Month: December 2023

All the Tears, All the Laughter, All the Feels

/ Jeremy / Leave a comment

The truly fortunate thing about antidepressants is that they hit the mute button on hard, destabilizing emotions. In that sense, they’re like a magical remote control that has the power to un-pause your paralyzed self and set it back in motion.

The truly unfortunate thing about some antidepressants is that they hit the mute button on all emotions. You can’t dull the sting of grief or loneliness without also dulling the likelihood, or at least the sharpness, of your soul’s humor or joy. At least that has been my recent experience.

From summer 2021 to summer 2023, Lexapro was a lifesaver for me, muting my Covid-era depression and anxiety and raising my baseline enough to function. (Which is a good thing since basic functionality is a pretty, um, basic function of our human mechanism.)

At times, I would even say that Lexapro allowed me to flourish. But even just for the times when it “only” raised my baseline, I will forever be grateful for SSRIs. That branch of pharmaceutical research, and the scientists who did the researching, helped get me make my way through a brutal mental health gauntlet.

But in recent months, I saw diminishing returns from my Lexapro use. And it wasn’t until recently that I realized I was experiencing what I’ve heard referred to as “emotional blunting.” I wasn’t feeling anything, good or bad, with all that much clarity. My emotional spectrum was compressed on both ends, and I felt numb. Like I was seeing both my potential joy and my potential sadness through a hazy, smudged lens.

Then in early November, 55 days ago (as I documented in this piece), I kinda-sorta-accidentally quit my antidepressant. And in the last 55 days, the most stunning thing has happened.

I can feel all the feels once again. Emotions that I hadn’t felt with any visceral precision for 2 ½ years. I have regained full access to the emotional spectrum. To my emotional spectrum.

On one hand, I have laughed more in the last 2 months than I had laughed in the previous 3 years combined. So much laughter, undulating like waves from my belly. Laughs that emerge in response to funny things (that my kids say, that I see on the internet, that I randomly think of) or just fun little self-deprecatory observations about my flaws and foibles.

It’s the kind of laughter that feels like a grand awakening.

On the other other hand, the poignant emotions and the tears flow freely now too. It’s amazing. But granularity is everything, so let me be very specific about these intense ripples of emotion, each of which felt like its own tidal wave. The 3 examples below are all from the last 20 to 30 days.

Reading Charlotte’s Web to my kids one morning, I got fully choked up by a rhapsodic passage in which Charlotte waxes eloquently philosophical about mortality. I had to stop reading for 20 seconds and collect myself. (On a side note, this book by E.B. White is magnificent. I give it 5 stars out of 5.)

Then as I watched It’s a Wonderful Life one night, I was overwhelmed by the intense pathos of it all. I experience something like this every year with this film, but it was notably more pronounced this time, and the wet hot tears were prolific. Pure catharsis. I felt George Bailey’s grief. And I felt Mary Bailey’s grief too. All the grief, all the joy, all the exquisite emotions of that aching story.

And finally, hiking on the Appalachian Trail one afternoon, while listening to emotionally earnest rock music, I was reflecting on some of the epic joys I have experienced as an ardent music lover and concert-goer. And these intense and indelibly etched memories, with music in my earbuds as a backdrop, walloped me with something I can only describe as euphoria. At first it was euphoria about music, and then it was euphoria about feeling euphoric. I was leaping in the air with joy.

Like, actually leaping. By myself in the woods. Like some kind of white-tailed deer (with Caspian rocking out in his earbuds).

It’s hard, and probably damn near impossible, to overstate how much these cathartic moments mean to me as a guy who has been sensitive and expressive pretty much from the moment I emerged into the light of this world. Emotional truth has always been a pillar of my ethos, especially since I came into my own as a college student.

I have long said that feeling things, and feeling them deeply, is just as central to being human as anything in our minds or bodies. Even rational thought, that ever-vital function of our God-given brains, takes a backseat to living our lives as emotion-imbued humans on this tactile, terrestrial plane.

