Monday, August 2, 2010

Exhaustion Blues by Henry Rollins.

Les comparto una obra sublime.
Explica mucho como soy y como me siento.
Ojala algun dia pudiera expresarme asi.

Gracias a Carlos Murgueitio por la transcripcion.

A.




Exhaustion Blues



Exhaustion, I thought I'll check in with you.
Right now is autumn, I'm in Germany...
Spring and summer make me think of the present
Autumn and winter paralyze me
Autumn makes me remember, forces me into mental rewind

Today we're in the van driving through a small village, and I caught the smell of a wood-burning fire, it scented me, I inhaled it again but it was gone.
Made me think when I was in the 4th grade, I delivered papers for the Washington Star. In the autumn the sun would set earlier and it would be dark by the time I finished the route. I could smell the wood-burning fires all over, every block
- Another thought comes to interrupt
A few months ago I was at the "New Music Seminar" in New York, that bullshit that runs every year so labels can tell each other how great they are. This time around we played the seminar. It was good as gigs go. It was a drag having to be around with all these people from nowhere peddling their music. I was put in the artist’s panel to answer questions from the audience.

There's some pretty interesting people in the panel. I sat next to Hank Ballard. He was a trip. I talked to Leonard Cohen, he was cool. That little shit from The Police was there. Lemmy was on the panel, drunk.
So anyway, we're all lined up behind this table and the mediator is an idiot, asking the panelists a bunch of stupid questions. He asks Leonard Cohen what was like to fuck Nico at the Chelsea Hotel.
Some brave penny sent a question for me to answer. Something like "Having grown up serving designer ice cream to fellow rich kids in a nice neighborhood, how can you reconcile with what you do now?"
What kind of question is that? It's the kind of thing you ask when you want to get smacked, and that's what should've happened. It would've been great if the guy come up front and ask the question and then I climbed down to the stage, punched him once and walk back to my seat.
That would have been high class entertainment as well as an art statement. Nietzsche called them "The Tiny Masters of Today". The little shit heels who never get what they need so bad.
So Anyway, I would throw papers until past dark and I stayed away as long as i could without freezing my ass off. I did all I could to stay away from my house. I didn't wanted to be there if I can't help it. I knew that my mother would be at home and I wanted to stay away from her as much as possible.
It was all right. I'll hang out and walk the streets passing the time. I liked being out in the streets. It's where I felt best. Home was always painful when she was there. On the streets I could be alone, to be one with my own thoughts.
Looking back, it was good that it went down that way. I learned to be self-reliant at an early age.

The autumn makes me think of women. Something about the cold air brings life to a woman's face. Perhaps it's just that I'm lonely at this point of the year, always rocking out some shit hole. But you know, it's a false loneliness because for the life of me, I can't think of a single woman that I wanted to be with. I like the ones in my imagination the best.
The ones that I think up in the van as the miles fly by. They're the women I tell myself about after shows when I'm feeling empty and alone. The women that fill the lie, the women who fill the void for a while until I can get on another thoughts.
Sometimes it's hard not to get lost on your thoughts in these tours. All these people in your face, nothing like it that they let you know that you're totally alone. The isolation is vivid, and then there's your exhaustion. You always come up in the end of the tour to remind me I'm not 20 anymore.
Sometimes I think I'm from another planet, I bet a lot of people felt like that too, I've known and I've never known and I'll never be able to fit into the screaming horrific bullshit festival. They try to hold on something and somehow all falls out of their grasp, or even worse, it seems out of reach. You can get the feeling of displacement feeling no placed.
I've grown accustomed to feeling alien everywhere I go. It's not big deal. I remember when I used to get of work, I'd go and eat at the same hamburger place every night. People would've always be staring at me, looking at my bald head. At first it used to trip me out and get me mad, but after a while I could be in a room full of people staring and I wouldn't even care.
You get a strange distance from people that you never get back all the way, no matter what happens. When you've been in the outside, a part of you will always be out there. It's a good thing too. If you let them, to waste your time and make you sick until there's nothing left of you...

