"If only I can fight off the voices of my parents
and gather a sense of self-esteem
Then I'll be able to REALLY sing..."
Sinéad O'Connor

I hearya sister.  A buncha right bastards, aren't they.  I was at least blessed with a great mother.  Unfortunately, women have no jurisdiction over men.  Legally, I understand that the opposite is true.  It's illegal to be a man in the West today.  But fundamentally, women have no jurisdiction over men.  No matter how great your mother is, the best she can hope to do for her abused sons is install a bilge pump to keep the ship from sinking.  There's no way to patch the breach in the hull.  Drugs don't work.  "Relationships" don't work.  And, no matter how hard you work, you can't mommy your sons into being men.  I don't know what else to say about it.  I really don't know.  I love the people my mother saved us from, and miss them all.  They are victims too.  But thank God for my stepdad.

"I've gotten older and I'm tired.  So it's time
for me to hang up my nipple tassels,
having truly given my all."
Sinéad O'Connor

I find the paradox of never healing in spite of having the kind of household-name independence that is denied artists today, strangely encouraging.  It is one less insurmountable obstacle to overcome.  Because those personal obstacles certainly have an outward appearance of insurmountability, like climbing Mount Everest in your boxer shorts.  My "brother" once said that "it is wildly F'd up," when I said half a dozen words to him about our situation, before he converted to the religion of unrepentant, hateful darkness.  It made me laugh, because it was a breath of validation, a glimpse of a reality some of us have never known.  He has a career as the director of the TV news in Detroit, something he's pursued, way beyond an entry-level job, but is so jacked up that he's decided to take the bilge rat route.  Probably instinctively, like I turned to drink and drugs.  But apparently, even the career doesn't help.  Does it.  You would know.  Apparently, the paradoxical pleasures of destroying the power station of your soul, so that it resembles a blacked-out city with no spiritual electricity or running water, are irresistible.  He woke me up to kick me out of his house once, in 2007.  I'd been there for one night.  He has never offered an explanation, or invited me to any of his subsequent houses.  The identity-checklist guy at my bank asked me a series of questions he erroneously assumed were "personal," to verify my identity, and asked me where my brother lived.  As in, exactly.  I had no idea.  The bank guy was embarrassed and moved on to another question.  My brother never sent a single word of any kind while I was marooned at home for so many years.  Not even chastisement.  And now that mom's gone home to Heaven, they don't even pretend anymore.  Those people are a nightmare.  The pain they inflict is unbearable.

"You are not depressed, lazy, or unmotivated.  You have lived so
long in survivor mode that you are exhausted.  There's a difference."
Comment from The Personality of Victims of Covert Narcissistic Abuse

Anyway, you have inspired me to bring some of this to light, Sinéad, because if you couldn't deal with it, it makes me feel better that I've found it pretty much impossible myself.  Thanks for the validation.  Because I am tired, too.  I made 21 homemade albums under a rock, usually under some kind of duress.  Not so much duress with some of the later stuff.  All of it under a rock though.  Some of the recordings are below sub-par (some are not), but my standards of writing have always been high.  Sometimes, people tell me they're "looking forward" to anything I may care to sing or write again.  I have no idea what they're talking about.  All I want is to get out of here.  I would never kill myself, but I threw out the accoutrements of being a musical stripper for entitled people who pay me with tips and expect me to live in the parking lot long ago.  I didn't bother to hang them up.  I don't care if I write another piece of music as long as I live.  I gave it my all, though.  I really did.  Thanks for validating the concept of exhaustion.  Most people don't understand that the word invalid and invalid are the same.  Am I invalid, or an invalid?  What's the difference?  Nothing?  Thanks for asking.  They think it's self-pity, because they can walk.  I have nothing in common with them, and never have.  They shoot you in the kneecaps then deride you for not winning the race.  What a bunch of bilge rats.

"Everyone wants a pop star, see?  But I am a
protest singer.  I just had stuff to get off
my chest.  I had no desire for fame."
Sinéad O'Connor

Another perfect statement.  I've played with numerous people who want "fame."  Being famous is actually their goal.  Getting the horror out of their heart is not.  Presumably, because there isn't any.  They don't even want to just play.  They want to play rockstar.  It's not the same thing. 

Clint Eastwood said something once about how he couldn't stand people who said they wanted to be "actors" instead of "movie stars."  He said, if you're WORKING, there is no difference.  But the attention-hounds don't get it.  And now, it isn't even working.  The control-freak scenester gatekeepers never let anybody achieve the velocity necessary for liftoff; they revel, I am convinced, in keeping people down.  Forgive the tangent, but a lot of people think it's haughty or presumptuous to merely want to MAKE A LIVING, and now they're crying about losing their livelihoods.  I hope they don't whine to any musicians.  They got the culture they paid for.  I didn't have a bank account for 20 years, and lived in cars and vans for 15, until I burned out and went back home.  Against my will, but God had other plans.  Amazingly, my mother is now in Heaven thanks to those plans.  She definitely entered into life maimed.

