Random Conversations with Friends, Lovers, Acquaintances, and Stangers
I listened to the podcast of Leonard Lopate tonite--Leonard Lopate is this guy who has a noonish talk show on WNYC-AM, which is NYC's NPR news-and-talk channel. Lopate might also be on WNYC-FM, but I never make it around to that part of the dial.
I work with a much older guy that has a Leonard Lopate story. The guy is old enough to have done radio back in the day when radio meant something (tho, of course, with podcasts, radio is coming back into a golden age, I think). "I was an engineer at WBAI," this guy told me, "and Leonard Lopate had a show on then. He treated the engineers like crap, not like [Some other personality], who brought us all coffee and donuts and had jovial relations with us. Lopate would yell at us, and treat us like hired help even though we were mostly volunteers for the station, and, come on, you don't fuck with intelligent volunteers. So during the programs when I'd do the sound, I'd fade him out of the left channel and into the right channel, and then sloooooowly fade him back into the left channel and out of the right. So, you know, if you were listening to him in your car or something, you'd hear him shifting from the left to the right. And during a break, he'd ask me if something was going on with the sound, and I'd tell him, No, no, it must be your headset."
Small, spiteful stabs at the heart. The manipulation of Leonard Lopate's voice has given this guy a quiet, decades-old joy, and a semi-amusing story.
So I was listening to Leonard Lopate tonite, in the shower, just after a friend had explained to me why he'd gotten fired from his last job.
This friend doesn't understand his own depression (who does?). He knows he has depression, and though he went thru a series of jobs, and managed to hold it together long enough to make it thru college, he still made a dumb mistake during the one job that mattered to him and the one job he was good at. A stupid-ass mistake, but a human one, and it got him fired, and he hasn't recovered. He was telling me this as I watched the current Miss USA tell Larry King about HER mistake. Miss USA went on and on about how wonderful she was now, and how impervious she is now to fault, and the awful reasons that lead up to her mistake, and the circumstances that made her mistakes possible, and I could tell, watching her, that the month of rehab hadn't changed her one bit, but knew she'd be celebrated for a while because she "overcame" her failings. Meanwhile, I was chatting with a friend whose life was ruined because he'd done one small thing, and he'd not had anyone to help him over it.
And the most I could do was tell him it was a dumb thing to have done, and that he needed to push on.
Then I told him about someone else--not me, surprisingly--who had even worse issues, and he suddenly needed to take his dog out for a walk.
I was listening to Leonard Lopate tonite. I'd downloaded the podcast via iTunes, and stuck it on my iPod, and was in the iShower, and the subject was borderline personality disorder. And I thought that I'm sometimes borderline insane, but don't think I'm clinical--I think it's normal to have personal deficiencies, and neuroses, and mental anguish, and mild depression. There are a lot of people out there who have issues. Like Greg, back in the day, he had issues, but so did I. And I continue to have them, and so does he.
And, I was listening to Leonard Lopate, and he was interviewing people who cut themselves, and I thought about the time, when I was about 7 or 8, that Mom showed me her scars on her wrists, and how the scar went across the wrist, and then she told me about how she got pregnant with me. And I thought about my drama teacher in high school, who, while discussing a play with us, told us, "I shouldn't really tell you this, but the point is that you have to cut down, not across, because it makes it harder to stitch up the wound."
I was listening to Leonard Lopate interview people about borderline personality disorder, and I thought about how everyone I know seems to be on the borderline, in one way or another. Everyone seems a bit on the edge of something--members of my family, strangers I encounter, my employers, the people I work with, Greg, me, friends--everyone seems to have a point of insanity that is not related to their general personality. And I'd like to point out that I include myself in this--I have my own edge.
This is part of my edge: I know so many people who have problems that I sometimes have a hard time sorting out their problems from my own. I can only assume that most of us are the same way, and that we all know people who have private torments. And I know I've shared my own private torments with others, in various ways. And I sometimes wonder how we know when one insanity ends and another begins. How do we keep our edges from touching each other?
Listening to Leonard Lopate's show about borderline personality disorder, I knew two things: I don't have borderline personality disorder; and, everyone else has borderline personality disorder.
