The Art of Anxiety

There is one simple phrase which simply cannot be stated and repeated often enough, because it's also one of the hardest things in the world to believe at times: "You are not alone." Although those of us who struggle with invisible illnesses, especially ones that occur in the mind, can feel like the world outside is a galaxy away, we're never really alone. We've still got each other. Oh sure, not the way that those weird normal people do, what with their Sunday afternoon barbeques and that terrifyingly lighthearted music which they dance to while wearing far too many of Nature's colors. Oh no, you sure as hell won't find us kumbaya-ing any time soon. But still, those freaks with their openness, forwardness, and far-too-friendly faces have something in common with us. When things get tough, they need someone to turn to. Hey, it's human.

Humans weren't built to be alone. And isolating ourselves is the worst thing to do when we're in pain... although reaching out to someone can be the single hardest thing to when you're in pain. You might be the type who tends to go internal and shut people out when things are bad. That's okay. Me too. It's one of the main reasons I make art. Without art, my head would explode. Without catharsis, my heart would explode. Music and art have always been there for me when I couldn't express, or was too afraid to express, my pain and frustrations to people who probably wouldn't understand anyway. And when I don't want to talk to anyone, or when I'm borderline-narcissistically convinced that they would never understand my pain, I still have albums and albums full of my favorite miserable music to help me through. It is truly my hope that the music I make with The Lazarus Gene can in some way help other weirdos like me in the same way that my favorite artists have always helped me.

As laughable as it is to me that every day, week, or month has become designated as some kind of "National Fill-In-The-Blank" Day, Week, or Month, we can all try to look past the cheese and appreciate that they merely serve as reminders and excuses to bring people together who deal with or are affected by similar things. I mean, it's not like Jesus is actually born every Christmas, or Americans regain independence every fourth of July, but a lot of people like to come together to acknowledge those things. This month is Mental Health Awareness month, and as a person who struggles constantly with a few things that might seem difficult to understand or even absurd to the average (or uneducated) person, I thought I'd write a little about my own anxiety and depression, how I deal with those things and how they relate to the things I do. 

I've had anxiety since I was a child. At first it was just general anxiety, but social anxiety was added to that around adolescence. Anxiety is a very tricky and deceptive problem. It can fool you into thinking it's something else. It can even fool you into thinking you don't have it. I wasn't able to clearly define the anxiety and nail it down as my main problem until I was almost 30. (Always thought depression was my main issue, until I realized that I was depressed because anxiety was stopping me from doing anything that might make me happy. The depression I regularly experience is still very real, and very painful, but it's a symptom rather than a cause).

It never occurred to me that I might have social anxiety. Didn't even hear that term till I was in my 20s. I've been performing since I was a child, in school concerts, plays, musicals, and later with bands. My sister and I hammed it up for our family from a very early age. I never had stage fright, with the exception of the minor 5-second jitters before the curtain goes up, which is normal, so who would ever think that I suffered from anxiety? Has anyone ever found it hard to believe when you told them you had anxiety or depression because you "seemed fine"? Yeah. Annoying, right? But you've got to forgive them. It's not their fault. They were born on the outside. They can't know what it's like to live inside a prison with invisible bars. 

I experienced my first panic attack around the age of 7, and the first time I remember having a poignant experience of social anxiety I was about 11, but I didn't know what either of those things were or what they were called at the time, let alone what to do about them. But the intense feeling of vulnerability and the ever-persistent desire to flee from it was always there. Basically, social anxiety keeps me prisoner in my own body, like Rapunzel in that fucking tower. And although I hate the tower, the idea of the world outside of it is even more terrifying. The idea of anyone climbing up and into the tower, equally frightening.

Everyone has emotional guards against other people, which they gradually let down over time as they get to know each other (Well, except those scary hippies with bright eyes and no fear. But we needn't emulate them. They wouldn't survive a second in the wild). People with social anxiety, on the other hand, have irrationally strong emotional guards that try to keep people out forever. If a normal person keeps a moat around the castle of their heart, a person with social anxiety keeps a moat filled with lava... with lava sharks in it... behind a fence of barbed-wire... which is behind a wall made of steel spikes... which has machine guns atop it that fire killer bees. Understandably, that inner fortress keeps people out quite effectively. But it doesn't just stop us from allowing people in, a lot of the time it also stops us from trying to escape.

