An Autobiographical Statement: 2005-2008

In 2004 I wrote An Autobiographical Statement, a monograph detailing my life story up to that particular year. In this piece I write at length of the intervening period between 2005 and the present, and some of the important events and experiences that transpired then. 

An average mid-sized American-made car, traveling about the regulated federal speed limit for a interstate highway (80 m.p.h) from City of the Southern Panhandle Plains–Lubbock, Texas, to the Queen City of the Rio Grande Valley–Harlingen, Texas, takes about 16 1/2 hours to travel across the State, notwithstanding additional periods of rest and immobility, bathroom breaks, sleepy periods, food stops and the occasional crying spell. I undertook such a journey when I returned to South Texas after a very brief and intense year at Texas Tech University, most of which was filled with nothing but 100% pure affliction. I left on May 14th and was back home on the following day, a Saturday. The weather had been temperate and agreeable in Lubbock, but in South Texas it was hot and humid. The two climatic shifts were practically symbolic of the two very different worlds I had been in, and the utter difference between them. 

By this time most of my friends had either abandoned me or had relegated their goodbyes to quaint expressions of sympathy, empathy, or bitterness. The person who helped me move out was a man named Ryan Mello. Ryan was born in Maryland but had come to Dallas to make a life for himself, and, when that didn’t pan out, decided to move out to Lubbock to make it happen. A friend of his let him live in a quaint trailer park on the outside of town. He and I spent about a week together, talking things out, hiking, and enjoying the only free period of time of rest and relaxation I had for the entire year. Everything in my life before Ryan can be thought of as time before a historical epoch (if you subscribe to the idea that an epoch is considered a prime reckoning date in historical dating): Before Ryan, and After Ryan. Before Ryan, life was much more disagreeable than logic would devise. After Ryan, it was still hard, but it was now easier to see what I was doing wrong, and what I ought to do to change the situation. Overall, Ryan spent $300 on my welfare for that entire week, more money than he had at the time. He didn’t immediately ask for any of it back, nor did he badger me like so many friends do very often, for repayment. In a hotel room in Lubbock, after I was told to leave the dormitory with all my things, he said to me: “I believe in you, and I know you will overcome this situation. This is an investment.” I didn’t know it then, but I quickly realized how important this ideology would be not only in my own personal development, but also in my interests in others. 

After I got home from Lubbock my mother said to me, “either you must find suitable employment or go back to school.” I immediately decided to go back to school to make sure that my transition from one school to another was smoother and more planned-out. Prior to leaving the dorm I sent out a transcript request to the University of Texas Pan-American in Edinburg, Texas. The lady at the registrar’s office said to me, “If you return to Tech you will be placed on scholastic probation.” I said, “At this point, what else do I have to lose?” I always saw Pan American as a step down from Tech–obviously when one has partaken of the first course, one immediately does not want to settle for soup and salad. And when I arrived there in August of 2005, after an entire summer of waiting, I was just ready to finish up college and try to forget about the losses of the previous year.

When Hurricane Katrina hit I was in my new dorm, second floor in a fairly metropolitan setting on the far western side of campus, and I had new friends (Amado and Chacho). Both were freshman (I was an upperclassman). They loved physical activity and so did I. That was the only pretext to our relationship. Of course I talked to Ryan whenever I possibly could. I had an awful roommate, also a freshman, who loved Star Wars and played Halo to the very late hours of the evening. So therefore I stayed out of my own dormitory, and began immersing myself into one half of my culture: Hispanic folklore and tradition. Pan Am is considered one of the finest exponents/study centers dedicated towards understanding Mexican American heritage, and, broadly, Latin American culture in general. I decided to preoccupy myself with the fascination towards the syncretism between Roman Catholicism and indigenous culture. This took an educational form in studying the religious traditions of New Mexico, in particular the Hermanos de Luz and La Cofradía de Nuestro Padre Jesucristo, widely known for an extant flagellant tradition that flourished in the Pre-Modern period. I took this a step further by applying my own experiences in New Mexico toward a musical reorientation and more specifically a reeducation towards some of the very ambivalent characteristics about music I had to begin with. 

