Mark Phillips' Pages: Workbook: 5/13/04: At the beginning of my breakdown I canceled a recording session with a friend.

William H. Johnson, "Street Musicians" (ca. 1940) — William H. Johnson, *Street Musicians* (ca. 1940)

May 13, 2004:

At the beginning of my breakdown I canceled a recording session with a friend.

Instead I moved to a new city in the futile attempt to put distance between myself and the burdens of pain and rejection and remorse which were overwhelming me into incapacity.

It wouldn't have mattered anyway. At that moment of shattered reality I doubt I'd have been able to function as I would have been expected to.

There's a detail in this which stands out as both egregious and exceptionally painful. A third musician friend, later a minorly-famous semi-star, was said to have commented, "That sounds like him, he's always been a flake."

Ultimately it's another sad example of my true love's destructiveness. In her petty spite and her maliciousness, hers was the voice passing and amplifying these mean-spirited remarks, to the long run detriment of all.