Si Chartsy como no!

“Writting songs, to me, it´s like shitting…” - Marty Anderson.

Viniendo de una persona que caga sangre, y contemplando que defecar es muy placentero (cuando no es sangre lo que cagas), creo pertinente preguntarse ¿Le será doloroso componer? Pero no, Marty Anderson no se refiere a lo doloroso que le sea defecar o componer, sino a la cotidianidad o frecuencia en que compone, para él, componer música es una descarga más, pero no por eso de menor significado. El compone entre 10 y 30 canciones al día.

Marty Anderson comenta que la enfermedad y su vida no deberían condicionar su relevancia como artista o músico, sin embargo su enfermedad lo es todo para poder apreciar el total de lo que hace.

Anderson ha mantenido a todos sus proyectos en el límite geográfico determinado desde su nacimiento el cuál es Fremont California, y así como se ha mantenido en un límite geográfico, logró contener durante mucho tiempo fuera del conocimiento público su mal.

Conformó un medio de Howard Hello, un cuarto de lo que fue Dilute y él es “Okay”, éste último siendo el más anecdótico. “Marty Anderson is Okay” un nombre que desde su reflexión funciona de manera subversiva y transgrede con el estado anímico del propio Autor. Anderson sufre de un desorden intestinal, básicamente hace que cague sangre, su cuerpo no pasa lípidos a menos que sea directo a la sangre y contínuamente sufre dolores muy agudos. 

Su voz y su manera tan característica de tocar la guitarra funcionan como la máxima descarga de la energía cautiva por la enfermedad y terminan por amarrar el discurso que la música genera en todos sus proyectos, su voz siendo “rasposa”, aguda, evidentemente adolorida, pero sobre todo honesta y sus acordes juegan, duelen a veces son como miel, otras veces son moscas molestas. 

Al escribir esta entrada, varias veces mis ojos se llenaron de lágrimas, sé que soy cursi e idealízo demasiado a esta persona, pero al escucharlo y saber por todo lo que ha pasado, encuentro un gran grito por la vida, escucho a alguien desviviéndose en cada nota, exponiendo cada uno de sus sentimientos, es aquí donde creo pertinente poner palabras del propio Marty.

“My medical regimen? Um … Currently I am on Pentasa, Flagyl, Prednisone every day. Morphine, Vicodin, Valium are when I need them, but keep in mind I’ve been on pain killers off and on — mostly on (at least to some degree) — for 6 years now, so it takes quite a bit to get an actual “relief” effect on this type of physical pain. T.P.N. is the white bags, the lipids (fats) are what make it white. It’s an acronym. But I forget what the P stands for. Total, (something), Nutrition.

I see my docs about once every few months. I go in weekly to have my PIC line and my dressing changed (that is what is in my arm: the IV PIC line is a small plastic tube that I wrap around my wrist, and the other end goes in my arm, into my vein, up around my shoulder, and directly into my heart. Infection is the biggest danger. No protection. But I am careful). I also have the IV site cleaned and caps replaced weekly etc. So I have that pick line coming out of my arm 24/7. That is where they draw the blood too. They do that every week as well. 3 vials! I’ve been meaning to ask if they could take blood work every two weeks. I don’t want my hemoglobin going way down again. I need my blood!

To be honest, I’m a little weirded out by telling the world I take all these poisons. Do you really HAVE to put this in? I guess it doesn’t matter. I mean, it’s the truth. So I don’t really care I guess. I just feel strange and don’t really think it’s necessary.”

Durante un tiempo dos integrantes de su proyecto Okay, vivieron junto con el en un pequeño departamento, ellos son Anna Weisman y Yosef Lewis, Weisman y Anderson por un tiempo fueron pareja y de hecho ellos se mudaron juntos, Yosef se les unió después. Lo que comenzó por ser una amistad, gustos musicales y una banda, terminó como un triangulo amoroso bizarro, en donde Anderson salió “perdiendo”, caído en una tremenda depresión Anderson regresó a vivir con sus padres pero no sin antes vivir solo, sin medicamentos, tratando de hacerse una limpia. Posteriormente se internó en un instituto de yoga en donde iba a tratar su enfermedad a base de terapias alternativas, yoga y comida cruda. Cuando lo visitaron sus padres, se encontráron con un Marty, a punto de quebrarse, inmediatamente lo internaron en el hospital y llegaron a pensar que esa sería su última noche vivo.

“There was a whole day and into the night when I thought, ‘OK, this could be it.’ And it’s like, ‘What have I done, what could have I done?’ Just thinking of stuff like that.”

He made it through that night, but the next turned out to be even worse.

