Too soon Santa... (and other humbug)

I remember seeing Santa at the end of a Thanksgiving parade once, when I was a kid, and thinking it was weird. It wasn’t Christmas; it was Thanksgiving. Too soon Santa, too soon. Why does it always have to be about you, old man?

Within my lifetime the celebration of Christmas has lengthened by about a month. It starts a month earlier than it did when I was little. It used to be early December. But he time I was a teenager, it was right after Thanksgiving. And now it's November first. Some stores are starting to put out Christmas stuff before Halloween even. WTF!? (Maybe viewing Halloween as the time you’re supposed to start thinking about Christmas is the fault of the people who made the Nightmare Before Christmas.) What is driving this desire to celebrate Christmas for such a long period of time? Is it just ordinary consumerism? Or is it an unconscious desire to find or manufacture some kind of happiness and distraction from the horror of our contemporary lives? 

For those of us, like me (yes, yes, it’s always about me), who do not have friends or loved ones with whom they will be celebrating a winter holiday, I fear that the Christmas lovers’ emphasis on “Christmas! Christmas! Christmas! It’s CHRISTMAS!!!” for the last two months of the year only serves to remind us of how sad and pathetic our lives are, how desperately alone we are. 

So, come on holly, jolly Christmas-ers, tone it down. And save it for later. (Have you never heard of delayed gratification?) Also, maybe take some time and look at the people you know who aren’t celebrating, who aren’t donning their gay apparel. Maybe include them a little. I mean, really include them, not just do a Christmas-greeting drive-by. You don’t have to adopt them for the month, just... I don't know, check and see how they’re doing. Maybe they don’t want to go to your party; then again, maybe they do. But they’re certainly not going to invite themselves. Ya know, Scrooge wasn’t always a bitter old guy. There’s a reason he’s that way. However – back to my original point – two months of mindless and shallow holiday cheer is not going to bring him around. (And by him, I mean me. As I said, it’s always about me. Isn’t it?)

Why I left

Someone told me last night that they heard a rumor about me. So, here’s my response to that rumor. Yes, I left a show. However, there was no throwing of anything, nor was there any “storming out.”

I guess, in a way, it’s nice to know that people are thinking about me and talking about me. But I would prefer you talk TO me. You’ll at least get accurate information. Of course, I understand that you may prefer to share a juicy story. But this one is just not true.

Here’s what is true.

I had some very basic problems with a director. I gave it a lot of thought and concluded that for my own mental and artistic health I needed to not continue in that situation. I also realized that my leaving the show would be the least damaging solution for the production and the theatre. I emailed the producers, and we had a series of meetings. There was no happy solution, just a confirmation that there were serious problems, including a significant disagreement about a basic artistic principle on which the director and I were unwilling to budge.

I told the producers that I had discreetly asked around but been unable to find anyone I could confidently recommend who was available to replace me. And I told them I would be willing to keep looking to help them find someone, if they wanted me to. They didn’t say much one way or the other about that. I complied a detailed list of everything I thought a replacement music director would need to know: what I’d already taught; what probably needed more work; band members contact info; etc. I sent an email to the band members and pit singers to let them know I was not continuing as music director and that they could contact the stage manager for more information. Over the next few days, I finished the work I had been doing on the band parts and sent that to the lead producer. (The show is written for 18+ musicians, and we were doing it with 8, so I had been working on and off for a month, putting together a version that would work. Also, that particular score and parts are notoriously full of mistakes.)

So. I didn’t just walk out of a show. I was angry, but it was not an emotional decision. I have known people who walk out of shows, semi-regularly. That’s not me. This is only the second time in the 25 or so years I have been doing music direction that I have left a show. Yes, I am passionate, but I am not rash nor thoughtless. And if you really know me, you’ll know that I am honest and direct. If you hear something about me, you can ask me about it. Then, you’ll hear first-hand information, and just maybe we’ll get to know each other a little better in the process.

