Hate is what got me here, love is gonna set me free

You know I think this is what it all comes down to - love and hate - that simple - the two driving forces of humanity - one can save us, the other can destroy us - and if there is enough of one to at least balance out the other that is our only hope. If you look at it like good vs. evil than it is kind of like Star Wars - and all the other movies that go into the subject of the respective battle between the two. I think both love and hate are natural emotions, and I try to stay away from the notion that one emotion is good and the other is not, because obviously they both exist and are a natural product of our minds. Maybe even to a degree if I look at hate as something natural and inevitable, than I am going to be more accepting of it and I won't hate myself for hating - as there are enough reasons I can find to hate myself as it is. I know for myself that has been my own individual battle. I had so much hate within myself growing up - and was brought up in an environment where my two parents hated themselves for their own reasons, and unfortunately because they were so emotionally disconnected - they didn't even seem to know it or realize it, and their children around them became the targets of all of this. You can see that each and every one of us inherited this self hate as a result, and that it has affected us all in different ways.

The battle between love and hate starts on the inside of an individual, and then ultimately manifests itself collectively. I believe hatred and self-hatred are one and the same. If you feel at peace with yourself, and love is the principal force in your heart, it is difficult to hate anyone or anything regardless of the circumstances. I can almost see why some might hate someone who has hurt or harmed them or a loved one - to feel hatred and revenge for someone who has raped or killed a family member. Even then I believe that to feel that hatred - even if seemingly justified, is more destructive than helpful. But what about those who hate someone who has a different skin color, ethnic creed, or religion - how do you explain genocide, murder, aggression to begin with? I think it is all projected self-hate.

I know self-hatred first hand. It was like a poison that took hold of me from an early age, but I didn't even know it was there. I knew I had trouble with certain things. Asking out a girl, even if I knew she liked me - was like paralysis - I couldn't move, I couldn't do it - even though regrettably I now believe it would have been a pleasurable experience that gave me some more confidence - because at the time I didn't like myself enough to go through with the risk, and I think deep down - even if the flirting, staring, blatant clues were there that she liked me - I just couldn't do it. I will never forget a girl named Tracy in my sophomore PE class - I knew as plain as day she had it for me - she was a nice girl, she was kind of cute - okay - maybe not a genius or a deep thinker, but it would have been good for me to date her and see what happened. I just couldn't go through with asking her out - and then what followed after that - inevitably - was my first conscious exposure to self-hatred - because I hated myself for not having the confidence to begin with - even though looking back on it now - I had no control over it and no tools to deal with it. There were two tragedies - the first was the chance for an experience with an attractive woman that I never got to live out - but if that was not bad enough, the bigger tragedy was blaming myself for my own learned inadequacies.

How do you even address an issue like this, when the family environment you are living in - sharing your same disease, denies it is there, denies their own self-hatred and hatred of you as a result, and just act like everything is normal in an insane assylum where it is hard to tell who is the doctor and who is the patient - who is the one in charge - who is the parent, and who is the child.

My pattern with women continued. I became completely obsessed with a college girl named Christina who had flirted with me in the end of my freshman year - it was an innocent flirt - but even so an invitation that I allowed to consume me and sink into my head until it was an obsession out of control because I could not get past that first initiation point. Who knows if anything would ever have even come of it, but I never even allowed it to get to that point and then I sat there blaming myself for not being able to take care of my own desperate need to be loved. I knew this need consumed me - obviously after years of growing up in an environment of spiritual emptiness and self-loathing I was starved for it, but here were fleeting invitations to possibly satisfy some of this thirst and I could not make it happen. The more I was starved, the hungrier and more desperate I became, the more I built it up into an impossible obstacle, and the more I hated myself for my own self-imposed starvation. Of course by this time, I was setting myself up for such an overwhelming task that I think even if I had found the confidence to ask her out it would have been doomed to failure. I really believe that this love starvation was what threw me into my depressions in my college years. I found brief refuge in getting high, but I realized that was harmful and in trying to give up my one form of medicine, that probably was the last straw in sending me into the plunging depths of depression.

