Caleb Senecker, you just made the biggest mistake of your fucking life.
***An inside joke***
With that out of the way…
Last Friday, I went to update the Scrapbook and realized that not only had I failed to start a Gallery for June, I hadn’t started one for May, and the one for April was only partially populated. Hey man, That’s Okay, you can’t always Be Consistent1. In search of Digicam photos, I took the SD card out of the Fujifilm. Turns out, I had barely even taken any Digicam photos. At this point, the alarm bells started going off.
***Wee woo wee woo***
Where the did the last 2 months ago?
Desperate for any clues, I went through my phone and saw only a handful of photos of myself amidst a few screenshots of memes. I looked through my Notes app Journal, and to my dismay I had only 28 entries to parse through. That’s only 36.36% of the days2. Disappointing, man. I went through my Morning Pages, but the handwriting was too bad. So it was back to Raw Memory, that good ol’ unreliable narrator.
Here We Go! Okay. 2 months ago, I was still living in Bela Lugosi’s loft. And to a man with just a bedroom — complete with an en suite bathroom, to be fair! — the idea of waking up and walking down that opulent spiral staircase feels like the Obvious Punchline to a Missing Joke.
It’s been jarring adjusting to the new downsized lifestyle— perhaps the 2 month reverie was autopilot to soften the blow? But why, now, does it feel like I’ve been pried Open? I guess it had to happen eventually. It was a drought and I was praying for rain, after all. There are times in my life where I feel Open to the universe, and times where I feel Closed to it. <- In that blog post I hypothesized that, for the last 5 years, I was experiencing a prolonged Closed Time, so profoundly deep that the minor Ebbs & Flows and Highs & Lows within its wavelengths appeared to be their own respective Open & Closed Times. As of Friday, I have been proven right.
· . ★ ✵ * . ☆• ★ ° •
Almost 5 years ago, the day “Happy, Healthy, Well-Adjusted” went viral and Jevandre died, the Closing Time trigger within me clamped so tightly I doubted I could ever Open again. Defeated, terrified, grieving, I just accepted this shallow field of vision as the New Normal3. The tragedy made me forget why I was Doing Music in the first place, or maybe it revealed to me that I never really knew, or maybe it taught me that I never even thought to ask.
I went through the Dreadful Summer of my first success feeling like a fraud, a phony, a Fake Artist4. I told myself, It’s Just Imposter Syndrome, but the feeling never went away. As I grew Further & Further away from Doing Music, my Outward Stature expanded and my Material Wealth grew. I traveled around the world with my Rich & Famous girlfriend, I lived in increasingly luxurious domiciles, I got Deal after Deal after Deal. Meanwhile, Doing Music felt Less and Less and Less real.
How was I doing any of This Shit, again? This Shit being Seeing The World and stuff. I had, like, 6 songs out. It made no sense. I wanted to get back to work, but why would I? I had peeked behind the curtain and saw the way These People moved. I thought that by also living (seemingly) carefree and working (apparently) not hard, I could emulate their success. I thought hey, Whatever I’m Doing Is Working. And if living my dream was going to feel so Intangible, at least I could dissociate my way into a comfortable life. Plans of man. After the breakup, I wanted to prove to myself that I was complicit in our Jetsetting, so I kept spending like a High-Roller, traveling around the world like an Heir, and renting Bela Lugosi’s loft like a fucking Rockstar.
Wear The Suit For The Job You Want, right?
The scaffolding of my delusions came crashing down all at once at the end of last year. The long-promised AWAL Option failed to materialize, and I was forced to default on the loan I took out to fund the creation of Eternal Underdog. By the end of March, I ran out of money. I had to exit Bela Lugosi’s loft, but first I had to find a new tenant and secure a new place to live. I had to get a job for the first time since pre-Covid. I lost all my credit cards in the move and the Mustang broke down. I took the bus, and then my scooter… ya know what, I’m going to stop summarizing. This is what happens at the end of the Novel and I don’t want to spoil anything5.
I blamed my Saturn Return at first, but my Saturn Return has to do with Communication and I didn’t know how to chalk any of this Personal Disaster up to a lapse in conversation. No, this felt more like when I slept with Moldavite in my pocket in 2020 and Caused™ every single member of the Melrose Household (sans Clev) to move out over the course of 2 months6. Everything in my life is new, lately. I’ve lost Big Friendships this year. I have full custody of Milo now. I’m a Wage Cuck. I’m in a healthy, Communicative relationship.
D’oh! The C-word. Saturn swears at me. Hey man, you devour your son with that mouth?
When you’re in an Awesome relationship, and you want to feel like a team, you are forced to rip yourself Open lest you risk the deadly sin of being a Halfway Participant. And when you rip yourself Open, you realize just how Closed you were. So what was I doing the last 2 months?