My Depression

I’m depressed. Very depressed. I’m pretty much always depressed. That’s just my life, that’s how it is. But right now I’m in a more intense than usual depression. I suspected recently that it would happen, as I have very little on my schedule for the next few months. But it hit really quickly. In fact I think it even started before I finished my last gig.

Usually this sort of more intense depressive episode takes the form of my sitting around and feeling... well, depressed. But also angry, and resentful, and worthless, and various other negative feelings. I find myself alone, without any significant connections to other people. And when I try to reach out, to connect, I am rebuffed. Or, maybe worse, ignored. And the occasional “I hope you feel better soon” type of comments on Facebook, or whatever, while I’m sure are well-intentioned, do not help. In fact, they only underscore the basic problem of a lack of real connection. So then I’m either angry or resentful at other people for their not wanting to reciprocate actual friendship. Or I side with them and agree that they shouldn’t want to spend time with me. Because, really, what do I have to offer anyone? I’m miserable, bitter, full of complaints, and basically boring. Who would want to be around that? 

Then I think about the past, and how there have been times when I didn’t feel this way. I used to have friends. I used to have a girlfriend. We lived together for a few years. I used to enjoy at least some of my work. And I used to get a lot of pleasure from writing. I used to not be dangerously broke. (I have way too much free time. These serious depressive episodes don’t happen when I’m busy.) I think about all that stuff. But I never can figure out exactly what went wrong. Well, sometimes I’ll focus on something to blame. But as much as I’d like to be able to blame one person or one event, I know it can’t have been one life event that caused it to all go wrong. It’s a lot of things that are probably connected.

Anyway, I sit around and feel bad and hate life. And basically hate myself. A few years ago it got so bad that I started worrying for myself. Not that I was going to do something harmful to myself, but that I might become negligent and just not care enough to be careful. I went on walks next to busy streets without my glasses and with no ID or anything. Once, while crossing a bridge, I looked down at the cars going underneath, and wondered what would happen if I fell. And I thought about death a bit. Not about suicide – I don’t think I was actually suicidal. It was a little more philosophical. But I was definitely in a bad place. And I scared myself. The thing is, after I realized how bad it was, and feeling scared, I think I started acting a little different, a little healthier. But I can’t remember what I started doing. Eventually, I had a gig – a show I started rehearsing.

Now my depression is taking a different form. I just want to sleep. To nap in the afternoons, mainly. I’m not doing much of anything these days. That’s the biggest danger for me – nothing going on in my life, nothing to distract me, nothing to take up very much of my time. And unfortunately, for the past 5 years or so, I’ve had a lot of weeks and months even, with little or nothing on my calendar. Combined, of course, with my usual lack of people in my life. 

These days, in the mornings I can find a few things to do: wash dishes from the previous night; watch youtube clips from the previous night's Late Show, or other youtube channels I subscribe to; maybe read a little bit. But by early afternoon, I’m just sitting around looking for something on netflix that won't bore me to death or make me more depressed because it’s about love, or friendship, or close family relationships, or people coming together to work toward a goal and bonding through their common struggles. And it’s not easy to find something that doesn’t fit one of those categories. So I end up napping. Not every day. So that’s good. Not taking a nap feels like I’ve won a battle. Not the war, just that day’s battle. When I say I nap, I don’t mean a 15 or 20 minute “power nap.” I actually mean sleeping, restlessly, off and on for 5 hours or so. It’s easy to do that. It’s not satisfying, but it’s easy. And motivating myself to do anything else takes so much effort. I can’t even really describe how difficult it is. I’ve never been very good at inventing busy work to distract myself. I have unfinished plays and musicals that I could be working on. But, again, the amount of energy that would take seems insurmountable. I think I’d like to do a photoshoot. It’s been about 2 months since the last one I did. But I have no one who’s interested (or interested enough to actually do it). And I might feel the same reluctance to put forth the energy.

