Have you noticed the influx of my releases lately?
Instead of releasing music last year, I mastered three tracks — a total waste of time, honestly. How do I increase my production fidgeting the same songs for a YEAR?
I don’t. I’ll take my chances producing a song a day. Always dreamt of being the lead singer of a punk rock band influenced heavily by Black Flag, The Descendants, and Minor Threat to be specific. Hardcore punk songs range from thirty seconds to a few minutes in length, a war of attrition. Track after track, an onslaught of anger and emotion. Elbows, shoving, mosh pits. A reverberation of chaos. Reminds me of artists like Midnight Tyrannosaurus, an artist who greatly influenced my dubstep journey.
Growing up, I experienced trouble finding musicians with similar taste, preferring to drum alone in my basement. However, as the drummer, you typically take a backseat to the writing process, which could’ve been argued given my lack of music theory and reading ability. I knew how to hit things quickly, keep rhythm, be a nuisance.
Discovering MASCHINE’s software, I produced frequently, but still only released three tracks. The POPE project amassed roughly 11 tracks all together over two years, stiffened by benzodiazepines, mood stabilizers, and anti-psychotic usage during my MDMA trafficking case. Overstimulated times.
After careful analysis of the SUPPLY EP’s release, I realized where I stood in the music industry. Nobody I know listens to bass music or IDM, a heavy influence on my production. Artists like Aphex Twin, Autechre, Hullabalo0, Kursa, EPROM and G JONES.
To make matters more difficult, I utilized my five year modern psychoanalytic education to confront narcissism, question transgenderism, and call out ghost production— landing me in boiling waters. Narcissists have distanced themselves or refuse to share my artwork based on the fear of ‘narcissism awareness’. The Philadelphia rave community and surrounding areas, typically left-wing-progressives are upset judging by the silent treatment, loss of followers, and direct messages. However I’m worried about the current state of affairs: the implications transgenderism has on women’s spaces in particular. I’m just asking questions.
How long has it taken to establish safe spaces and rights for women, and how quickly are we going to strip these spaces?
I get the vibe nobody local wants to associate or promote my work. The people who message for collaborations typically don’t follow my X or instagram, judging by the “its” and “thems” looking for work. The community hasn’t unfollowed me all together, I put effort into my delivery. I think they notice. However, nobody wants to get caught promoting the work of a “TERF” or “transphobe” in the rave community. It’s often the local scene an artist gets their start, and that’s where I’m struggling. Artists I associated with are creating distance.
The cherry is my claim of being an intuitive empath. The “source” for “discrediting” the transgender/transexual community. “How can this guy be psychic and transphobic?” To me it kind of makes sense: Deliver truth to an unlikely and unwilling crowd.
A sensitive crowd.
The loss of support and lack of engagement isn’t detrimental, as I’ve only been producing beats consistently for one and a half years, three or four years all together. I became dependent on hardware synthesizers which I sold and overcame a years-long writer’s block. Less is more, especially when you grew up on video editing software.
Just means I have to work harder and spend more time delivering my message. Furthermore, I’ll admit the beats are still beginner and I shouldn’t expect too much praise. However… I do create my own sound design, visuals, artwork, and maintain physical appearances. The silence was deafening.
The majority of artists headlining underground bass shows have produced for many years. Seppa, Resonant Language, and Bandito Jones said ten to fifteen years when I asked. Kursa, around sixteen. Many openers are producing equally as long, given the size of the community.
Furthermore, what’s stopping Philly from creating a larger underground bass scene? The Rust and Aspire Higher provide great lineups, but highlight established artists, all star casts. The Universal Emotion makes moves in the underground, and I’d love to see them provide multiple shows a month! However, The Ave is proof for the potential of bass music, packing crowds weekend after weekend for less than twenty dollars a ticket. Hopefully we see an emergence in bass music- a rise in events and venues. The greater the music, the quicker and greater the scene grows.
During these realizations I’ve been grateful for the opportunity to write music furiously, attempting to garner my own sound and reputation. My analyst, Dr. Anthony Tereo has assisted my understanding of the creative process. More reps, more sets. Creativity is a muscle, and while talent helps, hard work triumphs. Rick Rubin delivers a similar ethos on his Tetragrammaton Podcast. Even the most talented artists struggle to overcome their egos.
The ability to practice creating songs, beginning, middle, and end, has shifted the quality of each song I write. I’m subconsciously holding less material in my brain. No need to think about thirty unfinished songs. Finish them in one or two days, move on.
Art is about releasing the emotion, for me at least. Release and learn. A tool for self-analysis. But first, for godsake release the goddamn emotion. My art therapist at Sheppard Pratt Mental Hospital, Terry, preferred I smash, squeeze, grind, and splatter when creating art. She wanted me to express myself, to really release the repression. Chinese Medicine teacher, Trina, who intentionally pushed my buttons on campus hikes. The woman who jumped in glee when I finally rebelled against her demands as she hiked my sick body over hilltops. Anger, she was attempting to release repressed anger.
Howdo we release anger safely?
As an intuitive, I struggle with my emotions along with the emotions of the collective. A canvas is the only thing standing in the way of self-destruction, and with the emergence of AI, imperfections may be the distinguishing characteristic of human art after all. Raw, authentic, human emotion. Journaling blogs, splatter paintings, analog glitch feedback, quick-furious beats, and dancing to new releases are ways I typically release anger.
Raves. Booming subwoofers, next-level visualizers, psychedelic mentalities, and people looking for a party. Often when I didn’t have a safe house, I wound up at a rave until three in the morning, a home away from home. Somewhere to dance, smoke, and hang – look at the moon. Dancing especially. If you’ve meet me at a rave, you’ll find me standing next to the subwoofer, dancing for the next four to six hours. There’s something unmistakably healing, like i’m shaking off the bad juju!
What if we’re able to steer more troubled youth toward rave culture, safe psychedelic practices, artistic expression, music? Instead of self-destructing and falling victim to societies ills? What if the goal is to get more involved, build local communities, advance art and consciousness? What if it all starts with you and your involvement?
In absence of raves, my weekends are spent at the Lehigh Valley’s Mahoning Drive-In movie theater, the USA’s oldest drive-in theater premiering vintage favorites, cult classics, and horror masterpieces, often catching films like Cannibal Holocaust, Alien, Scanners, and Chainsaw Hookers: raw, nostalgia trips through distorted, creative genius. Body bags and all.
When I stumbled upon DIGITIST’SDEMONSTRATION OF FORCE, the lurching landscapes, mechanical-infused sound design, consuming growls, and punishing bass lines mirrored the sanctuary of a badass horror movie. Tension, destruction, survival.
Who doesn’t like a good scare?
From the start, Barbarian seizes audiences with ripping textures and demanding progression, transcending listeners through dramatic rhythm shifts, flexing production skills, while offering forward thinking sound design over combinations of dubstep and hardcore. For the UK fans, right? The impressive contrast of genres is masterfully articulated and certain to leave dance floors crumbling.
DIGITIST masters ‘tear out’ dubstep, a sub-genre pioneered by Excision, Zomboy, Midnight Tyrannosaurus, and MARAUDA highlighting heavy metal atmospheres, compressed-brostep bass lines, and chaotic crowds. However, DIGITIST’s authenticity is unquestioned, showcasing originality and blending genres like UK garage on his track ‘Interloper’ after assaulting listeners with dubstep monstrosity ‘Crude Oil’. The EP demonstrates unique experimentation, ethereal ambiance while combatting demonic drops and screeching highs. DIGITIST conducts a symphony from hell.
Cinematic, DEMONSTRATION OF FORCE captivates listeners with seven incendiary tracks. Roughly twenty-five minutes. Replay value?
Like a bowl of pretzels and a tasty beer: “Can you ever eat just one pretzel?” While I typically enjoy the Tipper-sphere of music, the r/spacebass, experimental bass producers, I’ve been returning to my roots: dubstep, particularly because it expresses anger. A forgotten emotion, and especially important to Modern Psychoanalysts – subconsciously rooted anger, the genesis of neurosis.
As a Slipknot, Korn, and Tool fan, I particularly loved dubstep for the ability to thrash, a noticeable difference to glitch hop and house. Isn’t it important we have music to represent these repressed times? The full spectrum of emotion?
Finishing the project with THAW, a drum and bass inspired song, DIGITIST concludes DEMONSTRATION OF FORCE like any decent horror flick: leaving the audience demanding more! DIGITIST possesses a unique sound palette, blending the lines between alien experimentation and the demonic underworld. Inspiration from producer comrade, EXECUTIONER, on tracks like UNCIVILIZED are highlighted, another upcoming producer known for intriguing arrangement, top tier sound design, menacing auras— who deserves increased attention.
Dubstep, riddim, UKG, hardcore, drum and bass: DEMONSTRATION OF FORCE represents a production milestone for producer DIGITIST – a robust, multidimensional listening experience. Not to mention a FULL EP VISUALIZER on the DIGITIST YouTube channel, featuring VHS style distortions, digital tracers, and bad-trip voyeurism. A name to remember in the evolving landscape of dubstep and experimental bass, DIGITIST leads by example!
The artwork alone speaks volumes. Can you judge an EP by its cover? DEMONSTRATION OF FORCE provides the argument.
The Honda ascended Appalachia, cruising into Morgantown, Pennsylvania — a dense highway town with rush hour traffic, quiet at night. Stomach acid gnawed my mucus lining, signaling that I hadn’t eaten all day. Hungry. And busy, spending the entire day clearing music gear: MIDI controllers, pedals, synthesizers, cords from my storage unit, packaging into cardboard boxes, and shipping or delivering to eBay buyers and Facebook marketplace. The income is being used to fund my expeditions for housing, food, necessities. Cannabis. I’ve been banned from living at home due to exposing my sociopathic mother and codependent father. I receive funding, however its unreliable and subject to change or loss. I was living in an apartment outside West Chester, but fled after discovering the apartment was filled with cockroaches and managed by a narcissist.
This was apparent by her (Julie Calboli) lies, cover ups, and unwillingness to ever meet face to face. The storage unit lies an hour away, so I rushed to the unit, grabbed the items, found cardboard boxes at Five Below or GameStop, packaged, and shipped from the nearest post office. Reminded me of days shipping controlled substances through the mail. Provided a nice rush of energy. I miss it. Restaurant work sucks. In the chaos of the morning, I forgot to eat. How many times does this occur? Too many. As the Honda trudged towards the hillside, golden arches protruded from the skyline, two humps, the shape of the letter “M” — McDonalds. I typically don’t eat McDonalds.
A sure way to spend the evening or early morning glued to the toilet. Not to mention the small business, anti-corporate sentiment that flows through my veins. However, I was strapped for cash and hungry. I’d walk out of the local dive bar spending at least twenty dollars, with the additional temptation of alcohol I couldn’t afford financially or mentally. Still healing from multiple concussions, car accident, jumped outside a bar by a few kids, self harm. I used to punch myself in the face to get my anger out, because I was raised in a family that doesn’t allow anger. There’s no reason to be angry in my family? Especially not with a sociopathic woman controlling the dynamics, ha! Full of resentment, I passed the local taverns and headed for the McDonalds twenty-seconds-walking from my hotel room. Another time, I said, When I have money. The McDonalds, parked against the Pennsylvania turnpike, witnessed no shortage of patrons. A line of cars permanently painted across the drive-thru lane. Chemically constructed hamburgers and French fries engrossed the mountaintop air. I arrived at the ordering screen, punched an order for two McDoubles, a large fry, and large cup of water (costs less, illusion of healthy eating). The total was roughly eight dollars and fifty cents. I qualified for a coupon, oh boy. They certainly know how to keep you coming back. I took a seat in the middle of the restaurant, a booth adjacent to the ordering screens, where a woman in a baggy, oversized button-down, black cap, and warm smile dropped a tray containing two McDoubles, the large fry, empty plastic cup. Sitting in silence, I reflected on a week of running around from storage unit to hotel room, selling music gear, searching for housing, jumping between State Parks, trying to make ends meet. The majority of my days are spent packing and unpacking from one location to the next, attempting to secure cheap housing. French Creek State Park, my usual hideout, was closing for the incoming winter months. This meant retreating to the nearest Holiday Inn, way outside my budget, but the only hotel without cockroaches in the area. Great. With my parents refusal to book the hotel for a month, I was exhausted, short-winded, and a bit desperate. I’m banned from Airbnb due to my felony, so living situations are not easy to address. The closest VRBO’s: spread all across the state, nowhere near my housing destinations.
