Please Love Me
I left Chicago on a cold September morning 23 years ago. Tonight I have returned.
The occasion is the third stop on my “Love Below Tour.” Tonight finds me performing in the living room of one Rebecca Ryan. Rebecca’s parents took my mom in during my parent’s divorce way back in 1980. And tonight Rebecca’s taking me in. She’s a school teacher in Lincoln Park. It’s gonna’ be cool.
As cool or cooler is that I’m hanging out with my cousin Andrew. He’s quite the musician on his own accord, and actually toured well prior to me despite being a little bit junior. Come to think of it, he remixed “Summer’s Gone” for the “Summer’s Gone EP.” His is the “Radio Joe Edit.” I gave Andrew his first guitar when I stopped through Denver en route to live in Telluride, Colorado, some fifteen years ago. He was about sixteen. Now in his late twenties, he’s far surpassed my capabilities on guitar.
That it’s cold and drizzling here in Chicago only makes the nostalgia that much more palpable. I lived in Oak Park, the first suburb west, for about five years. Some of my best and worst memories are here. The rainy skyline brings them all back.
Chicago makes me wish (as I often do) that I am Jeff Tweedy, driving a ratty Toyota to the studio to introduce the band to my new song, “I’m Always In Love.” Instead, I’ll introduce my cousin, a coupla’ old friends, and a coupla’ new friends to “Love & Other Indoor Games.” Then I’ll fold the cold in my jet-lagged palm, and turn for home.
I’ll meet you when I get there.
Elevation
“If you wanna’ kiss the sky you’d better learn how to kneel.”
I’m not sure what Bono meant by that line, or whether he even knows what he meant, but it somehow makes complete sense to me.
It’s rare that I make it to my knees at one of my shows. My music just doesn’t allow for it. I don’t have that much time off from the mic. But I found my moment last night, and I went for it: velvet pinstriped sportcoat and all. CJ was soloing, guest tamborinist Chris was smiling ear to ear, and I fell to my knees. Sure, it’s a dramatic gesture made, in part, for show. But there’s something so freeing and out of body about it. It’s release. It’s exciting, and cathartic, and fun. Somehow, there’s a little something more to it.
Said another way, if you want to get to Heaven, you’d better learn how to be humble. If you want to get to The Promise Land — whether that’s actual nirvana, emotional well being, lifetime companionship, whatever — you’ve got to be prostrate. You have to know low to know high.
I’m sure I’ll know lower in my remaining days, but I have glimpsed The Bottom. I’ve been handed over from one parent to another on Christmas day. I’ve laid in a hospital bed with a head full of bruises and blood. I’ve been a drug addict. I’ve walked the island of Manhattan from stem to stern trying to shake off worry. I’ve had my heart broken. And I’ve been exposed as a lothario in a major metropolitan publication.
The bottom feels like freezing rain. It feels like a shrinking room or a skull-crushing headache. It looks like 4:27 on a Tuesday morning when the streets are dead empty and it’s as dark and cold as the night gets. There’s nothing to see there. There’s no view. I’ve been there. I bet you have too.
And I’m not 100% on this, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t trade The Bottom for The Elevation. You know those moments: clarity, joy, absolute present tense. Well, I got a little bit of that last night. And I actually remembered to enjoy it. In fact, at least twice during the show, I stood extra still and took it in. It felt good. I felt full. I felt redeemed. Saved.
Thanks for that.
Dare You To Move
Welcome to the planet. Welcome to existence. Everyone’s here. Everyone’s here …
Everybody’s watching you now. Everybody waits for you now. What happens next? What happens next?
I dare you to move. I dare you to move. I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor. I dare you to move. I dare you to move. Like today never happened. Today never happened before.
Welcome to the fallout. Welcome to resistance. The tension is here. Between who you are and who you could be Between how it is and how it should be.
I dare you to move. I dare you to move. I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor. I dare you to move. I dare you to move. Like today never happened. Today never happened before.
Maybe redemption has stories to tell. Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell. Where can you run to escape from yourself? Where you gonna go? Where you gonna go?
Salvation is here.
I dare you to move. I dare you to move. I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor. I dare you to move. I dare you to move. Like today never happened. Today never happened before.
Who You Are And Who You Could Be
I strongly considered calling it quits last week.
