What Comes Is Better Than What Came Before

The first time I heard Cat Power's cover of the Velvet Underground's "I Found a Reason", I listened to it 17 times in a row.

Even then, I only stopped because I was aware that this behavior was what some might call obsessive, and because I knew I could have listened to it on repeat all night and never fallen asleep.

Since then, the song has undoubtedly been my favorite. It's the only one on my iTunes that has registered more than 100 plays (110 at time of writing), and I've certainly heard it many more times than that. I played it often when I worked at TDU; I've probably seen every video on youtube that uses the song; sometimes I'm too impatient to listen to the 6 seconds of silence at the end of the track and rewind to listen to it again before my computer counts the play. Even after all of that, I still have the same strange, painful, beautiful reaction every time I hear Cat Power's voice open the song that I had my sophomore year of college, laying in bed with my laptop.

For those of you who don't know the song (and Hell, even for those of you who do), close your eyes and listen:

The moment I hear her start singing, I feel my internal organs tighten and my muscles melt. I get gooseflesh across my neck and down my arms. My body is at war with itself - it does not know what to do, how to react. It's been almost 5 years since that first "Ooooh" entered my ears for the first time, and my body still cannot figure out how to process the information. I feel sick and nervous and sad and relaxed and in love and joyous and fearful and vulnerable. In the first 7 seconds of the song, I feel most of the emotions that a human being is capable of feeling - and they all come at once.

That physiological and emotional confusion is almost certainly what keeps me coming back to it. I don't know if this sort of visceral reaction is something that many people experience with music; I've never heard anyone talk about experiencing something similar. There are definitely other songs that are capable of putting me back in a specific moment, vividly reigniting memories I didn't realize I had. No other song, however, has had the physical reaction that "I Found a Reason" has on me.

I've tried to figure out why I feel the way I do when I hear it. You can tell in her voice that she is deeply wounded, and holding on to hope is something that is both impossibly difficult and absolutely necessary for her - that is something that resonates with me very much. The simple nature of the piano accompaniment is tragic and beautiful - I love that it doesn't overpower the vocals but provides just enough support to enrich without distracting. I love the lyrics and identify with the sentiment behind them. I love the strange ending - it seems somehow open-ended, like you aren't sure for a second if the song is really done. It's the kind of song that if you saw it performed live, you might not be sure if it's time to clap yet. I know I said I skip the silence at the end from time to time, but those few seconds really allow it to set in.

In the end though, I realized that it's not any of the qualities of the song or its production that make me love it the way I do. In any truly great art, there is something intangible and unnameable. It's what makes me feel wrapped up and comforted by Cat Power's shattered voice on this track; it's what makes me feel calmed and inspired by Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night; it's what makes me feel like I can reach out and give a hug to Charlie in Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Art should move us - that is what it's created for - and Cat Power's extraordinary work on this track does that to me in a way that few things do.

Having a favorite song is important, I think. It fills you up and makes you feel connected in a way that nothing else can. I hope you all like mine, but more than that, I hope you all find a song that has the same effect on you that "I Found a Reason" has on me.





Jack White talks about his favorite song:

So Long, Sweet Summer

This summer - the first of my adult life - was filled with travel, food, music, new experiences, friendships new and old, joy, crushes, mojitos, and the return of an ability to really feel experiences in a way that I thought I had had all along, but had clearly lost some of as I "grew up".

Today, I went back to work in preparation for the return of students in about a week and a half. Don't get me wrong - I really loved last year, and I'm looking forward to getting to know and teach and see a whole new batch of kids this fall - but I was a little bit sad to see vacation end. It's not because I had to start setting my alarm again, or resume the 45 minute commute, or spend my days in school - It's because, undeniably, Summer 2010 has been the best of my entire life. And I know part of what has made it so beautiful and special is the fact that time off is limited and fleeting and must be taken advantage of, but it's still hard to say goodbye.

