Muttley
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Location: wacky racer
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April 2009 - Muttley
Artwork credits: cordani @ est00.com
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"Swallow Your Words" is Episode 2 of "Stories Of Solace In Miniature". It's dedicated to anxiety reduction. On the basis of a publicised quote from "Overcoming Paranoid And Suspicious Thoughts", the outcome of me writing this may be ubiquitous. What I aim to ensure is that those reading don't make the same mistakes as I did. As the book writes, "The effort involved in explaining your fears to another person can mean that you're expressing those anxieties more fully than you've done before. You also get to hear them out loud. Instead of a jumble of thoughts rattling round your brain, you're presented with some clearer statements to the problem. All this helps give you some perspective on your worries and makes it a little easier for you to assess whether they're justified or not".
The modus operandi of "Stories Of Solace In Miniature" is to be proactive with what thoughts I am shedding, not to put cement on the shoulders of my readers. Simultaneously underlining banality and controversy, "Swallow Your Words" is a symbolic gesture for sucking up air and letting things be. However it also marks as the first port of call to where I contacted one of the woman's friends again. Within the confines of the recording I am able to rehearse what swallowing my words does for expressing fear, loneliness and longing for acceptance through tracks. These qualities I wished for improvement in repairing of the relationship; a shame things went awry before it was resolved. I turn my shoulder to the past and mull over when I lost the woman's friendship. One of her friends was left to do the dirty work of telling me in no uncertain terms to "F### right off" as I booked a flight to their city, calling me a freak, a stalker, and saying I should get professional help in his opinion.
What can I say. The travel itinerary I sent her was out of strict trust for her position, thinking it would be a certifier for heartfelt words I poured from Christmas to when, in May, it disintegrated out of dual ignorance - she wasn't inclined to talk to me - and I was inclined to make things work with her. It wouldn't be so bad if I was told in concrete form to stop messaging. Instead I was strung along until, finally, straw broke the camels back. Them having my address and mobile number also contributed to the paranoid and suspicious thoughts I am still encountering. But out of battle-weariness comes maturing, and I am ever thankful for the lessons I have learned.
Starting the file is the heinous "Tippy's Demise" by Stars Of The Lid, a drone piece designed to bring out the demons and wipe them over with the soap of kings. Matched up with "Opening Titles" by The Cinematic Orchestra, the second part of the track undergoes submergence by a rising string-based wash. From then on, "Borderlands" by Tim Hecker represents a travelling to the outer reaches of the psyche. Taken from "An Imaginary Country", the melodies swell like that of a rough panic attack. Being on wavelength in construction and placement, a silence is added as a cadence to punctuate this change.
In doing so the progression is liable to work like a breathing exercise. I have obtained several exercises to practice over the course of my problems, but the standout one I have to include here is: "Square Breathing".
1. Get into a comfortable position, ensure you have an open posture.
2. Imagine a box in your mind.
3. Take a breath for a count of three and imagine that you pass the top side of the box.
4. As you imagine yourself to pass the first side of the box, hold your breath for a count of three.
5. As you imagine yourself to pass the bottom side of the box, breathe out for a count of three.
6. As you imagine passing the last side of the box, hold your breath for a further count of three.
7. Try to repeat this a couple of times and practice.
I tried to select music for "Swallow Your Words" that encapsulated broody behaviour. Expelling it positively is the subsequent logical step. While listening to "Swallow Your Words" for the first three pieces, you can grab the bull by the horns and attempt such an exercise. In stark contrast, "The Secret Place" by The Daysleepers is letting us depart and retreat, each pause in percussion pregnant with foreboding warmth. "Come on let's leave this place / We disappear without a trace / Vanish into the air / You cannot find us anywhere". In recovery I mark lying down to rest as a tool for galvanising my mind. Then comes a favourite by Supertramp: the epic "Rudy". We are invited by gentle piano, and ballad-tempo singing, to hear of his unlucky fortunes and rhetoric as to change: "You'd better gain control now / You'd better show 'em all now / You'd better make or break now / You'd better give and take now".
