Eat Your Words And Fill Your Heart

They're all laughing. All my friends from college. Everyone I used to preach cynicism to.

They're laughing because I'm growing up.

What causes young men to believe that spitting on idealism and faith is the key to appearing intelligent, rebellious and delightfully mysterious? I mean, it doesn't work, not to anyone with a shred of conviction or experience. But we do it anyways, trying to appear stronger than the feeble sheep, hoping it protects us from wandering into the dangerous valleys we've seen so many fools led astray.

We are not like them. We are different. We can identify life's cruel joke: that we want what we can't have, that love is doomed, that selfishness trumps loyalty 9 out of 10 times.

So I lived on my pulpit between relationships. And even when I took time off the market, I still found time to judge. It's not hard. There are a lot of unhappy people in there forcing themselves to be together in hopes it bandaids the gaping holes in themselves. But it doesn't, so they do somersaults and beg all their friends to listen and watch.

And people like me sit back and laugh, point, beg the world not to act like a complete joke. We're in on it, see? We know that we're smarter than these esteemless fools, but just as likely to fuck something up. Women nag. Men cheat. Children suffer. You are bound to be alone no matter how hard you try, so why bother?

And hence we come to my early twenties revelation that marriage and long-term commitments are a complete joke. I made sure to tell it to anyone who'd listen, or at the very least, express my severe doubt that an institution built on childhood fairy tales and adult fear could ever last in reality -- hence the divorce and infidelity rate in this country.

And then of course, every time I did fall in love, the fuel burnt up like any precious resource. And when it's gone, you're coasting on fumes hoping you'll find an exit in time. And you do. And you suffer. And it hurts like hell until it doesn't...if you're lucky.

Sometimes I liked to think of myself as some kind of poor man's wandering romantic. That all my experiences were the makings of great wisdom, that I'd turn into some kind of romantic oracle and tell stories like the Dos Equis guy.

In reality, I was far too inhibited and paranoid to fuck and learn on a regular basis. I was great at getting out when the getting was good and awkward. But the sad truth was that every girl I committed to, loved, or simply dated was wrong for me in some way, and I knew it. In the beginning, in the moment, and especially in the end. I lived my life on the far side of a book end, looking back on my naive youth while experiencing it simultaneously. "She'll be my great unrequited love...she'll be my great friend...she'll be my great college romance, etc."

Because I was a realist, damn it.

And so for the past few years, I've dated and tried to keep my head on straight. Tried to make smart decisions and not lead anybody on, or be led on, at least for too long. Tried to avoid becoming serious with someone who I knew deep down wasn't right. So many beautiful pieces, but never the complete match. Cue more preaching.

But 2009. Oh, 2009, the year I knew would somehow be my year. The year I knew I would start climbing out of my entry positions in Los Angeles, personally and professionally.

And I did.

I got work on a TV series to get closer to professional writers. I got promoted so I didn't have to get coffee anymore. Lived on a better side of town. I took general meetings and got a script optioned.

Here's the weird part. Amidst all that, another office crush developed. Not out of the ordinary, seeing as how in this business, you're in a new office with new people every three to six months.

Then the weird happened. The crush turned electric. The electricity turned into seeing each other. The seeing each other turned into spending entire weekends together and never once feeling bored, uncomfortable or nervous.

We just fit.

And soon it was serious. Soon I wanted to say ridiculous things like "I love you."

And soon I would just lie awake next to her at night and wonder, "What would our kids look like?"

We didn't fight. We laughed. We ate. We smiled. We enjoyed life and sharing it, every single day. And best of all, romantic notions of the present and the future spiraled out of control simultaneously. Suddenly we're meeting parents, friends, extended family. We're making plans and taking trips and realizing that food just tastes better when we eat together.

She looks me in the eye and tells me I'm a good man, and I believe her, because I actively seek to make her happy every second of every day. She makes me better.

She says she likes herself better around me, that I make her feel like she is kind, that she is thoughtful, that she is beautiful and funny and charming. These things are all true.

And here we are, getting ready for our first Thanksgiving together. Suddenly living in two different apartments on opposite ends of town doesn't make any fucking sense.

So we're going to live together. Because we don't like being apart. Because we're better people together than we are alone. We are not annoyed or frustrated or complaining to our friends (..yet) It's been seven months and we still have faith that we can weather any storm. That united we won't let anything tear us down. That we're going to make it if we just keep treating each other so goddamn well.

