#picker upper

So last weekend I fricked off to Nashville, TN for the Everything Everything concert (which was awesome, btw). Stayed with my best friend at her aunt and uncle’s house, had a really grand time experiencing a new city and spending time away from home. I was honestly afraid that when I met her at the airport, I’d still have this heavy cloud in my chest and I’d be a huge bummer and ruin the entire weekend. I was afraid I’d accidentally be cold or unenthusiastic. I was secretly hoping that spending a short vacation with her would help put me back in the right mindset, since she’s basically the best and I always feel better when talking with her, and that effect should be magnified in person, right? 

We met up in the airport and the cloud wasn’t completely gone, but it was much more quiet since I was being actively distracted with new sights and new experiences. Anyway, the two of us have this past-time of watching horror movies - good and bad, slasher or horror, whatever. We just do. I don’t know WHY this started, but I’m glad. Horror movies are hilarious and terrible and wonderful. 

Anyway, we watched the 2015 ‘horror’ film He Never Died (it’s not horror there’s just like, blood and also cannibalism it’s actually a hilarious movie) on a whim (because it had better scores on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB than The Mummy Returns).

Since that initial viewing on April 8, 2016 to April 16, 2016, I’ve watched He Never Died 7 times. I’m in love with it. I want to know everything there is to know about it. I’m totally obsessed with it. When we first finished it, my mind was racing, the cobwebs getting torn apart as the gears started turning again. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for the rest of the trip. I was enthusiastic about something again. I was so excited about this story and this character.

(I’m going to say right now, if you haven’t watched He Never Died, don’t watch the video below because there is mild spoilers, and I think the initial viewing would be a lot more entertaining if you don’t watch it. You can keep reading but, don’t watch the vid.)

There’s a lot of content in the film that isn’t explained outright, and I was hoping to find enlightenment through interviews with the actors and director. My search for water found me this video, an interview with Henry Rollins and Jason Krawczyk:

...and I became terribly smitten with Henry Rollins as a human being. I’d never really seen anything Rollins has been in before He Never Died, so he was completely new to me. I didn’t know anything about him. But the way he spoke in this interview and the way he addressed things resonated with me. He worded things in a manner that clicked with my brain and started to put things in perspective.

In this interview, there were a couple lines that hit me really hard and started to open my eyes. This, horrible fog in my mind that I’ve been living with for I can’t remember how long started to lift, if ever so slightly. 

Key phrases that knocked me over and I felt I could stand to apply to my own life include the following:

“Curiosity is the main fuel behind everything I do. Curiosity and Anger.”

“I’m no one from nowhere. I know where I come from and I know what I can go back to, which makes me fairly fearless to go forward. I’m not a tough guy, I just don’t want to go back to where I was.”

"You’re not that good, so you better show up early and you better bring it because everyone else is much better than you.”

This man’s words and world view caught me totally off-guard. I love when you suddenly discover that an actor who plays horrible, terrible characters is actually a legitimately wonderful person IRL, haha.

So! I went on a binge and YouTube hopped from one show to another, basically devouring everything Rollins has said on a stage in the last few years. His advice and experience really shoved a brick of humility in my face and reignited that angry, indignant fire in my heart that went out a while ago. Rollins has basically reminded me why I turned to art in the first place. Why I would get up every day, excited to make something with my own two hands.

I’m back in that old mindspace that I fell away from. I’m alert, I’m happy, I’m excited, I’m angry, and I’m gonna do my fricking best and be the best human being I can be just to spite everyone who wants nothing more than for everyone to be cruel and horrible. Sounds like I’m playing really hard into Sticking It To The Man, but, if that’s what it takes? Good. I’ll do it until the day I die.

I’m going to link two of the shows and write the key lines that really have helped me out in the past week, for future reference and also to maybe help anyone else who needs a picker-upper and some fuel for their own fires.

“WE cannot overcome, but YOU can overcome, and YOU can inspire SOMEONE ELSE to overcome.”

“Let what you can go back to be the energy that will keep you from going back to it.”

“It’s either this or real life - and I have an imagination, and I will not take it.”

“Go after worthwhile adversaries. Ones that can hit back.”

“Don’t try to fix all of it, you’ll just be worrying. Clean up a few spots. Make it personal.”

"You’ll die of exhaustion before we will, because we have more anger than you do.”

“They want me to be fat, mediocre of aspiration, ill of health, easy to arrest, and high. And I’m not trying to slap the joint or beer out of anyone’s hands; you all rage like you think you need to do. I don’t get in the way of that. All I’m saying is, my theory, is all of that stuff, from the Big Mac to the whiskey, is all made to make you think slower, drive crooked, beat someone up you shouldn’t beat up, turn on people you shouldn’t turn on, pick fights you can’t win, and end up in the slammer or in a grave early. And THAT is to go out like a sucker. That is to be a fool. And when I was 23 years of age that is the light bulb that went on over my head. I said ‘Okay. You want to kill me? Here’s what’s gonna happen. You’re not gonna kill me unless you shoot me. You’re not gonna poison me with weed and whiskey and Big Macs and phencyclidine, or crystal methamphetamine, or ecstasy, or MDMA - it’s not gonna happen! I’m going to read more. I’m going to write more. And by golly, like Joe Strummer taught me, I’m never going to shut up! That’s what I’m going to do! I’m going to be a monumental pain in the ass of any of these people who deal in death, self-destruction, and mediocrity.’”

“You don’t leave anyone on the battlefield, because it really is them, or it’s us.”

Also here’s one that is just fun to listen to. It’s a ridiculous story and almost gets me in tears every time I listen to it: