A Radiant Darkness

A Radiant Darkness- Side One (download) / Side Two (download)  (save link as....)

I don't remember, were we wild and young?

All that’s faded into memory.

I feel like somebody I don't know.

Are we really who we used to be?

Am I really who I was?

My best friend, Dennis Hopper The Rabbit, passed away two years ago today. I wrote pretty extensively about this, and my subsequent spiral into grief and depression, last November, on what would have been his third “adoption day.” So I don't really see a point in going into another big long thing, because in the last five months, nothing has really changed.

When you lose somebody, you’re supposed to try to remember all of the good times that you spent together. There’s one really specific moment that comes to mind. We used to just sit together all night, Dennis Hopper The Rabbit and I. There was a night where I was listening to a shoegaze LP, drinking a chocolate beer, sitting with him while he at some hay. I recall making a Facebook status update to this effect, referring to what I was doing as a “baller lifestyle.”

This sticks out for me not because it is so memorable, but as a time when I was seriously very thankful, and happy about the fact that I was enjoying a record, spending time with my rabbit friend. It’s one of the few really good memories that I can pinpoint. There are a lot of other good memories, sure—like the time he jumped over his playpen walls because he was SO EXCITED about the food I was preparing; or when he figured out how to open our bedroom door and would dig and push at it until it popped open; or when he would lick my nose after I had given him a smooch on his forehead.

These are the things I should spend my time thinking about, rather than thinking about the sad moments—like the very end, or when he was very sick with a bladder stone, and all the uncertainty and stress that came along with that before he recovered.

Maybe it’s like this for everyone and how they deal with loss. You just end up dwelling on something that makes the hurt even worse.

My wife and I try to make it to a monthly support group for people who have lost companion animals. There’s a young woman who has started going because one of her dogs passed away very suddenly on New Year’s Day this year. She’s talked to some extent about friends of hers who haven't understood her need to grieve, and how long that takes. To some extent, they’ve told her to get over it.

In hearing her talk about this, I felt somewhat thankful that our circle of friends has been smart enough to not say something like that to me. Then again, considering how withdrawn from social situations I've grown over the last two years, maybe there have been hints of this, and I've just been too checked out to notice.

It’s so cliché to say that living with depression is like having a black cloud following you around, or always feeling like somebody is choking you—but those are both incredibly accurate. Sometimes the depth of this is literally too much to process. Waking up and getting out of bed seems insurmountable at times. Small talk, or conversation with others is almost out of the question.

There are moments when it’s hard for me to recall a time before all of this—like that I can't even fathom that for part of my life, I didn’t feel this way, and that I was someone else. I mean I've always been a bit of a downer. But the way I felt, say, four or five years ago looks like a light, comic romp compared to what I face today.

The photo up there—the one I used for the cover to this mixtape—it was taken two days before he passed away. It was before we knew how severe things had become with his abscess tooth. We never knew how much pain he may have actually been in until we met with the specialist who was going to perform the surgery on him. He never let on that anything was wrong. He had so much energy still and was full of life.

The last time I wrote about this, and subsequently put together a mixtape to process things, it was all songs about grieving and loss. This time, it’s a little more than that. The first part of this is about grief and loss, and the second part is everything that comes after. This can work two ways, I guess—one is looking at it as a double LP, because both side one and side two are self contained by a theme. But you can also look at it as a whole, since they work together, towards something much larger.

The first part is all songs that I either didn't think to include the second time around, or songs that came out late last year that I was rather moved by. The second side is, for the most part, songs that I've carried with me for a while—some of them date back to well before any of this was…a problem, but a bulk of them have meant a lot to me within the last two years. I’d say like 90% of the second side are also songs I played more often than I should have on the radio show I used to do.

Seriously. No one ever picked up on anything all of the times that I played “Asleep” by The Smiths at the end of my show. What’s wrong with you people?

I don't choose to get too personal on this site all that often, but it is somewhat comforting to know that I have it as an outlet if I need to really say something. I stop short of telling you to enjoy this, because an hour and forty minutes or whatever of really sad music is not “enjoyable” per se, but I hope that if you've ever lost somebody that meant the world to you, that you understand the place this is coming from, and that you are not the only one out there who is carrying these heavy feelings.

Side One:

Set it Right (Acapella Version) by How to Dress Well

This Woman's Work by Maxwell

Life Changes by Wu Tang Clan

The Road We Didn't Take by Freda Payne

I'll Be Missing You by Puff Daddy and The Family

Flight of The Navigator by Childish Gambino

Big Pain Tribute by Little Pain

I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You by Colin Hay

Heaven by Beyonce

Videotape by Radiohead

Sister Song by Perfume Genius

Side Two:

Please Forgive My Heart by Bobby Womack

It's Easier Now by Jason Molina

Fantastic Voyage by David Bowie

Screen by Brad

You Were a Kindness by The National

Place to Be by Nick Drake

The Drugs Don't Work by The Verve

Nightblindness by David Gray

Electro-Shock Blues by Eels

Everything Means Nothing to Me by Elliott Smith

Here, In Heaven by How to Dress Well

Asleep by The Smiths

Pills by The Perishers

Lucky Now by Ryan Adams

Pink Rabbits by The National

Blue Chicago Moon by Songs: Ohia