I swallowed the McDoubles with ease, devouring the fries, crushing the ice cold water. A fountain of energy erupted from the core of my being, a warm tingling sensation, the body’s overwhelming joy at nourishment.
Always remember to eat, I said to myself, always.
Finishing my meal in silence, I stood to discard my trash — catching from the corner of my eye, a gentleman perched in a booth studying a laptop. It wasn’t quite the gentleman that received my attention, but the sheet of paper taped to his laptop: “PHYSICAL VIOLENCE WOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE WITHOUT DEEP, SPIRITUAL UNCONSCIOUSNESS.”
As somebody who recently discovered their spiritual roots within modern psychoanalysis, I was captivated. Especially with his word-choice, UNCONSCIOUSNESS. I pondered a moment before removing myself from the McDonalds booth, maneuvering towards the gentleman with the laptop. When I approached, he removed his earbuds. “I like your sign, what does it mean?” I asked. A smile swept across the man, white hair glistening underneath overhead lamps, wrinkles forming crevices beneath his eyes. “Did you know you took the first step?” He asked, “Most people would’ve walked by, gone on with their day. Maybe not even noticed in the first place. But you decided to read.” “Hard to ignore with the big red letters,” I said pointing at the font. He cleared the laptop from the center of the table, brushed his papers, and asked if I’d like to join. With my errands accomplished, I agreed. “Ron,” he said, hand motioning forward. “Nick”, I said. “Most people would’ve walked right by,” he continued but you knew this resonated with you. You knew… How can somebody who commits violence have any understanding of who they are? How lost they must be. Do you know who the most important teacher is?” I shrugged. “Teachers have students. However teachers are NOT one of their own students. The principal teacher is the teacher of teachers who are NOT one of their own students.”The man then removed a stack of papers sitting parallel, eyes darting between empty McDonald’s booths. “I asked God to send somebody to talk to…and now look… Anyway, have you ever wondered what’s wrong with the public education system?”
Sure, I thought, memory floating back to six o’clock wake up calls, crammed unventilated holding tanks, miserable students, narcissistic and underpaid teachers. It’s a fucking playground, I love it. Send me back, now. Even now, the act of typing this essays is tainted. A portal to oppressive times. I hate writing. It took me almost six months to write this essay.
The fault of the public education system? Surely, it was literally torture waking up everyday and going somewhere you hated. Writing about shit you don’t care about, just to receive a shitty grade from an angry, misunderstanding teacher. It’s actually no wonder these narcissistic kids are actively shooting up their schools. Broken homes, broken school, lying government. What’s there to lose, how can I prove my anger to the system? If I had narcissistic personality disorder, no empathy, there could’ve been serious problems. I’ll be writing a separate blog about narcissism, repressed rage, narcissistic injury, and mass shootings. “Do you know what’s wrong with our society,” he continued,” we don’t put value on the most important teacher. And who is that?” “The self?” I asked, five years of modern psychoanalysis under by belt.
“You got it. These kids I’m trying to help, if only they could see the connection. Too busy repeating violence,” Ron said, “is a spiritually awoken individual capable of committing senseless violence?” I was washed with childlike awe, captivated by a potential spiritual teacher. Is this the next step in my spiritual journey? Must be, I thought. “One mustn’t judge those who haven’t awoken. Remember…” Ron Said, “even we were once asleep.” Ron’s fingers danced through laminated pages, flipping through a self-published packet. Locating the desired pages, Ron discussed Soren Kierkegaard, father of existentialism, and the connection between living an ethical, conscious life and alignment with the self, master of acknowledging the absurd. Ron discussed the lack of understanding self-awareness, the lack of understanding our identity. Our disconnection with God. He bounced to the Allegory of The Cave, the blind leading the blind, the failures of the modern education system. How people who don’t understand themselves are attempting to lead others. Failures are likely to occur, no? “And you’ve been tested by God?” I asked Ron, eyeballing a black Velcro, brace strewn to a wounded hand. The man bowed his head, removing his eyes from sight, bowing in agreement. “Yes, why yes, oh yes, Ron continued, “If you are a student of your true self, your true self is your teacher and you are led by spirit.”
Tears swelled as Ron pronounced his discoveries with enthusiasm,
continuing with claims that we’re both student and teacher, that Christ is both God and Human.”
“Christ Consciousness,” I said. “Exactly!” Folding his arms, Ron seemed impressed with his lecture, following with a question: “So how long have you been a Christian?” “Christain?” I asked, “I was actually raised Jewish.”The words dispersed Ron’s triumph like a gunshot. The smile faded, arms hugging his torso, body shifting from side to side. Attempting to cover signs of disgust, Ron questioned, ”Is that what you believe?” “Hmm.. I’d say I have a more gnostic interpretatio—“ A grunt jolted from the opposite side of the table, as the man lost interest, spiraling at the comment. Defeated and without making eye contact Ron said, “You know I once converted a Jewish man…. It… took some time, but eventually worked.”
“And you did it without tying him down and placing hot coals underneath his flesh?”
Ronald chuckled uncomfortably, the energy suctioned from the McDonald’s dining room. We both sat awkwardly, spiritual material scattered across the table. “Would you like me to email this information,” he asked “Sure,” I replied. Dread caressed the McDonald’s dining room table.
Ron slid a card across the table, RONALD BARNES: Reading Support Teacher. The opposite side read: The Paradox of One’s Identity — listing the Russell Paradox. Honestly, I didn’t really understand the Russel Paradox.
I’m not sure if Ron does either. The concept was incredibly wordy, describing mathematical sets that disregarded Ron’s English background. Why did an English teacher choose a complicated, mathematical theory to best explain his argument? His spiel was entirely focused on repeating lines from a business card, instead of intuitively explaining from the heart, or listening for that matter. Confusing, actually.
More importantly, I watched an interview with Bertrand Russel.
When asked why he’s NOT A CHRISTIAN, he claims, “I see no evidence whatsoever for the Christian dogmas.”
So I’m confused. Ron, a deeply Christain man, who self-destructed an entire spiritual conversation because I wasn’t Christian, is parading through town, pushing Christianity, and using a vocal non-Christian to reinforce his argument? Bertrand Russel who even wrote an essay: Why I am not a Christain”?
Do you see the… Paradox?
Talk about the blind leading the blind, it appears Ron was close but no cigar. The facial distortions, verbal gasps, and folded arms were a time machine to Inquisitions, Crusades, and religious zealotry. However, to Ron, it signified a moral authority, an alignment with Christ. My religion is good, your religion is bad. Melanie Klein’s “good breast” and “bad breast” theory, where a child splits people, places, things into liner categories of “all good” or “all bad”. A reincarnation of infant breastfeeding. The child splits the caregiver into two identities. The splitting preserves the child’s perception of the caregiver, and protects the child from negative impressions.
“Good caregiver” and “bad caregiver” but they aren’t recognized as the same person.
Splitting breeds subconscious scapegoating, mental malleability, and one dimensional thought.
I was anticipating universal truths: God resides within every person, the microcosm of the macrocosm, discussion of higher dimensional reality, the interconnectedness of humanity, death and spiritual rebirth, law of attraction, karma… instead Ron brushed the dust from religious history. The conversation folded. Difficult to continue a conversation with someone who lectured you for twenty minutes and disregards you based on backgrounds and beliefs.
Based on the first sentences that flowed from my mouth. Future discussions disintegrated. My phone screen illuminated the time.
“Thanks for everything, Ron” I said, removing myself from the table.
I tucked the business card into my wallet and we shook hands.
“Until next time,” I said, glancing at Ron, who’s eyes sunk, defeated by his encounter with a Gnostic-Jew.
Thankful, at least, for the reminder of my hatred towards the public education system. A system of forced learning. Learning what, and why? School enjoys treating human beings like they’re all the same, no differences.
Why doesn’t school teach us about ourselves?
By learning to focus on self-knowledge, we uncover who we are, what skills we offer, and how to implement, aka how be best help society. This avoids the pitfalls of spending an adult life bouncing from tragic employment to tragic employment, soul sucking your existence into something you hate. In the words of KRS – ONE, “school would teach knowledge of the self.” What’s more important that wealth, health, and knowledge of the self?
Instead of creating a school based around testing and taxation, we propel students with self-mastery, which benefits society by disallowing people to fall through cracks. An opportunity to engage with ideals and themes that interest an individual.
Not to mention a majority of teachers succumb to the narcissism pandemic.
Teachers like Ms. Coates who spent weeks attempting to suspend, even expel me for cheating, forgetting I retook a test when absent representing our high school during the statewide business leader’s competition.
This incident included many principals and authority figures who interrogated me for cheating. When in reality the sociopathic, elderly hag was losing her sanity and picking fights. My only high school detention came from Ms. Coates, because I was late to class at the end of the school year. Even though we had an agreement for the entire year: my classmate (Christain) and I run late because we’re coming from the farthest side of the school. She had a bone to pick. In the end, I wasn’t suspended and I received a failing grade on the test which plummeted my GPA. I guess everybody wins. Especially Mrs. Swartz, who did her best to brush along the situation like nothing happened — holding nobody accountable, especially a mean tempered, lying, mentally incapable sociopathic teacher ruining the education experience of gifted students.
Narcissistic teachers are a theme I encountered throughout high school, college, even religious school. Dark personalities responsible for crafting minds and inspiring the youth. Positions of power, nothing surprising. I also grew up with the administration’s children. So the proof is in the pudding. Our band, Punch The System, disintegrated shortly after ‘Gregg Swartz’, the bassist, was unable to practice without a parental guardian present. Memories of calling my mom to cancel her plans and return home so Mr. Swartz could leave our band practice— Punch The System, a punk-grunge inspired garage band. Not very punk after all.
Helicopter parenting and lack of boundaries being an indicator of narcissism — I would know, I went through similar behaviors with my own parents: monitoring conversations, stalking social media, strict video game preferences, homework enforcement. I was forced to play Xbox Live in the living room so my mother could hear all my conversations.
Mrs. Swartz became principal of the high school, where I was confronted for cheating by Ms. Coates, cornered and made to feel stupid. The lack of accountability and repercussions- a beginner lesson in institutional narcissism. Narcissists look out for one another.
The superintendent’s son, a childhood friend, is nicknamed “BM”, bad monster. A term coined for his constant uproars and blacked out behavior in social situations, private pregames, wherever. A covert narcissist who bullies his friends, spews aggression, and is actively avoided on the weekends. Cocaine fueled black outs are a regular occurrence for the superintendent’s son. The epitome of superb teaching and leadership, translating to all aspects of life, especially her children.
His avoidance of women also being an indicator of nearby narcissism. I avoided women because of my sociopathic mother. I didn’t kiss a girl until the summer going into senior year of high school, and she just finished giving my friend a blowjob. (Ha!)
I don’t think the superintendents son lost his virginity until a couple years ago at the Chinatown massage. One for the books. Also, I’m sure he’d appreciate me addressing him as “the superintendents son”, he was sure to remind me all the time.
