I Am The Hood Ornament

I Am The Hood Ornament

"More often than not, people with bipolar disorder are above average in creativity, perseverance, and sometimes intelligence. Countless writers, musicians, artists, scientists, performers, poets, and other creative talents have been diagnosed with some form of bipolar disorder, and some even attribute it to their creativity. Both the natural drive for success and flight of ideas in the state of mania and hypomania are linked directly to many creative motives. Some people who suffer from bipolar disorder have mixed states often, where they feel depressed and 'blue', but unlike clinical depression one in a mixed state may still feel 'always high'. It is one of the signature characteristics of bipolar disorder. They may have creative energy, racing thoughts, but a constant negative feeling. These two extremes combined can often lead to anxiety. This is one of the reasons that many people with bipolar disorder also suffer from panic disorder."
- Wikipedia

"When I sing
Rock and roll music to the world
I'm gonna scream
I'm gonna shout
Get my emotions
And work them all right out"
- Ten Years After

"If Jesus saves -- well, He'd better save Himself
From the gory glory seekers who use His name in death
Oh Jesus save me!"
- Jethro Tull

"If Bon Scott was on the Highway To Hell, you're the hood ornament."
- Bob, some guy I used to work in a fucking warehouse with



I got home around 11:15PM, a bit disoriented from being home on a Saturday after a Friday gig. Usually on a Saturday night at that time, I'm doing my solo set.

Last night I did two songs alone. Poor Poor Pitiful Me, solely so I could change the line "I met a girl in West Hollywood" to the town D is from, just because I think it's cute and I live to make obscure references onstage.

Heartattack & Vine worked, but only because I wasn't drunk yet. I kept blowing lyrics (despite having the words right in front of me, but I'm blind as shit) but I tweaked it enough to make it come off, because...well...nobody had ever heard the fucking song anyway. It was good, but not great. I didn't come close to capturing the degenerate sleaze that I did on the version I recorded a few weeks ago. But everyone seemed to like it anyway, so what the fuck.

A thought I played some of my best guitar solos. I never know. I've played bass long enough to know when I'm good and when I'm not. Guitar is still such a weird in-the-moment to-be-or-not-to-be experience, I have no fucking clue if its any good or not when I do the shit I do. But I thought the chordal buildup in Roadhouse (which I shared my conception of a few posts ago) kicked ass, and I suddenly found myself doing volume knob shit that seemed to work pretty damn well.

Louie Louie was also the utter essence of absurdity. I went into some full-blown Neil Young -on-crank mode, played a superbly STOOPID one-note solo, and got into some inane chord-mangling that would make The Melvins sound like Manto-fucking-vani if I'd had the right grunge tone happening.

The other guys were singing Hang On Sloopy on top of that riff. I was screaming "Plastic People! Whoa baby, you gotta go!" away from the mic.

To the best of my knowledge, no burgers were being served in the back...

I tried to do a David Gilmour on top of You Really Got Me, but it devolved into the same pentatonic-scales-from-he ll shit I usually do rather quickly. Five years ago I could play you the entire Dark Side Of The Moon album on gutiar (and bass) note for note. But I was doing that shit in my ROOM. Right now, onstage with this crew of beautiful misfits, I get so hopped up on adrenaline, riding six strings like one of Uncle Hunter's jackrabbits, there's no goddamn way I can be that subtle.

I love this band. In the space of three months, we've come to the place where even a fairly laid-back gig like last night kicks the ever-loving SHIT out of anything we did before T was in the band. A and I were pushing the guitar envelope, and I was pleased to know that he liked what I was doing, but he pulled out a couple killer fucking solos himself. I love having him in the front line, doing our goofy visual entertainment with.

Lots of Day Tripper riffs last night. She hasn't left me yet. I still feel her snaking around in me while I play that riff, sing Bang A Gong, do all the things that she taught me to do from such a distance...

I'm where I need to be.



Two computers here means two desktop pictures. The Unattainable Duo are keeping me company tonight. Abby's picture on this computer. Caitlin's on the one right behind my right shoulder. Two beautiful young red-haired firebrands that would rock my world clean in half if I could be with them. One is too far away, one is in love with someone better for her than I'll ever be.

To simply hold either of them close...to kiss those incredible lips...to feel the energy that makes them so real in me...



But what about last night...

This is amazing to me. That ANY woman would do so much as TALK to me. To have two killer young women simply talking to me, to have another one on the weekends to feel the things D brings to me, and to have whatever the fuck it is that E across the street gave to me this week...that's a lot to process.

