Ha! How's that for a grabby header. It was just a weird, paranoid thought that crept into my head as I thought, "Maybe I've had too much weed."
Q: What to do when you have completely lost your train of thought?
A: Try to find it, of course!
I had a thought about thoughts.
The thought was this: I get all sorts of thoughts throughout the day. Some types of thoughts more than others. Some could be viewed as primarily pessimistic projections, worries and fears about specific things like, "I'm worried about that zit on my eyelid" or I worry about going to the dentist and experiencing all that beloved pain. Or just a general "death by debilitating illness" of which I am just at that moment seeing the first symptoms. Other types of thoughts might be illuminating ideas about one thing or another. One sentence statements that start threads that lead to the French Revolution.
One started today with me deciding to look up the lyrics to David Bowie's "Candidate." I saw the words Les Tricoteuse and was compelled to go look that up. "I ain't gonna be singin' no song wherein I don't know what the fuck I'm singin' about." I'm quoting myself on that one.
So, it turns out that Les Tricoteuse were some women in the forefront of the French Revolutionary movement. They were the pissed off market women who didn't like the price of bread. They were famous for knitting while the guillotining was going on, only pausing to look up as a head was about to roll, then going back to their knitting.
I started thinking, "How familiar. We are in perilously similar times. Who knows who is who in this upcoming clash, who is "The Regime" and who are the oppressed. Politics being what they are, I can see liberals and Trump supporters both vying for the title of the majority and true voice of the American citizenry.
But...wait...what is going on here?
I see what's happening. My thought train is getting hijacked. Derailed or diverted onto another track. So, let's flip this motherfucker in reverse-----skreee---eee-eee-aaaa-aaa-lllllll. Brakes on and holding.
"That's a lot of fat to be moving around," as I always say to Patsy any time I see her doing anything the least be physical or active.
The fact is, I am documenting my ADD vs OCD right now. I'm seeing where my brain is at in relation to things. Like typing. Seems to be sufficient to keep up with my slow thought process. Just about right, in fact.
I can think of things to write about as fast as my slow-ass auto pilot of a brain/hand interface thingy can bang them out. About as much lag time as a first generation computer, where the word is typed but takes a second to appear on the screen. Perhaps in slow motion even. Or like the lag time you get when your computer is loaded down with processes, perhaps keyloggers even, and what you type goes into a seeming endless void for a moment or two, reappearing miraculously all at once. Or spilling out character by character, deliberately.
"Man, how fucked up IDGE YOU?" I'm quoting Eminem on that one.
Do I, or should I provide a list of references? Seems a little pedantic, like I don't think anyone who might ever read something I wrote would know the reference. Like, they ain't hip like me, ya dig?
Should I just define and explain all terms as I use them, so that people will know where I am coming from when I allude to certain things? Let everyone in on what is an inside joke known only to me?
The world according to Andrew. Not Garp. And certainly not Gorp. My perspective, my world, my definitions. You want to look around, be my guest. Get a lay of the land. I'll point out the major points of interest, as I see them.
Let's make this a collaborative affair, shall we? You be a good little reader and take part. "Give me an 'F'!!!!" No, seriously. Give me one. I'm out of "Fs" right now. I need one. Just one, to get the ball rollin'. I'll pick up another one or two along the way.
It's funny how I can be both lucid and incoherent at the same time. Or vise-versa. Or I can convince myself that I'm being witty, when in fact I am babbling, rambling and caraveening ----
oh my god, I just spent the last 10 minutes looking up the word "caraveening." It isn't in any dictionary, even the paper one, I looked! But I know it exists. It means to veer off course. Right? Am I right, or did the world abandon me to some parallel dimension where it does not exist or mean what I think it does? Go ahead and google it yourself. I swear, it's like the Mandela Effect kicking in here. The fucking references have been scrubbed.
Uhh..Hold on a minute. I think it was just me inventing a word. Yep. That's what it is. I mangled the word "careened," which is what I really meant to say. Uh, duh. That was a half hour at least wasted.
Meanwhile, it's 1:24pm and I'm only halfway thru breakfast. Coffee is still warm. Amp is still on. Food definitely cold. Perhaps a warm up in the microwave. Hmmm.
This one hit of weed is affecting me pretty strongly, coupled with all my useless supplements and this kick-ass cup of cordyceps infused esspresso/coffee blend. Mmmm, baby. One drug in one hand and one in the other. The effect is I become super focused on whatever it is I am doing, and also, simultaneously, easily led astray to new things upon which I will focus intently, only to be led astray from those by a new discovery in some other location of the house.
The wandering minstrel of "What the fuck can I get into next?"
