Memphis Madness

I had a big crackup in 2012 – which everyone who knows me already knows, and which was completely obvious from the increasingly crazy things I was posting here. (I left them up because it is an accurate record of where I was at, and it’s my domain, so fuck it.)

Impulsively, with a desire to escape (increasingly urgent, the word “escape” taking on sinister meaning at times), I booked a trip to Memphis from the day after Christmas, or maybe the 27th, to the 9th or 10th of January. A long one. I was going to spend New Year’s Eve there by myself, because, yeah, that’s normal. I was sleeping 3.5 hours a night. The clouds rolled in around 2 pm. So I kept waking up earlier and earlier so I could have a normal productive day. This had pushed me into a wild state of near-psychosis. I was both manic and depressive – simultaneously – an experience I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies. Being depressed is one thing. Being in a state of nervous excitement while also being suicidally depressed is perhaps the most dangerous psychological state anyone can be in. I flew to Memphis in that state.

A coda: It was an amazing trip. The clouds lifted. I did everything by myself. I drove around Mississippi. I went to Tupelo on Elvis’ birthday, but at 7, 8 in the morning when no one was there. I went to church. I woke up (again) at 4:30 in the morning and walked around deserted Memphis, which … considering the murder rate … was so stupid, but they are still beautiful haunting memories. I went to the park across the street from my hotel, when it was still dark out, a park right on the bluff overlooking the Mississippi River and sat and watched the dawn lighten the sky. Again: sitting in a park at 5 o’clock in the morning is not perhaps the best choice. It was during one of those morning meditations when I met a pimp. We had a lovely chat. I went to Graceland and took a tour, and I was by myself on the tour. Maybe because it was January 2nd. I don’t know. But I was alone in Graceland, I was alone on the grounds, I was alone on the planes (I admit it: I lay down on his bed and took a picture of myself doing so). It was frosty and cold. I went and had Bloody Marys at the Peabody Hotel, read Keith Richards’ memoir, and watched the parade of ducks. I took hours-long walks through the city. Daily. I walked out to Sun Studio. I walked back. I felt uplifted, exhilarated. (Again: I now recognize the danger signs.) Meanwhile, though, my family were all afraid that I was going to Memphis to do something final. I do not discount the possibility that that may have been in my mind, even subconsciously.

So let’s backtrack. I had basically ruined Christmas with my state of wild anguish. I was sunk into this toxic witches’ brew of self-loathing, fatalistic despair, and hopelessness. Good times. The day after Christmas, I woke up at 6 in the morning and drove to the airport for my flight. This means that I snuck out of the house – where we all were staying – without saying goodbye to anyone. Everyone was horrified and terrified. My sister later told me she thought she might never see me again. I have guilt about putting everyone through that. I have tried to let it go. I was baffled at why everyone was worried, believe it or not. As far as I was concerned, what I was going through was a completely understandable reaction to the reality of this world. Everyone else was living in La La Land. I alone perceived the shape of reality. Nobody ever said a rampaging manic-depressive episode makes people charming and thoughtful.

I get off the plane. It’s early morning in Memphis. The sun is bright. It’s cold. I’m on the sidewalk in front of the airport, and about to go pick up my rental car. I check my phone. There were four voice messages, one from my mother, and three from my siblings. I have written this story so I won’t go over it again too much. Every message said “We are very concerned about you. Please don’t do anything while you’re there. We want you to come home safe. Have a good trip but when you come back we are going to help you get into treatment.” Or some such variation. They all said they loved me but that something was very very wrong and they were going to help me get better. It was clearly a coordinated ATTACK. They all left messages while I was airborne and couldn’t receive them. So I stood there on the sidewalk outside the airport and listened to all of them.

I was mortified and irritated. I had been living this way for so long I didn’t know what the fuss was about. If I can re-create my state of mind, think myself back into who I was then, embarrassment was top-level. I don’t like people being worried about me and people had been worried about me since I was 16. I had been slugging it out by myself for years. This is just what I had come to call a Bad Time, and it would pass. Don’t they all know it would pass?