I was over being The Musician in about fifteen seconds. Coupled with a few other existential challenges that came my way concurrent the being outed in The Gray Lady, the whole week, well, the whole week just sucked it. Hard.
I considered changing my name back to Ben (which everyone calls me but isn’t how introduce myself and which should be viewed, not literally, but through the lens of metaphor), shuttering this website, and — most alarming to even me — cashing in the music thing (for $.49, but still).
As recently as this morning I was doing my best not to cry in public. I’m not even entirely sure why. I was telling my mom about this dude I know who’s a recently recovering and recently lapsed alcoholic. I could barely say his name.
“Hello, my name is Bob, and I’m an alcoholic.”
I’ve spent the balance of the weekend here, at my desk in front of the big south facing window, pouring over DAT tapes of previously-released albums, unreleased demos, and live recordings for the Friends of BWD, LLC, project. You’ll recall that in exchange for a small Pay Pal donation, I’d pledged MP3s of my first record, “Always Almost There” (which was previously only available on cassette) and “The Christopher Street EP” (which contributed heavily to “Love & Other Indoor Games” but never saw the light of day).
So over the course of Saturday and Sunday I’ve heard stuff I recorded as recently as last November, and as long ago as 1993. I heard plenty of crap. But overwhelmingly, I was kinda’ surprised: shit didn’t suck. And I found a coupla’ gems: a few songs I don’t remember writing (“Lottery,” “Hero In Me,” “Might Have Been”) and a few cool live things, like a performance of “World Leader Pretend” recorded two weeks after September 11th.
I mentioned this whole project at brunch with my mother this morning, and made a humbling and almost heartbreaking admission.
“I listened to over ten years of my songs today,” I said. “You know, me trying to figure my shit out. I resolved that I haven’t learned a fucking thing.”
And what does my mom do? She starts laughing so hard she nearly spit up her bloody Mary. She’s laughing so hard that she’s pounding her fist on the table, turning all shades of red, covering her face with a napkin. People are staring.
Fuck it, I decided, and laughed too. Beats the alternative, right?
It wasn’t the laughter, though, that saved my life. It was the music.
I rehearsed with for Tuesday’s “Love & Other Indoor Games” release party (7:30 pm at Canal Room on Canal and West Broadway) tonight. By the end of our marathon three hour session, I could breath again. I could walk again. I could fly again. I felt like me again. I hadn’t heard one of those annoying, self-defeating voices or ruminated on any of my worries for hours. And Dough sounds better than any band I’ve performed with since, well, ever.
I was fine. I knew everything was going to be ok. Evidence had suggested that in fact I had learned something, even if there’s lots left to learn.
Three chords and the truth go an awful long way.
And so I will keep my name. I will continue this website. I will keep recording, releasing, and performing my songs. I won’t be The Musician, or even A Musician. I’ll just be me: MTV News guy, singer/songwriter, triathlete, writer, friend, brother, son, uncle. And it’ll have to be good enough, ‘cuz that’s what I’ve got.
But enough of my yackin’. Whaddya’ say? Let’s boogie.
Sixteen Miles To The Promise Land
I don’t visit mountains with frequency. I haven’t stood with my arms outstretched in years. This is a problem.
I was eight-years-old when I first saw a mountain. My father drove my brother, my cousin Bruce, and me across the great Midwestern plains to the edge of the Rockies in a brown Oldsmobile station wagon. I wore a straw cowboy hat and a big brass belt buckle that said Ben. My brother wore Coke-bottle prescription glasses, a mouth full of braces, and a black cowboy hat. We were a sight, standing there at a rest stop along Interstate 80 with the great blue and gray moutains edging from the horizon behind us. I borrowed Bruce’s blue-tinted sunglasses, put one hand on my hip, the other around my brother’s shoulder, and smiled. One mile high and rising …
I rode a gondola into the Alps when I was sixteen-years-old. One minute I was standing on the edge of Lake Lucerne in Vans and a flimsy Polo windbreaker, the next I was bracing myself against the snow-strewn wind. I had never breathed fresher air or gazed on a bluer sky.
I drove from Pennsylvania to San Diego and back — 8553 miles — when I was 19-years-old. I paused at every range along the way: the Rockies, Bighorns, Tetons, San Juans, Sangre de Cristos. My photo album is chocked full of self-timer photos of me on the edge of some thin trail, a vast, tree-filled valley at my back, with my arms outstretched. And I am always smiling.
