“I’m just freaking out, yeah, I’ll be fine.”
- The Menzingers, “The Obituaries”
I’m a wreck lately. My bank account is back to double-digits. Unemployment won’t call me back for an update on the two months of backpay I’m supposedly entitled to but haven’t received a cent of. I tell my girlfriend I’m going to stop drinking for a while because I think it’s affecting my sleep, but really, I want to stop because I’m not sure I can anymore. A week or so ago, I got a parking ticket in Asbury. I stopped by the liquor store for three minutes to buy a four-dollar wine bottle opener and came back to a ticket in my windshield wiper because I didn’t put two dollars in the parking meter. I grabbed the ticket, careful not to crumple it in my hand, and when the car door closed behind me, I screamed as loudly as I could, just to feel something in the back of my throat. When I got home, I sobbed on the couch for an hour. I told Jo that I wished the parking enforcement agent had just killed me instead, and I meant it.
I’ve been putting on my bravest face through all of this, but I’m not sure I can do it anymore. The other day, I woke up cold and so full of dread, so decidedly unmotivated about the fact that I had no choice but to live out the next twenty-four hours in my skin, that I scared myself. I took a walk on the boardwalk at night just to be alone for a bit and listened to The Menzingers’ On The Impossible Past as loudly as my headphones would allow.
On The Impossible Past is a punk rock album about nostalgia from a speaker who is certain that life has only gotten worse with each passing year. That second thing is the part that resonates with me: the present is awful, until it’s in the past, at which point it doesn’t seem so bad anymore. And look, I’ve spent enough time alone in my bedroom, or driving on the Parkway, or riding the subway in the middle of the night, thinking about my own past that I know I can’t remember a year where I spent even most of its days happy. I think it’s a feature of my depression. It’s impossible to see joy in the present; it’s only visible in the rearview mirror. Singer Greg Barnett sums it up at the end of the second verse in “Gates”: “You’ll carve your names into the Paupack cliffs, / just to read them when you get old enough to know / that happiness is just a moment.” It’s an old picture with a friend you haven’t spoken to in years, a box of mementos and old birthday cards under your bed, your initials carved into a cliffside in an attempt to make the momentary infinite.
When I lived in Queens, the thing I missed most about my hometown in New Jersey was these walks along the boardwalk, from Asbury to Belmar and back. The way it quieted down when I walked there at night, alone with my thoughts and the sounds of waves and seagulls clashing over whatever found its way into my headphones. Asbury Park, Ocean Grove, Bradley Beach, Avon-By-The-Sea, over the bridge into Belmar, the walk back to my car, parked alongside Deal Lake to avoid the parking meters in Asbury. The way the boardwalk changed in texture from weathered driftwood to polymer to concrete as I walked south though the neighboring towns. My feet sweat in my shoes, my ears rang from my music up irresponsibly high, I watched the horizon as barges carried cargo along a sliver of Atlantic, and I thought about coming and going, passing through. It calmed me when I needed it.
The boardwalk is packed these days. I think everyone’s looking for that same feeling I sought, an escape. I can’t blame them for looking.
There’s a bridge in “Mexican Guitars” preceded by a beat where the guitar rings out. For a moment, it sounds like the song is over, like a new song has crept its way over the hill, into view, some small glimpse into an answer to all of this misery that Greg Barnett has invoked. Then, there’s a brief moment of clarity. Greg sings:
“I did what I did to get away from this,
‘cause everything that's happened now has left me a total wreck,
and everything that I do now is meaningless,
so I'm off to wander around the world for a little bit.”
He continues, as the chorus kicks in for the first time:
“So does anyone know the best way to go?
Which road that I could take to get to Mexico?
‘Cause I’m so sick of living in this ditch
with only the memories in the back of my head.
I’m on cruise control
and the radio’s on.
Yeah, they’re playing that song
that we both learned on our Mexican guitars.”
There’s a sense memory here that draws back that moment of happiness: a song comes on the radio that reminds the speaker of learning to play guitar on a Mexican Fender, an affordable alternative to the pricey American-made models. It kicks in as the driver’s on cruise control—moving forward in a straight line for such a long distance that holding a foot to the gas pedal would be physically cumbersome. If there’s an antidote, a surefire way to relive the moment that is happiness, it’s forward momentum. It’s aimless ambulation. Before the final chorus of “Casey,” Barnett reinforces the idea by employing Springsteen-esque car worship: “Just tell me when you're ready, I'm all packed to go / to search for that old place we found forever ago. / Oh, and we could take my car, yeah, she’s still got the spirit / we could live, we could live, we could live, / and no longer just have to hear it.”
I don’t know if anything’s better anywhere else. I don’t know if there’s some old place or some new place that could possibly serve as a refuge to the uniquely horrifying moment. I read a lot on Twitter and in the news about how this country had a record number of new cases this week, how many hundreds of new cases New Jersey reports each day. But it’s hard not to wonder when you spend every second at home.
I worry that I’ll look back on this time nostalgically. I’m afraid I’ll miss it, erase the sharp edges and long for this miserable, impossible summer, where I spend most of my time browsing the internet, playing video games, and watching movies every night with my girlfriend. I worry I’ll forget the anxiety, the depression, the grief. And when I get to thinking too much about that, I start to wonder if I can really trust myself at all. What if things aren’t as bad as they seem? What if I look back on everything nostalgically because things aren’t so bad in the first place? Do I really need money and a job to be happy, to be at peace? How am I supposed to feel about that?
I don’t have the answers at the moment. All I can say is that, a few nights ago, when I walked in a straight line to Belmar with On The Impossible Past in my headphones, I felt as close to an answer as I’ve ever felt. On “I Can’t Seem To Tell,” Greg sings “I can’t seem to tell if it’s my head or the earth that’s spinnin’ around,” and I nod my head, slowly at first, then sharply.
It takes hard work and talent to find the vocabulary for despair. Your despair is unique but I think many of us are finding ways to weather our own quiet (or not so quiet) storms. I certainly am. Great first essay.