MY LIFE IS UNFINISHED

Last Saturday I wound up in the Emergency Room for chest pain. It wasn’t my idea. An urgent care doctor made me go. The pain wasn’t terrible, but a little scary. I thought I was dehydrated from overwork and lack of fluids. I’d been working 12-14 hour days without getting up from my desk. Too many hours without movement. Not enough water. Seemed simple enough….

So the doc runs an EKG to make sure my heart is ok. After a few minutes, he comes back in and says I have an electrical blockage of some kind. Instead of rehydration, he gives me a nitro glycerin tablet and tells me that legally he needs to call an ambulance…unless I want to waive that right. The pain isn’t THAT bad. I’m dumbfounded. What’s happening right now? I tell him I’ll drive myself.

Emergency Rooms are good places to stay out of. Especially when you’re the patient. It turns out that chest pain is the fast track in the ER because they don’t want people keeling over on the waiting room floor. Who knew? So I get called in quick. They put me in a little isolated curtain, but I can hear everything. People moaning, kids crying, and some poor woman vomiting in the bathroom. Another guy across the way is explaining to the nurse how much he’s been drinking. A fifth of vodka before work, etc.  

You have to be a saint to work in a place like this. I don’t know how they do it. Everyone was really nice. The nurse puts me on a monitor, asks a bunch of questions and the ER doc takes tests. And then nothing. I wait. Staring at my feet, with my shoes still on, in a gown on a gurney. Some quality time alone. 

Then the questions come. Am I having a heart attack? What have I done to myself? Will I have to spend the night here? What if I need emergency surgery? I don’t know what’s wrong, but I know the culprit. Stress. Over the past couple years I met a beautiful girl. I started painting. There has been a lot of great stuff. But I also stopped traveling because the money ran out. I’ve neglected my music. I slipped into survival mode out of “necessity.” I’m selling more and more of my life just to pay bills. I’m barely breaking even. The canyon between what I love to do and what I have to do has grown. All this effort. And my reward is this gurney.

As I get older I understand the choices people make more deeply. I have more compassion. When I was a kid, I thought I had a lot of things figured out. It turns out, I didn’t see the whole picture. It’s easier to wind up here than I thought.

The questions continue. What if this is some drastically life changing event? Or worse? How do I feel about my life so far? 

One word comes to mind. Unfinished. My life is unfinished. For whatever reason, I’ve always had this sense that I’m here for a reason. There’s something that I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what that is exactly, but I do know that if I died or became incapacitated today, I’d feel like I didn’t get it done. It’s not a good feeling.

All the songs I’ve been toying with. Unfinished. All the paintings. My book. Unfinished. Great ideas are gifts. And I’ve been wasting them. 

So after 2 rounds of tests and a chest X-ray, the doc comes in and tells me he’s letting me go. The blood test says I’m not having a heart attack, and perhaps my chest pains are from muscular inflammation in my chest cavity. “If it gets worse, come back. If not, go see an internist first thing next week.” And that’s it. I walk out to my car, put the keys in the ignition and just sit there. What just happened?

Since then I’ve had various tests. All inconclusive. Like most things in life, it’s all landing in a grey area. I still hurt but it’s not awful. I’m trying to take it easy. I work for a couple hours at a time and then stretch. I’m drinking a ton of water.  

My rent isn’t going away. My responsibilities aren’t going away. But I already knew it was time to make some changes. I don’t do well in one place. I never have. I like to wander. I like to create. I’m not doing enough of any of that and my body decided to speak up.

Message received. It’s hard to go against inertia. To change the current tide. But I have to do it. I will do it. I have good “reasons” for winding up here. We always do. Everything always makes sense in our little brains, no matter how ludicrous it may sound to everybody else.  

HOPE IS EVERYTHING

I think hope is everything. 

We don’t have to be successful. We don’t have to achieve our goals. We don’t have to find the one true love of our lives. We just have to have hope that tomorrow can be as good or better than today. That's all it takes to keep going.

Suicide touched my life twice yesterday. I woke up to not only the news that Don Cornelius from “Soul Train” shot himself, but  a good friend of mine had taken his own life as well. I watched “Soul Train” when I was a kid, but bombs feel bigger when they land close to home. 

My friend lived in Chicago. I met him on tour in the 90’s. We knew each other for more than twenty years. After losing touch for awhile, we reconnected via the internet. We emailed regulalry. He would come to LA on business once a year and we would have dinner. I looked forward to it every year. We vacationed in Florida together a few years ago with another close friend. I introduced him to the pecan pie at House of Pies in East Hollywood. If he’d lived closer to House of Pies maybe things could’ve been different. Not just for the pie, but he would’ve been further away from his situation at home. 

I've wanted to die during 2 periods of my life. I considered suicide seriously during one of those times (if you’re concerned, it was a long time ago :) The circumstances are different for everyone. For me, my dreams came crashing down after I felt so close to achieving them, and then the love of my life left. I thought I had nothing. I was broke. She was gone. It turned out to be one of the most profound and incredible periods of my life. The only real reason I didn’t follow through with it was because I figured, while it could make me feel better (or not at all which would still be better), I also had this concern, what if it didn’t? What if there is more, and it doesn’t fix it? If I wind up some miserable disembodied spirit floating around I’d be pissed. I didn’t want to be the ghost on a reality show. That would be worse. 

So I told God to go to hell. I wrote miserable songs about feeling miserable. I was a cliche. I felt like I had nothing to lose and it set me free. I started talking to people I used to be too shy to talk to. Girls responded to my new headspace and I got dates. I started singing. All because I just didn’t care anymore. Then I realized I’d been caring about the wrong things. It wasn't God, the Universe or even bad luck. I was too concerned about what you thought, and what I thought was “right.” None of which really mattered. In adjusting myself to who I thought you wanted me to be, I lost myself. I learned more in that period of my life than any time before that. It was a breakthrough. 

My friend also lost everything he felt made his life worth living. And with nothing left to lose, he was starting to feel better. He asked me about a song he wrote last week that now I’ll never hear. He seemed to be feeling better. I’m not sure exactly what happened that made him turnabout and make the other choice. And I don’t know where it all would’ve led for him, but I wish he could’ve had the opportunity to experience what I did. I hope I was a good friend. I tried to be. Wherever you are my friend, I will miss you. I forgive you. Walk forward in peace. 

Don Cornelius had all the best musical acts on Soul Train and I wanted to see them. I wasn’t aware of all the cultural barriers he was breaking or how much of a brave visionary he was. I just liked the show. I don’t know what happened with him either. I know nothing about Don or his life. But if he did in fact do this by his own hand, i’d guess that for whatever reason he lost hope. The possibility of tomorrow wasn’t worth enduring the pain of today. I wish you all the best, Don Cornelius. Thank you for making my weekends better and introducing me to so many great acts when I was so young. I hope tomorrow looks better from wherever you are. 

It's always the "great guy" or "great girl." It's rare that I get news that some miserable bastard took his own life. Maybe it's not newsworthy because in those cases no one truly cares. But it’s a crowded planet. More often than not I think there is more love out there for us than we know. We might reject it because it's not the love we're looking for, but it's there. As alone as we sometimes feel, we touch more people’s lives than we think. Famous or not.