Eels - Not Ready Yet

Sometimes the world is just too scary to engage with

E (of Eels) happy to finally get in front of all his garbage. Photo-credit-Gus-Black-Eels-E-2621

About twenty years ago I visited a psychiatrist who had me fill out a five page, 100 question form to see if and how strongly I “qualified” as clinically depressed, anxious and/or manic.

As a person who tended to (and still tends to) downplay his symptoms in the presence of medical professionals, when given a choice between options such as:

1. never experiences sadness

2. rarely experiences sadness

3. sometimes experiences sadness

4. often experiences sadness

5. nearly always experiences sadness

I would almost always pick #3 “sometimes.” Even if “often” seemed more accurate.

I’d always been able to maneuver through life fairly well despite often/sometimes struggling to find a good reason to get out of bed, despite often/sometimes hiding out in office bathrooms to avoid having to attend all-staff meetings, despite often/sometimes finding myself counting the syllables in the words of the constant thoughts in my head, and the number of steps it would take to get from here to there and adjust my gait so that the total would be divisible by five.

I knew of people who were unable to get out of bed, unable to hold a job, unable to handle simple tasks such as buy groceries or walk their dog. Those were the people who were allowed to answer #4 and #5. The people who could say “often” and “nearly always.” I wasn’t that bad.

I saw myself more as a mental illness dabbler. A little bit of depression, a touch of mania, a sprinkling of OCD and a dollop of anxiety — both social and general.

It paralleled my drug usage throughout my life.

I was a pot smoker initially, then a bit of a drinker. I dropped acid maybe five times, did mushrooms and ecstasy a half dozen times each. I did cocaine once and it was fucking horrible.

I was probably 19 or 20 and me and my friend Dave snorted a few lines and then went to the gym. I remember feeling super powerful, like I could lift 300 pounds (note - I was 5’3”, maybe 120 pounds) and while using the vertical chest press machine I suddenly felt like I was going to faint. My vision began to fade from the periphery until all I could view was a narrow tunnel of light in front of me.

Dave must have seen me turn white and helped me to the bathroom where I proceeded to vomit for the next twenty minutes.

So I crossed cocaine off the list. And heroin was always a no-go.

Heroin was the mental illness equivalent of schizophrenia. It wasn’t something you fucked around with.

Pot was anxiety, booze was depression, psychedelics were OCD.

To belabor this metaphor (or analogy — I suck at remembering the difference), I viewed my struggles with mental illness as equal to my drug usage. As nothing serious. As something I could handle and manage with talk therapy and yoga.

Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash

Then, at age 32, I had a panic attack while living alone in my 1-bedroom apartment and thought I was having a heart attack. I stumbled to my neighbor’s apartment and convinced them to take me to the emergency room.

As we sat in the waiting room, surrounded by twenty or more other sick and injured folks waiting their turn to see a doctor, I could feel myself slowly calming down. I turned to my neighbor and said: “I’m fine. I don’t need to be here. Please take me home.” We drove home and I was fine.

But I wasn’t fine. I still had regular bouts of depression and anxiety and milder panic attacks.

So I saw the psychiatrist. And filled out the questionnaire. Because I answered everything with “sometimes” his diagnosis was that I had mild depression. Mild anxiety. I was mild and uninteresting. Come back when I was truly a mess.

He prescribed me several anti-depressant medications (not all at once). Zoloft. Celexa. A couple others. All of them amplified my anxiety and seemed to do nothing for the depression. Give them a month or two for your body to adapt I was told. No fucking way. I’d rather stick with the anxiety I knew than have to navigate this foreign, scarier version, no matter how temporary.

I’d already figured out what helped keep the depression, anxiety and OCD at manageable levels. Exercise. Writing. Eating well. Meditation. Listening to music. Playing the drums.

Eventually it became clear that anxiety was the biggest monster in my head. Getting out of bed wasn’t my struggle. Getting into it was.

Those who struggle with general anxiety will usually agree that bedtime is when the voices of doom, worry and rumination chatter the loudest and most insistent. There are less options for shutting them up. And when I did finally conk out, I’d wake up startled two hours later in the middle of some anxiety nightmare, my heart pounding in my chest. Going back to sleep not only seemed impossible but undesirable.

I became a nightly NyQuil user. I don’t recommend cold medicine as a nightly sleep aid if you have to be at a job in the morning.

Thankfully I don’t do that anymore.

Now, after years of trial and error, my current sleep cocktail is a combination of melatonin, lavela (lavender essential oil), and guided meditations. I tried more than a dozen different non-prescription supplements for sleep/anxiety and these two work best for me. The lavela I take twice a day.

No, they aren’t a sponsor of this newsletter. But maybe they should be!

I like to joke and say “I had anxiety way before it became the number one mental illness! Back in my day, both depression and OCD ran rings around anxiety!” It’s the modern equivalent of our grandparents claiming: “Back in my day, we had to walk to school in the snow, uphill both ways!”

It does seem that nowadays more people struggle with anxiety than don’t. It’s great that the stigma around mental illness is less pervasive than ever (at least in most places in the U.S.). But, for me, it was never a matter of feeling like I was the only one who suffered from it.

It was simply not wanting to suffer from it.

Eels

A couple weeks ago my friend and Substack writer

Brad Kyle

and I discussed ideas for artists we could both write about, to share with our respective readers and cross-post. We finally decided to write about Eels, and more specifically, the man behind Eels, E.

