The Cruelty of Expectation & Promise, The Wisdom of Snoopy

I learn slowly. In come cases really slowly. But I always try to learn. Being a damaged person and not as smart as I think I am, I have learned a lot of things that were wrong and needed unlearning. But I try. It's taken a really long time to understand that my wiring is not like a lot of people. Most of my friends are artists, whether musicians, actors, writers, painters or combinations of them. Consequently, I've been around a lot of people who are not wholly dissimilar to me. None of these people have employed me or been in relationships with me, so... well, you can see where that would go.

But I'm not gonna write about that. Ha! Gotcha!

Nope. I want to yammer about what it means to tell people they have promise or that a lot is expected of them, and what it means to go into any situation with expectations. Almost all of us do these things and we do it far more than we think. These things are inflicted on us, too. Again, it ain't fair; it's human.

Fuck.

I have no way to gauge this but I believe most people think I'm smarter than I am. I assert this because I have been told since long before I can remember that I have such great potential. At this point I would like to quote Snoopy in hopes that a parent will read this someday and think before saying that to a child: 'There is no heavier burden than great potential.'

It's fucking awful. This is tantamount to telling a child, "Be great or disappoint me." Suffice it to say that I've been told a lot that I'm a disappointment. Does that mean I'm not smart or talented? I hope not. But I have rarely lived up to anyone's expectations. Maybe it's because I didn't learn fast enough or shine bright enough. I didn't outstrip others or wasn't a leader.

Why do we do this? We do it to our children, our lovers, our parents, our friends and even those we don't like. One of the things I loathe about the internet these days is that there are always these ads and links that pop up no matter what I'm doing that read 'You Won't Believe How They Look Now!' or something equally harsh. Have you ever followed one of these links? Photos of celebrities in old age are placed side by side with others at their peak, invariably captioned cruelly. Or maybe it's an image of someone from the silver screen coming out of rehab, or a rock star shopping with family. How dare we allow our heroes to be human!!

But we do it to each other all the time. I watch marriages fall apart because people stop talking, or because a partner changes and doesn't explain what's going on, or because both partners change and rather than bring it to light they just grow cold, resentful and bitter. And they split. Usually afterward blame is heaped on the other one. This occurs in very enlightened people.

Of course sometimes there is blame deserved. Cheating? Not cool. Any violation of trust or legality falls under the not cool heading.

But think about dating. Two people meet or are introduced. They get excited and nervous. They hope. They second guess. By the time they meet again for the actual getting together and getting to know one another, they're each carrying a freaking suitcase of thoughts, worries, concerns and EXPECTATIONS.

Human. It's human. We're all fucking human.

But we don't have to bring these things to the table. Or, if we do, we can express them. We can say what we think and feel. Really. It's actually not hard to do. It may be nerve-wracking the first few times, but it's actually liberating to speak one's mind and admit to having doubts, fears, anxieties, previous bad experiences or any number of things.

'There is no heavier burden than great potential.'

There is nothing worse than having that burden dumped surreptitiously upon one. Or wielding unspoken thoughts like a weapon. It's like performing witch testing. It's metaphorically binding someone and throwing him or her into the water: if they float or swim, they're witches; if they sink they're innocent... and dead.

Admittedly, this plays into why I stepped away from dating and romance. I love all wrong. I fail witch tests. Being an artist means having powerful emotions, living by instinct and speaking freely. Most people are happier with mystery. Most people also expect a partner to be telepathic.

I got into the habit early of saying "I'm sorry." I said it so much in fact that I didn't realize it was coming out of my mouth so much that people were joking about it. But I felt I was constantly disappointing people and they regularly told me that I was not living up to their expectations. This changed when I was in couple's therapy and our shrink, a brilliant individual, made us bow to one another when the phrase was used for something that didn't require it. For a week we were bowing to each other a lot. And sometimes in public.

I learn slowly. But I try.

I still talk too much and I still don't always say the things I should. (I really will write about the conditional tense.) But I'm working on it. I don't want to be guilty of those things I felt were done unfairly to me. I don't want to hunt witches. I want people to get a chance and get by on their own merit. I want to see people learn.

But I know we have a long way to go.

Wonderful & Horrifying

Solitude is not what most people think. I won't tell you it's not great because there are aspects of it that are spectacular and liberating, but at the same time I'm not going to sugarcoat it. The downside is dark. 

There are a lot of people who can and do appreciate not having to answer to someone or keep a set schedule. Being able to up and do whatever at the drop of a hat is pretty cool. Yet most of the people who've spoken to me about isolation in glowing terms are the people who don't have any, those whose lives are filled with others making demands and wanting their time. They're people who don't get a moment's silence. So I think they may have a tendency to romanticize this life of mine.

