De Profundis

From where I write this, Lubbock now lays snowbound. I realize I have not written in this account of my life–the only real one I have–but that has only been because of extenuating circumstances. For the first time in a long time, writing in this journal has been superceded by the realities of work and school. It was something that I had been looking forward to for awhile. And, as I write this, so many many recurrent images and memories flood my brain now, that I am not sure where to begin. I should probably start at the beginning, in that case.

The last time I had written was in August. The day I arrived in Lubbock I was met by Shawn, my good friend from last semester, whom I had asked to keep some things for me (namely two pillows and a blanket) in his car since I couldn’t take them home on the plane. I cannot tell you the sense of exhaustion and foreboding that the heat of that summer afternoon held–the apprehension, the sense that things somehow weren’t going right. A couple of days later I had had a dream of a terrible thunderstorm breaking over my house, the kind endemic to South Texas in the summertime. I took that for an omen that I had serious karmic debts to repay. And it was true, everything that has now culminated to this moment of reflection has been one great path of suffering, each step filled with agonizing decisions and conclusions, but ultimately good for my soul, and the eventual completion of the Great Work appointed to me.

The first couple of weeks were relatively hurried. Collegium is now just a medieval improvisation workshop, since the majority of the members have now either graduated or moved away to other institutions (Lauren, the disgruntled graduate student who never really bothered to get to know me, moved off to Tennessee, Dann went to Yale), leaving Kelly, Austin, Nate and myself at the helm, with Dr. Mariani teaching the rudiments of organum, teaching out of the very treatise on the discipline. I was sort of disappointed in learning that we wouldn’t have a performance date this semester. I had brought my concert shoes up for nothing! But I did find other ways of performing music, and staying in the loop. Before I left Harlingen I finished up writing film scores for two directors who had commissioned me–one of them a documentary on a forest ranger and his crumbling marriage, the other a love story. Sérgio played three of these when I came to see him in Brownsville. I never thought–not even for a second–that I would ever find myself writing out music this tonal. I never thought I had it in me, but these things come with hard work and dedication to form, to harmony, and to counterpoint. I am proud that I was able to accomplish something this small but so overwhelmingly meaningful. It perhaps was one of those sweet moments that rarely arose throughout this difficult season, some sort of balm of Gilead that has made the wounds of this present time a little less painful.

There have been many, many, interpersonal disasters. To begin with, my assigned roommate, Glen, turned out not liking homosexuals (“I have to tell you, I’m not really comfortable with that.”). Then he complained (I heard this through other sources) that he didn’t feel comfortable talking about racial matters, being that I happen to be of Hispanic descent. And to make matters worse, his friend, whom he had wanted to live with all along, began to make complaints about his roommate, who via Glen’s somewhat skewed telling of the story said that he slept all day, did little work, and did not like African-Americans (Glen and his friend are Black). Finally Glen said to me, “I’m moving out” one fine day, and he did, and in walked Steven Gates.

He is 24 years old, from Houston. What struck me immediately about his character was his generally friendly, if not anxiety addled demeanor. He tends to be phreatic, gesturing wildly and fluctuating his intonation according to the various emotionally volatile states that he tends to find himself. He has been on anti-anxiety medication for a couple of months now, resulting, as he has told me, from a particularly nasty breakup with an ex girlfriend he loved. I don’t know exactly what to make of him, as there are days when he can be particularly childish and insistent, as a spoiled child, in getting his way. And there are some days where I am perfectly at ease with him, free from misunderstandings or very often the arguments that preclude any sense of peace or seclusion in our room.

I am too old now, for these childish diversions. What originally seemed like a wonderful, fantastic getaway (I told Scott once, “a vacation of learning”), has now lost the lustre it used to possess. Out there, outlying beyond the banalities of campus existence, is Texas. It used to be that just the mere thought of the open road would send chills down my spine, and now I long for that sort of consummate philosophical experience. I crave the corporeality of it. I desire so much from the world, and I fail both myself and the world fails me. I look to it for so many rewarding experiences, but I am so disappointed in them. I try constantly to set myself free from the bonds of forced responsibility, but my conscience prevents me from leaving a job before I can finish it. My age calls me to complete it as soon as I can. And my overreaching disgust for that pseudo-intellectual farce known as the American insular perspective is so palpable, so embittering, that all I can think of is just packing up, moving on, up, and away from people, what one arrogant ass called “perpetuating my isolation”.

This is the biggest I have ever been. I am now 30 pounds overweight, and I am not doing anything, aside from the usual routine at the gym, about it. It’s not that I don’t want to try, it’s because I have no time in my schedule now. This is unforgivable to me. I have always found time to do the things I like to do. And, as surprising as it might sound, working out happens to be a passion of mine. I used to wake up in the morning feeling the exhilaration of being able to lift a 60 pound weight all by myself, and now all I can think of is how overweight I am, how nothing I have really fits well anymore, how many pairs of shoes (being, you know, gay and all) I would like to buy. I question what I am doing in my physical body. I used to know it so well, but now it seems so foreign–so alien, so not me–that all I want to do is be someone else, be like someone else, look like someone else. Something other than what people really love. Mejoe in the summer rain. Mejoe at the piano, extemporizing. Mejoe hogging the pizza. Mejoe singing opera. Mejoe not being anyone else but Mejoe. I don’t know, I guess I want to be whiter, richer, more in control of my life. But then one has to concede it comes with limitations. For one, everyone knows me as Mr. Culture. That’s all I talk about. Somewhere, if I were to be someone else entirely–to become somehow a less cultured person–it would involve me giving up everything I know. I’m not proud of where I come from. I think of my poor mother and how much she suffered on account of my silly lifestyle choices. I wish I hadn’t run away from home so early to pursue fame and then almost kill myself when things didn’t work out. I wish I hadn’t made those horrible lifestyle decisions that made me what I am now. I wish every day I didn’t do the things I did to make her cry at night in fear, terror, desperation, anger or sadness, because it’s shortened not only her life but that of my grandfather, and I feel already complicit in his passing as a result of my disrespectful and dishonest treatment of him. These things I think about all the time. They can, and never will, go away. They are like keloids after burns–raised against the surface of the skin, scar tissue, thick and numb and stubby. The memories never go away, and during times like these they lay open fresh and bloody.