Memories of first grade teachers scolding me for coloring outside the lines, receiving low grades in art class, my fifth grade teacher treating my inability to stop writing as a problem instead of a gift. School sucks. Not surprising I found myself in the pits of OFWKGTA screaming “Kill people, burn shit, fuck school”. So close, I thought, reflecting on Ronald Barnes, Reading Support Teacher.
A close understanding to the interconnectedness of life, the divine within- but no cigar.
A paradox, sure, a Christian spiritualist preaching the words of an agnostic philosopher who renounced Christianity, who cancelled conversation with somebody because of his Jewish decent. Odd but in the spirit of Kiierkegaard, absolutely absurd.
I told myself I wouldn’t write while stoned and sleep deprived. But I also said I’d portray an accurate representation of myself, so fuck it. No lies. I’ve been told I’m ‘too sensitive’. What is being too sensitive?
Too sensitive is using marijuana everyday upon waking since 2014. An assault on the senses, waking up crushed by unseen forces, driven mad with restless leg syndrome, screaming, punching walls, throwing objects, breaking phones.
A bloody terrible way to start the day!
Too sensitive is feeling the neighbors at breakfast, bickering, pulling down the driveway, late to work. Too sensitive is feeling the dog barking, the neighbor cutting the grass, the children heading to the pond five minutes down the road. Too sensitive is feeling I-80 and White Haven ten minutes away. Too sensitive is waking up three to four times a night, and using a combination of cannabis and masturbation to achieve sleep. Meditation. Too sensitive is dropping objects because “bad vibrations need released”, maybe somebody told a lie, maybe a dark personality entered the room, who knows but better pay attention. Too sensitive is feeling the deer maneuver the backyard, the bees pollinating flowers, the spiders catching prey. Too sensitive is feeling the music flush your veins and ignite your hair like a line of cocaine.
A testament to my brainwashing I suppose. I did not realize I was an intuitive until roughly six months into modern psychoanalysis, awoken by another intuitive, Dr. Anthony Tereo, student of Hyman Spotnitz— intuitive. Until then I was still suppressed and living a lie thanks to my mother, who intentionally subverted any awakening to disguise her own sociopathy. What happens when an empath understands their gift of intuitive feeling, what does it mean for the narcissist? Predators don’t appreciate becoming prey. An observation. It’s their forest.
Too sensitive is feeling others thinking about you, reading your social media posts, reaching for your phone to respond to a text that hasn’t arrived yet. Too sensitive is crashing your car because you “feel something coming”, so you take the longer way home thus getting rear ended and completing your prediction — a feedback loop. “Would you have knocked over the vase if I hadn’t said anything”: The classic quote from the The Matrix, the scene with the Oracle.
Too sensitive is dreaming of cities burning before covid, dry heaving for months before the world shut down and losing sleep in the process.
Being intuitive is closely related to sleep. Connected to the ether, recharged, with a full eight plus hours of sleep, the intuitive is joyful. Disconnected: exhausted, burnt out and the experience is less desirable, if not unpleasant, suicidal. Too sensitive is feeling tomorrow when your head touches the pillow.
Too sensitive is feeling the electromagnetic field on every person, place, thing. Too sensitive is feeling where people are going when they leave, typically future conflicts.
Too sensitive is not being able to work a standard nine to five, because you never know what predictions will keep you awake at night. It’s being forced from workplace after workplace because your managers can’t quite put a finger on what’s happening, but they know something is happening. Too sensitive is feeling the psychic backlash from everybody wishing you “worked a normal job like them”.
Too sensitive is breaking your ankle in the Franklin Institute’s nostalgic heart display, because it’s holding too many vibrations in such a cramped space. Too sensitive is having ankle problems for the rest of your life, along with degenerate disc disease in your neck from pressures and density of the world. I used to have my younger brother walk on my back to relieve pressure, or I’d neurotically crack my back on school chairs for relief.
Memories of neck kinks preventing me from school as early as pre-school.
Too sensitive was having Brendan Murphy, Melissa Roller, and Abby Rigby send thoughts to my head causing me to laugh out loud in the middle of class. Removed by Ms. Cooper, my eighth grade English teacher who asked if I was “autistic or something”, who then proceeded to gaslight me into feeling terrible about my gift, a gift predominately related to English, observations and writing abilities. Hmmm… I wonder why I hate writing so much… The same situation occurred in Mr. Twiss’s math class, except the teacher would give me detentions, forcing me to stay after class so he could use my aura like a battery. I imagine he wasn’t having a great time living alone, raising two adopted African children consumed by lives of crime. My mother confronted the teacher and I never received detentions again.
My mother was used to guarding me from people. She wouldn’t let anybody close or anybody near who might awaken my abilities. Preferring I never build a close relationship with my drum instructor who invited me to drum recitals, enrolling me for sports instead of art/music classes, never introducing me to the piano when I sat playing keys all day; she intentionally subverted any understanding of myself. What would happen if Nick discovered he had psychic powers? What was being threatened?
Everything. Psychic powers threaten everything in the world of the sociopath— the narcissist. Intuition channels truth and the narcissist is desperately trying to erase any memory or acknowledgment that truth exists. They need lies to build illusions, to assume power and trap their subservients. The narcissist is consumed by anger, hatred, fear, and paranoia- primary lesser worth. A narcissist knows they are a narcissist.
I’ll never forget being under the influence of LSD with my longtime ex-girlfriend. A moment of peace, interrupted by a mean, rage full comment from my girlfriend who shortly apologized. Confused yet not surprised because of this regular occurrence, I asked “was this your borderline personality disorder,” to which wish she responded “No, this is something else.” They know they are narcissists, which is why so many of them run from me. The predator doesn’t want to become prey, and I see them, boy do I see them. They’re fucking everywhere, in case you didn’t know. Ever wonder why things are so shitty: crime, greed, corruption, violence, are all attributed to the narcissism pandemic. A lot of narcissists hate interacting with an intuitive, at risk of exposure, however others may become attracted, like moths to a flame.
The most powerful weapon in my arsenal is cognitive dissonance.
Laugh hard, laugh loud, and smile bright— I promise the narcissism will expose itself. Whether you meet direct aggression from the narcissist who’s unable to feel these transcendental emotions, or the codependent who’s involved with somebody unable to express joy, happiness, and inspiration, resistance is to be expected from somebody with narcissism in their life. A reflection of the narcissist’s unhealed traits, and a reflection of your inner work.
The greater the unconscious healing, the greater the resonance with intuition, the greater the capacity for love and joy. What happen’s when you uplift your vibration?
I think “too sensitive” is a shitty usage of words to express traits that don’t accommodate our backwards, narcissistic society. Sensitive is what my sociopathic grandmother said when mumbling under her breath about my feeling ability, sensitive is a label my parents garnered to excuse any accountability for their selfish acts, sensitive is gaslighting— an attempt to disenfranchise somebody’s perception of the world.
Intuition is about finding your place in the world, just like anything else. And finding your place in the world is about doing what’s best for you, despite the reactions and opinions of others. Something I’m still learning as a people pleaser. Something I’m learning while living somewhere that isn’t right for me.
Life’s too short to live somebody else’s life— to live in fear.
Reflections on the anniversary of Bicycle Day and 4/20.
Taking a trip through psychedelic bass history, I utilized my tax return, attending three Philadelphia electronic music shows. TRUTH, headlined The Ave on Friday, The Aspire Higher and The Rust (The Submersion Festival team) spotlighted Kursa for a stacked glitch hop lineup, and tackled the underground on Wednesday for the Verge 23 held by The Universal Emotion. Catching a glimpse of Philadelphia bass, I accidentally reincarnated my live electronic music journey. UK dubstep and brostep, experimental beats, glitchhop and neurohop, to the underground —the genesis.
No shortage of bass, might not be Denver —bass music capital, but we’re brewing.
The Ave, home to Unlocked Presents, longtime curators of bass music in Philadelphia, consistently house the largest names in electronic music. TRUTH, Digital Ethos, Wraz, and Spector illuminate UK dub, one-forty beats per minute — the signature sound behind TRUTH’s label: Deep Dark & Dangerous. With sound-system culture providing roots in Jamaican dub and UK dubstep, TRUTH seemed a worthy start to bass music history, especially for his 4/20 midnight set.
Upon doors, crowds stormed the venue, the signature Deep Dark & Dangerous purple octopus plastered Jerseys, bucket caps, fanny packs, the signature artist merchandise in bass music, primarily TRUTH’s since the fallout of Bassnectar.
The night was heavy with wubs, dub, but in particular Digital Ethos. While no stranger to Digital Ethos, I’ve missed his sets since 2017’s High Caliber and SubOctave Festival. The result? Mind-blowing bass, complex sound design and kick-ass arrangement — a set punctuated from your typical dub. During early exploration into bass music, I enjoyed artists like Bleep Bloop and G Jones, artists communicating dark emotions with cinematic fashion. Thundering bass, ominous and lingering — contrasted by tension and story building. Feels like a trip, a wormhole into the artist’s subconscious.
The hero’s journey.
Recent REZZ collaboration “CUT ME OUT” and original “FLIP THE TRACK” highlight Digital Ethos’ potential as a forerunner in bass music. Maybe I’m a sucker for hip hop percussion, insanely distorted bass lines, and a mature, refreshing take on bass music. Digital Ethos draws inspirations from the crisp production of Ivy Lab to the destructive, cinematic soundscapes of Noer The Boy.
The cherry on top?
Whoever’s working sound at The Ave deserves a round of applause. The subwoofers blew the crowd off their feet, literally. A perk of stationing your venue on Columbus Blvd: low frequencies, noise complaints? Who cares. Thanks for giving Digital Ethos a hometown performance. A powerful set to remember. Digital Ethos coming to a city near you? Highly recommend catching a set, especially if you’re interested in heavier, headier tunes. His production skills are pronounced by the illusiveness of his lineups: REZZ, EAZYBAKED, SHLUMP, PEEKABOO, Dirtmonkey, his originality is spotlighted by his ability to accommodate any lineup.
Also shout out Spector, who brought an impressive energy, especially after his six hour car ride, fusing elements of deep dub, riddim, and tearout. Igniting the stage with a sonically-destructive open, successfully ushering crowds for Wraz, who made his promising Philadelphia debut – a soulful performance of one-forty bangers and saturated wubs.
Bathing in bass, crowds of all ages, ethnicities, shapes, and sizes took to the floor. Bass doesn’t discriminate, especially at Philadephia’s designated electronic club, The Ave.
The next show? Goosebumps: Kursa, Duffrey, Smigonaut, Chez, and Sky.Lab, weekends before Tipper’s Rendezvous at Spirit of Suwannee Music Park. The anticipation before Rendezvous provided opportunities for artists like Smigonaut and Chez to foreshadow their upcoming performances, Smigonaut who gave Rendezvous a debut performance, and Chez who hosted underground after parties alongside producer Sqonk, fellow member of Charity Sound System.
However, if I’m being completely honest, I realized my knowledge of glitch hop was one dimensional. Personally, I’m drawn to dark, textural, atmospheric, punishing bass. I found bass music thanks to artists like Midnight Tyrannosaurs, Getter, Tsuruda, Noer The Boy, Woolymammoth, G Jones, Bleep Bloop, Chee, Slug Wife, PROKO, Woulg, Mad Zach, Mickman, Leet, Hullabalo0, NEWSENSEi, SHADES, Little Snake, and even The Haxan Cloak. While I discovered Tipper’s Forward Escape around 2014/2015, my playlists with Duffrey, Dillard, or Somatoast remain largely untouched.
I’m drawn to noises which express anger, a synchronization with my intuitive brain, constantly in contact with dark vibrations. Inspirations like Slipknot, TOOL, Korn, System of a Down, Death Grips, Metallica, Slayer, Black Flag, $UICIDEBOY$, and XXXTENTACION were surprisingly healing, even calming. A controlled chaos.