However: what happened to me on the sidewalk in front of the airport was very very different. Yes, I felt a knee-jerk embarrassment, even more so since everyone was speaking to me in such a direct “You need help. Now.” manner. Nobody had ever said that to me before. They would talk about whatever issue I was going through at the time, helping me to sort it out. Nobody ever went up higher, and said “In general, you have a huge problem.” lol Something about their loving concerned voices, one after the other, did something to me. It shifted something. It was like somewhere, deep inside, I always knew something was really wrong. It was unconscious, though. And I have been stubborn and also, maybe, childishly pissed off that no one had come along to save me when I was young. The time to help me was back THEN so fuck you all, look at the horrible result of my horrible lonely life. Take THAT. I know it makes no sense. But rampaging undiagnosed mental illness does not usher a person into clarity and grown-up thought processes.

So to hear all of them, the people I love the most, speak with that much clarity … cracked through. I suddenly felt I wasn’t totally alone in the world. It was a crucial turning point, because instead of throwing the phone into the trash and going totally off grid – another Fuck You for concerning yourself NOW – where have you BEEN all these years – an option I could have taken – I let their worry actually speak to me, I HEARD them. And somewhere I thought: Okay. Something is very wrong with me. It’s not the guy who just fucked me over. It’s ME. I actually felt better. Shell-shocked, too.

I moved off in a daze to pick up my car. I typed the address of my hotel into the GPS, and headed off into the Memphis morning. There was a lightness of spirit in me, a burden lifted. I knew when I got back home, I would have to deal with whatever it was that was scrambling my brain. No turning back now. It was like an intervention for drug or alcohol addiction. Once you are confronted by your family in a direct manner, it is very hard to turn your back and say, “Nope. I’ll figure it out myself.” It’s a turning point. Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.

I drove towards downtown Memphis. I have no idea what I did wrong when I typed in the hotel address. Clearly, I got something wrong. Maybe I inverted some numbers. I don’t know. But it feels to me now, in retrospect, that the GPS-lady, with her soothing voice, had her own plans for me. And maybe she was working on concert, on some spiritual plane, with my four family members and their worried urgent voice messages. GPS lady tells me to turn right, then left, then left again, I’m in Memphis proper, she’s taking me left and right, until finally I pull into a circular driveway in front of a huge bluish-white building. A building that does not at all look like a hotel. Over the entranceway were the words: “Memphis Mental Health Institute.”

I rolled to a stop, staring up at the building, and the GPS-lady said, soothingly, “You have arrived at your destination.”

You really can’t make this stuff up. It was actually funny. I started laughing. I actually started laughing. I don’t think I said this out loud, but I thought it: “So, GPS-lady-slash-Universe, are you saying I should forego the trip and just check myself in here? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

It’s still such a weird memory and I still can’t explain it. Of all the locations my mistake could have led me to … it could have led me to a random storefront, a private home, a community center, a beauty salon … nothing with a personal message attached to it. I don’t believe in woo-woo stuff but I admit, staring up at the sign, I wondered if woo-woo was involved.

I sat there in the drive, checking the address, re-entering the hotel address, and continuing on my way. And I had a good trip. Things got much worse when I came home. Memphis was just a brief respite from the hell that was the previous fall. I was put into treatment in a state of high emergency. It took my whole family – not just immediate – to get me there. But while I was in Memphis, where I went days without speaking to a soul, beyond the waitress at the diner, or the bartender on Beale Street, I lived in a cocoon of silence and meditation. (And at least I knew where the loony bin was. Just in case.)

Two years later, Inherent Vice came out, and the first time I saw it, this scene rolled around …

and I thought immediately of sitting in the circular driveway in Memphis, staring up at the sign. Wow. That’s just what I saw. It looked just like this.

I’m going to Memphis again, and I’m going for the same date-span. It’ll be ten years exactly, not since I’ve been to the city, but since the trip where the GPS lady echoed the voice mail messages from my family, and ushered me to the mental hospital in my first 20 minutes in the city. I need to go to Memphis for other things, and have been trying to plan it, but my work schedule – and the autumn – with New York Film Festival and other obligations – means I have to wait. So I thought … why not go for the same dates? Let’s re-visit, but in a different head-space … because …

I’m even staying in the same hotel. Symmetry.

Let’s see where the GPS-lady takes me THIS time.