You can listen to me read this post on Soundcloud or Youtube, or as Bliss and Drumming wherever you get your podcasts.
Oh boy! The next song up for re-release is from my first album, Conversation with Francis Bakin from 2008, and it’s one of my favorites. “Sunshine” was the first video I ever created, and I think it might have been the first song I wrote in this period. Gretchen Menn provided her killing guitar here too.
This song has a special place in my heart, because it is so close to the essence of all the inner work of being Clem. It’s serious and silly both, and there are some facets here I love to explore about who we are as people and personalities, and the major lessons I’ve learned in my own journey.
One of the central concepts of my self-discovery has been the idea of the mask. Carl Jung and then Donald Winnicott expounded on this idea, and it has been important in my understanding of myself and people in general.
Consider that everyone has a kind of core wound that they are working with. Maybe they feel they are unlovable, or maybe they feel they are not smart, or weak, or damaged. For me, I had a sense that I was intrinsically bad, that if people really knew me, they would see that at my core I was just not worthwhile. I have an idea of where that feeling came from, but it doesn’t really matter. It was there.
Here we are, working with this deep feeling of brokenness. To function in the world, we put on a mask, a personality self that meets the world, hiding the truth of ourselves beneath it.
Our mask is often the opposite of the wound. So if we feel unworthy, we put on a mask of someone capable of receiving, of earning. If we feel unlovable, we put on a mask of attractiveness. If we feel intrinsically bad, we put on a mask of benevolence and expend much of our energy over-extending to be of service. We feel weak, we focus on physical strength or display forcefulness in our actions. Sometimes the mask is just an amplification of the wound. We feel weak, we put on a mask of fragility. We feel fear, we put on the mask of crippling anxiety.
You get the point. This is a very basic explanation of the complications of the human species, so of course this is very limited in the telling, black and white compared to the many colored rainbow that is the human psyche.
If we take this at its simplest, the problem is that often people start to identify with the mask, and when it becomes impossible to prop this false self up anymore, there is a crisis. Aging is one of the great dissolvers of masks, especially masks of beauty or physical strength. The loss of health or money can cause the dissolution of a mask of success or capability. Public humiliation, a dissolver of the hero mask.
For me, because my intrinsic wound was one of being unworthy or bad, I had a couple of masks I would wear. One was of benevolence, of over-extending myself for other people.
The other one shows up in this video for “Sunshine.” It’s the one of over-confidence bordering on arrogance.
I kind of love this mask. It’s the mask I put on as the rock and roll drummer. Marijuana was a wonderful tool in amplifying this mask for myself. All self-attack and negative self-image dissolved in the substance, and this glorious belief in the power of Clem was in full glory.
The interesting thing about masks is that there are aspects that are healthy, that are healing to the wounds we carry. Maybe we put them on to model what it is we will look like when we heal that initial wound. Once the pot left my life, it was a fun practice to try to access this old confidence without the help. It has been wonderful to see that there is a real part of me who loves to make people feel good. To be in service to others.
There is another thing to add to this. My dear buddy Jeannine and I took a 40-question test one of us found testing to see if we were narcissists. We each took the test, and the higher the number, the more chance you were a narcissist. She got a very low score, an 8. I got a 32.
First, this cracked us up. Together, we added up to one perfect narcissist, and we figured that’s why we had such a deep friendship. But also, 32?? She said she went back through the questions and marveled that I must have answered positively for some of them. “You believe the world would be better if you were running it?” she asked incredulously. Well of course. Doesn’t everyone believe that?
I want to state here as truthfully as I can, I really don’t think I’m a narcissist. I know that true narcissists live in fear and are unable to love. That’s not me. I don’t attach too much to these Clem personality constructions, and I’m constantly working to chip away at my masks, any artifice in myself, and try to be humbly and authentically exposed and true.
When it comes to the test, I think that mask is the one who answered, that Clem personality self who overflows in out-sized confidence. A danger of the mask is that it can become an extreme version of itself as the fear of being unmasked builds. Without dealing with it, without figuring out a way to be more and more authentically true to yourself, without healing the wound, you get the worst of humanity. We certainly see that acted out every day. You could call this song “Call of the Cult Leader.”
Still, I love this Clem who appears in the video, who wrote the song. And now here is the mask speaking:
I really do think that if anyone were to give me a chance, I could fix all the world’s problems pretty easily. Make sure everyone starts with enough to make them feel safe and cared for. Make sure all the greedy folks are helped to understand that they too are safe and cared for, and that the grasping mask selves can relax. Make sure people are listened to, people are cared for, peoples’ needs are met. Animals and the earth treated sacredly. There is plenty here for all. It see it as a distribution problem.
There are plenty of people here who would be happily in service to help make these changes. I travel all over the place, and nearly everyone I meet wants the exact same things. They can quibble about specifics, and laugh about things, they can be kind and helpful, they can extend themselves for the other.
I always think about a big earthquake I was in once when I lived in Santa Cruz. I was in a bookstore and the shaking was sudden and extreme, people crouched down as books fell off the shelves and the place was rocked. When the shaking stopped, the very first thing that happened? Everyone hugged each other. Strangers helped others up, checked on them. Then there was laughter that twittered through, and the relief everyone felt brightened everything and connected us in a kind of levity.
This is who humans are. The mask tumbles down in times of stress and we see the truth, this open-hearted love and levity at the center of being.
It’s really not that hard, says the mask, as she stands up on her platform and shakes her fist in righteousness. Let me be your damn sunshine, baby. Just go along with the way I see things for a little while, see if it makes you feel just a little bit better.