Depression is hell - and spending two consecutive bouts of it at my parents house was probably without a doubt the worst experience I have ever had. If there is one memory that stands out - even more so than dragging the razor blade against my wrists in the hope that somehow I would bleed to death and just get it all over with - it was a memory of standing in front of my mirror and absolutely feeling the strongest loathing for the person who was looking back at me. I absolutley despised this person I was staring back at and blamed him for falling apart and having to live in the empty hell of my bleak parent's house. I blamed him for not finding love, for ending up in this hellish situation, for not making it at school, for not having a future, for not being able to survive in a competitive world, for not having what it took to do anything - and it was quite natural I hated myself for all these things enough to want to do myself in, because I really believed all of these things. It is hard to believe there is anything positive that comes from feeling this - but the one positive I see in looking back at this was that all this came to the surface. Sure if I had known anything about the blood supply in the wrists I could have succeeded in my attempt, but I didn't even know how angry I was, how much I hated myself - I thought in some strange way everything was okay up to this point because it was all that I knew.

So - somehow I have gotten from there to here - I am not exactly sure how - and that person staring back at me in hate is not a person who has gone away yet - but he is no longer in charge of me either. I see him trying to creep back from time to time, and I know he is still there. Sometimes on a particularly dark night, I hear him trying to tell me just to end it all - that it is too much - the bills, the responsibility - that I am not cut out for it. Yet he has been revealed and he is no longer the one completely in charge now.

Anything in life worth achieving involves practice of some sort. I may not be a technical guitar wizard, but I spent a lot of time learning to learn the part I wanted to - to pick a certain way, learn the scales, figure out how to write songs - and my love of music has brought me to where I am. I have realized that music and expression not only brings a lot of the hidden darkness to the surface, but it also can be a way of meditating on love, fulfillment, self-confidence, and believing in one's self. Although I have now experienced the joys of physical fulfillment with another female, I also know that it is fleeting and you can't count on it. You can't count on anyone being by your side, being in the same mood you are in on a passionate level, you can't depend on anyone else to reassure you that you are desirable, attractive, or have value. But through repeating these thoughts to yourself, in song, while you are getting ready to sleep, or in the middle of the night between hours of sleep, you can program yourself to start to believe it.

This has been my mission in life - to continue to meditate on love, self-love, acceptance, faith, and belief in a higher power that somehow or another is looking after me and protecting me. I believe these things, I sing about them when the sun is setting, I see that the real purpose of my job - besides paying the bills and feeding the family and dogs - is to bring my human presence to others going through a difficult time to try to make it better for them. I was even able to cheer up a woman in my office who had been told off by another, telling her not to take it personal - to believe in herself and not let the other person's problems become hers - and she later thanked me for it. I know it is often redundant to say these things over and over to myself, but I can't take my eye off the ball.

Ironically when I fell in love on line almost 3 years ago, once the ashes scattered it taught me that I could feel a passionate type of romance with a being not physically present - and I still interact with this presence, even though the being who was participating with me at the time has since moved on and found her own real life love. That presence can be there - you can be in love without straying from your home or surroundings - as I once wrote about in a song with the chorus "I once called her Cathy, once called her Renee but she never has gone left or went away" - these are names of the first and last female presence I had fallen in love with, but even if you can't see, feel or hear these people any more, you can still tap into that presence and feeling of being in love. It is a world of imagination, and maybe only as real as it needs to be, but real in its own way and I still feel like I am in love, but it is no longer with any one female human being - it is more with my own Jungian anima that was ultimately the being I was chasing all along. In bringing back in what was once projected out, that is what I mean by the last line of the chorus "she lives in my heart now I'm just bringing her right back home".

This isn't a happily ever after story - this is ongoing. The winter comes and it is more difficult to access, there is still a well of grief, hurt and anger that continues to live on. But unlike the man I was about 20 years ago, I now have the medicine to counter it. The medicine is love - and my battle is the battle we all face - on the individual and collective level.

As my new musical lyrical guru, Michael Franti - ever so accurately put it:

"Love like your life depends on it, because it does"

Let it down, let it down - let your love flow and astound me

Slowly this blog link is making the way out to some of my close friends and the one close member of my family. My real identity is not here anywhere, but you all probably recognize my writing style. All the musical quotes are followed by a picture or logo of the musical act that created them (or sang a re-make as in the case of Dancing in the Streets - I don't even know who wrote that song). Maybe because my parents are not here any more I am writing a little more freely. So don't be surprised if you see posts like the one a few down about the wonders of defacation in the morning, or even free talk about sex and self-gratification. After all - these are essential acts of nature and I see no shame in discussing them - just not necessarily in front of my parents and knowing they had the link always left me somewhat self-conscious and kind of on my best behavior - even when I was telling them off. My new decision is to tell them off on the phone if I have to tell them anything at all - and it is frightening to think I am a few weeks from seeing them. So though the writing style may be similar, it is a little looser here I have noticed - more mentions and uses of the word "fuck" for instance, but also probably a significantly lower audience - kind of like when Howard Stern moved to sattelite radio. I think not more than a handful know this site exists, whereas entire website boards had the link before. Still looking for my first "comment" but at the same time not entirely holding my breath over it either.