The first theory classes I had at Pan Am were with Dr. Christopher Munn, Ph.D, who emphatically said to the first class that year that no one was to coddle them as otherwise gifted students, but that the new academic success must be hard fought and won. Unfortunately I confused his enthusiasm for rigor and discipline with a personal disliking for me, particularly where books and materials were concerned. Therefore I made the first great mistake of that year: giving up too soon. I did, however stay on in his choir class, where he scolded us for our lethargy and general disinterestedness for music. However by Christmastime he complimented me on my increasingly good vocal quality, and for “my passion” for music as it was, and said I would be a good teacher on the subject. I did end up teaching Music Appreciation to some very unappreciative students, who saw classical music more as a means for sleep or immobility than anything else. I said, “There is more than you would think. There is always more than what one would think boring or otherwise uninteresting about music and life in general.” 

The only sort of composing of quality I worked on during this period were the Presidio Pieces, named after the town in deep West Texas where Ryan was called to move to in November or December for employment. Automatically the gears started turning in a general shift towards more “native” music, in particular the conjunto tradition of South Texas, and in a broader sense the West Coast Postminimalism that had musically interested me. Aside from that, there was little else to speak of. 

By early 2006 I obtained a copy of the Oxford Companion to the Year, one of my favorite books in my library and one that opened my interest up to the fields of the calendar, time reckoning, the romance of the seasons, months, days and periods of the day, celestial bodies, ancient civilizations, and history. All of these transformed me musically so that my works now display a “datedness” to whatever sort of tradition I might be interested. Two Pieces for Harp: Babylonian scales and the Bible. Hymn Tunes I & II: the early American choral tradition, Handel. Grass: the neo-Romantic tradition. In vain I tried to work on choral pieces for the 4 Marian Antiphons, but to no avail. 

Socially I was disjunct. I had a lot of friends and went out often, and kept my grades up within reason (the main reason is because I was eating again). Whenever we did go out, it was always to someone else’s house for someone else’s birthday party. I started reading Lolita for the first time, taking it up in January, putting it down in February, and then picking it up again in May and finishing it in June. By this time they said, “You are deficient in one hour and you must make that up if you wish to return in the fall.” So there was no financial aid for me, for fall. I had to withdraw. Again, Mother said, “You must find suitable employment.” And meanwhile, Ryan and I were having setbacks and misunderstandings, all of them my fault. 

May passed by and my grandfather said, “I remember when I was your age and I had these problems.” I asked him what I ought to do. He said, “Just work it off and you will be better.” I took up reasonable summer employment with a corporation that handled customer service calls for a national bank. The work was 10-12 hours long in an essentially joy-proof environment. Everyone who called me was either half-irate, paranoid, curious or rude, almost all of them people from a higher income bracket and less time to be courteous. I complained vehemently to Ryan when he came to visit me, spending three days on South Padre Island. “Yes, it’s a terrible job, but you’ll progress, I promise you.” For two more months in the hottest weather of the year I endured all of this: going in in the middle of the afternoon, working mindlessly and soullessly at the commercial machine, occasionally being harassed by the management or the customers, and having two five minute breaks, and sometimes no lunch (depending on call volume). I did, however, meet some rather amiable people, and had some interesting experiences. 

In August I took up a trip to Austin, Texas, where I had a terrible relapse and became quite insane. The essentially vapid social scene and insipid urban culture mixed in with the general culture shock of being in such a large American metropolis further confirmed to me my non-inclusion within that environment and also reaffirmed by general dislike of the socioeconomic malaise of American culture in general. It could be obvious to say, given the opinion of the average landed, partnered, middle-class, employed worker living in such a city to say that my ignorant self was overwhelmed with the realities of American class culture. But on the whole it was devastating psychological experience and further compounded considerations of a life outside of the expected norm. My Mother watched me as I became morose, depressed and suicidal. All throughout September, October and November, I attempted, time and time again, suicide attempts which all failed miserably. My friend Brandon became upset when I told him what I was going through. “I would never think my own friend would ever be bogged down by something so trivial,” he said. I replied, “But you see, the trivialities are the defining characteristics. They are what people openly discriminate by.” He cut me down from a tree where I had planned to hang myself in shame at dropping out of college. “I’ll be damned,” he said, cutting me down, “if I have to lug around a 200 pound corpse around in the back of my truck. You are so damn silly.” He urged me to see a therapist, and in November of 2006, I was in therapy, yet again. 