Its not that I don’t appreciate or listen to downtempo or ‘chill’ music, I just find a natural affinity toward the dark and abrasive. This is coming from somebody who listens to the Grateful Dead for weeks straight, however, I’d argue I enjoy the ethos of rock n roll, the devil’s music.
Who doesn’t enjoy a good jam?
The Submersion Festival team, Aspire Higher and The Rust, served free pizza for early arrivals, drawing crowds for Face Plant’s new project, Sky.Lab — a combination of surreal, ambient soundscapes, closing with intricate neuro-bass. One of the more unique sets, demonstrating a contrast in tempo, taking risks with ambient storytelling, contrasting a heavy lineup while simultaneously debuting a brand new project.
Chez followed with attention on crowd control, warming the audience with upbeat bangers, slinging remixes, and pushing smiles while performing tracks from the Mr. Nibbles EP, a sludgy exposure to the realm of distorted funk. Opening for names like Mr. Bill, Cool Customer, and Spoonbill; keep an eye out for Chez, who’s performing at Infrasound Music Festival this year.
The sheer variety of glitch hop is notable, from the hilarious remixes of Chez to the serious symphonies of Kursa, the genre has a spot for everybody, especially on the same lineup. Smigonaut demonstrated a variety of brilliant soundscapes, debuting a new groove with Philly’s own Zone Drums, hammering the audience with a combination of funky, introspective wonder. His latest project, “Abyss of Bliss” exemplifies versatility and production cleanliness, drawing ambient, drum and bass, and competitive glitch hop sound design. Smigonaut dances the line between groove, distortion, and transcendence, turning the keys in the ignition and launching the audience on a whim. Keeping the crowd on their toes, Smigonaut demonstrated why he took the stage at Rendezvous. Well deserved!
Duffrey stole the show with complex rhythms, euphoric builds, and inviting jazzy sound design featured from his latest EP “Legend of the Alley Cat”. ‘Welcoming’ is a word best to describe the sound of Duffrey. An innovator in bass music, Duffrey’s discography stretches twelve years on Soundcloud, fusing glitch hop, neurohop, and particularly drum and bass on his 2022 project “Shred the Infinite”.
Duffrey’s brilliant grooves, eargasmic engineering, and on-stage chill provide a beckoning experience for new listeners and veterans. Accessible, I’d consider introducing Duffrey to my non-EDM listening, jazz loving father. There’s something undeniably cool about the music of Duffrey, a conduit for the sounds of Miles Davis, Charlie Parker. From the laidback positivity of Honeysuckling to the spine-tingling glitch of Shred The Infinite, Duffrey’s crafted a unique vision of bass music.
Finishing the night with Kursa, I was reminded why I decided to produce electronic music. Kursa’s music is badass. A realization when he dropped Crushed from his Rain Legs EP. There’s no other way to describe the sheer power, force, and influence Kursa’s music has on the bass scene. The soundtrack to intergalactic warfare, sun death supernovas, underground uprisings, deep consciousness exploration. Proof? Check out Kursa’s new single with Philadelphia’s own Alicia Kiah featured on the violin. My kind of music, harsh, abrasive, yet sonically composed to perfection — the contrast of beautiful melodies, dark themes, and dubstep influence. Kursa, a pioneer of neurohop (subgenre of glitch hop, known for neuro bass, dark atmospheres, and hip hop/halftime tempos), is infinitely evolving, crystallizing solid production, and a master of any genre. Recently departing from bass supergroup K.L.O and record label Slug Wife, Kursa’s exploring new freedoms, possibly shifting the spotlight from the collective to the individual, while simultaneously launching “Plant Industry” a new label designated for collaborations under the Kursa alias, according to Riverbeats.life. While this bass-breakup may dishearten fans, I’d argue the proof’s in his discography. A subscription to Kursa’s Bandcamp is all the evidence to know this man’s on a mission with no end in sight. Amassing over one hundred and twenty projects,
I say, Let him cook.
A beautiful night from the Submersion team transitioned perfectly to Wednesday’s underground event, The Universal Emotion: The Verge 23. Traveling from Kursa’s crowded upstairs performance at Warehouse on Watts, to the tinier downstairs stage, crowds skimmed for an emerging underground experience.
Recently moving to Warehouse on Watts from Northern Liberties’ Kung Fu Necktie, The Universal Emotion is mounting success. This is attributed to show runner Joe Koidl, visual artist Tyme, and the Universal Emotion resident artists and crew.
New Jersey native Joe Koidl, DJ alias: Avrge Joe, founded The Universal Emotion during the COVID pandemic, live streaming bass music on twitch with artists like Mindwalker, Oni, Mindality, and Deez. Discovering a niche during the pandemic, Joe and collaborators continued hosting livestreams, eventually easing into “hybrid” (in-person/live stream) performances in late 2021, before bursting onto the scene after the pandemic’s conclusion.
With a stacked underground lineup including Tygris, Bandito Jones, and STARFOX, The Universal Emotion is ready to prove their contribution to the scene. Local DJs, musicians, and artists were all in attendance, DRO1D visuals, FREQ, Anumati, Wessanders, Inspect3r, photographer Kyle Ryan, and many more.
Only the Universal Emotion’s second event at Warehouse on Watts, and judging by the turnout, vibes are high.
Tygris (The Rust) demonstrated superb scratching abilities, incorporating elements of glitch hop over forward-thinking beats and kinetic drum and bass. Original while portraying extreme technical skill, Tygris resurrects the forgotten art of vinyl, blending elements of Tipper style distortions and nostalgic psychedelic soundscapes. His recent release, Shadow Box EP, demonstrates an ability to occupy the dance floor. However, the trick with Tygris is catching a live set — intuitive, in the moment, live scratching is priceless. With so much electronic music pre-rehearsed and scripted, Tygris is a breath of fresh air.
Bandito Jones displayed proficiency in reggaeton-dub influenced beats. Wailing reverbs, guitar samples, boom bap drums, funky and invigorating, with a summertime aura. “Ive been producing around ten years,” he said, “starts out as beep boop noises and eventually you find your way.” Words of advice for any new producers, myself included.
If you stumble across his 2024 Rendezvous Headnod mix, you’ll find yourself immersed in the funk-inspired, charismatic mindset of Bandito Jones, highly recommend, especially with summer on our doorstep. Did you grow up listening to Bob Marley, reggae, dub or UK dubstep? Bandito Jones is the next logical step.
The headliner, STARFOX, tripped audience members into a portal of deep neuro basses, jazzy exaltation, flexing mind melting brass on the dance floor. Blessed to experience favorites from his masterpiece The Nexus LP: Wub Potion Number 9, Open The Portal, and Welcome To Existence. STARFOX contrasts ethereal neuro and mind melting FX with the aid of his trumpet and saxophone, casting shamanic ballads into an ocean of rupturing bass lines. Portal hop, a self coined term for STARFOX’s style of wub — accurately defines his style of bass music, tripping into dimensions unknown. The performance was captivating, energetic, and boosted with Tygris vinyl-scratching and Wessanders guest encore appearance.
“Started my journey throwing acid parties in the deserts of California, just trying to keep the tradition going,” says STARFOX, also hinting at an EP sometime in the near future. “Clearing with management,” he said. We’ll be on the lookout! From outdoor lines, flocks of merchandise, and elbow packed crowds, to emerging scenes and vacant dance floors, the scene is alive and well. The common denominator? Community.
I encountered flashbacks of being crushed in crowds, eyes glowing on MDMA… Is this my sweat or somebody else? Memories of the 2010’s trap scene, Diplo, Vanic, hell I’ll admit to seeing Carnage and The Chainsmokers at Ohio University — gotta start somewhere? Unfortunately, there was hardly any room for dancing. The best features of underground shows being the ability to position yourself next to speakers, there’s always room to dance, plus the availability of likeminded individuals: People who actually care about the music.
It just so happened I reincarnated a typical electronic music pathway for bass heads — House, Trap and dubstep, to glitch hop and neuro, and into the experimental.
A right of passage to the evolving bass music scene.
After the show, Wessanders, The Rust spokesman of the night, stressed the significance of The Universal Emotion, “I have one favor: if everybody’s able to bring just one person to next months show, that’s one more person we can introduce to the scene. Joe’s trying to create something special here, something uniquely Philly and I think we should all get behind and offer support. At the end of the day its ours, its our community.”
The writing is on the wall — we’ve seen Bassnectar and Zedd’s Dead sell out the Hampton Coliseum, is that where the genre is headed? Las Vegas’ The sphere? I hope so, and for a couple reasons particularly. Bass music appeals to the senses, low frequencies rock bones and maneuver flesh. It’s a visceral experience – mind and body. With a spotlight on sub bass, the music translates a multidimensional listening experience, drawing attention to the repressed “feeling” sensation, touch. I imagine this is only the beginning of sensory based music?
Why should music be limited to the sensation of listening?
Have you ever seen the Futurama episode where Philip J. Fry learns the “Holophonor”, a combination of the Oboe and Holographic Projector? The instrument beams images and archetypes based on mood, tone, and rhythm, immersing the crowd into a spectacle of light, color, and sound. It is, after all, the future. But maybe the future isn’t so far? Shamans of bass music like Tipper, have mastered the art of transmuting bass across the human vessel, perfecting stage design, scavenging powerful sound systems, and curating frequencies particularly for the occasion.
A genre of music catered towards a live audience and sound systems — if you’re familiar with the Grateful Dead, a continuation of their ethos: a musical experience about “being in the moment”, creating community, familiar faces, the wall of sound, and the guidance of psychedelics. Can we deny the association with bass music and psychedelics any longer? In the spirit of the sixties revolution, bass music a similar, promising future of self expression and rebellion. A collective space to embark on the psychedelic journey, exploring consciousness and infiltrating the higher dimensions — unlocking clues for awakening.
After stumbling upon Tipper’s subreddit, I was surprised to read a majority of listeners reincarnating the lessons of their parents– following the Grateful Dead, spreading underground tapes/videos, following the act across the country — a family. A community based on forward thinking sounds, advancing technology in alignment with spiritual values, and an environment of acceptance, peace, love, and interconnectedness. With the addition of nature, a breathtaking venue to captivate the scenery, the final product is a bit…. Utopian. A peak into the possibility of the human spirit. Dissolving the walls of tribalism and personal trauma to breach the new age of existence — an existence of emotional transformation, breaking generational repetitions, building communal aid, and inspiring the search for truth. A return to the primordial sensation of “gut feeling” and intuition. The glitch hop scene (particurarly psychedelic) appears healthier, fitter, sexier than other scenes, even Friday’s dubstep show. Anything to do with the psychedelic influence on mindfulness and health choices?
Hoping the spotlight descends on healing. After all, it was substance abuse, personal trauma, and self-destruction, an inability to feel that cost the Grateful Dead everything – Jerry Garcia, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, Brent Mydland. A trickle down effect into a chaotic scene. Shit rolls downhill.
The Grateful Dead weren’t exclusive: Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Moon, Jim Morrison.
Does psychedelic bass music have the potential to learn the lessons of the turbulent sixties?
Since antiquity, individuals utilized sound waves as healing constructs, observing vibrational methods of tuning the body — Cymatics. Observed through sand or water when confronted with vibrational frequencies, the substances morph and sputter into geometric, crop circle-like shapes depending on frequencies. With our bodies comprised of three fourths water, energy, frequencies, and vibrations, electricity, wouldn’t the bass frequencies have a similar effect on the human body, the etheric body, the mind?
Are we subconsciously healing ourselves by attending bass shows?
Surfing the boardwalk, my thumbs slapped the shimmering reflection of my iPhone. Scrolling, searching for a song to captivate Ocean City, New Jersey on a sun-scattered, Sunday afternoon. Winds ricocheted against my black Nirvana t-shirt, hoodie around my waste, as I maneuvered through pockets of pedestrians embracing the unusually sunny, March day. The rays peered behind transparent clouds, illuminating a once barren boardwalk — elderly couples, families, dates, children, and surfers alike.