We are emotional creatures. We can’t merely think our way to happiness or connectedness. Emotions have to play a pivotal role. And the person who numbs their feelings will ultimately numb their mind too. The sensory body, the emotional soul, and the intellectual mind all work hand in hand.

To be clear, none of this is prescriptive. Doing what I have done would not work for everyone. Quitting a medication is very serious business. I can’t yet explain how this has been a success, and how I have had no withdrawal symptoms.

But what I know deep in my bones, now more than ever, is that emotions matter. And it’s worth connecting to your emotions in any way you can, no matter what prescription you might be on. Yes, it can absolutely be helpful to numb certain emotions when they are unmanageable.

But not much on earth is better than reacquiring the ability to feel. Our lives were meant to be felt. The human experience is innately sensory, and emotional. And the realization of this fact is a profound one.

In fact, I feel overwhelmed by the profundity of it all. It’s the best kind of tidal wave.

And I am grateful that I am able to finally, once again, be submerged in those feelings.

Illuminating Your Self in the Darkest Time of Year

/ Jeremy / Leave a comment

The holiday season is cold, and it’s dark, and it’s hectic.

Unbelievably, irrationally hectic.

People like to say “It’s the wonderful time of the year” (especially that eternal optimist Andy Williams) and for some people, sometimes, it can be! But for most people, most of the time, it’s not. For parents, it can be the most stressful time. For empty nesters, it can be the most melancholy time. For those who are single, it can be the most isolating time.

Only for children and teenagers are the holidays more often wonderful in an uncomplicated way. But if a child or teenager lives with a stressed-out parent, or others with mental health struggles, and they’re old enough to absorb some of that emotional chaos or some of that melancholy, it will be a mixed bag for their adolescent minds too.

December itself, like Santa’s sack of gifts if I can force a metaphor, is the most mixed bag there is. All the feelings, jostling up against each other in the span of a few weeks. I myself have experienced a few deep-dark Decembers in recent years. I know what it is to feel a bit like George Bailey on the bridge in the snow, right around Christmas Day.

But this year I feel good, and sturdy, and energized. So I want to offer a few hopefully helpful reminders to anyone who needs a boost, in this moment when I have lucked into a mental health oasis of sorts. I know my clarity could easily lapse next month, if history is any indicator. And then maybe I will need to hear these reminders from someone else. We all need to prop each other up, and let ourselves be propped up.

So here are 3 thoughts about preserving our bruised, battered mental health during the holidays.

Christmas (or Hanukkah, or Any Other Holiday) is Not Picture Perfect

We have to somehow let go of this emotional need to make everything look gauzy and perfect, with 1,000-watt smiles on all our kids as well as on our own carefully posed faces. Neither parenting nor singleness nor newlywed-ness nor divorced-ness nor empty-nest-ness are anywhere close to perfect.

The holidays don’t change that imperfection; they just offer far more perceived photo ops. But we’re still the same flawed, love-needing people in December, just with a bunch of added holiday stress that heightens our flaws (along with our need for love).

So go easy on yourself. It’s okay that our kids are a mess sometimes. It’s okay that we’re a mess just as often. Most of the time, we’re all doing our best.

Give your kids grace. Give yourselves that very same grace.

Your Worth is Not Based on What You’re Worth to Anyone Else

What deprives us of gifting ourselves that grace is often our bruised self-worth. And the reason our self-worth is bruised is often because someone else — our dad, our mom, our friend, our spouse, our ex-spouse, even our children — has made us feel un-worthwhile.

Value is innate. You are valuable. I am valuable. We have value because we exist. This is true whether you believe (as I do) that we were created by a divine being, or whether you believe (as a few of the kindest people I know do) that we we’re not created but evolved, and that humanity is fundamentally alone, with each other, in the universe.

Either way, our value as human beings is intrinsic. It is not derived, in any way, from another human being deciding we are valuable to them. It’s not even derived from a divine being deciding we are valuable (although a divine being that is worth believing in simply must innately value all created beings).

We simply matter because we exist.

So here is what you need to know. You matter. And you must not allow yourself to be swayed from this belief by the fact that you might not matter, or might not matter enough, to someone else. That feeling is terribly sad, to be sure. Being devalued or un-prized by a loved one can be brutal. But it is not prescriptive, or descriptive, of your actual self. It’s descriptive of their probably-bruised self.