This last session in therapy was not only the most productive, it was the shortest. Jim (that was the therapist’s name) said to me: “You are in unfortunate circumstances. Unfortunate, but not impossible.” He said I was essentially passive-aggressive but that it was sometimes good to exhibit such characteristics because they were malleable. He said to me, “‘Read The Prince’ by Machiavelli and you will see what I mean.” Everything else was easy after that. I had to learn how to be tough. I am a fairly big guy, but my self-esteem, for some reason or another, failed to grow as I did physically. I essentially had to learn how to be defensive and not give into essentially false perceptions. After that the excuse of “mental illness” was silly, ineffective, and practically untrue. I know consider myself possessed of reason. 

This is where bodybuilding becomes a fairly prominent part of my life. I won’t dwell too much on it, but I believe if we are not balanced physically then we cannot be balanced psychologically or emotionally. One does not have to lift weights or follow specialized diets–either we work with nature “in her manner of operation”, or work against it. The same goes for astrology, divination, reckoning dates in the calendar or composing. We just have to plug the right things in, and reap results. My first trainers were Amado and Chacho, who sought to bring me back to health, and then Ryan, who had always been interested in seeing my physical development recover. Very quickly I began to gain unbelievable masses again, recouping some things I had lost for years and years. Now I am as big as I have ever been. It also introduced a very rigorous sense of order that I adhere to almost every day. Most of my friends can attest to this via phone calls. I work out every other day, and my diet is negotiable based on whatever’s available. I make a point in not eating junk food, and do not believe in purging. 

I wasn’t just irresponsible about my self-esteem, but I also had to learn how to be fiscally responsible. In December 2006 my grandfather fell ill and by January of 2007 he was dead. I remembered him sitting in the warm sunlight with his thick heavy cigars in warm weather watching us play, listening to the radio and reminiscing about the War, always beneficent and magnanimous. Within days my Mother and her three sisters were fighting over inheritances. My Mother had been swindled out of hers (both aunts convinced him that she was handing over all her paychecks to my now-absent father, whom they never liked)–$10,000 gone in less than a month. All she got was a paltry $100 for monthly expenses, which my aunts have refused to pay her. Very quickly we ran out of everything. There came what we inevitably called “starving weeks”: whole periods of time when there would be nothing to eat, bills couldn’t be paid out effectively over time. The phone bill ran high. We both found better jobs and my Mother said, “Something has to change.” Very soon I realized we were going to be without assistance for a very long time. 

Somehow, I found the money to pay, out of pocket, for a trip to Presidio. Ryan was waiting for me when I got off the bus (after a 15 hour ride). The entire countryside was lit up by a thunderstorm and I had traveled the majority of the way in the dark. The following days were some of the happiest of my entire existence. I had the opportunity to experience firsthand the peculiarities of living in a place settled over for centuries (Presidio is the oldest settled area in continental North America), as well as the pleasures of isolation and quietude. It was in Presidio that Ryan and I settled on our relationship and said that if things were to work out between us, I might come back when I had a little more money and live there. We took in the sights, and went driving through Paisano Pass, Fort Davis, Marfa and Alpine. At the bus station on my last day, he cried when he said he was very happy I had come. That first trip was a cultural atom bomb and my cultural reorientation, I deemed, was at last complete. 

But by June there was a pressing need to find more suitable employment, and despite the contributions from other family members and friends, things were not working out at home. So in July, after writing Itinerary I settled on a long summer job with my former college friend Roy on working with his fireworks operation on a desolate stretch of road in Hidalgo County. My Mother was initially very worried about my well-being but then later gave her approval once she found out how much I was to be paid. What followed was quite possibly the most rigorous week of my existence, in which I was afflicted by insect and spider bites, attacked by a snake, almost run over, left stranded, beset by consecutive nights of rain, hail, thunder, lightning, and above all, heat, and subjected to terrible treatment while I watched Roy and his boyfriend assaulted one another with emotional games and diversions solely meant to hurt one another. By the end I had cuts, scrapes and wounds all over. The final check was $132.00, enough to buy groceries for the week but far below the $600 I was initially promised to make. 

