Conjugate the verb...

'to be' - past (not so perfect): I was, we were

there was a man; a juggler, a fool, a player on an forsaken stage...let's be frank, there was an idiot.

this idiot was lost in the pretense.  this idiot was obscured by the view. this idiot was a desperate illusionist striving towards ascension but decaying each perigee like some acrophobic satellite.  this idiot liked to mix his metaphors...freely.

one day, at the request of his family, his friends, the psychiatric profession and the community at large, the idiot dug a hole.  not a very big hole, but just big enough to be disconcerting.  

leaving the hole unguarded for a time, he crafted a box of the finest workmanship his addled focus could still manage.

into the box he poured all of the things that set him apart, yet set him at odds with what he perceived were the changing needs of those around him.  

into the box he poured his self loathing, his ever critical eye for perfection in everything,  the fuel that drove him onward, striving for better... better, always better, had to be better, just not good enough.

into the box he poured his manic frenzy...his scattered leaps from one teetering precipice to the next without pause, without thought of consequence, without regard for where the next leap would take him.

into the box he poured his smothering depression, and his relentless need to delve as far and as low as he could, just to see if there was something still further down in the pit he had not yet mined, polished, buffed of any imperfections, and brought back to the world of the sane.

into the box he put his lenses, his films, his camera obscura, all his filters...all those tools that allowed him to unfocus his eyes and see the world in small vignettes, see the things around him that go unrecognized every day, see the mundane, the things that are too obvious to seen by those staring directly at them, and craft them into things of great beauty, to him at least.

into the box he put his desperate need to fail at all costs, his notion that the merest hint of success meant his art was no longer his to control, no longer his to shape, no longer his.

into the box he put his unwillingness to adhere to the clock of the daily dredge... all the best work begins in the absolute depths of the night when the smothering clutching demons of the day have given way to the unfettered angels of the wee hours, tracing their flights of infinite beauty between the motes of dust disregarded by those not willing to seek them, not willing to see them for what they are, not willing to chase them until the sky pales and rouses the demons anew.

all this and more the idiot poured into this hastily constructed keepsake timecapsule coffin. unsure of his intent, other than knowing that he could not remain true to both sides of his need at once, and that something had to give. 

with a moment's flinching hesitation he cast the box into the hole he had dug. lying askew at the bottom of the pit staring up at him, a broken-backed consumptive demanding extrication.

the first clod of dirt was the hardest to cast.  once he could no longer hear its muffled cries the burial grew easier, and before dawn there was little trace of where the hole once was.  only a trained eye could discern the subtle indicators left behind.

many years passed since that day, and once-tiny birds had grown strong, leaving the idiot to wonder...if half of his soul languished in the dirt, and the other half flew far away, far from any need of his care, was he not just an empty shell? a dully resounding vessel?

the idiot was consumed with the loss of all he was, the loss of that which he had chosen so long ago on the day of deciding.

as the time grew shorter, he frantically retraced his steps, looking everywhere he had been before, that he could recall, looking for any sign, any hint of that long lost sepulchre...looking for the telltale signs, odd indentations in the soil, unusual patterns of overgrowth, anything out of place.

and far away, far away from the home he had built for those little birds, buried in the sand of an otherwise unremarkable beach just below the line of the dune grasses he found the box.  this was not where he recalled burying it...the topography had changed, as had the nature of the soil itself, but it was undeniably the box he had crafted.

as he wrested the box from the clinging sands he laid it in the dying sun, sat down beside it, and just stared. was this in fact, proverbially speaking, a box that he really wanted to open?  

being the idiot we know him to be, very little time passed between his making the decision that it would not be a very good idea at all to open the box, and his disregarding that decision and opening it just the same.

as the glancing rays of reddening sunlight fell into the container he was now more sure than ever was his, the idiot was struck momentarily dumb...the box he had poured so much of himself into was empty.

hours he lay on the beach...mouth agape..eyes darting in and out of focus. staring at that very empty box. now full moonless dark, he could still imagine the outlines of that hated empty vessel staring back at him.

numbly the idiot rose to an unsure footing, turned away from the agonizingly vacant container and walked...not even sure of where he was headed, just kept walking as the night crept on.

the more he walked, near blindly stumbling, the more his gaze unfocused, the more he saw...places revisited, lost memories revealed.  the idiot had not been here alone before, and then it kicked him square in the face...he hadn't been here alone.  he did not dig the hole alone, did not fill the box alone, did not care for the little birds alone. nothing that is real exists in only two dimensions, life requires three dimensions...there were three parts of his soul, not two, and she had been there with him the whole time.  somehow in his search for what he had lost, he lost sight of all he had gained.

there was an idiot.  a juggler, a fool, a player on a forsaken stage...let's be frank, there was a man.

