Ok, so some of you may have noticed my sort of staggering lack of writing here as of late. There is good reason for that. for the last six months or so my day job has taken up a huge amount of time. Something it hadn’t for a while, they need some problems fixed, which sort of took over my life. Its the great thing about hiring a compulsive problem solver, is that they don’t rest till the problem is solved- alas some problems are above my mere mortal skills. In the beginning of this month I found myself laid off.

As bad news as that is , I am thinking of it as a gift. A gift of escape, a get out outta jail guilt free card if you will. Knowing me I would have stayed always trying to fix what is ultimately unfix-able. I spent a lot more time dealing with corporate politics then being creative. Its very easy to get lost in the deal and by my own admission I am one of those guys who can get lost in it.

So I find myself with the glorious question :whats next? and to that i really haven’t a clue. There are a few other details that I may have forget to mention:

1. The missus and I are opening a hair salon called Miyagi, hopefully our doors will be open Mid-July, its in NE Mpls (411 E Hennepin right next to the Terminal Bar). The other ginchy thing about this is it will also provide me with a decent office to work out of, no disrespect to my spider filled basement.
There are a few pictures on my Flickr account if you want to see them. Its a pretty cool space and some great folks have been involved. Its been our secret project since last September I even went to Aveda business college to learn the specifics of their lanuage. The oddest part of this is hat I helped build a salon before during the Hair Police days, so this is a very odd Dejà vu, minus old friend and Focus 21 hairspray.

2. I have been working on a tv show for the past year, called “Conversation” It’s very cool, and all things willing the pilot episode will be done soon. I think I know where its going to live but my mouth is shut till we see an air date. You will forgive me if I am a litle sparse on details on this one. Timing , state secrets and all that.

3. I also produced a massive remix for te Vibro Champs, and am mid way through my first solo music project in ages “The Holy Roman Empire”- it’s sort of anti-music, experimental but hopefully not to self indulgent. That will see at least a Myspace page fairly soon.

So its not like I don’t have anything going on, in fact I seem to be busier then ever. My future plans do involve a lot more writing, for this space and others, but for the moment I have to float a little where the river takes me. Of course the problem is I have no idea where its headed, and while apparently it has some rapids, I am pretty sure I can still stay afloat. I know this, I want to make art , and thats something I really haven’t felt for a while.

So there you have it. No stunning self revelations- at least none for public eyes, just me. For years my sense of self identity was based upon where I worked or what i did I don’t need to be Chris of blank anymore, lets face it that all started with Jesus of Nazareth and that really didn’t end so well for him. So Its just me Chris, and it really is all cool.

Sort of like this video from Black Kids, which couldn’t fit my mood any better.(thanks J for sending it along)

It’s Halloween time and I started thinking about ghost stories, but not the kind that involve disgruntled specters of crazed killers, or evil leprechauns, that take over crack neighborhoods and eventually wind up in space. Rather the stories that truly haunt us. The bits of our past that serve to help define our future.Everyone has a story like that; the key stories retold at gatherings wide and small, all but guaranteed to be part of the amusing anecdote roundup that follows us through all the major middle class life events: birthdays, weddings, the big promotion, the retirement party and of course the funeral. Not to mention all the requisite family events in-between; the time that my mother mistook a packet of tea for exotic seasonings and used it to make “spicy scrambled eggs”. Ah, the hilarity of the stomach cramps that followed for the next several hours. There is they day aunt Jo finally made it as a contestant on the Price is Right only to be eliminated in the first round for not knowing the price of a box of Malt-O-Meal.

The ones we don’t tell, these are our real spook stories and no one, save the very observant and the occasional reporter from E! tell about us. The private defeats and bitter victories, childhood seems to haunts us in this like no other time. In part because it’s our secret origin where we build our first stories and develop our sense of self. These are also the stories we live the longest with, and consequently spend the longest living down.

Thirty years after leaving the playground and inside your still the fat kid who sucks at Four Square. Before you get the wrong idea, I didn’t suck at four square, I was however the fat kid, fat spazzy kid if I wish to be precise. Fat spazzy weird kid, if I wish to be truly accurate. To my family though, I am the kid that sat in the birthday cake. No matter what accomplishments I achieve in my life, to the eyes of my family I will never not be the kid who sat on a birthday cake. The details of the story have long since been lost to the sands of time, the only part of the story that matters is that at some point I ruined a birthday party. A birthday party that I believe was in fact mine, by sitting on the cake box. It doesn’t take much to amuse my family.