Am I the victim or the crime

Dealing with my parents always has sucked and it always will. It was either emotional abuse, screaming diabolical diatribes, guilt, denial - it was horrible and I never want to go back but at the same time I can't entirely get away from it either. So when they excluded my wife on an offer to come down and see them, naturally my thoughts were racing in my head. Hadn't they figured out that after months of not speaking to them that this was not going to help their cause? Was it their way of showing they were really the ones in charge - in an underhanded sneaky way, slipping a little cyanide pill back into the marriage explosion to see if I was going to bite down on it? I said nothing at first, switched blog addresses - and I was ready to never speak to them again. But then the daughter's shrink told my wife that I had to get my ass on the phone and call them out on the whole thing. So I did - and it was a pretty tense discussion. But I basically said extend the invitation to all of us or forget the whole fucking thing. I never did say "fuck" - my dad resorted to the word when in response to my previous blog posts he said it was clear my thoughts were stated that he had "fucked me over" in his upbringing of me (true enough). But I stayed cool - said hey man - that is the past - let's look to the present. Upon being pressed, he admitted my wife was deliberately left off because they still hold a grudge against her for some things she did to them that they entirely deserve and then some. Of course - they will see themselsves as the victims of that as well. Pops was not used to the terms being set on him, but had to accept the fact that I didn't care if the trip happened or not, that frankly if I never saw them again it was not going to bug me too much - and that as much as he is used to holding all the cards, the inheritance card clearly meant nothing to me and that if he didn't cave in, it was not going to happen - period - end of discussion. I stayed calm and polite, even did some obligatory bullshit at the beginning of the call - but just like negotiating a settlement with an attorney I stayed firm that this was the deal - you can be the one to not let it go down if you wanna, but I set the terms. I also switched the communications to phone vs. e-mail - not hiding behind the blue screen but talking it out. So it was a big step for me to stand my ground with them, because frankly I have been beaten down my whole life and accepted whatever scraps have been thrown in my direction. The end result is the trip will go down, they did extend the invitation to my wife - who after careful thought decided to see them would be just too damn miserable, and my daughter gets to go to Disney-ville. It was a big accomplishment for me to set terms with them without screaming or saying fuck off. Our daughter's shrink says dealing with them is like dealing with unruly kids - you have to set boundaries. They will never be anything other than what they are - there will never be an apology or admission of any kind from them, but maybe there was a little respect I forced out of their hands. I spend a couple days and nights feeling nauseous over the whole thing, but now I am ready to get this fucking trip over with and just let it happen. Confronting a situation and setting boundaries is the way one goes from being the victim to being in charge of one's destiny - and I can't deny all the shit that has gone down in my life, but I can decide to move on from it too. People give you as much power as you allow them to - and sometimes you just got to yank it out of their hands.

Paranoia's poison door, 21st Century Schizoid Man

I just saw Aileen Life and Death of a Serial Killer on videotape. Once you are done watching the movie, you feel a little sick. Clearly many people are of the view that a serial killer is an evil person, a monster - and that people who kill others should be given the death penalty. But watching this woman interviewed and hearing her life story you feel she never had a chance - she was probably pretty fucked up to start, then her grandparent is beating her senseless, she is having sex with her brother, giving blowjobs at age 9, and then she is living in the freezing snow and selling her body to get by. No wonder she got to the point where she wanted to kill people. It is suggested that her first "victim" was someone who was torturing her, although her own testimony is contradicted because after a while she just wants to get killed and uses the death penalty as a form of her own suicide. And with one of the bonehead Bushes in office - in this case little bro Jeb - don't expect the governor to do shit about it. The "psychiatric" exam to determine competency is clearly a fucking joke. I am not an advocate of the death penalty and this case gives you plenty to argue about.