You matter. Even if the crush of the holidays, or the loneliness of the holidays, or the strained family convergences that the holidays often bring, make you feel you don’t matter.

Own your worth, as best as you can. No one can take it away from you unless you let them take it.

This is why we need, and deserve, to do self-care. Because our selves are innately worth caring about. And we can’t love anyone else if we don’t love the person in the mirror.

“Love your neighbor as [you love] yourself.” Jesus knew what he was talking about. Doing the first without first doing the second isn’t easy, or even logistically possible.

So if we want to show the Christmas spirit, or a general holiday spirit, we must learn to show that spirit to ourselves.

Otherwise, we might be eerily haunted by the Spirits of Christmas Past.

And I wouldn’t wish that nightmare on my worst, Scrooge-iest enemy.

Honor the Ebbs & Flows of Your Body

Despite ubiquitous strands of Christmas lights stretching  as far as the eye can see, this month is physically dark.

It’s scientifically verifiable that no month is darker. And this darkness affects our bodies, along with our emotions. We’re like plants in that way. We need sunlight. And deprived of it, we have a harder time growing and maintaining a healthy level of color. We tend to un-bloom.

I have learned (scratch that, I am learning) to accept this, to know it’s coming, to not judge it. And to do my best to adapt to it. I know that this winter, for instance, I will need to finally make a point of using the light therapy lamp my wife got me last Christmas. I will need to continue getting outside as much as possible, as I have been doing with regularity for months. Even when it’s 20 degrees and I could take a nap instead.

But also, I will take naps when I can. Both of those self-care activities are needed. Resting in the dark, and energizing in the daylight that we do still have at our disposal.

Honor the ebbs and flows of your body. They are a function both of your own biochemistry and of the fluctuations of seasons. There is nothing to be ashamed of when you observe that dull December (or January) ebb. You simply need to be aware of it, and work around it with as much proactive verve as you can muster.

As Jack Kerouac once said, “The world would not exist if it did not have the power to liberate itself.” That is just as true of the world, as it is for each one of us.

So even if you lack the emotional bandwidth to have yourself a merry little Christmas, I hope you can find a way to give yourself a grace-filled one. And to liberate yourself from believing that anything about the holidays, or about your kids, or about you, needs to be perfect.

Once you accept that fact, the darkness inside (stemming from the cold darkness outside) can be overtaken by light. And everything can be warmly illuminated.

My 2023 Year in Film, or: 6 out of 7 Ain’t Bad

/ Jeremy / 5 Comments

As an 18-year-old, freshly fledged from the nest, I giddily and wantonly tossed half my disposable income in the direction of the nearest cinema.

Streaming didn’t exist, and I didn’t have a TV in my dorm room. As a result, I probably saw 20 movies in a theater as a freshman, and another 20 as a sophomore. Full disclosure: I watched most of these films alone, in a big multiplex in southwestern Ohio. All by my lonesome. Just me and that giant welcoming screen.

As a result of being a regular at that Huber Heights theater — the ticket takers might as well have welcomed me by name — I became absurdly well-acquainted with the films of fall 1998 to spring 2000. The Sixth Sense. Fight Club. Boys Don’t Cry. Three Kings. The Mummy. The Insider. Jakob the Liar. Life is Beautiful. The Blair Witch Project. Sleepy Hollow. Being John Malkovich. Superstar. 10 Things I Hate About You. The “American” trilogy: Psycho, Beauty, and Pie. (I very much do not recommend those last 3 as a triple feature. That would be… a lot to take in.)

A decade or so later, as a 30-year-old married guy, I embarked on a more sensible 8-10 trips to the cinema each year. Then after our first child was born, when I was 36, it dropped to 4-5 a year.

(Here’s a fun-fact sidebar: The 2 of us went to see Finding Dory while my wife was SO INCREDIBLY GREAT with child and we were trying to seek out distractions. That film gave us, or at least me, 2 hours of chuckle-filled solace. But as the kids these days say, along with very expectant moms: YMMV.)