But birthday cake sitting doesn’t haunt me. Oh sure it’s vague retellings at family gatherings is an annoyance, but haunting, no Haunting is really for ghost stories, and polite society doesn’t believe in ghosts except around a campfire, or in church. The real stories that haunt are those that we don’t tell aloud, Except perhaps in the company of a licensed psychologist or a non-licensed bartender. Stories that haunt us are never about the day we got a free box of cupcakes after finding a pony. They are the stories that are the darkest of our soul. They are the ones that we can’t even necessarily define because their emotional content is too soul crushing.

But if I was to try and define one, it would be the noose day. I was 12, and too call myself not very happy would be like calling Idi Amin mildly inconsiderate. Sure 12 is a young age to pursue such a grave endeavor, and yes there are plenty of reasons to lead to such thoughts, but this is a story about a battle, not the war. Suffice it to say that on a relatively sunny Thursday afternoon I decided to end my life. Conveniently, Time magazine had made Suicide a cover story, the pros and cons of each along with a handy how to guide.

Razor blades seemed far to messy, and well painful, and while I wanted to die, it seemed like that would really hurt. Plus if I changed my mind, the scarring would make short sleeve shirts impossible. Poison seemed too complicated, plus I wanted to be lucid, Not to mention the fact that locating enough of any particular substance outside of Sudafed would be difficult, and quite frankly who wants to decongest to death. It seemed hanging was easiest and relatively pain free, especially when compared to jumping off a cliff.

Killing yourself is not easy. I am not even speaking about the moral/ethical side of it. Merely the mechanics are troublesome; especially if you try to kill yourself has a preteen. You don’t have access to many of the materials that come in handy when doing ones self in. For example: our family home was a 50’s era rambler a fine house, but it did lead to a problem, low ceilings, and nothing really to hang by. They make it seem so easy in the movies, easily accessible light fixtures sturdy enough to hold a swinging corpse to be. But all of our lights were round, and seemed likely to come out of the ceiling. Not very useful for doing ones self in, especially since if I failed since Time magazine had told me that the likelihood was high, I just didn’t want to take the chance. Death was ok, getting in trouble for pulling the ceiling down was definitely was not.

After an exhaustive search of the house I came to the conclusion that a doorknob would work. After all it didn’t kneed to support all my weight ( I did mention that I was a fat kid) it just needed to hold the rope that would slowly choke me to death. The Height at which this happened was irrelevant. Another problem where would I get a rope? A kid buying a rope would surely be seen has a sign of a kid up to no good, was there a buying age for rope? The easiest option seemed to be something in hand, so I tied the sash to my Montgomery Wards blue velour bath robe that my grandmother had given me the year previous into a noose, the other end to the doorknob and slowly I choked, inches above the matted beige berber carpeting.

This isn’t a cliff hanger, obviously something happened, since I am still here, the question is what? Was it “knowing all the wonderful things I would miss if….” Could it be “knowing that I would surely tick off one of the Gods and thusly spend an eternity has a shishkabobed soul in the Bar-B-Que pits of the inferno?” Was it “a profound desire to live once I saw death l staring me in the eye” I wish… it was the far less deep realization that this was a stupid ass way to die. Inches above life, with a low end department store bathrobe belt around my neck, and the last image I see being dated beige Berber. So I loosened the noose, and let it go back to it’s former life has a sash, and the doorknob back to being…well a doorknob

It seems as if you can’t talk about suicide without talking about God. Which given the circumstance seems a rather odd time for it, after all if you had faith at that particular moment you probably wouldn’t be wanting to kill yourself. If you have faith, that means you have to believe it is going to get better, suicide is strictly a vote of no confidence. The thing about an attempted suicide, is that if you don’t tell anyone, it doesn’t really exist, and I had no intention of ever telling anyone, granted your reading this but don’t telling anyone, ok…cool.

If death wasn’t the answer what was. I walked outside to an all but abandoned park near the abandoned school; It was a neighborhood with abandonment issues. The playground had been left rotting after the first generation of suburban settlers kids had grown, the neighborhood had made recent attempts to refurbish it by adding some more “modern” jungle gym technology. Of course the real reason for its lack of use was that there were only a handful of kids living in the neighborhood. But still they tried;the lure of modern fancy plastic and wood construction, that sat unused, next to the well worn, well rusted amusements of old. The highlight of which was a large merry go round that was rusted into one place. …What can I say I was a twelve year old with a sense of irony. Some kids had forts, or hiding places in their houses, me I had this rusted merry go round. Has a clubhouse it was lacking, but it was mine and I was fine with that.

