memoir

It’ll Change Your Life, I Swear

/ Jeremy / 1 Comment

 “You gotta hear this one song. It’ll change your life, I swear.”

~ Natalie Portman, handing Zach Braff her headphones

For those of us who ardently believe in the immense power of music, hearing this line uttered on the big screen in 2004 was a moment.

A real kick in the, um, shins.

Because beyond friendship, family, and nature, there might be nothing on earth that shapes the contours of a human soul more than music. For me, it is the most potent art form. So much so that it has painted every vista I’ve discovered, and even blazed (or altered) the paths that have escorted me to those vistas.

Music has changed my life.

Every chapter of my story is built around the music I loved during that moment in time. And when I think of the defining moments that have comprised my 30s and early 40s, one band has delineated the trajectory of my personal saga more than any other.

That band is Caspian. An instrumental/art/hard rock 5-piece (formerly a 6-piece) from Beverly, Massachusetts. A band of brothers. Intrepid pioneers of a potent genre of music that has, perhaps to its ultimate benefit, never hit the mainstream.

A group of guys otherwise known, to me and quite a few others, as *clears throat portentously* the greatest band on planet Earth.

I discovered Caspian in 2009 when a random guy who I randomly (and briefly) worked with at a college newspaper near the Flatiron foothills in Boulder, Colorado not-so-randomly burned a few discs for me. One of which was The Four Trees by Caspian.

As soon as I laid ears on that album, I realized I had found something I’d long been looking for. Ever since I discovered music on my own, beyond the borrowed tastes that were pressed upon me by my high school friends or my youth pastor or my older brothers, I had been on a quest. From the age of 17 onward, I did everything I could to seek out and orchestrate a score for my life that was all my own.

But it wasn’t until I was 29 ½ and found Caspian’s early catalogue that I truly possessed the material to create the backbone of my motion picture soundtrack.

Caspian is well-loved (by its fans), but not well-known. It tends to be classified under the “post-rock” banner, a niche genre. And even for the nicheans themselves, the label itself has grown stale.

I mean, it’s dramatic instrumental rock. No vocals. But sometimes, there are vocals. And sometimes, it’s not rock. So what even is it? All I can say is: You know it when you hear it. Or more accurately: You feel it.

Having said that, Caspian has long since outgrown their prior classification. They started out as the most promising post-rock band since Mogwai, quickly evolved into the best post-rock band in the genre (in my admiration-addled view), and then just kept evolving way out beyond the property line of the genre’s backyard, into an expansive open range. Out into mountains and meadows of their own making.

After the stunning opening salvo of You Are the Conductor and The Four Trees, in 2009 they crafted their magnum opus, Tertia. All 3 albums contained blistering rock overlaid with aching beauty. Moments that twist your heart into knots, and moments that melt your face off your skull.

Caspian then released one of the most buoyant spring/summer albums ever (Waking Season), followed by one of the most mournful fall/winter albums ever (Dust and Disquiet), the latter of which represented the long, dark shadow of a tragic loss. The echo of an abyss, reverberating under a dark field.

Then, after a sabbatical of sorts, they reinvented the wheel with On Circles. Its 8 songs were entirely distinct from each other and from everything else they had ever written. One of them was the most layered and profound track that Caspian ever recorded, a song that is even more rewarding on its 50th listen. “Division Blues” quickly became my haunting anthem for this divisive, blues-inducing era.

To support their newest album, Caspian kicked off a truly epic North American tour, supported by some of their favorite bands. And then Covid decimated it with impunity, banishing Caspian and everyone else to a year and a half of shuttered tour dates, ravaged budgets, and forced hibernation.

The setback was brutal and the loss, to Caspian and to every other working-class musical artist, was incalculable.

But you can’t keep a good band down. And Caspian reemerged in late 2021 and 2022 to shred eardrums and make up for lost time. I saw them play 2 nights in Boston, 1 night in Detroit, and once had tickets to see them in Philadelphia but was myself decimated with impunity (and horrific timing) by Covid.

I have driven a long way, and would drive even longer, to see these guys on stage. These guys being, namely, Phil and Cal (the OG founding members, electrifying guitarists, and among the true-bluest and least ego-driven human beings I know), Jonny “Thrashburn” (a gentleman, a scholar, an artisan, and a badass guitarist), Jani (a masterful photographer and soft-spoken stick of dynamite rocking the monster bass riffs), and Justin (a musical craftsman and Renaissance man who pummels the skins with great ferocity). Former band members Chris, Joe, and Erin each live with the band in spirit too, expanding their mythology and making them somehow feel like an 8-piece.

I could try to describe what their music sounds like, or what it sparks in my soul, but I’m not sure that words are the best implements for such a task. Even though I’ve strung together over 1,000 of them here, it feels like I have 10,000 more left unstrung.

But to understand Caspian, as with all great music, you simply have to listen. (After all, as the maxim goes, writing about music is like dancing about architecture.) Even though over 90% of Caspian’s songs have no lyrics, I’m not sure any band’s music has ever spoken to me so clearly.

Caspian is the band, above all others, that has shaped my life. Their music makes me want to be creative. It makes me feel alive. It makes me want to be a better human being.