In late August I met Frank Newmyer, a Michigan artist with whom I have a lot in common. He said to me the first couple of times we hung out, “I’m bitter too. Hell yes, I’m mad and bitter, but dammit, I’m gonna get over it. I’m too young and you’re too good looking.” I was mad because I felt disenfranchised by life. Frank said to me, “I’ve given up so much for everything I have now, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Thus began a great strengthening in me. From Frank I have drawn a great deal of my strength and self-esteem. He was also one of the first people to prefer the uninterrupted isolation of nature and its external impressions, someone very much like me. He said to me once while I told him of a print I was making, “Light and color are the original elements. There is no exception.” 

By November and December I was making progress out of the rut, but little at a time. I had a good Christmas, even though I didn’t feel like I really deserved it, and rounded it out by asserting that the next year would change out. Scott Stallings and I began to have concourse with one another at about that time, I believe, as I was leaving a particularly destructive relationship with Peter Holyk of Toronto. Frank and Scott have been the only two good friends that have permanently stayed around. Not even Ryan, who left me and began dating a man named Juan Carlos, stayed around to watch me dig myself out of the hole I found myself in. Many people came and went, some of their own volition, others by behavior less than honest on my part or theirs, but they all left something. I realized that life is dependent on our own strengths, not on the circumstances fortunate and unfortunate we have. And ultimately it is up to us to decide what we ought to do, with what materials, what does work and what does not. As Cage says: “Life has no pedals.” 

This had its reflections on me quite early musically speaking. By January of this year I wrote Heath, the first real tonal work in quite some time, and the work I particularly cherish for its level on involvement and sophistication. I wanted to channel the strength of just a few melodic lines and good harmonies to work out an outline for a developing musical body of work. No reason to start thinking about death, or about order. The music exists naturally. We cannot manipulate it, all we must do is listen. Henry Treviño, a sprightly, annoying, phlegmatic man with a strong inadequacy streak, asked me to sing for the Diocesan Choir of the Diocese of Brownsville. I ended up enduring long trips to the next county over, almost always with this exasperating man, practicing ’til my voice was sore and my mood frustrated, but within good reason I was further convinced not only of my musical ability, but also of my thorough non-committal to Roman Catholicism. In fact I have been a great critic of religion, not out of spite as some do, or out of ignorance as others do, but rather from a purely scientific understanding of the way cultures and religions adapt to new situations. Take for instance, the cult of La Santísima Muerte along the Border. It used to be one would not find such a strange devotion to “a skeletal” Virgin Mary, but all it is is just a cover for a pre-Columbian death goddess syncretized with traditional Catholic devotions. A similar goddess, Mania, was worshipped and presented as a bogey to frighten children in Ancient Rome. Just beyond the thin veneer of credibility lies a treasure trove of history and tradition intermingled with violence, force, and contrasting opinion and interpretation. Beyond that lies the One, God, The Universe, The Cosmos, Karma, Fate, whatever you want to call it. Niño Fidencio: “Believe in God, who gives you life and power to cast out sicknesses and devils all by yourself.” Benjamin Franklin: “God helps those that help themselves.” 

Pérotin. The ninth century. Hocketus. Early religious pieces, either atonal or completely musical. The ancient modes being what they are, you can’t really transpose into different keys. So you go onto Stefano Landi’s Sant’ Alessio. The predominant instruments? Not viols. A string quintet, transverse flute; yes, that’s a harpsichord but it’s being played as a solo and not as a continuo instrument. 16th century Mexican and Chinese music have the same characteristics: colonial music, with a distinct native flair. In Mexico you have singing in Nahuátl. In China, you have traditional folk singing and instrumentation with Baroque instruments, and even harmony. And sometimes, music will lie right on top of music, very much in the same way you have fertilizer and topsoil when planting flowers. At other times, like Tuva singing, it is elemental. Compare this to the worldly Stockhausen, who employs microtonal singing, though being worldly, retains a natural energy connected to the natural forces of sound and pitch. In Presidio I was near a ford that produces sounds. At Contrabando Pass I dipped my feet into the pure Rio Grande River. This is how music ought to coexist, not taking away but giving back. And so as my music is, there also is myself. 

In astrology they say, “All time has cycles.” Partly true, as when we leave a particularly negative situation we are reminded of how we got into it. And when I say reminded I mean we have figures that show up, letters come in the mail, people coming to visit or accidental meetings, rumors, outlandish controversies, dreams, visions. And then there is another thing: people that are new, people that you love and love you back without trying too hard. People who believe in you, who will stand by you no matter what. These are the people I have now around me, and could only want more; the rest, as they say, “is history”. 