When I was growing up I used to listen to "Rudy" as a recital of what my fortunes were. It's a little known fact that I was once a full contact kickboxer. I trained three nights a week, my focus solely instilled to increasing my skills and precision. I quit the gym when I was eighteen years old but remember much from the period where, from 13 up to the final day, I would train with solemn moods imbued by optimism for my fate as an individual. Those days are long behind me, thankfully, although I am now back training after a three year break. When I retrace my footing, the palpatations in rhythm could be responsible for my paradigms in anxiety today. When you partake in eight mile runs, intense sparring classes and sustained aerobics, there is little room for conservatism. Training would accelarate from three months notice to a peak of fitness.
My last planned fight was the worst to take, only because it never happened. I failed the medical examination due to very low blood pressure, and in truth I was relieved, because I couldn't face it. I realised through three months of the hardest training I'd ever done that fighting was not for me. Luckily for my opponent there was a replacement fighter available, but that day I will never forget - the sense of bereavement is etched into my skull. What I felt after my fight was cancelled were suicidal thoughts; like everything I lived for was my status in kickboxing. I bled tears, worsened by fears of being chastised by clubmates and aquaintances, their perceptions focused on where I would fight again, and my gradually mellowing attitude to gym practice.
Looking back today, I put so many eggs in that basket. I was happier assisting - being on the fringes at shows, taking gloves to dressing rooms, cheering on my fellow clubmates - a passive aggregator of emotions and experiences. It's what I work with as a writer come promotional thickening agent. Similarly, where I watched the woman's MySpace page for updates of mood and songs played, there was no reason for dictatorial persuasion. However I lost my mind over it, running up to my parents house when something as small as a keyword change to a media head case (Britney Spears) came to the fore of my vision. Then came "destiny unfolded, I watched it slip away" by Joy Division. Searching for the song's history, its association with suicide set me reeling, whereby I was convinced the woman was in a really bad way; me wondering if I could help via continued contact. How foolish I was to think she was really interested.
"If spring can take the snow away, can it melt away all our mistakes?" asks Kanye West in "Coldest Winter". True, every tune in "Swallow Your Words" was discovered in the winter season. Like "Let Sleeping Dogs Lie", there is a metanarrative at work here, increasingly aligned with mental health methodolgy by there being five different vocalists in the file. They chat to the listener like a counsellor would to a patient. In boundless desire for the best outcome, I would add tracks to my recorded media playlists as reactionary pledges or pitches to the woman. For example, she replied to my "Built Then Burnt" (A Silver Mount Zion) lyrics with "memories may last for years but names are just for souvenirs", from "Some Kind Of Stranger", by the Sisters Of Mercy. "Goodbye my friend, I won't ever love again" is the final message we receive from Kanye. I don't know whether I will invest so much emotionally in an online relationship ever again, that's for certain. Like a narrow pipe filling slowly, but inexorably with sludge, I understood the virtue of moderation, but abused it with obsession.
When driven by my compulsions, I would find it very difficult to make snap decisions. Anxiety grabbed hold of me, forcing my mind to tackle the here and now, minus the concrete evidence of "here because". Like a lorry switching lanes, the trigger for self-analytical behaviour is cumbersomely manoeuvred from point a to b; horrible panicky periods that manifest like the look of a stranger towards a pining child. One day I attempted to visit my house, with my mother taking our dogs for a walk. I got stuck where the radio was playing "Moving" by Supergrass, and had a panic attack heading out to meet her. The lyrics of aforementioned track, "Stop wasting my time" refracted from the prism of words I received from the friend who warned me off. While this was happening I noted a red trailer truck with two planks of wood in the storage bay. A young couple had a small tiff in the intermittence of the trip, me thinking this was literally a "film trailer construct" that would depict a future sequence of events between me, the woman and her friends if they came to visit.
Faces I saw (in cars, or on foot) moulded into different guises, guises of people I thought were conspiring to afflict my progress. The trouble within is not knowing how to express that affliction in common terms. Whereby everyone's positioning in thought would bounce fast off each other, me overstimulated as to reply anxiously, feeling like I'm going to scream, but all that comes out was "I need help." That's difficult to counteract when the words for what I'm feeling don't seem to exist. Other times I would have thoughts running as rhythmic integers while talks were had. For example this files' "The Secret Place" by The Daysleepers ("I can't go back to life as it was" the pacifier) was patched together in small chunks when a chat with my parents regarding work, or a lack thereof - due to illness - was initiated. This area of conduct is hard to describe, so I can respond with an excerpt from my July diary;
"It of course makes me question left and right of validity, though not always as I'd like - through questioning strangers out of social context; this is a level I haven't reached - and sometimes I'm unable to - those in and out of cars, on their slower / faster routes. Like tonight, a fully subconscious affair that draws on a) piecing together faces, when faces aren't the same, b) juggling emotional stability, with subsequent following compulsions, to c) evaluating space and time coherently in whichever road to a solution we walk, then d) applying enough tact and re-acknowledgement that none of these sightings could be correct, to e) re-ordering our constructs, sense and optimism for re-integrating into the internet fold. An important factor / dividing concept is treating emotions arbitrary from computer contact - for a short while - or at least until enough composure is regained for the most positive resolutions available to the changes (private / non-private). All could be science fiction if I find contradictory information when able to return online".
