Mishka's Awesome Rocking Weblog

“People have got to stop making music that sounds like cell phones.”

The nature of life in a car is that you’re at the whim of the road.  You get all of the ups and down, and you’re subject to incredible reversals of fortune.
 
I’m sitting on the couch in my friend Anna’s house outside of Fayetteville, AR.  I’ve been on the road since Sunday the 29th and due to computer problems and a certain indolence on my part, this is the first time I’ve had a chance to sit down and write.  The last few days have been a mixture of anxiety and anticipation.
 
As I was writing that last sentence about eight hours ago, I heard a noise coming from my friend Anna’s bedroom.  I hadn’t seen Anna for about a year and a half.  In that time, she became addicted to heroin and has been in and out of detoxes and rehabs, gotten pregnant, gotten engaged, lost the baby, broken off the engagement, had six car accidents, and so on, ad nauseum.  When I heard noises coming from her room today, I went and knocked on her door and asked her if she was alright.  When I got no coherent response, I walked in and saw her cleaning up bright pink vomit.  I asked her what was going on and she said that instead of going to her AA meeting today, she had gone to W! algreens and bought a bottle of cough syrup and drank it.  I found the bottle, and it was an eight ounce bottle of maximum strength, the same shit that sent me into convulsions when I was sixteen.  I couldn’t tell how much of it she’d thrown up, but I knew I was in for an unpleasant day.  I was right.  She was barely coherent and getting worse, staggering around, tearful, gripped with sudden tears.  She’s a small person, always naturally thin, but now almost bony from being strung out.  For the first time, I felt like I understood all the drug analogies, i.e. ‘monkey on his back,’ etc.  It was like she was fucking possessed, like there was a huge, powerful supernatural being writhing inside her tiny frame.  I was continually concerned for her welfare as she kept walking into walls and almost falling into windows, onto end tables covered with pictures, etc., but more than once I was just creeped out by how depraved she had gotten and I just wanted to run the fuck out of there.

It’s incredibly hard to watch a friend strung out because you’re riddled with all these conflicting feelings.  I wanted to draw her to me and just hold her and let her cry and tell her it was going to be alright, and I was deeply disappointed in her not just for letting herself get so fucked up, but for fucking romanticizing it, and I was scared of her, I guess because I saw a little of myself in her, and I just wanted to get as high as she was and sit with her and talk about space ships and capsules and escape hatches, too. 

Of course, along with all the babble, she did say a couple of brilliant things.  In a long riff about how people are actively disinterested in the meaningful things in life, she said “people don’t want art to change their lives!  They want to talk on the phone!  They want to download!  They want to go to Blockbuster!”  Which, for the record, is true, but it’s no excuse for becoming a junkie. Listening to Sigur Ros (all fucking day, might I mention, which I don’t think is conducive to getting someone off the goddamn drugs, even after I gave her a copy of my new record, Christ) she pricked up her ears for a second, then looked at me and said “People have got to stop making music that sounds like cell phones.”  Amen to that, sister. 

After a long fucking day with her, both she and her parents opted to not let her go to the bar to watch me play.  I feel like I’m always writing “today was a new low” but let me say it: today was a new low.  I feel as bad as I’ve ever felt, and for once it’s not just out of pity and concern for myself.

Posted by Mishka at October 3, 2003 12:09 AM