'to be' - past (not so perfect): I was, we were

that which is broken

plaster cannot hide structural failure for long...time, the weight of being, the march of entropy, the inherent flaw in design...that which is broken can never be whole

fine tracery, pale spiderwebs of thin, oddly-stretched skin reveal a history of fracture, the scars of an unstable past...that which is broken can never be whole

thin veneer can never hide the multitude of sins inherent in hasty construction...stress, age, repeated impact disclosed in delamination...that which is broken can never be whole

the words you wrote are lost to time, the ink fades, exposure to the light speeds disintegration. words that define, and protect, that tell the tale...gone...that which is broken can never be whole

empty smile worn like a mask, a pretext of contentment, a bottle of science to conceal...a medicinal facade...that which is broken can never truly be whole again.

Four minutes and fourty-seven seconds...

this is day 6 of my progress backward into my youth, started on day 1 with Pink Floyd's 'A Momentary Lapse of Reason' and traversing their catalog from the top down.

Today brings me to 1973's Dark Side of the Moon, an aural road map of the path to madness. An amazing collection of songs by any standards, certified Platinum 15 times over, remaining on the Billboard album chart an astounding 741 weeks (that's a little over 14 years to you and me).

'The Great Gig in the Sky', the last track on side one (for those of you who remember 'albums' ) remains the most poignant 4:47 of my musical experience...a wordless requiem for mortality.

this 4:47 taught me all that music could possibly be...this 4:47 taught me the depth of human expression that could be contained in a single voice without utterance of a single word...this 4:47 still causes every hair on the back of my arms to stand up tingling...this 4:47 of the most profound wordless vocal performance ensured that all screeching-self-proclaimed-diva's that come after will fall hopelessly short of the mark.

beneath it all, beneath the swell and surge of instrumentation, between the rise and fall of session singer Clare Torry's august exaltation, somewhere around the three minute and thirty second mark lies the most terrifying words a stoned-out paranoid teen could almost here: 'if you can hear this whisper, you're dying'*...first time heard sent you scurrying for the turntable to back it up, crank the volume and play it again and again, making sure you heard what you thought you heard, making sure at all costs, that everyone had heard it.

as the stunned euphoria finally fades enough for you to realize that side one is over, the constant clack-clack-clack-clack of the needle stuck in the last groove, you flip the platter and a brilliant concept album works itself to sublime conclusion.

until tomorrow....

*it wasn't until i listened to Dark Side of the Moon on CD that i realized what that slight whisper was actually saying, "I never said I was frightened of dying."

a momentary lapse of reason

After another weekend of late nights spent at work instead of being spent on living, I was feeling my age, gray, tired, jaded...merged onto the parkway and put the iPod on shuffle.

and there it was...pink floyd's 'learning to fly'. the years melt away and i'm right back there, filled with youthful exuberance for the music that reached me, the words that i felt in my deepest recesses.

i can still remember distinctly the first time i heard this song...it was early september, 1987 and the beginning of my senior year at high school. the album had come out earlier in the week, but i hadn't picked it up yet.

i was always socially awkward...maybe it was related to the constant moving of my younger years, maybe that's just the way i was put together, in any case, making friends was not something i was gifted at...and as my wife is fond of pointing out, i've always been clueless when its come to girls.

it was a normal afternoon in mr nemith's physics class...labs were complete and we were filling the time while waiting for class to end. i had known justine bebko for several years, and we were sitting in the back of the room talking about the weekend...something about the way her foot brushed up against mine under the desk sent my head swimming with bloodrush...when the moment struck, i somehow managed in my ungainly way to ask her if she wanted to go to a movie on saturday, and she said yes, and gave me her phone number...thankfully the bell rang moments later, preventing me from exposing myself as tongue-tied, gawky, hopeless.