I spent my junior year at college staring at a photo of Mt. Ajax, a 14, 0000 foot snow-capped peak that bookends Telluride, Colorado’s box canyon, pledging to summit it by year’s end. That May, with $500 in my pocket and a sleeping bag, tent, mountain bike and acoustic guitar in my NIssan Sentra, I headed west. A week later, I called my mother from a gas station on the edge of town. I’d been camping outside of town for three days searching in vain for work and a place to stay. A thunderstorm was blowing in. I was choking back tears.
I summitted Mt. Ajax in August. My friend Suzi captured the moment. It’s framed on a shelf in my apartment. There I am, a goateed, crunchy granola in a yellow raincaot, grey fleece and blue mirrored sunglasses (again!) with — surprise — my arms outstretched.
If life were a Creed video, I would be Scott Stapp, and the move would be his patented “Jesus pose.” But life isn’t a video, and I have no Stapp-ish delusions. Instead, I think, the true heart recognizes the arms outstretched as an attempt to embrace it all, to take it all in. For later, when you might need it.
I’ve taken in a lot of mountains vistas. I’ve lost a lot of breath in the thin air. And I’ve gained a lot of perspective. I spent four nights fasting in the high desert of Utah after college seeking some sense of what I should do with myslef. And I spent three nights fasting in the San Jauns just prior to accepting my job at the MTV.
It’s quiet in the mountains. The light is brighter. I can hear me. And, mysteriously, there’s not a whole lot of “You’re an idiot” or “I give up” there. Or if there is, I don’t remember, because it’s been forever since I stood on a mountain and said to myself, ‘Some days last longer than others. But this day moved too fast.’
Clearly I’m due.
Shut Up
I released my first solo album three months after disbanding my college band, Smokey Junglefrog. I was 21-years-old.
The record was called “Always Almost There.” It was recorded in the weeks following my graduation from Syracuse University, and engineered by my friend Steve Feldman (who engineered the first Queens of the Stone Age record). It’s a pretty good record; a fair snapshot of a kid who has no idea where to go, or what to do.
I performed the release party backed by a band called The Bedouins. They were well-intentioned, but under-rehearsed. The performance bordered on a train wreck. Afterwords, my former band mate (and frequent nemesis) said to me, “Nobody said it would be easy.”
The comment pissed me off, primarily because it presumed I thought it would be easy (which I didn’t). It stuck in me for weeks and months to come. I channeled it into a song called “Shut Up! (These Little Voices).” It’s not my best song, and never made it onto tape (though my friend Joe claims it as his favorite), though I did play it live a bunch of times.
I stand before you with an open chest
Bleeding out loud I’m doing my best
But the storm blows unreasoned
In this tempest’s high season
The trolls hide below the bridge softly
Shouting out treason
I give you my secrets
You take them and walk out on me
As I stood in Times Square this morning watching folks pass by, I imagined that they too had their voices of treason. These days, there are two phrases on repeat in my mental playlist:
“You’re an idiot.”
“I give up.”
Personal pronouns and the psychology therein notwithstanding, these are, of course, telling phrases. There is very little that I can do, for now, to silence this inner monologue of doubt. Performing works. Nothing beats kneeling in front of the drum set strumming my guitar furiously. And running helps. Of course, not surprisingly, it is music that most successfully drowns out these voices in my head. Currently, it’s U2′s “How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb” that helps me to feel strong and capable again.
You were pretty as a picture
It was all there to see
Then your face caught up
With your psychology
With a mouth full of teeth
You ate all your friends
And you broke every heart
Thinking every heart mends
I release my fifth full-length studio album, “Love & Other Indoor Games,” this Tuesday night at The Canal Room. Again, I will be backed up by a terrific band, Dough. We expect to avoid the train wreck.
The album title is lifted from Judy Blume’s “Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret?” I chose it because, well, every song relates to loving, or wanting to be loved. And because the “Other Indoor Games” somehow buffered me from hipster criticism, my own, and the real thing. Love’s not cool, so I softened the blow with cynicism.