The day after school ended, I went to a local massage parlor. I wasn't really feeling any specific pain - I just felt like I had worked hard all year, and so I was going to do something to enjoy myself a little bit. My school's graduation ceremony had been the night prior, and I was full of pride and excitement for all my students moving on to bigger and better things. I was proud and excited for myself, that I had made it through my first year teaching unscathed and with an even stronger desire to do this for the rest of my life. My head and my heart and my soul felt good, and 55 minutes later, my body did too.

I went into summer feeling relaxed and refreshed. I think having that mindset going in made me more open to experience the joy in all that happened. I'm not going to recount everything I did this summer - it would take far too long, and I'm not near a good enough writer to really make you feel all of the things I felt - but the point of this post, the point of this blog really, is to share all of the beauty and hope and pain and feeling that I see in this world, and hope that it moves you as much as it moves me. So I will share about 2 things. 2 wonderful, glorious weekends that I will remember for the rest of my life, because they taught me new things and showed me the importance of old things.

My best friend's younger sister and her husband are two of the coolest, most interesting, most fun people I have ever met. I have gotten to know them a lot better in the last few months; I've met many of their friends at monthly parties they throw at their house, and I feel richer for the opportunity. I like Kelsey and Ryan a lot, but I never imagined that I would be invited to their wedding. When I first learned I was going to get an invitation, I was excited and grateful that I was going to be able to share in their big day. And I knew that it would be one epic dance party at the reception. They held the wedding, both ceremony and reception, at Brae Loch near Roanoke. On top of a mountain, with the Star City below them, they got married with true class and, in true indie-kid style, with Jack White playing in the background.

The music at the reception showcased the bride and groom's eclectic tastes, with tracks by LCD Soundsystem, Lady GaGa, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Tenacious D all making appearances. I sang and danced with Travis, his sister, her new husband, and all of their friends and family for hours. I gave up for the night several times - and every time I did, a new great song would come on and I just had to go back out on the floor. I danced until my clothes were soaked, and I sang until my voice was hoarse. And the great thing was that everyone around me was having just as great a time as I was. A few times during the night I looked around me and realized that this is what life should be - people who love each other celebrating that love together with music, food, dancing, hugging, crying. We are meant to be surrounded by love. We should envelop ourselves in it. Love redeems us and makes us act like the people we ought to be.

I made new friends that night. I learned more about people I had only met in passing. I got to see Travis's mom drunk.

It was fun; hands down the best wedding I've ever been to, and I'm so thankful that I got to go and take part in such an amazing celebration of love.

I also was fortunate enough to spend a weekend at my friend Kendra's lakehouse in New Hampshire. I feel like this was really the centerpiece of my summer, and that almost everything since then has been caught up in a sort of storm following a few days of living life with such passion and urgency. Kendra is a friend from college; she was a good friend in college - one of the first people I met at JMU, and one of the hardest to say goodbye to after graduation. It's a shame we don't talk as much as we used to, but I'm thankful that this trip showed me the importance of keeping close with those who mean a lot to me. She had invited me up to Lake Winnipesaukee the past two summers, but I wasn't able to make it either time for one reason or another. I don't think I'll miss another trip for the rest of my life.

First off, it has to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. Watching the sunset reflect off of the water in front of the mountains at the other end of the lake is the kind of thing that makes you feel so small, in the best way possible. I also got to do all sorts of things that I had never done in my life: I rode in a boat for the first time, I went swimming in a lake for the first time, I played Bananagrams for the first time, I got to ride in a 1966 Pontiac GTO for the first time, and see one of the coolest collections of antique cars in the country for the first time. More important than all of the things I did for the first time were all of the people I met for the first time.