On top of that, my body hurts. I’m out of shape. I know that exercise would be good for me, just in a general sense, but also specifically it would help with depression. But I just can’t. Honestly, sometimes I get winded going up the stairs in my apartment. That sounds like an exaggeration, a joke, but it really isn’t. So if I do get up the energy to actually do something, I feel so tired afterwards. And sometimes sore as well. Oh, and speaking of “getting up the energy...” Yeah, my sex drive seems diminished. Maybe not the desire to have sex, but the ability to perform. Not that I’m having sex. I haven’t had sex with another person in a very long time. So long a time that I sometimes doubt that I would be able to have satisfying sexual relations with someone. I mean, I might be “satisfied,” but the other person probably wouldn’t. Or, being so out of shape, I’d probably just end up hurting myself. How sad is that? Really, that’s pathetic. But I don’t realistically need to worry about being a bad sexual partner. I don’t have anyone who wants to just hang out and be friends, much less have sex with me. Just another thing to be depressed about. I haven’t even had that much sex in my life. Most of my life I have been single and not sleeping with anyone. And I can easily imagine never having sex with anyone ever again. Also sad.

So I sort of sleep a lot these days. It’s not great sleep. Usually there’s a lot of waking up, trying to get comfortable, sometimes just wondering how long it’ll be before I go back to sleep. You know, that kind of awful sleep. And unlike my typical more intense depressions, I don’t seem to be feeling things very deeply. Sometimes the normal depression (a.k.a. feeling shitty about myself and everything in life) comes for a visit. But it doesn’t really linger for hours at a time, the way I’m used to. A lot of the time I just sit here, or lay here, not feeling much of anything. Well, sometimes feeling very little. Other times feeling sort of helpless, and pointless, and powerless to do much about it.

It’s just...depressing.

a rhino died, and here's what I'm sayin'

While driving home from a rehearsal tonight, I heard on the radio a conversation about extinction. Specifically, about the recent death oath of the last male northern white rhino, but also about the wave of species extinctions happening in the world today.

I heard them talk about human impact, about loss of habit, and climate change, and poachers, and a little about economic pressures. But the host and guest of whatever this program was did not once mention human overpopulation. You know, the fact that there are outrageously high numbers of humans on this planet. There are WAY too many of us. As of the end of last year, we are estimated at 7.6 BILLION humans. I never hear anyone talk about this anymore. When I was a kid, and there were only about 4 billion of us, you heard people talk about it. It was a growing concern. A problem. Well, apparently no longer.

Here’s my real point. We humans do some horrible things to each other, to other species (both animals and plants), and to the planet in general. It would be great if we could stop doing bad things. But... WE’RE PROBABLY NOT GOING TO STOP DOING BAD THINGS TO THE PLANET. But the one thing that would make climate change and species extinction and all the other shit less of a problem is to have A LOT few humans here on the planet.

Now, I’m not comfortable saying that we should just kill off a bunch of people. But I am comfortable saying this:
Maybe we should stop treating every human birth like it’s a magical miracle from heaven. And maybe we should stop treating every human death as if it’s such a horrific tragedy that can be accepted. Maybe, just maybe, we don’t need to fight and struggle to keep every human alive and reproducing. Oh yeah! And maybe we don’t need that antibacterial hand sanitizer a dozen times a day.

It’s as if we’ve decided that every natural check on population just doesn’t pertain to us. We’re somehow special. Yep, so special that we’re fucking over tons of other species just to prove the point. And the thing is, if we keep going, we’re going to prove the opposite. That we humans can’t make as many of ourselves as we want to.

Anyway... There are too many people already. We need to slow down on the baby-making. A lot fewer humans could chop down some trees, and kill some animals, and burn some fossil fuels, and even use that hairspray with chlorofluorocarbons. All that wouldn’t be great for the environment, but the earth could probably handle it. But 7½ billion humans doing that is insane. And we don’t seem to give a fuck anymore. Just like America has pretty much accepted that we’re okay with mass shootings and other such violence, we’ve “civilized” humans have pretty much accepted that we’re going to make this planet unlivable for ourselves and many other species.

Well, get ready, cockroaches. Your chance is coming.