of my best photos of the band that night.

I thought hard about how I wanted to end this piece, but there are so many moving parts and tangential discussions that it seems impossible to tie it up. And more to the point, a wishy-washy, up-beat “and here’s why all this matters!” ending would be a disservice to the grayness clouding most of this piece. In a short word, the psychology of nostalgia and memory is fascinating to me, and being as awkwardly self-aware as I am fueled this. This piece began as impulses in my mind maybe three months after the show, but it took me a while to get it down on the page and flesh it out. Even then, though, I had the feeling that that night in Boston had been important to me on a deeper level. Hell, I might have even known that the night of, and it just took a while to uncover it.

If there really is a bigger picture here, it has to do with how and why sonder operates the way it does. After all, Against the Current, the other bands we cover, our Orlando HQ, our home town – these are insignificant details to you, but they’re part of our identity. The theory behind sonder wouldn’t change if you swapped these elements out, but the character would. And that’s, of course, because emotional connection to everyday things affects everything. And I just hope that, even if you don’t identify with mine, you have your own and you never let anyone belittle that or take it away.

Because the things that define you aren’t just things out there in the world – they’re your things, pieces of the world that you turn into a home.

---

Article, photos, and excessive self-reflection by sonder editor Andrew Friedgen. Like this? Sonder is an independent music, travel and photography publication at sonderlife.com. Give us a follow here or at our Twitter, Instagram or Facebook if you like this!

#against the current #chrissy costanza #dan gow #will ferri #travel #features #novel #long reads

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thefabulousfulcrum · 7 years

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This is really important, and it's not being said enough. Please pass it around.

Thoughts on The Vegas Shooting (or Why Men Keep Doing This)

article via Medium

Charlie Hoehn

I’ll never forget April 20th, 1999.

I was 12 years old, sitting in art class in middle school. We were playing with clay and making sculptures.

Suddenly, our principal came on over the PA. Her voice trembled.

“I have an important announcement to make. All teachers and students need to hear this. I will wait 60 seconds for everyone to be completely silent.”

The next minute was eerie. My friends and I exchanged confused looks, and nervously laughed. Our teacher held her finger to her lips. Silence.

The principal’s voice came back onto the PA:

“There is a shooting at Columbine high school. All students are to go home immediately.”

Columbine was 15 minutes away from us.

I remember taking the bus home, and walking into my house. My mom turned on the news. I recognized that fence. We’ve driven by that fence.

My mom knew the teacher. Dave Sanders. She’d substituted with him at Columbine.

In the last 18 years, we Americans have experienced too many of these shootings. And I want to share a few of my thoughts on why I think they keep happening.

By the way, this isn’t a political post about guns, or the media. It’s a post about mental health.

Over the past few years, I’ve found myself in the mental health space. And I’ve learned a lot about mental illness. Particularly that men in the United States REALLY struggle in this realm, and have very little support.

I believe mental illness is the single greatest health crisis we will face in our lifetimes. Mental illness affects every single person on the planet, whether we are personally ill or not.

If we have a better understanding of what causes mental illness, we don’t have to be so afraid. We can take better care of each other, and prevent these tragedies from happening.

Sadly, most Americans still fail to address mental illness as a massive problem. It’s still taboo, still stigmatized.

I was watching Jimmy Kimmel’s impassioned, raw speech last night about the Vegas shootings. Like Jimmy, I felt sick and heartbroken by the tragedy. But something he said stood out to me:

“There’s probably no way to ever know why a human being could do something like this to other human beings.”

Sadly, researchers know exactly why human beings do things like this.

There are clear reasons. And they are preventable.

Why mass shootings keep happening.

It’s tempting to call these shooters “psychopaths” and “pure evil,” or to blame the media or guns, but that absolves us of looking deeply at what each of us — as individuals, family members, friends, and community members — could all be getting wrong.

Now, I’m not a psychiatrist. And I don’t know very much about the Vegas shooter. I’m just a guy who studies mental health.

Again, this is not a political post about guns, for the same reason it’s not a political post about weaponized cars. I’m not as interested in the tool as I am in what causes a person to use it so destructively.

Nor is this a post in defense of the shooter. What he did was beyond horrific. He is not excused from this by any stretch (though I truly feel sympathy for the shooter’s brother, who seemed to be totally caught off guard by this behavior, and now he has to deal with the aftermath for the rest of his life).