At the lake, I met Jon and Kristin, a couple of Kendra's friends from work. Both are incredibly intelligent and funny and sweet; the kind of people that feel like old friends 5 minutes after meeting them. Accidentally slaying Kristin in a game of Never-Have-I-Ever on a shot meant for Kendra was the strangest introduction I've ever had to a person, and somehow it totally fit the playfully antagonistic rapport we shared the rest of the weekend. Jon and I totally nerded out talking about video games and Borges, and he told one of the greatest stories I've ever heard involving New Year's Eve, an unexpected pregnancy, and the phrase "raw-dogging". I also met Cam, Kendra's ultra-cool English rocker boyfriend who seemed to have an unending knowledge of music and a willingness to try anything, so long as it was new and exciting. He was also an incredibly thoughtful and sweet boyfriend, and it warmed my heart to see how much he cared for my friend. I met Melissa, the funny, sweet, playful, interesting, beautiful cousin of my friend Katherine. Many of the most memorable moments of that weekend, of this summer, came courtesy of her. I got to see Katherine and Biz again, friends from college that I see far too seldom. I got to hang out with my old roommate Jenny, back together with the old college crowd. I got to see Kendra's strange, funny, loving family, who I hadn't seen in years. I swear, every one of Kendra's sisters is smart and sassy and adventurous and so much fun to be around that you almost can't believe that there is one family that is so great. I can't decide if three days in New Hampshire flew by too quickly, or somehow stretched out over an impossibly long time. Looking back, it all seems like a whirlwind of music and games and food and fun, but I can pinpoint all these individual moments that surely must have taken weeks to create. It was a beautiful, magical three days that I hope reignited everyone's passion for living the way it did mine.

Yesterday afternoon, as a sort of figurative nightcap on the summer, I got another massage. It was one of the best I've ever received, and my body felt totally loose, relaxed, and restored. As great as that felt, I know that no corporeal invigoration could ever rival the power of the spiritual invigoration of meeting new friends, spending time with old friends, and remembering how lucky you are to be alive and surrounded by wonderful people.

The Future President of the Coolest Planet We Will Ever Discover

My students have given me some pretty cool stuff. Some of it was just sweet - signs, cards, candy - and some has been a bit more... creative. After going on a rant about kids stealing all my pens and pencils, and threatening to fail anyone who didn't give back a borrowed writing utensil, one girl brought me a new supply. One student who liked to make fun of the fact that I drive a beetle gave me a stolen VW hood ornament. A pair of girls in a class I student-taught made me the most incredibly bizarre card I've ever seen, and attached locks of their hair inside. It was weird.

One kid even bought me a bottle of everclear on a hunting trip to West Virginia. I figured "Hey, it would be irresponsible of me to leave a bottle of liquor with a 17 year old, so really, I have to take this from him."

I've only had a year and a half of classroom experience, and I've already amassed so much goofy shit that I'm not entirely sure what to do with it all. I'm thinking of getting a steamer trunk: If I'm going to be doing this for 30 years, it looks like I'm going to need a lot of room for all these mementos.

I love all of the crazy, funny, strange, and nice things kids have given me, but one surpasses them all.

In my first student-teaching placement, I had two classes that were a lot of fun to work with, and one that was full of demonspawn clearly engineered by evil scientists to destroy the hopes of would-be teachers like Piggy's brain upon the rocks in Lord of the Flies. Out of this hellaciously awful experience, however, came the most wonderful and hilarious artifact of my teaching career. Not so much given to me as confiscated by me, this glorious picture



was drawn by the ringleader of all d-bags in this class. On the day I found this, I had noticed him rather intently staring at me, but clearly not paying attention to what I was saying. I figured as long as he was quiet and not disturbing the rest of the class, then that's a pretty good day out of this kid. It was when he got up in the middle of my lecture to walk across the room to give the picture to another kid that I decided that I needed to see what this was all about. When I grabbed the picture off of student #2's desk, I immediately started laughing - I couldn't help it. I mean, honestly, it's a pretty good likeness. The kid is quite talented.

My beard was in its infancy then, and the shadow he drew got it just right. He nailed the spiky thing that my hair does when it's a little bit too long to lay flat, but not quite long enough to curl yet. The glasses look just like mine. He even added the textbook's built-in bookmark ribbon hanging over the edge of the lectern.

Perhaps I should be offended by the caricature's pink pants, girth, and horns. After all, those pants are red, not pink. I'm a large dude, but not that large. And my horns are nowhere NEAR that tall.

Actually, I think it's the horns that really make the picture.