During year one of Covid, my annual cinema count dropped to zero for a while. Heck, everything good and fun was zero. And dark. And thirty times worse than before.* To this day, I shudder to recall the zero-ness of it all. But that’s a much darker saga for another day.

A year into Covid, once we learned what was advisable, my annual movie quotient went back up to 2-3 — albeit while masked and sitting warily in the back row during unpopular screening times. To this day, I don’t know if The Green Knight or Jordan Peele’s Nope were truly as disappointing as they seemed, or if I was just too traumatized by *gestures broadly at world* to appreciate them. I’m guessing the latter.

But now it’s 2023 and I’m back, baby! Back to being immersed in the sweet smells of success (cinematically speaking, with apologies to the great Burt Lancaster and the possibly even greater Tony Curtis) and fresh buttery popcorn. I’ve been to the cinema 7 times this year. It’s possibly I will end up at 9 or even 10, depending on how my otherwise deeply family-forward Christmas break goes.

And the films in question have been, by and large, stellar. (One was directed by Christopher Nolan, but I will nobly resist the urge to say that one was interstellar.)

Here, without further ado, is a fly-over tour of my movie year.

After a winter and spring movie slate that was unusually unappealing to me, summer hit with a wallop. In June my eyes lit up and my depleted and winter-worn dopamine supply was belatedly and ravenously replenished when I saw Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse in our charming indie theater, Midtown Cinema, a wonder-filled place which I had recently rediscovered for the first time in 20 years.

I never thought an animated Spider-Man film would hold even the slightest appeal to me, not having seen any of the Andrew Garfield or Tom Holland installments and still being a member of the Tobey-Maguire-is-the-only-Spider-Man club. But holy smokes. These Spider-Verse flicks, and Miles Morales himself, transformed the superhero game. And so I kicked off the summer season with a brain-rewiring masterpiece. 9 out of 10.

Then my wife and I went to the movies together for the first time, shockingly enough, since 1917.

(The film, not the year.)

We’ve seen a handful of Wes Anderson films together over the years and we both appreciate his brilliance. (I’m still a Tenenbaums guy, along with Rushmore and Budapest.) So we watched Asteroid City, and we both loved it. Not in a way that would allow us to explain to another human being with any lucidity the themes or even the logistics of the film’s meta-layered plot. But my gosh was that thing marvelous to look at, and my gosh was the cast riveting. 8 out of 10.

Then in late July, during a weekend concert getaway to Boston, I endured my only dud of the year. A movie I was utterly convinced I would love based on the last 3-4 installments of the series. But man, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part One was as belabored and clunky as its title.

Parts of it did look sensational, although those parts had been largely spoiled by the trailer. The plot and the dialogue, though? Incomprehensible, strained, and forgettable. And I swear that Tom Cruise, like his even more talented ex-wife, is losing the ability to facially emote. 3 out of 10.

Thankfully, the taste of disappointment was washed from my mouth by Labor Day. Barbenheimer, that phenomenon that singlehan… no, doublehandedly, reinvented Hollywood. Released on the same day, those two films combined to make almost $1 billion in the United States alone. (Okay, Greta Gerwig made just slightly more, with $636 million to Christopher Nolan’s $325 million.)

But much more importantly, both were wildly singular creations with big ideas and careening originality. And they were far more successful than almost any of the franchise blockbuster movies last summer. (Does anyone even remember Ant-Man 3, Transformers 6, or Fast X?)

I saw Oppenheimer first, and I was worried it would be too heavy and bleak since my mental health was on a summer downswing. But when a film is that thoughtfully and vividly wrought, even its darkness can feel illuminating. Yet another big-swing masterpiece by Christopher Nolan, whose The Prestige and Memento and the aforementioned Interstellar rank among my favorite pieces of 21st century drama. Oppenheimer blew my eyes out of my skull and, in the process, blew my mind wide open. 9 out of 10.