And my friends are all chuckling when they read my sappy online postings about how goddamn happy I am to be doing the dishes. How great it is to be shopping for a couch together. Drew (if that is his real name) went and got himself domesticated, and he's loving every minute of it.

And now all of those scared, naive fools look like the noblest of characters. Now I understand what kind of ideals are on the table when people commit for life. I'm getting older but it still feels young. I'm in love, in the healthiest relationship of my entire life, and for the first time, I'm living in the present looking forward to the future. To our future.

We are both still realists. We end every dream future scenario with a "and you know what, if it doesn't work out..." or a "and I know it's unrealistic, but..."

But even realists fall in love. Even cynics become believers. Everyone gets to eat their own words and admit that there are exceptions to every rule.

I am in love with someone I respect, support, admire, and adore. Apparently, she's quite taken with me too. If we can just remember what home feels like, we might be able to keep it safe, keep ourselves safe from the bullshit that tears people apart.

We are fucking great together.

And if we're lucky enough to bring some miniatures into the world, we're going to get it right. Show them what love, respect and all of that is made of.

And Jesus Christ, they will be charming, magical, attractive little monsters.



east coast. west coast. love.

Distractions.

There are so many beautiful women in the world. How do you settle on one choice? So many disparate elements floating and swirling around you that make your eyes twitch. The smallest of qualities become such appealing assets; A great laugh. A winning smile. An incredible shape. An infectious spirit. All of these things refract like shards of light in your peripheral, and though each one is alluring in their own right, they remain scattered and segregated amongst a throng of individuals, rarely collecting inside one perfect specimen.

And that's why we try to be adults and not indulge individuals for a piece instead of the whole. It's why we learn to draw lines between lovers and friends. Because even if that laugh, or that smile, that body or that charm pulls you forward, these things alone aren't enough to make you stay.

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Which is a goddamn shame. I'm a bit of a collector. I tend to organize and recruit friends based on the level of interest they generate in me, avoiding the boring, the typical or the insensitive on the basis that life is short, and you might as well spend it with people who make you smile.

But if I had the power, I'd capture, distill and bottle those elements into a simmering confection of perfect chemicals -- and go swimming in it.

Alas, I don't have this power. I can be good. I can look and not touch. I can understand the difference between need and desire. I can choose to avoid the inevitable pitfalls of emotional involvement and only traverse that minefield with someone that matters, someone that's worth risking everything for.

And hope I'm grown up enough not to destroy everything.

Chett Fineburg & The Writing Struggle

Just before I visited NYC this past October, I made a stop in Florida and visited my little brother Tyson in godforsaken Orlando.

An hour before I left, we did this. Now it's finally finished. Enjoy our pleasant diversion...


Chett Fineburg and the Writing Struggle from Tyson Lindo on Vimeo.

The Concept Is Also The Problem

So sometimes I swell up inside with feelings and observations and thoughts that ransom-demand I express them creatively. If I can't, if I don't know how to process and understand them through an art form, I become angry, negative, listless and even sort of depressed.

I need to expel what's in my head and/or heart, and I need the by-product to mean something. I need it to make sense.

For example, I've had an idea for a new blog format I've been meaning to try for years. I finally did a test pass in NYC at the end of 2008, and having just recently seen some of the early results, I feel like this might finally be the macguffin I've been looking for. A synergy of interests that converge my talents toward a smart target. It's an idea that allows me to create something new, something honest and relatable that other people can connect with, enjoy and maybe even feel inspired by.

Unfortunately, I'm already experiencing doubt and cold feet. If I want to talk about the things going on in my life and in my head, in a visual form no less, it's going to require me to pull vivid details from my personal life and the people in it.

Now, I've been doing as much in MySpace blogs for a couple years now, but this is different. There will be visuals, I'll be drawing avatars, trying to capture likenesses. Doesn't matter if I leave the names out or change them altogether, my depictions of certain events could get back to people and it could freak them out. Shit, it's freaking me out just thinking of putting my history onto the goddamn internet.

There's a complete lack of control once it's released.

So why do it? Why bother?

I suppose the answer is that for the past few years that I've been writing and blogging online, there has seemed to be an overwhelming amount of interest and support from those who have been kind enough to respond, comment or encourage. I wrote a goddamn advice column for christ's sake. People put my words together and react, and luckily, it's a positive reaction.