You may be familiar with this situation, scrolling through song after song, only to realize you’re stuck recycling the same playlists, the same artists, the same tracks: the most recently played. You’ll know when it happens, and if you’re like me, it’ll make you slightly uncomfortable.
“The world of music at my fingertips and I’m listening to the same Grateful Dead tape (Dick’s Pick 33: Oakland Coliseum October 9th -10th, 1976, highly recommend).”
The walk, an attempt to induce sleepiness and hunger, was grasping effect.
My stomach churned against the scent of boardwalk fries, oven baked pizza, melted mozzarella, and the brutal lines for ice cream.
“Maybe its time to head back?” I thought to myself, “I hardly have any cash to spend. Boardwalk’s expensive.”
True enough, I was dependent on my parents, something difficult to communicate or confess. Especially if you know my past, the lengths I exceeded to maintain financial independence from Mark and Betsy. Eventually landing in legal troubles, which unfortunately resorted in even more financial dependance.
I spent over three years grinding the restaurant industry during peak COVID: delivery driver, dishwasher, busser, runner, bartender, server, food prep.
During my time at Anthony’s, I was prepping ingredients, bartending, taking tables, running food, bussing, and cleaning the guest’s dishes, all in one shift. Essentially a one man show alongside a manager and general manager. Despite the hard work, I encountered a theme of narcissism and codependency that prevented any upward mobility, eventually being forced from job to job at high turnover restaurants. Does this have anything to do with my psychoanalytic education, anything to do with the fact I’m educated in why these managers and owners are burning down their restaurants in self-destruction?
Do they notice?
Am I perceived as a threat?
I asked my last manager during a heated argument and he never said no.
This is subject for an entire essay, so I’ll return shortly to discuss narcissism and codependency in the workplace.
Trouble with work and various life situations occurred, I was jumped on my birthday after an altercation, receiving a concussion and broken hand. A drunk driver totaled both cars while returning from Dead and Company, slamming my head multiple times against the roof and headrest, a confrontation between my prescription-pill-popping brother, his wife, and my parents where police and courts were summoned to clear the dust, and climaxing with a cockroach contaminated apartment.
I negotiate enough money to stay off the streets, feed myself, and continue working on my art — my chosen career field. I could’ve lived out of my car during the winter months, but actually found it moredifficult and moreworthwhile to negotiate support and avoid burning bridges.
A lesson I’ve been learning: How much are we able to accomplish with the help of our fellow man, how much easier would COVID have been if people and corporations actually assisted each other instead of accumulating profits?
However its a tense situation. I recently find myself in Ocean City due to lack of affordable housing near French Creek and the Poconos, my determined final resting place due to scenery and lack of people.
I have specific housing needs. My search for housing is a character arc itself extending from the age of five years old dealing with health issues, visiting countless primary care physicians, psychologist, psychiatrists, specialists, surgeries, inpatient, outpatient hospitalization. This is an incredibly personal journey, and I have to know what works best for me. I’ve already been forced to move from the last two locations in my life. So I’m sorry if I look like a rich kid on vacation right now, I have to know my self worth with the resources available. Like any businessman.
I will be returning to discuss abuse at the hands of the medical establishment, and resentment toward an upper-middle class upbringing. They are connected.
Walking for over an hour, my legs drudged over wooden planks, muscles tightening to my hips. Time to head back. I trudged along the boardwalk, allowing the salty breeze to clear my recently infected sinus’s — spying surfers in the distance.
They ambushed the pressing tides, whipping around storm drains and gulleys, washing up on sand-stained shores, crowds spectating in admiration.
In the corner of my eye, a bench protruded from the edge of the boardwalk, vacant, beckoning to melting thighs and aching feet. I placed myself against the wooden frame, enlisting the help of Alice In Chains to set the mood, MTV Live’s Unplugged. As Lane Staley’s hoarse, angst-embraced vocals soothed my ear drums, I heard a muffled vibration — a figure caught the corner of my eye.
“Whersav-Sdfaf—fd!”
“Huh?” I said, removing the earbud from submersion.
A bulky gentleman, five o’clock shadow, black sweatshirt over black sweatpants, worn tennis shoes, clutching a Dollar Tree plastic lunch-bag approached the boardwalk bench.
“You got the best seat in the house, I was here earlier. Bathroom.” he said hovering over the bench.
“Would you like me to move?”
“Nah man…It’s all good, best bench on the boardwalk. Five-O-One, Fifth Avenue, first bench — surfer’s bench,” he said taking a seat, “You know how to surf?”
“Can’t say that I do.”
“Usually we surf on the other side, but recently a lot of guys come here. I’m a big boy though, hardly fit into a wet suit anymore, gotta lose a couple pounds. Old man. Won’t catch me surfing near rocks and storm drains like these guys either. Young man’s game — didn’t mean to interrupt you. You can listen to your music.”
Half tempted to replace the ear bud, I sat frozen, aware of the possibility of conversation. A theme: encounters with strangers who shed light on specific ideas I’ve been ruminating in Modern Psychoanalysis. The crashing waves embraced a moment of silence, as the gentleman eyeballed Nirvana’s “In Utero” on my black t-shirt.
“I love the sixties, seventies, and eighties music man. The stuff that really rocks. The music they played at Woodstock; Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, The Who, Crosby, Still, Nash, and Young; guys like The Eagles, The Cars, ZZ Top, Peter Gabriel, Genesis, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Dire Straits…even Ravi Shankar… I saw his daughter play the sitar once — music where they actually care, ya know?”
Recently visiting Woodstock this summer, I jumped eagerly into the conversation.
“Favorite band?” I asked.
“Too many. Depends on the day, the mood. Anything with real intentions, where they care about the rock n roll. Something pure. I’ll go as far back as Earl Scruggs and some bluegrass, to Chuck Berry, early Rolling Stones — better than the newer stuff, maybe some Jethro Tull. Have you ever listened to their first album? Better.”
“Incredible, bluesy with the harmonica,” I said.
“Yeah man, and the flute— ‘My Sunday Feeling’. People don’t listen to that stuff, always the radio songs. What’s you name?”
“Nick, you?”
“Ronny…Ronny Longboard Shwartz.”
We shook hands.
“No ninety’s music?”
“Nirvana is too weird for me, but I like Alice in Chains.”
We discussed music for almost an hour. Favorite musicians, Woodstock, discographies, blues, bluegrass, the invention of the synthesizer, the history of Bruce Springsteen and Atlantic City surfer culture, racist banjo tunes of the twenties. After a lengthy conversation, my stomached roared. I was preparing to leave when Ronny divulged about growing up in Atlantic City, moving to Ocean City, promising never to return to casino stacked skies, escort muddled streets, cracked out corners.
“A small town with big city problems,” he said, “all thanks to those damn casinos. I remember when they first opened. We were there. At the ribbon cutting. How much good those did…” Ronny explained how casino culture killed his hometown, increased alcohol consumption, gambling addiction, drugs, crime. “I’ve lived a hard life. Everyone grew up with a skateboard, surfboard, and an instrument in their hands. First they traded it for a bottle of liquor, then a needle of heroin. Peer pressure, always. I never met my dad. Called a Vegas gambling missionary and found him there, never met him. I don’t need that in my life right now.”
“You sure know a hell of a lot about music, did you get into a music career?”
“Nahh…Not exactly. Just day by,” said Ronny.
“Certainly know quite a bit. Who got you into music?”
“Myself. I was the lead singer of a band too.”
“Play any gigs?”
“Ha! Hardly, garage band. Just some local guys having a good time.”
Ronny focused on the surfers floating against the tide as a bicyclist slammed his breaks, eyeing Ronny from the throne of his bicycle — Tour de France bike suit and all.
“Yo Ronny, what’s good my man?”
“Yo, buddy. How are we today?”
“Good man,” said the bicyclist, “Haven’t seen you at ACME in a bit. You still over there?”
“Nahhh, I got fired.”
“Anyway you can get your job back? I’m sure they’re looking for every dick they can find!”
“Yeah,” Ronny said, Yeah.”
The bicyclist departed after a brief intrusion, as Ronny sat perched against the wooden bench, accompanied by his Dollar Tree lunch bag. The seagulls chirped overhead, casting shadows that whipped the wooden planks. Ronny continued.
“I don’t believe in religion,” he began, “religion is nonsense, controlling.” Ronny shifted toward me, hesitating. “You wanna hear something crazy?” Peering over each shoulder, Ronny paused. “ I guess I’ll just say it…. Fuck it, Despite everything I know there’s something up here,” Ronny circled the left side of his head with a finger, pointing to the empty space joining his ear. “I don’t know what it is…I was walking beneath the spot where my friend’s brother died, killed by lightning, leader of the local Neo Nazi’s, electrician. I don’t go back there often, but when I do, sometimes I feel him.”
Ronny hesitated for a moment, discovered I was still listening and continued.
“My friends are dead. I survived and I owe it to whatever this is,” Ronny pointed toward the empty space next to his head, signaling towards the other. “A hand grabbing my neck, telling me to go over there, stay away from that, ignore that, no, over here, idiot…. Sometimes it feels like my dead friends, my mother who recently passed, sometimes it feels like this one woman…”
“What woman,” I asked confused.
Ronny paused before removing a black brick from his hoodie pocket, a relic from the past, a flip phone. “Don’t mind me. I’m high energy, low tech.” He searched through his phone, returning the screen with a black and white, Marilyn Monroe-esque, photograph of a woman posing, faded, circa 1960’s?
“I don’t even use streaming services for music, just YouTube on my broken laptop, but here she is… I saw her photograph one day and decided to call her, let her know how much I appreciated her early work… before it got smutty and risqué. Not a fan of the slutty pictures. She wasn’t really there when I called her… dementia… I mean the photograph was thirty-forty years prior but I let her know. I’d call her from time to time, found her number online. When she passed away, I could feel her along with the others.”
Ronny pointed to his ear once more.
When Ronny mentioned the smutty picture and his preference toward purity, he provided a perfect example for the Madonna Whore Complex — the inability to view a woman as BOTH a caring, compassionate wife and sexual partner. Did you know a great portion of men are unable to perform sexually after they marry their wives? This is known as the Madonna-Whore Complex, stemming from the infant’s attempt at preserving the innocence of the primary caregiver. Melanie Klein, prominent psychoanalyst discovered that during breast feeding, a child would bite, tear, and punish only one breast; while finding great comfort and admiration in the second breast.
A ‘good breast’ and a ‘bad breast’ resemble the infant’s attempt to split the identity of the caregiver into two polarizing identities, bad and good instead of a multidimensional human, somebody who isn’t perfect. This occurs when the child’s emotional and physical needs are unmet and the child becomes overwhelmed with negative emotion. Instead of blaming the caregiver, the child splits the caregiver into two separate identities to preserve the child’s identity of the caregiver.
This phenomena translates to incredible problems in society. For example, one of my major inspirations in life, Ken Kesey, suffered from a Madonna Whore Complex. How? Maybe it had something to do with Mountain Girl, the young teenager who slept with Kesey during the Electric Kool Aid Acid years, who conceived his child while Kesey had a wife and family at home. In Tom Wolfe’s book, Faye Kesey is continuously projected as this Mary Magdalen, do-no-wrong, woman duty-fulfilling, child rearing housewife. However, Kesey seems unsatisfied, searching for an emotional outlet in teenagers. Mountain Girl and Kesey eventually split, leaving Kesey’s child to be raised by Jerry Garcia. While Kesey is pushing consciousness, spirituality, and a higher plane of existence, he’s simultaneously caught inside a childhood repetition which endangers the family model. Behavior that encourages the repetition of the Oedipal Complex, as Kesey’s children are witness.
