You Must Go and Win: Essays (13 page)
Read You Must Go and Win: Essays Online
Authors: Alina Simone
“It makes perfect sense,” the Punk Monk replied. “Any job contains such small and a bit foolish details. Even that of priest. In fact, if our job will contain only serious things we are interested in, it will be not useful to our souls. This is exactly what you are supposed to be doing. This is your path.”
This didn’t feel like a path, I thought to myself. Rather, it felt like the deliberate avoidance of some other definite and more sensible path that had suggested itself to me many times in the past. But this little bit of encouragement, which I found myself enjoying immensely, also had the unintended consequence of tapping into a wellspring of self-indulgence, my endless appetite for enumerating the problems I compulsively—almost cheerfully!—kept inserting into an otherwise problem-free life. “Everything feels very unstable,” I began, “and I am considering just dropping all this and going back to living a life of quiet desperation …” Lately, the issue was that whenever I worked my day job, I felt paralyzed by guilt for neglecting music. Yet whenever I switched my attention to music, I found myself overcome by self-loathing, undone by the sheer impracticality of noodling entire days away on the guitar. The real problem here was that I lacked both the
discipline to embrace the hedonistic lifestyle art-making required and the pragmatism to undertake one of those careers that deliver you to your future as predictably as a Japanese bullet train. Because these thoughts were so troubling, much of my time was spent ensuring I had no time to spend. The successful artists I knew always made the most of any spare hour. Given a day off, they might print up some stickers featuring their website and likeness, and spend the afternoon blithely affixing them to public property. For me, days off turned catastrophic. Oh, they might get off to a banging start, with the brave intention of writing a new song or two. But ten minutes into the project, I would notice that this new song sounded troublingly like my old songs. More intrusive thoughts would quickly squirm through this first chink in my self-confidence.
You do realize that no one is waiting for this new song? No one cares whether it is in the key of A or G, or how long the bridge is. No one cares whether you manage to rhyme
Tanqueray
with
Le Carré
, or, for that matter, whether this song ever gets written at all. But go on—write it! Stick it on top of the pile with all the other old-sounding new songs …
After these thoughts spent some time crashing about in my head, I’d decide it was time for a break. Better still, a bath! And while reflecting in the bath, it would occur to me that no matter how hard I work, I will never grow up to be an old black woman like the singers I most admire. My angst would thicken, first into a stew, then a gumbo, as the hours slipped by unnoticed, until suddenly it was time for dinner, then bed. Before I knew it, I was back at my day job, lamenting the time I didn’t have to write new songs.
discipline to embrace the hedonistic lifestyle art-making required and the pragmatism to undertake one of those careers that deliver you to your future as predictably as a Japanese bullet train. Because these thoughts were so troubling, much of my time was spent ensuring I had no time to spend. The successful artists I knew always made the most of any spare hour. Given a day off, they might print up some stickers featuring their website and likeness, and spend the afternoon blithely affixing them to public property. For me, days off turned catastrophic. Oh, they might get off to a banging start, with the brave intention of writing a new song or two. But ten minutes into the project, I would notice that this new song sounded troublingly like my old songs. More intrusive thoughts would quickly squirm through this first chink in my self-confidence.
You do realize that no one is waiting for this new song? No one cares whether it is in the key of A or G, or how long the bridge is. No one cares whether you manage to rhyme
Tanqueray
with
Le Carré
, or, for that matter, whether this song ever gets written at all. But go on—write it! Stick it on top of the pile with all the other old-sounding new songs …
After these thoughts spent some time crashing about in my head, I’d decide it was time for a break. Better still, a bath! And while reflecting in the bath, it would occur to me that no matter how hard I work, I will never grow up to be an old black woman like the singers I most admire. My angst would thicken, first into a stew, then a gumbo, as the hours slipped by unnoticed, until suddenly it was time for dinner, then bed. Before I knew it, I was back at my day job, lamenting the time I didn’t have to write new songs.
I wrote these thoughts out for the Punk Monk and then went to sleep on the floor of a man who may or may not have been the sound guy at the Replay Lounge in Lawrence, Kansas. I couldn’t understand whether he was the real sound guy or just
some guy replacing the sound guy who didn’t show up. In any case, I did understand that he had a room to spare and that I could sleep there. But of course, it turned out to be very cold on the floor and I didn’t sleep at all. Which meant I didn’t wake up in the morning, I simply arose from the sleep I didn’t have, from my seven-hour sprawl on the floor, feeling bludgeoned. And since there wasn’t any coffee on hand to reach for, I reached for my computer instead and found I had a reply from the Punk Monk.
some guy replacing the sound guy who didn’t show up. In any case, I did understand that he had a room to spare and that I could sleep there. But of course, it turned out to be very cold on the floor and I didn’t sleep at all. Which meant I didn’t wake up in the morning, I simply arose from the sleep I didn’t have, from my seven-hour sprawl on the floor, feeling bludgeoned. And since there wasn’t any coffee on hand to reach for, I reached for my computer instead and found I had a reply from the Punk Monk.
“When you are not working on yourself,” the message read, “the world starts to work on you instead. People lose their identity and, then, integrity and start to live by two or more lives, none of them being worth to be lived. In this way, desperations are inevitable. You must acquire the skill to be yourself.”