I feel no guilt about the experience with E, or much anything else for that matter. But it is very, very odd to be so disconnected. Even two hours after she left that day, I was beginning to wonder if I'd hallucinated the whole damn thing. "Did I just get laid? I THINK so. My dick was in SOMETHING it hadn't been in before."

At times like this, you begin looking around the apartment and making a list.

Right hand
Left hand
VCR
Sock
Grapefruit with hole drilled in it
Loaf of dollar store white bread

OK, I've got those things covered. What else...oh yeah, the chick across the street...

That's what bugs me. Not that I had emotionally-detached sex.

That I even now place so little value on something that I shared with another human being.

Stone wrote me to express his displeasure at my post about my initial encounter with E. He said I should have made some shit up to make it funny.

I wasn't sure there was anything funny to be found in it.

Then I wrote back:

"Next time I ain't working so hard. My arm hurts more after the shit I had to do to try to get her off than it does after the shit I do to MYSELF.

OK, that was pretty funny."


I'm an evil prick.


FURTHER PROOF

I stopped in Muncie on the way home for booze. I had a crazed momentary lapse of reason that nearly caused me to go visit some college bar near Ball State and try to pick up co-ed poon, but then it occured to me that I really don't feel like being the old guy sitting alone on the end of the bar pretending to watch sports. Not tonight, anyway.

So I just stopped for a bottle of rum.

The guy rang me up and looked at my Bacardi Select. "That's some dark rum there."

"Yeah, it's been a while since I had any. This is what I drank to get through my divorce"

"Yeah, I hear ya there."

"Hell, you should've seen the shit I had to drink to get through my MARRIAGE."

I'm unusually proud of that line.



it's been raining like six bags of psycho motherfuck here this weekend. I have no goddamn idea what that MEANS, I just think "six bags of psycho motherfuck" sounds good.

The previous cruel and offensive joke aside (it was a fucking JOKE, dammit), I had a very nice time talking to Sheryl for a while today, who sent me a text message solely to inform me that the Giant Jesus statue was drowning.

The parking lot of the church was flooded from the rain and he's already waist-deep in a pond.

"Guess you ain't walking on water THIS time, are ya motherfucker???"

"He doesn't have any feet!"

She's fun to talk to.

It's true. The Giant Jesus statue (AKA Heywood Banks's Big Butter Jesus, just a few miles west of me) has no feet. He's a torso upwards, coming out of a pond (currently the size of Lake Erie) with arms outstretched in takeoff position.

The vicious irony. A cripple Jesus. No feet. No fucking LEGS. Let's see Benny Hinn work his way around THAT ontological dilemma. "You are HEALED of your paralysis in the name of...uh...the savior that had to have Bartholemew wheel his ass around Caanan!"

I bet Jesus had a fuckin' COOL-ASS wheelchair. Hey, when you're The Father's Son, you get a big fuckin' allowance. I bet He went straight to Sam's Club and got decked out in a killer wheelchair with leather armrests and rearview mirrors just to check up on that Satan bitch when He told him to get thee behind His holy ass.

I drove past My Savior (who I still intend to piss on some drunken night if I can get past security) and got off on the exit towards home. I pulled over and texted Sheryl.

"If Jesus saves then he better save himself from a fucking shitload of rain, lest I use his name in jest."

I enjoy being a Jethro Tull fan.



Johnny Cash is singing a Beck song to me as my Bacardi takes the edge off.


I'm sure everyone around me thinks I'm a goddamn lunatic these days. I feel pretty normal. I know that emotions hit me stronger than most, that I can veer from the beautifully sublime to the window-shattering evil in nanoseconds. That a simple setback with one beautiful dark-eyed lady I shared a slow dance with last night can send me right on the edge of alcohol-drenched psychosis.

I'd have it no other way.

I've come to rejoice in my condition. Being bipolar is no longer a disorder. It's what makes me feel alive. The dark shadow over my life a couple years ago was not because of this weird brain chemistry, it was because of the things that held me back from letting those chemicals dance. You should see 'em. They do that country line-dancing shit while I play 60s spy themes on top of the Pink Cadillac riff, and as disturbing and horrifying as I know that mental image is, it's pretty much the essence of what makes my life operate. So fuck it anyway.

It still pains me that I had to nearly destroy a relationship with a very giving and patient woman and put extra strain on my relationship with my incredible daughter in order to be here.

But we're all better off now. And I love where and who I am right now. The other shit that I still try to pull myself from will not deter me from the goal. I'm happier and healthier now than ever. Music and love are flowing through me. Other shit is too, shit I'm not so fond of. But I can live with that for now.

I'm gonna break my rusty cage and run.

Love,
Dougie