Then came my viewing of Barbie, pretty deep into its record-breaking and culturally galvanizing theatrical run, after 10s of 1,000,000s of people had already seen it. I admired it, I enjoyed it, I laughed early and often, and I sat at the feet of the brilliant women who wrote and directed and starred in it. I did my best to learn some things from them about what the world looks like for a woman in a toxically and perpetually man-powered society. It was a superb example of entertainment as cultural thinkpiece (that somehow remains purely, wildly entertaining).

I’ll leave it at that because to me, it was a film by women, primarily for women, and the conversation should center around women. For once, all of us men can just yammering so much and let the women have their moment. A gem of a movie. 8 out of 10. (If my gender allowed me to feel the movie deep in the bones of my own personal experience, I’m sure it would have been at least a 9.)

Then, prestige film season — which is a term in the movie world for October through December, when “awards-worthy” films are released by studios — brought the much-hyped Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.

I eagerly absorbed all 206 minutes of Marty’s latest gangland (by-way-of-1920s-Oklahoma) saga of power and corruption. And I absolutely loved… maybe 160 of those 206 minutes. The final act felt like it belonged to a different, less viscerally engaging film. But holy smokes, those first 2 ½ hours were agonizing in the way movies about white people and Native Americans should always be agonizing. 7.5 out of 10… but the first 2 ½ hours were a solid 9.

And finally, for now at least, I met up with my best friend (since kindergarten!) to see The Holdovers. My connection was three-fold: I love Alexander Payne films, I love Paul Giamatti, and most importantly, I love Alexander Payne films starring Paul Giamatti. Thankfully, this moviegoing experience didn’t go Sideways (oof, I know, my apologies) because it lived up to almost all of its warm critical reception.

I laughed roughly 27 times during the film, which is a great start. But I also was choked up by one scene, felt deeply moved by five other scenes, and had my appetite for acerbic verbosity satiated by twenty more. The Holdovers is exactly the kind of film I love to see at an arthouse cinema. “Doesn’t need to be seen on a widescreen” my foot. Big stories are best seen on big screens. And this story was sizable, not to mention absolutely, positively hilarious. 8 out of 10 (but it has grown in my memory to be closer to a 9).

Me and my 39-years-strong BFF Dave, at 22-years-strong Midtown Cinema

So there you have it. My 2023 movie year. And what a year it was! It’s quite gratifying that 3 of the 5 top-grossing films (thus far) were movies I loved. That rarely happens. And I heard good things about 1 of the other 2 of 5. But as for The Super Mario Bros. Movie?

I’ll stick with my memories of the original trilogy of video games — especially the immaculate, imaginative, immersive Super Mario Bros. 3.

Those video games endure as perfect artifacts of my childhood. But as an adult (and speaking only for myself), movies have utterly supplanted video games.

And all I want to do, when I have 3 hours to myself, is either escape to the woods…

Or escape to the movies.

🍿

*I hope Jessica Chastain sees this movie reference. Can someone share this blog with her? Anyone have an in? Although I guess I’d settle for Kyle Chandler or Joel Edgerton.

Cold Turkey, Warm Heart (or 27 Days of Clarity)

/ Jeremy / 1 Comment

I quit my antidepressant by accident.

Well, the first day was an accident. The other 26 were intentional.

I don’t recommend impulsively quitting major medications (without consulting your doctor for 13 days) as a general course of action. I’m guessing 9 out of 10 doctors would agree that’s a terrible idea. And I’m guessing the 10th one was too busy prescribing medications to fill out the poll.

So no, I don’t recommend this course of action. This blog post is not meant to be prescriptive, and only you and your doctor can formulate your own prescription.

Nonetheless, I am profoundly glad I stumbled into this outcome. At least for now.

But let’s back up a bit.

I bottomed out in spring 2021. Anxiety, sleeplessness, depression. Sleepless anxiety that made me feel depressed, and depression that made me feel anxious and sleepless. It was a vicious circular vortex and a low-level mental breakdown. (Not truly “low-level,” to be clear, but I know that some mental health strugglers have experienced even worse.) My mind was as chewed-up as a well-worn dog toy.