friday night brought with it a party, seemingly innocent in its presentation. i'm not sure how i got there...it doesn't matter...i'm not sure if i was invited...also doesn't matter. what matters is that i was there, as were many of the usual irregulars; bestfriend john maxwell, jay bream, mike benscoter, susan rollo, justine bebko, the inseperable carrie pearson and laura wilton, steve semantic with squadron of muddog tagalongs, gung ho jo and dean armageddon, others i couldn't place or can't remember. the party was at dave yolen's house somwhere in the backend of little ferry just off the greasy hackensack river.

things began well...as is my ill at ease nature, i was quiet at the start, clearly avoiding the eyes of justine, but the bottle of tennessee whiskey i brought opened up my mouth and senses. by this point the revel was in swing, and i was adrift in the rapture. and there was justine...talking with steve semantic, entangled on twister matt with dave, dancing with dean...mind you, there was nothing at all reprehensible in her behavior...but the fragile structure of my newly constructed social accomplishment was nudged, and teetered wickedly...i developed a raging sense of jealousy. took another swig of brown amber to wash it down but it was stuck in my throat.

at that moment mike benscoter grabbed me and dragged me to the television, blaring, as most were in the 1980's, mtv. and there it was...the new pink floyd, 'learning to fly'...kneeling reverently before the glowing shrine absorbed in the sonic saturnalia, wholly spiritual, mezmerized fully and completely for 4 minutes and 53 seconds...a lifetime it seemed.

sadly, the rest of the evening suffered by comparison...the more i drank in effort to right the collapsing structure, the worse it listed in the storm of envy...by the time justine cornered me and confronted me it was too late, and i was incapable of even speaking. in my utter self-loathing i put my head through the wall in the hallway, and justine left with many shouted words that i was too far gone to hear clearly or piece together.

i made to walk home, down the highway, across the hackensack river bridge and into ridgefield park, but susan rollo and john maxwell interceded, near dragging me into susan's car, and strapping me in, locking the door.

all the way home i swore incoherently, banging my head in emphasis against the back passenger-side window.

needless to say i did not call justine on saturday, and it was a long while before we righted the wrong and were back on good terms.

what is the point of this rant? just this...live, feel, breathe, love...and play that song that loosens the chains of adult years. play it loud.

yes...the names were changed to protect the innocent...but if you were there, you know who you are...and thank you for the best times of my life.

that voice again

this is the year. this is the year that i achieve...thinner, taller, healthier, more socially adept, successful, fun to be with. i've heard this before, i've said this before.

this is the year i'm honest with myself. better. this is the year i admit my failures. more to the point, this is the year i admit my poverty, my potential unmet, a lifetime of financial failure, promises unfulfilled, promise unrealized.

for years beyond count i've locked off who i really am for fear of what it might mean to those around me. for years i've closed off my mind, afraid of what i might find there. to borrow some words from a favorite song, "if i show you my dark side, will you still hold me tonight? if i open my heart to you, show you my weak side, what would you do?"

but the time has come at last to open up my mind, take a deep breath ready for the plunge, and embrace who i am, and who i was meant to be.

i haven't written a word since the breakdown for fear of stirring sleeping nightmares again. the medicines, the therapy worked, but too well and now i feel achingly unfulfilled with all my professional choices since. i need to try and go there again, at least to see if it's still inside me...at least to say i did, in fact, try....i'm picking my pencil up from where i left it.

this is the year i finish the novel.

in a hotel room on december the 17th

eyes irritated by the smoke and grime, i can’t quite focus...can no longer see you. can't quite remember how you smell, how your skin feels brushing against mine.

some 17 years of hampered ambitions clutter the neglected furnishings of this dingy stasis…motel 6. surrounded by swirling specters, thousands upon thousands of abandoned souls hoping to be reclaimed like some otherworldly lost-and-found...mostly lost, few ever again found.
threadbare armchair cramped in ill-lit corner vibrates sympathetically with thrumming heater...last feeble cry for attention...some recognition. i parenthetically acknowledge its existence and move on.
smudged full length reflection fights its way through the heavy air from across the room and for a moment i meet its gaze. ‘who are you, who are you this time’, tom waits sings to me from crackling lo-fi. where have you been all these years? was it worth the price they paid, this lurking behind scattered likeness? their pills took you away from me and only in the stale empty hours do i still catch glimpses of you.

