Part 9

Most people will attest to the fact that the mid-2010's was a period of heightened emotions on a near-global scale. The 2016 US presidential election was ramping up, and was the backdrop of the average American's everyday life. While I hadn't been old enough to grasp the weight of most elections I had lived through up to that point, the battle between globalism and nationalism in 2016 was undeniably unprecedented, and it caused me as much anxiety as the next person. The world was changing, and we were all changing with it.

Northeast LA was an overwhelming place to live during such times. JD and I had just moved from his uncle's house in Malibu to an overpriced rental in Mount Washington, just a few miles outside of downtown. It was a stark contrast to the super-rich hippie vibes of seaside living. The clean ocean air that had filled my lungs was replaced by a thin cloud of dust and smog. And the people. The claustrophobic cluster of so many people in one place gave me the feeling of being a tiny ant on a giant, inescapable anthill. 

Long gone were the housekeepers and assistants who made us meals and did our laundry. Gone was the spacious living room with the beautiful ocean view, and perhaps most sadly of all, gone was the custom golf cart on which I had taken so many memorable joyrides. JD and I were officially on our own. 

As often happens when two friends move in together, our friendship, which had already been standing on shaky ground as of late, began to strain. It's not like we hated each other or couldn't get along, but there seemed to be a growing animosity between us that was brought on by unavoidable differences in personality, my personality being like an unstoppable force and his an immovable object.

I was desperate to nurture my extraversion, to explore LA, to make friends with local weirdos, and to finally taste the ever-elusive rainbow that I had spent a lifetime chasing. But JD was simply not interested in any of that. I was perplexed by his prevailing disinterest in anything existing outside the four walls of our house. But my pitiful pleas for him to explore the city with me only pushed him further away, and thus accentuated the loneliness I was desperately trying to escape. I couldn't understand what was going wrong.

Something that made matters even worse was the fact that, on top of paying the initial security deposit for our house, I had paid for three months of rent in advance, assuming that JD and I could spend that time working on new songs, so that when his uncle got back to us regarding potential music-business opportunities, we would have a plethora of new material ready to go for our debut album. Sure, I had drained my entire bank account in one fell swoop, but it was a bet I was willing to take. JD had inherited a hefty chunk of change when Steve passed, so he was quite financially stable for the time being. Everything looked good on paper, but I never accounted for the possibility of our friendship turning so icey. The type of musical chemistry that can only exist between two people on the same wavelength, that magical X-factor that had carried us further than I ever imagined, was rapidly vanishing before my eyes.

I was depressed. I didn't know it was possible to feel so alone in a city populated by millions of people. I started taking long walks through the hills of Mount Washington, lamenting my situation, yet still holding out hope that things would take a turn for the better. I would take the Gold Line train to Little Tokyo and wander aimlessly through the weird, neon-lit Japanese shops. The pangs of the passage of time grew sharper and more acute by the day, the minute even, as I waited for something, anything, to free me from my predicament.

I grew weak from a lack of nutrition, my diet consisting mainly of oatmeal and ramen noodles. I had no idea how to take care of myself, and I started to lose what little bit of muscle I had, which rendered me a ghostly image of my former self. The impulsive decision to shave my head didn't help either.

I had a lot of time on my hands, a lot of time to think. I was searching for meaning in books, particularly in The Sayings of Confucius and The War of Art. I gravitated towards a podcast by the neuroscientist and atheist philosopher Sam Harris, who had a calming and logical voice, but I had already been a proud, militant atheist since my early teens, so there was little he had to say that I hadn’t already heard. 

But there was a growing cognitive dissonance in my mind, and I felt I could trace it back to the book I had finished a few days before moving to Mount Washington. It was the book I had borrowed from Anthony’s office about a month before, the one with the curious title that happened to catch my eye on that boring, yet consequential morning. It was Steinbeck’s East of Eden, and I couldn't get it out of my mind.

In summary, East of Eden is an allegorical novel set in Salinas Valley, California during the early 20th century that sees its characters play out the Biblical narrative of Cain and Abel, who, according to Genesis, were the first two naturally born humans, their parents being Adam and Eve. If you're not familiar with the story, when the brothers make their respective offerings to God, God respects Abel's offering but does not respect Cain's, and thus a violent conflict ensues in which Cain murders Abel.

In East of Eden, the abundantly compassionate and loving father-character is continually wronged by those he cares for the most, but in the climax of the story, after one of his sons inadvertently causes the death of the other, the father finds it within himself to forgive the surviving son. Therefore, the book suggests that the surviving son has been absolved of his guilt and shame, and is now free, if he so chooses, to cleanse himself of the darkness that caused his brother’s death.

Another major theme of the book is the all-too-human tendency to create false idols out of people who we want to look up to. But the bigger we build them up in our minds, the harder they fall when they inevitably reveal themselves to be imperfect. The insinuation that this phenomenon, of which I was most certainly guilty, could somehow be fomented by a disbelief in God challenged some of the foundational tenets of my worldview.  

In my analysis of the Cain and Abel story itself, a realization struck me to my very core. After having spent the past few months surrounded by award-winning entertainers, mansions, and exorbitant amounts of wealth, I wondered what was wrong with me that I was now drifting toward destitution instead of sharing in the ubiquitous success of my peers. Why was my life, that had recently been so full of promise, falling apart at lightning speed? Why was everyone else being rewarded for who they were, and I wasn’t? Why didn’t anyone seem to recognize my value? I asked myself these questions with a fallen countenance, and then it hit me: I was no better than Cain, the angry, murderous older brother of the enviable Abel. 

While I wasn't literally a murderer, I could follow the logical steps of how resentment in the face of rejection was feeding a destructive, nihilistic will to power within myself. I had refused to be humbled, to learn, to adapt to my surroundings. Most of all, for my entire life really, I had felt as though the world owed me something. And oh! how much of this was wrapped up in my relationship to my hero, Anthony Kiedis!

All of these new thoughts and ideas felt so dirty. Atheism had always been such an integral part of my identity. Wasn't I too smart to entertain anything involving God or the Bible? But because of the circumstances in which I found myself, I was being forced to rethink everything I thought I knew…