I am convinced there are people–people I know and have known–who used to like me but do not. I brought these things on myself and I completely take responsibility. I am tormented by their torments. I wish I didn’t have these thoughts or images. Instead, I wish to liberate myself from them. Suicide would be so wonderfully easy, so effortless. It would just be transitioning states. It would be the only thing to rid from me these thoughts of inadequacy, pain, suffering, silence, discontinuity. But I would rather have it the hard way–since I like doing everything the hard way–and no matter what might happen or who might say what, I would be a liar to not say that somewhere I mean something to someone. I just have to push through and be the person I need to be. Oh, how much I need to be there. I need to be bigger, stronger, faster, more built. I need to love myself. I need to die to the world. I need to go far away, where people will never ever use me, or hurt me, or make me feel unloved or unhappy. I will and must cut off all of my connections to toxic people. Shortly after this semester began, I blocked a former good friend of mine on AIM because he was just so annoying, so confrontational, so absolutely shallow and vain and maniacal about body image and sex that it drove me literally insane. The only reason why he did this was to get under my skin, to make me feel bad for not being one of his fans. Even though I had liked him I had to say that I wasn’t interested in him, that for my own sanity’s sake I had to abandon these false hopes and plans and visions of how I might change the scenario for him, how I might make him a better person. But he is consigned to himself and to his desires, and I mine, and there is nothing I can do, nor he, to change that.

I can only think of the good people now who love me consummately. I am a good, decent, loveable person. I drive people insane with my inability to feel good about myself but what I lack in self-esteem I make up for in intelligence. But I am by no means W.H. Auden. I need to be alive physically. I need to be active. I need to explore myself and my sexuality in a way that no longer demonizes the stereotype of gay culture for its inherent inabilities to be self-critical. I don’t want to die an unhappy, unhealthy, sick, brilliant person. I want die with a huge body, with a developed, active mind, with an amazing sense of purpose, morality, and the love of cultures, languages, traditions, and folkways, but most of all, with a love of self and a determination to make things work. I fumble in the dark sometimes. I cannot find my lantern or my keys. But I so desperately want so much to live, to live as none has ever lived before, that I am going to die if I don’t. I am stifled by the façades I have placed for people’s approval. And all I want, is to leave the physical body and its fetters aside, and ascend to the higher forms I am meant for.

This must happen.

The Conferences/2nd Return to Lubbock

The last part of the summer, from the very end of the month of June to now, has been nothing but tribulation. One night I noticed my mother was not feeling well–this had come, almost predictably, after arguments with my brother and a fall at work–she had complained of her stomach and back giving her a lot of pain. I thought but little of it, seeing as that she had not eaten very well the night before, but by 5 AM the next morning things became serious. She was vomiting and could not keep anything down. So I called my brother (he had been partying out that night), he came home, and we carefully packed Mom into the car and drove to the hospital.

It turned out that my wonderful mother had been harboring several large gallstones–including two that were the size of baseballs–for years. This had come from years of bad nutrition, smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes, and stressful living conditions. The ensuing infection that came about from this was so widespread most of the fluid (a dark greenish, bilious, pyotic fluid) had invaded the cavities inbetween the gallbladder and her stomach, and caused gastrointestinal distress. For three nights she suffered with little water to drink, as water would just aggravate the motions to vomit again, nor any comfort whatsoever, but instead she sat up through the night, hour after hour heaving nothing but that fluid, which had the unmistakable smell of burnt, rotten almonds. The doctors said they could do little while her vocal chords were burnt by pint after pint of stomach acid. And there I was, not sure of what to do myself, since the little medical training I had had were of little use in the situation. All I could do was sit by her side, run the palm of my hand over her hair, and hold her hand. It was horrible.

For the first time in my life, I was confronted with the future spectre of what will inevitably happen to my mother. She will die, and I will be left without her. That feeling is the scariest, most unhappy feeling in the world for me right now–knowing that the only person who can really understand you, at least objectively, will no longer be there to understand you. Then what happens? Well, if one is truly lucky, one can be grateful for her life, and move on completely happy and vouchsafed in the knowledge of her positive influence. But for me, I can only think of the immense maw that would be left with her absence, the knowledge that she had indeed gone forever, never to return, not to reciprocate an embrace or a smile over food. It will be the most horrible, trying time of my life–as if it could not get any more trying as it is.

i think I cried for several nights after that. I had been looking forward to more positive aspects; my birthday was in a couple a weeks, and all I could think about was an excursion to the seaside with my friends whom I hadn’t seen for a while. The weather gave no consolation. It has been hot since the day I arrived in Harlingen, and was so when I left, now two weeks ago. Day after day the same scenario prevailed, as it often does in the plains of South Texas: the hot and intemperate sun, rising furiously out of a bank of night clouds, its face bright and unwavering in its brilliance, making the ground too hot for bare feet and eyes. And night would come, a stinking, festering humid mass of air that came down after the sunlight had faded into blue and then deep blue and then purple, and with it big junebugs, soldier beetles and gnats. I slept the majority of the summer without air conditioning, in an overcrowded room that my brother and his girlfriend used as storage. Night after night I had to get up around two because it would be too hot to sleep, and I’d only be in underwear or maybe just a sheet, and then I would shower just to cool off. And it seemed then the heat was too intense even for sleeping, as neither comfort nor consolation could cause me to rest, just knowing how much my mother was suffering in the hospital.

Originally the doctors had planned for the gallbladder to be removed rather quickly, as the nature of the severity of her infection caused concern for the rest of her body, but during a test procedure anesthesia was improperly administered, and through shrieks of pain my mother said she was being disemboweled. Her heart rate and blood pressure went up, and when it was deemed that she could not endure the test procedure, she was sent to the Critical Care Unit of the hospital for evaluation. I had been not even a couple of minutes at home after a stressful move with my cousin before I had to go back to the hospital, and rushed the fastest I have ever rushed to see how she was. She was and would be fine, we were told, my aunts and my little brother and me; there had been a mistake and they would correct it. However the inept doctor decided that, in order to be careful, a catherization was necessary. After my mother was sent home from the hospital (on my birthday, the day my little brother and his wife were married rather unceremoniously in the hall of the Justice of the Peace), she told me she was afraid of what might happen to her during the catherization. Immediately she began to talk about her death as if it had been written on marble, and the undertaker was coming to recieve her body–how I needed to reconcile with my brother, how I needed to assume control, being that I was the only son who was trying to make something of himself–and I wanted nothing to do with it. At least, not at this age. I’m too young to be the executor of a will, better yet, of a small amount of money and a cheese-holed insurance policy that probably wouldn’t even cover funeral expenses. My little brother said he would make sure to take my share and make it so that he and his wife were well off, but everything that belonged to me was suddenly not mine, my name not even worth the paper it will be printed on.

Typical afternoons in South Texas are spent under the shade of the outside sunporch, where the breeze from the Gulf comes around three and sends refreshing air to stir up the still and unbearable morning heat, which is always somehow worse than the afternoon heat, because of its intense humidity. We had to buy another air conditioning unit from my cousin who had sold hers upon entering her new apartment, and this one suited my mother’s old room just fine, making it a delectable prison for her to lounge about in. Because that is exactly what it was–a prison. For five weeks my Mother was not allowed to do anything–no lifting of anything heavy, no washing the dishes, no attending to the laundry, no driving (which she was not happy about either). My good-for-nothing brother, having quit his job, refused to do any housework, delegating it to his new wife, who refused to do so as well. So I attended to the washing, the mopping, the cooking and cleaning, the daily duties I have been so well accustomed to, and which I have to do, because no one else will. I have the hard work ethic in me as much as I do a gene that allows for good muscle growth.

