People showing up from my past was something I had not planned on, but you may think I should have expected it. I didn't really think anyone would pay attention to me, or this blog, when I began in 2007. You have to consider that I felt like a complete failure when I started all of this. My mindset was I was getting fucked by another record company the same way I had in the past. It was just the latest version of the same old thing. The difference being, that I could come and write about it on this blog, and various other places on the internet, like myspace and facebook. Any expectation that someone from my past would show up as a positive did not exist for me. I was damaged goods and knew it. I was a pissed off human being with nothing to lose. The music business didn't mean shit to me at that point, and still doesn't. I had the attitude of, "let's tell the truth about it," which I had never been able to do in the past, except to occasional individuals who might have listened for an hour or so. Whether or not anyone listened here was immaterial to doing it. It gave me an emotional release by doing it. A place to put my own decades long anger. I had been so penalized for being angry in the past, by friend and foe alike, that I needed a place of my own to vent at will, and this blog was that place.
I was not about to let the opportunity to speak out get squelched by anyone or anything again. My experiences were real to me, and the opinions of others, which came in the form of comments about what I wrote, were damn near meaningless. I looked upon adverse reactions to what I wrote as more reason to push on and keep writing, which I did. When you have almost no self-worth with regards to your own work you have to make up, and remake up, your mind on an ongoing basis and keep going forward, which I also did. In the music business I was condemned for being pissed off by the same people who had fucked me out of ever getting paid. On the blog I could say that and make it stick, at least in print. My only real enemy was myself. I could let the opinion of others halt me, or I could keep on going. So my daily battle was with me more than it was with anybody else. Along the way I stumbled repeatedly in my efforts to continue, but in the end I did continue, and am still here.
So if you understand, even in the slightest way, what I said here, then you will be able to understand why I say I was not expecting anyone from my past to show up and be positive about what I was doing. Negative...perhaps, but not positive. That is why I was surprised when women who I'd known in the past showed up and didn't condemn me. They'd left me in the 60's, so I figured they'd gone away for a reason, a reason that would be impossible for me to conclude had been positive. "If you liked me so goddamn much, why did you vanish one day without a word?" "If you loved me, what made you throw me away?" "Did you ever think about how it felt to me, looked to me, what it meant to me?" I seriously doubt whether you ever stopped to think about that. What I think is that you were much like me, a selfish son of a bitch who was out for yourself. What I resent is that you act as if you were pure as driven snow, and that your heart was true. Bullshit! You're heart wasn't any truer than mine was, and I was admittedly selfish as hell.
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