When What Worked Stops Working
Spiritual crisis begins when the ambitions, desires and strategies that once organized life stop delivering. (The Spirituality of Warren Zevon’s “My Shit’s Fucked Up”)
This is part three of an eight-part series on Warren Zevon’s “My Shit’s Fucked Up.” (Read part 2.)
“I said, ‘My shit’s fucked up? Well I don’t see how.’ He said, ‘The shit that used to work, it won’t work now.’
I had a dream, aw-shucks, oh well. Now it’s all fucked up, it’s shot to hell.”
— Warren Zevon
Some years ago I was playing in a band, and we weren’t getting along very well.
It came time for an audition. I arrived at the last minute because I didn’t want to hang around with the other guys. I tuned up in a hurry and ran on stage. The band sounded like garbage. I remember thinking: these guys really suck.
It turned out I was the one who sucked. The audition came to an end, and I was angry. They said to me, “What the hell were you thinking?” I said, “You’ve never played worse.” They said, “Play an E chord.” I did. It sounded like an F — I had tuned my guitar a half step up for the audition. Yeah, we didn’t get the gig we wanted.
Our hero in Warren Zevon’s “My Shit’s Fucked Up” is making the same mistake. When faced with the truth, he pushes back: Of all the possible causes of my suffering, how could I be the cause?
Many people describe life as not under our control: Same old, different day. Life is up, and then it falls. Fortune is followed by misfortune. The day starts with enormous potential, and by the end of it you’ve been smacked in the face by reality.
We all keep a mental balance sheet. When it shows too many negatives for too long, we feel it. The problem is: we’re often unable to understand why we feel terrible. When shown that the reasons are at odds with our expectations, we push back, saying, “No, it can’t be that.”
So it is with our hero. He thinks the old strategies, which once helped him flourish, still can. His life project seems to be laminated to his identity.
And yet, he sees that his dream is “shot to hell.” Never mind how much time might have lost, or what its cost him. It collapsed, and he feels it. He hit a spiritual dead end. The doctor tells him so.
When we hit that spiritual dead end, it feels like hell. And yet we keep going, trying other routes. No matter what we’re aiming for — wealth, honor, glory, power, physical ability, pleasure — if we look to these things to ultimately fulfill us, we end up circling what Catholic apologist Frank Sheed called the “abyss of nothingness at the very heart of our being1.” St. Augustine would say this is what love out of order looks like.
But if our hero felt bad enough to seek help from a physician, why question the diagnosis?
I suspect he wants a fix that allows him to keep doing what he’s always done, to get it working again. I was in the same situation recently. I prayed to God for years to remove the spiritual fetters that were restraining me. He never did, and I couldn’t figure out why.
That is, until after deep reflection I understood something: had he helped, I’d walk just a few steps in my newfound freedom, find the chains on the ground, and lock myself up again. The suffering I had endured was caused by my own misdirected love and the strategies I used to pursue it. The failure was in my own will, and only after years of denial did I finally see it.
So it is with our hero. The doctor’s diagnosis, though difficult, is truthful. But our hero, in denial, thinks he knows better, even though his dreams remain unrealized. What does he do? In the next post, he takes one big step forward — toward despair.
Coming in part four of The Spirituality of Warren Zevon’s “My Shit’s Fucked Up”: Despair Begins as Rationalization.
Tagged: Warren Zevon | My Shit’s Fucked Up
Frank Sheed, Theology and Sanity, ch. 28.