Good Art Bad Art – Part I - Agoraphobia

“Until recently, agoraphobia was defined as a fear of open spaces. It now also includes several other related fears, such as having a fear of entering shops, a fear of crowds and public places, or of anxiety associated with being unable to reach a place of safety (eg, home), in a quick enough time. In extreme cases, people with agoraphobia may be unable to leave their home.”

I know it well. Although considered and even berated by the elders in my prim and proper family growing up for being what they used to call “a social butterfly” I have long suffered from a severe resistance to leaving the confines of “wherever I happen to be.”

Now I know what you’re thinking. I travel more than most. Traveling is a big part of my living. Whether it be for music or research or activism I tend to be on the road more often than in town. That's true. Traveling is not my problem, though it used to be as the below will illustrate. Nah. It’s more of a reluctance to actually doing anything other than sitting alone and working.

It was 1 AM on Thursday night and all I felt was dread knowing that I had an engagement the evening of the following day. Not that I had anything remotely objectionable to do that evening. It was after all a social gathering that involved the most famous painter in Iran, the most infamous filmmaker in Iran, Leonard Nimoy of “Dr. Spock” fame, the composers Phillip Glass and John Zorn, and Choreographer Amy Greenfield. Along with a bevy of gorgeous dancers and models and the usual assortment of Manhattan socialites one expects to see at such affairs. But for the life of me I could feel nothing but dread with the knowing that I actually had to leave the house that evening. And here it was almost a full 24 hours before the scheduled event and I was lying in bed perspiring and tossing and turning just thinking about it.

Why? I have no idea. Been that way for years. Never even questioned it until recently.

There was the time I was booked to fly to Seattle from Miami and cancelled the day before. No need to name names, but it took almost a year for her to speak to me. Understandable. Just couldn’t bring myself to get the get up and go to actually get up and go. So I laughed in the face of an already booked airline ticket and just didn't bother to show up. Heartless. I know. On another occasion I was scheduled to speak at a friends wedding in Vermont and so dreaded the fact that I was supposed to pack a bag, hop on a plane and fly somewhere that I didn't sleep at all that night. I woke up and told my friend who was also flying out to the wedding that morning and who drove by to pick me up that “I wasn't going. I just don't feel like it.” Never quite got over that one. Took me years to get it into my bloodstream that I actually stood up the whole damn wedding party and respective family so I could “just stay home where it’s safe.” There was no excuse for it.

Perhaps it was laziness. Perhaps it was just the fact that I didn't care enough. Perhaps it was the associated hassle of having to do so much to get ready for the trip. I do find that when someone else is responsible for taking care of everything involved in booking the trip and getting me there, including accompanying me and making sure that I actually leave the house, that I'm usually fine. I am as plenty of my friends will readily assert an extremely social creature. Overtly social. So once I'm out I'm fine. (Except for the fact that all I can think about is leaving unless something truly spectacular is happening.) But the truth is that after one lives a few decades, and especially lives the way I have lived, and has pretty much seen and done it all, left no stone unturned, nor declined the offer to sample just about everything, that there just isn't much “truly spectacular” left to experience. And that's putting it about as honestly as I can. Now I grant you that I I have never actually witnessed a man copulating with a horse in real life, only on the internet. But that isn't going to get me dressed and out of the house. Perhaps aliens landing on the White House lawn would. If and only if I had a press or backstage pass.

There's just something about “having something to do” that bothers me. It gets under my skin and drives me crazy. I'll brood about it the whole day until I am forced to drag my sorry ass out. Late of course. As usual.

Had six appointments this week and canceled four of them. Well, not exactly. Going too easy on myself. Had six appointments this week and didn't even bother to call to cancel four of them. Now granted, I'm having a tough month. A tough year. Going through a rough patch so to speak. So I need to go easy on myself. That's what they say anyway. “They” always know. So I'm giving myself a break. But for how long? How long am I supposed to “give yourself a break” before it becomes enabling? Or just plain old and tired?