vision clouded by the distance and time, i can’t quite focus...can no longer see you. can’t quite remember how you smell, how your skin feels brushing against mine. in lucid moment i accept that somewhere in the wilderness outside these oppressive, peeling walls there is a person i love more than all the pain, more than all the failure i covet. somewhere beyond this cage there is a person i call home.

this is a long road.... part 1

this is a long road that leads nowhere
(...and maybe I’ve got nothing left to say.)

A Brief History of the kidneythieves

From an outsider's perspective, the history of the kidneythieves is delineated, and possibly defined, by the bookends that are 'tea and apologies' and 'fake western vista'. Sad as it may seem, this may, in fact, be the case. Not possessing the objectivity that a true outsider would, the line between the ideal and the reality blur here for me.
Whether vanity, delusion, nostalgia or need for closure motivates me, I can't say for sure, but I'd like to try to expand the definition of the kidneythieves. I don't promise that my memories are concrete reality, or that others who were there would see things in the same way, but I guarantee that my interpretations are as accurate as my small brain allows. I'm also going to try to shed light onto the words I chose, again within the bounds of my recollection and perception, most of which have never been discussed in any detail, even within the band. It may be that no one cares outside of the band itself, or in fact within the band, but I will go on with the presumption that someone beside myself does care, at least to some extent. I have to...after all, that's always what it's been about...the presumption that someone is watching, someone is listening - I've always needed that audience, needed to believe that I was performing for something. That is why i was a kidneythief. That is why i, unlike others, cannot continue...cannot just play "for the fun of it". It was always about the audience, even when I occasionally deceived myself into thinking that they didn't matter, that I didn't care what the critics said, didn't care that no one was paying attention...like Tom Stoppard alluded to in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, when he wrote, "the play was three acts gone before we caught sight of ourselves, stripped naked in the middle of nowhere and pouring ourselves down a bottomless well..." when there is no audience, all purpose is gone.
On a basic level, 'tea and apologies' is a collection of songs about externals...about other people's issues, about society's issues, about people or things that didn't necessarily exist anywhere other than inside the heads of the people who wrote about them. Some were only vague themes that served as poor excuses to put words to music...all form and no function, a sawdust cake to coat with icing, full of description but describing nothing. From the opening chords of 'the dying season' through the pristine finale of 'salvation (dropping lemons)', this is a band seeking something but not really finding it, this is an album where the writing is the point, and not just a means to a point. This is not, in itself, a bad thing, and this album contains words that still touch me, images I can still see..."Pressing leaves at the tomb of Saint Anthony / fool dances across the marketplace, flower clenched between his teeth / think he knows his life is a comedy....dropping lemons as the people walk on by / the juggler in him smiles, knowing that he's messed up more than once today..."

At the other end of the spectrum, both temporally and thematically, is ‘fake western vista’. It remains an intensely personal collection of songs dealing with disillusionment, anger, loneliness, longing and an overwhelming need for something or someone to believe in. A direct result of, and reaction to, years spent fighting an uphill battle to maintain control and direction of a band in the face of commercial failure, growing disenchantment with the music industry and continual internal upheaval, all while trying vainly to gracefully shoulder the increasing responsibilities of the real world; family, finances and legal issues. Ultimately conceding to the seeming inevitability of failure, the song ‘endgame’ stands alone as a deliberate epitaph. Let me be as transparent as possible on this point – during the recording of ‘fake western vista’ it became clear that, for my part at least, the fight was over, I was done being continually torn in two. While half-hearted efforts were made to stop the hemorrhaging after the release of FWV and the departure of founding drummer Mike Pinchera, ‘endgame’ was specifically created to be a conclusion – anything that came after could only be considered a post-mortem.

I have no desire to end on a downbeat, so let me make it clear that, with the obvious exception of my marriage and the birth of my children, the greatest moments in my life came to me as a kidneythief.