No one can say now that I am a bad soon, because I have made so many sacrifices for my family’s sake, and for my own. If anyone wishes to call me a martyr then, so be it–better a triumphant martyr, who bears his sufferings quietly and patiently, rather than a person who shies from responsibility. This, therefore, is my cross. I embrace it, I love it; I will endure what I need to endure in order to be on a higher plane than those who would so easily give into baser aspirations. I will do whatever I have to do–whatever comes forth from the power that I can will–to make myself and the world a better place, regardless of whatever ideologies I may not necessarily agree with. This is actual power–that is, actualizing in its unique nature. It comes from great distress, great suffering–the image is of a massive release of energy during an earthquake. People are moved. Buildings, moved. Environments, disrupted. To move through this world being sure of oneself absolutely is a responsibility that few people have. It comes with great trials. These trials make us who we are, or they break us. I have been broken so many times that I do not know if I will even be alive at the end of the day but I keep doing it because I know something better has to come.

I have to admit, I’m not an altogether sort of person yet. There are social façades, and these run deep, cutting deep into self-esteem and self-concept, making everything from picking out good shoes to making lasting friendships difficult. I know I am not destined for a life of quiet acceptance–it’s too easy when too many people have saved you to do that. But something has to be better than this life of repugnance, of desperation, of constant and finite suffering. Desperation has moved me hurriedly on a plane to a city of the Plains, to school and back again, from nightmare to dream to reality to fading and incipient visions. It has run me through painful relationship to painful relationship, from the anger and confusion of misunderstood lives and opinions to the unending sense of inner self-conflict, the the kind that ravages the conscience deep at night, when one is supposed to feel good about what one has accomplished. I feel like I have such a long way to go; so much to get over. And it would seem so easy as to just forget about what people think–but I am a type of person who does things the hard way, and I can’t say I don’t like people to like me for being a good person. I am a good person, I keep on telling myself I am; no matter what I look like or say or think. I just want to be in a good place with everyone, because I hate having to play emotional catch-up, or even worse, cutting them off when it seems that they might not just be interested anymore.

Someone once said to me that I would just end up perpetuating my isolation by not really being myself. How is it possible to not be yourself and be yourself at the same time? It happens all the time. We put on masks that hide our identity and intentions from others, and our selective choices fit the context of the people we want to be in good standing with. Would you dream of showing your stash of gay porn to your friends at a Christmas party? Would you confess to your spouse or significant other about coveting that which is not yours to begin with? I could go on, but it is a uniquely human trait to be multifaceted, and this definitely applies in social situations, as well. To some people with the confidence and inner emotional strength, it is easy, but with me it is like trying to light damp matches. It starts up, but takes much nurturing. The fire is incipient, barely there almost, but it can grow to be ardent and defiant, even against the darkness and the damp of the world.

My soul. What is it to have a soul? It is a vital essence. It cannot be overcome; yet it feels overwhelmed, smothered by societal expectations, the ennui of day-to-day experience, the horrible little tragdies of day-to-day business, the catastrophes of rejection and dis-alliance. And yet people like me continue, burned beyond recognition, like those who self-immolate themselves in protests, breathing and bleeding, burned and broken, but still alive. I am alive, I will be. My life doesn’t end on the side of a road, or under the base of a tree or a supporting beam of a house, or in the incarnadine residue of a gunshot blast. Whatever pushes me to the Upper World, and to the continuance of the Great Work, pushes me on, to the point of exhaustion; the pain is exhilirating and completely sublime.

No one has been through what I have been through. My experiences are my own. I want to share with the world a sense of appreciation, of love; but through this much suffering must come about, weight must be lost and gained, weights lifted, things to be done, books read, papers written, diplomas handed out, then doctorates, people invited over for weekends, impressions made, meals cooked. Tears must be shed, blood spilt, the cross carried up and over and finally to Calvary, the last stampede and push towards something limitless and invisible. But now I can depend on myself for my own sustenance. I am a big, well-built man. I have spent many years depreciating myself, but I am now at a point where the crucible has been made, and I am ready for purifications and sacrifices. I am ready.

Weight Bench

Now the days are long and still again. Summer has returned and the seasons have changed. The last of the spring was set out two months ago down here, while in Lubbock it still is in its fullest flower. I remember walking by the Library at the University and smelling the fishy scent of flowering dogwoods, living snow. Now that scent has been replaced with that of tall fragrant mimosa, sugarwood, hackberry and Hong Kong orchid. All of them have either pungent, repellent, sugar-sweet, or soapy scents that waft on the late evening breeze that comes off the coast. The sun dips behind the tall branches of the pecan tree that belongs to our neighbor, and at that very best time of the day I am attending to things outside–correspondences, mail, journal entries, music. How far away Lubbock and the University seem now. My own sordid pessimism often threatens me with never returning again, but I know this cannot be true. On my desk sits my plane ticket, clearly marked for August 24th. Now, of course, I am planning other trips.

Most of the day I spend working here at the house, or working out. I am eating lighter now, as the season and as the almanac suggests, and less fare that might otherwise be too heavy or too hot to make in a kitchen without the benefit of air-conditioning. I learned the hard way: three days of Hamburger Helper did not bode neither healthy nor appetizing. So now I am just sticking to light meals at lunch, the colazione or light midday meal, a snack in the middle of the afternoon (something like fruit), and then a palatable yet restrained, supper. I don’t get the opportunity to really eat as healthily as I should here, since our rations are restrained by price and therefore we buy what we can afford. My mother has said she knows the less we eat altogether, the better it will last for the month, but already I can think of my little brother’s girlfriend making an absolute mess of something in the kitchen, besides wasting food for special occasions, which I am completely against. If there is anything I hate more in the world, it is waste, and me and my mother have had to suffer with wastefulness for almost a year now, while both my little brother and his girlfriend run through milk, bread, eggs, sugar, coffee, orange juice and meat at the rate of some great establishment.