In 2007 I gave a party for a friend, invited a bunch of other friends, hosted it at another friend’s loft in Gramercy because at the time she had the most sprawling pad among us, and at the last minute I decided to bail on it. Little Dawn was furious. “Fishy get your lazy ass here now and help me prepare for this goddamn party now!” “Dawn how mad would you be if I didn't show? I'm tired.” “How the hell can you not show up for a party YOU are hosting? Fishy I love you. We’re friends. So I know you'll forgive me for saying this and appreciate my willingness to be radically honest with you. If you don't show up for your own party that you have conveniently decided to throw at my apartment I will never speak to you again! Got it buddy?!” “Yeah. Got it.” So eventually I reluctantly made my way there. And in the end it was fine. In fact, it was a damn good time and an important occasion to celebrate. It was the getting out of the house part that was hard for me.

The band has hated me for it for years. Every band I've ever been in actually. I was infamous for my tendency to be late to everything or cancel at the last minute. I used to cancel concert performances all the time simply because I didn't feel like leaving the house back in the college days when we were in the band Shattered. The drummer would be in his car on the way to the gig and I would call and tell him I wasn't going to show. A truly heinous action I know. The club owners used to hate us back in the college years. Problem was that we were one of the biggest draws in town when we did manage to play so they couldn’t say much except “don't ever do that again.” One club did ban us from ever playing there again. But that was a different story.

The “lateness” thing eventually came to a head on the fateful night of the official CD release party of our Sleep With You album. I was already in the city of Orlando, on an Avatar course. Mere minutes from the venue that we were to play that night. The band was driving up in a rented maxi-van from Miami. An almost five hour haul filled with our equipment. Short version, they got there with plenty of time to set up, eat, and relax before the gig and I was an hour late. And yet I was already in town and staying just a few minutes from the venue. Piano Man bitched me out so hard for that one that he threatened never to play with me again if I ever pulled a stunt like that. He pointed out that I was the only musician that he had ever played with, ever, that showed up to rehearsals late every time – even though the rehearsals were at my own house. True. Funny. Sad. But true. So I was forced to really take a look at it. What WAS happening? How the fuck could I be late to my own CD release party for a new album when I was already in the freaking town the concert was in? And the rest of the band got there in time with a five hour drive ahead of them?

Eventually I realized it had a lot to do with this whole reluctance to leave the safety of the house thing. Granted, I was staying at a hotel. Nothing feels safer to me than a hotel. Not my “house.” But hotels feel safer to me than just about anywhere else. Another mystery. I just like hotels. Everyone does everything for you. Your only job is to have a pulse. That I can do. Most nights anyway. Another mystery: Send me packing off 3000 miles away and I'm fine. Invite me to lunch half a mile away and thank Allah himself if I actually show up. But Piano Man’s insistence that I stop showing up late to everything really got me thinking. I finally came to realize that it just came down to motivating myself to actually get myself out of wherever I was... pure and simple. If I'm “here” wherever “here” is, I would rather stay “here.” Newton’s law of inertia or something.

“In New York we make plans so we can break them” we say. We have more to do in The Big Apple than anywhere else on earth. Our calendars are filled to the rim so escaping a prior engagement feels like a sunny day in January. There’s no explaining the feeling of relief when someone cancels on you at the last minute. It is as if one minute you weigh 300 pounds and in the next you feel as though you only weigh 150. Just because someone cancelled on you. Can’t explain it to someone who doesn’t live here. They wouldn’t do it. They would be shocked by it. We stand each other up for lunch, dinner, meetings, appointments, the ballet, symphonies, the Philharmonic, even weekend getaways. All so we can “just stay home and experience some quiet and get some peace.” New York does that to you.

