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Ever since my first Rammstein odyssey, I've toyed with the idea of recording them and posting them on Youtube. Not the concerts, mind, but the getting there--the driving and the eating of diner food and the adventures in toileting and laying me down. I don't know why. I guess it's because I want people to know that I'm real. Sometimes I get the feeling that people see me as nothing more than a collection of rage, pain, and endless complaints. I am these things. I am. I cannot deny that. It's plain to see. But I am not only these things, any more than Rammstein are only the guys in pancake makeup who prowl the stage and sing about making sweet love to corpses. I laugh and joke and love and smile and find wonder in the world, and I want people to see that, too.
The thing is, if I film these journeys, then people are going to see everything. They're going to see me laughing and joking, but they're also going to see me with egg smeared on my chin and food on my lap. They going to see me struggling to get into a hotel bed or hunting for an accessible toilet. They're going to see pain and frustration and the wellspring thereof, and I'm afraid that once they see it, that is all they will see. They won't see the laughter or the happiness or the person just trying to squeeze a drop of joy out of a hard road. They'll focus on the moments of weakness and weariness and dismiss the entire endeavor as just a pity ploy by a bitter, loveless drama whore. They will never accept it as a shoestring documentary of life at waist-level.
And I don't know if I want to put myself out there for that. I don't know if I'm strong enough to endure the negative blowback--the insults and the skepticism and the sneering, ugly judgment of strangers. There are many people out there who might be helped to know that they're not alone, and good people who might learn something, and good people who would see it for what it was meant to be, a love letter to a band and a snapshot of life on the edges of the world, but there are also unkind people out there, small-minded trolls who would point and laugh for the sheer nasty joy of it, petty people who would mock every crumb that spilled from my mouth and rolled onto my lap. And they would be nasty enough to share that mockery with me, to rub my nose in it rather than keep it behind locked and like-minded doors. And I don't know if I want to accept that risk.
But it's a possibility I keep coming back to, obsessively. I've found myself on Amazon three times in two months pricing handheld camcorders. I keep thinking of all the times I've trawled Youtube looking for videos of people like me doing things other than waiting to die, and how absurdly happy I was to find wheelchair ballroom dancing or a disabled woman sharing her dreams of a husband and family or just some guy boarding the train. Maybe there's somebody out there like me, somebody who thinks they could never do X or see Y because they're fragile or weak or broken. Maybe there's somebody out there who wants to see Radiohead or the Deftones, but can only think of all the obstacles. Maybe they're out there, and maybe seeing me climbing that mountain to see Rammstein would make them as happy as it makes me to see wheelchair dancers gliding across the ballroom. Maybe it would give them the confidence to try that someone gave to me, and if it would, aren't I obligated to pay it forward?
I could always flock the Youtube feed, insulate myself from ridicule, but that's so damn obnoxious, so damn cowardly. It smacks of, "Look at me! Aren't I so special and brave?" more strongly than just putting it out there ever could. Besides, it would entirely defeat the purpose of reaching that random yutz in the far-flung corner of the Internet.
Maybe I'm just blowing smoke up my own ass. It's highly likely that no one on the Internet would give two slick fucks about the misadventures of some cripple on a road trip. But the idea keeps stirring in my head, tenacious and restless. If it's been this persistent, then maybe it matters. Even if it doesn't, maybe I should do it anyway just to say I did, and to hell with the specter of jeering pricks who won't matter a tinker's damn when my toes point heavenward and the final ledger is balanced.
The thing is, if I film these journeys, then people are going to see everything. They're going to see me laughing and joking, but they're also going to see me with egg smeared on my chin and food on my lap. They going to see me struggling to get into a hotel bed or hunting for an accessible toilet. They're going to see pain and frustration and the wellspring thereof, and I'm afraid that once they see it, that is all they will see. They won't see the laughter or the happiness or the person just trying to squeeze a drop of joy out of a hard road. They'll focus on the moments of weakness and weariness and dismiss the entire endeavor as just a pity ploy by a bitter, loveless drama whore. They will never accept it as a shoestring documentary of life at waist-level.
And I don't know if I want to put myself out there for that. I don't know if I'm strong enough to endure the negative blowback--the insults and the skepticism and the sneering, ugly judgment of strangers. There are many people out there who might be helped to know that they're not alone, and good people who might learn something, and good people who would see it for what it was meant to be, a love letter to a band and a snapshot of life on the edges of the world, but there are also unkind people out there, small-minded trolls who would point and laugh for the sheer nasty joy of it, petty people who would mock every crumb that spilled from my mouth and rolled onto my lap. And they would be nasty enough to share that mockery with me, to rub my nose in it rather than keep it behind locked and like-minded doors. And I don't know if I want to accept that risk.
But it's a possibility I keep coming back to, obsessively. I've found myself on Amazon three times in two months pricing handheld camcorders. I keep thinking of all the times I've trawled Youtube looking for videos of people like me doing things other than waiting to die, and how absurdly happy I was to find wheelchair ballroom dancing or a disabled woman sharing her dreams of a husband and family or just some guy boarding the train. Maybe there's somebody out there like me, somebody who thinks they could never do X or see Y because they're fragile or weak or broken. Maybe there's somebody out there who wants to see Radiohead or the Deftones, but can only think of all the obstacles. Maybe they're out there, and maybe seeing me climbing that mountain to see Rammstein would make them as happy as it makes me to see wheelchair dancers gliding across the ballroom. Maybe it would give them the confidence to try that someone gave to me, and if it would, aren't I obligated to pay it forward?
I could always flock the Youtube feed, insulate myself from ridicule, but that's so damn obnoxious, so damn cowardly. It smacks of, "Look at me! Aren't I so special and brave?" more strongly than just putting it out there ever could. Besides, it would entirely defeat the purpose of reaching that random yutz in the far-flung corner of the Internet.
Maybe I'm just blowing smoke up my own ass. It's highly likely that no one on the Internet would give two slick fucks about the misadventures of some cripple on a road trip. But the idea keeps stirring in my head, tenacious and restless. If it's been this persistent, then maybe it matters. Even if it doesn't, maybe I should do it anyway just to say I did, and to hell with the specter of jeering pricks who won't matter a tinker's damn when my toes point heavenward and the final ledger is balanced.
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