No Exclamation Really Fits

It comes over in a wave, like the feeling you get when you are hundreds of feet up on top of a building and first peer over the edge.  That suddenly unbalanced stomach and flash of total paralysis.

In that scenario it is just a quick wash as maybe you steady yourself with a hand on the parapet.  But in a life gone off the tracks it can last, almost a lifetime.

Telling myself it is never too late doesn't do it anymore.  When it is too late, it simply is.  And it can scare the hell out of a person.

Maybe this is the cowardly aspect they talk about when those who actually have no clue try to assess suicide people as having taken "the coward's way out".   I consider those who go along with the crowd, no matter what, as the true cowards, but that is another story.   They run the world, or allow it to be run.  Herd animals at their finest...

Last thing I would ever want is the suicide path, but I do not think everyone has a choice.  You'd be surprised what your mind and body can manufacture; fear, pain, confusion, suffocating loss of hope.  Those can push someone over the edge--literally. All one can do is to hope that he can be some benefit to others who deserve it, and forget what a wasted and hopeless existence he has built.  Or just wandered into, like a rootless vagabond; a dead leaf blowing in the breeze come fall.

So, I am in a band with some nice and some strange people.  One of the members is successful, and not such a misfit.  She used to head up the arts and music for a very large school district--one of those "unified" deals.  It paid big bucks I think.  She has a long term marriage and, to me, has it all together.

The rest of us are weirdos.  Sorry, but we are.  The main person struck me as gay, but she isn't. She just likes that boyish look.  I get no vibe whatsoever that she likes women in that way, but she seems to eschew feminine accouterments as well.   She has a long term marriage so she has more sense than I do, I guess.  Then we have an alleged woman who was apparently born male and I have not reached down to see if a surgical procedure has been performed.

People go, "Hey, that chick playing bass for you guys is a dude!"  What can I say?  She never told me she was not a chick.  But I guess I thought the same thing.  I have no desire whatsoever to even discuss the situation.  The actual women in the group seem to be all sympathetic and almost over the top PC about the issue.  I just find "her" a little arrogant and off-putting.  Good player, in a way.

That brings me to something I have learned about playing.  There are very musically educated, skilled players, and there are players who know how to play off of others, and always listen to everyone on stage.  This one has the creds, Berklee music school, etc., but seems aloof, superior, and kind of isolated.  That symbiotic thing is missing, although she is highly regarded in the jazz circles around here.  So, maybe I am just a bigoted and mistaken soul.  Probably not.

It makes for one odd looking music group.  And I believe it is our downfall.  Got to wonder when people say to me, "Oh, you're playing xyz next week?", and I say yes.  And they say, "I wish it was just you and leave the others at home."   No, please, I do not want to carry that.  That hurts me more than flatters.

 I guess I'd rather play with gender confused women and alleged women than the typical middle aged "I have to have just the right tattoo, the exact right hair and goatee, the bandana, and pretend to be badass" blues/rock players.  What conformist nonsense. There is a conformity to it, right down to the lingo, and mindless causes.  Of course, that is the natural and right look for some I guess.

But the attitude of , "I'm a rebel" is diluted a bit if you are as indistinguishable from the others as an Anonymous convention with hundreds of Guy Fawkeses.

Really.  I am so over the skulls and whatever the Texas Longhorn finger thing means in a rock context.

OK, I never liked the skulls, etc anyway, so if I wasn't into it, I guess no need to be over it.  But I used to tolerate it.  Now I want to bring out the fumigator every time I see it.

There are a lot of people and cultures that seem more legitimate candidates for suicide than I am.  So why is it so hard to get through the day?  Why the paralysis?  If I told you what I think, you would jeer and say I was a wimp.  I believe it was the lies I was told from infancy by my borther about my lack of worth, and my parents' tacit agreement.  The only people I trusted programmed me so well that I have failed to thwart it.

But like the trans whatever person in our group, if anyone else messed with the person I would be the first and fiercest in his defense.  But those people whom I defend rarely know it or appreciate it. Clueless bastards, all of them.