In August '94, I felt like I hadn't written anything truly exciting in over a year, since before Weezer had gone to New York to make
The Blue Album. My thoughts turned negative even in the midst of Weezer's take-off for giant success and of all my dreams coming true. On August 5th, I wrote:
We've been on tour for a while now. I'm sad. We're ruling I guess. I've been so brainless. My life is such a waste now. I've haven't written in my journal, written one song, read one book, thought one thought, written one postcard. I'm a full-on vegetable.
And then I wrote to a friend:
I'm going to try to save my soul from the hell of rock stardom by writing to you. Hopefully this act will spark some sort of life into my spirit. I'm basically dead right now. It sucks. I have no desire for anything. I barely eat at all. A few bites of bagel or a handful of pretzels and I lose whatever appetite I might have worked up. (I used to be a pig.) My head doesn't turn for pretty girls anymore... I'm just not interested. Ho-hum.
I rarely think about you anymore. I don't reread your old letters and, obviously, I haven't written in a while. I don't think about anyone else, either. Actually, I don't think at all. I haven't written any songs, poems, stories–nuthin'. I'm a veggie. Our manager tells me things that should make me happy–sales and airplay statistics–buy instead, they just sound like random meaningless numbers.
Sometimes we come close to dying in the van (Karl's a scary driver) and I think weird thoughts like: "Who cares. Bring it on." I have violent thought involving large trucks, splintering bones, pools of blood, and car fires. And none of it bothers me at all.
I suppose the only thing I enjoy any more is playing our music in front of an audience. And even that only half of the time. A bad show is so ultimately depressing.
My thoughts grew even more negative. By December, I felt bad even about performing. On December 5th, I wrote:
Tonight/today was miserable. Madison Square Garden. It was the most passionless piece of garbage ever. And last night, too in Connecticut. This is the lamest job in the world. How much longer can I keep it up?
I felt tortured on stage because I assumed everyone was looking to me to be a passionate performer but I perceived not even an ounce of passion in myself for what I was doing. Weezer had been working non-stop for six months. My voice and my body were sore and exhausted. Before the last show of the year, the KROQ Christmas show on the eleventh, I described the depths to which I felt I had sunk:
I guess I should record these blackest of feelings before our last show. For the past couple weeks I've been completely miserable.
I don't talk to anybody, and onstage I never even so much as look up. Now I've got a sore throat, I feel like crap and we go on stage in three hours.
I was completely burnt out. After the KROQ show, I flew back to Connecticut for a vacation and on Christmas Day, I wrote in my journal with apprehension about the next year's schedule.
I'm petrified to return to the band, to return to the stage. I hate that life with all my heart...
I went on to clarify my feelings in January in a Rolling Stone interview, unpublished to this day.
Possibly the worst part about being on tour is that my emotional life is completely on hold. It's been about four months since I've had substantial (or even insubstantial) contact with a female, or anyone, for that matter, outside of my band-mates. I rarely feel any emotion at all anymore. I'm never really sad, happy, or even lonely. I'm just numb like a robot. I miss the soap opera of settled life.
What really worried me about not having an emotional life was that I had nothing to write songs about. Now a year-and-a-half had passed since I'd written anything that I loved. I believed that what I needed as a writer was to shut myself off from the world and from the over-stimulation of being a touring rock star, and to let my feelings rise to the surface again so that I could describe them in songs. On January 12, three weeks into my vacation, I wrote in my journal:
I'm starting to feel the blackness closing in. I'm really alone. I'm really insane. I play piano constantly. I'm at least four hours a day of total, complete concentration and mindlessness... I'm definitely going nuts.
I miss Chiba terribly sometimes but I never call her. I'm totally alone.
For the longest while I was lifeless. Dead meat. Now at least I feel the pain and loneliness starting to creep in.
It looks like I'm finally writing in this journal again. Plus I wrote a song today. And sadness. Hopefully more on the way. And then in one week it's back in the deep freeze.
I've got to settle my life down. I've been rootless for one-and-a-half years now.
The song I had written that day was a song called
"Walt Disney" (Track 15). In this song I tried to describe the frozen, numb condition I had fallen into after seven months in the spotlight on the road. The song had a beautiful, mellow sound. I really appreciated it and was grateful to it. It did capture the state of my life at the time: the "phone singing" in the third verse standing in for Weezer's manager calling me to go over the details of our impending tour, which I clearly dreaded.
