RUMINATION
We are always running. Living in the future or the past.
Every day at the edge, ready to snap.
Uncomfortable in our own skins.
Desperate to close the gap between chaos and order we disregard the only moment we are actually alive in……now.
We want things to be different from how they are. But we don’t see how they are. All we see is the distorted projection of ourselves.
We busy ourselves with perpetual doing, planning, worrying, suffering and look outside ourselves for solutions. We expect science or religion to relieve the pain created by our own self-destructivity.
Rumination, despair, fear…..all creations of the desire to release ourselves from an indescribable grip. The subterranean grumbling of the inevitability of our deaths.
We try to think our way out.
Stop asking questions you know you cannot answer.
You are perfect as you are. You are a biological miracle. The being that knows and knows that it knows. You have the chance to experience a glimpse of this glorious universe in awe rather than greedy disappointment.
Everything beneath your conscious surface is working benevolently to keep you alive. Don’t worry, your heart will continue to pump and your lungs to breathe without “you” doing anything. Shift your focus of attention from the festering tiny world of ‘me’ to the Universal.
Stop living in the claustrophobic space behind your eyes.
Depression
The traps of modern society compound our cyclic negativity. Money and power make greed, envy and anxiety. Work, consume, die. Our lives are measured by what we have not who we are.
Images of horror and perfection leave us feeling sad and inadequate.
We don’t act. Paralysed in the only lives that we have, lost in our daily mazes. Hating ourselves and blaming others. At the mercy of politics and media.
It leads us into economic despair and addiction to escapism. Digging deeper holes of emptiness inside ourselves.
No drug will fill the hole.
No amount of money will create self worth.
No amount of thinking will stop you thinking.
Depression is a plague. The relentless apathy it creates fuels the self defeating lethargy cycle.The do-nothingism. The cutting off from normal sources of stimulation and pleasure. The building of the emotional prison, the isolation and incapacitation.
It is a paradox. We don’t run from tigers anymore. All that latent fight-or-flight stress goes into our thinking. Our own thoughts have become our enemies.
We must recognise depression as a symbol of change, a calling to re-humanise, to go back to the natural, the ritual, the calm meaningless truth of ourselves. An opportunity for rebirth. It is the unconscious warning the conscious.
Your thoughts are not you.
You wear them like a lead chain around your neck. Break that chain.
Stand proud outside your rumination. You are infinitely wise and extraordinary. You are completeness, unified, integrated and harmonious, your strength unbreakable. You love being alive. You love to love.
Your darkness is a symptom of conditioned mental events. Bad habits. Functions of the hyperactive ‘doing mind’.
Don’t get caught in the panic trap. Don’t get lost in experiential avoidance.
Happiness is just a skill, a discipline.
Accept.
Humour yourself with compassion, misjudging the injustice of existence.
Insomnia
March 2013 was a fucking juggernaut of brain pain. The old workaholic self keeping me doing and doing. Layer upon layer of self-inflicted responsibility, questioning. High as a kite on perpetual stress. Moping about in the night like a slapstick ghost. The never ending “story of me” being played out in the bedroom, the bathroom, the hallway. You can’t run from that story. That hamster wheel tragi-comedy.
Here began the delight that is Chronic Insomnia.
Most of my life sleep was an issue. As a baby I would sleep two hours a night and drive my parents up the walls. Still, they did their best to ease that psycho baby. Struggling with their torn unconditional love.
The doctor said it was a sign of high intelligence. No consolation for my puffy-eyed parents and the disturbed mini me.
A week after I was born I became sick and was held in isolation. Close to death. Nobody was allowed to touch me. I have hungered for that lost week of care my whole life. In 2013 I became that baby again. Back in the ring with my original fear.
My mother was also up at night. She had no schedule, her wandering mind as scattered as the mind that her genes created. Never able to turn it off. She also had an endless stream of major physical illnesses leading her into bouts of depression and hospitalisation. Sickness and struggle was often in the air.
She told me I was her nighttime buddy. Always awake ready for a chat. She never saw that this kid needed reeling into a ruthless routine.
Nonetheless I was a happy kid. My nature was optimism, curiosity and drive. Bulldozing forward laughing. I love that image of me.
Often I focus on the purity of my child self. My grown up cynicism has stolen my youthful innocence. I want it back.
When I left home as a teenager and started with the entertainment lifestyle, I instinctively threw myself into hedonism. This then became my excuse for bad sleep.
I became addicted to cocaine and alcohol to ease anxiety and to make the banal shallowness of fame all around me more bearable. Facetiously increasing my problems with glamourised relish. I was always the last fucked up man standing at the party, never accepting that it had to end, angry when people would leave, disgusted that I had to come down.
Underneath my party mask I was insular and brittle. My work was the only real grounding force.
After a 10 year blur of mind and body abuse, when the drugs induced only terror, I managed to quit the hard stuff. The sleeplessness remained. My oldest friend.