For the most part, I've come to enjoy the solace. Once I came to understand that part of my problem is that socializing really taxes me, I became much more comfortable staying in. Some of you might have figured that out far younger than I did and have always enjoyed being by yourself. I hated it when I was younger. Social anxiety made me want to stay away from people, but my general anxiety made me scared to be alone. I was assaulted on all fronts! But too much solitude can backfire and you can almost forget how to act normal (And it's hard enough for me to act normal even with people in whose presence I'm already comfortable). The way I used to solve that problem was by drinking. The problem with me and alcohol is that in order to get myself to the point where I was no longer afraid to talk to or approach people, I was too drunk to make much sense or leave a good impression. It's miraculous I ever made friends, let alone kept any, during that time. But I did manage to make a fool of myself enough times. Eventually I had to stop drinking altogether because it was a crutch that was hindering more than helping me (And admittedly I also have a propensity for addiction, a trait which shows its ugly head in more things than merely intoxicating chemical substances).

Ok, so you're probably wondering if I'm ever going to bring this back to music. Well, as you may know from your own experience, or from the preceding paragraphs, living inside a shell like that makes some things incredibly difficult. Things like joining or forming a band. Things like booking shows. Things like talking to fans or other bands, talking to club owners, talking to... well, basically anyone who could be important to your career!

I'm a very anxious person, but with chill people in calm environments, especially with some sort of shared focal point or focused reason to be there, I can relax and make friends and contacts fairly easily. It was through friends from high school that I ended up playing music with a few bands. Usually it was people I met through drama classes and plays. See, I was comfortable in the theatre environment, so I had no problem being outgoing there. Outside of those classrooms, I'd walk around my high school campus hunched and frowning, praying to whatever god may be listening that no one would approach me or look at me. (And I mean anyone - could be a person who merely speaks too enthusiastically and leans in too close, could be a bully, could even be a girl acting interested in me. Yeah, I was even terrified of the thing I wanted most of all - romantic involvement). See, I can "accidentally" make friends and contacts in relaxed environments, but walking up to and talking to a total stranger who did not invite me over - just shoot me in the foot instead, alright? It'll be less painful.

Eventually I joined a few bands. But, aside from when we were performing, when I was onstage in my element and completely comfortable and unafraid of anything, I kept to the sides as much as possible. I never talked to people who came to our shows, never chatted with people in the other bands, never even bothered to try to look approachable. In fact, I did my best to hide. Not easy to do when you're 6'2'' and dress as garishly as I do. So instead of being hidden, I just looked unfriendly and uncomfortable, which wasn't an inaccurate impression to have of me in that situation. My ability to network was stunted from the git-go. Even when I did try to take part in conversations, my life-long insecurities had a tendency to make me babble about irrelevant subjects and over share (something I still do when I'm not taking my time and breathing before I speak).

I was never able to form the band I really wanted. (These humans, I mean... they're just so hard to work with!) I wanted to create my goth-alt-metal-industrial band. But the few musicians with whom I'd attempted to form partnerships early on left a bitter taste in my mouth. My experience with the culture of "cool," and just how cool I clearly wasn't, left me feeling very alone and afraid to show my art to anyone. This led me to start making music entirely on my own. I learned from Trent Reznor that you didn't need a band. So, fuck it, I thought. I bought a four-track (anyone remember those?) and started teaching myself how to write and record every part. Eventually I started playing my own music at shows here and there, but usually it was alone, just me and a guitar or piano. I didn't trust many people to play with me, and the few times I did have friends play with me, I was very shy and unspecific about how exactly I wanted them to play things. I was too afraid to cause a confrontation, too afraid to ask anyone to play a certain part a certain way, too afraid to make anyone uncomfortable. The assertiveness that is required to be a band leader, especially one who writes and arranges all the parts, was completely foreign and uncomfortable to me. Eventually I learned to collaborate a little, but to this day I think I've only written about a dozen songs with other people - and those people are unique and special to me. 

