Brian D. McTear to me

May 16, 2009

I like that thing you mention about Writings of a Samurai… I am going to have to check it out. You are right. This is exactly what we do. My music for years was almost entirely about dying. It was actually mostly brought about at the time by the death of my dear friend, Sara Weaver (she died of Leukemia in 2002), but really loss of her made me think a lot about my own passing.

Likewise about the parents and the upbringing… My family made me the “star child”. I felt like the featured event in everything I did. I even feel like it was a little damaging to my younger brother, though he says otherwise today (I am one of seven, by the way, with a youngest sister who also has CF).  But there was a time when I was about 10 years old where my doctors thought I should go to the Children’s Seashore House in Atlantic City. They said it was like Summer Camp, only in a loosely “hospital-like” setting. It felt more like the institution in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I was supposed to stay for three weeks, but the place and some of the people just freaked me out terribly. When I begged and pleaded to leave, my parents told my doctors that they were going to pick me up (after just 5 days), to which the doctors admitted they were a little concerned that my parents were “in denial” about my condition. The experience really solidified the family approach to raising Brian with CF. In a nutshell, it could be summed up as, “Don’t let anyone tell you that CF means you can’t have a normal life.” Of course, as the circumstances present themselves we have to roll with it, but I am not sure I would have ever had a band, written songs, sang on a stage … These are the most profoundly enjoyable experiences of my life. I am very grateful for their approach!

I can’t wait for you to hear SUNSET, too. If you like Blood Feathers, you are going to love this song. One of the best experiences any of us has ever had in the studio!

B

Robert Wolter to Brian

Feb 22, 2009

being a musician i’ve seen some crazy shit, and i’m assuming you have too. over the years my life has quieted down a lot while at the same time a lot of my friends lives have amped up. i went up to nyc with my best friend tonight to visit our buddy who was having a party at his place. normally i wouldn’t have gone but i wanted to get out and have a bro-down, know what i mean? as we were walking up to his place a realization started to take place in my mind. 1. he’s single 2. he lives with another single guy 3. he drinks and smokes 4. it’s 30 degrees out.

so of course all of my worst fears come true and to make matters worse his roommates friends are all wannabe DJ’s so there’s tons of dudes in lebron james jerseys rolling and smoking blunts and i’m like trying to stay warm by the grill on the porch wondering how i didn’t realize this. well, i made it through the night and i made my friend leave early. aside from the obvious nightmare of a physical situation for me it was good to hang with my friends and get out for a little.

anyways to make my point. it fucking sucks that i can’t go balls out anymore, you know? do you ever get pissed off about that? i know it’s not a good feeling to carry, but when i see all these kids my age letting loose and going crazy and i’m like having a mini-panic attack at my friends party cause i don’t want to suffocate…you get the picture.

Also, we were talking on the way back from the city about what happens when you die and his opinion is that we all just get recycled back into nature, that we’re all organic beings and that what we live is what we get. i just can’t buy that. i can’t. how can all the people who get a short stick, how can that be it for them? i mean, all things considered i have it REALLY good and i’m bitching about how i can’t get wasted. there are people who suffer beyond my comprehension. this can’t be their only experience.

ah man, sorry to go off on you like this but i think you’re the closest person i know who can understand these types of things. thank god for that “super nice” gene!

Brian McTear to me

Feb 22, 2009

Hey man,

I HEAR YOU!

Admittedly, I’m a little older than you, so I might be a little more okay with settling down….had my share of craziness, and it just doesn’t turn me on the way it once did. I also can’t help but wonder every now and then how much my own little party life (which was mild at best) and all the time spent in smokey bars (a good year or two straight, if you add it up I’m sure) is responsible for the issues I face with my lungs these days. But I really don’t have regrets.

Still though, nothing sucks more than taking an invite to someone else’s environment, then realizing they don’t have a concern in the world, yet their shit could make your really sick! It’s been happening to me more and more.

The weird thing about life, and I think your conversation with your friend points to this, is that I don’t think it can be understood until it’s in danger. I really think that most people contemplate life and death when they are young in moments where they are drunk or high. The conversation doesn’t yield quality results, I think, as you’ve seen. Nothing against anyone: but you and I, and people faced with the concept of mortality when we wake up, when we eat lunch and when we go to sleep have a much richer sense of life. Your average healthy person can have religious or “pop” senses of life and death at best, but I just don’t think that is very real. I mean, he’s right about what happens to the matter part of your being, but you probably were meaning to talk about more than that.

Here’s a nice way to think of life and death…. I am not sure I BELIEVE IT, but that’s a whole other conversation….I can definitely imagine something like this, so I like it:

Outside of physical reality, where there is no time, we just ARE. Physical life is like a travel package, a vacation into the world where all things are experienced along a time line, allowing concentrated experience and understanding. It’s your own creation and it’s probably super trippy and surreal, by the standards of timelessness. And there’s probably an awareness that physical life has all sorts of details that are simply illusion, but you go for it, anyway. It’s intense. You can choose to live anywhere along the time line, ie. historical setting, and you can even do it with a friend as well… Or you can split off into several “lives” and experience all different things in all different settings and walks of life, which is probably most common. You can be a good guy, a bad guy… It’s your choice (and consequently, I think “good” and “bad” are simple terms related to physical reality. Probably don’t mean much outside of it).