It has lead me into manic streams of creativity. It has shaped who I am. And that unrest no doubt shaped my schizophrenic music. I am ok with that. It was an asset in that sense.
But it never hit as hard as 2013. Something changed, it sharpened its teeth.
Subsequently I have learned what I had my whole life was not full blown Insomnia. Just the long slow inevitable build-up to it.
In my new found cycle of awake I got to know what a real sleep disorder is, how it changes your life and grinds you into a mental pulp.
After a successful IAMX crowdfunding campaign and a work trip to Los Angeles I returned to Berlin in deep winter. It began as prolonged jetlag.
One week turned into two, three into four … on the fifth week I stopped sleeping altogether. At this point all I could think about was death. I can say that with a distant smirk now.
This feeling activated me enough to go to emergency in the search for something to explain it….a brain tumor, meningitis. I was checked, given a brain scan, a handful of random sedatives and sent home.
It did nothing.
I found a Berlin sleep specialist and he prescribed heavier medication. The pills managed to shut me down…for an hour or two a night, for a while. Giving me a surface rest, without the deep sleep necessary to be a balanced human, ….but I got some relief from the anxiety.
I continued to think the problem would magically go away. I thought I would ‘click’ back into being the driven sarcastic me again. So I decided to get back to work, push on and start rehearsing for the long awaited US tour.
A mistake.
That tour was phenomenal and life-affirming despite the condition. The love I was receiving was out of sync with the way I felt. I was pumped up on devils energy and adrenalin. Beating the fuck out of a drum every night with frustration.
The toxic combination of long term sleep deprivation, medication and touring turned me into an ultra sensitive wreck. I saw love and suffering everywhere. Being on stage was like being put through a shredder. Confused, full of adoration and queeze in equal measure.
My compassion grew, I am thankful for that, but I was a fucking shambles. I was giving more than I had.
So I made a long overdue decision to stop touring. Go back to my homeland and get some help.
ENGLAND
In England, back in the fold, burnt out, I began to rebuild my relationship with my own mind. Chipping away from all angles in an attempt to break the vicious cycle of sleeplessness and panic.
I was diagnosed with Chronic Insomnia, Depression and Anxiety. I was put on appropriate medications and a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy course indefinitely.
Two years earlier I had completed my fourth solo album Volatile Times. I can say now, with hindsight, that that period was the definitive beginning of my spiral down. It brought up persistent black thoughts that wouldn’t go away. The blanket feelings of disappointment just grew. I was not aware of being sick in the head at the time. We never are.
The harder I threw myself into my music the more power I gave to these feelings and the more they would suffocate me. It became difficult to perform songs without being consumed by them.
My music began to seem like a psychological threat. Where once there was a pleasurable release of emotional energy there was now a build-up of negative association.
But IAMX has always been an exploration of this spirit. I cannot separate my life from my music.
IAMX exists because of these problems.
I therefore find myself faced with a dilemma.
How to continue being creative without losing myself completely.
This is my next project.
Family
For 3 months I lived in my parents’ garden shed. They fed me every day. They carried me.
The shed was a real shed. It was shit, sitting at the back of their soggy English garden. I cleaned it out and made it my temporary home.
I needed to be close to them. I was broke after cancelling a huge IAMX tour so there was no mythical glamorous 5 star retreat. Just back to roots, my working class past.
Most days, after therapy, I forced myself out. I often ended up at the wide beaches of Camber Sands and Dungeness or the forests of East Sussex.
Running, photographing, meditating, neurolinguistic programming. Waves of indescribable exhaustion would overcome me. I would sit for hours, days unable to move. In a choking tunnel. Frozen by a phantom of repetitive anxiety, hopelessness and fear. Blubbering about nothing.
I stared at an apple tree in the back of my parents’ garden every morning for a month. I know every curve of it. I can smell the sea air blowing through it.
I couldn’t remember who I was. I didn’t know what was happening and how to get out of it.
I felt like it was the end of my life. I was quietly saying goodbye inside.
Yes, it was that ridiculous, it was a primal feeling.
Days with my little niece India and my parents’ dog helped to distract me. I tried to embrace nature and the zoned-out beauty of the being mode. Nature puts us in touch with the infinite. It soothes.
We all have the capacity to understand when life is good, when art is good. It is a deep knowing, a feeling of something that reminds us of balance or ancient truth in the universe. We are conditioned to tolerate and suck up shit hype and mind poison for money’s sake from an early age. That’s the culture of business. But the unconscious still knows what’s right.
When I watch fire or the sea I can’t reconcile the idiocy in the world.
I sit here and I observe myself following rain drops running down the edge of a tulip.
I am the raindrop, I am the tulip.
I am devoted to the universe. I am consciousness totality infinity.
I look into the eyes of a person and I see eternity.
This is reality. The superficial constructs of modern life are not.
Info
I am writing this blog to have some kind of closure on 2013. Maybe also offer some kind of comfort.
I know when I was at my worst I found comfort in reading about people like me. I still do. When you’re inside a torturing habit, it seems like there’s no end.
But there is.
We get through, that’s what we do. We adapt. We are fucking strong.
Our sense of our own strength is not clear to us. We think we are weak. We think we need or deserve somebody there always taking care of us. We don’t deserve anything.
In trauma we are all WILL machines. We have become disconnected from our inner resolve. Our immense power and drive to survive.
Healing
During the long nights I thought about giving up, artistically, mentally, physically. Feeling sorry for myself. Feeling like a victim. Over-indulging the fragile bitch that I am.
That is the life I have chosen. My fucking nature. Bring it the fuck on.
And the constant stream of imagination that burns a hole in my head and demands to be tapped, organised and made understandable, is also beautiful. I cannot deny it.
It is one of the dependable satisfactions in my life. It makes me feel alive just like fucking or seeing your passionate soaked faces in front of that music does.
I read all of the moving, uplifting messages you sent to me. Letters, emails, tweets. I know your names and your faces. The trials you people have been through made me feel better about my own nonsense. Thank you for sharing.
You, along with my closest others, gave me a firm helping hand when I needed it the most.
I will never forget.
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Thank you for sharing all of this. In 2001 my depression was about to ruin my life and it was through medication and cognitive behavior therapy that I was finally able to learn to discipline my thoughts and break the negative perception cycle of inadequacy and lack of abundance. 2013 was an exceptionally challenging year for me as well. A friend killed by police, a sibling sent to prison and I was fired from 3 jobs in a row after having a solid history that I’d worked very hard for. I thought I was being beaten down and feared I wouldn’t be able to get back up. Starting over again at 40 years old was the scariest thing but I’m a never say die kind of person. I’ve had to fight all my life it seems so in the midst of an anxiety attack after the 3rd firing I decided that this was just the universe trying to push me in the right direction for me. So I started walking dog’s for next to nothing. It started with the dogs and eventually led me back to working with vegan food once again. Sharing my compassion for all life with others. I now have a dream job making more than I ever have. What do I do with the windfall? I drive fearlessly for experience precisely because we only have now! We’ll see you on tour this year. Stay grounded, walk the dog. 😉
PORCA TROIA PENSAVO DI AVER TOCCATO IO IL FONDO CON L’INSONNIA MA TU MI HAI BATTUTO.
MI SONO SEMPRE VERGOGNATA DI PARLARE DI QUESTO MIO PROBLEMA CON LA GENTE INVECE BISOGNA FARLO
ORA DORMO MEGLIO E NON PRENDO PIU’ PASTICCHE 🙂
Danke, dass du mit uns deine Geschichte geteilt hast.
Deine Worte haben mein Herz berührt.
Mir geht es gerade auch so wie dir damals. Alles ist hoffnungslos und ich kämpfe jeden Tag weiter.
Deine Worte geben mir Kraft! Ich bin tatsächlich nicht alleine…
Ich danke dir!
Amazing! As a therapist, I was drawn into your music by the unyielding truth that emanated from it. With great creativity, depression, anxiety, and hopelessness can result. The learning that you can hold both didactically assists in getting you through.
Nature, your niece, and the apple tree are the soul’s healers
I wonder if you have ever tried Shamanism as a resource? Just a thought.
Thank you for sharing your story!
I too, have long suffered in the same way. Seemed hopeless for an extended period. Thought about those things which only other “other people” would ever consider. Bleak.
Nothing worked. The so-called health practitioners, handfuls of them, tried many flavors of odd sounding concoctions which made me feel a variety of ways. Never “good” though. So I stopped allowing them to test their theories on me. After all, they themselves were never sure of anything. Why should their numerous ineffective attempts be surprising?
However, unlike so many similar stories, there was indeed a solution, and a very odd one indeed. The cure, was a horse of a different color. Equine supplement enemas! Since I began irrigating my bowels with this horse food supplement, I have slept like an infant with considerable regularity. I will not mention which substance, for obvious reasons, but a simple search will answer that. It is relatively inexpensive, and sold in bulk. A bucket lasts months. Plus, my bowels have never felt as clean! It’s a win/win of the most splendid sort. Despite being a bit long in the tooth, I learned to administer it myself. Which is a blessing, since the Indian nurse who helped me the first few times was rude, smelled of curry, and was less than gentle with my delicate dark star. So I used what little horse-sense I had left, and figured out a very efficient way.
I feel like a stallion again!
Cheers
Thank you for sharing yourself with us.
I usually don’t feel connected to many people, I feel only few, it is like I don’t have a surface point that can connect, but I have few paople I feel so deeply like they are something more meaningful than just human beings. One of my lovers introduced me wih your music and I feel like a miracle has happened. There is a connection point. Small, like with everyone, but still.