It’s become abundantly clear in the last few weeks, though, that “Other Indoor Games” are bullshit. Hearts break, and hearts mend, but it’s important stuff. It’s big stuff. It’s not a game, played unwittingly or otherwise. It’s the real thing. It’s even better than the real thing.
Love is all that matters. Anyone who tells you any differently, Your Highness, is selling something.
Burning Photographs
I got glasses and braces at virtually the same time: just a few days into my first year at Conestoga High School.
The glasses were big ole’ tortoise shell horn rimmed things. They were big. Like, each lens was as wide as a pint glass. I loved ‘em. I wore ‘em all through high school. Looking back at photographs, though, well, they were pretty unfortunate.
The braces were even more so. My broken jaw notwithstanding, I’d had years of orthodontia by high school: pulled teeth, retainers, the works. So I’m new at this big high school, and I’ve got two silver braces on my two front teeth and a wire spanning the gap of missing teeth on either side. I didn’t smile much, and when I laughed, I covered my mouth.
Most of my memories from high school itself take place in the cafeteria. And in every scene that plays in my mind, I’m at a different table with different people. And in none of ‘em am I really comfortable. And none of ‘em do I really feel at home.
A former colleague of mine from my brief time at Rolling Stone wrote a profile on Eddy Vedder years and years ago for which Eddy refused to do an interview. The piece basically torpedoed Eddy’s claims that he was a high school oddball, misfit, and castaway. Instead, through interviews with friends, the piece suggested that Eddy was popular, involved in student council, musical theater, bands, the works. The piece called his shoe gazing an act.
If anyone cared to ask someone other than me whether I was well-adjusted, involved, and/or popular in high school, I’m sure the answer would border on the affirmative. I’m sure no one would remember the ridiculous glasses, the awful braces, or my attempts to conceal it all with my hands. And yet, looking back — even still, today — I don’t feel well-adjusted, involved, and/or popular. That’s not what my life looks like from behind these contact lenses and dental implants.
So … which is it?
I’m Not Broke (But You Can See The Cracks)
To say that resetting my broken jaw without anesthesia was painful is a monumental understatement. To say that showing my face at school later that summer was somehow worse is straight up fact.
It was, perhaps not surprisingly, a love triangle that found me in a bloody heap on the sidewalk in front of the Wawa. It was a misunderstanding. Nonetheless, I was on the receiving end. And in one fell swoop, I was out cold.
I came to slowly to the sound of my attacker and his entourage taunting me. I knew immediately that my jaw was broken. The ER doctor at Paoli Memorial Hospital confirmed later that it was broken in two places, and dislocated from both joints. And then he relocated.
The story is well documented. In short: flash, crack, blood. Lots of blood. I was filled with gauze, shot up with Demerol, and drifted off. When I woke up 18 hours later, my teeth were woven with metal wire. My jaw was locked shut for eight weeks.
I spent the balance of that summer in hiding. I went out. I saw my friends. I did things. But I was in hiding, stoned morning, noon, and night. Or nearly so.
The first day of my senior year approached quickly. I had already faced my attacker in court. Despite a rich history of violence, and my appeal to the judge that he be forced to deal with that violent streak, he got probation. In other words, he had to be home by midnight. Nonetheless, we found ourselves running down the railroad tracks evading cops at a party later that summer. He drove me home. Well after midnight.
Back to school, there were rumblings from a small but vocal minority.
“He had it coming.”
“Glad someone finally kicked his ass.”
I was shamed. I was embarrassed. For getting sucker punched.
The shadow that followed me through those hallways eventually cleared a bit, but never fully dissipated. I stayed stoned for nearly ten years. I still feel shamed. And embarrassed. For getting sucker punched. Worse, for putting myself in front of that oncoming fist.
Sometimes you don’t see it coming. Sometimes it blindsides you. Sometimes you do see it coming, and it’s equally disorienting. And sometimes you find yourself spinning around, dizzy from making the same fucking mistakes over and over and over and over and…
And then you break the cycle. You face the day, shake the naysayers, and get on with it. Because there’s work to be done. Even if you’re still aching, there’s work to be done.
Modern Love
I will never date in this town again.