Anyway, when a life runs up, your physical awareness shifts back in the eternal present, and probably for what seems like a few seconds (because you are still on “physical time” kinda like jetlag) you go, “whoa… Wait… Oh shit! That was crazy!”. You were never cheated, you chose that package for a reason. Life is the ultimate expression of creativity, and every life is an achievement.

That probably sounds like a speech in a Lifetime movie! Or from the rad cool kid in an After School Special!

Take care, man! Do you have a blog? My girlfriend Amy likes to say, “If you have problems, blog it out!” She’ll tell the cats to “blog it out” if a scuffle occurs. (It’s silly, and of course she doesn’t blog, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have problems). I’ve been wanting to find a place to write about time and reality and all this fun stuff, and maybe a blog is the way to go. Maybe we can co-author a blog about life!

B

Brian McTear to me

Feb 22, 2009

I hope I don’t just seem like I’m spewing for the sake of spewing.

What do you think about life and death? Like, what did you say to him about this stuff?

(and it’s only been a minute or two since mentioning it in my last post, but I really like this idea of Brian and Bobby’s Life and Death Blog!… Two pen pals with CF who actually live within two miles of each other, and have a lot of the same friends. We could just post our emails!)

B

Robert Wolter to Brian

Feb 22, 2009

No, not at all! I love talking about all of this stuff. It’s been on the forefront of my mind a lot with all the different books I’m reading. I think a lot of my friends are like, “uh-oh here he goes again…” when I start talking about it with them. I have a feeling they think I’m overly concerned about death because of my situation. Obviously it serves as a catalyst for why I’m thinking about it but in general I just love the topic.

I actually do have a blog! It’s a dream blog that I haven’t updated in almost a year, but there is some good stuff in there I suppose: http://robertcwolter.blogspot.com. We should totally blog it out! I wonder if these conversations could be of use to other people with CF or other similar illnesses. (on another note, I’ve always wanted to give back to the CF community somehow and one of the ideas I had was to have adults with CF made available to newly diagnosed kids parents to answer questions and just have some sort of correspondence. Everyones situation is different but not knowing what to expect must be pretty terrifying for new parents. I know my parents would have probably liked to have had some kind of support, especially since I was diagnosed so late.)

The conversation with my friend really didn’t lead anywhere. He keeps his emotions pretty close to his chest. It’s exactly like you said, until you’re confronted head on with your own mortality it’s hard to speak on, it’s not a reality for him.

Although I’ve been really close to cashing it in, I can’t say I’ve had any kind of near death experience or anything like that, but what I do have is a feeling that this isn’t it, that my body is just a body and this is just my “earthly” experience. What is after this life, I can’t say for sure, no one can, but I know there is something. I think that humans will constantly progress and evolve. If you think about technology and forms of communication, it is constantly getting smaller, faster, smarter. One of the things my friend said was that it was a shame to waste so much brain power in this life. I think that’s true, there is so much that can get accomplished. I’m a firm believer in if you can think it you can create it, like you were talking about in previous emails. So I do think humans are part of nature like everything else and constantly evolving and will reach different levels of existence as “time” moves “forward”.

I also wonder if relatives mean anything in the next life. Does blood translate to the next life? Does it mean anything? Like you were saying, can we choose who we can live in this world with? I definitely think that there are lessons to be learned in every life we live. I really do think dreams are little windows into what the mind can truly accomplish. I think they also serve as recycling centers for our daily experiences but if you really dissect them you can learn a lot about yourself and others. They’re like your super-intuitive instincts.

Do you blog it out?

Brian McTear to me

Feb 23, 2009

When I was 18 I was pretty sure that I was going to be a rock star, so I wanted to take a year off before college and make that happen … skip college all together. Some of my closest friends, including one of the guys in my band, assumed I didn’t have long left, and that’s what I was doing! It was weird because, especially back then, I was SO healthy. I mean, arguably a lot healthier than those guys! People just project their fears all the time. It’s one of the things that sucks about having an illness is that people are sometimes ready to project their fears for you before they need to.

I am psyched to read your dream blog. I have just started writing a blog for Weathervane Music, the non-profit organization I am trying to establish. If you are interested, the address is wvmusic.tumblr.com. I am just getting started with it. And we should totally put something together. Even if we just take our emails and upload the correspondance to a blog… We could edit out whatever we don’t want people to read, but I bet some people would like to read it. I’ve been rereading our emails, so I know someone out there would be interested!

Regarding the mentoring: You know, when I was 19 I was at one of my last doctor visits at CHOP. While I was waiting this young couple was getting the results from their kid’s CF test, and I saw them just moments after finding out. It was unbelievable. I actually wrote a letter to them right there and asked the receptionist to give it to them since I was sure they weren’t in the mood for talking. I said I basically didn’t know much about other people with CF’s experience. I was pretty sure that I had a milder case than many, but that I had a promising and happy life, and they shouldn’t assume any less for their child. I am not sure what I said was well informed, or mature, but the receptionist read it and wiped a tear. It was a touching moment.