I was incapable of being a leader, but I had no intention of being a follower. Either of those roles would've made me far too involved with and vulnerable to other people. Come to think of it, I'm not sure how I ever made any friends, let alone kept so many of them to this day (my one saving grace is that I inherited my dad's friendliness, although not his confidence). If the girl who would become my best friend in high school hadn't approached me, a scared little boy dressed in black, I don't know where the hell I'd be today.

The problem is that when you actively pursue music, you suddenly realize what we were all told but ignored or dismissed: it's hard. Really hard. It's not playing just any coffee shop that's easy to book. It's not just playing your friends' backyards. Oh, it often starts with those things. But if my sociology courses in college taught me anything it's that to gain a following you have to find people who don't know you, and in hindsight that little fact was already blatantly self-evident,. You have to advertise, network, schmooze, and otherwise win over total strangers. Friends have nothing to gain by supporting you - they already know you. Strangers don't know you, and that gives one an air of otherness and mystique. But... talking to strangers... that's what we anxious people fear most!!! But you can't create your main fan base out of your friends. (Or at least, not when your music is as gloomy and angry as mine. Sure, my friends love me, but they don't understand most of what I deal with in my head every single day, and they sure as hell don't perpetually rage misanthropically against the world like I do. Lucky bastards). So, realizing that success would come only if I became a good marketer and expanded out beyond my comfort zone and into a world of unknowns,  I let my dreams fester and rot, too scared to face the overwhelming amount of rejection that every artist must face before finding their true audience.

I spent the whole of my 20s writing and recording albums and then tossing them onto the shelf to collect dust. I can't stop writing music. I can't stop recording it. But the stress of dealing with venues and bands made me content not to perform it. I channeled my urge to perform into vaudeville comedy and sideshow. But those were all mere distractions. I even traveled across the country a few times doing sideshow and vaudeville. Fun, but artistically unfulfilling. Why did I do it? Because it didn't mean anything to me. It was casual. It was low-risk. My heart wasn't in sideshow and comedy the way it is in music, so if the audience didn't like what I did, it rolled right off me. I wasn't bearing my soul to anyone, in fact I was very successfully masking it and hiding behind a character. (Now, don't get me wrong; I love performing in vaudeville and sideshows. And I love the troupes with whom I've worked. But it's not my strength nor my main passion).

It wasn't until I was approaching my 29th birthday that it hit me - my life had no direction; No purpose, no meaning. I had no reason to continue living. I had nothing. I was single, I was without a steady income, and I didn't know how I wanted to spend the next 5 to 10 years, let alone the decades thereafter. It was then that I finally realized what had led me to that place: anxiety.

Anxiety had crippled me. It had kept me "safe" from ever confronting real life. I'd clipped my own wings and thrown myself into a cage (The Lazarus Gene's first album, which I'm finishing now, is called "Break The Cage" because it deals in part with these issues). When I woke up and realized I was in trapped, I panicked and scrambled to do something with my life. I applied to grad school for a degree in philosophy and religion. I got accepted. I was ready to delve into the world of academia as my living. Essentially, I was about to lay down my arms and take a backstage role in my own life. The thing that stopped me was realizing that in order to commit to a Ph.D. program, I would have to give up a great deal of my art. Even during my undergrad program I wasn't able to perform as often as I would've liked because I get very drained by the socialization of school, the paperwork (who doesn't?), and the mental energy needed to do tedious research. And my anxiety can often make me tired even when I'm not with people or working on anything particularly difficult. To commit to the Ph.D. would be to essentially say goodbye to music for 6 to 7 years. That thought scared me into action. I decided to forgo grad school and focus on my music instead.