People, I know, stand in bewilderment at our exception. A former friend of mine said to me that he couldn’t understand how people could live the way we do. It seems that most of the people I have spoken to have never been in the situation that we now call normal–no one has ever had to go without, but then again, inasmuch as we are in debt, it cannot be more than those who live so extravagantly and then make off-the-cuff judgments about the way we live. Then again, those people have had little life experience as it is, dealing only with the environment they’ve been raised in. It doesn’t bother me as much as it used to, though. Those people are off in a world where their lives are seemingly determined by issues of control, desire, and affordability. It isn’t really “authentic” if your entire world is dominated by people who believe the same things you do, or enjoined by the same social causes, or even belief in a higher power or not. These things were ordered by people for the sake of conserving social power among a people ordered for it, not necessarily open to new or different entities. What’s uniquely horrible about my own experience in this world is that I have been both repelled and attracted by it–repelled that people can make value judgments and say audacious lies and assassinations of character, and attracted by the false sense of eqanimity it seems to promise, an absolution of shame from the lesser world I come from. I realize my own problems come from a denial of the culture of where I come from, a shame in knowing that the same people I’ve idolized all my life are the ones I don’t want to acknowledge because I would be rocking the boat of white mass-culture identity. But I know that is failing both myself as an individual and the many different and varied cultures that I have been priveleged to have been raised in. So many people don’t want to face their own selves because of this shame–the shame of being raised poor, or even in the middle class suburbs, or in a strictly religious family, or one in which a careless agnosticism seemed to reign supreme. Then there is this sense of emotional denial–denial that, since the prevailing psychological demand, at least institutionally speaking, is that we have to be calm and detached from situations we believe to be emotionally distressing, we take this home and apply it to one another. Someone said to me, “I don’t care how people feel. Never has crossed my mind.” Why would someone feel this way? And then of course I discovered why–because people suffer from immense emotional cowardice. They cannot cope with these emotions I and many people feel because they themselves have never experienced it, or are otherwise dismissive of it. It is a double tragedy–a sense of failure at not recognizing someone or something worthy or beautiful, and the actual act of rejection. A corollary tragedy to this is thinking that we can never enjoy something beautiful ever again because of past traumas. And then, as if to perpetuate these things, we force our own issues on other people, belittling them in the process, and making them feel wholly unloved, unwanted and socially leprous.

I realize now that I am destined to live my life outside of social influence–it is not just a requirement for my own happiness, it is a social mandate in itself. It is not that I do not want to mingle with people, or enjoy being around them, it is a feeling of permanent and pervasive seperation from the idle trivialities of human existence. I have lived apart from standard social norms for most of my life–beginning life without a father, then never finding social acceptance for that and other things, then moving on to a life physiologically seperated from normative social reality, then the questions of sexual, racial and cultural identity. I realize I am going to be on my own for a long time, and I am not afraid of it. I was able to eke out an existence of purely private means, all by myself in Lubbock. I will do so again. The wonderful thing about all of this is that a life apart is full of not only independence, but interdependence. Peter Garland once said to me, “I’d rather live as a little fish in a big ocean than as a big fish in a little pond.” And that’s the best part, being completely anonymous and detached from the insanity of the world, from its depravity, from its ceaseless and meaningless noise and outcry. I don’t want to belong not because the world rejects me, but because I openly reject it and refuse to let it consume me alive.

Part of my own personal desire for betterment is not only emotional stability, but strength to keep fighting for what I believe to be the right and proper things. I have to keep myself healthy and fit because I know I am on the right track and that I’m not going to end up as a just a big blob of goo like everyone else. I’m not going to die of complications from diabetes, like most of my family. I’m not going to contract HIV and die of AIDS, like some of my friends and family have. I’m not going to be so apathetic as to sink into a life of self-contentedness and shut myself up in some fortress of a house, worth more than my entire assets put together and impossible to pay for. And I’m not going to give my heart to someone who doesn’t appreciate me, who can’t appreciate me for the things I have spent most of life here on Earth studying and appreciating. Most importantly, I will never, ever again give into the completely wrong opinions of people who have never known me, never heard of what I am talking about, never bothered thinking of others, and never bothered to even discover what I have discovered. One of my friends told me a story as to why he quit college: simply stated, he hated the fact that so many people affirmed one particular music theory over another. He got tired of being told what to do, and what to think. I never ever want to be oppressed by people who don’t know what I’m good at to tell me I’m not good at what I’m doing. I will never sacrifice my own integrity for someone else’s useless opinions. And I will never, ever quit doing is good enough for me–whether that might be bodybuilding (because it IS a reality, I’m not just some guy doing it for the lulz), or ethnomusicology, or cultural studies, or living in South Texas, at the end of the state, or living the way I do, on my own terms. I may be angry but it is that anger which perpetuates me to work for the benefit of others, to do more for myself and society in general, and the betterment of the world.

Update

I came home to South Texas on May 6th, after a practically comical morning on the airplane. The flight from Lubbock to Dallas was quite full and the ladies at the gate were initially wary of my arm size (they were emphatic it was not about my weight) and the general feeling of discomfort (what one of them termed the “touchy feely”) that someone sitting next to me might encounter. I have never had this problem before, as flying is a relatively new experience to me, and I have never had to ever worry about such a thing. But I now understand the relative trouble a person of size might have to experience, probably far worse than I ever had it. But then again, I saw average people have trouble fitting into airline seats, as well as those other people not asked to buy a second seat as I was asked. This was one of those little contingencies that happen. My friends have not stopped making fun of me for it.

The flight itself was agreeable. The morning in Lubbock had been cloudy and dismal and foggy, very much like what I had arrived to when I first came to Lubbock all those months ago, back in January. So it seemed like a fitting end to my first semester in Lubbock. To my knowledge, I passed all my classes, excepting the one Personal Financial Planning course, from which I withdrew because it is a useless and stupid course, and too expensive withal, and definitely a big mistake on my part for even choosing to involve myself with all the money. The atmosphere in that classroom was particularly tense and somewhat full of revulsion, as the current economic crisis seemed only to underscore the futility, experienced on the part by some of my younger colleagues, to save for a future now all but blasted by their parents’ greediness and disillusion. But on the whole the instructor was friendly and had a most agreeable comportment, and in the future I might take more classes, as time and interest permits.

Dann is now gone. He left about two or three days ago, by my reckoning, just as the rain was beginning to fall the way it does this time of year, in the warm and hazy afternoon. He sent me a short text message saying that he hadn’t seen anything in his in folder outside his office (meaning the gift book I bought him as a parting gift), and wishing me a good summer. I am pretty confident in the future I will be able to see him again in Connecticut, where he will be for some time now. He was a good teacher to me and he has been such a good friend. I only hope now that I can continue to apply what I have learned to future endeavours and my own personal and artistic progression.

As for everyone else–on campus, that is–I met with Dr. Jocoy for a bit just before I left and made plans that upon my return in the fall I would pursue a course in independent studies in musicology with her, with a focus on “non-western Baroque”, or, more credibly, Baroque music in Latin America. What I do not wish to do is to conduct research on music already present in the musicological record; what I am looking for is discovering new music and writing about it. I am looking at two very distinct musicological fields–research and analysis. There has been much written about Latin American traditions of the Baroque in colonial New Spain, in particular that in Mesoamerica, but little has been written about music from specific areas of that part of the world (I am looking at Afro-Hispanic music from Veracruz, Oaxaca, Michoacán) and mission music from early Alta California (modern day Southern California), and native syncretism with Baroque elements (such as the oft-written connection with Baroque violin techinque and the development of folk music). I am expecting, hopefully, to be able to introduce possibly playable music that has never been heard or played before, or, even more hopefully, to produce a body of work that will be the first work written about a musical subject in the record.

