Splitting the Atom

Just in time for Heligoland to drop tomorrow.

Those frustrated with Twitter are frustrated because they have a belief that a story needs a beginning, middle, and end. And that it should have all of those parts before it’s presented to them. What the hell am I supposed to learn from a tweet? The point of Twitter isn’t knowledge or understanding, it’s merely connective information tissue. It’s small bits of information carefully selected by those you’ve chosen to follow and its value isn’t in what they send, it’s how it fits into the story in your head. There are great stories to be found on Twitter, but you have to do the work.

I tell a narrative with my tweets—the narrative of my life, mainly. I announced my probable bi-polar II diagnosis on Twitter long before I posted it here. [And before I got some great feedback from friends who wanted to tell me that I'm not alone. That made it worth it.] My friends have an idea what’s going on in my life, because I share a goodly chunk of it on Twitter. Jonathan figured out that I had an obsession to eating sushi last week. My tweeps know I’m sick today. [Oddly enough, I didn't tweet where I went in to work for a couple of hours because I felt I had to do it. It was the right idea, but I'm paying for it now in feeling puny. I'll live.]

I’ve often said that I don’t know why someone who didn’t know me would read my Twitter. I’m largely the same way with Twitter—I care about the people that I follow, for the most part. I know about my friend Justin’s music school debt, how it creates angst for him and has him in a job he hates because it pays him well enough to get out of that debt. I know that some friends saw a lot of snow today, and some saw none. [And folks know that I saw very little at my house but a lot out by where Stephen and Misty live.]

Now, few of these little blips of information make a whole lot of sense if you don’t have some sense of the larger picture, which is why I write here. Why I share my life online, I’m never 100% sure, but the fact of the matter is that I do it. Part of me thinks that it’s self-expression. Part of me thinks that it’s narcissism. But I find value in it, which is why I’ve done it for almost a decade [!]. But these moments make more sense in the context of friendship, which is why I enjoy it when I go visit Rick and Jessica and don’t have to fill in gaps about what’s been going on with me since they last saw me, or how I’m excited when Mike Terry or Josh Stockment come to visit and roll on up to Nashville ['cause that's how we do], or when we meet Hubbs in Nashville.

Fundamentally, I find that Twitter is a channel of that narrative, a way of taking your friend’s temperature. What has their eye? [when it comes to links]. What has their ear? [when it comes to music.] What has their ire up? Are they at GEOFCON TWO? Are they happy about something? Have they been in a car wreck? [Happened to two different friends this week. Found out via Twitter both times.] I care about Twitter because I care about people, both those I’ve met and those I’d like to meet.

IRM

1999-10-28: Headliners, Madison, WI, USA

Click cover art where extant for the download links. If I don’t have a download link, well, I’ll go and see if I can find the CD and dig that up.

• 2003-09-04: McDonald Theatre, Eugene, OR, USA.
• 2006-10-09: Von Braun Center Concert Hall, Huntsville, AL, USA. This one, etree says it has, but it doesn’t, really. And it’s so good, so I need to find the CD and load it to Owl & Bear or something.
• 2007-06-26: Warsaw, New York, NY, USA.
• 2008-07-04: Roskilde Festival, Roskilde, Denmark. I’ve raved about this one before, but it’s great. And no, I don’t have a torrent source for it now, but I’ll try to find one…
• Andy Osenga: 2009-03-23: The Rutledge, Nashville, TN, USA. I believe you boys have this. I don’t have any record of it here on GFMorris.com. My bad.
• 31 Aug 2007 Over the Rhine show. 2007-08-31: Moonlite Gardens, Coney Island, Cincinnati, OH, USA
• 1998-06-02: Studion, Stockholm, Sweden
• 28 Sep 2000 Elliott Smith. 2000-09-28: L'Olympic, Nantes, France.
• . 1994-04-29: The Blue Note, Columbia, MO, USA. One of the last UT shows ever, and it fucking blows the doors off. This bootleg is almost old enough to drive, man.
• M. Ward on KEXP in Seattle. 2005-03-14: KEXP, Seattle, WA, USA. Short but sweet.
• . 2004-09-18: Butternut Ridge, North Olmsted, OH, USA.

2008-02-27: 9:30 Club, Washington, DC, USA

Strong Relation

I Should Love You, But I Hate You

Tony sent this to me, so I figured I’d be nice and listen to it. [And yes, Chris Lehman, I got your email, too, and I'll listen to it, but I'm better acquainted with TK.]

Downtown Church

This explains so much about me, and yet I am not even close to settled with it.