I feel similar to you in 2013. now, I am in this deep insomnia/bipolar/nobody loves me and I don’t want to live blablabla shithole, but your music and personality that is your music helps me better than medication and everything else.
I am also a synesthete, and you taste like Aronia melanocarpa, smell like dark and shining Universe and feel like a owervelming human in this fake world. Some of your songs are dark green, but moslty dark blue, dark violet, white and black, all my favorite colours. You touch my auditory – tactile skin with gentle hands and kick my lazy ass with steel feet. You are neutron stars in my bones and hypernovas in my heart.
And most of all – I can write again! I really can write again. I am writing roman and I feel you are one of few my muses.
I hope you will create yourself through your art as long as I live!
It breaks my heart to always see the most talented and beautiful of souls go through the most horrific of things. It always brings to mind the theory that the most insightful and talented/intelligent people are the most prone to psychopathology, as they are the most able to see the world as it is (regardless as whether it’s due to a chicken or egg effect). I’m sorry that you had to go through such horrific things, for years i’ve endured the same myself – so while i didn’t go through the same, i know what such circumstances do tend to feel like. However, it’s remarkable that you were able to do something with your pain and suffering – something beautiful, and were able to not only be strong enough to make a blog post about such, but were able to write such a breath taking album about it. I’ve never been able to put my finger on it, but something about your music always drew me right in which so few bands do. Especially Volatile Times – i actually got the lyrics to the chorus of ‘These Volatile Times’ tattooed onto my back during the very beginning of my recovery so i could remember how far i’ve come, and i hope that you can look back on this blog post, your beautiful album, and the messages years from now, and see how far you’ve come as well. I hope you are truly able to appreciate your own talent, and the remarkable things it does for others. <3 Much love.
Extreme paranoia, hopelessness, hallucinations, doom and all that
Wanna say I’ve gotten over it
Can’t be sure if I’m blocking it out or if it’s just beneath the surface, sometimes
But it fuels most of what I do, creatively, otherwise
<3 You Chris!
Well, I’m not going to apologize for what you’ve gone through. From my own experience, it’s unbelievably frustrating.
I also suffer from insomnia, as well as recurring sleep paralysis.
And if the insomnia doesn’t keep me up at night, the terror does.
I wonder why it is that all those who inspire me and my art have sleep-related issues?
I’ll remember what you’ve said about this, as it gives me hope to keep fighting through it all, and not in the same horrible way the world tells me to.
Thank you.
I never dreamed my circadian rhythm could be so broken. The hours of the nights and days blur together, or maybe I become frozen within them, intermittently melting apart or merging, I know not which. Looking forward…
Reading your blog opened up a whole world – it was like talking to someone I knew so well, yet, we’ve never met. Actually, a friend told me: ‘Let’s go to this guy’s concert, he’s amazing’, and I thought why not, although it wasn’t exactly my type of music. But after the concert that day I left slightly changed; happy, elated that this world still produces people like you – so creative, so powerful, so honest. Also sad, because your music cuts to the bone and turns one inside out, leaving flesh and soul exposed. A kind of sadness that makes one dash out in the streets on a grey morning looking for the first bud set to open, the first smile given away by a stranger and the scent of fresh air. It’s all worth it.
That extraordinary force cutting through your insides, leaving a space that slowly fills up with contentment when you write, it’s the driving force of life – creativity, you are the parent, you made this child that grows up with every performance and you see it become a symbol of a new generation. It helps others grow – how amazing is that?
No matter how hard it may get, keep going because you make the world better. Such an interesting, talented, complex and inspiring person and artist!
Thank you for being you.
Chris, thank you for sharing you gift, your pain, your struggle and your recovery with all of us. Thank you to your family and friends and colleagues who were able to see you through that time. It’s not easy to be aloneside someone in your shoes. Life is a work in progress and it means so much to hear that someone we admire so deeply struggles along with us. Having just left an addict who is self-medicating and refuses to stop, your words inspire me that he might wake up one day and seek treatment and stop pretending that the drug and drink actually fix anything. If I could send him your exact words I would but he won’t listen. I hope he scrolls this blog one-night (or day?) in his sadly typical coked-out stupor and ruminates on these words:
“No drug will fill the hole. No amount of money will create self worth. No amount of thinking will stop you thinking.
…
Your darkness is a symptom of conditioned mental events. Bad habits. Functions of the hyperactive ‘doing mind’. Don’t get caught in the panic trap. Don’t get lost in experiential avoidance.
Happiness is just a skill, a discipline.
Accept.”
**know that I still have so much love for you and I am still here for you as a friend when you decide to take responsibility for yourself.
Thank you very much for sharing your story Chris. I am going through something similar at the moment. The environment that I am in is not very healthy and I am desperate to leave. You have no idea how you have helped me by sharing your story. You are such an inspiration to me.