The Oedipal Complex foreshadows difficulties with gender identification, the feminization of men, infantilization of children, preference of narcissistic love objects, and overall is a nuisance to developing society.
If you’re like me, you accidentally made a whore a housewife — Women who constantly look for sexual escape, incapable of unconditional love, bouncing from love interest to love interest, narcissistic. Were these girlfriend’s capable of providing real, unconditional love and support? In one example, the cheating, ghosting, and abandonment of our six year relationships should be the indicator. However, unconsciously this is what I was looking for: unloving women to debase and dominate as a sexual object, an oedipal revenge against a mother figure from childhood. The act of physically controlling a woman for a moment and casting her aside to prevent any vulnerabilities. Many times after having sex with a girlfriend or any woman, I’d feel a compulsion to drive her home, tell her to leave, go to sleep, even break up with her.
I also had trouble masturbating while thinking about certain women, as if I were “degrading them” or making them “unworthy”. One woman for sex, another for the home.
However, most relationships, I’d find myself sleeping with a woman only to run away until it was time for sex. Tinder and dating apps were incredibly enabling. It’s not proud behavior, but its a defense mechanism against my sociopathic mother — a subconscious recognition that women are possibly dangerous and must be treated as such.
My grandfather, when acting out during his marriage with my sociopathic grandmother (history repeats), brought his affairs to the dinner table. Literally.
In an act of self-destruction, my grandfather would actually bring his mistresses home and introduce them to the family. This is a revenge act against women in general, using them as objects, but especially my sociopathic grandmother — along with a cry for help. I grew up hearing about how my grandfather was a narcissisticasshole, a piece of shit who cared more about sex and himself than anything else, but after psychoanalysis, I believe my grandfather had a Madonna-Whore Complex — married to somebody with absolutely no ability for love or compassion — trapped with a sadist, looking for a way out.
It’s important to identify how narcissists and codependents share similar behaviors when self-destructing. The analysis of the self, family history, individual personalities, and individual behaviors allows access to the full picture. Without a properly trained analyst, somebody skilled in understanding resistances and unconscious motives, history may be lost.
Ronny also mentioned his skinhead friend who died from lightning (what are the odds). This provides evidence for the root of scapegoating, tribalism, and prejudice within the “the good” and “the bad” breasts. An infant will exemplify the same splitting behavior, not just within women, but races, religions, anything. Even how Ronny kept explaining every artist’s first releases were “better than the rest”.
Ronny’s automatically classifying a specific release as better than “the other” releases, solely based on order of releases. While I won’t disagree, AC/DC’s ‘Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap’ is a great album, is it better than Back in Black?
Jethro Tull’s ‘This Was’, more inspirational than ‘Aqualung’?
Suppose there’s no right answer, music is subjective, right?
Do you see the “This vs. That” mentality, at least?
How about the voices in his head?
It could’ve been easy to laugh at Ronny when discussing the orb of voices encircling his skull providing him with proper guidance, the deceased friends and family, the woman from the photograph, Raquel. However, Ronny didn’t explain the situation with a psychotic gibber jabber, he didn’t break from reality, he didn’t form word salad. You may be familiar with these phenomena if you’ve ever encountered a psychotic episode. Ronny carefully explained his perspective of intuition, listening to the inner voice, staying alive, and why he’s the sole survivor from his friend group, a burden he carried like the plastic Dollar Tree lunch bag.
It became more apparent when I tried to leave, and every time I said goodbye he rang me into the conversation. A man who’s lived a difficult life, few family, dead friends; freshly fired from his ACME day job, living vicariously through a group of young surfers in a body too big for a surf board. But a shimmer of light sparked from the corner of his eye, a relaxation when speaking, and a smile that hugged his prickly, oval face. A stranger, but no stranger to strangers.
“I’ve really gotta go.” I said, stomach twisting, eyelids cement.
“No worries, about time I hit the bathroom again. Been a couple hours. Just stay up, man. Don’t let anything or anybody get you down. You wanna learn how to surf, I’ll be here. Five-oh-one, baby.” He jumped from the bench, standing tall against the Atlantic City skyline lingering in the distance.
“One last thing,” I asked Ronny, “ Shwartz, what is that?”
“Hundred percent German baby!”
“Sounds like something out of Space Balls.”
Ronny sighed, “Never was a movie guy… more into music… Especially a movie where the yudin are tryna make a few bucks off a guy like me.”
A laugh struck me by surprise.
We shook hands under the flocking seagulls, amongst the first crowds of the beach season, basking in a beautiful spring afternoon.
“I’ll catch you later man!” I said, “thanks for the music suggestions!”
Amongst the crowds Ronny punched two fingers into the sea breeze, the sign of horns and bellowed,
“Keep rocking and rolling, Remember Ronny….Ronny Longboard Shwartz!”
One final attempt. The paper plate fluttered against moist embers, casting dust and debris into brisk winter winds. I gasped and heaved for ignition – praying for the wet wood to spark. A source to cook my dinner. Nothing. Glancing around the campgrounds, there was no escaping the record rains and flooded waterways engulfing French Creek State Park. I was forced to comply with the flooded conditions and recently purchased, sponge-soaked firewood. Great. The sun crawled beneath the prickled tree-line, drowning in a moonlit sky.
Time was against me. Darkness and no flame. Hungry.
A collision sounded from the adjacent cabin, penetrating a thin wooden frame. An argument, shaking the serenity of the cabin campgrounds. Minding my own business, I tended to the miserable fire, embers fizzling and smoke ascending amongst the onslaught of recycled forest droplets.
Too wet, I thought, screams reverberating against towering trees, Just my luck.
Glaring into the blackened logs, defeated, I examined the medical marijuana container resting on the picnic table. Removing the cap from the glass enclosure, a boulder slammed the pit of my stomach. The concentrated cannabis, welcoming with its fruity essence and sparkling aura, was replaced by scentless, microscopic specks.
No weed, no fire, and a choir of shrieks from the neighboring cabin.
I should’ve planned more efficiently, I thought, wasted time bouncing from storage unit, to hotel, to campground, to storage unit, to Facebook Marketplace buyer, to post office. Christ. How could I fuck this up?
Spending my days bouncing across southeastern Pennsylvania, I was exhausted and overstimulated, exchanging hotels and state park reservations in attempts to cut costs from vacating my recent cockroach-ridden apartment. Selling items from my storage unit to fund the expedition, asking family for assistance. Hotels are expensive right now, and if you manage to find something cheap? Good luck, there seems to be a bed bug and cockroach infestation sweeping the hospitality industry, even found them during my stay at Nockamixon State Park. Walking into a hotel without reading Google reviews is a job best suited for the Men In Black.
Do I drive to Pottstown? I pondered, while examining the empty marijuana container. I’d rather not, I just spent the entire day driving. Maybe I’ll just make ramen noodles or a PB&J? I should have something laying around he—
“Hey, what’s going on over here?” Expecting my conflict-stricken neighbor from the adjacent cabin, I was surprised to see a stranger, smile emanating from his beard, one hand outstretched, another entombed in a winter coat.
“Over here?” I asked, eyeballing the dysfunctional cabin behind him.
Did he mean the yelling?
“Trouble with the fire? Hey, my name’s John.” The outstretched hand maneuvered into my grip, as we shook hands underneath the moist canopy.
“Saw you over here, thought I’d say hello. I just moved down here a couple days ago. Scouted the area beforehand. Not bad.”
“Nick,” I said, shaking John’s hand.
“How long have you been out here? I asked a few other campers, varying answers. That guy over there, he told me he’s here on weekends. The couple next to me… they’ve been camping in a tent for months. Husband’s a manager at Turkey Hill. Looks cold in that tent.”
“Whenever there’s vacancy,” I said, pointing towards the rented cabin.
“How much?”
“The same as full hook up, minus the running water.”
“That’s not too bad. Yeah, my wife and I are splitting up,” the man interjected, “I’m out here with my camper. It’s not entirely winterized, but it’ll get the job done. Let me know if I’m being too much. People tell me I’m too much. Might be on the spectrum, a bit.”
“Sorry to hear,” I said, how long have you been together? The man shifted confidently in my direction, eyes shimmering behind a pair of glasses.
“Its okay, its my fault. It’s always my fault. I’m a bit difficult. Ten years…. I told you, if you’d prefer I leave, just say somethi — Hey, you need help with your fire?”
Smoke-stained logs peered from the fire ring, as the wind slapped our winter coats. Eyeballing the defeated logs, I asked,
“What do you have?”
“Yeah, one second, I’ll be right back. Is that okay?”
“Sure,” I stood watching as the man bolted from the cabin site, descending into the darkness of night. When he returned, John placed a six pack of Lagunitas IPA’s, folded cardboard, and a handheld device shaped like a butane torch.
“Wanna see something cool?” John ignited a switch on the handheld device, delivering a roar, which suctioned the nearby air, and dispensed punishing winds onto the ember-soaked logs. Flames embraced the wood, snapping against damp tree bark, mounting the steel enclosure. Fire.
“What the hell is that?” I asked, glancing toward the pistol shaped device.
“Multi-purpose air gun, useful for air mattresses and campfires. Want a beer?”
John passed me the Lagunitas, which I accepted.
“Are you hungry? I’ve got campfire nachos.”
“Absolutely,” he said, “But if I’m being obnoxious or taking up your time, just let me know, okay?”
I agreed, spreading tortilla chips, dicing jalapeños, green peppers, olives, and onions; scattering nacho cheese, cheddar, salt, pepper, a layer of taco seasoning. To compensate for the lack of protein, I doubled the portion of vegetables, tossing the cast-iron tray over the flames.
We discussed state parks, national forests, backpacking the Appalachian trail.
John’s an outdoorsman, spent much of his childhood camping with his family, later investing in his own camper, his home currently.
“From outside Reading,” John said, “I’ve been all over the area, but surprisingly never to French Creek.” Words arrived easily, comfortably for John, who found no worries divulging personal information to a total stranger. “We had three miscarriages, my wife and I. Maybe it’s a sign from the universe, right?” John peered into the campfire nachos, cheese fusing and bubbling amongst the heat. “I mean, I’m not easy to be with.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know. I’m antsy, a bit intense. You know… you can tell. I’m difficult.”
It was true, John was a bit intense, extroverted, but was he menacing? Did his personality threaten me with the possibility of theft or violence? While I admit, I didn’t let him into my cabin… this was a rule of mine, no strangers in my bedroom —
I didn’t feel threatened. The man offered me beer and fire while essentially homeless during the impending winter months. In fact, he played a role I was all too familiar with: The self-attacking, low self-esteem, blame-taking codependent.
John was most likely confronted with a narcissist. How?
From his living situation, to the constant “I’m difficult”, the beers he explained he carries backpacking, the smile plastered to his cheeks, there appeared to be somebody in John’s life he had difficulty confronting, at the least.
“What do you do for work?” He asked.
“Restaurants, figuring it out ” I said, what about you?”
“Interesting,” he said, eyeballing my Honda Accord Hybrid parked in the cabin lot, “I’m a teacher.”
“Teacher? I come from a family of teachers. What do you teach?”
John took a swig from his amber beer bottle, eyes lingering against the flames.
“Pre-crime, a high school over in Reading.”
“Pre-crime, what the hell is that?” I inquired, picturing Tom Cruise from Minority Report, pre-cognitives floating in water, high tech surveillance gadgets.
“Reading’s gotten bad over the years. Real bad. Ghetto as shit. Where are you from? You said outside Philadelphia? So you know.”
Picturing the town of Media, Pennsylvania, A Christmas town, string lights illuminating State Street, the families in fifty thousand dollar SUVs, fastened designer bags, eight dollar beers. The homeless living in their cars behind Double Decker Pizza.