Well, this stream of consciousness thing is ok, but you should see what happens when I try to tell Siri about it. All I get from her is, "I don't hear what your saying, but here's what I think you were saying, so I'll just fix it for you."
And of course she gets it all wrong, right down to the basic level of comprehension. Like, Siri, seriously. English, Motherfucker. Do you speak it?
When I noticed my food was cold I went upstairs to microwave it.
Then, for some unknown reason I decided to go over to the mixing board
and turn it on, making the mic hot for the two giant speaker cabinets
that I have it hooked up to.
It was set up for acoustic guitar, but the
dynamic mike wasn't picking it up very well. Attempts to correct for it
by turning it "all the way up" resulted in a loud squeal of ringing
feedback that is designed to crack skulls by exploding the brain from
within.
I then went downstairs to fetch a near field mic, used for
miking small amps. This is probably not the mic of choice either, having
no preamp in front of it. But I will give it a whirl anyway. Back in a
few.
Ok. Great. That works out. The one mic is for the singing and
the other will suffice for the guitar. Better if I had direct input
from a pickup on the guitar, but no matter. This will do to encourage me
to experiment with miking myself as an acoustic performer. Like in some
cheap coffee shop, with a lame setup, similar or worse than mine. Just
kidding, it couldn't be worse and exist in a public venue.
There's a
hole in my man cave where that boom mic was residing and taking up real
estate. Now upstairs, it has displaced the vacuum cleaner, which can live in the
closet for all I care. This is much more interesting to look at and I
won't stumble around it.
I managed to heat my food 3 times in the
last 1/2 hour, indicating that my ADD is in full swing. Back and forth
like a squirrel, undecided about which way to run to avoid the oncoming car.
Now
I've gotten it into my head that, yes, I ought to record this for
posterity. Just after I finish eating and peeing and doing whatever else
comes in between me and the next thing I want to do.
I will say this: during the time when I'm most spun out in 2 to 3 different directions, I don't tend to notice things like my eyelid or right eye's poorer vision. Or I just don't give them a conscious thought.
No interminable self check-ins. How's it doing now? What about now? Better now? Did this make it better or worse? Will it be worse tomorrow? What about in 5 minutes? I'd better check. What can I do about it? What are my options? Let's go over them again, shall we? A million more times. Run a few more scenarios out in my head, wherein I become this monstrosity, unlookable upon.
-- Unlookuponable? Neither? Fuck you! It's one of them. Whichever one I say, bitch! You got it? Yeah, you. You know who I'm talkin' to, internal grammar police nazi fuck. Bam! Smack a bitch's what I'll do. Functuated that wrong, too? That's fun + punctuated for all you illiterate in Andrewspeak. My head, my dialect. Go fuck yourselves.
Where is all this hostility coming from? You are only talking to yourself, friend. See how it is? You've gone mad. And no one has deigned to tell you. None of their business anyway. I'll be as crazy as I want to be. Get naked in my living room crazy, yeah. Curtains open, music blasting. Tell me anything, I dare you.
Time to play "Lord, Send Me an Angel."
Well, that was productive. And Lesa just wrote me. How can I write about it without seeming to be, like, a judge or critic? It was one of her best, clearest efforts to give me her thought process and how it relates to her frame of mind, re: COVID, depression and frustration.
I'm a sucker for when people go deep. It's not really something you get a lot of these days. Most people are like I was in my last message to her, all facts and reporting, without the analytics, the internal motivations. Just, bam, I went to the store. Then, bam, I ran into so and so. Or we went to Disneyland and had a good time. Big clunky facts with just the skimpiest of details about the feeling or sense of the event. Like, "Here's a picture, you caption it."
Meanwhile, some, like my usual self, are long on the "and it made me feel, etc. metaphor, hyperbole, blah blah blah" and many other such trees as to give an inadequate view of the forest. The need is for a balanced approach, one not too vague or general, but not caught up in minutia either, without even making a point.
She did a good job of weaving together the narrative into a cohesive product, which I was able to get a real sense of "how ya doin'?" and really, not figuratively, off in some land of undecipherable imagery, but a construct that could be read and figured out by anyone who read it.
I got the message. It was clear. I'm impressed and am envious of that, or proud of her ability or whatever without sounding too condescending, like I know what the fuck I'm talking about.
I liked it. Ok? That's all I'm trying to say. It had substance. Not too thick, not too thin. Volume, treble, bass all set to perfect room dynamics. None of that endless feedback or unclear, muffled mess. Articulate, well-crafted--geez, am I writing a review or what? I better shut my pompous ass up for a minute and get the mail.
---
So, I took the rest of the day off of this "live" blow by blow of my Saturday weedcation. Now, I'm going to take a shower and go to bed. I'll read this later. Maybe.