Thank you Chris.
Dear Chris,
I just want to thank you for share it with us. It had to be hard to show people your worries and truth about this hard time in your life. A long time ago I suffered something similar but I found that music can make me feel alive and I didn’t give up. I send you a lot of good thoughts and love, because you deserve it.
Ps. I was at your concert in Poznan and I was feeling the emotions flowing from every word and melody. It was an amazing experience.
Thank you for an amazing frankness. Looking at you now, I understand that everything bad ends.
I now have very similar feelings. I slischkom long live in fear, depression and panic attacks. This is a very strange life. However, I manage myself.
You know, Chris, I think if you have a shred of imagination and magic, there are always problems of perception of reality. But sometimes they go beyond the limit.
Thank you for coming into my life with his wonderful music and strange soul. Just in time. We will hold each other’s hands, even at a distance. I believe in us.
Good luck with evrything dear soul!
dear Chris,
your words touched me deeply, painfully… you are a genius in your music, in you text, in your words…
please be sure that I understand you and i will support and believe in you as long as you want to be a genius in your music, in you text, in your words… be strong and genius as long as you want to be but don’t be afraid of the background noise… see you in Freiburg
I’m so sorry to see that you were in a bad condition.Your text is so sincere and human as your music.Keep your self for your family,for your doggy and your audience who loves you very much and respect.Thank you for existing,after the rain comes the sun,good luck !
It’s like I met a kindred spirit. It’s strange. Very strange. This feeling when you realize you’re not alien. I almost feel like gushing floods of tears. And I finally stumbled upon music I can identify with; music that embraces me. Thank you Chris for sharing your gifts and talents with us. I love the instrumentality of your music and how you wield your voice. Im constantly awed by you. And Metanoia is my first music album that I think deserves every cent. Pure genius… I love your writings. <3
I pray that everyone becomes blessed with the best lover on earth. Mine makes me experience strange emotions I wouldnt have felt if not for them, some are good and other are bad, but I accept them all; they make me feel alive, and real. Happiness for me is..
Revering His Openness
Safeguarding His Sanity
Unbottling Untapped Reservations With You
Exploring Carnal Desires With You
Is Happiness
I wz editing the pronouns (since i literally typed it for my lover xD) and apparently I pressed “Post Comment” by mistake on the first post prematurely.
It’s like I met a kindred spirit. It’s strange. Very strange. This feeling when you realize you’re not alien. I almost feel like gushing floods of tears. And I finally stumbled upon music I can identify with; music that embraces me. Thank you Chris for sharing your gifts and talents with us. I love the instrumentality of your music and how you wield your voice. Im constantly awed by you. And Metanoia is my first music album that I think deserves every cent. Pure genius… I love your writings. <3
I pray that everyone becomes blessed with the best lover on earth. Mine makes me experience strange emotions I wouldnt have felt if not for them, some are good and other are bad, but I accept them all; they make me feel alive, and real. Happiness for me is..
Revering His Openness
Safeguarding His Sanity
Unbottling Untapped Reservations With Him
Exploring Carnal Desires With Him
Dear Chris,not long ago I discovered IAMX by watching “How I get away…” The music that touched me was by IAMX.I cant believe that I couldn’t find you earlier.My whole live not any other music has touched me this way.Im so happy that I’ve discovered you.You are such a beautyfull soul with a incredible voice a great artist…
I wish you all the best !!!
Salut Chris,merci pour ces mots qui percutent mon coeur,mon âme et tout mon être…je ne souffre pas d’insomnie mais je connais la souffrance,la deppression et malheureusement,la dépendance aux drogues…quand j’avais 15 ans,un drame c’est passé dans ma famille,mes parents on tous les deux été envoyés en prison pour avoir essayé par des moyens illégales de subvenir a nos besoins et de régler leurs dettes, suite à ça ma mère c’est suicidé dans sa cellule et mon père est resté en prison trois ans mais n’a plus pu rentrer en Belgique suite à ça…donc je me suis retrouvé seule face à un monde cruel ou je n’avais jamais appris à survivre par moi même….j’ai perdu toute ma joie de vivre et je peine encore aujourd’hui à la retrouver…je me suis laisser aller dans la drogue (d’abord speed,ecstasy puis plus sérieux,opium,héroïne,cocaïne…) encore aujourd’hui a mes 30 ans j’ai ce brouillard de négativité qui m’enveloppe et s’insinue en moi comme un poison dont je suis le seul remède…mais comme tu l’as dis,nous sommes si fort ,et au fond de moi j’ai toujours cet espoir que tout ira bien….voila
merci pour ta musique qui m’a tant réconforté et motivé dans ce monde chaotique….