***The Missing Joke from earlier***
What is the one thing money cannot buy?
I’ve been happy. Worse, I’ve been in love. That’s right. Despite being — or perhaps because I am — a big fat broke chud, I am once again experiencing the full spectrum of Human Emotion. Unlike what I thought in my Closing Time post, being Open is not all Gliding & Convenience. It’s scary. It’s uncomfortable. It’s vivid, it’s clarity. It’s fire and it’s rage. Turns out, Openness itself is not about being happy, but it allows for happiness in a roundabout way. Openness is about being vulnerable. And you can never truly be happy until you are brave enough to be vulnerable.
So what is Openness? Big question. The blog’s cache is too full to quantify that question, so I won’t even try. The Book Really Is Over. I know what Open feels like, at least, and that’s good enough for me in the Big 26. Open feels like timing. It’s when you’re trying to shove a breakfast sandwich into your shirt pocket at work because you’re running out of hands on the way to the bathroom, and you don’t stop to pause because you trust you’ll get it in your pocket by the time you get to the door.
Open also feels like being really, really sad. Last Friday, the day I ransacked my belongings for evidence of the last 2 months, I was crashing out. And as I am wont to do when I am crashing out, I went to Wi Spa. In the sauna, naked, half-watching the World Cup exhibition match against Germany, a tall Irish bloke called Jonathan strikes up a conversation with me. He starts with the philosophy of sports and concludes with how our society is lost because our elders have been brainwashed by a demagogue and we, as deeply tribal creatures, cannot function without their Sage Wisdom. In return for his insights, I complain to him about how the $10 price hike at Wi Spa threatens to gatekeep the 24-hour jimbiljang from the chuds. Jonathan tells me to enter Koreatown Plaza on Western, turn left, look for a booth in front of the bank and ask the nice lady for Wi Spa tickets and she’ll sell you them for $26 cash. Thanks Jonathan, now tell me, What’s The Purpose Of Relationships In Relation To Career? Will You Be My Mentor Now? I Love You? We agree to meet up next week, naked and candid and vulnerable. I don’t know if I would recognize that guy with his clothes on. I don’t know if he’d recognize me — hell, I haven’t even recognized myself for the last few years. I would never have had that conversation if I wasn’t naked.
***Is this catharsis?***
I was starting to think I was too old for that.
I’m back, baby. The world is permeable once again. I knew it wasn’t fucking Imposter Syndrome. I was just an imposter, lowercase L. It was all an act. I was wearing a mask and it kept me Closed and disconnected. I hated my life, but I didn’t know how to admit it. There’s an atomically thin line between manifesting and deluding yourself. You can think the life you want into existence, but you cannot trick yourself into thinking the life you already have is the life you want. Jetsetting was cool on paper, but I paid for it on credit and goddammit will I be paying that off for years. Oh well. So what if I’m broke again? It won’t be for long. I’ve seen behind the curtain before. Now, I want to get there on my own merit. I missed the garage, and in a way, I have it again. Lorenzo and I turfed out the studio in our new house. I know why I’m Doing Music again: it’s so that I can get myself out of this stupid Day Job. Back in the day, once Doing Music got me out of my stupid Day Job the first time, the monkey in my brain started eating himself and I began to wonder if there was something more. Nope…nada. Just find what you love, and do it every day. I learned my lesson. I’ll get back to where I was eventually. I haven’t failed. I just have to swing the bat harder. When’s the last time I put my whole pussy into it? Maybe never. I think of going demo-for-demo at Sam’s, way back when, and how I was always too afraid to show off mine. I didn’t think they would withstand the light of day, so I kept them to myself. I know now that music should be communal. Jonathan says we’re tribal creatures, after all. The question I’m ready to ask myself now is: Do I Really Want To Be Seen? I express myself on my hidden little blog, or in a tell-all Novel behind a paywall, but the internet-at-large has yet to see me. I still have all these demos to show off. Can I do it?
So, Daddy Saturn— Thank You For Returning. I was hoping that when you came back from the store, the conversation would be about Career or Money, but if you want to talk about Communication, I guess I’m Open to it.
See you in the steam room
-mbk
FOOTNOTES:
1. Although I was consistent with the Scrapbook for over a year.
2. Did the Novel really make me Burnt Out from writing? I hadn’t even wanted to write on the blog.
3. Covid, if nothing else, was good for the lexicon
4. This was when “TikTok Artist” was still a derogatory phrase, after all.
5. This is your life you fucking psychopath, do you ever learn?
6. Huh, I can’t believe I didn’t include that in the Novel. Life is long.