The goal of this post is simply to shine a light on the root causes of men committing mass shootings.

1- Men in the United States are chronically lonely.

Boys in the United States — just like all human beings — need touch, caring, warmth, empathy, and close relationships. But as we grow up, most of us lose those essential components of our humanity.

What’s worse: we have no idea how to ask for those things, or admit we need them, because we’re afraid it will make us look weak.

As a man, you might be thinking, “Not me, I’ve got drinking buddies. I play poker with the guys. I’ve got friends.”

But do you have confidants? Do you have male friends who you can actually be vulnerable with? Do you have friends whom you can confide in, be 100% yourself around, that you can hug without saying “No homo,” without feeling tense or uncomfortable while you’re doing it?

For most men, the answer is “no.” So, we spend our time posturing instead.

From an early age, we have an unhealthy ideal of masculinity that we try to live up to. Part of that ideal tells us that Real men do everything on their own. Real men don’t cry. Real men express anger through violence.

The byproduct is isolation. Most men spend the majority of their adult lives without deeper friendships, or any real sense of community. Not to mention a complete inability to release anger or sadness in a healthy way.

There is a fantastic documentary called The Mask You Live In, which explains how boys in our society are ultimately shaped into mentally unstable adults. My friend Ryan recommended this film to me, after confiding that he cried throughout the entire thing. I cried, as well.

Simon Sinek echoed similar insights on Glenn Beck’s show:

“We’re seeing a rise of loneliness and isolation. No one kills themselves when they’re hungry; we kill ourselves when we’re lonely. And we act out, as well.

In the 1960’s, there was one school shooting.

In the 1980’s, there were 27.

In the 1990’s, there were 58.

In the past decade, there have been over 120.

It has nothing to do with guns, it has to do with people feeling lonely.

How do we combat the loneliness that kids are feeling? All of them attacked people in their own community, and all of them attack people they blamed for their own loneliness.”

This loneliness compounds as men grow older.

Without deeper friendships or a strong sense of community, the isolation is soul-deadening and maddening. You are alone.

Any slight from someone you care about can feel emotionally traumatizing. After enough rejections and feeling like an outcast, you begin to believe that people are just cruel and not worth the effort. You perceive people as threats.

Before we ask, “How could he do such a thing?” we have to understand how he felt on a daily basis, and how those feelings grew over the years.

2- Men in the United States are deprived of play opportunities.

You might be offended by this suggestion.

How could this guy talk about play after a shooting?! Play is for kids!

Wrong.

Homo sapiens play more than any other species. It’s impossible to prevent a human from playing. We play shortly after we are born, and the healthiest (and least stressed) humans tend to play for their entire lives.

Play may be God’s greatest gift to mankind. It’s how we form friendships, and learn skills, and master difficult things that help us survive. Play is a release valve for stress, and an outlet for creativity. Play brings us music, comedy, dance, and everything we value.

The irony is that loneliness would not be a problem if we all got ample time to play. Not only would we have deeper friendships, we’d also have better relationships with ourselves. Play allows us to enjoy our own company. If you truly know how to play, you are rarely alone.

But that is not the state of affairs in the United States. We are lonely because we don’t play, and we don’t play because we are alone.

There is a very strong correlation with play deprivation and mental illness.

When you deprive mammals of play, it leads to chronic depression. When you deprive a human child of play, their mental and emotional health deteriorate. Play suppression has enormous health consequences.

“But the Vegas shooter loved to gamble! He went on cruises!”

That’s not the type of play I’m talking about.

To better understand this dynamic, we need to look at the background of another mass shooter.

In 1966, Charles Whitman shot his wife and mother. Then, he climbed up the tower at the University of Texas in Austin, and shot 46 people. In total, he murdered 16 people. At the time, this was the biggest mass shooting in United States history.

Dr. Stuart Brown and his team of researchers were commissioned to find out what “The Texas Sniper” had in common with other mass murderers.

They found the key when they looked at their childhoods.

Brown recalls:

“None of them engaged in healthy rough-and-tumble play. The linkages that lead to Charles Whitman producing this crime was an unbelievable suppression of play behavior throughout his life by a very overbearing, very disturbed father.”