Walking up the hill towards it, I felt something. A warmth that I had never truly felt before, a rather unearned, but welcomed sense of well-being. Upon my arrival I was greeted by a stuffed animal version of everyone’s favorite wookie, Chewbacca hanging by his neck off of a lug nut on the new playground. That was an irony I didn’t enjoy, so I removed him to the more respectable position of sitting in a toddler swing. I laid back on the immobile rusty merry go round, it then did something that I can not explain. It moved.

Clockwise 3 times, then counter clock wise 3 times. All with a shadow cast on one side of it like some sort of schoolyard yin-yang. Going back and forth between the dark and the light. As if this wasn’t weird enough, then came the crows. Circling overhead 3 times then flying away. I may have been 12 but I recognized this has a moment. A moment that scared the crap out of me.

It is impossible to put into words the moment of this sort of symbolism, had I just pissed off God? I knew my priest would have thought so. Was this just happenstance and a set of coincidence? It was a little hard to think has I was running from the site. It seemed to me this was a miracle, or at least has much of one has I was going to get. Maybe they happen all the time, and we just don’t notice. Some would have used a day like this to start a religion, others has an excuse to use a tremendous amount of drugs, me I went watched Gilligan’s Island and hid under a blanket

So that’s my story that haunts, it’s the story that can give hope in moments of quiet desperation. It’s a story that gives courage in the dark. It is a story that occasional makes me feel like a whack job, thinking this all must have been some sort of figment of my imagination. But I know the truth I don’t know what happened, all I know is that it did, and sometimes that’s really the best you can do.

One downside to daily blog writing, well Monday through Thursday blog writing in my case… is that you write as you need to, I set aside time write, comeback, write, comeback edit. Generally speaking that works. My schedule is more like a task list then a concrete structure, that works fine for me, that is unless you have a day like today. Those are the days that you get thrown a curve ball. Today I got a curve ball.

I found out that a old friend died, now if you have been reading this site with the slightest of regularity you can tell i am sentimental, overly so. Friends that I haven’t seen in years I think of , wondering what they went on to do with their lives. friends from grade school, people from temp jobs. Now. please realize oh dear and gentle reader that i have a near legendary level of forgetfulness as well. I can forget almost anything with ease; I once pulled over to the side of the road to hear a song on a staticy college radio station, telling my wife I had to find out what this song playing was. She looked at me weirdly and said Ok. I said I wanted to immediately go and purchase said record, again she just looked at me like I was crazy and nodded. Of course the announcer came on and I realized it was a song I had put out on my label.

Like I said forgetful, I did say that didn’t I… but then wicked deep of weird and arcane knowledge, its how my head is wired, different then factory specs, but I am not complaining.

The hardest things are people that you have difficult or unresolved issues with, like all humans I have a few. Today i decided I was going to resolve one. If not resolve it, make some sort of effort, i had tried before but that was a decade ago. Harold was a friend of mine 18 years ago, we were club kids back in the day, going to First Avenue, hanging out, chasing girls, wearing skirts, and talking about film. In my late teens and early twenties we were close. Until the time that we weren’t. Thats what happens when youre 21 you have moments good bad, and you grow. Of course what came between us ultimately was a girl, but then isn’t it always. Without getting into details Harold and I never spoke again, the girl broke my heart so severely It was in a cast for some time after. life went on, my heart survived to be broken again, the next time not so easily though.

Whenever I saw him, he avoided me, I would wave or say hi- and he would just stare past me like an executive avoiding panhandlers. He would walk to the other side of the street rather then be on the same side as me. Its like he just couldn’t ever let go of the past, personally I ‘d long since forgiven any past wrongdoings, because you sort of have to. To some extent life is like a bookshelf, you only have so much room and if you want to keep the good books you have to dodge the bad ones.

When I got sick, (see post below) I decided that I needed to put it in human terms, so I named my disease Harold, after someone that I had a good relationship with that went bad, but I hoped to someday repair. what really gets me is that he had passed away a month before I named it, but right around when i was diagnosed, The timing of that is just a little too eerie.