“And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off:
it is better for thee to enter into life maimed,
than having two hands to go into hell,
into the fire that never shall be quenched:”
Mark 9:43

Maybe those other people were the "offending hands."  Mom probably did us a favor.  This unbearable, to-date unhealable weight is probably the lesser of 2 evils.

An horrific consideration.

For the record, I relate to the frozen, abandoned kid on the street.  And I don't care who knows it.

Anyway, Sinéad, I tell them all the time (or did, I don't do it as much now that I realize they simply don't listen, not to anything), "if you're down with the freeload, enjoy the free download."  They got the culture they paid for.  A bunch of subscription-based attention whores who create content that is dated the instant it's published on the consignment shelves of social media.  It never occurs to them that music is not subscribable content (I can think of one exception, initiated by a guy you've never heard of, at least 10 years ago)(the exception that proves the rule, as they say), perhaps because there are now at least 2 generations of people who believe rappers are musicians.  Which is why so many talentless people claim to be "rappers," but never singers, trumpeters, or badass Rock & Roll oboe players.  You can't download an app that gives you the illusion that you can play the badass Rock & Roll oboe.  It doesn't happen instantly.  It takes time to learn to rock out on the oboe.  Whatever the case, these unfortunate social-engineering projects take actual payment for "creating" disposable cultural packing peanuts that litter the consignment shelves of the compliance-happy behaviour-modification platforms that dominate the thrift stores of their formerly-vibrant and interesting culture.  Everything they consume is secondhand, and worthless.  And it expires in an hour.  If they had any self-awareness, it would kill them.

"Religion is a smokescreen, it has everybody talking
to the wall.  The Christ character tells us himself:
you must only talk directly to the Father;
you don't need intermediaries."
Sinéad O'Connor

I've been saying it for years, "Christ made religion obsolete 2,000 years ago."  Apparently Joe Pesci said he'd have given you a smack, if he was running SNL when you tore up the picture of the pope on live TV.  I have never been a fan of your music (though I never have disliked you), but I always thought that was a cool stunt.  And anyway, anybody who thinks offending the religious sensibilities of somebody who can't keep foul language out of almost every sentence he has ever used onscreen is anything but a necessary chore, needs to have their head examined.

However, if converting to Islam is "the natural conclusion of any intelligent theologian's journey," I'm going to defer to your history of abuse on this one.  I understand not having any guidance or clue and going all over the map.  I've always seen "the map" as more of a cocktail napkin than any kind of guide myself (not a good thing), but Islam?  I got married in Vegas, so let's call it even.

"Madonna is probably the hugest role model for women in
America.  There's a woman who people look up to as being
a woman who campaigns for women's rights.  A woman who
in an abusive way towards me, said that I look like I had a
run in with a lawnmower and that I was about as sexy as a
Venetian blind.  Now there's the woman that America looks
up to as being a campaigner for women, slagging off
another woman for not being sexy."
Sinéad O'Connor

Madonna is an idiot.  Those attention whores I mentioned earlier, who hide behind the word "recording artist?"  Yeah.  Her father the devil invented them.  Ignore her.

“There is a certain music industry hatred for singers who don’t ‘fit in,'
and they are never praised until death — when, finally, they can’t
answer back.  The cruel playpen of fame gushes with praise for
Sinéad today … with the usual moronic labels of ‘icon’ and
‘legend’ … You hadn’t the guts to support her when she
was alive and she was looking for you."
Morrissey

Saludos, Morrissey.  Such sentiments trickle down to the pissant "community" level as well.  Never forget, hipness is death to the individual, and only the individual is truly hip.  "Communities" are hives of mediocrity and compliance.  Whether it's at an industrial level (apparently), or a local one.  They maintain control over their subjects like all mono-thugcratic groups:  By Excluding Their Undesirables.

Who are the undesirables?  I shouldn't have to explain it.  You should be able to figure it out.  Say something original, or unique, or even WELL, and watch the busy bees go scurrying, with their wings clipped so they have to haul the honey by hand to the queen.  It's like clockwork.  The community will never disappoint, in that regard.  It's the only thing about them you can count on.

Rest in peace if you can, O'Connor.  I was never even a fan, but find myself affected by your death in ways that transcend the glistening, temporary idiot baubles of art.  Even the greatest, most priceless Michelangelos will burn, when it's all said and done.  His most famous works decorate the halls of wickedness itself, after all.  Is it a pristine cistern, or a bedpan?  The Pristine Bedpan Chapel will not stand in the final day, and neither will our songs.

You were brilliant, and you are missed.

To God,