I have finally returned to Calendar studies after a time away researching folkloristics and culturally bound illnesses. The latter culminated in something of a renascence of an interest in traditional folk medicine and healing, and I hope by 2012 to have at least a primer for medical professionals in dealing with an increasing problem among non-English speakers in dealing with real medical problems simply labelled as a culturally bound syndrome. What I am now interested is not so much computus as martyrologies, particularly the doubtful ones (I am called to think of Sts. Barlaam and Josaphat, simply a coverup for a story about the Buddha and his disciple). I hope I can conduct more research into that field as well, which will probaby include getting a copy of Butler’s Lives, which is probably the most substantive book about the saints ever compiled, but which I have never been able to afford. With all of these things I hope I can gain a clearer understanding of the nature of cultural intelligence.

Toward the end of the semester, there were contingencies that have now presented some very interesting situations. For one, I know have a $264.00 bill for food, the result of running out of “dining bucks” for my meal plan (already flawed enough as it is), which has prevented me from registering for fall classes and getting my grades. The good news is I can go back anytime I want to, so things will definitely be looking for me in the long run. I do hope this summer passes by quickly, as I cannot even begin to think about staying down here. I love my education and want to continue it, and now I am just beginning to taste the success that awaits me.

I am not sure of where my life will take me now. However, this is the happiest I think I have ever been, and I hope now that I have some serious considerations for a life-encompassing passion that I think I can claim as my own. What will happen now is anyone’s guess. But I do hope that I can keep on physically, morally, psychologically, spiritually and educationally growing. I just hope everything works out for me.

South Texas has not changed. It is still the perennially tropical, mosquito ridden paradise it has always been. Arriving at the terminal in the fullest of the afternoon sunlight I was hit pratically in the face by the hot humid air of home. Paul and his girlfriend CJ were practically unrecognizeable. Paul is now heavier than he has ever been, overweight by some 60 or 70 pounds and unable to close the zipper on pants that are twice too small for him; CJ is dumpy and pockmarked, her dark hair stringy and crinkled from a life of abuse. When Mother got home she hugged me, though I could tell from her eyes she is tired and weary of her situation. I cried when I said she looked so and told her I missed her for the short time I was away from home. To celebrate, she went down to the bakery and fetched some sweet bread for us, and we all sat down and she informed me of the recent developments at the house. For one, CJ has come into a sizeable amount of income resulting from a structured settlement she will be recieving upon completion of her 17th year–the sum of which is an estimated $21,000. This means that she and Paul will be moving hence from the house we all live in, and perhaps giving to my mother some $1200 for the fees incurred from her coming to live here after the terrible hurricane we experienced summer last, and that we all will therefore move from that house–them to their own, my mother and I to a new residence–hopefully very soon. This news, however tentative, comes as welcome news to us, who are now having to contend with a house falling apart from the years of decay and weathering it has had from its very shoddy construction, relatives who do not approve of the current living situation (my own return from college included) and a host of other financial and situational problems stemming from my brother’s arrest and detention last year, which all of us are frankly tired of.

I miss all my friends. I never get tired of thinking about them and do miss being able to talk to them. However I think at the same time after all the trouble I had with making new friends this past semester and all the terrible choices I made in making those friends, a break from social interaction and its perils is most welcome after a season of highs and lows. I talk to a few people now on the telephone, in particular Jeff, and my friend Frank, and my ex-boyfriend Ryan, who is always busy now, working for American Airlines. I think things will be much better friend-wise now that I have cut off the majority of a friend base wholly unattractive to me. I am glad to be rid of them all, and the distractions they sometimes offer.

All Things Considered

In the intervening time between my initial arrival here in Lubbock there have been many changes, some positive and some negative. Coming here has not been a mistake, but there were regrettable circumstances, particularly where my personal relationships with others are concerned, and I am now having to repay an endless number of karmic debts which have arisen as of late.

When I last wrote, it was mid-February and I had come off of an emotional high from my first real concert in some years, singing with the Texas Tech Collegium Musicum, a small vocal/instrumental ensemble headed by the marvelous Angela Mariani-Smith. This woman I had heard since middle-school, where the first sparks of knowledge of the music of distant past began to flit around in my imagination. I learned to love the 10th century abbess St. Hildegarde of Bingen (not knowing of course of her predecessor, the beautiful Byzantine abbess Kassia) from her, eventually taking her as patron saint along with Sts. Cecilia, Catherine and Viviana. To this woman Friday evenings after high school were spent listening attentively to country dances and songs in foreign tongues, to the development of the Western musical tradition, and largely, of popular musical traditions as well. And here she was, sitting right in front of me, smiling, her melliflous and wise voice advising me. Her office contains a beautiful old harpsichord made in Pennsylvania many years ago; its sound, brittle and vibrant, echoes with the kind of resonance modern pianos rarely come about to. Dr. Mariani refers to it in the feminine sense, as if it were some grand revered matron of music. Beneath the academic exterior, however, is a woman who has played in a rock band, who is married to an eminent expert in the rise of American music. She glows when I mention John Cage and my love of the 44 Harmonies. She smiles beatifically when I speak of bodybuilding on one hand and Morton Feldman on the other; other times it is the flamboyantly intellectual Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre contrasted with the meek and saintly humility of Sophonisba Allegri. Her influence, I realize, has practically been for a decade and has made significant and lasting marks in my own formalized musical and artistic development.

And to that, there is Dann Coakwell. At 31 he is the most adept and amiable tenor I know. After a day spent frantically looking for a voice teacher within appropriate academic limits, I had agreed to pay him 60 dollars to help me refine my voice, originally starting out with singing Jobim and Takemitsu. This man, of course, has little time to be wrapped up in the trivialities of who’s-better-at-what; his world is simultaenously grand, obscure and tangible, he sings for the Austin-based group Conspirare, headed by his former voice teacher when he was UT-Austin, and when I was still in high school. We became fast friends, and very quickly I emptied out my conscience to him in that embarassing way I usually do – and he was more than understanding. At my age, he said, it was perfectly normal to not know what one wished to do with his life; it is true, I don’t know what to do with myself. He analyzed my voice and said, ‘there is something hidden beyond your upper voice, something rich and bel canto‘. It was true. Somewhere, deep down in my throat, was a voice I had suppressed and abused for years. My own self-deprecation and negative self-opinion had prevented me from developing it into something more realizable. I was depressed for a week after that, and did not take any physical activity or recreation, nor food, nor any sort of nourishment. I cried for hours wondering why I had done such a thing to myself – why, after all this time and all this trouble, I had not found the contentedness within my own physical appointments to harbor success. And then Dann said, ‘Do not worry. This takes time to develop and you are still in a developmental, unrealized, and very early phase. You have a beautiful voice with definite possibilities, and all you have to do is give yourself a chance.’After this I felt much better. I was concerned my own circumstantial affairs were interfering with my musical development. Dann said, ‘Get it taken care of.’ And that was all I needed, off I went.