It makes me want to headbang so hard that I briefly ascend to another plane of consciousness.

And on some level, Caspian’s music just… makes me.

The Worst Summer of My Life, Chapter 12: The Darkest Hour

/ Jeremy / Leave a comment

“The darkest hour of the night comes just before the dawn.”

~ Thomas Fuller, in the cleverly and jauntily named 1650 text, ‘A Pisgah Sight of Palestine and the Confines Thereof: With the History of the Old and New Testament Acted Thereon’

It’s mid-June. I’ve been burned out and bottomed out for 7 weeks. And I’m now armed with a little orange canister of tiny white Lexapro pills. A canister that I resisted adamantly, then eyed warily, then accepted reluctantly.

Desperation can drive a man to hang up his hang-ups and avert himself from his aversions.

But here’s the thing I didn’t know about antidepressants: They don’t work quickly. Like, at all. And even worse, they can make things worse before they make things better.

On a beautiful Friday morning shortly before summer solstice, I spent a few hours at a lake with my family. It was a moment that would have been heartwarming and vividly memorable under normal circumstances. But it felt dishearteningly colorless and forgettable in my grindingly greyscale mental state.

This was the morning when, in distracted agitation, I called in my Lexapro prescription. On the drive home, I picked up my prescription at Target. Shortly thereafter, I popped my first little white pill. I knew it wouldn’t immediately kick in, but I hoped that it would at least help alleviate the insomnia that had ravaged my body.

No such luck. I couldn’t sleep that night. Or the next night. And even worse, the pills made me feel even more anxious while I tossed and turned in the dark and listened, in quiet desperation, to the most somber and sedated songs I could find.

My relationship with music was an odd aspect of this bleak chapter in my life. Typically, I am as intensely and viscerally connected to music as anyone I know. There are 50 different bands I adore and am drawn to in any given mood, at different times of the year, and even during various types of weather. Bands that connect me to 100 different specific points from my own personal saga.

But while I was depressed, I was ambivalent to 98% of that music. I had no desire to listen to anything that had energy, or a propulsive beat. I didn’t want to hear music with either buoyant hopefulness or even a darker, poetic angst. I was frozen in time and numb to nostalgia, so I resisted any musical artists that would remind me of other chapters of my life.

Nearly all of my usually-favorite music simply reminded me of how not-myself I was. How turned-inside-out I had become.

The only thing I could bear to hear was hyper-tranquil, hyper-ambient, hyper-sedated music. Bands like Stars of the Lid, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, or Hammock (but only their more narcotized albums). On a day when I was marginally more inspired, I would type “relaxing classical music” into my search bar. I spent one week listening exclusively, over and over again, to a theoretically sleep-inducing soundtrack to a Disney nature documentary that I found oddly haunting (and by the 6th listen, faintly and oddly haunted).

But no matter what sleep soundtrack I chose, I could not sleep. I tossed and turned even more miserably in my first few Lexapro nights than during the previous 6 insomnia-ravaged weeks.

So after 4 days, without consulting my doctor, I quit taking my antidepressant. I pictured how dilapidated my body would be after another few weeks of terrible sleep, and I couldn’t bear to risk it. I was ravenous for sleep. And the idea of an antidepressant increasing my anxiety seemed like a maniacal grift. Like a painkiller that heightens your pain.

A few days later, I messaged my doctor to tell him of my decision. He wrote back to say he would instead prescribe me Remeron. This was apparently a combination antidepressant / sleeping pill, which sounded like a miracle drug to me in that moment.

I started taking the Remeron, and it did indeed zonk me out. I would still wake up in the middle of the night, but I could fall right back to sleep. I started building up reserves in my sleep bank for the first time in months. However, and this is a pretty big however, my depression continued unabated. My primary burden was as heavy and as dark as ever.

So about a week in to my new regimen, I again messaged my doctor with an update. And he then informed me that Remeron, at the dosage he had given me, was primarily just a sleeping pill. I would have to take double or even triple the dosage to also get the antidepressant effects. To which I thought, but didn’t say: “Is that something you could have perhaps told me, oh I don’t know, when you prescribed it to me?”

I was once again frustrated with Doctor #1, the one with the bombastic personality. Should I have stuck with Doctor #2, the one who had gaslighted me but at least had a fairly empathetic bedside manner?

In any case, I was once again back in the vicinity of square one. Which was the last square I wanted to be in. Heck, I would have preferred Red Square at that point in time.

My frustration with Doctor #1 aside, he recommended that I restart the Lexapro I had quit. He told me I needed to be patient this time. So I gritted my teeth for the journey. Although now I would be taking it in conjunction with the sleep-inducing Remeron.

Maybe that pair of medications would help me escape the mind-obliterating labyrinth of depression. Maybe they would help me find my way back to the place I needed to be.

That place being clarity.

And hopefulness.

And restfulness.

And above all, the place that each of us should inhabit.

Myselfness.

This is part of an extended series of posts about my recent mental health struggles. Thank you so much for reading. Facebook is my primary platform for sharing this blog, so feel free to give me feedback there. (Unless you somehow found my blog independently, in which case… welcome!) I am deeply grateful for your interest, and I hope that you find some warmth, validation, or solidarity in my memoirs.