Thinking...

A lot of people assume that musicians are drug abusers.

Possibly because a lot of musicians are. And a hellf of a lot of people who aren't.

But that's not the point.

Every so often you find a musician who isn't. And sometimes they say:

'The music is the drug to me.'

A lot of times it's a sort of Choose Life bright smiley kind of woolly vanilla thinking.

But for me it actually is true. In that music, specific kinds of music at specific times affects me just like a psychoactive drug would.

The right piece of music, recorded in the right way, can have the effect of making me see things completely differently, and it can open doorways in my mind.

Sometimes they are doorways that I try really hard to keep shut.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying that if I throw on a CD of some psychaedelic sounding music instantly I want to chase blue butterflies.

But music can have the effect of helping create a pathway for me to wander down in my meandering internal journeys.

In this case, I was sitting on the bus, listening to Venetian Snares (again) and playing with my phone. Something in the music had me thinking about something to do with Highschool. I don't know what.

And I remembered sitting in the Guidance Counsellor's office, one of many times in Grade 11 and 12, when he said to me "I always see you early in the mornings. Walking along the buildings by yourself, up and down. You're not very happy, are you?"

That moment really resonated inside me somewhere. I wasn't happy. Sometimes I have trouble remembering the times of my life when I haven't been feeling lonely or anxious or angry or sad. And those two years were some of the worst of it. That wasn't the issue (it was an issue, but not the frequency of resonance).

No, the shock was that it was close enough to the surface that someone else could tell.

I have no idea where I'm going with this, I don't think I have time to go and I don't really want to take any passengers.

Not today, in any case.

I remember a couple of years ago, I was back in University, and I was ironing my clothes and playing The Art of Drowning by AFI in the living room.

It was an album I had listened to plenty of times. But this particular time something about the music had me reflecting on all the wrong turns I had made in my life, and I wound up curled up on the couch sobbing, furious and miserable that I should have done so much more by the age of 27.

My friend Clayton called me up out of the blue one night not too long after, and I told him about that. He told me not to feel like that, it was just fatalism. That did make me feel better.

Two or three weeks later Clayton was dead, an apparent suicide by overdose of prescription drugs.

This is a really depressing entry.

Don't worry about me. I'm fine.

I just wonder if my perpetual underachievement is related to the way that my sense of Achievement, Self-Worth and Reward seem to be entirely disconnected from the things that they should be.

I wonder if it all has to do with the way that sometimes nothing can make me happy, but sometimes it takes nothing to make me happy.

Did that make sense. You're right, it does and it doesn't.

Sometimes I wonder what it was that made me this way, what happened to me to feel like this.

I've spent too long on self-indulgent navel gazing.

I see Dad again on Friday.

I've been checking out Websites and things.

I'll have a list of things I've done to get another job in a place that I actually want to work.

Over and out.

J