“I basically had 16 hours straight of just throbbing pain at the base of my spine. … The nurses were freaking out because they kept giving me morphine, but it didn’t stop the pain. I was shaking, I couldn’t lay in bed, I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t stand, I was just moving around. Not a fun night. But then it just went away. I couldn’t sleep all night, and finally I passed out, and I woke up 20 minutes later and was fine.”

Anderson thinks that what happened to him was something called a “Kundalini Release.” The term “Kundalini” derives from a Sanskrit word that means “coiled up.” Dictionary.com defines it as “Energy that lies dormant at the base of the spine until it is activated.” A release is, well, apparently what happened to Anderson; he believes that this energy exploded out of him, kicking off a new kind of healing process and imbuing him with a heretofore nonexistent vigor, determination, and compassion.

Probablemente todo esto suene muy “mágico”, pero el hecho es, una vez sintiéndose mejor, Anderson llama a su banda, incluyendo a Yosef y Weisman, sin importar todo el daño que le llegaron a hacer y planean juntos el primer show de Okay.

Me róbo una crónica sobre éste acontecimiento del sitio sfweekly.com

 It’s 12:30 a.m. when Okay arrives onstage, the last act on a four-band bill. As the assembled audience members take their seats on the floor and on what happen to be actual wooden pews, the show begins, as it always does, with Tingshas, which ring crisp and tinny, a thin percussive layer of high-frequencyXanax. Warm keyboards ooze up, and strummed guitars set the pace. The song is called “Adi Mantra”; Anderson sings, in his quavering, effected voice, “I’ve been waaaasting so much tiiime.” The music swells, keyboard sounds double up on each other, and a cymbal slithers out above the din.

The green neon sign blinks: You Will Die Someday.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

The musicians fire their cap guns at one another, which gets a laugh, communicating that yes, this shit is spiritual and important, but no, we’re not taking ourselves too seriously. Next song: “Bloody,” a perfectly deranged pop ditty. Anderson’s keyboards are all cute and cuddly, emitting syncopated chords as he sings, “Bloody bloody/ Our way is going to be the way/ Bloody bloody/ We don’t ask why.” Then the tune explodes — literally, because before the show Lewis handed out little exploding party-poppers to select audience members, so that when Jay Pelucci slams his cymbals and Panda bangs whatever she bangs and Anderson yells, “OUT!/ Of our way,” bursts of confetti spill from various corners of the room, and the music turns into something like a lost Ringo-penned Beatles tune, romping and stomping, before everything drops out and it’s just Anderson singing over a vaudevillian keyboard line, “You’re gonna die but how/ You’re still alive right now/ You’re still alive right now/ What to do?” Then the band joins in and it’s Ringo’s romper room again, and the party builds and builds — like weather, I tell you! — and then stops.

And the green neon sign blinks: You Will Die Someday.

The song ends and there’s a moment of silence, about a minute’s worth (which is sort of awkward for the audience, to tell you the truth), and the silence is broken by the musicians pulling out those things that look like kazoos and blowing in unison a loud, squeaky fart. For “Wild West” a few songs later, after Anderson sings the refrain — “We’re not headed for disaster” — and the song ho-hums its way into a sashay of keyboards, Weisman and Panda punctuate the sound with the wheezy, percussive chirps of deflating balloons.

Maybe this scene sounds cheeky and twee, but the kazoos and the balloons and the cap guns are all necessary, because something needs to lift this zeppelin off the ground, because when Anderson sings, on High Road’s “Compass,” “I consume all the sadness/ That you throw over me/ And I spin like a compass/ That don’t know where you be,” he’s singing a song he wrote when the girl sitting behind him was tearing his heart out by sleeping with the guy standing to his right — and somehow he’s forgiven them both. Which is some heavy shit. And when he sings, on “Give Up,” “I’m gonna give up/ I’ve got to give up/ And on you go,” and it’s not really clear which towel he’s talking about throwing in — his life? his relationship? — well, that’s some heavy shit, too. But it’s cool, Anderson wants us to know. Maybe that’s why he closes out the show with “Sing Along,” a snappy kazoo-laden tune that bounces around your head like a pingpong ball: “It’s all right it’s such a sad, sad fucking song/ It’s all right if you’re still singing along.”

Lo que yo siento por la música de Marty Anderson, toma parte de un lugar mucho más visceral en mí, por lo cuál a menos de que me grabara hablando sobre él, lograría estructurar mi pensamiento de una manera coherente, mejor…

“You Will Die Someday” No es una advertencia o amenaza, es meramente un recordatorio.

Charls