I wrote about that saga at great length a few months later. The short version is: I nervously met with my very-bombastic, not-very-good-at-listening family doctor and he prescribed Lexapro. So I took a helpful prescription from an un-helpful doctor and after a few brutalizing weeks of acclimation it successfully raised my baseline enough to help rescue me from deep darkness. Thank God (for pharmaceutical science).

Fast forward to 2023. I’ve been taking Lexapro for 2 ½ years and it has continued to raise my baseline so that my downswings are more manageable. But I have begun to experience diminishing returns. My lows are slightly lower than they had been, but still manageable. My highs are not quite as high, but still elevated. And at times I’ve wondered if replacing Lexapro with something else would be more suitable.

This brings us to an unseasonably mild Sunday in November, an “upswing” month when my mental health was humming along nicely. On that Sunday morning, I forgot to take my pills.

I proceeded to have a positively wonderful day with my kids, lucid and joyful and decisive. The kind of day that was common for me throughout the entirety of autumn (as seems to happen October and November).

I didn’t realize my oversight until the next morning when I went to take my Monday pills. And the sight of that still-full Sunday slot gave me pause. Why hadn’t I noticed their absence in my body or mind?

So I thought “Maybe I’ll try skipping a 2nd day. Just to see if I can pull it off.” I placed a pill in a little plastic orange container and dropped it in my backpack to take with me to work, just as a fallback option if I got the sweats or started feeling some withdrawal.

But then the day was a great one.

And the next day was another great one.

And the whole subsequent week was smooth sailing.

And here I am, nearly a month after semi-accidentally going cold turkey, and I feel extraordinarily lucid. And decisive. And energetic. And good-humored. And myself.

As David Byrne would say, “How did I get here?” What the heck is going on exactly? Previously, each time I forgot to take my pill for even one day I felt a bit sweaty and jittery by late afternoon. That gnawing feeling of depleted serotonin.

So what gives? This is nothing like how cold turkey usually tastes.

I have several theories, but the most operative one is this: I don’t think my body specifically needs Lexapro anymore. And my mind is so flooded with serotonin during my “upswings” that I can somehow wean off an antidepressant without any problem.

To my medically untrained mind, and as I listen to my body, that appears to be what’s happening. (And yes, I’m in consultation with my relatively helpful new family doctor, not the un-helpful one I referenced earlier.)

But the flipside, and the other operative part of my theory, is this: My seasonal highs and lows dictate that January will likely bring a darker, flatter outlook. My sweet chariot will swing low. And I will likely need something to help me cope. I am consulting with my doctor and a few trusted friends about how I’ll level out (and level up) my low self. I have a working theory of what I can try, but for now I’ll keep that on the down-low.

What matters now is that I am experiencing something legitimately unexpected. It truly feels profound to me. And on some level, it even feels providential — although I always struggle to say that since everyone’s experience is so utterly different. So what is providence exactly if it’s doled out so unevenly? In any case, the emphasis is on feels, because I can truly, deeply feel things for the first time in 2 ½ years. My emotions aren’t being muted anymore. More on that vivid new emotional acuity in a future essay.

The last almost-4 years have been a ride and a half for all of us, worldwide. I can personally testify to the chaotic and visceral destabilization wrought by the pandemic era, overlaid with the decimating moral horrors of the late-stage Trump era. (I know some will cry “hyperbole!” But that was my exact experience. Take it or leave it.)

So stumbling into a huge measure of cold-turkey-induced clarity, as you can imagine, feels like quite a strange and wondrous gift.

And I will not look that horse in the mouth.

I will just savor the chance to ride that magnificent beast, in the verdant pasture of my newly rediscovered sense of self.

But I will also mentally (and logistically) prepare for my annual January downswing, which may well require a different prescription.

Hopefully, though, it will allow me to keep some of this same careening momentum.

One day, and one moment, at a time.

That’s all any of us has.

Sunlight Ascending over the End of the Ocean

/ Jeremy / 2 Comments

“Never meet your heroes,” they ominously intone. And then later in a different context, they snidely warn: “Never wear the shirt of the band you’re going to see at the concert.”

They might even have the audacity to offer this counsel: “Never drive 13 hours round-trip to see less than 1½ hours of music.”