Spring was reluctant to come. At the beginning, the first peeks of intermediate warmth and sunshine were met later with fierce remonstrances of cold and ice. There were days in which the sun did not shine until its sinking disk appeared behind a practically Catholic veil of clouds and the sunlight came streaming in brilliantly one last time. Long nights of cold and desolation took over. Jacob sitting at his desk, playing his music, was company enough. No visitors. Phone calls and every now and then a gift in the mail from Scott. This was enough to keep my chin up, and my spirits burning bright. For St. Valentine’s Day, he sent me a beautiful tower of sweets and fruit from Harry and David, which I consumed heartily in four days. It was one of the sweetest things (literally) anyone had given me.

And then, for the first couple of weeks of March, there was a transformation. The days became warm and temperate, and soon enough the fish-smelling dogwoods and Bradford pear trees blossomed into allergic bliss. The walkways were covered with white petals that looked like snow drifting in the wind. A shipment of Threadless t-shirts and some new shorts and shoes made the commute to classes and work much more agreeable. For a while, it seemed, things were alright with the world. Even Ryan, off in his own world of affairs, had no complaints, and every time I talked to him he was tired, but always glad to see me. Just the other day he told me that the State Education Board cleared him of all charges of unethical behavior, and his license is functional again. I am grateful and thankful to Almighty God for His Providence shown to Ryan. For, inasmuch as we have had our own disagreements, I love him, and he loves me, and he is so proud of what I have accomplished.

There is still so much to do. I have run out of food money and am on my last forty dollars (I had to buy supplies for my Service Learning Project with Dr. Lambert), I still have not found suitable employment or living arrangements after the spring semester is done, and I am concerned about my mental and emotional health lately (all of this is interpersonally related). I am so frightened, but it keeps me going on to progress. I know I can accomplish what is necessary. I must gird myself, and press forward. I am required to fulfill the Great Work allotted for me.

Between Temperament and Circumstance

The title from this post comes from Madame Bovary, in which the narrator describes Emma’s immense beauty shortly before her re-encounter with Léon at the Rouen Opera, and after the near-fatal illness she experienced after Rodolphe ended their first tryst. It is not coincidental that things have been going swimmingly for me this first full week of classes here at Texas Tech, after a week of hard readjusting to the realities of living alone once more. 

I am still so surprised at the fact that I am even here in the first place. The plane ride was not glamourous at all. One wonders why so many people pay to be ferried around in such uncomfortable conditions. It seems that my experiences riding a Greyhound bus and flying on an airplane were practically the same, although the plane had ostensibly wealthier and more well-dressed passengers than those other experiences where I sat next to convicts and migrant laborers. The sensation of bumpiness and discomfort was perhaps assuaged with the lovely sight of sunrise over a bank of winter clouds, of distant cities and near cities, farmlands, red veins of riverbed and green belts of spring planting, and the eve-present enormities of land and sky, and nothing in between but that. I was somewhat lucky in my accomodations by being given entire rows to myself in which to sit.

At Love Field in Dallas I had agreed with Ryan (somewhat surreptitiously) to meet me. He agreed, after an initial day or two of bickering. However either I had gotten the wrong idea, or he had been misguided in his directions, that we kept on missing one another in the terminal. I spent two hours impatiently people watching while waiting for my flight to come in.

The weather had been, as I had predicted, quite cold but agreeable to the overall circumstances of my flight. I felt harried somewhat by businessmen and social traveller alike–those people who are a rarity in the vast expanses of my beloved South Texas, who are somehow ineffectual and unreal with all their gadgetry and idle worries. For me, though, I was constantly worried about the nature of whether I was doing things in a correct fashion, rather than traipsing about carelessly, as in the case where I practically forgot my wallet in a tray at the security booth of the airport terminal.

I arrived in Lubbock, Queen City of the South Plains, about noon. The air was frigid and still. I called a cab and waited there at the practically empty arrival terminal, for about twenty minutes before a long-haired man appeared to come and pick the other poor college student up waiting to return to his own hall. It was simultaneously embarrassing and comical to see a well-oiled frat boy make light of our meager situations by suggesting to the cabbie to take him in first, rather than us. And thus I reaffirmed my general dislike for the student body at Texas Tech.

When I arrived back to the campus I had a subdued excitement mixed with a great sense of nostalgia and loss. After all, most of the people I had met in 04-05 were either gone, to either more accommodating circumstances, or to rehab, or into oblivion, never to be heard of again. No one greeted me upon returning. Everything seemed at once so hospitable and inhospitable; so strange and intransitory, that coming back felt like I had made a great, irreversible mistake. 

My hall is a decrepit brick building standing out adjacent to a parking garage and the Education and English building, two collegiate monstrosities that I fondly remembered from 2005 as being the furthest I had to walk in uncomfortable shoes to class. I couldn’t resist the urge to poke fun in that weird antiquarian sort of way I have, by referring to my hall as the Sala Clementina.

My roommate, a tall and lanky 19 year old from Dallas, did not immediately show up to give me warm welcomes. Indeed, after a fairly clumsy arrival at the hall,  I opened my door–last one in a long hall, as always–and discovered no one was there. The room was spare, keeping up as dorm rooms here do, with accents of wood paneling everywhere. The beds were prison-made at Huntsville by murderers. Throughout the dreary afternoon I took in drear old Lubbock and dead old Texas Tech. I walked to the library where to my surprise and delight, I found a copy of the Toru Takemitsu songbook. I have now checked out this book for the semester. 

My initial impressions of the University were that nothing had changed. This was still the small dusty West Texas college town I had first come upon in that fateful summer of 2004, and nothing–not even the terrible driving conditions–had changed. The one thing that was gone, however, were all of my former friends. Of the people that originally came here in 2004, only two remain: Mark Watson, who is now at the law school, and Christopher Freyburger, the wonderfully loud, honest, unabashed student of the theatre who became an unlikely ally my first year here. I had told him when I saw him later of the crush that I had developed on his director, Jeffrey, about a year before. He’s gone now, in DC, doing whatever privileged people do. Chris saw me seated in the Student Union building while I was attending to business. “You look so different,” he said. “You don’t look anything like what you looked like in ‘04, that’s for sure.” Indeed I don’t. I was starving then, insane, angry, terrified for my life. This was before those days of great clarity with Ryan, who taught me to finally love myself for who I am. Now I am larger, more muscular, more adept at handling the crises of life.