In other words: Healthy and joyful play must be had in order to thrive. Play is how we bond, and form our deepest connections with other human beings.

“It’s 10 o’clock. Do you know where your kids are?”

Ever since that famous ad aired, parents have shamed each other into watching their kids like a hawk.

If you let your kid walk up the street alone, you’ll either get a call from another parent, or the cops will pick them up. Our kids are stripped of their right to experience life on their own terms.

In an effort to improve our kids’ test scores and beef up their future resumes, we’ve stripped away nearly all of their free play opportunities. Recess has been sacrificed in the name of Scantrons, and pills are prescribed to the kids whose bodies and minds cry out for play.

The result: A generation of the most anxious, depressed, and suicidal American children on record.

This is all in alignment with Dr. Peter Gray’s research, who studied the rise of mental illness and the decline in play:

“Over the past half century, in the United States and other developed nations, children’s free play with other children has declined sharply. Over the same period, anxiety, depression, suicide, feelings of helplessness, and narcissism have increased sharply in children, adolescents, and young adults… The decline in play has contributed to the rise in the psychopathology of young people.

This is why I believe mental illness is the biggest health crisis of our lifetimes. Because those kids will grow up into isolated adults who don’t know how to play, or seek out their friends when they are lonely.

They are alone.

In the most memorable chapter of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, the author describes the research of James Gilligan, a young psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School in the 1970s.

Gilligan was invited to make sense of the Massachusetts’s prisons and mental hospitals, where he interviewed murderous inmates. He included in his notebook this heartbreaking observation:

“They would all say that they themselves had died before they started killing other people… They felt dead inside. They had no capacity for feelings. No emotional feelings. Or even physical feelings.

Universal among the violent criminals was the fact that they were keeping a secret. A central secret. And that secret was that they felt ashamed— deeply ashamed, chronically ashamed, acutely ashamed.

I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed or humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed.”

ALL OF US will face difficult times in our lives where we will experience shame, humiliation, disrespect, and ridicule.

Do you know what gets us through those hard times?

Do you know what the difference is between you and a killer?

Friendship: Love and support from the people you played with.

I often think of the final line of Stand by Me:

“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12… Jesus, does anyone?”

I don’t know much about the Vegas shooter. Maybe he was a psychopath.

But I’m guessing he wasn’t.

Instead, I am betting that these factors about him were likely true:

He felt deeply lonely. He had no significant friendships to rely on, and very few quality people he could confide in.

He experienced play deprivation. He didn’t have joyful fun with himself, or with others.

He carried with him a deep sense of shame. About what, I have no idea.

Even though we’re in the safest period in the history of civilization, these shootings will keep happening in America. They happen every single day. Guns are a part of the problem, and so is the media. But there is a bigger problem.

We are a culture that continually neglects the mental health of our boys, and our men.

The good news is that you, as an individual, can make a difference. Reach out to someone who you think could be lonely, and go do something fun together. Confide in each other. Be a safe and supportive person to be around.

If you’ve noticed their personality has drastically changed, invite them out for several hours. Be there for them. You could save their life.

And it wouldn’t hurt to have these books in your library, either:

1- Mental Health Emergencies

2- Play

3- Fearvana

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things2mustdo · 5 years

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Poor Bret Easton Ellis. For someone I imagine to be rather fastidious – years ago, a friend of mine visited his New York apartment, where he was a little surprised to be told not to touch any of its owner’s CDs – this can hardly be the easiest of Monday mornings. For one thing, Virgin Atlantic has lost his luggage. Ahead of my arrival at his pristine London hotel, he had to dash out to buy deodorant; his black tracksuit bottoms are faintly marked with a stain that may (or may not) be airline toothpaste. For another, I have an absolutely stinking cold. In the bar where we’re to talk – it’s called the Punch Room, which is appropriate, given the territory covered by his new book – he sits down, not at my table, but at the one next to it, which makes us both laugh. Is he really going to stay all the way over there? “Well,” he says, faux sheepish. “I’m so susceptible to these things, and I am on a book tour.” Reluctantly, he inches towards me.

