My Confession, Part Five

And then I fell, and things got blurry. I woke up on the floor of a public bathroom. The tile was cold. I got up and waited to wash my hands while an older man washed his hands. It was a clean bathroom. When he was done, he reached for a paper towel and grabbed it. He used it to sop up the water that he had splashed on the sink. I remarked to him with a question, "wouldn't the world be a nice place if everyone cleaned up after themselves?"

He agreed as he shook the water off his hands, deposited his trash, and left so that I could use the sink.

My Confession, Part Four

For those of you that don't know, getting into Stanford is really hard. You basically have to be able to fly or bend spoons with your mind or something like that. I'm getting better at it now, but back then I could barely conjugate farsi, let alone order dinner via esp. Instead of Stanford I went to Berkeley after I was done with city college, which was still quite an extraordinary achievement for Me the Slacker. I went to philosophy classes and studied until night time came around. Then I got high and played drums in the basement of my dorm until I got tired and went to sleep. That was basically my life. Every once in a while I would hang out with some of the people in my dorm who were gracious enough to befriend me, but I was too busy with getting things done to really let them in to my life. What with all the hubub about Me going to Smarty Pants University, I had forgotten that school is no more than a bad joke that one can benefit from knowing, but you can't take it seriously or you'll end up the fool. I had started out as a fool and it was therefore easy to see the joke for what it was, but I had let myself get tempted into trying to find something deeper in the absurdity, not realizing that in doing so I was having to run fasterfasterfaster just to keep from falling down - falling off.

My Confession, Part Three

The thing about going to Stanford is that you've got to do a bunch of stuff for them to let you in, and being a slacker that barely graduated from high school is not really a part of that. I had made my goal, however, and seeing as it was at least theoretically possible I saw no reason to abandon it and so I went to city college; that noble institution of slackers, morons, and the generally confused. I resolved that this time I would execute my assignments to the best of my ability. I would take school seriously. I do not know why I wanted to do this. Looking back, I can only understand it as either a case of demonic posession, or as a long term performance art piece titled 'Irony.' I had not decided to take school seriously because I wanted a Career. Such a notion was entirely foreign to me. No, the line I used was about Education. If asked "Why do you want to go to Stanford?" My anwer was, "To get an education, which is valuable in and of itself."

Nonsense.

BUT - I was determined to achieve my goal. In my first term at city college I chose an introductory philosophy class and had my mind completely blown on the very first night. It was a three hour session. The professor was effective, to say the least. He would prove to be a very powerful influence on me for the next few years. After that first class I walked down the florescent hallway alone, and I could feel my brain swimming in my skull. The hallway was empty except for myself and two guys in green jumpsuits, one of whom had a piece of cardboard layed out. He was spinning on his head while his friend watched. There was no music other than the hum of hallway lighting. I walked by the breakdancers and down the stairs, through the campus and the parking lot to my car.

to be continued...

My Confession, Part Two

I can't remember when exactly, but I think it was around sixth grade. That was when I decided that "Rock Star" was a better answer to The Question than "Cow." Coincidentally, that was when my grades started to slip. Until this time, I was one of the top five smarty-pants kids in a class of 30. At grade six, age 11, I began to spend less time doing homework and more time staring into space, listening to the stereo. At first it was quite embarassing. I was used to being a good student, and therefore I had trouble admitting to the teacher that I had not done my work. It would take years to develop the confidence necessary to look an authority figure straight in the eye and explain that their assignments meant absolutely nothing to me. Shortly after that I so mastered my contempt for the educational system that I was able to deflect the querries of scholastic authorities without even acknowledging their physical presence. As a senior in English class my teacher asked me, in front of everybody, "Do you even care if you graduate?"

Indeed, she had the power to ask this question. If I did not receive a passing grade from her, I would certainly not graduate. For me to reply 'No, I don't care,' would have been a challenge and would have acknowledged her power and revealed my weakness. And so I said in reply to her question, "That would be nice."

I was reading something at the time. I did not look up. She did not reply. Class went on as normal and I graduated in June. One day shortly before graduating, however, I made a little goal. For this particular term, I had managed to enroll in as many classes as possible that allowed me to do more or less as I pleased, which typically did not involve sitting in a chair in a row of other students. I was quite pleased with the order of things. While I was not particularly fond of school, I certainly did not hate it. I had come to see it as a big game that everybody had to participate in, but you didn't necessarily have to take it seriously. On this particular day, I was walking around the campus during classes, and so it was quiet. I passed by the Career Center, or College Center, or whatever it was called, and I noticed something that said "Stanford" on it. "Now that would be funny," I thought to myself, "if I went to Stanford...I think...I will go to Stanford."

To this day it shocks me how casually I made that decision.

to be continued...

My Confession, Part One

"Welcome to the world of human beings. We are playing a game. The rules are rather intricate, but once you learn them you may be able to come up with better ones."

I fool myself. I constantly fool myself. Intentionally and constantly I fool myself. I have never been ambitious. When I was very small, around the classroom the children told the teacher what they would be if they grew up.