Ok, let’s discuss surreal. Location: Las Vegas McCairn International Airport. The din of slot machines chimes loudly over U2′s “A Man And A Woman” on my iPod. The Strip shimmers just across the tarmac. I’m waiting on Jet Blue Flight 192 to John F. Kennedy Airport less than 24 hours after arriving in Sin (or, for me, Sleep) City. I crack The New York Times Style section — my favorite — to find a frighteningly accurate depiction of the last year of my romantic life accompanied by a hilarious illustration of myself (plus snack strip and earring).
Of course, I knew it was coming. Heather had long since let me read the piece. Heck, I even contributed to our collective recollection to some degree. But there it is: my dysfunction spilled across The Gray Lady. And of course, it’s not really about me anyway (cue Carly Simon here). What a trip. What a surreal experience. What can ya’ do? I grimaced, climbed aboard the plane, and fell into a shallow sleep.
As a guy who moved to New York over ten years ago to be a freelance writer, it wasn’t quite how I imagined making The Times (Concert Listings notwithstanding). But as the guy who was voted Class Flirt in the 1989 Conestoga Senior High School yearbook, it shouldn’t be so surprising. Yunno’ what it is? It’s two thing’s: surprising, and disappointing.
First, it’s surprising that this city that once seemed so big and so impersonal, should in fact be so small. It really is like high school. Word travels fast. There are no secrets. Whether its the bloggosphere, Friendster, or Page Six, nothing stays quiet for long.
But far more importantly, and a little more well chronicled, is that it’s all so disappointing. That is, I’m disappointed in myself. I shouldn’t have been so careless. Not in getting “caught,” or in being less-than-discreet, but in being so careless with other people’s feelings.
One of Heather’s commenters said something that stung, largely because it was true:
What a typical man you are and what typical women we are… You admit to being a terrible cad and we love you for it.
Me, a cad. Ouch.
I always figured that, as long as I was clear with the women I was non-exclusively dating (which, for the record, is a recent phenomena: I have a long history of serial monogamy), everything would be all right. I always figured that if I owned all of my issues right up front, then everyone would be ok. I always figured that since my intentions weren’t malicious, no one would get hurt. And truthfully, I never thought I was worthy of much heartbreak.
Heather’s (excellent) article wasn’t the only illustration of the err of my ways, but it was the most public. So let me say, to anyone who cares, or hasn’t heard from me personally: point taken.
Of course, the true test of a man is in his deeds, not his words. And should I have a chance to love again, should some woman be so brave, well, I guess the proof will be in my actions.
Fortunately, every journey has a departure, and a destination. And though it is during the journey itself that we learn who we are, it was a relief last night to land back home in New York City. It is a relief to depart The Surreal, and arrive The Real.
Leaving New York (Not Easy)
24 hours in Vegas. How psyched am I … sigh.
My colleague (and Cockfight bandmate) Robert Mancini is getting married tonight. At the Ballagio. In Las Vegas. How ‘Ocean’s Eleven,’ right? I’ll be the Brad Pitt character. It was a tuxedo, or my black circa ’99 Banana Republic three button. I went with the suit. “Ted Nugent called. He wants his shirt back.” I’ll let Mancini be Clooney. It’s his day.
Thing is, I’m over — and I mean in a Big Way — Las Vegas. I didn’t even stop thorugh as I raced westward on Highway 25 during my collegiate cross country trek in ’90. Heck, I was over it then. I ended up there years later for my cousing triple bachelor party. Chris and I mountain biked all day while the rest of the guys hatched some roulette scheme that lost them a cool grand collectively.
Every time I find myself there, I think, ‘I’ll never be back.’ A year later, there I am, staring down The Strip at all the is Plastic and Fake. Which ain’t my bag. Give me real, give me genuine, give me brick and mortar, silver and gold, honesty and truth. Spare me the piped-in air, the atmospheric control, the constant daylight. And most of all, spare me the cash hemorage. I have my music career for that.
And so it is, I’m on a 7:10 Jet Blue flight. I arrive at 10 a.m. I wed Mancini, then board a 10 a.m. flight Sunday morning.
Did I mention that I’m too old for this shit?
Las Vegas is further illustration that New York is neither a Red or Blue state. It’s just this island floating free of the rest of the world. It is contented in its diversity. I relishes the absence of Big Box Stores. It moves at an unprecedented pace. And it throws its money away on sushi, not slots.
So how psyched am I? Well, the Xanax is working. I’ve got that going for me.