Still, he is such a good sport. His manner is warm, and his face – pinker and heavier now than at the height of his literary fame, and topped with hair that is silver – bears a near-permanent smile. He talks and talks; he doesn’t watch his words; he is frequently very funny and sometimes a touch scabrous. All of which makes me wonder about the way he is treated both by some journalists and on social media. In the days before our meeting, I read a review of his new book that was so gratuitously spiteful, it fairly took the breath away. I also read an interview on the New Yorker website, one that had done brisk business on Twitter, causing indignation, outrage and glee wherever it appeared. People were saying that it dispatched the supposedly beyond-the-pale Ellis satisfyingly, and with utmost appropriateness. But it seemed to me to be mostly an exercise in baiting, interruption, disingenuousness and grandstanding on the part of its writer.

Ellis’s new book is his first for almost a decade, and his first work of nonfiction. It is called White, and is best described as a provocation, though it’s much more than that if you take the trouble to read it. Yes, there’s lots of goading about why he hates snowflakey millennials (“Generation Wuss”, as he has dubbed them). It attacks what he regards as the narcissism of the young, roundly dismisses the rush to offence and the cult of victimisation, and chases down the self-dramatising of those liberal Americans who must be passed the smelling salts at the mere mention of Donald Trump. Although he thinks the #MeToo movement had real meaning when it began, Ellis dislikes the way it has since extended to include, most recently, such supposed crimes as what some might call the overfriendliness of the former US vice-president Joe Biden. He is largely dismissive of identity politics, and despises the way that people can now be “cancelled” (erased from public life) over some relatively small but dumb thing they may have said in the past. Like I said, the book is a provocation – and it’s up to you, the reader, to choose to what degree you are prepared to allow yourself to be riled.

The first year of fame is always fun, then you spend the rest of your life trying not to be humiliated

But the essays in White also contain some pretty nifty film criticism; reading it, I felt for the first time in ages interested in Richard Gere again (and even, momentarily, in Charlie Sheen). There are interesting sections on Joan Didion and David Foster Wallace, and on what our cultural lives were like – more precious? More intensely felt? – before the internet. Ellis is good on his 1991 novel, American Psycho, and its strange prescience (we’ll come back to this). Above all, there are some neat flashes of memoir: in particular, an account of his 70s childhood in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, where he grew up the son of a wealthy property developer, and the friend of kids whose parents were directors and movie stars. As he notes, the world then was built for adults rather than children – something he experienced as freedom, and on which he looks back with gratitude. And here, perhaps, he places his finger firmly on one of the primary causes at the heart of the war of words that rages between his generation and that of his boyfriend of 10 years, the musician Todd Michael Schultz, who is 22 years his junior (yes, he lives with a millennial). What it comes down to is a question of timing, and of upbringing.

“I thought it was rather exciting,” he says, of a childhood that enabled him to see the films he wanted to see, and to read the books he wanted to read, unbridled by anxiety on the part of his carers (thanks to this, he developed as a teenager a passion for the films of Brian de Palma, the director of Carrie, Scarface and The Untouchables).

“This is not a blanket statement, but…” He guffaws, knowing full well that it absolutely is a blanket statement. “What I’ve noticed is a kind of helplessness in millennials. I didn’t realise this until lately, but I was on my own. My parents were narcissistic baby boomers, more interested in themselves than us [they would later divorce]. Not that they didn’t love us, but they were very wrapped up in their own lives.

“I do remember floating on my own. I had to grow up on my own. I had to figure things out for myself. I had some help. I’m not saying that I didn’t. But certainly, there wasn’t the overprotective bubble that so many of my friends raised their children in. Growing up, I didn’t know a single person on medication. None. On my boyfriend’s side of the aisle, though, there wasn’t anyone who wasn’t on something, including him. Growing up, I didn’t know anyone who wanted to victimised either; we wanted to be affected by stuff.” He emits a hammy sigh. “I don’t care if I sound old any more. I haven’t changed at all. I was the old man at 15.” He then launches into a brief and somewhat practised riff about the emotional support animals that people are now allowed to take on planes, should a medical professional have decreed such a creature beneficial to their mental health: “I can’t go anywhere without my chihuahua! Are you kidding me?”