Every time they push you out, you get more of yourself in return. I figured it's a good deal, seeing how many people have no clues of who they are, waiting all night by the phone hoping that someone would call, going out with people they don't care about or don't even like, because they can't stand the thought of being alone? Because the thought of being alone tells them that they're failures? That people who are alone are always lonely and miserable?
I hear so many stories about people having to lie all night because they are going out with someone they didn't like, and had to keep up some kind of appearance. That's the stuff that gives you nervous breakdowns and cancer.
It all makes me feel the same way every time. People for the most time are a waste of time. The more time you get to yourself, the better.
When I had wheels, I used to spend more time in my car than in my apartment. I had a mono tape deck there and I would drive around just to hear the music. There's this Dunkin Donuts I used to go to and hang out by myself.
Every moment spent away from my boss, from people I knew, every moment I spent making my own world, I felt better about myself. I'd hang out in this place and drink coffee and listen to the locals talk, trying to untangle the last 4 years of my life. I didn't know what to do with all the hatred that I had inside.
I tried to write, but it didn't work. A good healthy level of hate is always good to have on handle all times. Nothing wrong with it. Hate gets you through the times where love just confuses and entraps. Hate is so final and pure, love is many headed and dangerous.
I know hate is good 'cause I see how many people don't know how to deal with it. They don't see it for the energy force it could be. When it rises in them, they run headlong into a stranger who lives inside. They don't know themselves and it tears them up when they need themselves the most.
They don’t have themselves to go to, they're always too busy burning the wax, trying' to look good for someone else, trying' to be someone's something. What a sellout. That's a waste, when you sell yourself out.
There's certain music that only works for me in the autumn. Sitting in this cold club makes me want to hear Lou Reed. When I came through here with Black Flag in 1983 it was February, it was cold as hell. We played this Velvet Underground tape as we limped from show to show. Every since then, it's been Lou, the autumn and winter.
His album "Street Hassle" got me through many cold weather blues, still does.
I can't remember an autumn in the last several years that I wasn't in the van driving down some gray vacant highway. Cold weather makes me think clear and makes me more withdrawn than usual. I'm not close to people, I'm close to myself.

I spend a lot of time inside. Where else you can go when everything pushes you to every edge in the joint? You have to make your head your home. It's the only way I'd stand in places like the one I'm in tonight. If you can't pull into yourself you're finished, the road will crush you.
Nothing like Europe for exercises and isolation, that's why I like it here. Last night was good, after the show was over, I sat behind the PA and listened to the music. No one could see me, so I could hang on without having to talk to anyone. After the shows, people can really bring me down, they ask questions I cannot understand. They want to talk about what they just saw, which is the last thing I want to think about.
Sometimes, when they ask questions I can tell by what they want to know that the distance between them and me is really far. It's depressing. I see that I am really all alone out there. It was good just to be able to listen the music and not have to see or talk to anyone. I don't even want to talk to the guys in the band after playing. I just want to sit and try to pick up the pieces the best I can.
There's a great feeling when you're totally resolved, and you make the jump from being lonely to being only. When you're so totally alone and absolute, when you're the number one.
This is a great moment. Finally you know something, it's all yours. When I put myself through the human test and I come through still being able to say my name and knowing that there's nothing else for me and no one for me, I become stronger. My will power grows. I push my pain threshold up farther, I'm able to take more. I'm able to learn more.
I made myself an enemy of praise and adulation. Let me explain the reason for this.
Praise is dangerous. It can go from a little to too much in a few words. Sure, it's nice to know that someone likes what you do. You can see what it does to the "Rock Star" types that believe the reviews and the things that everyone says.
But to take it all away, you must turn deaf ear to praise, move and keep moving. The last thing I want to hear is that someone likes what I do. When someone starts in with it I try to change the subject. I know that I'm probably more extreme than most on this respect but I found that praise screws me up. I like it best having little or not interaction with people at all. That's not to say that I don't like people that come to the roadhouse to see the show. I feel a great responsibility to the strangers. They take time out of their lives to check out what I'm doing and I'm honored, but I don't wanna hear the rope.

I am systematically destroying myself piece by piece, and I don't want to be complimented on it. You have to be careful, because it can all turn on you.

I found myself in bad situations where I ask myself if I should never talk to anyone again. I just want to get on with the work, the rest doesn't matter.

Seeing someone that you haven't seen for years and they tell you "What your problems are?" , and then "You're nothing but an asshole anyway", "You're in that magazine", "Who you think you are?".

And I think to myself about the long drives and all the bullshit that anyone in the road has to put up with. I pull back from that thought and look at this guy, my age with a beer gut and an attitude giving me grief.

It's sad when someone you know become someone you knew. It makes me very hard and weary around people. If I am not careful, I'll sleep into ugly roots of cynicism and I don't want to be like that.

Exhaustion, you're a disease.

Best not to mix the past with the present. The present pains the past with gold, the past pains the present with led. When I run backwards, I feel the desperation rise. Best for me to hurt and head long into the present, never look back. Maybe catch on fire if I do it right.

That's all there is, the right now. If we don't plant ourselves in the front row of the present, I predict that if anyone of us reaches old age, would be sitting on the front porch thinking "Damn! Should I've burned all the temples, screamed, danced and dragged life through the colds?"

I align myself with life's brutal headlong lunch towards death. I'm in motion at all times, waging war with exhaustion, winning some, and losing some...

1 comment:

  1. Me alegro mucho que te haya gustado el "Exhaustion Blues" que compartí contigo.

    Tengo uno más para tí, en este link. Te gustará:

    Henry Rollins - I know you http://youtu.be/Vj-B42gXcoQ

    Todos podemos expresarnos así, sólo que debemos dejar que las palabras fluyan... sin restricciones. Animo :)

    ReplyDelete