Each cut on this collection is accompanied by notes in the track listing from Matt or I, adding background, motivation or other comments meant to give perspective wherever possible. Original lyrics are also included. A complete history is beyond the scope of this project, but I won’t rule it out under separate cover at a later date.

If I’ve neglected to say it before, thank you all for the best, and worst, ten years of my life.

Merry Christmas.

- Patrick Borrelli, Dec 6, 2006





Patrick has been talking about this project for years now. It would be an annual event around early November or so, when he would approach me – “Matt, this is the year I am going to get that audio history of the kidneythieves done. It’ll be a little Christmas present from me to everybody in the band” He barely believed himself as the words left his lips and I nodded with disbelief.

This past year things changed though and, whether inspired by the void left in his life from not performing and creating or just the internal nagging of a project incomplete, he got it done.

Several months ago Patrick told me that I would be getting involved with this on some level. I was happy to oblige his demand, though I don’t think I had a choice. My tasks here have been pretty much limited to handing over a garbage bag full of cassette tapes, representing nearly ten years of informally recorded material, and these pages of writing. This catalog represents hours upon hours of Patrick’s near-maniacal work sifting through literally weeks and weeks worth of recordings ranging from rehearsal babblings to full mock live-set recordings to working versions of forgotten songs to studio recorded music. The final product represents nearly one hundred percent Patrick’s work. I was merely along for part of the ride.

For me this process and indeed the finished product represent a chance to relive some of the experiences, situations, relationships and emotions lived through over the span of time it represents. Through these tracks I feel, again, the frustration of bandmates not feeling the same inspiration as me, the simple pleasure of laughing at stupid band jokes, the inspirational and unlikely development of music through the democratic workings of four separate and distinct individuals locked away in a room and the making of friendships that share a deeper thread of experience than could ever be anticipated.

It is these feelings that type the substantive text into the countless stories that are inevitably rehashed at each and every one of our gatherings.

Whether it is…..

Oscar standing over Patrick as he writhed in pain in the gutter of some Long Island highway telling him to “Walk it off, it’s just a cramp. Don’t be a baby….” (Patrick eventually spent the night in Winthrop Hospital in Mineola, NY and was miserable with a kidney stone for weeks)….

or Murph reading us an early review of ‘tea and apologies’ and how Patrick’s vocals are “bonoesque” only he reads it pronounced ‘es-kū ’ giving birth to a new vernacular in our language and years of ribbing for Pat for a single slip of the tongue…

or Mikey Pinch smuggling Coors Lights in his drum stick bag and sneaking sips during songs (damn, he dropped his sticks a lot!)…..

or Patrick interacting with the huge biker guys from some band from Ohio behind my father’s van at WE Fest. Big Biker Guy: “Cool Harley decal. Who rides?” Patrick: “His dad (pointing at me)” Exit Oscar and Matt stage right!

or Tom ranting angrily about monkeys in the recording studio with a venomous tone usually reserved for murderers and rapists….

or Peter’s racist tendencies and penchant towards submissive, Asian girls….

or Milt’s (Bill) squeamish wife at dinner out at our favorite Cuban restaurant – “I’ll just have a cup of coffee and some plain white rice, thanks”…..

or bumping into Darren four years after we kicked him out of the band at Happy Hour at Friday’s on Rt. 17. He walked up to us, “Hey, Matt, from the kidneythieves, right? I’m Darren. I used to play bass in the band.” Patrick asked me after Darren went on his way, “Who was that guy? You know him from work or something?” “No, he played bass for the band for three months!” …..

or that scary bald drummer guy who was actually a grandfather and attended one of our house parties with his girlfriend who attempted to get with every guy in the place. Eventually it got to the point where he felt the need to threaten some guy with a butter knife in the kitchen for talking to his woman…..

The music and lyrics of these songs, both completed and tragically incomplete, are the physical evidence of the lives we led those ten years. Though each song has its own personal life and set of both fond and bitter memories, it is the collection as a whole that makes me smile with thoughts of playing music and sharing life with my best friends.

Thanks, Patty B.

Enjoy.

- Matthew Spagnolo, January 16, 2007.