White by Bret Easton Ellis review – sound, fury and insignificance

It is this mollycoddling, he believes, that accounts, in part, for what he regards as the total inability of his boyfriend’s generation to understand not only that others may have a different viewpoint to their own, but that it is entirely acceptable for them to do so. “It has disabled him in a lot of ways,” he says, of Schultz. White contains more than one account of his boyfriend’s liberal meltdowns in the face of Trump and his supporters. So how are things currently at their West Hollywood homestead? How did Schultz respond to the recent publication of the Mueller report? “He was very quiet for 24 hours,” says Ellis, not without satisfaction. “For two and a half years he had been praying for it: Mueller is going to save us. Then it came out, and it was: Mueller is a stooge. People have gotten so obsessed and so angry with Trump – you could say that they have been Trumped – and I have warned him about this. I have told him: you need cunning, you need a plan, you need to get someone good [as a candidate] and then you can get him out of there. But just screaming about the resistance and shouting that Russia is to blame for everything isn’t going to work.”

This makes me wonder: what’s the nature of their bond? (The two of them met at a dinner party.) “Mysterious!” whispers Ellis, loudly. Well, does Todd look to him for guidance? “Yes, he does. But I don’t know why it has lasted for 10 years. It is an intense friendship.” Does Todd make him laugh? “All the time, and I make him laugh, too. Also, what I’m talking about in the book takes up only about 10% of our time, though…” He can’t help himself. “Actually, he has become really anti-media, and against the Democratic party, too. He is a socialist, and he does believe in ‘tear it all the fuck down’, and I don’t believe that can ever happen in America. I think it’s a centrist country.” To be clear, however, Ellis also regards Trump as an “idiot” and “grotesque”. He did not vote for him, and thus is bewildered – or, at any rate, irritated – to be repeatedly described as an apologist for him. “Molly Jong-Fast, the daughter of Erica Jong, wrote this piece in the Daily Beast where she asked: How did he [Ellis] turn into this Maga cap-wearing ultra-conservative? These people have been raised to think their reactions to things are completely correct and that the other side is not only totally wrong but also therefore immoral, sexist, racist. All my book argues is: let’s have a conversation. But of course it has already been totalled in America. My ability to trigger millennials is insane.”

I have the impression that, unlike most writers, Ellis genuinely doesn’t care what people say in their reviews. On the page, he might sound pugnacious, even thin-skinned. But in person, he is cheerily blithe. Then again, for him it was ever thus. As he writes in White, to have a long-term career as a writer, it’s possible that you need to be hated as well as loved. When his first novel, Less Than Zero, made him famous at the age of just 21 – he was still a student at Bennington College when he completed this famously affectless account of the lives of a group of rich LA teenagers – it received as many bad reviews as good ones. “Simon & Schuster were taken to task for publishing the journals of a 21-year-old drug addict,” he says. “I remember newspaper op-eds about it, and it has been like that ever since. It’s just part of what my brand is.”

His third novel, American Psycho, starring the serial killer, investment banker and (yes!) Donald Trump worshipper, Patrick Bateman (later made into a faithful film starring Christian Bale and, more recently, a musical), was rejected by his publisher shortly before it was about to appear – when the decision was taken in November, 1990, its cover was already designed – after some at Simon & Schuster found themselves discomfited by what they saw as its misogynistic violence. In the end, Random House published it. Ellis sees the book now as something of a canary in the coal mine – and it’s hard not to disagree with him in a world where censorship, seen and unseen, is undoubtedly on the rise.

“That book wouldn’t be published now,” he says. “I mean, no one wanted to publish it then. Very few people came forward. I was just lucky. But what’s interesting is that I didn’t know until I was putting White together just how haunted I’d been by American Psycho. I can’t get away from Patrick Bateman. I mean, it was prescient, and not only because of Trump.” (Trump is mentioned 40 times in the novel, thanks to Bateman’s obsession with him; as Ellis writes in White, in the late 80s, Trump was, to some, an inspirational figure – and maybe this was why he felt more prepared than some on the left when he was elected president: “I once had known so many people who liked him.”)

