feeling gravity's pull

Technically, this another post that doesn't involve me busking. However, seeing as this is the third night in a row that I've stayed up playing out my thoughts for myself and scrabbling crappy lyrics on just about any surface I can find (this is why I try to have blank post-its on my walls), I'm going to count it.

This was my much-built-up week off from work. Unfortunately, tiny commitments here and there whittled away most of the break, so I was glad that I'd left the last two days to myself to trek down to DC. The aim of using this as time to get out of my head and chill my body out was achieved, but I also think I accomplished the exact opposite. So:

Yesterday, when I hopped the train, I was listening to R.E.M. Never having got into them (mostly because of the unfortunate coincidence with my initials...), I'd attempted a few of their early albums in college to try to do the requisite, "yeah, these guys aren't any good now, but college kids back in the day loved them, and if there's one thing education is showing me, it's to respect an artist's overhyped past" kinda thing. It didn't click. This time it clicked. The depression I've been feeling for the last two, three weeks was immediately and thirstily breast-feeding from Michael Stipe's glorious vocal nipple (follow that?), and off I went into the deep end. The second the train left the station and I saw the least bit of scrabbly vegetation, my mental floodgates were self-sabotaged and I word-vomited all over my notebook. Tons of lyrics. I'm sure they sucked; that's why I stopped writing a few months ago. I'm embarrassed by how bad my ideas are. But I stopped caring. Why?

I guess because I was out of my comfort zone. Much as I hate how habitually stupid work has grown, and how habitually alone I feel, and how habitually unartistic I fear I've become, these things make up my routine, and, over time, have come to define my comfort zone. So, Rob, just get out of the city, and voila, you've got a couple shitty ideas. Sweet. Why don't you do this more often? Just go all over the place.

Then it hit me: is this why people travel? Maybe not all of them, of course. But maybe a lot of them do so for this reason. I dunno.

But after a nice, semi-relaxing (the semi- because it was rather brief) stay, I found myself getting all grumped up again on the train. Where I'd been feeling vulnerable, creative, sad and lonely only a day before, I now felt angry, stupid, sad, and lonely.

I just got more upset by the time I got home. Actually, enraged would be a good description. The reason? None, really. But I think I'm going to stop generally apologizing for that stuff. I'm a cool guy, and I'm gonna emote with confidence, yo. My dog is dying, I've managed to lose a significant number of friends in the last two years because I'm a stubborn moody schmuck, and here I am secretly griping about a few silly people who find silly ways to piss me off. This is seriously out of whack.

Anyway, I wish I could say I'll have at least some lyric updates to put up here, but seeing as how I'm turning slightly green looking at what I wrote, I doubt that'll happen.

"Fables of the Reconstruction" is amazing.