I had an amazing day yesterday. I fell asleep the night before with the awe inspiring realization that if I reneged on a few promises to call some people back to “get together” that I didn't have one engagement that was absolutely necessary that day. It would take flying off the radar but I could pull it off if I really wanted to. I wouldn’t even have to change out of my bathrobe. Woke up early. 7:30 AM is early for me. By noon I needed some more coffee and to drop off some mail. Ever increasing clarity of thought coming at me from all angles over the last two months, I started getting the notion that I really didn't need to change out of my bathrobe if I didn't want to. We were in New York after all. Which roughly translates to “no one gives a shit what you do. Just keep moving or step aside.” Which is why so many of us live here I think. How else do you explain eight million people crammed onto an island 12 miles long by 2 miles wide? Living in our little shoeboxes that sell for roughly $1300 a square foot if “you got a good deal.” Yes. There is true peace and tranquility in a city that never sleeps and where the only thing that is demanded of you is that you mind your own business and stay anonymous no matter how well known you happen to be.

So downstairs and out into the loud raucous world of midday Manhattan I trekked in nothing but a woolly blue bathrobe, a pair of well-worn furry Hammacher Schlemmer slippers, and a pair of sunglasses to retrieve said coffee and drop off the mail. As suspected no one even blinked. “I could take this Gonzo effect seriously if I allowed myself to” I thought. How far could I take it? That was the question. We will see over the next few decades. One thing I have learned is that once you cultivate a certain proclivity for eccentricity there is no limit to what people are willing to accept from you. You could be stark raving mad, as I often suspect I am, and people will get used to it.

When I ordered my coffee the lady behind the counter, who happens to have a soft spot for me because unlike most of the rushed and hurried English speaking “just give me my fucking coffee and bagel” Manhattanites that she is used to dealing with, I speak Spanish with her and take the time to at least say hello, makes a comment about the fact that I am still dressed in a bathrobe and slippers and I'm in a coffee shop on Broadway at 12 o'clock in the afternoon. “I've got nothing going on today. So what the hell?” I replied and smiled. “It’s still a free world, sort of, right?” And she just laughed. That was that. Nothing. Chalk that up to one of the multitude of greatest things about Gotham City.


So what about the aforementioned grand affair that I was expected to show up promptly for this evening you ask? Well, truth be told, and I hate to admit it, it did indeed cause an influx of panic and dread so palpable in my entire being that by 3 PM I had to lay down and just breathe, knowing that I was expected to actually show up somewhere by 6 PM, and worse, show up “on time.” Why? I have no freaking clue. But at least I'm onto it. at least I know that this malady exists now. Rather than enabling it by not bothering to even acknowledge it or recognize it and rather just rationalizing it all the time using wit and charm, I am now fully cognizant of it and more importantly ready to tackle it.

I am reminded that most people I know do not seem to suffer from anything remotely similar. In fact, they normally feel honored when invited to such things. A friend says to me a few months back, “Fishy we know you aren't going to come and we feel guilty for inviting you to things knowing how uncomfortable it makes you to have to decline everyone so we just don't bother to invite you out anymore.” Well for fucks sake, don't do that I yell. At least allow me the courtesy to politely decline your invitations.

Catherine Darlington works her ass off all day, often times 12 hour days and still manages to see a Broadway play, a ballet, or have drinks or dinner with a friend almost every night of the week. Princess Little Tree will do just about anything if you just ask her. She's up for it. Weather Girl too. Has one of the busiest social calendars I've ever heard of. And perhaps that's all there is to it. Social events just don't do it for me anymore. Is Zeus himself going to appear in the sky and pull a laser light show out of his ass? Probably not. So why bother? Reminded of the late Hunter Thompson in the latter few decades of his life. Everyone knew he wouldn’t leave the comfort of his beloved Owl Farm. There was always a party happening at Hunter’s place. It’s just that you had to come to him. He never left. And for most people that was just fine with them. Hugh Hefner had and still has a similar ethic. Not only did he never leave his home, he made his home his office, running the entire empire out of his living room, demanded that everyone work out of HIS house, and hasn't changed out of his bathrobe in decades. Smart men. Good ideas. Life as art.

Remember. Try to remember. It's only wrong if you make it wrong. Choose to make it right. Love it and live it. One life. Live it as art. Every moment. You are an artist. Be an artist. Make love to the entire world from the comfort of your own private world if you have to, but whatever you do just don't forget to make love. There is art in it.