I saw Peter Gabriel last night at MSG, and it was… interesting. It was excellent in many ways but also really depressing in many other ways, and the whole thing really threw me by the time I got out of there. It’s strange to say that going to a show full of people and energy and music that I essentially enjoy would make me leave in a deep depression, but there were a few nerves to be pinched.

To first get this out of the way: I like Peter Gabriel’s music, but I don’t think I like people who like his music. I think it’s a very personal thing to me, and the songs of his that mean the most to me aren’t the ones that have supported his livelihood. So to go and have the guy sitting next to me yell “SHOCK THE MONKEY! SHOCK THE MONKEY!” after every other song really made me want to sell everything I own, put a unabomber-style shack on my property, and never talk to another human again.

The other thing that bothered me is that although I go to a lot of shows alone, I really don’t like doing it. And this is probably the first non-metal show I’ve ever attended. So not only was there no chance for me to talk to some other dude about the band, like I did when I went to see Rush or Fozzy or whatever else, but pretty much every guy there was with a woman, because this is the kind of show you bring your girlfriend to and hope they play “in your eyes” or whatever. And, not that I haven’t noticed this before, but I’m getting extremely depressed about being alone. Sometimes it doesn’t bother me, but then there are these breakthrough points where I suddenly realize that it’s been months and months since I’ve dated, and I’m currently sustaining no relationships, and I have nothing going on where I’d potentially meet people, and I have no energy to seek out people, and things won’t change themselves, and I have no energy to try to change things. And I can push this stuff away enough to get up every day, and go to my job every day, and maybe put in a little bit of writing on my books or whatever, but when I really think about it, it completely fucking demolishes me. And that happened.

So I’m sitting there for this whole show, essentially spending the whole thing not thinking “wow, I have all of his albums, he’s great,” but rather “I wish this show was over so I could go home and completely reinvent my horrible life.” And the thing is that a lot of Peter Gabriel songs mix happiness and depression in such a strange way that they totally pulled me further into this. When I’m alone, when I’m depressed, I listen to his music, and that helps me write and create. And that means I’m not a fan of “Sledgehammer,” but if you’re depressed and you listen to “Mercy Street” or “Red Rain,” it’s not going to snap you out of it. And my whole career of depression has bookmarks in it via his songs. Even the happy songs remind me of failed relationships, like when they played “Secret World” and it reminded me of the girl I dated back when that album was out, the girl that put “In Your Eyes” on a mix tape for me and now even the first two notes of that song practially exorcise her to me again.

The concert “ended” in a very strange way. They played the song “Signal to Noise” from the new album, and it’s very heavy and deep and dark and forbearing, but absolutely incredible. It’s primarily a more tribal drum sound and some symphonic synth. As the song approached the end, each instrument would finish playing their part and the person would just put down their stuff and walk off the stage, until finally it was just the drummer and a synth playing a sample on its own. Then he got to the end, and the lights went off, and that was it. It was such a heavy and strange ending, watching everyone just walk away, and it struck such a strong impression on me that it completely blew me away.

(Of course, they came out and played a couple of radio-friendly singles as an encore, which sort of ruined it for me, but still…)

So there it is. I have a lot of thoughts and a lot of plans, but mostly I just want to go home and sleep and sit in bed and read and just try to figure out what to do next. I have a hot idea for a new book and I’ve been letting it fester in my head. I think getting onto something real in the writing department would help, but it’s also one of those times where I know that writing isn’t the answer for me and I need to figure out what is.

On that note, I better go home.

A lot has been up. Nothing has been up. My heat was out for a weekend, and I was sick, which meant pure misery and I was about a double-shot of vodka away from going to my landlord’s house and beating his power meter into a non-functional state until his heat went off. The heat is back on, and my mood has improved immensely. My cold is almost gone, no sniffles or aches, but the post-Nyquil dream and sleep cycle has gone completely fucking David Lynch on me. Also, although I have no sniffles, about every hour, my sinuses exude about a cubic liter of thick snot that immediately blows out of my nose in a very satisfactory manner, yet not as satisfactory as absolutely nothing. My appetite is also messed up, as I can now taste food, yet I realize that everything that a) I can cook or b) I can order for delivery tastes like total shit. My last two dinners and today’s lunch were horrid and I did not finish them. I am hoping to segue this into some kind of diet where something that is low-fat/low-calorie or whatever will suddenly taste better to me than horrible Greek food as cooked by Mexican workers in a Chinese restaurant in Queens. Or maybe not.

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I am working on The NecroKonicon nonstop now. The goal is to have something to give the publisher by the end of the year. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE go read it, find mistakes, point out my horrrible speling errors and everything else, and give me ideas for new stuff so I can turn this fucker out. I am adding stuff every day, so please take a look.

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I had a lot of other things to say, but mostly I need to get some work done. So I must go enjoy the heat and write some damn glossary entries.

