Pandora In the Time of Melancholy

Some days listening to Pandora can be a destructive exercise. Beautiful songs of longing or emotional impact turn into excuses for self-pity and a loathing of what the world has done to you. It’s never a reminder of the mistakes you make and the situations that you either passed up or botched, it is ALWAYS the world’s fault for your current predicament.

Depression is an evil condition particularly when it is coupled with the irrational delusion that somehow you have no control over the things happening around you. Heartbreak, unemployment, empty bank accounts are horrible things to deal with (especially all at once) but lying around listening to sad music and feeling bad for yourself won’t change anything.

Unfortunately this has been my stock response to trouble for as long as I can remember. I imagine that even as a baby in my crib that instead of crying or screaming when I had crapped my diaper I instead lay in my own excrement blaming the world for my upcoming rash. Why put up a fight and try to improve things? Then I would lose the power of being a martyr. Suddenly I wouldn’t have other things to blame it on but rather have to accept that maybe I had a hand in my own downfall and then my situation would lack the proper context to draw sympathy from those around me.

Over the years I have gained the wisdom to recognize this behavior in myself, although unfortunately not the wisdom to prevent it or stop it, which requires a much higher level of enlightenment than I’ve yet mustered.

In many respects this type of apathy and cynicism made me the perfect pre-2004 Red Sox fan. I expected failure because the world would never allow me the joy of seeing my team come up victorious and in fact would force me to lose in diabolical and heart-rending situations. This perfectly suited my negative outlook and gave me one more reason to continue down my path of mediocrity. The end result was always going to be a loss no matter what so don’t try too hard.

The Red Sox found a way to turn things around and created a situation where the future was always a bright one. Personally I thought I had as well. This September ripped the optimism back out of my psyche and brought it back to 2003 levels. Strangely there is some comfort in this situation as at least I can point to specific reasons why my current outlook on things is so bleak, but after feeling good for a little while it is very difficult to consider going back to a prolonged run of feeling miserable.

Back to the Pandora. Much like the Red Sox have been, music is always tied into certain memories that create the conditions on whether or not I like a song. Nostalgia and music is covered brilliantly by Chuck Klosterman for Grantland. I try to listen to the AvettBrothers channel and each song that once was full of intrinsic heartwarming melodies is now a hand holding my head underwater until the bubbles finally stop. Dramatic I know. These were songs that helped define a new outlook on where my life was headed and without changing a single word are now painful reminders of failure.

This Red Sox season held a similar fate. The team was rolling and everyone knew this was the team to beat despite injuries, and apparently drunken binges in the clubhouse, and the fans trusted that the team would give us a collective happy ending. Then it all dropped off a cliff. Suddenly we watched with horror as an entire month of ineptitude led into the worst/best night of baseball ever.

            Now we’re left to pick up the empty beer cans and cardboard Popeye’s containers and try to remember the good times while Ray Lamontagne and A FineFrenzy urge us to shed some tears and move on.

*Just to make it clearer these were all songs that came on Pandora while I was working on this post today, all of them are particularly poignant to the past year, none of them were the songs that originally prompted me to write. Pandora is scary in its cruelty...

Heartbreak

I wish people would stop saying, “Everything happens for a reason. It’s for the best.” It’s categorically not for the best. Eventually time will ease the pain, the failure, but nothing will change the fact that I didn’t want this. I couldn’t imagine this happening. I’m embarrassed, ashamed, devastated…

You know when you’re driving to school or to work or to any place that you’ve been a million times and suddenly out of nowhere you realize that you’ve arrived but can’t remember the drive at all? We’ve all done it. The body goes into autopilot, muscle memory pushing you forward down a very familiar path. The same happened on my trip back to the East Coast.

It was five days of staring straight ahead, the road endlessly stretched out in between markers that seemed more real on a map than when driving through them. Gallup, Amarillo, Oklahoma City, Indianapolis then….home. It was five days of heartbreak, painful acceptance of blame, and regret.

Some people say they have no regrets. I am not one of those people. I have plenty of them but never has something left me this empty because I regret not MY unhappiness but that of the person who I loved. When you do something supremely stupid you feel bad because it hurts your family but their love is eternal and not only will they forgive you but they will try to support you. A relationship (she would want me to call it a domestic partnership) even one filled with love, is far more fragile than that.