But I've tried not to get into specifics too much. I used to think I'd turn some of the most devastating yet hilarious moments of my life into works of art that people could appreciate, that some of my worst adventures would become my best stories.

But a couple of years ago, I found I'd appeared in someone's work: a hack job smear campaign short film created by a spiteful ex-girlfriend.

And in that blinding instant, I realized what it's like to be turned from an intimate companion to a cheap anecdote.

From that moment on, I felt like every song ever written about someone you loved was a bullshit play for sympathy from needy artists. That we're all full of shit. That perspective is an illusion and everyone's trying to look good instead of being honest.

And thinking of myself as an honest man, that knowledge sort of damaged my ideals about what's appropriate to share, what one can cull from the clay of life to sculpt a vision.

Maybe I'm rambling here. I'm just saying that I try my best to respect privacy, to protect the secrets and insecurities of others. I might be an agnostic, but I still believe in treating others as you wish to be treated, as the good (crazy) book says.

So what do I do? I feel like I can't move forward with my vision for this project until I deal with this issue. I can't concentrate on or execute this undertaking if I'm struggling in the dark with how honest to be.

I don't enjoy hurting anyone, unless they're an evil fuck and truly deserve it. That's a sweet sensation of righteousness.

But I'm not sure how to fly this thing. Not yet.

The butler did it! (7 years ago)

I'm a messy person, so when I need to find something in particular, it usually involves rummaging through everything else. This also means sporadic reunions with long lost artifacts that flash me back to times I've mostly forgotten or washed away.

Case in point: an artifact unearthed from my romantic past. Evidence of a relationship that was defining to experience and devastating to end. I'll always remember the first time love came right back at me. I'd been waiting for what seemed like six consecutive lifetimes, and by the time I turned twenty, it was my turn.

It was just as good as the fucking movies.

So tonight I found the journal that she left me after we broke up so many years ago. Inside are less than a dozen entries she wrote while we were together. Looking over them again, I came to a big time realization -- I pushed her away.

The words in the journal were of undying adoration, pledging to stay by my side forever, but fearing the day I'd pull away and stop seeing her as some divine creature of serendipity. She knew I'd built her up, her fragile self-esteem didn't think she'd survive the drop if and when it happened.

And it did. In stages. And now I can articulate why. I used to think we just fell out of love -- I was wrong.

What happened was, my honesty, my goddamn brutal, indignant honesty had to make subtext context: I didn't see us working out in the end. I saw writing on the wall. We weren't meant to last forever. We'd enjoy our time together in college, but beyond that, I knew life had other plans in store for the both of us.

And of course, when she heard that poison, she started to pull out. She pulled until we were both at equal distance. Then we both agreed to break it off.

Which was fine until I lost my mind over it. But it was too late. I'd chosen my path and couldn't stray. Neither could she. She gravitated elsewhere. She moved on to someone else.

And she married him.

And why, you ask? Why did I do this? Why did I give up on the first true love I ever had reciprocated? Why have I repeated this pattern with every relationship or flame since?

Because my parents conceived me with special, superhuman abilities, and one of them is a Sensory Perception to NEVER END UP WITH THE WRONG PERSON.

I'm so terrified of making the biggest mistake of my lifetime by shacking up with the wrong woman, it's as if I receive broadcast signals from the future warning me to get the hell out when I sense things aren't meant to be.

And they never are, really. There's always something. They're never the girl you see yourself spending the rest of our life with.

And even so, who the hell is that girl, anyways? What does she look like? What does she have that all of the others don't?

I don't know. I know we weren't meant for each other. Maybe it's me, the me from now, feeling justified, sending those emotions back to a terrified and insecure 21 year old kid that he'll live and that he made the right call to hold out for the right one.

I'm saying all of this because I met someone recently who really fucking scared me. I've spent a few years being the most aloof motherfucker in the room, but the moment someone perforates your atmosphere and exposes you to a whole new spectrum of emotions and energies, well -- it's exciting but exceedingly terrifying.

I was scared about the future. I didn't want my powers to kick in. I just wanted this to work.

I turned right back into that scared, twenty-year old kid.

And maybe that's who I'll always be, the high-energy, desperate to please comedian who freaks out the moment things become real. Real feelings. Real fears.

When I got scared recently, I ran away at the first sign of trouble, of vulnerability, I suppose. Because the fear of falling for someone works both ways: you're terrified it might not work out, but the fear is fueling your heart into overdrive and you're reaching record speeds. Your thoughts, your blood, it all charges the same battery. It possesses you.

