Fool

Nights fly by at the restaurant now that business has picked up — the weeks piling up like dirty laundry. Somewhere beneath the warm and familiar anxiety of managing a restaurant, a dull, relentless heartache simmers, coming to a full-on boil only on days off when I don’t know what to do with myself. Songs pour out every other day it seems. Some worth pursuing, some quickly abandoned and thrown away, and still others which feel too fresh and fragile to evaluate right now. One song in particular falls outside all three categories. After a long, miserable day off last week, I came home and was greeted by the songwriting gods so swiftly and powerfully, it was as if I was struck in the jaw with no warning and knocked to my feet. Before I knew what had occurred, I was downstairs outside my apartment building, smoking a cigarette, and listening back to a raw recording I couldn’t have contrived if there was a gun to my head. I started crying and I kept saying, “Oh my god, oh my god” out loud to myself between awful sobs. 

The song is called “Fool”. I’m thinking I’ll release it soon here. I called Zach the night I wrote it, and three days later, he had mixed the song and sent it back. I asked Brian Bond to run it through his tape machine for some warmth and glue and character, and then I “mastered” it myself. Zach made some really great decisions with the mix, giving the song a little bit more movement and dynamics. I feel really uncertain about how it might be received, but I am holding onto a simple fact which brings me some peace about sharing “Fool” with the world: It is probably the most honest and concise song I have ever written. There is no story. I am not using my typical specificity and imagery. The raw emotion drips from this song like a bloody nose — unmistakeable, unsettling. 

Zach and I have been spending a fair amount of time together lately. Our schedules haven’t lined up well and there’s fifty miles between us, but we make it work somehow. Once a month, sometimes twice, I’ll rent a car and drive into Napa for a day and a half or so. We are currently on a fajitas kick, so Taqueria Rosita’s has become a regular ritual when I visit. Zach lives on Main Street a few blocks from downtown proper, and just a block or two from New Technology High School, where I spent my freshman year (dreadfully I might add). 

Zach and I have been inseparable since we were eleven and twelve years old. He’s one of the only people left in my life (who I’m still close with) who knew and loved my dad, which has become remarkably special to me. Zach has been holding me while I cry over women and family and my own failures for almost twenty years now. He knows my insecurities, my flaws, my stubbornness, my family and its endless complexities. And I know his grief, his inner child, the twisted sense of humor he inherited from both parents, and his musical prowess — the artist in him. As we get older, this realization keeps unfolding deeper and deeper every year that ours is the kind of intimate friendship many people never get to experience and just how special that is. We are so very different in so many ways, but we keep each other honest and we’ve carried each other through so much. Our friendship is dynamic and reciprocal. We take turns adding to each other’s music, we take turns taking care of one another, we take turns pissing each other off. 

I’ve had this image in my mind for months now. How we are all walking through a dark forest, forging our own trails. And throughout this very long night called life, we encounter strangers, folks whose paths meet ours by accident. And sometimes our trails merge for only a moment, while other times we walk together with a new stranger for ten minutes. And though rare, there are other times when we walk the very same path with someone almost all the way through the night. We walk with them so long that we forget we were ever awkward strangers. And we build trust along the way, becoming more vulnerable with each step. And sometimes, while we’re building this trust, we encounter danger. Maybe it’s another lone traveler with intentions to kill or steal, maybe it’s a rushing river (waist-high waters) that must be crossed. And each time we experience hardship together, something is lost. And something is gained. Life is a long, lonely, and scary night in the woods. And if you’re lucky, you meet a few safe and genuine fellow travelers. And if you’re luckier than that, some of them walk many miles with you, keeping you company and looking out for you. Most people fall off our trail after a short time and sometimes we bump into them later. I think I met my fellow traveler in Zach. And we will probably walk each other out of the long night in the forest and into the dawn of death. That is my hope, anyway. 

Okay. That was quite a tangent, but I cried writing it, so it’s staying. I strive for cohesion normally, but today I feel less concerned about organized thoughts. 

Anyway, parallel to Main St where Zach lives and one street over is Brown St, a quieter and more distinct road lined with quaint homes, none of which resemble one another at all. My first real crush lived on Brown St, and every Wednesday we would walk to her house from our middle school, holding hands quietly. Wednesdays were short days and I don’t remember anyone being home most of the time when we walked into her cozy, lived-in, and very specifically scented Victorian around one in the afternoon. I remember us feeding the dog peanut butter, downloading Sublime and Smashing Pumpkins songs on Limewire and burning mixes onto CD, walking to the church across the street and sitting on the ground against the side entrance door, holding hands, hugging, laughing. I never kissed her. I was so nervous, hands clammy, stomach aching with infatuation. One brisk January morning during recess she “broke up” with me. I still remember where we were standing, how I felt, and pieces of what she said. I just see you more like a brother. God, I was devastated. I spent the rest of that school year fairly heartbroken until I met the girl who would possess my heart until senior year of high school. After that, my Brown St crush was just another peer I went to school with and heard rumors about. 

My grandmother on my dad’s side died the same year as my sixth grade girlfriend dumped me in the hallway. Between those two losses and the chaos of my home life, I experienced a kind of loneliness and heartache that still feels atypical to me for an eleven year old. Against the backdrop of the affluent suburban-ism that contained my life, the depth of my emotional pain at that young age is sort of difficult to wrap my head around. Years later, I would face that little boy on the school bench in the nurturing presence of my therapist feeling the very same feelings and for the first time, I experienced an enormous amount of empathy for him. “Who is in your corner right now, Ashton?” he asked, careful not to break the spell of time travel. “You feel alone, but who is there for you?” The words fell out of my mouth instantaneously: “Amani,” I replied, and then, “Stephanie Sjoblom. She sat on the curb with me while I wrote songs and she still buys all my records to this day.” I cried so hard as I realized that Stephanie Sjoblom always saw me. And she still does. We hardly ever communicate, but I get emails every time she downloads my music. 

So much of the heaviness I felt as a kid followed me discretely into adulthood like an antagonizing ghost. When my dad died in 2017, my nervous system had had enough. I was emotionally paralyzed for years after that. Once in my early to mid twenties, I asked a close family friend, “What is wrong with me?” to which she replied (and I am paraphrasing), “Absolutely nothing. Your highs are higher and your lows are lower than most of us. It will probably always be that way, and that’s part of what makes you special. You’re going to have to learn how to manage your sensitivity is all.” 

All these years later, here I am again. Heartbroken. But this time it’s different. I’m thirty one now, and I guess I finally figured out that pain isn’t permanent or lethal, but rather temporary and torturous. I dove headfirst into the cold, breathtaking waters of a loss and I’m learning how to keep my head above water and refrain from panic. I took someone out of my life who I loved immensely and her absence feels just shy of unmanageable. The details really don’t matter, although some of them may well show up like scattered wreckage on my next record. I don’t feel the need to keep this loss a secret, but I also don’t feel the need to expose the relationship or its ending with naked specificity. Those details are mine to agonize over. 

If you happen to hear “Fool” upon its release, feel free to keep this context in mind. I have always been this way. I feel deeply and it can be disorienting. I have been holding my guitar and singing from a broken place since I was eleven years old. It’s what I know how to do. At the recording studio the other day, I blurted out something rhetorically to Greg, but mostly to myself. “I don’t know how other people deal with this, but this is the way I do it.” It will always be that way.