I was so enthralled and amused by this drawing that I showed all of my friends as soon as I could. I hung it on the fridge in my apartment. I scanned it so I could make it my profile picture. Everybody I showed seemed to enjoy the picture. When my friend Shawn saw it, he said I looked like the future president of the coolest planet we will ever discover. Other friends started calling me Mr. Willis, a shout out to the fact that that class deliberately "forgot" my name every day. People still make references to the drawing, or ask if I still have it.

"Of course I still have it," I say. "It's the coolest thing a kid has ever given me."

If you'll excuse me, I think I'm off to get this thing framed.

Let the Wild Rumpus Start!

Since I was very little, Where the Wild Things Are has been one of my absolute favorite books. One of my earliest memories is my mother reading that story to me in my bedroom in our old house in Richmond after I woke up from a nightmare, and her sleeping in the chair in the room with me all night. I used to have reoccurring dreams that I was in the world of the book at least once a week for much of my childhood. I still have that dream from time to time, though not as often these days. It's probably strange to have the same dreams at 24 that you did at 4, but I look forward to the nights when I can ride my private sailboat across the ocean and into the land of The Wild Things.

I've told a few people about my plans to decorate a room in my house, should I ever buy one, with the framed pages of the book. I've considered getting a WTWTA sleeve tattoo at some point. I have WTWTA decal stickers over my desk, and one of my favorite articles of clothing is my WTWTA tshirt. Despite the fact that it is a 37 page picture book for children, Where the Wild Things Are still has a strikingly profound effect on my life.

I've tried several times to figure out exactly what my fascination and connection with this book stems from, and I've come up with several unsatisfying answers. Is it pure nostalgia; a wish to go back to a time when my mom reading me a book and sleeping in the room with me could make me feel safe, like nothing could hurt me? Is it the fact that Where the Wild Things Are taught me how to use my imagination; that it awakened in me the idea that there is a world much bigger and with infinitely more possibilities than the one we can see with our eyes? Is there something innately cathartic about the story; does Max's kingship over The Wild Things satisfy some deeply human desire to control rather than to be controlled?

The answer to all of those questions, of course, is "probably". Maybe that should be reason enough to explain why I love this book so much. Maybe my quest for something beyond that is entirely quixotic, full of wholly-fruitless romantic idealism. Rereading the story today though, something else struck me:

Max is kind of a piece of shit.

I know he's a child and children get wild and that's sort of the point of being a kid sometimes. But Max goes above and beyond. He maliciously destroys things. He chases the dog with a fork. And when The Wild Things give him everything he ever wanted and treat him as a God, he sends them to bed without supper. Not the way his mother did - as punishment for misdeeds - but purely out of spite. Something bad happened to me, so now something bad has to happen to you too. It's the equivalent of one kid dropping his ice cream cone and deciding it would be appropriate to go around and knock everyone else's ice cream on the ground too.

I've read this book literally hundreds of times and I always knew that Max was doing bad things, but I think this last time through it really clicked exactly how bad he was.

But now I can't stop staring at this picture after the wild rumpus is over and Max has demanded that all The Wild Things go to bed without supper. The text below the picture reads:

"And Max the king of all wild things was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all."

And it's not just the words, but the look on his face - Maurice Sendak's illustration has the most nuanced and human expression that I've ever seen in a cartoon before. The words on the page say that Max is lonely and wants to be loved, but his face says that he's lonely and wants to be loved and he doesn't think that anyone can love him. It's on this page that Max realizes that he's been a total asshole, and THAT is why he leaves The Wild Things. He knows that they will be better off without him as their king - he waves them a simple goodbye, denies their pleas for him to stay, and then turns away from them forever, because he knows that he does not deserve their adoration.

If this were just a story of a bad kid doing bad things and then going home to find that his mom still loved him enough to give him his supper after she said she wouldn't, it would still probably be a fine children's book, but it wouldn't have the following it has or the impact it has. What makes Where the Wild Things Are really resonate with me is the fact that Max realizes he doesn't deserve love, but receives it anyway.