"Fireman," one would say.

"Doctor," comes from the small mouth of another.

When the querry reached my ears, my brain responded: "A cow. I will be a cow if I grow up."

As I grew and learned the rules a bit better, I realized that I could not hope to be a cow. People kept asking me this rediculous growing up question however, and I needed a reply that was at least theoretically possible.

"What do you want to be if you grow up, young Matthew?"

It was important that the answer was percieved as serious. People don't like to be mocked, espceially when they are taking interest in you. If I were directing myself in a play, I would say that this particular line must be delivered in a deadpan fashion - no irony, no sense of scale. The line must be delivered with the same spirit of one who wished to be a dentist or a truck driver.

"I want to be a rock star."

The problem with this, of course, is that there is no prescribed method, no technical school for rock stardom. The closest approximation to an instructional guide about this illustrious career is the folklore of popular music: Anectodal Accounts of How it's Been Done in the Past. And as we all now, such generalizations are nearly always useless to the specific case.

And so, I knew that this career path was a rediculous one, and what I knew in my heart but never let on was that I didn't hope to actually follow it. I never wanted to be anything other than what I was. The notion of growing up and 'becoming' some new thing was in my mind Nonsense. I expressed my contempt with the rockstar ambition.

to be continued...

I've Been Fucked Over #2

I had a friend in wood shop. He was into cars, and I thought cars were okay so I got more into cars because we could talk about that. He lied a lot. I didn't really care that much because I thought it was interesting and I didn't really have anyone else to listen to, anyway. He played bass guitar and so did I and I was a better bass player than him, but I never really mentioned it. We had that in common, too. We started a band and I became the singer for some reason. Mike was in wood shop, too and he had a guitar, so he was the guitar player. We had no drummer but we practiced a lot anyway in Mike's garage. We covered Misfits songs and I remember one day this old guy was taking a walk by the garage. He started yelling at us, but he wasn't complaining. He was shouting "Turn it up! Turn it up." That was kind of strange, in a good way. I would get really into the songs. I don't have that lack of self consciousness anymore and I can't believe I did the things I did. I would throw myself around. I would land on the driveway in view of the whole neighborhood and scream. They called me g.g. because g.g. allin was this crazy singer guy that fucked himself up pretty bad when he performed. I wasn't as crazy as g.g., though...nowhere near as crazy as that guy. One day I showed Mike how to play this guitar solo he couldn't figure out and he punched me in the jaw. I guess I didn't do it in a humble enough manner. The band didn't play together after that. Later Jesse all of a sudden stopped being my friend and spread a bunch of lies about me at school. It was kind of a shock. I never did anything to the guy. I didn't let myself be sad that time.

I've Been Fucked Over #1

I had some friends. They turned me onto punk rock back when punk rock was having its semi-revival/corruption. You know, when those flannel shirt wearing bands came around. Anyway, we hung out and did stuff. We even had a band. Daniel was the singer because he wrote crappy spoken word about his parents doing coke. I was the guitar player because I had a guitar. Matt played drums because he had drums. Leigh played bass. It was my bass. One day we were playing in my room and things were going poorly and I screamed really loud the words "Shut Up." After that, I fell on the ground and didn't say anything. They kind of milled around the room and then left. Leigh left last and by the time she left I had kind of gotten over it, and was able to get up off the floor. It was raining outside and we exchanged some words. Her boots were grey and so was the water she was standing in. She turned around and started to walk home. A little while after that, Daniel and Matt found a new friend who was probably a bit more interesting than me. They stole my notebook and made fun of the notes in there from this girl I knew. They decided that I was lame and they came over one day to throw things at me. It hurt a lot and I was sad, but I didn't really tell anyone about it. Who do you tell when your friends don't like you anymore?

The summer was hot. Every day was the same hazy sweaty dream and the fan in my kitchen window was always, always on. But now it is cold in Los Angeles. I know that this is a relative coldness because I can still wear shorts if I want to, but the contrast is real. When the temperature drops in the basin the skies take on a crystal blue and the clouds a puffy white and one can't help but forget about the smog. Last night I crawled under my extra blanket - the one I usually sleep on top of, donned a tee shirt and some soft track pants. And it seemed to all happen just last night, as if Mother Nature decided we had had enough of this sun drenched misery and flipped the autumn switch to "On."

Some say our culture has no memory, or that if it does it only goes back about 10 days. I find this to be true in matters of politics, where most people cannot see behind the dusty clouds of that event which shall remain nameless here. I suppose it is my general disinterest in such matters that excepts me from this rule, as clouds for me are not quite so thick. The weather and the whims of nature, however, are events I have a most intimate relationship whith, and while I can indeed be objective about the cycles of the sun and rain when pressed, it feels as if the cold has always been here and will never end. In just the same way at the crest of the heat wave, I was hard pressed to remember a time when my body was not continually moist with sweat, and when a breeze of any kind was received like new love.