That was a dangerous decision because it's less assuring than the cozy existence of a grad student. By cozy, I don't mean easy, of course. I mean that at least in grad school I would have had a clearly defined and static goal. Art is more fluid. In grad school I'd be structured by the program while being mentored by people who thrive on goals and structure. For someone with anxiety, that's a sweet deal. Order, routine, structure... all  great safety nets against uncertainty. But it wasn't important enough to me. It wasn't big enough. And it was far too intellectual. I can intellectualize till the cows come home, but at the end of the day my emotions inform my decisions far more than my rationalizations for or against those very emotions. No, to deny that music matters most to me is to deny who I am. Of course, the kicker is that the horrifically competitive world of art and entertainment is in and of itself fucking terrifying. But, between facing the evil world of entertainment vs. not facing it, I decided that facing it was the lesser of two evils.

Anyone with anxiety knows how many breaths we often have to take before we walk into a crowded room (That is, assuming you're able to breath at all, right?) But we often walk into that room anyway because we know that the terror will subside eventually, and if it doesn't, we can always leave. Deciding to make music my life was, I believe, a risk worth taking. I have a few important safety nets for my physical existence should I fail - I know I'm not gonna starve to death, in other words. But what I don't have is an emotional safety net. How can one shield oneself against heartbreak when giving away one's heart? You have to be vulnerable, and you have to vulnerable to... other... humans! Fucking yikes! I'm putting my whole heart into work which may continue to be ignored for the rest of my life. And my heart may get broken a few more times before it gets accepted. Well, to be frank, my heart was dying in my chest anyway - far better to take the risk to revive it than watch it slowly shrivel up and stop beating.

If I fail completely, well, I'll deal with that insanity when I get there. What I finally came to understand, and here's the important part, is that, yes, I have massive anxiety about this. In fact my anxiety is worse right now than it's ever been because I'm taking risks I've never been brave enough to take. I'm terrified of failing myself. I'm terrified of being ignored. But what I'm far more terrified of is allowing my anxiety to rule every decision I make for the rest of my life as it has for the past 15 years. I've lived complacently, ignoring my passions, and forcing myself into artistic, and often personal, isolation because I was afraid. I'm still afraid. I'm shaking in my fucking boots. But I have to stand up to the anxiety this time. And I know I'm going to face it over and over again as I build my career from the ground up. Unlike some other obstacles, anxiety is an adversary that never backs down for too long. So the key is to keep standing up to it until you gain strength. It'll never go away. It's not a demon you can kick out with just one exorcism. But the next time you fight it, you might need one less move than you did the time before to knock it down.

On the upside, fear makes for some pretty good music. Fear is a theme that runs through half of my songs. Fear, confrontation, anger, submission - all these things I struggle with daily. It's about the never-ending struggle against myself and for myself. And most of those internal issues and confrontations of the mind also translate externally to the outside world - the people and institutions that do not accept us for who we are. It's not about religion, politics, subcultures, or anything so easily defined as that. There are lots of religions and ideological groups or subcultures that will accept us for who we are. But there are a shit load more that will not. And we can't always know who we're dealing with until we've gone a way inside (hence why so many of us with anxiety just avoid going inside in the first place). Like the monsters within us, we have to face the monsters without. Sometimes it's nightmarish, sometimes it's violent, and not necessarily in a physical way. But if we don't learn to cope with those anxieties and manage them, they'll eat us alive.

Hey, we'll never be normal, and it's important that we accept that. Hell, fuck normal. "So, I barely talked to anyone at the party, and I left early... so what, I showed up and came in didn't I?" Yup. Sometimes just showing up is in and of itself a victory. Take those victories. Every little victory is yours. You don't have to be like anyone else, but it's good and pragmatic to manage well enough to meet them halfway... at least for long enough so you can get some shit done before you go home and curl back up in your cocoon at the end of the day. (Hey, no one said you had to get rid of the cocoon. Even when you've got your wings, if you've got anxiety, you're probably still gonna want to wrap back up at the end of the day, especially after you've dealt with all those weird-ass normal people).

Be brave, folks. You've got this. If nothing else, at least we freaks have each other. And with any luck, the hand of God, the thread of Fate, or whatever's runnin' this show, some of us might actually manage to make our voices loud enough to remind each other of that across the great chasms of anxiety we constructed around ourselves.

-Daniel