It's not romantic.

It's cold. I can count on one hand the number of times in a year that I have physical contact with another human. That includes shaking hands. Getting sick is challenging. Sometimes getting out of bed is a less than sunny prospect. Similarly, going to bed alone every night is not always a blast. It's not even necessarily a sexual thing (although I remember that being cool). Just curling up with someone, wrapping around someone before falling asleep, is one of the most human things. People who get to do that every night forget that. 

On the other side, I can stay up as late as I want, sleep in if I'm inclined, ignore my chores and blow off the entire planet. No one notices and no one carps. If I have an idea for a song or a story at 2:00am, no one's there to ask what the hell I'm doing or when I'm coming back to bed. 

The funny thing is that having a life geared toward selfish impulses is kind of odd for someone who's not fundamentally selfish. I'm not denying that I enjoy treating myself, but as a friend pointed out, humans are not built to be alone. Since the earliest recorded history we define everything by duality. The struggle between good and evil. The necessity of challenge to achieve success. Light and dark. Day and night. Man and woman. Even the idea of The Lone Hero is someone who faces struggle and makes sacrifice for the better of others.

So why do I live this way?

Because it's the best solution for me and for everyone else. I don't get the 21st century, not really. I am too easily disappointed and I am invariably a disappointment to those few people who've wanted me in their lives. I'm a simple person at the root of me and that seems to piss women off. If I'm not complicated, scheming, duplicitous or playing games, the women who've been attracted to me get bored and angry. Sex, love and romance aren't enough. Good conversation only goes so far. They like conflict and complication. I don't. 

Am I saying this is bad? Fuck no. My life is whatever I want to make it. On weekends I rise before the sun and make breakfast to watch it crest the horizon, to feel those first rays hit my skin. Sometimes I play it into the day, selfishly making a tiny soundtrack for the dawn. I don't have to make my bed or I can, in the words of the last one I dated, live like an old woman. If the urge is to research mythology or wax nostalgic, I can unreservedly. 

But I'd be lying if I said I don't miss conversation or smelling a woman in my sheets, having a hand softly touch my back. Being unexpectedly kissed. Hearing laughter when someone catches me dancing. Making breakfast in bed for someone. Another presence.

I guess one of my meanders is always gonna be a mixed bag. I don't write this with a tone of regret, I'm just trying to get at some king of honesty, some personal truth. And that's rarely a thing with only one side. I could just as easily write of my experiences in relationships. My temptation would be to wax poetic and go on about the lyrical qualities of the women I've known. But there are reasons that none of those partnerships endured. And I don't by any means imply that there is only culpability for one party. I have been a nightmare in those pairings.

But that can be another post.

More of the Nothing

Rereading the previous installment I see that editing would be a good thing. As an improvising musician that's not so much my way. As a writer I know this makes me more than simply lazy. At the same time I'm not the one who heaped either title on my little pointed head.

And so I start the meander with whatever that was. On to the aforementioned nothing!

Reclusion. Isolation and solitude. I think for some the ideas are romantic or even comedic, but I came to them purely as a means of survival. We don't, as far as I know, have a choice in being born. Instigating one's own demise is both criminal and seen as a breach of morality. Most take it as a character flaw or a sign of weakness. But anyone who denies that life is hard is a liar or has never suffered. I've known a lot of the former and, sadly, a few of the latter, too. What a strange world we've made for ourselves.

Does this mean I want to die? Of course it doesn't. I love life. But the living of it can be a motherfucker. A lot of the reason for that is simply being human, but probably a bigger part comes from having to interact with one another and the fact that we're all so different, that we have to function within the construct of society as we've made it.

Further, both in terms of biology and social programming, men and women might as well be cats and dogs. We're drawn to one another but as strongly vexed by each other. Men are predominantly linear, changing slowly and preferring to stay focused on a goal but also governed in no small part by testosterone and aggression. Women are physiologically in a near constant state of flux and this colors  so much of a their lives. Women also, in my experience, don't believe men are as simple in their orientation as we in fact are.

So how the hell do we reconcile this?

We don't. We acknowledge that these differences exist and, should we opt for real relationships, do all we can to make communication possible and forgive often when we lose sight of those difference.

Anyone who's been in a relationship knows that this returns to that whole not easy business I brought up before.

I can't write much about men. I'm told that I'm not like a lot of men. Don't know if that's true and really I don't know that it makes much difference. I'm just me, whatever that is. I do know that my experience isn't common and that's shaped me, so possibly my perspective is different, skewed, interesting, ridiculous or worth your time. I guess one of us will find out before long.

What the hell was I writing about?

Women! Right.

