It’s Friday morning and I’m doing my thing. This. The dust has settled now from the shakeup of my relocation, and here I am, feeling a bit lost, wondering if this whole narrative I’ve created about my life, this so-called journey of self-discovery, has been nothing more than a fantasy, a game I invented to give a sense of meaning and drama to the particular sequence of choices and random events that have delivered me — more or less in one piece — to this fine Friday morning. The internal knot I’m picking at right now has a dimly foreboding feel to it, like stifled waves of nausea. Deeper still there’s a sense that I’m missing something very, very important, something that is being communicated to me by everyone and everything all the time, yet somehow remains elusive for being so glaringly obvious. If I would just turn the dial a hair to the right or a smidge to the left, I would be tuned in clear as a bell, but I seem to have forgotten the basic things, like what a dial is what a bell sounds like.
It seems the fog of amnesia has settled over me, again. Yes, I’ve been over this ground before, I’m certain of it. Whatever is being communicated to me is something I already… fucking… know. Been here, done this. And yet…
Until the age of 30, the rules of the game were simple: every thought, emotion and action of any significance was wrapped up in the grand project of finding “the one” who would love me the way I needed to be loved. With each “failed” relationship, I understood a little more about the folly of such a project. At 40, I can note — with more than a little gratitude — how each morning I emerge from sleep to the joyful discovery that I am not alone. In fact, I wake up each day to the knowledge, rather unsettling at times, that I presently have everything the 30-year-old me ever truly wanted, and everything that any human being could reasonably hope for. And yet…
Am I spoiled rotten? Have I gotten too soft? Perhaps my edges were forged by the years of burning angst and the constant hammering of struggle and failure. It’s as if I don’t know how to be… comfortable.
Maybe I’ll invent a new game, create a new project and lose myself again in the drama of it all. Maybe I’ll stop all this navel-gazing and focus my creative energies on those less fortunate, those who would consider it a luxury to wrestle with my itty-bitty demons. Trouble is, I’ve been there too. I’ve been the martyr and the saint. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve been over every inch of this territory, wherever the hell I am. It’s just that my tracks have been covered up, and I can’t remember for the life of me what it was I discovered here that seemed so earth-shattering at the time.
Whatever it was though, it was somewhere deep down.
Better start digging.
I think it’s normal to feel like this after a monster move across the country. I think you’re feeling a little wrong-footed by the newness and trying to make sense of it all and that can translate into what you might feel are deeper meanings; signs and wonders that you feel you might be missing.
I do think a lot of us search for some drama and equate comfort with tedium. Something I am definitely trying to snap out of. I know you’ll feel better ?
Awesome to see you writing again BTW.
Thanks Stereo! Yeah, I think writing might help me work my way through the fog…
Great to see you had a blast in LA!
Yes, that is life, those cycles, we forget who we were and we start over again, always reinventing, always changing. But mostly, I think it’s a good thing. We should always be pushing against the boundaries, self-imposed or otherwise… at least until we are too old and tired to do so. :)
Indeed. Thanks for this, and for all the truly marvelous things you share on your site. I truly appreciate what you do.
Hi Bob
Long time-no contact. Your songs keep getting better. I’m still listening to Something Somewhere on a regular basis in my van driving to work. Thanks again for the CD.
I’d like to share something with you, in case it resonates, or is helpful in some way, and also just to say again that I see much of myself in your own expressions here. Sometimes in a weird “alternative universe” kind of way, I feel like I’m reading about a younger US version of me!
Anyway, this is kind of lengthy and a bit self-absorbed – apologies in advance! I popped over here to see you because I was following a link on Integral Life to Roger Walsh’s work. He pointed me towards the work of Robert Desoille and the “repression of the sublime,” and Andreas Angyal’s “evasion of growth.” plus Maslow’s ” Jonah complex”—the fear of one’s own greatness.
While I was reading about their stuff, what popped into my head clear as day was the phrase on your website “Everyday we slaughter our finest impulses…” Not only that but I recognised so much in what they were saying about my own habits of denying the sublime in my own life, and where in my childhood they likely came from. I had a jaw-hanging-loose-tears-in-the-eyes-shit-they-are-talking-about-me-and-I-had-never-even-considered-that-before” moment. True moments of self revelation are rare – I just had one.
Recently I’ve been doing the same old thing – partly beating myself up for not getting the 17 things done, partly recognising that conversely I don’t want to live in a way that requires me having 2 P.A.s in order to get everything done. I too have been (partly) living the househusband role for 10 years now, albeit in my case with an excellent part-time self-employed job (teaching Taiko drumming). How to structure one’s own time at home is a weird challenge isn’t it?. (There are some good practical websites out there that I found helpful.)
But the main obstacle I kept coming up against was my own resistance to putting focussed attention on structuring my daily habits in order to maximise time on the things that really matter to me. Like you when you were working and had limited free time, I struggled with the need to attend to those genuine obligations/chores/tasks (commuting/groceries, laundry/finances…), while at the same time finding quality time to put into the (top 3 of the) 17 things.
But when I did have quieter work periods, and when I had had time to “recover” from bursts of hard work, I STILL didn’t focus on the top 3. Why not? There was some other hidden dynamic going on. I’ve been grappling with this for years. I now think I was experiencing what those psychologists are referring to as the “repression of the sublime”. Does this sound familiar or have resonance for you at all?