I've done, said, thought awful things in my life. Terrible things that were cruel and petty and heartless. I've sought vengeance and delighted in other people's misfortune. I have manipulated, played, and taken advantage of people. I have hurt countless numbers of people countless numbers of times. And as much as I try to never do things like that again, as much as I try to be a good person, I will always fail.

Like Max, I realize that I am not the person I ought to be. And like Max, inexplicably, people still love me. And I am grateful.

That is why Where the Wild Things Are has endured as a staple of kids' lives for almost a half-century. That is why I have loved it so much for nearly my entire life. I think that very few of us are entirely happy with every decision that we've made. Lingering on past mistakes too long is a mistake in itself, but the warm feeling you get when you realize that somehow people still love you despite all of the things you have done is something that feels as good and as surprising as an adult as it does when you are a kid.

Bi-Polar Bear

Today's post was originally going to be about my favorite song, and what makes a favorite song so special. While I still do want to write about that, I'm feeling a bit more passionate about something else at the moment, so I decided to postpone.

Bipolar Disorder is a monumentally misunderstood disease. I hear my students refer to other teachers or administrators they don't like as Bipolar, I hear people on tv throw around the term like it's some sort of character flaw borne out of personal weakness. I understand that most people who pull out the term as a cheap insult mean no disrespect to the 6 million or so people in this country living with some version of the disease; it's an easy attack - like calling something "gay" or "retarded". And like using the words "gay" or "retarded" as synonyms for "stupid", using "bipolar" to describe someone who is angry or whose rationale for a given decision or action may seem inexplicable to you is harmful to the general widespread understanding and acceptance of the condition.

In the interests of full disclosure, I'm Bipolar.

In November 2007, I spent about a week in the mental health facility attached to Rockingham Memorial Hospital going to group therapy sessions, speaking individually with psychiatrists and counselors, and generally trying to get myself right to go on with my life in a healthier and more productive way. I suppose it worked - I haven't had a major episode of either mania or depression since my time there. However, when I think about the 5 days I spent at RMH, what I think of is not any of the meetings, lessons, or coping techniques that I learned to deal with my disease - I think of the people I met.

There were usually about 10 of us in the room at any given time, though some people sort of came and went, and every single person in there had Bipolar Disorder. A few had other issues as well - PTSD, addiction troubles, OCD - but nearly all of the problems in that room stemmed directly from Manic Depression. It's been almost 3 years since I have seen any one of the people I met there, but I still think about them from time to time and hope that they are doing alright.

The thing about Bipolar Disorder (and the main reason why you shouldn't accuse that woman who got a little bit snippy with you in line at the grocery store of having it) is that it really affects the sufferer's life. I'm talking life-changing, can't-be-the-person-you-want-to-be, every-day-is-marred-with-the-footprint-of-disease kind of effects here.

One of the patients in those sessions - let's call her Kate - had just gotten back from a mania-fueled bender to New York, where she spent every dime she had without any recollection of how she had gotten there, who she had seen, or what she had done. The only thing she had to remember the trip by was a new tattoo on her arm (luckily, she told us, she kind of liked it). Kate had a Master's degree in Criminal Justice, and wanted more than anything to be involved in law enforcement, but due to her condition it is illegal for her to ever be in possession of a gun. She was looking into options within the federal prison system that might work for her, but she could never be a police officer like she had wanted to be her whole life.

Another patient - James, for today - was a football player who had come at the request of his coach. You could see on his face that he was uncomfortable with the thought of having a label put on him that might make him seem weak or unable to deal with his problems. When he spoke, it was clear that the social stigmas associated with mental illness weighed heavily on him and made dealing with his issues even more stressful and unmanageable than they were already. The facilitators of the sessions tried hard to convince him that there was nothing wrong with accepting his condition; that he could deal with it more effectively and be a happier person in general if he treated it like what it was, a disease. James left after a couple of days without receiving much help.

