Cancer has taught me how scared people are of everything. Perhaps in sounds cynical in that phrasing, but it’s no secret human beings operate largely on fear in the day-to-day. The crux of my point is this: People will follow your lead. Whether it be out of fear, obliviousness or something in between. The more strength I present to people the easier I make this on them. Weirdly enough, I haven’t taken a moment to cry or feel sorry for myself once since this entire thing has started. I have not broken. Not to brag.
There was one time, late at night when I was in my own head, I heard Dave Mason and Cass Elliot’s On and On, and it absolutely transported me to a place beyond tears. I could have cried or not cried; that really wasn’t important. What was important was that sense of belonging; someone else had felt the way I was feeling before. And that’s what art is, is it not? Portrayal of a feeling yields inspiration; art. Sometimes I turn to philosophy to understand that cognitive dissonance (has anyone ever felt this way?), sometimes I turn to art. Music almost always does the trick. We often forget in the shuffle of our everyday lives how nice it is to just sit and listen to music. And when you get lucky; when music transports you to that special place – somewhere beyond your own body, that’s when it’s special.
On and On is now one of my favorite songs of all-time:
About a month ago, I was lying in a hospital bed at UC Davis receiving chemotherapy. I had done a round of chemo before at UC San Francisco, but that was before they knew what type of cancer I had. For that reason, the chemo was much easier – just an eight-hour session of what they call R-CHOP, a cycle of five different chemotherapy drugs. Once doctors at the National Institute of Health were able to determine that I did not have regular large B-cell lymphoma (much milder) and I actually had Burkitt’s lymphoma (incredibly aggressive), it was decided I would be put on a much more intense chemotherapy regimen called R-EPOCH (another useless acronym, I know). R-EPOCH, instead of a short eight-hour session, is given over the span of five days. That is; 24 hours a day for five days straight. It’s not a lot of fun. If you’ve been hooked up to a machine before, you know it can be uncomfortable, nauseating even. Chemotherapy drugs make the body incredibly warm. I’m a person who runs hot in general so that part was especially bothersome – especially when followed by severe chills and then going back to extreme heat.
So anyway, I’m in UC Davis, hooked up to this machine that’s been pumping poison into my body for 24 hours straight, and then doctors come in and tell me it is time for me to receive my intrathecal chemotherapy. For those of you who aren’t medical experts, intrathecal means administered through the spine. With a needle. A big ass needle.
The doctor tells me to get naked and bend over, but not in an exciting way at all. I sternly turn to my mom and tell her, “No pictures, please”. And there I was. In just my hospital robe, bent over my bed, bald as Amber Rose, clenching my jaw waiting for a 1-inch needle to be inserted into my spinal column. I thought to myself: How the fuck did I get to this point? Sure, I didn’t exactly take care of my body in my early adulthood. I liked to party. I liked to drink. I liked to do drugs. I liked to eat like shit and not worry about the consequences. But never in my life did I think that any of my poor decisions would lead to this terrifying and demeaning predicament. And perhaps they did not. But the thing about cancer is, it has a funny way of making you feel like this is all your fault.
Suddenly, there, bent over my hospital bed, I heard the voice of an angel. Except it wasn’t an angel. It was Ringo Starr.
Octopus’s Garden by the Beatles had shuffled on in my AirPods. A fine, fun song – if you like the Beatles more playful stuff, which I do – the song had never really spoke to me outside of being a groovy psychedelic tune. But this was the first time I really listened to the lyrics:
I’d like to be
Under the sea
In an octopus’s garden
In the shade.
Boom. I was instantly transported. For a moment, two minutes and fifty seconds to be exact, I was gone. No longer was I thinking about the needle hanging out of my spine, the gangle of doctors huddled around me to make sure the person performing the procedure didn’t miss and cause me serious nerve damage. I wasn’t thinking about how unlucky I was or how shitty it was that this was the first of many spinal taps to come. I was where I wanted to be; in an Octopus’s Garden, in the shade.
Close your eyes and listen for a moment. Transport yourself:
I keep searching for this transportive effect everywhere I can. It is perhaps a sad indication; that our happiest moments come when we perceive ourselves outside of our own bodies – but it is also perhaps a sacred realization. We are not going to have these bodies forever. Bodies break. They fall apart, are stricken with horrible ailments, cancers and diseases - in many cases whether we take care of them or not. But when we die, and we all die, we get to leave our bodies. Whether you do or don’t believe in an afterlife, I think there must be at least some peace in knowing that leaving these janky bodies behind will bring some sort of relief. I for one hope our next lives look and feel a little like this.
Comentários