WEBSITE: theendrecords.wordp...
LOCATION: NYC
RECORDS: 9
LATEST RECORD: over 1 year ago
JOINED: August 20, 2010
LOCATION: NYC
RECORDS: 9
LATEST RECORD: over 1 year ago
JOINED: August 20, 2010
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By Graham Hartmann They all thought he was an army brat, moving from city to city and starting anew at each stop. It was in Los Angeles where writing became his passion. He would neurotically scribble words into his notebooks, filling his desk with the most private thoughts of an ordinary child. In the fourth grade, his creativity was dominated by joyful expressions of life’s most innocent simplicities. His favorite poem was called “Light,” which he avidly recited to his classmates during show and tell before proudly stapling his work to the classroom wall. “Light brings a new day Peaking through the blinds Warming my stuffed animals Shining through the leaves of the tree in my front yard Showing me the world Squinting during baseball games Playing hide and seek at night I love the beautiful light” His prideful work was the first of many, but the last in which happiness served as his sole inspiration. Everything changed when his father was promoted and moved the family to London. It was difficult for him to fit in. The British fifth graders didn’t like Americans, nor the god complex they assumed all Americans possessed. He was bullied constantly; hit with wooden rulers during class, and left to wonder the schoolyard alone during recess and lunch. He chose to spend his alone time by picking a tree to sit under and continuing to fill his notebook: “Beaten down with rulers By my so called classmates I waited until the children left to go home And told my teacher about the bullying She said “Well that’s your problem” I walked out of the classroom… Changed” London soon became the setting for the first of his dark thoughts. He wrote: “I told my mom that I didn’t want to live anymore I have no reason to live My Uncle would miss me she said I held a knife to my chest when no one was looking” He thought he had been saved when his father was promoted again. He was to start high school in Sydney, Australia. For the first time in years, he felt a new kind of energy surge through his body. He felt the warmth of the daylight, no longer suffering from permanent tunnel vision. Once again his bags were packed. He was ready to start over. He began the ninth grade in a private Anglican school. Uniforms. Church. Controlled Minds. Conformity in its most devious of forms. He rejected what he was taught and refused to become a victim of religious ideals. His hatred for people grew in the pit of his stomach, the seed having been planted long ago. But along with his anger, his passion grew into more complex and experimental forms. Alone in his basement he learned to play the guitar, while quietly committing his thoughts to his notebook: “Feels like I can’t hold on Can’t tell the difference between right and wrong This road through life is so long And there are so many who try to cut you off These voices in my head They tell me not to follow What we’re all meant to swallow I’ll just be myself instead And I’ll refuse to go along With this world that’s so hollow” In his final year of high school, he found love. Carly. She dressed in black. She moved like a vision of pure energy. She had red and black dreadlocks, crimson nails and checkered wristbands. Her lips were wet with venom. It was only a matter of time before she bit down, filling his veins with a degenerative slow-acting poison. He carried it inside him like the remnants of a shattered bullet, lingering within him as he returned to the United States for the first time in almost a decade. New York City was his destination, to study at NYU. The memories of Carly showed no signs of fading, continuing to infect his mind and stirring his twisted creativity as he spent hours staring at her picture on his computer, obsessively analyzing every aspect of the face looking back at him: “I feel a little suspect staring at your pixels When I lose another hour and another piece of normal Warm legs embrace causes a pause in breathing The warmth I obtain is pure technology SMALLofBACKnapeOFneck Fingers align with ribs Toes pointed Searching for air within hot carbon Sculpting you with plastic horses circumferential Fantasm: accompanied by music and lights Horrific surrealism/Glazed reality Romantic intensity becomes too overwhelming... and I'm back I want to make your ears ring“ His mother begged him to seek help, and arranged for him to see a psychiatrist. The medication he received only made his lingering angst transform into relentless mania. The notebooks he had kept since he was a child, once serving as a platform for his expression of beauty, became polluted with nonsensical ramblings and psychotic hallucinations: “I feel incredibly scared my dreams are haunting me and I continue to wake up in a cold sweat My frantic rustling of notebook pages is surly keeping me upUPuppupPUUPP My daily patterns are turning danergous My muscles and joints are sore from constant tension. As if I continue to brace myslef for the oncoming impact What have I become? These disgusting chemicals hve turned my brain into some sort of paranoia laboraottory where more and more ridiuclous enemies and threats are being revealed I keep seeing a man with a flashlight when I close my eyes/ He keeps turning it on and off to keep me from sleeping. “ As he continued to sink into himself, he received more and more emails and phone messages from his mother, each more desperate than the last, hoping establish contact with her first-born son. She even wrote him a poem in an attempt to connect with him on some sort of deeper level: “I’ll lift you up I’m stronger than you think I will help you reach your dreams You have it within you But until you believe… I will help you reach your dreams The times will change I won’t have to ask I know you’ll rise up and lift me When I have the need” I love you Dee, Mom The final entry in Dee’s most recent notebook is thought to represent his own mental argument regarding the decision of his fate. The poem was specifically dedicated to his mother: “I’m a chemical addict To a drug that can’t live up to its name Covered in a soggy blanket That seems like its never dried the same Long distance with my mother Who begs me to put the gun down I can’t live without you I can’t live without you my little boy You’re the apple of my eye You’re the apple of my eye Won’t you think about me? Won’t you think about me before you pick up that knife? Please don’t follow your heroes My boy you know you’re mine But I can’t stumble on Marching through a valley of fools And when I give up It will be my last thought That her shine will never be like it was” |
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