I can choose to be my diagnosis, or I can choose to treat the symptomology and see myself as a whole person. Once we came to the idea that this might be what it is—before Christmas, if you must know—I strongly defined myself by that diagnosis. I went into a shell of myself, honestly, living this whole meta-life where I overanalyzed everything. The only reason I was functional at all during this time was because I spent December in hypomania: I wasn’t ten foot tall and bulletproof, but I was at least eight feet high and ready to run through brick walls.

Running through brick walls. That’s a common act here on my end. I get convinced that I can do anything, and being a generally capable chap, I find that I’m able to accomplish much of what I set my mind to—but only when I’m hypomanic. When I’m depressed, I do very well to get out of bed in the morning and put one foot in front of the other. Imagine, then, when I came off that hypomania back to the depths while my good friends Kat and Sean were in town. That first weekend, the only thing that got me out of bed was the knowledge that I’d get to spend some time with them. Spend a lot of time with them, I did; then I’d drive home and the blackness would settle back in.

So, I did what any smart depressive does: ask for help. I met with my psychiatrist a couple days early, then started on a new drug regimen. By the end of the week, I was feeling much better, but the last few days … well, let’s just say that I’m happy that I titrate up to the next dose of the mood stabilizer tomorrow.

This is not easy. In fact, it’s quite hard. But doing nothing would be worse, for me. I can’t go on living like I was, with the antidepressants working some of the time and fighting some of the depression, except when it got worse, and then it would get better again, and that would be because I was hypomanic, and while I never quit my drugs or even stopped the dosages, I’d take my eyes off the prize, thinking I was Fixed.

I wasn’t Fixed. I’m trying to learn how to manage this, this which is so clearly my life and has been for a decade, though maybe I’ve not wanted to face it. But here in my thirties, I’d rather face my demons than be owned by them. I’d rather fight them and lose and lick my wounds than just lie in a pile in bed, unable to move, crushed by the biochemistry being off in my head.

And why the hell am I writing about this on the Internet? In a few hours, Facebook will import this as a note, and all 1200+ of my friends can confirm what they’ve long suspected—that I’m batshit insane at times. Isn’t this a bit of an overshare?

No.

I want the stigma of mental illness to go away. I want people to understand that people they know and love can struggle with these things, publicly, unafraid of who might know or find out. When I took time off at work back in June, everyone there really didn’t want to talk about it. I understood that, but man, seriously … I needed it. I realize now that I was coming off of some hypomania and plunging really, really far down in the hole, to a place where the antidepressants didn’t begin to touch things.

Yes, I need to talk about these things—not out of narcissism, but because others need to know that they’re not alone in this struggle. I’ve had at least two friends who, because I’ve written about my depression in the past, have sought help themselves, saying to me that they felt emboldened because I’d been public with it. In the light of that, how can I not share this fight with you?

I won’t get into specifics on meds or anything, but I’m combining an antidepressant with a mood stabilizer. It takes eight weeks to get to a therapeutic dose of the latter, and that’s proving to be hard, but I’m at least functional. That’s how most people end up fighting this: both barrels. The goal is to get to a normal person’s ups and downs, because those can be handled. I also see a therapist in addition to my psychiatrist, and if you ask if it’s worth it, I’ll tell you that I pay her out of pocket, and when I was seeing her every week last year, it was 10% of my takehome pay. It was worth every penny. I’ve unlocked a lot of wrong thinking in my head, and it makes me a lot more equipped to handle this. Talk therapy is not for everyone, but it’s definitely been for me.

So that’s what I’ve got, and that’s what I do about it. Got questions?

2007-10-28: The Vic Theatre, Chicago, IL, USA

Been reading this the last few days and really enjoying it. It’s making me think about my own story…

Deuces Wild

2007-07-14: Victoria Park, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

Live at Eddie's Attic

Poison & Wine

Michael bade me to get this, and I had Amazon MP3 credits, so …

Transference

If I review stuff, it’ll be in the form of a weekly or monthly post that reviews whatever I’ve listened to in the last time period. It also won’t be long: I’m thinking 140-character reviews, a la Twitter. [In fact, I might just use Twitter to do it, and use Alex's Twitter Tools to power doing it. Hmmm.]

This is only relevant for the subset of my audience that gives a rip about what I’m listening to, of course …

Update, 2124: Oh, hell … the longer I thought about it, the more it made sense to just do it. Welcome, @geofsnewmusic.

2008-08-15: Riverfront Park, Nashville, TN, USA

2008-07-04: Roskilde Festival, Roskilde, Denmark

I’ll have both prints and standouts available for sale; images are below. I’ve printed these previously, and I know that they look fantastic. Chris Hubbs, Mike Terry, and Josh Stockment have all seen them, too, and will attest to their awesomeness.