E is the nom de plume of Mark Oliver Everette. Prior to forming Eels, E wrote and recorded two solo albums under his last name first initial — A Man Called E (1991) and Broken Toy Shop (1993). I believe Brad is going to explore this early period of E’s career. And if I know Brad, he’s likely going to include a good part of the Eels oeuvre along the way. I’ll include an excerpt of Brad’s piece in next week’s Earworm newsletter.

Me? I will try and keep it to one song. Try.

I own one album by Eels. Their 1996 debut, Beautiful Freak. Also seen by many as E’s 3rd album, as Eels is essentially Mark Oliver Everette. (And here is where I want to point out how much easier writing this would be if he simply called himself/his band MOE.)

This fact doesn’t mean much in the age of streaming, but as the band has been around since 1996 (or 1991), if I was a true Eels fan from the beginning, I likely would own a lot more physical media.

I mention this merely to illustrate that I’m not an Eels expert. In fact, that one album that I do have? I don’t recall buying it or listening to it or having any preconceived notions about it whatsoever.

That all changed a week or two ago when I played Beautiful Freak in its entirety for the first time, following along attentively to the lyrics. I didn’t do the dishes or fold laundry or walk my dog Bernie.

The album starts off with the sound of static. Then a lo-fi swing beat enters, followed by a simple twinkly piano melody that sounds both childlike and creepy. A couple seconds later three ominous cello notes appear and then disappear. Then about 25 seconds in, E’s voice enters speak-singing:

Life is hard
And so am I
You'd better give me something
So I don't die

And suddenly the full band enters the song — bass, guitar, drums and backing vocals. This type of quiet/loud sonic method was de rigueur in the rock and roll sphere at this time. It was essentially the grunge playbook. Think of most any Nirvana or Soundgarden song. Loud quiet loud. Or quiet loud quiet loud.

Novocaine
For the soul
Before I sputter out
Before I sputter out

“Novocaine For the Soul,” the opening track on Beautiful Freak was the album’s “hit” single. Hit being relative. I think it got some airplay on alternative rock radio at the time, as it sounded familiar on first (re)listen.

I particularly was impressed with the production on the album. With headphones on, I could pick out a plethora of additional sounds and textures. There was a lushness absent from most grunge music of the time.

Then I discovered that the producer was Jon Brion. One of my all-time favorite producers. And musicians. He is someone worthy of several Earworm pieces.

For those not privy to Mr. Brion, here’s a couple (of probably a hundred) classic albums he’s produced and/or scored the soundtracks for:

• Aimee Mann’s first 5 albums, including the Magnolia soundtrack and Bachelor no. 2 (one of my top 10 albums of all time)

• Fiona Apple - When the Pawn…

• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (scored the film)

• Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

• A million other movie soundtracks and album work from everyone from Brad Mehldau to Katy Perry

But this isn’t meant to be a track-by-track breakdown of Beautiful Freak. I mention this opening song because the lyrical content of “Novocaine For the Soul,” which explores the theme of life being hard and the desire of wanting something to numb the pain, is one that permeates through most of the album. Some might say that a good part of E’s extensive discography (16 albums including his first two as E) focuses on the myriad of ways he has tried to subdue/face/retreat from/battle against life’s hardships.

As much as I truly enjoyed the entirety of Beautiful Freak, it was the 5th track, “Not Ready Yet,” that took up residence in my heart and head and wouldn’t move out.

It’s another quiet-loud-quiet-loud structured song, but something about it — maybe the choice of chords, maybe the anguished yearning in the guitars during the last minute and half, maybe the anguish and yearning in E’s voice — grabs me deep in the gut. It’s also the straightforwardness of the lyrics that hit me hard. There’s nothing metaphorical or unclear in the song’s words.

There's a world outside
And I know 'cause I've heard talk
In my sweetest dream
I would go out for a walk

But I don't think I'm ready yet
I'm not feeling up to it now
Just not that steady yet
And I don't need you telling me how

So if I leave my room
Don't you tell me to lighten up
Maybe sometime sooner or later

But I don't think I'm ready yet
I'm not feeling up to it now
Just not that steady yet
And I don't need you telling me how

There’s a sober clarity in these words that reveals a deep pain and struggle in the narrator, but one in which they seem completely aware of.

That’s the line that sticks with me.

So many of us who’ve struggled with mental illness have had something like that said to us over and over. Maybe it was “Snap out of it!” Or “You just need some fresh air.” Or “What do you have to be so depressed/anxious/sad about?”

Whatever the words, whether out of ignorance or well-intentioned, they serve to deny our real suffering and cause deeper wounds.

So the fact that the narrator in “Not Ready Yet” is aware that they are not ready yet is a victory in and of itself. It’s a song of self-advocation. It’s a song that both honors the struggle of mental illness and the courage in respecting your boundaries.

Sonically, the struggle and the courage are beautifully, cathartically expressed. It’s hard to find the right words to describe it.

I listen to “Not Ready Yet” and I feel heard.

I listen to it and I feel like I might be ready.

I’ve had the great privilege, back when I was a videographer, to get to film teens talking about the pandemic and how it affected their mental health. It was both heartening and heart-breaking to listen to them so honestly and eloquently discuss depression and anxiety, expressing how widespread it has become with their peers. It’s great that these young people have the language to name and voice their struggles, yet that doesn’t seem to keep mental illness from spreading like wildfires.

Is there a question in there? Maybe it all will naturally spur conversation.

Okay, how about this:

Are there any songs or albums you turn to when you are struggling with some sort of emotional/psychological/spiritual pain? What are they and how have they been a balm for you?

Thanks, as always, for reading these words.

You rock.

Steve