My friends like to joke about how I think everything sucks, that I am always miserable, and I can’t have a good time. I wish there was no truth to the gag. Until I know how to make myself happy how can someone possibly be happy with me? I don’t have any answers and right now under a cloud of depression I’m having a hard time focusing on the future, just the sadness.

All of this depressing, desperate whining is the explanation for why this Adele song, which I heard probably 3092 times on the way home, is so powerful to me and came out at exactly the wrong time. Listening to any emotional song during a break-up is a bad idea, but this is striking because rather than an image of clothes strewn about on the ground outside, broken picture frames, and lots of heavy drinking, this song inspires just a deep longing for a return to the status quo. It is rationale anger and true sadness, not of HOW it ended but rather that it ended at all. Anyway, make fun of me if you like but each time this came on the radio the waterworks were soon to follow…

The Long and Winding Road

Tornado sirens are the scariest sounds that I will ever hear in my life. Until recently, tornados were as foreign to the Northeast as tsunamis and I had never heard that particular combination of screeching fear, anger, violence, and despair. I’m not positive that the tornado itself would be as terrifying than the heart stopping unknown of hearing those sirens for the first time.

Walking across the street to get dinner was surreal as no one was reacting to the banshee noises emanating from seemingly everywhere. The bar patrons were sitting calmly laughing about the slim chances of a tornado actually touching down (“Never in my lifetime…except that one time”) getting angry when the bartender told them they were closing early and they had to head home (after buying another round, of course). After a day of weather in Pennsylvania that would seem over the top for a horror flick, the Gods were apparently no happier when I arrived in Ohio.

Good time to stop and take a picture

Heading back to the hotel I saw my first funnel that wasn’t on the Weather Channel. I could’ve sworn that I was standing in the middle of it and I immediately started looking for something that I could tie my $10 belt to like I was Bill Paxton (or Pullman, whichever one was in Twister). In reality it was miles away and I was actually standing in a group of gawkers all with our phones out to record the experience and make sure everyone saw it on Facebook. The sirens stopped 30 minutes later but I sat awake all night in a cold sweat waiting to be carried away to Oz (the Technicolor version, not the HBO version).

I couldn’t leave Youngstown fast enough.

Day 2 was beautiful. Despite warnings to the contrary, Ohio and Indiana were beautiful to drive through. Farmland as far as you could see but with houses, hills, and wooded areas mingled together that made for a serene trip, which was amplified by the welcome sunshine (Illinois on the other hand is boring as hell). Making great time I raced through into Missouri and crossed the Mississippi in St. Louis.

Crossing the Mississippi should be the seminal moment of the trip. It should be a clear marker that you are no longer in the East but now out into the wilds of the western USA. It should give you the feeling that you are Kerouac On the Road taking part in some great adventure. In reality the Mississippi River smelled like sewage and while driving past The Arch was cool I never felt as though I wanted to stop.

Traveling cross country on your own can be an experience akin to Yoga meditation. Alone with your thoughts (and your Ipod) you get to delve into the reasons behind your journey and the destination that you are racing towards and can come to some clarity about who you are and who you want to be. Of course, I experienced it more akin to a war between me and the miles ahead. I was more like Odysseus trying to get to his Penelope as quickly as possible and I was battling against the sheer immensity of the Midwest. In my Calvinist New England mindset it was the struggle I needed to overcome to achieve true happiness at the end. Damn Puritans ruining everyone's fun.

I flew past St. Louis thinking nothing about storms or trouble ahead. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, Oklahoma was being ravaged by a series of powerful thunderstorms that lay straight across my path. I was also headed towards Joplin, Missouri that only a few days earlier was almost completely destroyed by a twister that no special effects could equal. I only became aware of this when I decided to put an end to Day 2.

My second night on the road was no less terrifying and stressful than the first. Stopped an hour north of Springfield, MO I watched the news to see that my road ahead was directly through Mother Nature’s killing fields and was constantly reminded by the very serious weatherman that this was the worst tornado season in years. The stress of knowing that I would have to drive through Oklahoma was quickly set aside when I was woken up at 4:30am by that now familiar screeching wail that sent me scrambling to the bathroom wrapped in blankets and sweat.

