stable? that's for horses

I arrive in Guangzhou after one international and one domestic flight, one iced black coffee down, I come to smoking a blue-tipped Chinese cigarette outside our hotel, flashing an unnecessarily winsome smile at the little delivery robots bringing purchases nestled inside their chest cavities to the rooms. I watched Magnolia on my incoming flight and wonder if this was a mistake.

I am having somewhat of an existential crisis, but what I don’t know yet is that towards the tail end of my trip, food poisoned by a potentially dirty beer can drunken at the foothills of a sunset hike in Guilin, I would be Gregor Samsa-ing my way through the remainder of this journey in Shanghai so in hindsight, I had it kind of good in Guangzhou without realizing it.

It’s not a full blown Elliott Smith level crisis, I’m not Seymour in A Perfect Day for Bananafish just yet. It’s not like I don’t delight in things. I delight at miniature cucumbers, quartered lengthwise and laid to rest on a bed of crushed ice on an elevated plate. I delight at trying on a five hundred American dollar qipao made of green and pink silk that I have no intent of buying at the New World Mall. It is very long and loose on me. The woman trying to sell it to me notices me pinning it with my hands then types into her Baidu translator and shows me her screen, “Too tight clothing makes people look cheap.” I delight in buying one that’s shorter and more fitted instead, blue and white silk, for two hundred yuan, off a street vendor that’s also selling Mao’s Little Red Book. I buy it without trying it on. I delight in feeling alone all the time, even when everyone is around. I delight in the interview with a local publication that takes place in my hotel room, bestowing me in my very own Lost in Translation moment when the cameraman says something lengthy to the magazine correspondent, who in turn just tells me to speak faster. I delight in a crisp white John Galt baby tee I acquire multiples of at the Brandy Melville Shanghai. I delight in drinking Chinese electrolyte drinks, my favorite so far being the original flavored Scream. I delight in reading Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon all over the Yangshuo countryside despite the heat and humidity melting the spine’s glue so I have to snap a rubber band around it when I put it down, to not lose the pages that fall out after I read and subsequently turn them.

I remain coated with a ridiculous biofilm of unease, unable to shake it despite swimming laps or getting a sunburn or watching the impressionistic play of lights and music on the Li River. I can’t lie on my left side at night, I feel my heart beating so hard in my chest. I am forced to fall asleep lying on my back which makes me feel like Samsa after he turns into that damn beetle and nobody knows what’s really wrong. Yes, all of this is exacerbated and then put into relativity by my stupid food poisoning. I try to explain what’s wrong but my mouth feels full of marbles. I am feeling wan, and awfully sorry for myself. I wake up drenched in sweat multiple times every night.

Somewhere over the Caspian sea, seat reclined to sleep, mummified in my dirty grey hoodie, Closer playing on the screen, I feel somewhat normal again. I’m re-reading Generation X after having just talked about Douglas Coupland and I’m reminded of the future I thought I would have when I read this book first, teenaged and dewy with anticipation — it wasn’t some clear vision or anything, it was just sheer excitement at the unimaginable fact of ever growing up, and now it feels like none of that has really happened; like I am stunted or disillusioned, preoccupied with whatever.

My fourth album’s being announced next month and what I should technically feel excited about has just left me a little anxious at the prospects of it all. I can’t wait for summer and warmer temperatures, maybe all my problems will be fixed by then. Maybe they won’t. Whatever!

PS. My new single, Cowboy Mouth, is a month old! Have you listened yet?