In my travels around campus, I was gradually reintroduced to the subject of the great American sociocultural malaise. Everyone, it seems, has some sort of totemic object of technological prowess that somehow enhances their social popularity, no matter how repulsive their personality may be. Here, it is any number of things–North Face, Apple, or Hollister. The typical student of agricultural science is a long thin man with a fully developed face of facial hair, decked in tight blue jeans with a brown suede or leather jacket over a plaid shirt. There are some exceptions, the obvious “scene kid” crowd an amalgam of drug or alcohol addicted young fresh things rehashing any number of tired fashions, often choosing to incorporate several decades at a time. And most of them are off in that elitist special little world of theirs, with their friends, their ‘good times’, and their classes. I am defintely an outsider–could it be any other way? 

Ryan had promised to visit me but we had a terrible argument the second weekend of my stay here and for that weekend, I finally understood the terrible emptiness that can exist without him. He is off in Dallas, trying to restart his life, after his job at Pecos was terminated after he struck an unruly child. His boyfriend, Juan Carlos, has firmly declared his intentions to have Ryan never see me ever again, but Ryan said he would always find the time to see me. About a week ago I told Ryan that hearing about Juan Carlos and him made me feel ‘dead inside’. Ryan responded that I was one of the best boyfriends he had ever had, but that I hadn’t really ever forgiven myself for our own mutual sins. I don’t think I ever will. Maybe it’s given me a sense of purpose in finding someone out there who won’t be afraid of saying ‘I love you’ without worrying about the consequences. My heart hurts when I think about all the fights Ryan and I have had. I don’t want to ever lose the admiration of someone like that. But at the same time I feel like I deserve someone else’s love again. I want someone to cook for, someone to workout with, someone to have around to talk about music with. I don’t want to have the semblance of a relationship. I want the actual thing, without fear of permanent and pervasive abandonment. 

I was depressed for about a week after that. I didn’t go to class, and I suffered for it. I emailed the professor of my history class, and he was stern, as was the other professor for my financial planning class (which was a mistake, given my good intentions). The only classes I could muster up the strength to go to were my social work class, where our class project involves visiting a terminally ill person; so far my Wednesday afternoons have been filled with visits to a retired veterinarian on the outskirts of town named Dr. Lambert. Seeing him reminds me of my grandfather, and offers up a quiet hour away from the insipid and oppressive atmosphere of campus. I confront life well lived when I talk to him; most of the time he is in genial spirits and quite conversational. He has a pet bird that mimics whosoever might pass by, their speech patterns or phrases. He has been sick for some time. I am not sure whether he will pass away or not, but somehow, I crave rest and death just as much as he does. 

Within the first couple of weeks there began to be problems. The first few days I was oblivious to the nature of these problems. They were, of course, financial. The college began to pay out financial aid refund checks and it took them all of four or five weeks to find mine. An address change did not aid in the prompt delivery of said check either, but when it came it was most welcome. I bought myself new clothes and the first necessities for class. The other problems were interpersonal. For about a week I had trouble with another resident of this hall. These problems were related to an apparent difference in the socioeconomic status between us (I am not sure if I am poorer or he is more trashy). It got worse as he began to make comments about my physical body and its sexual prowess, which were embarrassing to hear passing by. There were tense situations in between that time and now. Fortunately enough, I have not had any more problems since then. I am convinced, however, that the majority of people here are decidedly of a certain ‘entitledness’ here that comes along with socioeconomic status and its socially empowering forces. 

I wonder if I am the only one who feels isolated and misunderstood here. There are so many, many other people here who probably feel the way I do. And no matter how many new friends I make, it always comes with the understanding that I am not an explicitly young person anymore, nor am I explicitly popular. These things pass away, however, where my education is concerned. I have reminded myself over and over again that I am not here to socialize, but to continue the Great Work I have been commissioned to finish and to establish a life of my own here. It is not easy but it is accomplishable. 

Within a few weeks my room has become populated with gifts and endowments to make my stay here less stressful. From Kevin Hamm in Sacramento, a duvet, pillows and sheets for my bed, as when on arriving here I had none, and was left to spread sweaters over my body. Scott sent soap and a nice box of edible things for St. Valentine’s Day, the first such gift I have received ever from a gentleman. I myself bought a new pair of apple green plaid shoes, just for the color and the price. Such little mercies make the day easier and more agreeable. It makes me fear less about what I am to do here after I am done with the semester. 

Back at home, the spring has come and the flowers have come up. My little brother and his friends cut down the beautiful Texas Mountain Laurel tree that was damaged during last year’s hurricane after that tree scratched up my mother’s car. My mother too, has had no end to her sufferings this year, but I pray that they will end. In early January, just before I left, she had major eye surgery to repair a tear to her retina that endangered her eyesight. Now she will have to have surgery done again to remove fluid that has presented itself again in the same place, and again she is afraid of losing her eyesight. I mortify myself every day for not being around to assist her. I openly wonder if these years that I spend on myself are simultaneously the last years I may ever get to spend with my Mother. She has always told me that I have to focus on what is important for me. But I cannot endure being an orphan again. When my grandfather died, I finally realized what it would be like to be an orphan. How can I not consider the woman who gave me so much? To her I can only give as much back as possible. I do not want to be an orphan again, not this young at least. That would be the final sword, the last of all possible sorrows. 

Writing here is the only opportunity I have throughout the day to be a real, emotional person. It is the only time I can let my guard down and not have to worry about whether people will judge me or not on any number of real or imagined ills. I don’t worry about what people think because I know they worry about the same thing. But conversely, people don’t care about what you do, think or say, unless it is something they can derive some pleasure from. Cruelty, I have discovered, is a universal trait that everyone is good at. I have met people who are perpetrators of such suffering. And I have also met people that are indifferent to the suffering of others because it would only complicate their own self-established sense of apathy and disillusion. 

I ran away from home. I will not lie. I had to leave because there was no room for me. But now I want to keep running until there is no one–till nothing is left but me and the warm open air, and sunlight. I don’t know how long it will take–but this experience here is part of an escape from all the horrors of the present and past. I have only to set my gaze on the upper world. It calls me. I ascend to it freely.

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.

The Boundless Freedom of the Unlimited Heavens

It has been a lonely season. September passed by without much fanfare, praise God, and with much more temperate and agreeable weather than previous years. October has come on now, with the lowest friend count in awhile, which has proffered up an unusually pronounced period of reflection over the absence of people in my life and how good, and simultaneously, how bad it feels. 