I shrugged, “Depends”.
“A lot of our kids are high risk for gangs, violence, jail and prison. Its a program designed for troublemakers.”
“Really, does it work?”
“Sort of, hard to say. Eh, Usually not. You have to know how to deal with troubled kids. They all have something to prove, they all want to look cool in front of their peers. You know how you handle them?”
“How?” I asked.
John emptied the beer bottle down his esophagus.
“You gotta give them a taste of their own medicine!” He chuckled, “they tell you to go fuck yourself, you send it straight back.”
“That works?”
“It works better than getting pushed around. It’s a balancing act.”
John didn’t know it, but he was channeling psychoanalytic insight.
Dr. Hyman Spotnitz, founder of Modern Psychoanalysis, developed a method for dealing with narcissists and patients called “eliciting the toxoid response”.
Spotnitz confronted patients while mirroring a caregiver or primary object within the patients past, beckoning an emotional response normally suppressed. The patient’s confrontation with their analyst bridges the unconscious material hindering their emotional progress. For example, an analyst may talk over the patient during session, tell them their ideas are silly and incompetent, show little interest in their session, or even mimic the patient.
The analyst attempts to embody a primary object or relationship from the patient’s life, or even the patient themselves.
What is the analyst looking for? A response.
Spotnitz believes repressed emotions, primarily negative emotions like anger, are trapped within the individual’s psyche. When the patient is confronted with the analysts behavior, they may eventually feel compelled to express themselves. The expression and identification of emotional triggers ultimately heals the patient over time by reverting them to the “pathological state”, the mirroring of situations and responses that molded the patient’s neurosis and illnesses. The patient exorcises unconscious, negative emotions, and directs them to the frontal lobe of awareness, and back onto the analyst. Energy may not be created or destroyed, only transferred and transformed. Law of thermodynamics.
Have you seen David Fincher’s Netflix show Mindhunters? The show resembles John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker, FBI investigators from the emerging serial crime unit. While interviewing narcissistic, sociopathic, and psychopathic serial killers, the investigators become strikingly aware their conventional methods of communication fail to achieve results. Finally, the investigator played by Jonathan Goff attempts a different approach. He asks the prison guards to remove the shackles of notorious serial killer Ed Kemper, building trust between the killer and the investigator. The investigator proceeds to engage in lively conversation, asking Kemper how good it felt to murder those women, to defile, and embarrass their corpses. Instead of treating Kemper like a specimen, he forms a relationship, prying into the killer’s mind, allowing him to talk, and going as far as ordering pizza for interviews with Kemper. Investigators discovered a tight-rope when confronting narcissists, a tug of war between asserting dominance and allowing the imprisoned killer to talk freely.
Confrontation is imperative in modern psychoanalytic thought. When the patient first arrives in treatment, they do not view the analyst as a separate human being. The analyst first allows the patient to speak uninterrupted, forming a closeness in identification to the patient, dissolving the ego boundaries between the two. After many sessions, the analyst will provoke the toxoid response in order to assist the patients emotional outlet, to exemplify and initiate confrontation, to identify the separation between analyst and patient — to gain awareness of the suppressed emotion and the origin. This process of confrontation mimics the identification of self in childhood, predominately because a child’s ego first identifies with the primary object, eventually developing an individual sense of self through healthy maturation, through the freedom to discover and explore their own personal interests.
Have you ever met a child in the midst of the terrible twos? This is the child exercising their new knowledge of separation. They are saying “No” because they can.
“No” is the beginning of the child’s understanding they exist outside the primary object, caregiver, typically mother. A “No” is an establishment of the self. Improper understanding of this troublesome developmental stage may further repress the child’s developing sense of self. A caregiver may misdiagnose the child’s actions as “bad behavior”, instead of allowing the child to negatively express themselves, rationally.
Issues with this developmental phase may fracture the child’s identity or even cause gender dysphoria, especially if the child exhibits closeness with the identification of a specific parent. This is one reason why two parent households are so important, the child, especially a male, breaks their identification from the primary object, and requires an exemplary member of the opposite sex to solve the Oedipus Complex — the lust for the primary object. More often, the child mistakenly assumes responsibility for their parents emotions, becoming parent (people) pleasers, neglecting their own emotional needs for the needs of the caregiver.
(Another blog post about transgenderism soon).
While FBI investigators fell under increased scrutiny for ‘conversing’, ’entertaining’, and confronting societies worst, they eventually discovered a useful modality for conjuring informative interviews, along with a theme of harsh, conditionally loving mothers amongst serial killers —Ed Kemper, who engaged in sexual intercourse with his mother’s severed head.
Removing the cast-iron tray from bursting flames, I placed the campfire nachos on the wooden picnic table. Nacho cheese popped and geysered steam into our nostrils. We sorted tortilla chips onto paper plates, cracked fresh cans of beer, and sat by the fire’s warmth.
“So you come from a family of teachers?” John asked.
“Father is a lawyer for Thomas Jefferson university, both grandpa’s were local law/political science professors, grandma was an English teacher and guidance counselor, other grandma is a pastor, Aunt is a math teacher, cousin is a professor of music at North Carolina – Greensboro, Uncle and Aunt were professors at University of Toronto.”
“Wow, that’s pretty cool. I mean, what are the chances? Me, a teacher, meeting a descendent of teachers, in the middle of the woods, like this?”
A chill ascended my spine, tickling behind my ears, radiating to the top of my head. A reminder, that despite the cockroaches, despite the conflicts with my family, despite the financial ruin, the near homelessness, I’m right where I’m supposed to be: Tucked beneath the stars of Appalachia, munching home cooked campfire nachos, sipping Lagunitas beer, and sharing the company of a stranger during hard times.
“Ahh shit,” I said, glancing at the time projecting from my iPhone.
“What’s that?”
“Any dispensaries open at this hour?”
John excavated the trenches of his coat pocket, removing a black USB-shaped device.
“Here you go,” he said, “puff it long and hard brother. Live resin… yeah, yeah.. high school teacher smoking pot. It should be legal. Better than drinking. Seriously.”
Removing the device from John’s grip, I noticed the cannabis insignia painted across the black battery, medical marijuana, and live resin at that!
“Do you like teaching?” I asked, pressing the marijuana cartridge to my lips.
John glared into the fire-pit, a smile wiped his beard and without hesitating he responded,
“I love it.”
My lungs exhaled the herbal vapors which protruded against the moonlit evening, against the glow of the roaring flames.
The night was quiet and still and I was full and stoned.
Slam. A steel door penetrated an uncanny moment of hotel silence, awakening anticipated sleep, and plunging me into the chaos of shared living. Fumbling in the darkness, eyes scanning, I realized nobody entered the room. A fear when living in public spaces. A real fear. One “housekeeping” away. Trust me.
An ensemble of slamming steel doors thundered from the hallway, as truckers, vacationers, and passing strangers vacated their rooms. Holiday remnants.
Reaching for my iPhone, I peered at the clock unfazed. Ten o ‘clock in the morning. Early….erhhh no…late… difficult to say when forced captive by insomnia. Life becomes a game of addition, mounting individual hours of sleep in the holy attempt to gain a full night’s rest, usually unsuccessfully.
Glancing around the hotel room, a relaxation caught my breath, replaced by gnawing frustration. Why am I here, what am I doing, what the fuck?
At least I knew who to blame. For what? For moving into a cockroach-ridden apartment, which my landlord Julie Calboli knew before signing the lease. How did she know? It definitely wasn’t the cockroach gel left in the closet, or the clogged drains with battery-operated flood alarms, or the broken-decaying dishwasher with moldy vegetable specs, or the dilapidated oven, or neighbors claiming “the bugs are better than before”, or her refusal to ever meet face to face, stating “this has never happened before”… from afar.
Morgantown, eight minutes outside French Creek State Park, cordially became home after an exodus and months of location hopping – and it’s not perfect. Weekends are bombarded with sport teams, drifters, and the attached expo center magnetizes crowds across the state. The increased foot traffic means the increased slamming of doors. Typically begins around six-thirty in the morning and ends around four o’clock in the afternoon.
A recipe for disaster when dealing with insomnia.
Why don’t you just go home? Home. Sure, and simultaneously sacrifice any emotional well-being for the comfort of my sociopathic mother and codependent father. Yeah, that’s a great idea. I’m sure nothing can go wrong. I’m sure my physical and emotional health won’t pay the toll. I’m sure they haven’t all ready.
Too many emotional and physical scars to return. A sentence to insanity at best.
The gaslighting, physical abuse to animals, invasion of privacy; the constant games of mental chess, unlimited lies, fear of retribution, and the wire-rope of conditional love. The pettiness of discovering your chargers unplugged from power strips.
I’m good.
Awoken for the fourth time, bloodshot eyes, fingernails digging trenches, I yanked my phone from the table and took to social media. An outlet for my anger – An immediate, short form response compared to the screwdriver forehead-fracturing tactics of blogging. I honestly do not enjoy writing. Lets make this clear. God, I’ve been avoiding it. With everything I have. Fuck. However, unfortunately for me, I believe I’ve encountered a few opportunities to communicate a story. Not entirely my story, but the stories of people I’ve encountered on the road. They individually mirror a theme or person(s) from my life, ideas and archetypes I’ve encountered during my process with modern psychoanalysis.
This healing process: modern psychoanalysis, simultaneously ignited the fiercest conflicts I’ve ever known alongside the liberation of my unconscious mind.
A natural reaction, the mind becomes aware of the programmings of the programmer. Does this always warrant a negative reaction, well how malignant and improper were the programmings? And how nearby are these people during this process of unravelling?
Unfortunately, in my case, the parental programming was malignant, improper, and the unraveling process took place within my parent’s household… primarily during COVID. Confronting my sociopathic mother and codependent father is the greatest life altering situation I’ve encountered, and I’ve fought a lengthy prison sentence for a nonviolent drug crime.
Punching the purple Instagram icon, my thumbs ambushed the internet. Drawing from my discussions about narcissism, I posted various public messages regarding the unconscious presence of narcissistic personality disorder, the absence of a biological cure, and the subsequent invasion of our families and institutions.
I pounded keys furiously, projecting my anger regarding forced living conditions into the heart of what I thought to be the problem. Narcissism. A biological surrender to the frustrations accumulated within a child typically two years and younger – when negative emotions have no escape, where do they go? Dr. Hyman Spotnitz believes negative emotions, primarily anger, are hopelessly redirected back onto the child’s ego. This tornado of anger and self-destruction formulates a spectrum of narcissism, ranging from healthy perceptions of the self, to the self-destructing codependent, or to the egregious desolate depths of the malignant narcissist, psychopath, and sociopath – A dense self-hatred projected against the world.
The structural basis of narcissism being what? Repression, mainly. An inability to discharge negative emotions. Trapped psychic energy. Instead of being met with love, compassion, understanding, nurturing, an opportunity for self-expression, the child is confronted with an apathetic energy, uncaring, short of patience, demanding, or even downright unreliable. Relationship and career conflicts may also intervene with proper attention and development, preventing the child from meeting their emotional or physical needs. When the frustration or anger is unable to be communicated, the energy becomes trapped within the psyche. This is a lesson in the law of thermodynamics, Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred and transformed.
With my psychoanalytic education and my own distaste toward my current state of affairs, I decided to declare my unconscious conscious. Posting images littered with my psychoanalytic insights and personal history, I rejoiced in the revenge for my lost sleep.
Concluding my doctoral thesis, I grabbed my bong and medical marijuana, heading for the designated smoking section adjacent to the hotel. Finding a spot on the curb, I finished my post before getting medicated for the day. Still attached, I know.