 

 

Standing Before the Abyss/What Are You Going to Do?

The last bit of October came and went as it usually does, in the blue twilit light of the fading day and on the cool north wind, and with it went the last of flurry of activities; money here and there, all going into nothing but food and bills, and desperation. The simple fact is that CJ and Paul, even though they have not officially tied the knot, have thoroughly made their intentions as a married couple painfully clear by draining the resources of the house as if it were some great establishment, running through bread and milk (CJ is an avid drinker of milk and an even more aversive leaver out of half-drunk glasses), great users of power and water (CJ coming home at one to do her laundry, keeping me up with the noise); and most annoyingly, complaining outloud that there is no food and it is somehow not her fault that we are in this position to begin with. 

I have tried to stay out of the entire situation by only planning on what has eluded me for such a long time: my education. I may have said in the past that it had no bearing on me, but when I talked to Lennard he was adamant about me leaving the house once and for all. ‘It is not right for you to be stuck in there with your brother,’ he said, ‘two grown men living with their mother.’ So for these last two months, I have been applying for readmission for Texas Tech University. The original idea came about whilst Lennard and I were talking about scholarships, and I had mentioned that I had applied and had subsequently been awarded a nice little scholarship to Texas Tech. He said, “Well, it’s a cheap school…” and that settled it permanently. So now I am in the midst of great preparations for what will be one of the most trying experiences of my life. This year has been a year of portents and great signs. Psalm 19: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork.” And if there has not been a clearer expression of God’s remembrance of me it has been in the skies, with all the rainbows, morning stars, haloes, fogbows, gossamer showers and shooting stars. These were not accidents of nature, but rather indications from God Himself to assume responsibility for things I have long abandoned. Now, after four and a half years of hiding, of passing through shame, resentment, guilt, immense unhappiness, days wasted and tears spent; a time sojourning literally through deserts and abandoned places, of wanting but never having, of craving but never obtaining, of devouring but never being satisfied, I have come to what I have sought not only for myself but what everyone else has wanted for me. Beginning from Isaac it was destined that I was to finish up my tenure at Texas Tech, that I was to produce a work of subtlety and grace, that this work would be the culmination of the Great Work, and that Great Work would lead to freedom. There were never any shackles or bounds: I was free to leave anytime, and it was I myself who refused to set myself free. There were people willing to help and I refused them. I have been humiliated and ground into nothingness. And now I have who have for so long sold myself at half-price to the most unworthy owners now realize that I am so much more than I originally estimated. 

Time is like a current: for a while it rushes you on to far away places, to people you have not seen before, to situations and things you have no experience of, and then, after you think you have seen everything, it runs a course back over things you thought you might never see again. It runs you past people who loved you once and to whom you owe a great deal of patience or debts, to injustice or temperance, or to justice and appeal. The months pass away into the haze of the past, and tomorrow is just built on light and hope. And in that great expanse you have to decide what you want to do with yourself–to give yourself away to misfortune and despair, to lonely houses and people that do not understand you–or to lauds and honors prepared for you. We are endowed with such an unbelievable Providence shown unto us, the most undeserving, that all we have do is ask with all our inmost being and crave that which is rightfully ours. How many times did I think it providential that some great mercy was shown to me that allayed my suffering, that one person made sacrifices so that I could attain what everyone else has? Packets that come in the mail with soap and candy. Someone assisting me with a flat on the side of the road. A workout plan. A reassuring word after a hard day. Kisses in the warm desert air with the promise we’d see each other again. My Mother, laughing with me at some years-old joke, while I make her coffee. Blessings of tears. All of these things were providential and are paving-stones in my development as a person. I have come back bigger, stronger, smarter, more experienced. I have to come defeat the challenge and conquer it. Similarly, I have had much to learn and I am prepared to learn more as time goes on. My whole life still fits into two suitcases–but now instead of it being the entirety, it is just the essentials. There will be much going to and fro. But now instead of nothing I have the support and admiration of everyone not only here at home, but many many people who love me and cherish me. They have been not only provided me with occasional material support, but more importantly, the love and guidance to ascend to the upper worlds that once disbarred me entrance. I come conquering riding on the skeletons of past personages and formidable adversaries. Now, with the whole world’s hope, I have come to conquer and claim victory, elusive for over four years. It could not be any more sweeter.