But in my life as a raging music die-hard, I have kindly rejected all of this seemingly sage advice. What do they know, anyway? And who even are they?

Well, one of them is Jeremy Piven’s character in PCU. And I, for one, would rather not base my concert-going ethos off Piven saying “Don’t be that guy.” (As in, the guy who loves a band so much that he wears that band’s T-shirt to go see the band play.) Ah my dear fellow Jeremy… I love being that guy.

So last weekend I euphorically violated the 1st and 3rd pieces of advice. I would have gladly violated the 2nd one too, Piven’s glare notwithstanding, but I didn’t have the appropriate garments. I made sure to rectify that for 10 bucks at the merch table.

So I met a few of my heroes and I traversed an absurd distance to see 82 minutes of music I love (plus another 60 minutes of music I didn’t love but enjoyed watching in rapt curiosity).

And I’ve got the T-shirt to prove it.

For those who prefer the condensed version of events, here are the specifics of my 24-hour adventure, mashed into one epic, heart-quickening sentence.

I giddily drove 410 miles from central Pennsylvania to central Ohio to see post-rock stalwarts The End of the Ocean play a hometown show in Columbus, their first one in 4 years, with their close friends in Michigan-based 6-piece post-rock band Sunlight Ascending, along with local hardcore bands Minority Threat and Stairway to the Sun at a dive bar called Ace of Cups, after which I met every single member of both my favorite bands and stayed as long as I possibly could, and only when the bands had packed up and were finally leaving did I drive home through the night fueled by adrenaline (and 2 hours of sleep at a rest stop) while basking in the euphoria of the pummeling, gloriously cinematic rock that had just transported me into a state of happy oblivion.

Last Saturday, that is what I did. Or more accurately it’s what music did, for me and for 150 other people at the Ace of Cups in downtown Columbus. It was easily one of my 5 most memorable (non-kid-related) days in the last few years.

God bless rock and roll, and may it never die.

So… that’s the short version of events. But if you’re not into the whole brevity thing, as the Dude would say, there’s way more where that came from. The joys of my concert road trip were myriad and they were magical. If you’re feeling the magic, by all means keep scrolling.

First, let’s talk about the wild and dizzying spectrum of concert experiences in the Ticketmaster Era.

On one side of the spectrum is this: “Wait for hours in an online queue to pay multiple 100s of dollars to our Ticketmaster overlords, including obscene fees, so you can go to a gaudy corporate-owned arena and pay even more money for parking, and then watch (from a respectable distance) a truly spectacular show where you will almost definitely be nowhere near the stage, and after which you will never, ever meet your favorite musician at their merch table.”

On the other side of the concert-going spectrum is what I have experienced dozens of times as a die-hard fan of dozens of bands whose followings are passionate but vastly smaller than that of Taylor Swift or Foo Fighters.

It goes a bit more like this: “Wait for zero hours in an online queue because you just buy your $20-30 ticket at the door, with zero fees, at a small dive-bar venue where you pay zero dollars for parking and then watch a truly spectacular show where you can very often stand right next to the stage, hovering over the pedalboard and the hand-scrawled setlist taped to the floor, especially if you get there as soon as the doors open, and as an added bonus you will very often get to meet your favorite musician at their merch table because the first thing they want to do after the show, besides getting a well-deserved drink, is hobnob with the fans and maybe even give your fist bumps and hugs because they are so grateful you drove all the way to stand in awe as they and their guitars rip a hole in the Sun.”

Or, you know, something in that general ballpark. (But not at an actual ballpark.)

Ticketmaster has a done quite a number on us, but concerts don’t actually have to be expensive, even in 2023. And they don’t have to be impersonal either. All you have to do is find bands to love and support who are local, or under the radar, or play in a genre that for some incomprehensible reason isn’t widely accepted in the United States.

In this case, that genre is “post-rock.” A realm known for pummeling and/or evocative rock music, usually without vocals. Music that usually feels like an intensely heart-swelling movie score, but in some cases goes as hard as Metallica or Led Zeppelin.