I just got a call from my friend Lisa from the parking lot of the IMU. She’s from up here (Stamford, actually) but visited to see the Lilly Library and needed directions to find it. It’s pretty weird to consider someone I think of as a “New York” person to be in the place where I lived ten years ago. It’s even more weird to give directions by phone, and mentally imagine what it would be like to be there. I was actually reading a few pages from Summer Rain last night, so I’m really in the mood to be back there. Maybe I can put some of this nostalgia into the stories I’m trying to finish.

I’ll still sick, although the cold has moved from the throat to the nose. I’m not fond of blowing my nose constantly, but it sure beats that back-of-throat post-nasal drip, or the throat-suddenly-dry, must-cough-violently thing I’ve had going for the last few days.

I finished rereading The Fuck Up by Arthur Nersessian, and it wasn’t bad. It reminds me of a modern-day Down and Out in Paris and London by Orwell, and I was able to mentally figure out more of the geography now that I work in the Village. It’s a slightly depressing book, and sometimes the writing is a bit jumpy or inaccurate, but it’s not bad. It makes me wish I could write a book similar to it, but I’m not as verbose in my prose as he is.

Okay, I need to go to Duane Reade and stock up on cold supplies (Dayquil, Nyquil, Kleenex, etc.)

Vague things I find disturbing:

First, I watched this entire TV show about Al Roker getting his stomach stapled shut. Since I am like 30 pounds overweight, I often think about this, but you need to be like 100 pounds overweight to get it done. Also, my problem is not eating large volumes of stuff; I actually don’t eat a lot in any given sitting, it’s just what I eat that got me here. It’s also amazing that he got this invasive surgery done to get down to my current weight. That doesn’t make me feel as bad.

Second, during this Dateline NBC or whatever it was, they had an ad for another Dateline show in which some parents were deemed unfit parents and had their kids taken away, then went out at gunpoint and stole them back from foster homes. The commercial depicted it as “the system has screwed us, and since we’re such strong people, we would do anything…” This is total bullshit. If a court takes away your kids, you’re given a list of stuff you have to do to get them back. The list is not unreasonable for a normal person: get a job, get off drugs, take a course on parenting, etc. The real story is probably that these folks couldn’t do any of this, but they could get a guy and go take their kids back. This is stupid, and this kind of thing will make tons of dumb parents who had their kids taken away that they could do the same thing. It’s amazing how American culture has propogated this belief that everyone is always right, and that anyone can do anything on their own terms. It’s probably Reader’s Digest’s fault for publishing all of those little amazing profiles of courage or whatever the hell they are called. People are wrong. People fuck up. Deal with it.

Third, I will probably watch the above show.

Fourth, if you download an entire first-run movie because you don’t see yourself giving the MPAA ten bucks, you are an idiot. I actually saw a LiveJournal where someone said they were going to see 8 Mile but didn’t because they didn’t want to give the MPAA the money. This is stupid. I mean, wanting to see 8 Mile is also stupid, but that’s not the point. I don’t feel that I need to justify this any further, but rather I will issue a decree making it true.

It seems like I had a fifth thing, but I can’t remember. I’m still sick and pretty much reduced to watching TV, and not much is on. I did finally sign another lease, which is always good.

Now, I must eat my soup.

When I was in Vegas, I went to a Walgreen’s across the street from the Stardust on a pretty constant basis, since bottled water cost about $87 in the hotel. I always like big drugstores because they remind me of the ones in the Midwest, like the huge Osco in the Concord Mall that has recently vanished (along with everything else in the mall.) New York drug stores suck; they have almost no selection in the medical-oriented things, and no variety in the non-medical stuff. I bet you could buy a snowblower at a CVS or Hook’s back in Indiana, whereas you might have to go to seven different places to find a 4x4-inch bandage and some gauze in Manhattan. (And when you do, it will cost more than an emergency room visit.) It’s the same gripe about lack of real estate, cost of real estate, and the fact that we don’t have a Target in Manhattan and that would make my life much better, even though all of you in the Midwest are saying, “why would he want a Target? They suck ass.”

Anyway, I was in this Walgreen’s, and saw something I’d never seen before: an earwax removal tool. It looked like a little plastic plunger, except it had a ring on the end of it. The idea was that you shoved it in your ear and scraped out a thing of wax, and it wouldn’t push the wax further back because of the shape, or something. Since I have constant ear problems, I bought this thing, ran back to the hotel (okay, I didn’t RUN) and jammed it into my ear, carefully following the instructions to make sure that it didn’t puncture my eardrum. After all of this anticipation, it removed a piece of wax about as big as the amount of wax a crayon leaves on a piece of paper when writing a period or comma. I felt ripped off, expecting it to remove something about as big as a BB, or maybe a small kidney bean. No dice.

At first, I thought that this was just another ripoff from the health and beauty industry, like magnet-point shoe inserts, anything with the word “Igea” in it, or the ab-exercise belt. But later, I thought that maybe this was some kind of pea-under-seven-mattresses sort of perception problem. Maybe the “huge” amount of wax in my ear that bothered me was just microscopic. Maybe this was like some larger metaphor for my life, and all of the things bothering me - money, acceptance, dating, writing - were all microscopic bits of wax that weren’t that big of a deal.

Okay, this is getting stupid. I shouldn’t come up with journal ideas on the subway anymore.