At the time of American Psycho’s publication, he says, people conflated the crimes of Bateman with the attitudes of his creator – if Bateman was a woman-hater, then surely Ellis was, too – just as they’re now convinced that he supports Trump simply because he has had the temerity to criticise those who are opposed to the president. Thanks to this, he received death threats. Perhaps this is why it took him a while to admit that there were indeed things he and his most famous character had in common. The novel was born of the dislocation Ellis felt as he was writing it: if Bateman was living a double life, then so was he. In 1987, having moved to New York, he was still coming to terms with his sudden, glossy fame. It seemed to him that there were then two Brets: the party boy whose image appeared in newspapers and magazines alongside actors such as Robert Downey Jr and fellow members of the newly minted literary Brat Pack such as Jay McInerney (sometimes, Ellis barely knew he’d attended whichever opening was being reported), and the one whose anxiety and self-doubt were spiralling out of control, and who treated these conditions with a liberal use of cocaine and benzodiazepines.

Did fame screw him up? “A little bit, but it wasn’t something I was chasing, and it didn’t mean anything to me. The first year – ’85 to ’86 – it was fun. The first year of fame is always fun, then you spend the rest of your life trying not to be humiliated. People are suspicious of you for ever.” The Brat Pack was, he says, entirely a media construct. “I was never friends with Tama Janowitz[another of its members]. I barely knew her. There are these pictures of me and Jay with her that are reprinted all the time – and yet, those are the only three, and they were all taken at the same party. I wasn’t even hanging out with Jay that much. I got to know him much better after the Brat Pack thing went away.”

There is, he agrees, something almost inevitably disappointing about the career of a writer, particularly one who enjoys early success (at Bennington, he also knew Donna Tartt and Jonathan Lethem). “People would be shocked by how few books most writers sell. The writing career is not at all long.” Does this make him feel mournful? “No. I’ve never won a prize, there are advances I still haven’t made up: two of my books that were bestsellers still haven’t made their advances yet. My audience is… niche. But I’ve written the books I wanted to write, and I’m happy with them.”

These days, he spends his time writing film scripts and working on his podcast, which has a small but devoted audience of subscribers. Will he ever write another novel? “I can never say never. But the notion right now of using the novel as a form of artistic communication… I really don’t have that kind of story, or if I do, I want to tell them in movies or TV.” Does he believe it’s over for the novel generally? Though he agrees that novels are not such a big deal as they were when he was young, he still loves reading them. “I liked The Girls [Emma Cline’s 2016 novel about the Manson cult]. It had a consciousness, and I’m looking for that. But… The Woman at the Window [a bestselling thriller by AJ Finn]. Something like that is a style-free zone, and I can’t read it. The Girl on the Train [Paula Hawkins’s thriller]. That was a terrible book.” He slaps his thighs, delightedly. The internet, and the choice and speed it lends us, has led, he believes, to a reduction in what he calls “ardency” when it comes to books, films and TV. People don’t get passionate – we tend not to make a fetish of art – the way he did as a young man.

Is he happy? “I’m… mellow. Are you ever really happy? No. But I’m not miserable. There’s no point. I’m getting older. You realise: why am I so uptight about things? Why do I care? Everything matters a lot less. I was here in London in 2010, and then I was still in my absurd midlife crisis. I think there’s this notion that you’re being supplanted by younger men; you’re being aged out of the biological imperative that is the world. It happens to everyone, but it happens to women and gay men much earlier. You realise: oh, I’m not being looked at, and this person’s not interested in me, and I’m going to try and hold on to my youth, and colour my hair, and get a sports car. And then you realise: this is misery, and you think, fuck it, and you relax, and that’s freedom. The burdens of sex and having to be attractive and stay in shape are gone. It’s the pose. The pose is gone.”

He laughs loudly. “It gets to the point where even the notion of possible friskiness is oppressive.” What he says next is too filthy to print, but it makes me laugh, too – the mind that brought us what David Foster Wallace called Nieman Marcus nihilism (Patrick Bateman and his ultra-designer life, all labels and muscles) thinking only of elasticated waistbands, and sleep.

• White by Bret Easton Ellis is published by Picador (£16.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99

#bret easton ellis #essays #american psycho #books #culture

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abbythoughts · 4 years

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I’m tired of being your daughter.

I’m tired of living under your control. Home? It’s never been a home. More like a house where people come and go but haven’t you realised how nobody is happy under this roof?

I feel mentally drained and there are a lot of things in my life that have developed because of who you are as a person, and how that has affected my growth as an adult. I’ve sought professional help but do not have the financial resources to continue seeking therapy.