But what is particularly disturbing for me - is that this woman was not only schizo, but she also has borderline issues. At the beginning of an interview she is bubbling and cheerful, but moments later something sets her off and she is raging pissed. I hate to say it but that reminds me of my own mother. My Mom in my opinion is one of the fucking craziest people I have ever known. I know it says a lot about me as well, but she was completely unstable, and could go from smiling manic happy to raging pissed out for blood in moments as well. It happened many times. And I have spent a life time dealing with my own demons and self hatred as a result. No - I ain't going serial killer if you are worried - I will never kill anyone or anything, but it doesn't stop me for feeling sorry from or empathisizing with this poor woman who got injected in Florida. I have spent a lifetime dealing with my own rage, self-hatred and demons I inherited from Mom. Needless to say celebrating this woman's 80th birtdhay interests me none at all. Needless to say her repeated scorn for my wife will probably mean I may never speak to her again. It doesn't fucking matter much - the damage is done, and I will try to forgive but forgetting is not going to happen, as much as everyone in my family wants me to re-create a memory of roses. Living with my Mom was a hell all to itself, and through wonders and miracles I have reduced a lot of that hell - but it won't ever completely go away based on what I can see.

Still - watching this crazy woman on my screen - seeing how miserable and doomed she was from day one of her life, I have a lot to be thankful for her. I could have turned out like her too - and part of what she is may be a part of me - but thankfully it is not all of me.

All we need is music, sweet music, there'll be music everywhere

So now that I got my bitching about the ass-holes in my life out of the way, I am going to tell you what it is all about here really. It is all about reaching out to the great spirit. Some who are skeptical may say no great spirit exists. I know for a fact SHE exists, the question to me is where. I know I have a spiritual side - that I feel a magic when the day starts to approach sunset, or the rays hit the local mountain in the early portion of the day. So there is already a spirit in my heart. So of course, the religious among us say that the spirt is a link to god, the atheists say it is a function of neurons producing a biological image. I am reading a book by the Dalai Lama about science and religion, and although he has a great respect and admiration for science and does not try to outright dispute it the way a lot of idiot Christian fundamentalists do, he also says it leaves a lot unexplained - including consciousness itself. You all know my side - I think science is a great vehicle, a great tool, and it is like explaining the mechanics of the car without talking about the one getting behind the wheel. I am leaning to the spiritual as a real life deal just because my intuition and faith says it is real. Scienitifically, I know it is a leap of faith and obviously I am willing to reconsider. But I believe the spirit is the real deal and really can't explain it any further than that. I think the spirit is an essential to life - just as essential as food, water, sleep and clothing. The other day I saw a dude at the gas station with a few Budweisers in hand - and I could see a construction worker after a long day looking forward to downing a few cold ones and reaching out to his spirit that way. I guess whatever works - personally I have gone that road and the hangovers and body destruction gets old after a while.

Really playing music - even with my technical limitations - means you really feel what you play. It is a form of meditation, exploration - and some times a way of reaching out to a lot of hurt, rejection, anger and sadness - like in "da blues". But for me when it is really working, it is a way of bringing out an end to a craving of something outside - like a beautiful woman to make all of your romantic and sexual dreams come true - and arriving to that state you would be in if that woman was physically on top of you fucking your god dam brains out - and just getting right to that place. That is what I got at when I put together a song called There's Only Love - which I also have as a video out there on a My Space page - it is a way of meditating on being there already without needing another vehicle - drugs, sex, an object of any kind - just getting there through pure imagination - imagining you are there and then willing yourself to be there. Once you get there - and I visit quite often - all of a sudden the notion of needing something outside of you seems less important, because you see it is all fucking there already if you want it to be. You know - believe it and it will come true. Without love in the dream it'll never come true - BUT - if you have Love IN the Dream than it is a thin line between dreams and life itself - life is a dream and you can navigate the dream to the place you want it to be while in a conscious state. So when I am really feeling the music - guitar in hand - voice coming out - leaning over, hunched over in what seems like a state of tripping but it is really tripping on my own mind - I am living the sweetest dream and I am already at the place we strive to be.

I know Buddhism talks about meditating to feel nothing - well fuck that - I want to feel something and I want to feel something good! Granted I can't always get there - it is a real bitch to try when there is 9 hours of daylight and I am down and out - but a lot of the time I can get there and it is pretty phucking wonderful to be there I must say. I can't necessarily carry it over to the rest of the day - though I try - but having that place to go to is a real refuge of beauty when I have to ponder and deal with the real life reality of us humans frying the hell out of our planet, the struggles of keeping a family together when we are all fucked up on our neurotic needs and isssues - trying to keep the loan balance in check - I mean life can be kind of a drag at times when we are too caught up in the cold reality of material life. But just a bit beyond that man - it is a great place to be. The Dead shayows and even some Phish - they were kind of like my university - I saw a combined 150 of them and I could often get to that place when the band was on and I was in tune with what was going on. But now I can often just make it happen all by lonesome. It is easier for some reason when the daylight is coming to an end - that is the witching hour as I call it, although technically speaking it is suppose to be at midnight - but to me that is when the spirits call me, the beautiful Goddess I have fallen in love with throughout phases of my life and imagined her as an actual human being - she is out there and I am in love with her and I don't need her to be an actual human - beause she never was anyways - she was just my dream superimposed upon a mortal. I can't even really give words to justify the shit - but when you go there enough, it is real in its own way, even if you can't really show anyone else the place where you went - because you gotta "Ripple" your own way there - just like when you fall you fall alone, you also gotta get there by yourself. Trust me - it is a fucking beautiful place - I hope to see you there soon.