So I like the thought of making something like that. Adults with CF talk to parents of and/or children with CF.

I sort of suspect that dreams are actually momentary insights into another reality or existence that is most likely not on the time line, and maybe in many cases not even attached to the physical world. Again, If you can entertain the idea that time is not real, then a thread of connection between lives that would seem to be on different parts of the timeline really could be as simple as opening a momentary channel between those lives. Dreams would be a perfect place for those threads to expose themselves to each other. Imagine how crazy it would be to exist in another life, and in a dream that boy or girl, man or woman …or Trafalmadorian… is getting glimpses into playing drums, walking through a house with different animals in each room, and having CF!

I like thinking about these things.

And for what it’s worth, in the Seth books, they talk about people very commonly keeping close to their loved ones…in one existence you are brother and sister, in another you’re mother and son, best friends, etc.

Here’s a crazy related story: My sister Nancy is 5 years older than me. Her mother in law died in 1994 or so. About 2 years later, she had her daughter Molly. One time after she took Molly to see her grandfather (Nancy’s father in law), just as they were driving away from the house, Molly (maybe 3 at that point?) said to Nancy, “I used to live there, exept when I lived there I was the Mommy and Daddy was the little boy!” Nancy said the hairs on her neck stood on end for the whole ride home.

B

Robert Wolter to Brian

Feb 23, 2009

That is a crazy story. I’ve had a couple of experiences of “seeing” things, what I think were spirits. When I lived in Northern Liberties, the house I lived in was owned by this lady who had actually died in the house (I didn’t know this until after the fact). But one night I had fallen asleep on the couch and when I woke up I saw someone walk up the stairs, but not really walk, it was very quick and then just kind of faded away. At the time I was really tired and maybe I was just seeing things but Jen, my roommate at the time, had also had a similar experience (also unbeknownst to me at the time). The second time is saw something was in the hospital. I was pretty sick and not only was I running a little fever, but I was also on some pretty heavy duty pain medicine. Again, it was really late maybe around 4 a.m., and the nurse had just given me a dose of pain medicine. I dozed off for a few minutes and when I opened my eyes there were numerous (this is really hard to describe) “energies” in the room. I want to say kind of like lights or something. I couldn’t communicate with them or anything but it was like I was acutely aware of their presence. Both instances you can maybe chalk up to tiredness, drugs, or both, but those were the only times I’ve ever experienced something like that so while I don’t take them too seriously i think they are noteworthy nonetheless.

I had this other experience about six months ago (sorry i’m kind of rambling here). I had pulled some muscles in my back and after about two weeks I was still in really bad pain. I was just starting to turn the corner, but kind of at the end of my rope. Now, I wouldn’t say that I am a religious person, but a spiritual one, and over the summer when I was in the hospital (the same stay where I had the experience that I just told…) I got into the habit of saying prayers for things. I try not to pray asking for things, but just acknowledging my good fortune. But this night I felt like I was going to freak out so I just prayed for my back pain to go away and to be able to finally get some rest and to be able to experience normalcy again. When I woke up it was like my prayer was answered. My pain was SO much better and i could get around a lot easier. I don’t know what that all means, if it was just mind over matter, the natural course of my healing, or truly was an answer to my prayer. Maybe all three combined, but if something outside this physical world helped me then maybe I’m not so crazy after all. Like I said, my step-mom is Catholic and her mom and all of her mom-friends have a prayer list that they put me on when I’m in dire straights. This doesn’t make me any closer to the Catholic church per se, but it does make me believe more in the power of the mind.

If you are ever with Devin for a while talking about these things he has some CRAZY stories. I’ve wanted for the longest time to collect all kinds of these types of stories on tape and make an audio essay of sorts.

What if we did like a weekly blog post? We could each do every other week, so we’d do two a month. Maybe we could set it up so that we’re riffing off of the last blog post that we each make. And if we want to switch it up we just start a whole new topic. Totally like our emails…conversations.

Robert Wolter to Brian

Feb 27, 2009

what about,

Senses of Life and Death

the Brian and Bobby Letters.

I’m reading the Watchmen right now. It’s funny how when you start getting into a subject (like I am now with life, death, reality, time, etc…) it just starts to pop up everywhere in your life. It seems like every time I turn around I’m encountering more info and garnering more thoughts on these subjects. The Watchmen touches on a lot of these subjects.

I heard this interview with an actor/screenwriter Danny McBride the other day. He was in Pineapple Express and also wrote and acts in the new HBO show Eastbound and Down. Anyways he was talking about how he’s had some success as an actor but he really loves the art of writing because he loves seeing what he puts to paper come to life on screen. I’ve never been a huge part of the writing in most of the bands I’ve played in but I know what he means. One of the greatest feeling I get from playing music isn’t being on stage or getting recognition, it’s the process of creating and hearing and seeing how everything comes together. It’s amazing how the power of imagination can turn thoughts into matter.

Man I didn’t set out to write this long letter, it just sort of happened.

a’ight ttyl.