I also thought, frankly, that it'd be really sweet to live on a desolate island with high speed internet connection, cable, food, and shelter. Then I realized that's exactly where I live.
I work with a much older guy that has a Leonard Lopate story. The guy is old enough to have done radio back in the day when radio meant something (tho, of course, with podcasts, radio is coming back into a golden age, I think). "I was an engineer at WBAI," this guy told me, "and Leonard Lopate had a show on then. He treated the engineers like crap, not like [Some other personality], who brought us all coffee and donuts and had jovial relations with us. Lopate would yell at us, and treat us like hired help even though we were mostly volunteers for the station, and, come on, you don't fuck with intelligent volunteers. So during the programs when I'd do the sound, I'd fade him out of the left channel and into the right channel, and then sloooooowly fade him back into the left channel and out of the right. So, you know, if you were listening to him in your car or something, you'd hear him shifting from the left to the right. And during a break, he'd ask me if something was going on with the sound, and I'd tell him, No, no, it must be your headset."
Small, spiteful stabs at the heart. The manipulation of Leonard Lopate's voice has given this guy a quiet, decades-old joy, and a semi-amusing story.
So I was listening to Leonard Lopate tonite, in the shower, just after a friend had explained to me why he'd gotten fired from his last job.
This friend doesn't understand his own depression (who does?). He knows he has depression, and though he went thru a series of jobs, and managed to hold it together long enough to make it thru college, he still made a dumb mistake during the one job that mattered to him and the one job he was good at. A stupid-ass mistake, but a human one, and it got him fired, and he hasn't recovered. He was telling me this as I watched the current Miss USA tell Larry King about HER mistake. Miss USA went on and on about how wonderful she was now, and how impervious she is now to fault, and the awful reasons that lead up to her mistake, and the circumstances that made her mistakes possible, and I could tell, watching her, that the month of rehab hadn't changed her one bit, but knew she'd be celebrated for a while because she "overcame" her failings. Meanwhile, I was chatting with a friend whose life was ruined because he'd done one small thing, and he'd not had anyone to help him over it.
And the most I could do was tell him it was a dumb thing to have done, and that he needed to push on.
Then I told him about someone else--not me, surprisingly--who had even worse issues, and he suddenly needed to take his dog out for a walk.
I was listening to Leonard Lopate tonite. I'd downloaded the podcast via iTunes, and stuck it on my iPod, and was in the iShower, and the subject was borderline personality disorder. And I thought that I'm sometimes borderline insane, but don't think I'm clinical--I think it's normal to have personal deficiencies, and neuroses, and mental anguish, and mild depression. There are a lot of people out there who have issues. Like Greg, back in the day, he had issues, but so did I. And I continue to have them, and so does he.
And, I was listening to Leonard Lopate, and he was interviewing people who cut themselves, and I thought about the time, when I was about 7 or 8, that Mom showed me her scars on her wrists, and how the scar went across the wrist, and then she told me about how she got pregnant with me. And I thought about my drama teacher in high school, who, while discussing a play with us, told us, "I shouldn't really tell you this, but the point is that you have to cut down, not across, because it makes it harder to stitch up the wound."
I was listening to Leonard Lopate interview people about borderline personality disorder, and I thought about how everyone I know seems to be on the borderline, in one way or another. Everyone seems a bit on the edge of something--members of my family, strangers I encounter, my employers, the people I work with, Greg, me, friends--everyone seems to have a point of insanity that is not related to their general personality. And I'd like to point out that I include myself in this--I have my own edge.
This is part of my edge: I know so many people who have problems that I sometimes have a hard time sorting out their problems from my own. I can only assume that most of us are the same way, and that we all know people who have private torments. And I know I've shared my own private torments with others, in various ways. And I sometimes wonder how we know when one insanity ends and another begins. How do we keep our edges from touching each other?
Listening to Leonard Lopate's show about borderline personality disorder, I knew two things: I don't have borderline personality disorder; and, everyone else has borderline personality disorder.
I also thought, frankly, that it'd be really sweet to live on a desolate island with high speed internet connection, cable, food, and shelter. Then I realized that's exactly where I live.