2018, Long Beach, CA
The one new neighbor in Long Beach who wasn’t schizophrenic confirmed that along with being a hotbed for methamphetamine addicts and the mentally ill, the building I moved into January of 2018 also had a bedbug infestation. This would be the seventh time I’d moved all my possessions, mostly music gear, into a building which had bedbugs. Bedbugs lay several microscopic eggs per day, and music equipment cannot be sprayed or heated. I didn’t own a bed. They lived in the walls. I was highly allergic to the bites, but what made them a particularly painful pestilence is they could so easily be spread from one place to another. I lived like a leper so not to spread them to friends’ houses, studios or public places.
It would cost thousands of dollars to move everything into a box truck and fumigate again. I had just paid a two thousand dollar deposit to move in to the apartment, and the one year lease I had just signed was weighted in the landlord’s favor. It was nearly impossible to get out of the lease with my refunded deposit. I didn’t know anyone in the area. Despite the loud screaming, televisions, and thumping on walls and floors which went on incessantly in the building, waking me up nearly every night, somehow whenever I played music, even in the middle of the day, police showed up at my door.
I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t make money doing musical projects which required making noise. I was having serious financial difficulties. I was on the verge of 33, and everything was about to change.
Each of us holding our little rectangles with our breath pinging off satellites, I interrupted his silent prayer with a very painful untruth. "You know after years of praying to ceilings, I don't believe in it. You know that. You know I believe, at the very least, one has to believe in prayer in order for it to work, right?"
He took a moment to respond. "No, I don't think you have to believe in anything, but did you receive anything? Did you feel anything? What were you thinking about in that silence?"
"Honestly? Honestly, man, as I’m in this real life crisis with no way to pursue my career, no path forward and nothing, completely broke and broken, left to rot in society’s gutter surrounded by schizophrenic methheads while I’m eaten alive by bedbugs which are laying eggs in my music gear, the last of my possessions, as we speak, as you’re telling me some hocus pocus, I was thinking how ridiculous this whole 'spirit vs. empirical reality' thing is.”
“I was thinking of all the alleged prophets of the world raping and killing people in suicide pacts, sacrificial ceremonies, righteous pseudo-retribution, mass genocides in the name of cults, gods, spirits, ghosts, religions for Christs and comets and sorcery and superstitions.
“I was thinking about all the sex and bloodlust disguised as noble dogmatic pursuits. I was thinking about what always happens in history when religion and superstition usurp logic and reason, and patriarchy turns female heroes into whores and burns them at the stake while the relationship of man to Mother Earth becomes dominating, conquering, and raping her for resources.”
“I was thinking about the medieval iron effigies, pornographic imaginations made manifest by syphilitic priests who destroyed half of Europe by adopting to scare the black plague into submission by leading constituents to wear scary masks.”
“I was thinking about all the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic Alabamians who force-fed me platitudes throughout my formative years, regurgitating its own confusion into rage.
“I was thinking about the southern baptists I grew up with and what makes their denomination distinct is that it was founded on two separate heavens, one for white people and another for black people.
“I was thinking about the acquisitions of inquisitions and Crusades and how God is always the greatest scapegoat and every pious human on earth has used their own piety as an excuse to conquer and destroy someone or something in the name of God.”
“I was thinking about the biological baggage leftover in our primordial brains and how our sentience has been a curse to every other species on earth, a puff of nonsense blowing easterly in the name of a personified cumulus cloud somewhere right beyond the horizon, naked baby just out of reach of the five senses that humans happen to occupy at any present moment, painted by one of the secretly gay renaissance artists for one of the secretly gay pedophile priests who would publicly burn gay people along with the women and the firewood which was called a faggot, you know, ‘Throw another faggot on the fire, Father. It’s getting quite chilly. Frigid, Father Judas. ’Tis frigid indeed.”
“I was thinking about how much better the world would be without any of that shit.”
"I see," he said reluctantly. "Why did you think that?"
"Seriously?! Seriously, man?! How are you hovering between these two contradictory realities. How can you still pretend both things are real? You know the difference between a rock you're sitting on and a metaphysical, mystical, magical rock in a universe beyond perception. You know exactly what I mean. You can SEE the color green. You can SMELL a fucking flower! And who KILLS in the name of science?! Who's so almighty and righteous in the objective, empirical, rational world? Religion is CRAZY! The only time I believe in magic is when I'm drunk or high. You know how CRAZY spirituality is, and you damn well know the difference between what is real and what is hocus pocus!”
Without hesitation this time he exclaimed, "Yeah. CRAZY. They're both CRAZY. The rock that you discern with your five senses, and the fact that you’re experiencing it at all, THAT is CRAZY. Your consciousness existing in an infinitely expanding universe? THAT'S CRAZY. Did you ask to be born? Do you choose to have the thoughts you have? THAT'S CRAZY. You look at the color green and call it green because everyone else calls it green. THAT’S CRAZY. You don’t know where you came from or why you’re here. THAT'S CRAZY. You just woke up one day and you were a human and you just accept that this is reality and everything outside your current state of awareness is hocus pocus woo-woo nonsense. It’s CRAZY to trust the measly limitations of your five senses, and it’s even CRAZIER to affirm it all with some peer-reviewed physics experiment you read in a book which rashly proclaims, “Science deduces no god, therefore life is an accident and we all come from a 4 billion year old warm puddle. THAT'S CRAZY.”
Beat.
Beat. Beat. Beat. Silence. Heartbeat.
“That’s true… It’s all… pretty fucking crazy…”
Something shifted in me in that moment. I had an insight, a shift of perspective. I had this visceral memory of these visions I had as a child. I used to go to these worlds all the time, and I knew them so well. What was that? And I knew then that it was connected to that place of inspiration, the inspiration for songs and words I’d written all my life which flashed like lightning, and that was all pretty damn magical. It was somewhere between fleeting and forever, physical, mental, emotional - it was happening more and more often, like a little pinhole in the fabric of reality, where something much bigger than my idea of reality shown through. In those moments, I saw myself not as an irrelevant piece of matter being projected, flung haphazardly through space, but rather as creator of the whole projection. In those moments, I wasn’t being tossed around by the wild, turbulent currents of existence, rather I was co-creator of a great film in which we were all playing our respective roles and watching simultaneously.
With an eternal sigh, I finally spoke. “I just wish I could die or get on with my life. It’s the same thing everywhere I go, as I get to the finish line, it’s like the world goes out of its way to build a wall there before I can cross. It’s like the laws of physics change in order to keep me from accomplishing my goals. And every time I pull myself up and start over, the world just beats me back down.”
“So who is this tortured character and what is this godawful melodrama? How did I get stuck in this role? Why am I defending my own misery? I just want to be accepted, just like everyone else here. I just want a place to be, to do what I do, to write and record music. I can’t imagine a universe that would produce a thing like me for ANY other reason than to channel this stuff.
“This is absurd. I hate the religious crap, but this life has been too fucking absurd and too synchronistically tragic not to acknowledge that there’s some other force at play. It’s the same insanity everywhere I go! And there’s absolutely NO logical reason these things keep happening. I go out of my way to find normalcy, to find stability, and everywhere I go I’m shaken to my knees!”
“This life has been a war for art, a war for the right to create, a war for space and time to simply be, to live.”
“I know, man. I know. I feel for you. Why don’t you come up to Ojai? We’ll be there soon. It’s only a couple hours drive from you, right?”
The following week, I walked out of the shower onto Chestnut Avenue naked to avoid carrying the bedbugs or their eggs. I got into my beat up old truck, drove to Ojai where my spiritual life began.