Joking (?) aside, despite that this young woman can't be expected to appreciate the life-experience behind why I took her unsavory feelings seriously, without letting my heart bleed openly for her, I did so because it's apparent to me that she's someone with more "stuff" in her than most people are born with. All the things that she has ostensibly going for her must be conflicting with the things that really go on inside her, and which she has yet to grasp and grapple with. It had been for similar reasons that, though always having been musically-inclined, I got into making music of my own, on my own ("by me"). There had had to be some way to break and put reins on the herd of wild horses that I'd inherited – or the worst would be in store for me. It had, at the outset, been a case of being overwhelmed with what I'd been handed to overcome.
As time went on, and my songwriting grew more refined and I was able to give musical ideas form, the process of overcoming was well underway. Then it came time to stop music-making altogether. At that point, I had to consider it an obvious and irrevocable decision – not unlike one is faced with the "decision" to quit doing heroin or beating one's head against a brick wall. Fifteen years after that, however, Garageband entered my life, and something "clicked" in my head, signaling that it were okay for me to make music again. At that point, it was a matter of re-building my musicianship and my songwriting from the ground-up, starting with rudimentary forms and ideas. Gradually, over the next seven years, I worked and worked at it, going in directions which I could never have foreseen, as I let myself be led wherever the ideas might want to go. I decided to take a break from music-making, since it had turned into an habituation, rather than a process of discovery, if not also a drive to maintain an average of an album-a-month. I knew that I had to wait for music to seem necessary for me again.
Since one of my motivations for making music is to make stuff that I would like to listen to, I did just that, for months. During this time, I looked back on the experiences and the ways of thinking which had gone into the music, and realized that, this time around, music-making had assumed the purpose of my becoming, rather than overcoming, something. That, of course, entailed un-becoming that which was most unbecoming, at least to myself. It was a matter of psychic metamorphosis; of trying to become something more becoming of me. There is stuff that just gets in the way of what a person really is, of how he or she wants to be but doesn't know how to articulate or put into effect. This stuff comes from other people, from one's upbringing, from society at large, from circumstances. In its original context, it has to be endured or accommodated, but it leaves its residue on one's soul. If that context might persist for too long, it causes derangement of some sort. Most people deal with that derangement by taking it out on or smearing others. Some people have to resort to being prolific recluses in order nto avoid being the sociopathic asshole that most people settle for being in such cases.
Thanks to music-making, I can no longer relate to a lot of things, and a lot of people, as I had used to when I'd been involved with them. Most recently, I can't stand the idea of drinking alcohol, except perhaps wine-with-dinner among convivial company. This isn't preaching about sobriety, nor adopting some moral high ground otherwise, it's just that the person I'm becoming can't accommodate what alcohol entails, anymore. The set ("album") of songs that I've just completed seems to have altered my neuro-physiological constitution, as well. After I'd completed the final song, I fried a hard drive containing all the movies and music that I'd accumulated over the past 15 years or so, dropped and broke an expensive (for me) camera (though it still works fine), and had other accidents so unlikely for such a careful-with-stuff person as I, over the course of a couple days. Some asshole I'd known in New York once made a good point that, after he'd complete a painting, aspects of his personal life would fall apart or change drastically and suddenly, because the psychic energy put into the artwork was "changing the order of things." I've come to take this almost for granted. For me, it seems that, the better the work, the stronger its resonant effect, whether or not anyone else has heard the music.
In light of the effects that the music I've made within the past decade's time had had upon me, it seems even more absurd to me that people whom I'd known 20–30 years ago be invested in maintaining their 20–30-year-old perceptions of how I'd been 20–30 years ago. When I listen to music that I'd made in the early 1990s, I may remember writing and recording it, but I can't relate to the person who had done it. The temporal schism is that of a generation, after all; the experiential gulf can't but correspond. As for stuff I'd done still-earlier than that, I feel embarrassed and resentful that it remains associated with "me," but on the other hand, I'm not ashamed to keep my name on it. Photographs of anyone at 27 and at 57 require some moments of blinking and eye-rubbing to reconcile them as being of the same person. From time to time, I encounter persons who had known me a long time ago, and they either expect to be able to relate to me as before, feel inclined to hate at me for something I can't remember or a propensity that I've since outgrown, or want to rekindle some old bullshit. Sometimes, old friends can relate on terms which can't be outgrown, given a modicum of mutual respect for what's changed about either.
When I was listening to the young woman describe her depression, I ended up telling her, "You'll be okay," not because I wanted to superficially placate her, but because I knew that she had what it took in order to make it through the hell that self-discovery for a person with more "stuff" than normal has to go through. I kept it so succinct because I could never explain to her, much less to her full comprehension, what that's down in there, how much can be lost and grieved-over, and how much life can boil a person down. What's the choice – to remain the same, staying the miserable person you are, or become a new and better miserable person? Or, potentially, to no longer be miserable? When I'd started making music again, now nine years ago, I sometimes felt as though the top of my cranium had been removed, exposing my brain. I had to make the decision between not proceeding into this renewed, familiar-yet-unknown territory, or to let myself go along for the ride and not go insane. Every so often, I'd start on a lyrical idea, and something would tell me, "You can't say that," which indicated to me that I should. I decided to let the guiding principle be to "see what's really there." If I'd find it unsavory, too bad – I had to eat it. If others might find it unsavory, so much the better. I wasn't doing it in order to be liked for it, but to try to become a person whom I liked being.