Cementing myself to the concrete, I punctuated my final phrases for a few instagram followers and prepared to smoke the cannabis leaves, watching as a family unpacked from their travels. My thumb hovered over the “SEND button” as the doors breached open to the parking lot. A woman jolted from behind reflecting glass doors, blonde hair hooding her eyes, an inside-out sweatshirt stitched to her frail figure. The woman lit a cigarette, and the family headed inside.
Pressing “SEND” on my iPhone, I observed as she inhaled and tip-toed to the curb, positioning herself next to me. Exhaling the cigarette smoke, she brushed dirty blonde hair from her face and asked,
“What are you running from?”
“Is that the vibe I give off?”
The woman inched closer, exhaling cigarette smoke, which surfed the breeze directly into my face.
“I’m running,” she said.
“From what…”
“From my abusive husband…”
A crimson crust protruded from her nostril, bloody, battered.
“Are you okay?” I pulled the medical marijuana closer, nervous, observing her slender fingers like twigs clutching the cigarette upright.
“No… I’m running. I’m not going to stop,” she said.
“And how far do you think you’ll get?”
She didn’t answer, instead she sat idle, glaring into winter’s leafless horizon.
A silence lingered.
“What’s your name?” She asked.
“Nick, you?”
“Audrey”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
She didn’t answer. Silence.
“I’m getting a PFA, she said.
“Protection from abuse,” I said, “are you getting that done here, at the courthouse?”
(I only just recently learned about PFA’s, and I’ll have another blog directly related to my brother and his wife filing a false PFA and hospitalization against me).
She didn’t answer so we sat in silence.
“Do you have kids?” she asked.
“No…” I answered.
“Then how could you EVER know what I’m going through?”
“I guess I don’t….” I responded, as she turned away disgusted.
“Where are your kids,” I asked.
“With my husband.”
“Umm, are they safe?” I asked confused.
“Yes,” she said confidently, before a frown smeared her lips.
“How many kids do you have?”
“Three…”
“And you’re sure they’re safe?”
“Yes,” she repeated annoyed.
An alarm sounded in the caverns of my subconscious, a tiny alarm. If your husband was abusive, why would you leave your three children behind? Why would you leave on your own… to find help?
And why so secretive, sketchy, and annoyed about topics you’re bringing up. You approached me after-all.
The man, previously unpacking the car with his family and wearing a Kutztown Cannabis Festival t-shirt, exited the hotel doorway. He noticed my attempted disposal of the bong, but reassured me, “It’s all good brotha,” before igniting a one hitter in the passenger seat of his Dodge SUV.
“I’m going to start running again, maybe right now,” she said, dramatically dropping her cigarettes and lighter, stumbling into the parking lot, and vanishing behind a row of parked cars.
In her disappearance, the gentleman and I discussed medical marijuana and the Kutztown Cannabis Festival. The contrast in energy between the woman and the gentleman were palpable. The upbeat, fuzzy intoxication of marijuana versus the cold, dire, and ominous situation presented by the woman. Talking to the gentleman, I noticed the lighter and full pack of cigarettes. She’d be returning. Do I leave? I took a picture of the cigarettes and placed a follow up post on Instagram regarding my strange encounter. Where’s the connection, abuse? Slightly intrigued, I decided to smoke a bowl of marijuana.
I’m in the middle of a scene, I thought filtering seeds and stems with my thumbs, and pounding diamond laced-gooey leaves into the glass slide. Ken Kesey would be proud.
The discovery of the film, the scene within our own lives, and the cannabis too.
I began to smoke but was viciously interrupted.
“You asshole!” The woman descended upon me, arms extended, fists flailing, tearing at my hoodie.
“What?”
The woman reemerged, striking me by surprise, hands clasping my wrists, tugging close…and closer.
“You asshole… just… hold me,” forcing my arms to the side, Audrey closed her eyes, maneuvering her lips closer to mine.
“Whoa, whoa… what’s going on here?”
“Please… just come closer. Hold me. Kiss me. Please…” Alcohol vaporized my nostrils as I carefully pushed the woman away.
“Hold on, what’s going on. Is this the best idea?”
Frustrated, the woman pulled herself away.
“Why won’t you kiss me? Is it because I’m ugly?”
“No it’s just – ”
“Then why won’t you kiss me? Please.”
“How about we sit here and smoke instead? I’ll keep you company.”
I positioned myself next to the lighter and pack of cigarettes.
“What?” She answered disgustedly, “COME HERE,” the woman said throwing herself into my lap, melting, burrowing her head into my chest, yanking me to the warmth of her limp body.
“Will you come up to my room with me?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I responded, gazing nervously into the parking lot.
“Please,” she said while clutching both of my legs.
“Its just — ”
“You don’t want to sleep with me because I’m ugly.”
“Trust me, its not that. I’d love to sleep with you, I just don’t think its a good idea. It’s early, why don’t you go back to bed?”
“I’m literally asking you to go to bed with me.”
“Yeah but… without me….”
The woman snuggled into my being, alcohol permeating the winter breeze. An overwhelming desire to comfort Audrey ignited my veins. A desire to hold her tightly, to reassure her, to place a kiss atop her forehead. The desire for a man to be with a woman, to provide and care for her, and yes, with the possibility for sex. It’s been years since I’ve really been with a woman, four, maybe five years? I discontinued relationships and dating to focus on myself and the analytical process, to eradicate myself of codependencies and the Madonna Whore Complex (blog coming soon).
Of course I miss sex, who doesn’t?
In the intensity of the moment, I snatched my bong and held it to my chest. A shield. An escape. The alcohol stung my nostrils and watered my eyes.
“Are you coming up with me?” Through frazzled blonde locks, the woman peered at me with puppy dog eyes, a whimpering scarred lip, and the crimson crusted nostril.
“I’m sorry….” I said.
Immediately she unfastened herself from my embrace, snatched the pack of cigarettes, the lighter, and stumbled for the glass doorway, departing as quickly as she arrived.
I stood, seemingly naked in the brisk winter breeze, bong clutched in my hand pants down.
The realization dawned on me, quite suddenly, that I’ve met this woman before. I’ve lived with her, and therefore I’ve all ready slept with her. The ghosty white flesh, slender frail figure, menthol cigarette sucking, succubus. An ex-girlfriend.
During my furious posts to Instagram I mentioned narcissism, sociopathy, psychopathy, but I failed to mention another Cluster B personality disorder, borderline personality, BPD. And here arrives the universe with a dangerous and callous reminder.
If you’re familiar with The Sopranos, you’re familiar with borderline personality disorder. Tony’s god awful, wreck of a mother who auditions herself as the star of every tragedy. Gloria: Tony’s short-term mistress with an erratic, drama dependent, conflict-causing, seemingly irrational personality. Gloria in particular, who literally stalks trouble, following Tony’s mob-boss wife, chucking roast beef at his skull, and the never ending supply of temper tantrums, the “why me?” After intentionally sparking conflicts.
Borderline personality is a “splitting disorder” where people are viewed as entirely “all good” or “all bad”. This is a defense mechanism developed during childhood against a difficult primary object. The child divides the primary object (typically mother) into two separate classifications which extends from the child’s perception of the mother during breast feeding. The “good” mother and the “bad” mother… the “good” breast and the “bad” breast. This theory was developed by psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, who observed how the child preserves the image of the primary object through a process known as “splitting”. Important to note that one doesn’t require borderline personality disorder to exemplify “split thinking”.
“Jews run the world”, “All Muslims are terrorists”, “Trump supporters are racist Nazis, “Democrats are paedophiles,”. These are examples of mislabeling an entire group of people based on tribal classifications. His tribe…bad! My tribe… good! Tribalism.
When dating somebody with borderline personality, you fluctuate between being a savior, hero, and dream partner to dictator, tyrant, and abuser. One of the most prominent weapons utilized by somebody with borderline personality disorder is sex.
The amount of phone calls and sit-downs I received from friends regarding how my girlfriend was cheating, the spontaneous fights causing her to “disappear” for days on end, only to find she’s been shacked up with somebody new and temporary, the sexting on snapchat, the “don’t worry about him”, the refusal of sex for months even years, and especially intense fights before intense physical sex.
Many times this would be an act of self-destruction, especially right before a vacation, concert, or birthday. The borderline person has a “splitting” disorder, which means they have a problem connecting, just like somebody was unable to connect with them as a child. Borderline individuals mimic a childhood revulsion from connection and love by self-destructing and pushing people into the “bad” identity. This identification preserves the child from ill perceptions of the primary object or caregiver, and mirrors the the history of detachment.
For example, a mother brings her child to the park, where the child picks flowers and excitedly presents them to his mother. In response, the mother does not show appreciation, maybe she ignores the child, empties the child’s palm and washes his hands, behaves in a particular way that undermines the bond and boundary dissolution of a loving relationship. This splitting behavior symbolizes a deeply rooted fear within the borderline and narcissistic person, the fear of love and the fear of dissolving one’s ego and self. Another example of this phenomenon occurs during the psychedelic experience. Narcissistic and borderline individuals find themselves bait to “bad trips” caused primarily by the exposure of their trapped, anger-stricken subconscious, and find difficulty “letting go” into the ethereal realms of love, bliss, and the other.
“Audrey”, raised many red flags: The alcohol abuse, sexual promiscuity, abandoned children, discombobulated story, the desperation yet annoyance I won’t partake in her scheme, Audrey leaving when the Cannabis shirt man appeared, the anger and departure upon refusal of sex, even her blowing cigarette smoke in my face. This was all telling.
“You asshole,” I’m in a time machine, watching a woman pound against my chest, slapping me across the face and accusing me of cheating, before she disappears with her friends, destroys our plans, and books the nightly dick-down from one of numerous disposable flings. A creation of conflict, where I’m suddenly the “bad boyfriend” and she’s suddenly pardoned, immunized by victimhood.
The problem arises when the borderline person discovers a malleable partner, a prey. Judging by the cuts and scars trailing the woman’s face she had discovered just the partner. The predator is searching for an emotionally weak, fragile individual whom they are able to control. This is why emotional intelligence is so important. If you are unable to recognize the mind games, you’ll actively find yourself on the losing side.
The costs of losing? You’ll find yourself slowly decaying, dying, or even imprisoned like a coworker friend of mine, with your bank accounts recently emptied, and your lover on the run with somebody new.
A narcissistic, borderline person requires a partner in their game of charades. How well do you think an emotionally weak individual will take to the news of infidelity, manipulation, or cunningness? The woman of your children is whoring herself and its entirely your fault! The narcissistic, borderline individual screams “abuse” after they’ve intentionally incited a terrible reaction. The borderline person is counting on this.
Here strolls Audrey, claiming she’s been abused, abandoning her children who she probably has no real attachment, drinking at eleven in the morning, and convincing a much younger stranger to sleep with her after inciting violence, most likely caused by a similar situation of infidelity. The excitement she twiddles, debriefing her husband about the twenty year old she fucked in a hotel room outside Morgantown, PA.
How did she know to find me, so quick for discussion, did she spot me from the window in her room? Predator and prey.
Within milliseconds of posting to Instagram, I encountered Audrey. A sign from the universe, or am I forcing my delusional, isolated perspective of narcissistic invasion down your throat? Did I misread the encounter?
Am I making this up for attention? I’ll leave that up to you.
When my friend asked, “How do you smoke with your medical card,”
I replied, “Smoking section near the parking lot. Honestly, I’m interested to see if I meet anybody over there.”
A joint lesson in manifestation and narcissism.
Palming through double glass doors, I emerged below mountaintops and a star threaded sky. A glass pipe dispelled from its holster, emerald trees packing the cylindrical slide. The parking lot still, asleep beneath the nightlight of McDonalds arches and a single stuttering lightbulb. Resting my bottom against the cement curbside, I drew the lighter and fastened the pipe. Alone, I thought, spotting the butt end of a Marlboro Menthol cigarette.
THE BADBOOB 