All along the watchtower

Didn't want to be mean about it, but I couldn't think of one good word to say

You reach a point in your life where once in a while something clicks in your head, it is almost like a light bulb turning on by itself. As some of you may know, I am married to a gal named Suzy Greenberg - and we have had our rough spots from time to time. Lately there has not been much going on in the old bedroom and it has become a mutual thing. Maybe I am just getting old, maybe the idea of taking care of myself in some ways just is easier to deal with than the real act, maybe it is just a phase, maybe it just is not that important any more. But regardless I have been at war it seems against those elder folks in my family that refuse to accept her. A couple years back I went under a kind of tirade and I rebelled and tried to get those to change. But after yet another time around where they snubbed her and conviently left her off of an invitation to come down to see them down south in the Tenessee hills, I realized something - I had nothing to say. I was ready to go off on them again, let them know how lame it was to do this, how pointless it was, find a million reasons to criticize it - but then after thinking of the old if you got nothing good to say, don't say it at all - I realized that I had no response. I was kind of sick over the whole thing initially, but now I just feel nothing - actually a little relief because now I don't need to actually see them - I kind of feel free, freaky and free as the song goes. They aren't going to change, God bless them, they are just going to continue to be the ass-holes they are and I can't stop them. Yet in their ass-holeness I can either keep the fumes away or emerse my nose deep in their anuses for another whiff. And at this point in my life, I have just had enough of smelling it. So I don't need to participate - at all - I don't need to ask them to change, demand they change, go off on them, tell them how much I am enraged because I don't feel those things any more. I just feel - relieved. Silence is all I have left, because there is nothing left to say - nothing - I just can't think of one good word to say, so here I am now somewhere else and I ain't saying shit. And in some ways I am glad they gave me the opportunity for that light bulb to click, because honestly I am just plain better off without them.

Dragging my weary shit ass up the mountain

I was just in the bathroom today and letting out what seems to have been backed up for a hell of a long time and just thinking - if there is any time you are ever wondering about something to be grateful for, think of the simple action of filling up the toilet bowl with food that came through on the other side. Not only is there that feeling of great relief, of unloading an unwanted burden- maybe not quite on the same level of joy as unloading a sperm excess that has backed up for an entire 24 hour period (I usually don't wait that long) but on top of that there is the sanitation issue. We don't think about it, but people in some places have serious diseases because the shit just sits there, accumulates flies, smells bad, and then sanitation issues that can be fatal develop. No, with us in a developed country, we just watch it sail away and then just like magic, the only thing that remains is the smell. How satisfying, how heart warming. Hell if there is a reason you are looking for to believe in the Great Spirit - just look down at the wonderful invention of your toilet. It is only when it goes wrong, backs up - lets out the "Type III" water that we really can see what a blessing and miracle it can be when it really works.

This video from Fear of a Black Hat also explains how a simple act of defacation is unifying in a way - it is the great equalizer - regardless of race, economic status, or standing in society - it all comes out of the same place "Black, White, Yellow, Red, Brown or Gold, our shit all comes out of the same little hole".

Forgive me if I don't sing in your key

I have run away from my former on line identity and now hear I am. If you have the link to this consider yourself quite special. Too many people had the link before and it created a certain ugliness that emerged from time to time that I kind of tired of and even participated in. So a select few who know how ugly I really am can see me here. It is a simple formula really - some people - through no fault of their own - just kind of bring me down - and if that is the case - repeatedly - through both past and present experiences, than the answer is simple - I stay away from them. Pray for them, love them, send them positive vibes and hope that they can find a way through their self-destructive and poisonous way of dealing with people, but don't let their poison contaminate you - regardless of whether or not they happen to be related to you - and in this case - yes they are. So - forgive me if I don't sing in their key, hopefully I can sing somewhat not too far out of key and sing in yours.