The hotel called everyone into the lobby and away from the windows until the sirens stopped. Turns out the tornado landed a few miles away. (“No big deal” according to the hotel employees. I had a different opinion.) The next morning I drove by Joplin and I saw trees sawed in half, guardrails tossed aside and, even from the highway, I witnessed pure evil  and thought of what could have been. It was impossible not to shake…

From Oklahoma City to New Mexico each mile looks as ugly as the next and yet, that doesn't make it any less impressive. Staring into the largest sky I've ever seen, at least while my feet were on the ground, I felt as though I could see all the way back home and see Phoenix forward in the distance. The world seemed compacted as though everything was just around the corner but at the same time I finally appreciated the vastness of the country. Like I was reading a Steinbeck novel the world opened up in front of me and everything was a reminder of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. I quickly turned the Ipod to “The Ghost of Tom Joad” set the cruise control and tried to imagine what it would be like to live in a region where Amarillo is a big city.

West Texas is dull (no offense to the people living there but it really is a whole lot of nothing) but for the sky. New Mexico added the element of colorful mountains, massive plateaus, and majestic desert scenes to the ever present wind that pushes from Missouri through to the Pacific. Making the final push to Phoenix, hands at 10 and 2 just like Driver’s Ed taught me, I tried to keep the car from being blown off the road and avoid the inevitable Dust Storms I could see in the distance stalking my path.

Driving in the West is a sad experience. I felt isolated and transported back in time. Wind, dust, and brown were the only sensory inputs for over a thousand miles. When I saw a group of cowboys riding the fences it dawned on me how tough and bleak an existence it must be in the middle of nowhere. Of course they all probably went home to their satellite dishes and broadband internet, but seeing them in Marlboro Man pose made them all seem like John Wayne taming a new land. I’ve never been more aware of my city slicker-ness. Albuquerque, Gallup, and Flagstaff might as well have been New York City the way they rose out of the nowhere haze.

Everything about the West is trapped in nostalgia. Every sign tried to pull me off the highway to the history and drama of Route 66. You get the sensation that you are traveling through a memory of a glorious past. The small town oasis eroding in diesel exhaust. An America trudging wearily day after day, pleading to be heard over the air conditioner, desperate for us to roll down our tinted windows and believe that it was once great. Even if, in truth, it never was.

One more road to Phoenix and it was just as overwhelming as all the rest. I-17 is 2 hours of downhill skiing. Long slopes matched by sharp turns that had me on the edge of my seat (an uncomfortable way to drive by the way), all the while dodging trucks and trying not to get pushed off the road by cars pretending they were on the Autobahn.  At the end of the road the Valley of the Sun awaited and with a grateful sigh and a long stretch I had made it to the end.

My new home (Chase Field top left)

P.S.- I apologize. I never meant for this post to be this long. If you made it all the way to the end I appreciate your effort and the fact that you didn’t have anything better to do. 

From One Home to Another

Joe Posnanski wrote a great, and long, blog post about what defines “Home” and it seemed poignant to me as I made the biggest decision of my life. I was about to move away from the only place I’ve ever known, the people I’ve spent so many years getting in and out of trouble with, having good times, great times, and tough times. I was leaving my actual family and all of the people who had become family.

I heard my grandmother cry and say this might be the last time we ever see each other. I watched my grandfather rush back into the house rather than cry in front of me. I tried to hold back tears watching my sister leave walk away wiping tears off her cheek. I cried and held my mother in the kitchen grateful that she wasn’t able to see me off because I didn’t know if I would actually be able get on the road.

Good byes have never been so tough.

I will never forget my last night with my friends. Finally understanding how close we had all become and how important they all were to me. But even more shocking was how much they were going to miss me. I never really appreciated my own place in the group dynamic and that the emotions I was feeling were shared by so many other people in my life. Every moment of that night was an awakening and an emotional struggle.

I hate good byes.

But…there are things that happen in your life that are completely unexpected and force you out of your comfort zone. Circumstances push you to grow as person, to experience a part of yourself that you might not have realized existed. The most obvious of these is falling in love and, being a romantic, once that happened to me there was only one goal in my mind. I had to be with the person I love, any place without her would feel incomplete.

I miss everyone back East and that will never change. Yet, as I drove 2600 miles through the heart of this immense country racing to be with the woman I love, I realized I was carrying my friends, my family, and my Home with me. I will always be a Mass-hole, New England will always be at the essence of who I am no matter where I live, and nothing that happens in the future will change that.

So…When I finally pulled into the driveway in Phoenix, grateful to be off the long road (I’ll have more about the actual trip itself in a later post), and I wrapped my arms around the reason for my move there was only one thing I could think to say,

“Hey beautiful, I’m home.”