I Throw Away my Life and Memories
Hello, good morning, how are you, I’ve no inspiration for awhile and this is a short one.
I’ve been listening to Daniel Johnston recently which is a recall of when I discovered him in high school. If you’re unaware of who he is, I highly recommend you watch both The Devil and Daniel Johnston and Hi, How Are You Daniel Johnston?
Daniel was a musician born in California, raised in West Virginia, and then formed his music career in Texas. He actually lived in San Marcos, a town 20 minutes and 18 miles away from my hometown, when he created his signature album “Hi, How Are You,” with the art famously worn by Kurt Cobain. I took my SATs and graduated there. I created a CD mix for a high school English project when I was 16 or 17, and half of it was Daniel Johnston and half of it was Twenty One Pilots, namely their debut album.
I mostly drove here to go to a hookah bar
He suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and passed away in 2019. When I lived in North Texas, in 2020, a mental health non-profit named the “Hi, How Are You Project” showed up to my apartment complex and handed out flyers and stickers of the album art, which I placed on my jacket, which faded over time and is now gone. That was the first time I was reminded of him and the second time I had become interested in his music while in a particularly difficult spot in my life – the first was when I was told my mom was sick in high school and the second when I was more alone than I had ever been before. The third is now, and it was naturally reminded to me, and as always I'm unsure of what rediscovering it now means.
Both of these artists were endearing to me, they were openly raw with the music they created, especially Johnston with his illnesses, and I was seeking a sort of vulnerability with them. I wanted the force of the world to hurt me and this was a gateway. I don’t have the CD anymore, I don’t have the sticker, I just need you to take my word on this, because I Throw Away my Life and Memories, like the title. I travel light. The only thing I’ve kept over the last decade is my desk, some CDs, some old physical copies of games, and some other small items like yearbooks and wooden boxes gifted to me. Myself in Texas isn’t even myself in Columbia. Every time I move, every time I decide that it’s yet again necessary to drive 4-24 hours away from my old home and start again, I inevitably lose a part of me physically and bank on remembering it, correctly, forever. “What was that you said about memory? “A monster,” was it?”
I yearn for renewal and drown in my nostalgia, which is a nasty combination. It feels revealing and relieving to talk about my old life, but it would be even better to show it to you, to have these things to remind me to talk about them. I had this goddamned CD on my computer and I deleted it years ago because I guess I needed the 20 MB of space, the idiot. I put a sticker on the wrong kind of surface. All I have, mostly, is digital, but that over time is written over, refreshed, forgotten about. It’s hard to start again and keep a new log of my life when I miss remembering what the old one was like. I’m happy I started this blog because now I have something slightly more permanent, at least something large enough that I won’t just delete it off the internet or my computer. This is my new start. I really can’t get rid of this even if it ends up embarrassing me. I really need to break this cycle.