Because I have nothing to sell without the fine talents of Mr. Andrew Osenga in playing the concert where I took this shot, I am splitting the profits with him. More on that in a sec.

8″x12″ print:

Signed or Unsigned?

Unsigned $30.00 Signed $45.00

11″x14″ standout:

Signed or Unsigned?

Unsigned $100.00 Signed $150.00

All prints and standouts are from Mpix. If you’re asking, “What the heck is a standout?”, I asked the same thing when I first came across the product. It’s a print mounted on 1.5″ thick Gatorfoam, edged nicely and pre-drilled on the back with holes for hanging. You can use nails or pushpins to hang these; I have done both to good effect. In fact, I have a nice little gallery of some of my favorite shots on the walls in the stairwell of my townhouse.

These are a limited run: I’ll do just 50 prints and up to 10 standouts. That’s it. Andy and I will split the profits from unsigned items 50/50; if he signs, he gets 60% and I get 40%. [It's only fair.] I will sign and number all the prints and standouts, plus keep records for authenticity. You know, for when Andy signs that multimillion record deal and you want to list this on eBay.

Now, I know that these aren’t cheap. I was originally only going to offer the standouts, and then I decided that I just couldn’t envision enough people wanting to drop $150 on a signed copy. But I figure that there are some of you that love Andrew enough to do that. [And then there's my mom. You should buy one, Mom.]

I’ve done the math, and after I pay for shipping and sales taxes, I’ll make about $800 if I sell all the units, as will Andy. We’ll make more if you want them signed, of course; if everyone buys theirs signed, it’s something like $1700 for Andy and $950 for me. I plan on using this to pay the filing fees to get my LLC, with whatever’s left over getting reinvested into the business—probably mics, maybe a wide-angle lens. I’ll do these sales periodically, with different artists each time, to fund gear to document shows. Andy will probably use his to buy gear for the studio or, you know, feed his kids.

As y’all probably know, I give my recordings and my photos away for free under a Creative Commons license, so this is your way to say thanks for spending the time recording concerts for posterity. I get the money to bootstrap my company, and you get a fun piece of memorabilia that looks great.

2003-09-27: Mercury, Austin, TX, USA

Valentines and Desserts

Friday, February 5, 7:30 PM, North Hills Church, 11319 Highway 231/431 North, Meridianville
Friday, February 12, 7:30 PM, First Presbyterian Church, 307 Gates Ave., Huntsville

Erin Colwitz, conductor
Stacy Owens, assistant conductor
Sharon Keffer, accompanist

Join the Huntsville Master Chorale and a few special soloists for an evening of unique music about the joy – and sometimes not-so-joyous – pangs of love. Enjoy the music of the Victoria and Palestrina, celebrating religious love; a choral song cycle by modern composer, Karl Korte; and old standards like Gentle Annie, Aura Lee and Paddlin’ Maddlin’ Home.

We hope you’ll join us for this varied evening of musical Valentines and Desserts.

C’mon … you get to see me in a tuxedo! Isn’t that worth coming out?

2007-06-02: Primavera Sound, Barcelona, Spain

I’m glad that you’ve made the choice to stick it out. Twice, I’ve become overwhelmed and left churches to start anew, for exactly the reasons you’ve alluded to here [although unlike you, I've never been on staff; but I did get asked to be the youth director once when I was in college, but anyway]. I find in the results of this that the problem lies, well, with me: how I balance my life, how I react when challenged by others, etc. Unlike you, I’m still single, so I don’t even have the marriage relationship to remind me that these rough patches are worth trucking through. I envy you that.

I am currently between church congregations for a number of reasons. One, which seems quite silly, is that my overwork at work and at my previous congregation got me to a point where I was overwhelmed and ultimately depressed, and I gave up the thing I could afford financially to give up. Sad, but true.

And yet while I’ve been out of a congregation for more than a year now, I find myself yearning for corporate worship and study. I find that I don’t challenge myself—rightly or wrongly!—in solitude. I find that small groups can often end up having herd mentalities, and I need something bigger than that so I don’t get into those mentalities.

And … in the course of writing this, I think I just talked myself into going to the local megachurch on Sunday. Heh.

I want to expand on that last point a little bit. I’ve long resisted large congregations, thinking they should plant. Part of this comes from my reading of Dunbar’s number and my desire to know and be known by a community of believers. But as I wrote that about small groups, I realized that my need for community can be met at that level while my need for larger corporate worship and accountability can be met by a larger congregation. You know, as long as I don’t buy into herd mentalities and “us v. them” thinking.

I’ve resisted visiting Asbury UMC, Madison’s large Methodist congregation, for all those reasons. But sitting here, I feel this tug on my heart that all that is just flippin’ silly. So… okay, God.