There are a few times in my life only where I’ve been absolutely gutted, not by my own disabilities and limitations (which happens all the time), or the weight of the dumb world (also frequent), but by the emotionality of someone else actually reaching through the cold universe into my coal heart and grabbing it deeply and with pure intention and without mercy.
One was when I was working the door one very late night / early morning at First Avenue in Minneapolis on a weekend dance night, very exhausted by the crowd and by my job overall which taxed my social skills well beyond their limits, exhausted by the time of night where drunks from other clubs were spilling out into mine, people not suited for the place, people who should be in cabs on the way home. This one guy seemed to have had too many, and I was trying to turn him away. He was with a friend. Something was a bit off. What his friend explained was that he wasn’t really that drunk, that most of his state of disassociation and insobriety was the horror of the life event he’d been drinking that night to try and leave out of his mind for a few hours; and the moment I tried to turn him away at the door was when that liquid armor failed him. His mother had been killed by her partner, recently. And he was too new in this shattered world of his to go out and do anything normal, yet, but he’d misunderstood, until I stood before him accusing him of too much comfort booze. I hadn’t known.
We talked for a bit and I’m no miracle worker and nobody could get in a time machine and make the thing not happen. But I am pretty raw by nature, both abrasive and easily harmed, and occasionally a thing in my orbit meets me at that level. This was the thing, someone unlike me, but in a rare state where he was so blitzed with grief he could split time. And I turned out to be what he needed. I was wearing a watch with my artwork on it I’d had custom made, he spotted it, asked me about it, and told me never to give up my art. Took off his watch. As a reminder, gave it to me, for whatever I’d given him – I didn’t even realize I had it in me. Hope, I guess, which he’d left at the last bar. He’d spun through aggression and dissociation and into healing in the blink of an eye.
He and his friend left then, and my manager saw my imminent dysfunction, covered my post, took me upstairs to the office and sat me down with a drink so I could recover from the shock of the whole thing. It was like I’d sucked some of the grief out of him and had to sob it out myself. I’d seen right through someone’s skin. This guy was inside out. Everyone is in there somewhere. But under so many layers usually. So many layers.
 |
| I've lost mine, like an asshole, but here's his. |
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I’ve never had a worse year. I’m in shreds. My career has collapsed, my city is burning, I have no stability, nobody needs me, my dreams are gone. I’m out of gas.
So another gutting moment took me by surprise yesterday at noon when every David Lynch fan in the universe stopped what they were doing to meditate for ten minutes as he’d have done, on what would have been his 79th birthday a few short days after his final trip to the moon. I’d been fully immersed in a Lynch retrospective all weekend and was consumed by grief and awe. I was watching a stream of endless Lynch movies and clips. The stream paused for the meditation. And then when left alone with that in silence, it enveloped me. I sucked all the peace and love vibes from the thousands and thousands of meditating people radiating outward, and ate it up like a black hole.
