Can’t sleep. Got a lot on my mind and no real good way to say any of it. But the thoughts keep me awake anyway. They need oxygen so they can burn up and leave me alone.
Saw a good show tonight. Young crowd. So many tall people or maybe I am shrinking. So many small and measured movements to the beats, hair stringy with sweat. Harshing my mellow, naturally, was That Guy. You know, That Guy — he who was thrashing about and gesturing to the band like he was exorcising their demons. Some dude eventually had his fill of That Guy’s shenanigans and started mock dancing with him, using hugely exaggerated movements that those of us looking on and paying attention read as total parody. Things escalated over a couple of songs and shit got real when choking was involved. A teary, trembling girlfriend stepped between the two and distance was achieved, and just as soon as things had become heated, they had dissolved back into sweaty dance. I don’t know why people can’t just fucking be cool. That Guy, and all That Guys past and present, just fucking be cool, would you?
It was good to see the Hi-Tone packed at nearly midnight on a Wednesday. I had this fear fantasy while getting ready that it would be a ghost town. While the prospect of getting a table and sitting perfectly still so as to become invisible comforts my fevered, neurotic brain, I always feel just awful at shows like that. I always clap harder at shows like that. Maybe if I sound like three people, they won’t notice I’m just one. But musicians, despite how they look, are probably good at math, what with the counting beats and all.
I’ve been working lately at feeling less pathetic, which has been a goddamned monumental task. In true Me fashion, I have handled it horribly. I have slid like Pete Rose, it seems, into some sort of spectacularly mopey rut featuring moments of such acute self-loathing that I cannot leave the house. Fuck, I don’t know what it is and why I can’t just think my way out of it like a good and resourceful smartfat chick, but I can see it in my face: a literal and metaphorical weight carving an angry line in my brow and settling existential dread in my eyes. The problem with being terminally single is all that fucking time you have to yourself to think about all that fucking time you have to yourself. The brain gets going and starts asking those questions that can’t be answered correctly, questions about what it is about you that must be so horrible. So fucking horrible.
There’s no way to win that battle with your own brain, so, on good days, I do my best not to even engage.
And that, friends, is why I sit outside and play in the dirt and point my camera at flowers.