When Luke mentioned that he had anxiety issues and you shrug it off? The truth of the matter is I too have anxiety issues and really, it’s no surprise there considering someone at home has it and is refuse to treat it thus implicating it onto others in the environment. I have a legit personality disorder because of my environment and it really is not healthy to continue living in this environment. Here are some issues that I’ve faced that has greatly affected me and my living in this place.

1. You don’t respect me: My Career It’s really not funny, nor is it a joke when I say that business is not good this season. And you just comment, “Ya that’s why I tell you go get a REAL job“ or like when I don’t eat dinner because I work “YA LA if you get a REAL job I won’t have all these problems”

A REAL JOB. You don’t respect my career choice. Respecting doesn’t mean you have to accept it, but respecting it means you DO NOT MAKE such comments, neither do you need to constantly give advice on what I should and should not do. I REALLY DO NOT NEED IT. You are unable to show empathy and you wonder why I don’t empathise with you.

Just because I’m not the ideal daughter that get good grades, got a good job after uni blah blah blah. I know you talk shit about me to others, and I really don’t need that kind of toxicity in my life

2. You don’t respect me: My life choices & boundaries

By not respecting my life choices, what I choose to do in life, what I want to do in my life, my space and my choices including my religion and relationship choices - you are not allowing me to be who I want to be.

It is extremely distressing, once again same thing. Respecting doesn’t mean you have to accept it, but respecting means you do not make unnecessary comments, or your unnecessary behaviour and way you respond to how I spend my time or who I spend it with it’s really not need and it’s beyond rude. I’ve only gotten mean, and in your words “disrespectful” because I am only trying to protect myself and my mental state. I also believe that if I don’t feel respected, I shouldn’t give respect. It is so degrading to live in this environment and everyone around me e.g my friends can actually sense, see and have witnessed the change in my mental state ever since I’ve moved back home from Uni.

I think I’ll never forget the night where I was ironing my graduation gown and I burned myself and you scolded me, and said I cry until very poor thing but i brought it on to myself? Yes, so what? You didn’t have to point it out to me. Thanks to your scolding, that night I actually felt like COMMITTING SUICIDE. I actually felt like DYING BECAUSE my life is so shitty and I really don’t and didn’t need the negativity that you constantly perceive onto others.

3. You don’t respect me: My room but it’s YOUR HOUSE

You constantly barge in and honestly, I was very very very disturbed when you just open the room door when I’m changing thus I put the sign on the door. But yet, you did it again when you wanted to wake me up and ask me to join you for lunch.

I’m really not interested to join you guys for lunch when I’m asleep. There is a reason why I am still asleep and it is not for you to decide it by opening the door and waking me up just because you want to eat lunch with me. That’s not caring for me, that’s not “I wake you up cause tot u want to join us for lunch“. That’s what you think but that’s the truth of the matter. What you think is not the best but you always think that you are right, “I only concerned for you what”

That right there is a narcissistic thought. If you were really concerned about me, and you respected me, you would not have disturbed me while I’m sleeping, you would not have freely open the door as and when you like just because this is your house.

On top of that, you don’t wake luke up for lunch when he’s sleeping cause you’re afraid he will scold you. But how come you can do it to me? Then when I fight back or am unhappy, i get shouted at but NEVER have I ever seen you shouting at luke when you accidentally wake him or you wake him. You will rapidly apologise like mad. So why is there this difference in treatment here

4. You don’t respect me: I’m not your friend or your husband or a third parent, I’m your child

Don’t dump your emotional shit on me from your unstable relationship with dad. That is not my issue to solve and I hate how you make it mine by constantly telling it to me or in your words “ranting” to me.

In fact, this has been an issue ongoing for so long and you do not understand how much unnecessary stress you are putting on me. Yes you need someone to support you and stuff but that person is NOT ME. In fact, while I was still attending church, I had to do so much healing in this aspect because of you and daddy’s marriage. If you really wanted to, you would have gone to your pastor and solved it by attending marriage counselling or whatever. But because you refuse to, or have yet to or for whatever reasons, it really is putting unnecessary burden and stresses on me that really impact my mental health.

I’m not interested in listening to your stuff because once again, you don’t respect me, and you don’t listen to my stuff WITHOUT giving me unsolicited advice that I do not need.