Post-rock is, in a word, my jam. And I will drive 6, 7, 8, even 9 hours to jam out with the preeminent purveyors of that genre of music.

Most often that is Caspian, they being the reigning titans of post-rock (although they tend to resist the genre label). I saw Caspian twice this year (in 2 major American cities, in the span of 3 days!) but they weren’t part of the show last Saturday.

The two bands I heard in Columbus held their own quite admirably with the very best post-rock bands around. And man oh man were they eminently worth the drive.

The End of the Ocean, from Ohio, veers toward the heavier side of things while maintaining a restrained, melodic core. Their musicianship is impeccably tight. Their early music was very pretty (and sometimes went hard) while their more recent music goes hard (and sometimes is also very pretty). All 3 of their albums are wall-to-wall superb. Two thumbs up, both hands down.

I saw the band play Harrisburg in 2019 and chatted them up extensively then, including a lengthy exchange about the wonders of early Third Eye Blind. I even was a passenger, for a minute, in their band van! So I guess you could say we go way back well — well, 4 years at least.

Then there’s Sunlight Ascending, from Michigan, which embodies the more textured and experimental (and glisteningly hopeful) side of post rock. Their songs are often 6 minutes long, sometimes even 8 or 9, and they’re structured like 4-act or 5-act symphonies. Each song is a journey, and you often feel like you start a song in one place and end up in an entirely different one.

Their first album came out in 2009 when most of the band members were, get this, fifteen to eighteen years old. Crazy, right? Especially since their first album was among the most moving, cathartic ones I’ve ever heard. I saw them play Post Fest (a post-rock-forward festival) in Indianapolis this past summer, before which I somehow had never heard of them. I listened to their set and was mesmerized. Then I met them at the merch table and gushed about how much I loved all of their songs. Just as I did on Saturday.

So there you have it. A rough sketch of the 2 bands I drove through 4 states to rock out with.

But what do you do after you drive 6 ½ hours to hear 1 ½ hours of music and then you’re amped up on concert adrenaline? You can’t just hop right back in your car after the final song, right?

Exactly right. So what you do is go to the merch table or to the stage or to wherever the members of the band are, and TALK THEIR EAR OFF. Because here’s the thing. Bands that are under the radar and underappreciated, in my experience, really want to meet their fans.

So for the better part of two hours, I did just that. There are 10 combined members in Sunlight Ascending and The End of the Ocean, and I talked to every single one of them. Some of them for a minute, some of them for 5 minutes, a few of them for 20 minutes, and one for about 45. Andrew and James and Sean from Sunlight Ascending. Tara from The End of the Ocean. Trish from both bands (she pulled double duty that night). And everyone else too: Dennis, Jeremy, Wes, Kevin, and Jason.

I talked to all 10 of them, and all 10 of them were well worth talking to. They were down to earth, funny, appreciative, and very happy to answer all my enthusiastic (and/or granular) questions about their music.

At the end of the night, at 1:00am, they were trying to gather everyone for a band picture out on the streets of Columbus, while a drunken fight broke out one block away. (Hopefully that’s been resolved by now.) So I offered to take the shot for them.

Let me repeat: I snapped a picture of 2 of my favorite bands, the very picture they ended up putting on Instagram.

I mean, what an honor.

So here it is.

And here I am. Living the dream. Concert road trips are the stuff of dreams, and I will never outgrow the desire for the catharsis and connection these trips offer me.

These are one of the few things I ever splurge on, and the only “splurging” aspect is the gas money (and the merch table) since the concert itself is always so cheap. My wife Dani is just as hardcore as I am about music, and concerts are essentially their own category of our family budget.

Someday I will take great joy in taking my kids to one of these shows (once their eardrums can handle it). Because another of the great things about post-rock is: It’s pure. It’s for everyone. It’s not about drugs or drunkenness or debauchery in the slightest.

It’s about the music.

And the way music connects us to each other.

But just as importantly, the way music connects us to our true selves.

Long live live music, no matter how far you have to drive to see it. After all, as the preeminent purveyors of post-rock are often known to say (quoting Charles Bukowski)…

Go. All. The Way.