Perhaps it was the deadening sensation in my head, but considering the source, I was starting to have trouble with these Deepak Chopra–y pronouncements. For one thing, it seemed to me like the path of punk rock and the path of priesthood were two distinctly separate paths, running in opposite directions. And if the Punk Monk himself was a living oxymoron, just another weird, muddled mess, like all the other weird, muddled messes I typically surrounded myself with, what good, really, was all this advice about path-finding and self-being? Again, the following day, in Denver, I had my reply.
“Some time ago,” the Punk Monk wrote, “I defined for myself a ‘right’ image of the Church as a church where Yanka could be a parishioner. There are all manner of churches in the world. The first thing is to establish your relationship with God, the next to find a church where you feel at home. Did you know that Yanka also converted before she died? She was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church.”
I hadn’t known. But the next morning, as I drifted down I-70 west toward Salt Lake City, listening to Yanka, I found myself
thinking about her conversion, wondering what it was that made her do it. It didn’t matter, I told myself. It didn’t save her. Religion was an insufficient guardrail. She ended up dead in the river, an apparent suicide, alone and rootless and looking for a comfort she’d never find. And yet … and yet, what to do with all this driving, driving, driving? Everything just going on and pointlessly on? The sky above northern Utah, too big. Idaho blurring by, a waste of gas. If I could convince myself that I was, indeed, on a path—a God-given path, not just some hideously circuitous highway mocking me with its metaphoric significance—
then
I could really get on with this hopeless to-ing and fro-ing. Once freed from logic, the singing to indifferent audiences, the failure to sleep on various floors, could all be undertaken with a renewed sense of purpose.
thinking about her conversion, wondering what it was that made her do it. It didn’t matter, I told myself. It didn’t save her. Religion was an insufficient guardrail. She ended up dead in the river, an apparent suicide, alone and rootless and looking for a comfort she’d never find. And yet … and yet, what to do with all this driving, driving, driving? Everything just going on and pointlessly on? The sky above northern Utah, too big. Idaho blurring by, a waste of gas. If I could convince myself that I was, indeed, on a path—a God-given path, not just some hideously circuitous highway mocking me with its metaphoric significance—
then
I could really get on with this hopeless to-ing and fro-ing. Once freed from logic, the singing to indifferent audiences, the failure to sleep on various floors, could all be undertaken with a renewed sense of purpose.
When I got home from touring, I was surprised to discover that I actually owned a Bible. Not some shoddy paperback cribbed from the nightstand of a Motel 6 either, but a handsome hardcover version that weighed as much as a full bottle of Jim Beam. How had I failed to notice it there on the shelf, right next to Jenna Jameson’s autobiography, for what must have been years? I remember I once tried to read the Old Testament and made it as far as Judges. It got off to a rousing start, I recall, with the slaughter of ten thousand men. But by the time Jael bent down and drove a nail into Sisera’s head, I was done. I knew I could never meet this God’s stringent requirements; I didn’t have the self-discipline. If He ever told me to follow Lot out of Brooklyn and never once look back, I would simply hand over my keys and my cell phone and prepare to become a condiment.
Now I decided I would give the New Testament a try; I had higher hopes for Jesus. But I quickly found that, like everyone, the Messiah had his good days and his bad days. He could be belligerent. He was maddeningly self-contradictory. Occasionally?
He smote things. But I was also surprised to find that Jesus sometimes said things that I found comforting, that stayed with me.
He smote things. But I was also surprised to find that Jesus sometimes said things that I found comforting, that stayed with me.
“Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself,” said Jesus in Matthew 6. “Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.”
So true, I thought to myself. Don’t be greedy. There will always be more trouble tomorrow. I jotted the verse down on a notecard and taped it up next to my desk. Soon there were a lot of notecards taped up around my desk.
“How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye?”
Right again. Don’t be a hypocrite. With a two-by-four in your eye, you can’t do much of anything, let alone deal with somebody else’s speck.
“Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored?”
This last verse, from Luke 14, was a conundrum. But I liked that first declarative phrase, the rare glimpse into Jesus’ seasoning preferences. Jesus thought that salt was good. And now I could picture Jesus salting things. Maybe regretting the extra shake, worrying about his sodium intake. He came into focus for me then. Myself, I’d take wild mushroom risotto over a Hostess cupcake any day. Jesus and I may not have a lot in common, I thought to myself, but we could come together on salt.
It was something.
Growing up with no religious affiliation, I always figured that I had only two options if I wanted to get with God: the Judaism of my father’s side of the family or the Russian Orthodox Christianity of my mother’s side. But since everyone on both sides of my family was raised atheist, they didn’t leave me with much to
go on. When I was five or six, I remember asking Mama what would happen to me after I died. We were eating lunch in a restaurant on Cape Cod with a group of my mother’s friends. I knew it probably wasn’t the best occasion to bring it up, but we’d driven past a graveyard earlier that afternoon and a panicked scribbling feeling had been rising in my chest ever since. I remember the conversation stopping after I asked my question, and Mama looking down at me from what seemed like a great height.
go on. When I was five or six, I remember asking Mama what would happen to me after I died. We were eating lunch in a restaurant on Cape Cod with a group of my mother’s friends. I knew it probably wasn’t the best occasion to bring it up, but we’d driven past a graveyard earlier that afternoon and a panicked scribbling feeling had been rising in my chest ever since. I remember the conversation stopping after I asked my question, and Mama looking down at me from what seemed like a great height.
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