I just want you to know that you have saved me in many more ways than anybody has ever have…. I’m still here… because of you. Your words, your music, your everything. Why is it that souls like us suffer the most? I wish I could stop this pain. I hope one day to be able to fight it just like you have, so I can find my happiness again. Don’t ever stop, please.
Come Home ii.
I was diagnosed with Depression several months ago by my Dr. My lowest
point in my life was when I was 16,
I was put on several different medications, none of them were helpful
The only thing that helped me was music, I’ve listened to so many different bands throughout my life
none were relatable to me, fast forward several years I was scrolling through Facebook and I found Iamx, his
music is incredible and very relatable
A long time ago I was headed in that direction and then I happened to meet a sufi shaykh and for the first time I tasted a fresh cup of water when at the time all I was getting was salt water.
Your music is the most fresh and exciting thing I’ve heard in a long time.
Thank you.
You are cosmic. Beautiful fragile genius. So kind and so opened, like a kid. A lot of people need you because they can’t do what you did. It’s a talent and a price for this talent.If the words have at least some power, then I put all my love into these words. Please, take care of yourself.Universe needs you.
I feel true love for you. Your music is what makes me feel alive, feel myself. It consoles, comforts, inspires, arouses a person inside my impersonal body. You are are an incredibly magnificent person and I am infinitely grateful for what you did for me, for all of us.
We’re both Aquarius, so i can relate to everything you went through very well, i know exactly how it feels to be able to put yourself in everybody else’s place but to not feel reciprocated, I hope i can listen to more of your work in the future, stay safe.
THANK YOU FOR NOT GIVING UP OR STOPPING. YOU ARE ONE OF A FUCKING KIND. KEEP GOING! LOVE YOU!
So sad That I didn’t get a chance to see you on your last tour. I live in Florida unfortunately. I was trying to make it to Atlanta, but things fell through. I hope you tour again soon and this time, I can see you and maybe possibly meet you if you do meets again. Please, please, please! xoxo
Hello! I just recently found out about of your existence… I think you are interesting and wise and also that these words seem not enough. So, can you open this door for me? To i can try to read and hope to ever open your X soul. Chris, you made me gotten up again! Oh Gosh! Thank you much for this man! Give him a lot of all only super best! I want he to feel a harmonic and comfortably anytime.
It’s weird how comforting this was…I was initially on a small “quest” to learn a bit more about you. There was something so fascinating about you, but you’re also a bit of a mystery. I don’t quite know what I’m feeling after taking all this in…It’s like, respect, but love? I also feel terrible that I didn’t know you were going through all of this in 2013. :c There’s a lot of things I wish I had known to say back then…That’s a lot to go through…It’s comforting to know you’ve found a way out. <3 I want to say that maybe that means there's one for all of us. <3 And I know it's going to sound very "basic fangirl" of me to say, but it feels even more genuine now than it ever has; this insight has made me fall even deeper in love with you and your work. Knowing all of what went into it. Getting a small peek at how much and how long it took for you to get to this point, I'm in absolute awe. <3 Maybe that's the word I was looking for…
love you…i´m thankful! for you…your art…your soul…i´m happy that you are with us in this life…
i love you chris, thankyou for just being and who you are. you are such a beautiful and inspirational person, beyond just your music and art, but with it you will truly live forever… your music and experiences drives me to look deep and strive to work harder and live for beauty and art. best wishes, with all my love… xxxxx
You know, Chris, I was searching for the some boy all my time, started at around 14 to this days… I clearly saw his face, i knew his face. And i did not find him every time i met somebody else. Can you image what i feel now? When life is almost passed. It was your face. Nonsense… But i’m ok… Just i miss you all my life.
No one can heal completely
But we can all feel better
Every now and then I read your words again
So I do not forget what I was
THANK YOU CHRIS FOR YOUR WORDS
Holy shit Christopher! Have you ever had your astrological chart done professionally? You have Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter all in Aquarius. You have an incredibly concentrated Uranian energy in your chart. I don’t know what house your stellium is in (need your birth time for this), but this could very well lend to the chronic insomnia you experience. Aquarius is ruled by electric Uranus. Your stellium is square Mars/Uranus, sextile Neptune, and trine Pluto.
I’m not a professional astrologer, but know enough that you have an unusual chart. Maybe you know all this? If not, consider Jeremy Neal-Chirotic Journal (UK), Kathy Rose, Basil Fearrington, or Joni Patry (Vedic) for some self-exploration. Another one is Moses Siregar. Highly recommend astrological counseling.
Thank you for sharing yourself. You have an exceptional voice that stands out like neon and a fine mind. You are a true testament to living out your birth chart to the hilt! A tremendous pressure to express. Seems a shame you need sleep at all. And I also feel strange in this world looking around me at the lack of critical thinking. Media induced fear, deliberately inciting racial divide, violence, etc. Controlled opposition all around. Like a bad acid and mushroom trip, but then there’s the true reality of the balm of nature to soothe. And maybe some indica.