Roger Walsh gives an example of his experience during a Ram Dass talk on the chakras. As he was speaking about higher and higher levels, Walsh and others around him fell soundly to sleep. He interprets this as a bodily manifestation of resistance to operating at higher levels. Does your “amnesia” fall into the same category? In my case it manifests as sitting on the sofa with the remote and endless re-runs of Judge Judy when I could be recording my songs!
Another similarity in my own life, as well as my wife having a full time educational job, is that I too currently have more free time than normal due to me having worked real hard the last 18 months – I can take my foot off the gas in terms of chasing bookings at least for the next 3 months. With that freer time comes opportunities for deeper digging such as chasing up the Walsh references, but it also means that I am actually making progress (albeit still at a snail’s pace) with my own music projects. Who knows, some of my songs might actually end up on Bandcamp before the year is out!
Lastly, on another blog entry looking through boxes, you mention that you were a “good boy”. Me too, the teachers loved me, “head boy” of the school, straight A’s etc. I’m not sure but I think I got so much praise from adults as a kid that I got embarrassed about it, or other kids got jealous, so that I started repressing stuff even then. Am I still repressing my best work? This is the newly emerging stuff I’ve got to work with next I think.
All the Best
James Barrow
UK
James,
Great to hear from you man! Coincidentally, I just saw your name pop up over on Joe Perez’s blog. I appreciate your level-headed commentary about the whole Gafni situation. What a circus! Good luck trying to dialogue with Joe. A while back he called me out for being “non-integral” here on this blog. I tried to engage him in a dialogue, but it was about as productive as bashing my head against a brick wall, so I bowed out rather quickly. (I’m sure he has good intentions and that my own shadow stuff contributed a lot to the impasse.)
Thanks for the encouragement regarding my songs. I’ve had more time lately to fool around in the studio. Hopefully, I can keep the fire burning once I start “working” again.
Great to hear you had such a profound moment of self-revelation. I definitely resonate with this “Jonah complex” notion. I keep bouncing around from a feeling of inspiration and a deep faith in my own powers to a crippling sense of doubt in those same powers. When the initial inspiration for doing something wears off, I just can’t seem to push through the obstacles. Without the palpable sense of inspiration, I inevitably start to question whether or not I “really” want to do whatever it is (i.e. write, play music, somatics, teach). As I start to feel more and more defeated, a sense of resignation creeps in, and I get that familiar “Here we go again/This will never change” feeling. I certainly don’t have a conscious sense that I FEAR my potential greatness (although is HAS occurred to me that that might be going on behind the scenes). Consciously, I’m only aware of the sense of doubt. It’s the feeling that I really just don’t have what it takes to be great at anything, or that I’m just not passionate enough about any one thing, or that I’m just interested in too many things and there’s not time to be great at them all, or that I’m simply not willing to put the necessary work in. There’s certainly some truth to this, in the sense that—up till now in my life—I simply have never worked really, really hard at anything. Why not? Perhaps it is a denial of the sublime. If so, I’m not sure how to overcome it.
For me, I keep getting derailed by the same thought patterns. One of them is: “I just don’t know what I truly want to do in life. If I did know, then I would pursue my dream with every ounce of my being. But I don’t know, so first I need to figure that out. At this point, I need to accept that it might never happen.” Another one is: “Not everyone is lucky enough to have a passion that lends itself to making money. I love music and writing, but only when done strictly ‘for the love of the art’. As soon as money gets involved and I’m trying to ‘sell myself’ or exploit my own creative process, it transforms into something that I no longer love. So the only solution for me is to work a ‘day job’ and otherwise do things I enjoy in my ‘free time’.”
Of course, the fact that this issue keeps bothering me, coming up again and again, tells me I’m not at peace with my present status quo. You mention:
“the main obstacle I kept coming up against was my own resistance to putting focused attention on structuring my daily habits in order to maximise time on the things that really matter to me.”
This really resonates with me, and this is a major struggle I’m presently engaged in. I finally have the time and support to change my patterns, and yet I’m not making the most of it by any stretch of the imagination. Every day has been a battle. I recognize that it’s an excuse and a cop-out to wait for a sense of total certainty about a course of action, and to expect to always feel inspired and on fire about whatever it is I’m doing. It takes a deep trust and faith in oneself to continue to press on in the dark, after the fire has gone out. Up until this point in my life, I have not had this kind of trust and faith in my deepest self (or at least I haven’t been able to sustain it for long).
Anyway, I will keep working through this. Thanks again for taking the time to offer your perspective. I do think that the “repression of the sublime” may have a lot to do with what I’m going through. Now, what to do about it?
I hope your own process continues to unfold in a positive direction, and I look forward to that Bandcamp page!
Best wishes from this side of the pond!
-Bob
I wake up each day to the knowledge, rather unsettling at times, that I presently have everything the 30-year-old me ever truly wanted, and everything that any human being could reasonably hope for. And yet…
I know this so well. On bad days it makes me feel ungrateful, although I know I’m not.
I hope the tracks reveal themselves. I really do, for both of us.
Thanks Kim!