institutionalization was big in the 1980s. faddish, even. it must have had something to do with nancy reagan’s “just say no” campaign. it was the era of self-help, or in my case, help or else. i spent my eighth grade graduation in the lockdown ward of a hospital in california’s bay area: psychiatric tests, group therapy, anger management, 24-hour surveillance. all my sharp objects were taken from me. i wore hospital pajamas and slippers, my vital signs were taken twice a day. and when the psychiatrist put the rorschach ink-blot in front of me and asked what i saw, it didn’t dawn on me that what i saw wasn’t what everyone else saw. “well, it’s a ritual; the blood from the beheaded dove is dripping down on jesus who is tied to the altar, about to be sacrificed…” it seems i had a very interesting imagination. i spent a great deal more time with that doctor. these are the times i think about when “the moments that shape your life” are discussed. i’ve been accused of being a sad person. and perhaps i am, but i look at my life through it’s experiences and i don’t see how it was possible for me not to come out this way.

i was born the only son to a mother who raised me on her own. my mother had three sisters who bore only daughters. the y chromosome was scarce; there was my grandfather and me. after years of alcoholism, my grandmother kicked my grandfather out. a jobless drunkard trying to get dry with nowhere to go, my grandfather moved in with us. he and i shared a room. through the next several years, as he found a way out of his darkness, he sought to give me the things that my life was missing. his guidance was golden. and like all things that are good, it was short. he died just before i went to the hospital. looking back, his death catapulted me to my end. about to be expelled from school, suicidal and strung out, i spent most of my nights alone in my room huffing solvent fumes. at fourteen, i was certain i was living my life’s final chapter.

our eyes don’t perceive things outside of us as much as they project ourselves onto the things outside of us. i know this because people tell me what they see, and it stands in contrast to what i see. what i perceived as the end turned out to be the beginning… after i was released from the hospital, it was suggested that i find some hobbies. i was told i didn’t have enough cards in my deck, and an idle mind was nothing the psychiatrists wanted me to deal with. since i spent most of my time in my room listening to records, the obvious choice was to play an instrument. and so it began.

the fifteen years following my institutionalization have been an endeavor to record my personal thoughts. the last time i moved, i threw away six garbage bags of paper. poems, songs, journals, unsent letters, short stories, draft suicide notes. perhaps i have been writing the same song over and over. perhaps i keep those dark things around to make me comfortable. perhaps i am scared to live a normal life, and as an escape, i remain this way. all these things have been suggested to me, as offers of compassion with the hope that i may change. i thought trashing those six bags would be a catharsis toward the light. but i still see the same.

today, the music is different. it’s no longer my dream song. i have settled on something that can be actualized. it seems i am difficult to work with. i bring sadness to those around me. originally, i hoped there to be a band. a swirling array of instruments with a chanteuse championing the despair. i started to this end around ’95, with six incarnations of the same sound being born and dying within a tumultuous six year period.

in the first incarnation, amy and i were writing songs that would later be fleshed out with a full band. we never made it past the seedling stage. second, i assembled a band, thinking if the songs were completed before the singer heard them, there would be less pressure on her to “make” the song. the band (charles, mitch, chris, and i) rehearsed four or five songs, and i found another willing singer, kjerstin. she heard the material and liked it, and her and i worked on vocal arrangements. kjerstin and i had a close connection, yet she was never able to sing in front of the band. it ended haphazardly. the third incarnation bore fruit. abandoning a full band, i played acoustic guitar and jannette, the girlfriend of good friend and former bandmate charles, sang. by this time i had amassed reams of songs, bringing a new one to every practice. we performed regularly, recorded songs and got along with one another. as fate would have it, our little duo was cut tragically short when a rumor of infidelity starring jannette came to life one night and she had her head smashed in a car door by the jilted girlfriend of the man she was in love with. incarnation four was with an old friend cori, whose ability as a singer-songwriter i had admired for years. cori and i collaborated on redefining the songs i had written acoustically for full band studio recordings. we had made good progress. we even recorded a few songs. then her marriage began to fall apart. it got a little uncomfortable, and i pulled back. by coincidence, kym, a woman i worked with, became incarnation five. remaining in the studio recording paradigm, she and i tackled the same set of songs i had worked out with cori. it slowly became apparent that kym had a penchant for drink. she needed four or five beers before she would approach the microphone. and that was in the isolated settings of a studio. the few times we met at her apartment to rehearse songs, we’d end up talking about life’s dramas instead. in the end, we never got anything done. again, i pulled back, thinking she wasn’t really interested. incarnation six was not my doing. i joined some friends who already had a band. i brought the unfinished songs from my failed endeavors to the new group. shortly thereafter, we recorded an album and began playing shows. i was approached by kym at one such show, where she yelled at me. she wasn’t finished with my songs. she was angry i “flaked.” that altercation was followed by several long conversations during which i explained that we had been “rehearsing” for six months yet only had one demo recording to show. she hung up on me after calling me an asshole. i poured myself into the new band. unlike all the other efforts, this wasn’t mine alone. i wasn’t spearheading the band, and i was grateful. not for long, though, as angela, the singer, expressed concern that all our songs were depressing her. to angela’s credit, we had a song to an aborted fetus, an ode to a prostitute, a handful of forlorn end-of-love songs and at least three suicidal anthems. in an effort to adapt, we quickly tried to write songs that were less-than-miserable. and we disbanded shortly thereafter.

it may seem that with my description of the ending of the six incarnations that i position the blame on the singers, but i don’t. six women telling you that you’re the embodiment of sadness is halfway to a unanimous verdict. rather than risking an overwhelmingly obvious conclusion, i abandoned others, and for lack of a better term, “went solo.” this is what i mean when i say i’ve settled on the songs i write now. they are specters of songs lost. in them, i hear skeletons of ideas i had high hopes for with the women who helped realize them. to others, i’m sure, they serve just fine as complete ideas. and so they are. (everyone else has moved on, so why shouldn’t i?)







my songs are new in that they were recorded within the last year. they are old in that they contain residue from variations on themes that were born years ago. the themes are as old as time itself; the agonies of contrition, the meaning of suffering, hope and hopelessness. everything i do, it seems, is desperately personal. i learned to not overwhelm people with notebooks full of tortured verse, and i function day-to-day as if i were amongst the ranks of people who function day-to-day. but this is what i do. when i am alone, i pull out the stack of photographs, the bundle of old letters, and live amongst the apparitions. it is where i feel most alive. i have never looked for happy endings, but there may be a way to take all this despair and make it inspiring. to appeal to the greater theme of time’s triumphant arch which is lost in the infallible grace of a despairing moment. perhaps the greater good is there, but i can’t define it. there’s really no room between you and the song for me to stand and explain what you should be feeling. my role in these songs ends when you listen to them.