Hope you’re getting your winks and staying even keeled. New fan here.
Much Love and Warmth to you on your Journey of Life,
Jen
Chris, I have just discovered your music and each time I pop in my earbuds and listen I feel powerful, confidant, alive and invincible for reasons I can’t quite determine. I’m addicted to the voice and your sound. Reading about your struggles, I hope you will at the very least find solace in the tremendous impact your art has on the souls of many. You resonate with so many, your songs are the anthems of angst that reminds us we’re not alone. I’m grateful to #htgawm for introducing your music to me. Peace and love.
stumbled apon this at 5am, also unable to sleep. like you I have suffered from insomnia my whole life, it is a draining, eternal battle. hope you are sleeping better now. in case you are reading this, also just wanted to say i have been a fan of yours since I was 10 (!!) and thank you for shaping who I am today.
Happy Birthday Christopher! One day early if your birthday is correct on Wikipedia. I was dicking around thinking about your music and watching your vids. Love that your voice is phenomenal live too. Not many can pull this off. Your voice, YOUR VOICE, y-o-u-r v-o-i-c-e!!! Melodies and your lyrics. Incredible!
According to Numerology you’re starting 2018 with a 8 personal year. Check it out: https://feliciabender.com/8-personal-year-its-a-power-year-baby/
Hope your birthday is full of magic, joy, and wonderful surprises! 🙂
xo Jen
Happy birthday, my crazy baby boy! Love you with all my heart.
Awake in South Carolina and rereading. Hope you are well.
Angelique (Chicago)
I’ve been going through similar issues for several years. On and off. You have made it through a very difficult period, my God, I didn’t know how bad it was. Thankful you had family to take care of you. May you continue on
getting better every day. We all love and support you, and thank you for this <3
Hi Chris and IAMX Crew!!!
I really miss you guys. Only saw you all once so far, back in Slims in SF. How are you doing? I feel as though you are my Tribe from afar.
Just FYI, as you already know Chris, you are an expert musician and I always thought you were underappreciated compared to more mainstream musicians. That being said, your music inspires me and I see you as both a friend and a teacher. When all else fails your music re-awakens my urge to create my own music.
We all have weaknesses. The only one in my life is money. I was born and raised middle class but honestly, I don’t want to get into all that.
Good luck to you in everything you do, Chris. And remember, no matter where you are or how you feel, you are never alone.
Sincerely,
Kerry
Um… Hello, Chris. Thank you for sharing this, it is some kind of therapy too for someone who struggling right now, for someone like me. I know about your music since 2006. Those times it fitted my attitude so well… Then something inside me has changed and I stopped listen to music. I faced with depression, lost in myself, in the very dark corners of my own mind. I didn’t know how to get out of it, because it is not accepted to ask for help with mental illnesses in Russia. I still don’t know how to do it. All I can do is laugth the shit out of my own depression and insomnia. Being ironic helps but not for long.
Two weeks ago I bumped into your music again, don’t know how it works, maybe the Universe itself guides me (haha), but for the second time it happened just in the right time, when I needed it the most. So here I am, reading your blog, listening to your music and finding in it the power to drag myself out of a mile deep hollow. The process is very difficult for me and I am just at the very beginning. But thank you. Thank you for being you, for sharing these things, because it is very important to read something about people like yourself. Knowing you’re not alone, knowing someone who got out of the difficult times alive.
Your music happened to help me (and many other people I’m sure). You have such a great influence, such a great power. Sometimes I think about the people who were inspired by certain persons to live or even to die. You are one of those lifechanging persons. You inspire to fight, to be strong, to love, to find inner power, so thank you. I hope you will never face the dark days again and that YOUR inner soul power will always be enough for you.
The love and support around you will always help to restore it. XX
What a magnificent blog.
I know this is from many years ago but it still holds so much.. Everything you do is art. You ARE art. We may be tragic sometimes, but it is not who we are – and because of that tragic tendency.. the light in us is so blindingly, beautifully bright. The Unified Field is one of my favorite music videos – I seek to help the homeless.. those who feel severed from a world who doesn’t want them, and doesn’t deserve them. This video shows their beauty in a way I’ve only seen from looking into their eyes myself – something many won’t do.. but they will watch your video. The ending is perfect.
Alive in new light is about my rebirth as well … you represent the highest artistic forms of our own feelings and stories. It represents rebirth for many – and it is powerful.
Do you believe in fate?
I have a story.
Many years ago.. through a transformational time, I found your music. Listening to your passionate and expressive emotional fluctuations for quite some time, feeling your voice deep within my being, floating on a feather drifting through the sonic atmosphere of your soul’s sound whilst in solitude. (Didn’t mean to throw such hardcore alliteration in there.. or did I) I thought to myself, “I must see this man live.” but to my dismay, you were European.