He and I had made a film in 1991 about Lillian Colton, a Seed art pioneer, and a woman who i just truly adored. She passed away earlier this year, and several people had asked about this film which I never had a copy of. I had given his name to various people but none felt like doing the effort to find him. So today, I tried- the first web page that came up for him was his obituary. No information other then who had survived him. So his death, like most of his life save that period of time when we ruled a small corner of small night club, in a small city, in a small country, in a very big universe, was a mystery. Now there will never be that resolution that I always hoped would come. So I sit in my basement and listen to David Sylvian, and type it to people that didn’t know him, in fairness maybe I didn’t know him either. But, we did spend some time together a long time ago.

Editor’s note:Ok, I wrote this in August and posted it to friends associates and family. But what i am writing references to it so…It seemed to make sense to repost it here. I am not secret about it, it is just an aspect of my life not all of it. But what I am writing for today relates to it so read it , and now that tomorrow ill go back to complaining about the media….……………………………………………………………………

a brief note about what has been going on with me
Friends, associates and other folks,

I wanted to write a brief note about what has been going on with me, Not that I want to put the rumor mill out of a job, but I ‘d rather say it once definitively then have a million depressing conversations.

The big news is: I have Kidney disease, in particular one called IGA Nephropathy, or Berger’s Disease. Personally, I have chosen to call it Harold. (Here is a more solid description of it , or if you want way more information overload then check out http://www.igansupport.org/) It is currently without a cure; I really don’t like that incurable word, so I am choosing not to use it. Simply hasn’t been cured yet.

It’s the most common form of kidney disease in the us, but strangely not the most popular in the US ( gee, it sounds like my taste in music) . Its not fatal, well not if your in a country with modern medicine, it is serious though; it s sort of a fatty acid that stops your kidney from processing protein correctly, side effects include high blood pressure and high cholesterol, both of which help to make the disease progress. It’s vaguely hereditary, (my dad has it though he is convinced he does not, and it is a mass conspiracy against him, man I hope lunacy isn’t a side effect…)

One big thing is what a difference the Blood pressure makes, for the past few years , I found myself easily agitated constantly anxious, a lot more emotional then I had ever been, and of course out of breath. Now that’s completely different, I feel like I am in fighting shape again. Its like having blinders taken off, and snap, its that simple you can function a few million times better. What every one told me the nervousness of entering you late 30’s and bad work stress was instead an illness, thank you medical industry, now if you could have told me three years ago.

I am at 40% functionality in my kidneys, you need of dialysis or transplant at 15%. So I have a ways to go, and hoping to never have to go there. Some doctors say 1 in 4 with this will need dialysis or transplant, , some say anyone who has this and lives long enough will need it. Personally I am hoping for the former. Transplant doesn’t cure this either it’s in the blood, Quite frankly it seems that Harold doesn’t know how to take a hint. Some say you can go into remission with the right amount of homeopathy.

So I have an unwelcome house guest, that I am doing my best to make peace with, there is no magic pill or potion to make it go away, they treat the symptoms. I am on cholesterol medicine, High Blood pressure medicine and some other things that your grandparents are on. When I was diagnosed a typical blood pressure for me was 147/118 ( for those who are not in the blood pressure know, that is bad; fat guy in nursing home eating ribs bad) today I hover around 114/65 (that’s good, Jack Lalane good). I go to the gym on a regular basis, and to date have lost like 30 pounds- its amazing what a good motivator disease is for weight loss. Of course I am truly astounded by how tubby I had gotten. Other then that I had to cut down on liquor, give up aspirin. They tell me that’s how to keep it in check, so that’s what I do.

I see the doctor every three months and that’s really it, I am not in any pain (well save after too heavy a workout) and I am sometimes fatigued, but hey at least I have an excuse now!) As far as your major diseases go it could be a hell of a lot worse. Yes its scary, but not a lot I can do about it; you play the cards your dealt. How you play them is up to you.
So that’s the story, I apologize for doing this in a Blogand not saying it right away, but I need the time to get my head around it and its not like it was information that has an expiration date. It has taken me a few months to accept this, I wanted to feel like a “guy” when I told people, not a “guy with kidney disease”. It just took a little time to get to that place. I do not to feel broken. I do however feel a little scuffed. But isn’t that to be expected?

So now you know, and as GI Joe told us, knowing is half the battle.

Your Pal,

C

PS: totally serious about the not dying thing, So please don’t act like I am fragile, cause that really ooks me out.