Anger

Nine o’clock. I dreamed about jamming with J—. Then I figured out why I liked playing with him: he was subordinate to me. For the same reason, he didn’t like playing with me. Perhaps what’s intimidating about my bass tone is not the instrument; I think the beastie is really me. I’ve always been insubordinate in rock bands. I wanted to run the show myself. With M— and P—, I was being dictated to, which may have been frustrating for me. Was I angry? Inclined to throw a tantrum? Back to my tone: I built that bass myself and knew what it would sound like. No one else “engineered” it but me. Certainly no devil pulled the strings, unless he is just myself. Then what am I really afraid of? The consequences of showing anger? What used to happen to me when I did this? My parents overpowered me, proved to me how helpless I was. They washed my mouth out with soap, they gave me enemas for punishment, and so on. I learned to contain my anger and express it in banging on coffee cans with chopsticks. Was it okay to have anger? You feel what you feel and that’s the truth, the law. Whether it is just or unjust to others has no bearing on how you feel. I have to acknowledge my emotions, and anger is an important one. I’m afraid of it for the way I used to be punished, thinking that it would happen again. Repressing anger does damage. The emotion irrupts in other ways, perhaps even as the symptoms of schizophrenia.

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