Track 7: The Worst Trip I’ve Ever Been On
Brian Wilson died today.
I’m sitting in the Sandy library nursing a cold, feeling the weight of grief that’s older than the headline. I’m here because I couldn’t stay in the basement until work. I needed to get out, eat McDonalds and then an apple fritter from 7-Eleven. I needed to blast Pet Sounds on the drive from West Jordan to Sandy.
My future is uncertain. Again. I can’t access my Granite School District payroll to know if I’ll get my last check from a job that felt more like an abusive relationship. I’ll be strung out on DayQuil for the rest of the afternoon, and probably NyQuil when I get back to my bed.
Welcome to Track 7.
In Pet Sounds, Track 7 is “Sloop John B.” The one where everything goes to hell and all the singer wants is to go home. He’s been beaten, poisoned, humiliated. The food’s bad, the people are worse, and he’s stuck on a ship he didn’t ask to board.
“This is the worst trip I’ve ever been on.”
And somehow, I’m realizing that this is exactly where I am.
Not in a metaphorical way. In a literal way.
I’m on the back half of a journey that’s broken me open in ways I couldn’t have survived a year ago.
In May 2024, I had plans.
I wrote in my journal with red ink: “I have a monthly income of $6,000 or more.”
I laid out weekly themes, vocal warm-up schedules, a return to BOTU, plans for a performance I was calling the “James 3.0 Super Ukulele Show” (or J3SUS, for short), and notes to myself like love letters from a saner version of me.
I still believed that structure could outrun collapse.
I didn’t know my lease was going to end abruptly, leaving me no place to go.
That Denver would kick me out.
That I’d move to Utah, land in my brother’s basement, and cry behind the steering wheel after teaching a guitar class full of middle schoolers who behaved like chimpanzees doing tequila shots.
I didn’t know that hope — that kind of hope — was just a performance of resilience.
That I was doing spiritual cartwheels in front of an indifferent universe.
But now I know.
Now I know I was trying to deserve to be saved.
I was pretending to be the kind of person who could pull himself up by a handcrafted Ukulele transcription of Beethoven's 6th Symphony. By 160 solo guitar livestreams on Facebook. By over 2,800 consecutive days of yoga.
And maybe I am that person — but the world I live in doesn’t always write checks for creative miracles. Sometimes it writes abrupt lease terminations. Sometimes it messes with your faith that the direct deposit is on its way. Sometimes it raises the price of your burger and a new set of guitar strings by a dollar.
That’s the truth I can say now.
The one I couldn’t say then.
I used my hope to gaslight myself.
I believed that if I didn’t make it, it was because I didn’t believe hard enough.
Not because the housing market is rigged.
Not because my labor was underpaid and undervalued.
Not because the artistic world rewards hype over depth.
Just me. My fault.
That’s what the self-help culture leaves out:.
That sometimes, you do everything you could — and it still isn’t enough.
And yet.
Here I am.
Writing this.
Honoring the memory of Brian Wilson by blasting Pet Sounds during my commute.
Maybe Track 7 isn’t where it ends.
Because after “Sloop John B” comes:
“God Only Knows”
“I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times”
“Caroline, No”
Those aren’t songs of triumph.
They’re songs of survival.
Songs of ache.
Songs that say “I’m still here, even if no one understands why.”
And that’s me right now.
Still here.
Still trying to touch the joy of playing music, even if it’s hiding behind the fog of fatigue, fear, and forty-year-old calluses.
To the reader:
If you’re in Track 7 right now, I see you.
If you’re crying in your car, or your brother’s basement, or to a Beach Boys record that shouldn’t hit this hard — I see you.
You’re not alone.
Let’s try writing Track 8.
Together.
Subscribe for more writing from the middle of the storm. I don’t have answers. But I do have songs.