Haha – not that it sucks to be European, but I didn’t think you’d come to tour in America.
After some difficult times in the middle east this year, I said, “fuck all this” and took the cheapest next day flight out to Europe. It was to Krakow, Poland. Being there quite aimlessly last minute, going to art museums and whatever solo travelers do, I saw a post from Jon, a man I met probably ten years ago playing a show in Dallas. I haven’t seen a post from him in years. All of a sudden, I see a photo of him with IAMX in Krakow, Poland.
Well.. if I didn’t believe in fate before, I sure as hell did then – and I thanked it immensely in that moment, for thinking of me, and bringing me to you. In the same city as IAMX on the other side of the world, I wondered if perhaps my time on this planet would be cut short, because IAMX is the final artist on my bucket list to see, and it happened in quite a random way. I must note – after looking at art all day in Poland, and all over the world, I remember explicitly thinking in gratitude that night at your show, “This is the most incredible art I’ve experienced in a VERY long time.”
The serendipitous nature of our paths crossing doesn’t stop there. When I arrived back in America, I was working on tour with a friend’s band. One of our last shows was at The Independent in San Francisco just last month – after which I find out (again through Jon – good thing you hired that awesome tall long-haired specimen) that your first show on this North American tour is at that same venue with the artistically designed mirrored green rooms. Fate brings us together again.
I am thankful for you, and your piercingly pure voice. The voice in all of the forms of art you create. I am excited to see you once more.. tomorrow. I hope to one day give you a hug.
P.S. If you ever want to visit Lake Tahoe, my offer still stands – solo cabin just you and your pup with room to reflect and create. Polar X would love it here :p
Chris Corner from IAMX writes about his illness and life, in long and honest blog post called Insomnia Schizophonica .
Thanks for those words. Its 6 am here and I feel bit anxious about “nothing in particular” That background noise I try to dissipate in everyday meditation. And those words are my meditation today Chris. Thanks you for sharing this and your music. Im now reading Arthur Janus book “the primal scream” and your words are a perfect complement to it and I again feel that is no coincidence in all this connection (the unified field). Your music is my little voice that pushes me to be more real in making music, to feel and hear my guts more so Im into it. So thanks again!
Holy Fuck I just found this! ???? I don’t know how to organize and make more understandable. I need help translating. I did start the waking up app a couple weeks ago. I was trying to meditate in hours that were not mine. But I’m also having a huge energy and inner schedule shift. I’ve kept my sisters schedule during healing. But it fucking dawned on me that I realized, “What’s Erins schedule??” The shift and the progression is happening rapidly. I can’t keep up with all of the constant information I somehow tapped.
You capture me. And my attention to your words become physical focus like tunnel vision. I tune into your channel so effortlessly. The sun is ready to set but it’s also raining. I saw a rainbow the other day like I’ve seen one before. I can’t remember the last time I saw a rainbow. It always rains when the sun is out in Colorado. I am the rainbow.
I think it’s supposed to be painful to have beauty. To engage all senses at once… And to feel it ALL.
It’s in deep waters and dark storms we find life.
To be, and thrive and not just merely live and fail to see it all.
Years ago, I found myself listening your song ‘This Will Make You Love Again’ for the first time ever during an empty time of my life. Barely can translate what you are saying, can not understand what you are meaning, did not bother to try to do neither. Years later, this time during a very busy time of my life, I got stuck with your song ‘Sorrow’ somehow. It felt so good, it hurt so good that I wrote down the lyrics to my anatomy book in front of me; with much desperation, to find something from me between the words. In the end, I did found what I was looking for and it was a relief, really, to be able to translate the sentences and put them into my own life like puzzle pieces. After the experience, I re-listened TWMYLA and cried for hours. Seeing (hearing) my ownself from someone else never felt so hard before, I cried for that too. I have chronic insomnia since I was 7, I used to try to make my mind stop for a little while so that I can rest a bit but after 12 years later, I have accepted that I’m a workaholic, if that’s the right word choice, and my mind would never want to stop even if my body would beg for it. I have accepted that, people like me can never rest well; can never stop doing ‘something’, learning ‘something’, creating ‘something’. Your song ‘Insomnia’ helped me a lot with dealing monthly seizures coming from this non-stop working part of me and I have never been more grateful. However, I can’t help but feel a little mechanic while dealing with my old, senseless self during nights. I tried so hard to not to feel anything for years during my early youth and now, sadly, it became a reflex for me. Things happen, should feel something but can’t because if do, I won’t be able to fall asleep again, so stop feeling whatever it is, protect yourself. From yourself. It’s a cycle that I want to but can’t get out, trying to find peace with one’s mind shouldn’t be too hard but here we are, aren’t we? Reading your own experiences don’t give me peace directly, of course, no can do so but they help me to put the things I wanted to scream out loud on kind, powerful words. Thank you for that, Chris.
Yours, truly.
İrem.