5. Expectations: at home

You expect this that and this and that. What do I mean? Really simple put in some examples, Cleaning the house:

Even when we clean, you will reclean because it’s not good enough. Then you complain we don’t help you

Every time we attempt as something, it’s never “good enough“ by your standards, you think it’s not done properly and it’s honestly really freaking tiring. We try to help, but you just put it down. So why would anyone want to help if even if we help all we get is shit in return?

You always have something to say, and it’s nothing that it’s positive or appreciative. And then you say nobody appreciates you at home? Because in all of our attempts to try to help or be better, neither have you ever appreciated a single attempt of ours and that’s why.

6. Narcissistic Parenting: and it has affected my growth going into adulthood

Below are some excerpts from great articles I’ve read over the years:

“It’s clear that there are hundreds of thousands of people around the world who were raised by at least one narcissist, and it wreaked havoc on their self-esteem, their feelings of well-being and safety, and their confidence and courage. Being raised by a narcissist gives rise to a belief throughout our lives that we are just not “good enough” despite everything we try and bending over backwards to please others.

And it damages your boundaries, which are the invisible barriers between you and your outside systems that regulate the flow of information and input between you and these systems. These damaged boundaries thwart your ability to communicate authentically and powerfully, and taint your own self-concept, which in turn damages your relationships and your capability to thrive personally and professionally in the world. Most adult children of narcissists never get the help they need to recover and heal, because they have no idea that what they’ve experienced as children is unhealthy and destructive.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathycaprino/2016/07/09/how-being-raised-by-a-narcissist-damages-your-life-and-self-esteem/#754c9dd92c67

Engulfing Narcissists — these are parents who see their children as extensions of themselves. In other words, engulfing narcissistic parents become obsessively involved in your life to an extreme extent. They don’t respect your boundaries or acknowledge you as a separate person. (https://lonerwolf.com/narcissistic-mother-father/)

Manipulation:

Guilt trip: “I’ve done everything for you and you’re so ungrateful.”

Blaming: “It’s your fault that I’m not happy.”

Negative comparison: “Why can’t you be as good as your brother?”

Love is given as a conditional reward, rather than the natural expression of healthy parenting.

Dr. Christiane Northrup, the author of Dodging Energy Vampires, describes what can happen when you have a long-term relationship with a narcissist. Eventually, it emotionally drains you to the point that it can lead to other issues, even those affecting your health.

“The same is true for you. If you are in a relationship with an energy vampire, you may be able to withstand the energy drain for a while, but eventually the relationship takes its toll. And, I’m not just talking about feeling a little emotional or drained. There can be serious health consequences when you are in an unbalanced relationship with an energy vampire. In my decades on the front lines of women’s health, I’ve seen people suffering from adrenal fatigue, chronic Lyme disease, irritable bowel syndrome, thyroid disorders, an inability to lose weight, diabetes, breast cancer, autoimmune disorders and so-called mystery illnesses.”

In fact, I have read countless of such articles and sadly, I relate to them so much it’s unbelievable. I am always SO EMOTIONALLY DRAINED at home, even tho Home is supposed to be a comforting place.

I have low self-esteem, and even though I’ve had many success in my life, I never feel good enough. My friends always ask me why because they all think that really, i’m not doing terribly. I’m also deeply insecure, overly-sensitive and unable to make decisions - all symptoms of a child of a narcissistic.

True love:

Is loving someone without wanting something back. Wanting the best for the person yet being able to respect the person and their boundaries.

I felt like I was brought up to support you in your old age or to help you perceive an image of some sorts. And that’s fine but when it feels like that’s my only purpose in life, get a good job and money to give to them, it really feels depressing. Life itself feels depressing.

For me:

I am a separate being from you. You don’t get to have a say in how I live as an adult even as I slowly transit into adulthood. Your life is not my life, I am not responsible for your actions your thoughts and your decisions or the way you want to live your life. I am responsible for my own actions and decisions and way of life.

I cannot change you but I can focus on myself and focusing on myself also includes cutting toxicity out of my life which includes trying to block toxic people out of my life.

Moving out:

You think I want to move out just because it’s cool? No. It’s because going no contact and moving out is the only way I can recover. It’s the only way I can be me and who i really am without a negative impact in my life.

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