In the previous post I described myself as a grudging romantic. That's only today. Previously I'd have called myself wildly romantic. Some might have used the hopeless or eternal labels. Lately I realize that no matter how cynical, sarcastic, angry, vexed or anything else I become, that frigging romantic streak will not die. It's a cockroach of a character trait. No metaphoric or metaphysical microwave or decapitation will do it in. I've tried.

But where I lived my earlier life for women and for the wooing of them, I am changed and so are my views. I still love women but after about a half century on this spinning marble I have seen and endured a lot. I know that a lot of what I was taught about women -- and chose to believe -- was more than wrong: a lot of it was lies. Maybe it's what we as men would like to believe of women, but...

We're taught women are weak. Women are strong. We're taught women are emotional. Women can be emotional, but women can also cut off their emotions in a heartbeat to deal with something completely dispassionately if they feel they need to. We're taught women are sweet and I believe there is powerful sweetness to most women, but women can be mean, ornery, malicious and straight evil.

None of this is to say men aren't the same or worse. I repeat at this point I know little of men. I know me some and if I'm not like most men then I'm hardly going to write about men.

At the same time, I'm not generalizing about women. I'm writing about the women in my experience. More specifically the women in my romantic experience.

It's possible to know a woman for years or even decades and not really know her at all. I became involved with two of my deepest friends after long periods, 15 or 16 years in one case and 30 in the other. What I knew about them for all those years before we got together sexually and romantically was a lot, I thought, but women are wildly more multifaceted than men, I think. Or in my experience.

I remember one of the most powerful exchanges I ever had with a woman. As a musician and writer I'm always trying to get at some truth. I think I've always been this way. But I can't forget when I finally managed to meet and get to know a woman I'd been intrigued by for some time. We connected well and shared some incredible conversations. When I told her about my philosophy and approach to things her response was,

"I believe everyone is lying all the time."

Stopped me in my tracks. Stunned me. I was angry, chagrined and indignant.

Then I realized, as I sometimes remember to do, that we're different people with different lives and different histories. I knew nothing about her at that point, including how she grew up or anything else. But I did know she was an actor and as part of her craft that belief was central. To get at the heart of a character it was essential to grasp that the surface and the core may be wildly different things.

But this was the beginning of a journey. Last year I was talking with one of my favorite people. I was in a lousy mood and she was bubbly. She commented on my snarkiness and I pointed out that I was sick of the ways women choose to talk to me, how they treat me. She smiled and her eyes were laughing.

"Lying to you, huh?"

"Yes!" I blurted.

"Women lie all the time. Sometimes we don't even realize we're doing it."

Again, stopped me cold. Stymied me.

But I'm a man. I don't have to put up with any of what a woman has to deal with constantly. Not in any real way. Whatever condescension or objectification I'm dealt are a fraction of what any woman has to deal with most of her waking hours. Rape is not the same thing in my mind or in my life. I haven't had to learn from the first how to deal with slimy looks, attitudes, characters or behaviors in at least 50% of the people around me at any time. Threat is not a looming presence in my world. Not really. And it's not convoluted with media images telling me constantly what I'm supposed to be, with everything tied up in my looks and my sexuality. Bitch, slut and whore are rarely things I'm going to be called, to my face or behind my back. They won't be screamed by strangers or casually uttered by my friends.

For all that, for all the confusion of being a man and dealing with women, I'm told I should not carry baggage into every exchange. I need to treat every woman as an individual.

That's fair. Difficult. Challenging. But fair.

At the same time I know I'm constantly being compared to everyone from a woman's father to her ex to the one that got away. And after knowing women some, these comparisons are done in a VERY different way than how the men I know do it.

None of it's fair. All of it's human.

Hmm...

This is getting a lot longer than I'd intended and it's not really going much of anywhere, is it?

I'll need to go into my diatribe on the conditional tense at some point.

I don't know. At the end of the day what I get back to is that I don't know.

We're all of us limited creatures. We change and grow, if we're lucky, but we can only see and know so much. Sometimes when we think we're being open we really aren't. We're blind to so much in ourselves. And as my friend pointed out, we may not even know we're lying.

Yes, I just expanded that to include men.

But honestly I don't think it's a hopeless thing. Not an easy thing, but not hopeless. We're drawn to each other and if it's gonna be more than making babies, we owe it to ourselves and each other to try and be more, to be better. And I think we can be. If my own life has taught me anything it's that we impose more limitations on ourselves than anyone puts on us. We rankle when we're told what we can't do and we rail against it. But we seem just fine with the things we tell ourselves we can't do. How bizarre is that??

I guess I should wind up for now. Tune in again for more of this idiotic ranking and dribble that passes for brain fodder!

And if you made it this far, thanks for taking the time. Really.