No gentleman callers? Not a problem, as I don’t want to even think about the word “relationship”. At this point friendship is ticklish, but the absence of it tends to boost and assault my self-esteem, all at the same time. The mornings are filled with quiet sunlight and still, cool air; the nights are filled with a sense of purposeless accomplishment and salvaged duty. Things have gotten somewhat better at the house, though we still have lots of things to consider (still planning on moving away)–now or not now, a wedding for Paul and CJ–that may or may not take place on Hallowe’en. And of course the other thing that bears consideration might be the extended possibility of a future nephew or niece for me, with some sort of banal, awful name that young parents give to particularly unattractive children. “Joe, I’d like for you to meet your new nephew, Gucci Armani Harley-Davidson Skullfire HotTopic.” Or, “Joe, I’d like for you to meet your new niece, Destiny Grace Starlight Twinkle Fairydust Horseshit Pink Barbara Otherkin Starfire PonyLove.” Then when I suggested a more attractive name for a boy, Ethan, CJ says to me, “You’ve got to be crazy thinking I’ll name a child a middle-class white boy name like that.” And I said, “I don’t think a brand name would get the kid into a good four-year college, now, would it?”

Mom and I have tired of Paul and CJ, and with good cause. For one, Paul’s behavior is now one where he simply looks at CJ and spends money. I gave him my class ring to pawn sell, to my mother’s horror. “I spent over $400 dollars on that ring.” When they came back with the money from the pawnshop, I said it was all right and that it would come back to us eventually. “It really didn’t mean much to me, aside from its value,” I said. “I mean, high school wasn’t all that good anyway.” Then there is CJ herself. At 17, she is the utter epitome of a spoiled, selfish, conventional and fairly uneducated girl with a penchant for dishonesty, as well as rabble-rousing. Just a couple of days ago I heard my long-unheard of aunt finally speak to Paul after several blissful weeks of non-intervention that she was uncomfortable with CJ “barging” into her house, attempting to talk to my cousin, to whom CJ has become good friends with. Clarissa, her other friend who used to come here quite frequently, is now gone, having been permanently attached herself to the loud, obnoxious friend of Paul’s, who fessed up to committing several counts of credit card fraud for the lulz. Inside part of me was both disgusted and fearful–the only reason, she says, my aunts have not intervened in this is because of “the lack of respect” we have for my dead grandfather’s house, not wanting to make the situation any more crazy, as it is. “Joe, too.” Whatever that means. 

At the gym my friend told me, “It’s time you look into doing things for yourself. Not even the Lord Jesus could save everybody, but he sure did try.” And this is precisely correct; from now on, I’m not even considering the grocery question unless it involves both me and my Mother. The dog’s influence on my emotions has waned somewhat, ever since she both pissed and shat on my bed, ruining a perfectly fine almanac that I collect every year. For the lulz, most likely.

And then there is the question of boys. Two gone now, and this time, Ryan almost threw his hands up on me after I ridiculed him for getting drunk and hungover (photographic evidence exists). This I did partly out of jealously and hatred for basically going back on his promise to stick around (he is planning on moving up to Little Rock with that cold-blooded businessman), but also out of a lulz-driven desire to see him fall flat on his face in a FAILtastic display of faggotry and butthurt. This came out of a fairly serious situation about two weeks ago: Ryan, defending himself from the slings and assails of an unruly child, slapped him in defense. The child’s overprotective mother filed a complaint, and Ryan quickly submitted a letter of resignation to protect his career and his interests. So that brief love with Pecos now done for, he is thinking of moving back to Presidio, since they need people there apparently, or moving to Midland/Odessa with Juan Carlos to start a new life together. Later I was apologetic and even conciliatory. It was too much, even if the temptation to exacerbate sweet LULZ was present, to make fun of Ryan, someone I love and will continue to love immensely. On the other hand, I think it was perfectly necessary–Ryan seems to know everything and to proceed swimmingly, avoiding FAIL all the time, and then rubbing it in my face. This incident just evened the playing field. 

Last week there was not just one rainbow, but three–two in the evening, both red and gallant, and then one in the brilliance of hot and humid, rain-filled afternoon, brilliant and low against the turbulent coal sky. Then came a calmer period of cool weather and more seasonable climate, filled with the undisturbed stillness, the calm of early autumn mornings and the dazzling intensity of azure skies. Early mornings filled with birdsong and morning stars, proffered by indigestion and ill posture in bed. What seems like palpitations. And now, nothing more than primitive evenings of perfect sunsets, clouds in the face of the sun, then the powder blue of a mysterious autumn evening full of moonlight and stars, the kind of moonlight that you see in Caspar David Friedrich paintings and sonatas by Beethoven.

Scott was kind enough to send me new CDs and new soaps from LUSH, as well as a couple of other things. He is the only person I talk to everyday, almost always at four here at the house, as I am coming off of an afternoon full of highs.

Update

I’ve been without internet service for awhile. Hurricane Ike was not to blame. Instead, my little brother’s excessive and unwarranted cell phone use was the cause.

CJ and Paul have been alright. Things are bad here. Our bills are high and I am doing the best I can to bring them down. Still I have to say I have a lot of disappointment in myself for not trying harder. And inasmuch as I want to take a long vacation, I do not think that will be a possibility for some time.

Cameron is gone now, for good, sadly. It was of his own volition and I do not hold it against him. I was in love with him and it constituted three glorious months of absolute bliss, the first time I had feelings for someone other than Ryan. He wrote me a long, beautiful, letter that I got to read in church (I am still singing for Henry). It ruined my Sunday and depressed me for the entire week, but I feel better knowing that somehow I’ll eventually get to see him again.

I talk every day to Scott now on the telephone or at least send him an e-mail. He’s become a best friend and a mentor and a confidante. He makes my life better just by knowing that not all of it is bad–there are good things, like my iBook, gay porn, candy, and good music. I would like to share a chelada with him someday. I think he is the only person who absolutely has 100% faith in my ability to overcome unfortunate situations.

As the Chinese say, “slowly one treads over vipers and coals”. Victory, in sweet Jesus’ name, is near. My mom is tired, sometimes depressed, but valiant. “You need to do more,” she says, and inside it hurts, but I’ve gotten so used to it now. In the gym the pain becomes your best friend. All you do is set it aside and see where it takes you. I am still confident I will make it to Sul Ross, even though now it seems so far away.

I’ve begun performing in public again, with Sergio and Blanca, two Mexican virtuosi, one an accomplished pianist and the other a soprano with a flair for the dramatic (niece of the famed composer Julian Carillo, whom John Cage mentioned early in the 50s as a pioneer of microtonality)–and the Ensemble Euterpe from Reynosa, performing alongside the popular classics music by Revueltas, Piazzola and Alois Haba.

I’m almost close to completing 12 Melodies for Carillon, done in a style reminiscent of early American hymnody and thoroughly tonal. When I began to compose it I was so taken aback that I was writing in a key with melody I had to slap myself. They all have their own distinct hymnodic names, e.g., Cherry Grove, New Providence, &c. Berio said we must either make amends with the past or completely forget it. I am trying to make a direct effort to make amends with the past, especially my own, in relation to the Border and to my own love for American music.

I remember Miss Celie in The Color Purple saying “I may be poor, black and even ugly, but dear God, I’m still alive.” I may be poor, overgrown, unshaven, gaining weight, and in the most remote part of Texas, but dear God, I’m still alive and working towards a good end.