Dear Pro Audio Expert on the Subway,

Your Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pros are open-back headphones intended for studio use. The back being open means that you have no isolation from outside noise and the rest of the car has no isolation from you. It kind of doesn’t matter, though, since they require 250 Ohms and the Android tablet you just plugged them into isn’t going to get anywhere near that, so they probably don’t get loud enough to really matter. I’m sure you already know all this and just don’t care, though. Of course.

You’ll get much more enjoyment from them when you get home with those sweet LPs you’re carrying and plug them into that $75 USB turntable you bought from Urban Outfitters. I’m sure it will be, like, all warm and analog, not at all shitty and distorted and cheap sounding.

Yup,

Chris

Rested and alert, I woke up at 7:45 AM after forcing myself to bed at 3. It’s Saturday, I am here alone, and I do not have to be in Philadelphia until 7PM tonight. I am in the midst of my most profound manic episode of the summer, the kind that finds me locked away by myself writing music night after night, doing anything I can to avoid going to bed, instinctively waking up from my reluctant sleep every few hours to check my email and send awkward text messages that I won’t remember, arguing with friends and co-workers and strangers a little too easily, and filled with the most wild and inspiring ideas and frustrations and drive to both reach out to everyone and cut myself off.

This is me, right now.

It is a double-edged sword. On one end, we have the drive behind almost everything I have accomplished that I would consider integral to my identity: Woe and most of its best songs, learning PHP and building phillymetal.com, all the high-level tech knowledge, most of the books I’ve read, all of my best writing, so many of the events I remember most, so many of the decisions I’ve made. On the other, we have the failed relationships, missed work, missed school, missed social obligations in general, the alienation of friends, money wasted, time investments in things that never panned out, the damage to my health, the occasional risky behavior. Of course, it could be worse. I don’t… blow my savings on cocaine but I guess there’s still time left for that.

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder three years ago and it snapped everything into focus. A lifetime of weird behavior summed up very succinctly, missed by doctors because I had never done anything crazy enough for them to consider anything more than simple depression. The final straw was when I jumped in my car and chased down a mugger who violently attacked two girls and stole one of their purses… while another girl I had just met was in the car with me. At 2 AM. When I checked myself into the hospital two weeks later, that incident caught their attention. Suddenly, a lot of the problems I had with school, routine, and really just life in general could be reexamined for what they were: tainted — I refuse to say “controlled,” as I ultimately have to be responsible for my actions — by a chemical condition that at times made me untouchable, at other times made me unbearable.

And here we are again. I’m dealing rather well, if I do say so. Mornings like this are difficult because I have to concede that my recent behavior — writing 20 minutes of music in three weeks, in particular — is not exactly normal, even if it does benefit me. I am realizing that I have an opinion of my manic episodes that verges on romantic; after all, they are the source of such drama, such adventure, some rabid creativity! There are enough personality archetypes that seem pervasive enough in our culture — the free-spirit, the wild artist, the uncompromising visionary — that one could possibly argue that we, as a culture, view bipolar disorder’s extremes in idealized, romantic language. The language is one-sided, though and focuses on the benefits because they make great stories, rarely its propensity to seize upon an individual with the worst possible emotion with no provocation, prodding them in a direction they don’t belong. Can I blame it for massive run-on sentences? Probably.

I feel fortunate in that for all of the grief it causes me, my episodes are relatively tame compared to others. Most of the specifics have been omitted here, particularly about the lows, and I hope that nobody reading this (not that anyone will read this) feels that my expressions of hypomania somehow marginalize more serious experiences. With all of the violence in America lately, I think that we need more serious discussions about mental health, and before that discussion begins, everyone owes it to him or herself to look inside and seriously examine the things they do, why they do them, and how they can make the most of everything they have.

This is what I can write in 20 days and record in one. My voice is kind of shaky. You will like it anyway.

Here.

[wp_bandcamp_player type=”album” id=”1915064426″ size=”grande2″ bg_color=”#FFFFFF” link_color=”#4285BB”]

I haven’t written and recorded any music that wasn’t for Woe since starting that project in 2007. I’m a little too tired to really write much more so just listen. Once this show next weekend is past, I will record a proper EP. I’m kicking around the idea of doing a tour in October but I have no clue what to do with this stuff, so we’ll see.

I have this theory that years of explaining complex, technical information (as well as barely technical information — things like the difference between POP and IMAP, shit like that) to noncomplex, nontechnical people has changed the way I communicate. Years ago, I remember my writing being a bit more dense, my word choice a bit more exciting, my ideas expressed a bit more dynamically; these days, I break ideas into smaller pieces, with short words and short, simple sentences. It’s great for explaining things to clients but when I do want to write something a bit more flowery, something like song lyrics, I have a really fucking difficult time getting my ideas on paper unless I am in a very particular mood.

This is where I am right now. I have the music for two songs totally finished, about 13 minutes, so I’m almost half-way to my goal of a 30-minute set for my acoustic show in twenty days. I plan on working in a cover, so I really only need about 25 minutes, and then you figure there will be a few minutes of tuning, some between-song, “Hi, thanks for coming out, I’m Chris and this is my first show, self-deprecating joke, awkward moment that you’ll hopefully find endearing,” and shit like that, so… I’m close. Problem is, lyrics are proving to be a drag. One of the two is done and I’m not in love with them but they work; the other… not so much. There’s a third that’s far enough along that I could do lyrics and I’m in the same boat. The way I assemble sentences has changed so I can help “developmentally delayed” adults understand the complexities of their iPhones.

Fuck! Rant over.

On August 25, 2012, I will be performing an acoustic set at the North Star Bar in Philadelphia as an opener for Wino & Conny Ochs.

I am really fucking nervous. If we disregard the fact that it’s my first show playing new (as-yet-unwritten) material, we come to the fact that this kind of thing leaves the performer far more exposed than the traditional band arrangement. When I’m playing black metal, I succeed or fail with my friends. If I fuck up, we fuck up; if someone else fucks up, we fuck up. Everything I say is hidden behind a wall of amps, a wave of cymbals, cloaked by a furious snarl and on face and a vocal delivery that reduces my lyrics to a fragments flying through the storm. I take pride in the honesty behind Woe’s lyrics and image, but no matter how hard I try to strip it down to its core, there will always be a divide between the performer and the audience.

This material will be different. Me, an acoustic guitar, and a microphone. Everything I say will be audible, every lyric I forget (cause that does happen) will be noticeable, every missed note and sloppy chord change will be clear as day. After a lifetime of playing aggressive rock music, this all feels very frightening.

I’ll have a demo up soon. There are a few songs I’ve been working on for a while that I’m going to finish up and use for this. One was originally a Woe song but the requisite clean vocals were just too much to attach to that project; another was far too wimpy to ever even consider; another was planned for Woe but, again, a little too wimpy so I wanted a better outlet for it anyway. Having only about a month to prepare is OK. If I had two months, it would have been one full month of procrastinating and nervousness followed by 10 days of frantic writing and then another 15-or-so days of frantic rehearsing, all leading up to 6 minutes of awkward between-song banter, 5 minutes of a cover, and 21 minutes of actual performing. The way I look at it, the deadline requires me to sort of cut the fat.

And that’s that. For now, onward to failure!