It's seven years later. I still don't want to settle for the wrong person. I'm still looking for the right one. And I'm still entitled to freak out and run if things get weird. Cash out. Take myself off the shelf.

Sometimes we're not ready to deal.

But I have to believe I'll be ready to go all in if it feels like love. Need to believe I can get there, that I can overcome all those wonderful abilities my folks gave me, the ability to not trust, to not let my guard down, to always have an exit strategy.

I'm looking forward to facing the fear again, to come out swinging, to skip a beat and notice that the ticker still works.

I don't know when that's gonna happen. I don't know what's around the corner.

I'm just doing my goddamn best to grow up.

Use Somebody

Dear East Coast West Coast,

This blog is a joke. Looking at how infrequently it's used for absolutely anything by anybody downright pisses me off.

We seriously need to revise the purpose of this motherfucker or just stop kidding ourselves and delete the goddamn thing.

In other news: I'm unhappy. Go sit on a nail.

regards,
Drew

RIP: LA Radio

My radio was stolen out of my car in October of 2006, only a couple months after relocating to Los Angeles. Being the cheapskate pleasure-delayer that I am, I left my car silent, without any semblance of musical contact for more than a year. No radio to get me through deadly LA traffic, no CD player to get my mind energized and my eyelids opened wide.

No sir. I lived the humbled life. My car was mute. My passenger conversations hushed and awkward.

It wasn't until early 2008 that I finally went nuts and bought a new stereo, with a CD Player/MP3 port.

And it was soon after that I found Indie 103.1, the best radio station in Los Angeles.

The reception was crystal clear on the West Side/Culver City area where I had moved. Up in the valley, the signal vanished, but luckily I spent little time in the valley. It was a beautiful, whirlwind affair. They played good music, music I liked by indie rock/pop artists I dug. I had waited my whole life to find a refuge from the disposable, processed junk food, top 40 radios stations with their Idol ballads and club crud singles, or the castrated sounds of lite rock and easy listening tailor made for baby boomers who wanted a taste of simpler times. Don't get me started on the state of modern rock.

But Indie was different. This was my music. Fresh, fun, exciting and new. It was so good that I felt no guilt in ignoring donations to KCRW during it's pledge drive of 2008, namely because they only seemed to play about two hours of music a day with Nick Harcourt's Morning Becomes Eclectic, which in and of itself played a ration of 36% good music I hadn't heard of and 64% unintelligible, godawful nonsense that played like new age satire. Otherwise, that station was all NPR, all the time. (Side note: I'm not anti-NPR, I just can't handle it for more than ten minute intervals, as their crisp, hushed, mushy-soft voices not only put me to sleep, but actually manage to disintegrate my masculinity one cell at a time.)

No sir. All I needed was my Indie.

Then things slowly changed. Just before the end of 2008, Joe Escalante's morning show disappeared, taking with it an array of interesting guests, David Lynch's offbeat weather reports and Timothy Olyphant's hyper-enthusiastic sports recaps.

This worried me. As 2009 began I also noticed some jarring new musical selections that belonged on a toxic top 40 station. Even some KROQ-style, crappy squaw-rock found it's way on from time to time.

But I told myself not to worry. Everything would be fine. There was still good music to find on my one, shining ray of hope on FM radio.

Until last week, when Indie 103.1 announced that it would cease broadcast immediately due to corporate interference and an asphyxiating market of traditional, manufactured sludge.

I had hoped the highest hopes and said the equivalent of prayers.

But I knew I was out of luck
the day the music died

Some people might not understand. Some might say it's no big deal. But good radio is going the way of print, slowly being replaced with corporate advertising misrepresenting itself as new and exciting music.

The DJ is going the way of the Dodo, quickly replaced by corporate stooges, yes men, and employees doing what the record company tells them (eat tar and die, Clear Channel.)

So yes, I'm pissed. And I mourn the loss of a great radio station, run by a collection of great DJ's that brought a little something to my life while trapped in my claustrophobic Corolla. Props to Joe Escalante, TK, Jonesy's Jukebox, Ted Roman, and all the fantastic people that made Indie 103.1 such a fantastic station. I hope you're all reading and Googling the mountains of online eulogies and blogging laments from the listeners you delighted.

I for one will regret having only spent a year with you. Though the station lives on in electronic, online form, it does so without the voices and the personalities that helped make the station what it was.

Farewell, Indie. You will be missed.