Two more patients were local women. One worked at the Wal-Mart distribution center, the other as a receptionist at a tire-seller. Both were in the midst of months-long depressive episodes. It took every ounce of energy for them to get out of bed in the morning, and each of them complained of regular hours-long crying sessions at work. Their families tried to be supportive and help, but they didn't have the resources or knowledge to really make much of a difference. One of them said it was such a relief to be with other people who felt the same way, because then she knew it wasn't just her.

There was the abused teenaged mom. The day trader who worked on the internet because he couldn't reliably make it out of the house every weekday. The physics student who had been at JMU for over a decade because his illnesses kept necessitating leaves of absence.

The person I think about the most when I think back is a woman who I'll call Lynne here. Lynne showed up my third day in the facility, and we sat next to each other at every meal and every session until I left. It's a little bit strange: I can't remember much of what our conversations were about, just the feeling that we had each found a friend in that place. Lynne came from a relatively privileged background, and whatever her husband did seemed to bring home enough money for the two of them and their children to live comfortably, but she had had a very hard life. She had been raped twice, suffered the abuses of an alcoholic father, and lost a child when she was 7 months pregnant, forced to deliver his lifeless corpse anyway.

More destructive than any of those things though, I think, was the impression I got that no one took her or any of her troubles very seriously. From the time she was a teenager, everyone seemed to think "you're blonde and pretty and have money. What is there to be upset about?" For the short time I knew her, Lynne was experiencing what's called a Mixed State episode - Basically, she was simultaneously exhibiting signs of depression and mania. It's a hard and confusing way to live, more so when your husband doesn't understand or care and everyone you know is telling you that you should just be happy. Several times in the three day span I was with Lynne, she expressed a simple and earnest desire just to go back to the couple of years she spent in Charleston, SC while in college. It was the only time in her life that she was able to really look back on fondly, and her face and voice were different whenever she told me about it. She told me about how she goes back there for a week every summer, all alone, and it is always the best week of her year. She told me about how disappointed she was when she went with her husband once, and he complained the whole time. I listened to Lynne, and I made her laugh. She made me feel happy and comfortable and needed. To this day, I still get sad when I remember her face when I told her I was checking out, and exactly the way she said "but who will I talk to?" She sounded like a little girl then, and all I wanted to do was hold her forever.

I haven't seen, talked to, or in any way heard about any of the people I met since my time at RMH. I used to hope to run into Lynne or some of the others when I went back for my bi-weekly counseling sessions or when I saw the psychiatrist, but I never did.

Every single one of those patients were good people, and they all had hard lives. Much harder than mine. My professors let me slide on some things that I missed, my boss and my coworkers covered for me at my job, my friends were supportive and helpful. I, for the most part, have a handle on my condition and live a normal, fulfilling, and productive life. I'm lucky. But whenever I hear someone misappropriate the term "bipolar" or sling it like a joke, I think of the friends I made in a few days at RMH and all the troubles that they have gone through and survived. It makes me wish everyone could have experienced that and come through with as much more empathy and understanding for others as I did.

Some Links:

Wikipedia's Entry on Bipolar Disorder

A list of some of the many celebrities and historical figures who are bipolar

An article my cousin's husband wrote on a JMU student who killed herself as a result of her bipolar disorder

So I guess I'm a blogger now?

After a few years of careful observation, I've decided that I think this whole internet thing is here to stay. As a result of this realization, I figured it's about time I got in on the party.

I suppose the goal of your average blog is to entertain the reader; to create an interesting or thoughtful diversion, to make you laugh, to keep friends up to date on some sort of project of the author. I can't promise that this blog will be insightful or funny, that it will make any of you see me in some new or deeper way, or that it will be in any fashion full of excitement. I hope it will do all of those things at different times, but all I can promise is that I will be entirely honest in this forum, and that I will write new entries often and faithfully.

The last year of my life has been noticeably devoid of a significant creative outlet, and so I am hoping that this can evolve into something that either satiates my thirst for that or leads to some other creative opportunity.

So there it is - That's the deal. I write, you read, and hopefully we all feel a little bit more enriched.

More to come soon. I promise.