We'll carry on*

A pretty much relentless spew of drivel that attempts to sum up the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Six. And mostly fails pretty miserably, though hopefully we can agree it was basically a futile endeavor to begin with.

Writer's Block, originally uploaded by ConfessionalPoet.

Okay, GOD, I must write something.

It's not that I don't want to write. Holy hell, no. In fact, I've been so verbally constipated lately that last night it was all I could do to keep all the words from overflowing and spilling out in a great gush of nonstop, high-speed babbling at Brian, while we sat on his porch in Somerville and watched cars drive slowly by like little old men.

This is the thing, and I'm writing it here because none of the people who've already heard it from me in person want to even hear it anymore: 2006 has been a year in which I've finally anted up and chosen a direction, begun to make the compromises that are required with settling on a path, or at least a reasonably coherent pattern of behavior.

Before I could legally drink, I told Brian last night, I'd already given up on two "careers", one in music and one in academia. I'd already been dressed down by at least two people many decades my senior on how much "potential" I was squandering. Even nowadays my dad is still waiting for me to get off my ass and write the Great American Novel, and my best friend and I have had the Good Will Hunting "If you're still here in 20 years I'll kill you" conversation and STILL I have yet to master how to shit or get off the pot.

Brian is the first writer, and by that I mean writer in personality and not just by trade, that I've ever gotten to be friends with the way I've always been friends with musicians and actors. There are things I have in common with Brian that I have in common with nobody else I've met before. It has been a relief to hang out with him, because he gets what I'm talking about to such a degree that I can't stop talking to him. That's all we did yesterday--sat outside and smoked cigarettes and drank Coke on the porch while I blabbed and babbled and Brian got the occasional word in edgewise. ("Beth," Brian asked me once, deadpan, when I had just come up for air after a twenty-minute rant on something, "Were you by any chance a lit major?")

He told me hilarious stories about a kid who always said, about thirty seconds after a joke, "...what?" or about the time he listened to Radiohead's Kid A three times in a row and then, raising his head from his desk, said, "I get it." I told him Tim's "puke and throw" story and not only did he get the humor, he got the punchline, which was the part where Tim, having told the story, sat back and said "I can still hear the screams." Brian also had his own punchline to a story about a friend of his who dumped on him about his girlfriend while he was drunk and puking one night: "So then I pretended to hit my head on the toilet and pass out." (He didn't, actually, he said, but that's how he'd end the story).

"See," Brian said, lighting yet another cigarette, "That's the kind of shit I could be writing down." And I thought, Eureka. It was like when Iain handed me On Writing, also this year, or when Steve played his euphonium solo before that--all this year, a doozy of a year if there ever was one. When Brian said that, it was an epiphany. A discovery. This trying new things--this getting to know new people or new things about known people--it's not all neuroses and tough rows to hoe anymore.

We then moved on to a discussion of college experiences that culminated in Brian's use of the phrase "exoskeleton of arrogance," which pretty much made my entire day.

I suddenly came to the realization yesterday that for the past, oh, eight or so years, I haven't been so hot in the "making new friends" department. At least in terms of volume--though I have made some quality relationships that are extremely important, they have been few. Now, all of a sudden, I'm finally figuring out how to get to know people--how to get past my own dire predictions of almost cartoonishly horrifying scenes of rejection and just talk to somebody for a while.

More and more people, including my family, have felt freer this year to tell me, in so many words, to shut the fuck uuuup, for Chrissakes. I consider this a good sign as well. People don't say that when they feel they have reason to be afraid to, and I'm glad I'm not so much "that guy" anymore.

I've spent the last year or so feeling like I've become an increasingly fragmented person--I have so many rich but discrete groups of people and influences, and some of them by definition cannot meet. Sometimes I feel like a walking paradox; other times I just feel like I've stunted some part of myself for the gain of another, and realize after all that it would always come down to this, eventually--finally making the choice to not undertake one thing in favor of another; to not take a certain path when deciding to take another one. Luckily I've learned somewhere along the way to realize that I am not just losing an option in making a choice but gaining something as well. What I'm gaining at the moment by "selling out" in some ways (like censoring myself), procrastinating in others (like on the Great American Novel, for instance) is these pleasant connections with people I have something in common with that I've never had in common with anyone before.

For someone as obsessed with communicativeness as I am, it's a unique kind of punishment to have new parts of myself newly uncovered from new company, and yet to be the only, solitary one who knows what the two parts taken together look like. I have reached the age where I cannot be my full self in one place anymore--at least until the truncated and discarded (or as I prefer to think, set aside) parts are forgotten about.

There is, however, one place where some pieces meet, that I've also freshly discovered this year--photography. I am still toying with the idea of doing the "A Picture A Day Challenge" next year on Flickr. For this year, it's not a picture for each day, but I made a commemorative set of 2006: The Year In Pictures. It's the only way I've got to really sum up the year at this point, because there are some things I won't write about, and others I can't, but some of those pictures can say it all instead. It helps if you watch the set on slideshow while listening to "Welcome to the Black Parade," "When You Were Young", "Delilah", and "Time of Your Song" back to back to back to back. And if you hide all the sharp objects beforehand and keep some Kleenex close by, because even without the nostalgic photo slideshow that is a pretty asinine and dangerous combination of songs.

I'll also probably do the year-in-review questionnaire Andy recently posted on his MySpace. And I can't promise there won't be a few crazy freewritten tirades on here as a result of the Block. But I'll do my best to keep it to a dull roar.

______________________
*Title one of the poignant lyrics to "Welcome to the Black Parade", as referenced on the left hand sidebar, which I am still listening to multiple times per day.

Comments

[Brian]

"And then I hit my head on the toilet bowl on purpose so that I would pass out. I woke up with a chipped tooth, but he finally shut the hell up."

Now that's what I'm talking about.

[beth]

now look, fool, where's your blog already? this is getting ridiculous.

[Dan]

nice place you got heah. I was wondering where your non-Sox blog went. I bet there was a big announcement I missed in my general not-being-around-the-internet-ness.

[beth]

damn, how did I miss so many people? Glad you found it anyway. :-)