"manic depressive"

-- from "things i made up to annoy my (ex)girlfriend"

When I think of that time now, I see the afternoon sun passing through the basement window, as though we might have been doing something right. Most days after work, we’d go down there to hang out, have arguments about bullshit, prove theorems, listen to music, and above all else, drink. We’d be at it a while too, because my girlfriend at the time didn’t usually get home until about five hours after I did, so there was no danger of the fun police showing up. One day, during one of these after work parties, and for absolutely no reason at all, I picked up my guitar and played something at random. I hadn’t played in a long time on account of the guitar being warped to the point that it no longer sounded right, and I never seemed to find one that could take its place. It came to be known as the broken guitar.

The next day I was down there by myself thinking about the day before. That’s when “basement music” first came to me. Its basic ethos is “press record and play” — it doesn’t matter if the guitar is broken, it doesn’t matter if you’re out of practice, it doesn’t matter what you play, it doesn’t matter what you sing, it doesn’t matter if you are too close or too far from the mic, it doesn’t matter how stupid you sound or who you offend, just play because you feel like it at the moment. The first one I did that day was called basement and it was all about what me and my friend were doing down there, and perhaps more importantly, why we were down there at all. As I recorded it, I remembered the day before, seeing him tap on an empty wine bottle while I played on the broken guitar, the symbolism was too much.

The more I did it, the more interesting it got. The best basement music wasn’t simply improvised — because all basement music was pure improvisation — the best recordings always contained some ambient element that no one could have predicted in advance — a telephone ringing mid song, a dryer buzzer going off, perfectly synchronized with a closing chord, someone cooking with a wooden spoon in a sort of pissed off percussive state that says “you better get the fuck away from me before I throw something at you” — or one time, I got really lucky, and a recording picked up the sound of birds singing along outside my window. They do that you know. If you don’t believe me, try it.

So that brings us to a basement tune called “manic depressive” — the quotes are part of the title — from a larger collection of improvised songs called things i made up to annoy my (ex)gf.

"manic depressive"

now how come you’re unhappy when you get paid so much money 
when you’re free to do anything you wanna do on any day of the week?

and how come you’re not happy when you have a lovely girlfriend
that will do any god damned thing you want her to do on any day of the week?

’cause i’m a
   wrist slashing
   suicidal
   schizophrenic
   manic depressive
   and damn i need a drink.

i’m a
   self-mutilating
   alcoholic
   medicating
   psychopath
   and damn i need a drink.

smoking cigarettes and drinking 
passed out on your basement floor 
don’t you want something else in life? 
don’t you aspire to be more?

like what, like what? 
like what, like what?

oh your god is in my shot glass
your families are all clones
there’s no poetry in your escapist lives 
or passion in your bones.

like what, like what? 
like what, like what?

If you’d like to hear the other songs from things i made up to annoy my (ex)gf, along with the lyrics and the stories behind them, you can find them at The Keye Store. Just like last week, use the code IHATEMYSELF at checkout for a 10% discount.