June 2008: "Anxiety, raw emotions, and a disfigured, prediction-and-plan lifestyle change accomodates more worry. My fault alone, for I have struggled to rectify my doubts, especially when feeling so far away from normality. It's also necessary for me to say that, seeing as connections with my status, three to four months ago have shifted, a metamorphosis of unpredictable outcomes could have sprouted, perhaps all down to others not having indisputable truth that I had compassion for them, or that I would return, or furthermore, how friendships online could have disappeared altogether. I have faith in those people I spoke of, a lot of faith for good; all that stops disclosure now, is time to heal under supervision. I write with no wishes for aggrandised entitlements, and that, through all my suspicious thoughts, unstable moods and sombre hours, I know there is light waiting, in whatever consistency we progress to - as long as honesty and integrity stays inside".
This was written to eradicate the speculatory and detrimental; a distillation of the essence from my lengthy notes. Instead of a hallucination where I could see things that weren't there, it was as if every aspect of the stasis was enlarged, and me watching others like I was using a giant microscope; picking up small nuances like how their sentence ended, to how long they took to speak again. An unexpectedly complex method in the madness, where any foundations of sense were obscured by temperaments modifying quickly, or communication altering in subject and application. Uniform ordinations are rare, tangled sensory fusions a speciality. Hopefully the antipsychotics will continue to affect me for good. After all, it's why I'm able to write with such honesty of the rocky past life I've had.
PJ Harvey's voice on "Broken Harp" I treat as the woman's medium. "Can you forgive me? Forgive me, can you?" Followed by: "I tried to learn your language, but fell asleep half undressed, unrecognisable to myself." In the process of watching her I found out she was a swinger, which dampened my spirits when I thought conversing with her was in vain. I put so much into talking with her - she was upheld as special by me, as she listened to the story of a friend with bipolar disorder trying to take her life. She also supported the minimix series I run and where you are downloading this instalment.
Hence Supertramp's "Crime Of The Century" is the climax among magnitude and order. It's self-effacing of the bad qualities of man: "Who are these men of lust, greed, and glory? Rip off the masks and let's see." It takes me back to middle teenage years and delusions of grandeur - having yourself told that you could be a world champion by the time you're 20, is all very appreciated, but not great when it gives you an inflated ego. The competition I fought were all very challenging, make no mistake. I was the first fighter from their gym to be a junior on the bill of the promotions, and the youngest to have an international contest. I cherish the memories as much as the recordings I have of them. "But thats not right - oh no, whats the story? There's you and there's me / That can't be right." I replayed this song in spades before I engaged in semi-contact bouts, slowly fading the volume when the CD was to change track in ritualistic fashion.
To paraphrase, it's perhaps criminal that I didn't follow up my message to the woman's friend who shouted me down. I have a document saved that recounts all my sightings and views, dated as May 16th 2008, maybe forever destined for the desktop. So "Swallow Your Words" is indeed an apt title for this time. Me telling an audience of what I've covered up for so long - loss of self-esteem when training, to psychotic behaviour when recovering: it's not easy to present. But in writing this, I feel it will help me, and you the reader develop a better bond. Moreover, if you think ill of me for what I've done, there is space for healthy criticism. I hope you enjoy this trip through the "Stories Of Solace In Miniature" archive.
Related links:
Stress And Anxiety: A Self-help guide
est00.com
Subvert Central Mastering
Mixed in Cubase SX 3.
Any feedback much appreciated. 
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www.subvertcentral.blogspot.com
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Dogs On Acid > The Board > The Booth > Muttley & Guests - The 15 Minutes Of Fame Mix Series (2008 Edition)
04-19-2009 11:40 PM
