Then My Veins Might Burn

As I hear for a countless occasion “Down In The Dark” on my old iPod Classic of 120 GB –it's not that I am freak of technology: I love physical albums and in fact I dislike Apple 'cause my iPod is on perfect conditions and it seems that it is suffering “scheduled obsolescence”, but there are not many options to hear (converted) physical albums while you take a rest from work– and as I cannot stop thinking about a man waiting for the rush as he tells to a girl that she will make it a little better for a while, I would like to write that I heard about Mark Lanegan long before The Winding Sheet was released by Sub Pop in May 1990.

Nonetheless, first I listened Screaming Trees (when I watched Singles, back in 1998... or something like that...?) and, in particular, I heard for the first time this song on which Kurt Cobain sang and played guitar, when I downloaded it from Napster... almost 20 years ago. 

I was a teenager, Internet was “on fire” and I was crazy about Nirvana –I still like their music– and, in Napster, the song was suspiciously labeled as “an unknown song of Kurt Cobain”. 

What I've written so far, might look like an ordinary thing, but I have a different story: almost three years ago, on a pretty awesome period of my life, I saw Mark Lanegan, face to face, and we shook hands after a show. 

His band came to Mexico City. They were touring Gargoyle –Lanegan's tenth solo studio album– and they played at El Plaza Condesa. It was a pretty emotive show. I was about to cry over and over again. In the most Freudian sense of the term, it was a cathartic show for me. 

For more than five years, in which I went from being a postgraduate mentally ill student to being a postdoctoral physically ill researcher, I had been listening to his music.  

In between, I had a few miserable years. 

When I started my postdoctoral research, I was diagnosed with gastroesophageal reflux and I followed various unsuccessful medical treatments. Independently of the terrible suffocating experiences inherent to the disease and independently of the endless awful nauseas provoked by antibiotics, gastroenterologists told me that reflux was eroding my esophagus in such a way that it was very likely that it progressed to a cancerous tumor. 

On the previous months I got to the operating room, I listened Mark Lanegan's music more than ever. I associated his sad music with my ill mood, but, somehow, music turned my negative emotions into something positive.

From his solo career, Blues Funeral was the first album I heard –I bought it almost immediately it was released by 4AD on February 2012–, then I listened The Winding Sheet –couldn't resist to the bunch of papers I'd read over the years pointing it as a big influence on Nirvana's MTV Unplugged In New York– and then Bubblegum and Gargoyle, and then his collaborations with Queens Of The Stone Age, Duke Garwood and Isobel Campbell's Belle & Sebastian.

As I write these words, I have heard all his albums. 

I could try to explain why “Bleed All Over”, “My Shadow Life”, “Emperor”, “St Louis Elegy”, “Deepest Shade”, “When Your Number Isn't Up”, “One Hundred Years”, “Bombed”, “Wild Flowers”, “Juarez”... gave me the chills, but I won't.

Words aren't enough. 

I respect him as an artist. He truly seems one of the very few artists with enough guts to quit “the Seattle Sound” of the nineties. (I know: Screaming Trees were from Ellensburg, but I guess you get my point.) 

At a more personal level, his lyrics were a powerful inspiration on my worst days. They made me think of my disease and they made me realize that my disease was not the worst disease in the world. It was funny, 'cause I really didn't feel OK. My life sucked.

Sometimes I was so tired of not even being able to eat regular food or drink something other than plain water. Sometimes I hated my life. I felt nauseated all day long. I was endlessly clearing my throat. I ate without hunger just a very few selected meals. Eating was so monotonous that I lost a few pounds. 

Day after day, I woke up sick, hopeless and nauseated. I couldn't even tolerate regular smells. They made me threw up. I had to take everywhere my own bag of emergency in case I threw up. I couldn't even read a single paper for 30 consecutive minutes. 

By September 2018, I was finally feeling like a normal guy. Three to four months after surgery, I'd re-started to eat regular food and I could even drink a beer or orange juice. 

Obviously, I was so happy. Besides I was feeling OK and I was so excited by the show at El Plaza Condesa, one day before the show, my then most recent research paper was accepted for publication. 

That paper was the result of my last three devious postdoctoral years and it meant a lot to me. Although I had written all my previous papers in which I was first author –of course they were supervised by my PhD advisor–, it was, officially, my first paper as a corresponding author.

A few minutes before the show, at the stand of Mark Lanegan's official merchandise, I would have loved to buy Phantom Radio or I Am The Wolf, but I was so broke. Instead I bought a lithography. It's strange how sometimes you don't have money when you really need it. 

At the end of the show, Mark Lanegan came out of stage to sign some things. 

I was the first in the line. I was the first in the audience to shake hands with him. He was so polite and he signed the lithography I'd bought and my copy of Uncle Anesthesia (one of the most popular albums of Screaming Trees, which was produced by Chris Cornell).

I would have liked to tell him a few things about the way his music had changed my perspective on life, when I was so sick, but I didn't want to bother him. Neither I wanted to act like a moron. I just told him: “It was a great show”. And I really meant it. 

Under the dim lights of the forum, I saw Mark's smiling. 

For a moment, I looked at his red hair and then into his eyes –he wore thick glasses– and I tried to guess how many times did he had heard the very same words from another silly fans around the world and I felt so stupid. 

Then I gave him my hand and he politely gave me his. We shook hands. 

I walked away feeling numb.

My copy of Sing Backwards And Weep –Mark Lanegan's memoir– arrived a couple of days ago. As I started to read it, I checked my twitter time line and the first thing I found was a tweet on which Mark Lanegan quoted a passage I had just read on his book. 

He said that the Sex Pistols changed his life. 

Then I stopped reading and started to write this post. Hope someday he'll read a few lines of how his music saved my (miserable) life. 

Down In The Dark

You Can't Fire Me Because I Quit

Is it fiction or is it real? 
Can't believe it. 

I am really pissed off!
I would like to scream it! 
I would like to yell it to Academia!
I would like to tear my skin!

What I've just noticed, I find it pretty unfair. 

It sucks. 

I published many papers as first author when I was his pupil.
No one of his several PhD students, published as many papers as I did. 

Not even the most brilliant. 
(As he pointed out several times, in front of undergrads: "I just followed his instructions and I had no ideas".)

Not even those workaholics.
(Those who worked from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. on a daily basis.)

Not even those who later would become postdocs on fancy labs. 
(Those who went to Europe, to the labs of the Neurosciences' rockstars of the time.)

Not even those who already have published papers on Nature, Science or PNAS.  

No matter what, even when I was about to obtain my academic degree, he humiliated me. 
Never understood why he changed so dramatically with me.
At the beginning, when I was about to study a PhD, he was so polite with me. 
He even asked me for my personal life and goals.

Later, as he pointed out a couple of times, at his office, it was not mandatory to become friends. It was mean to be an academic transaction. Simple and plain. 
Not less, not more. 

It was not my fault that most of the undergrads in the lab at that time were lazy, irresponsible and disrespectful.

I had many issues to deal with.
I wasn't able to run the experiments of these students, if it was what he found it so deceiving. 

I had to deal with my savings. 

Due to my intention to publish more papers than I needed to obtain my academic degree, the scholarship finished and I had to survive an entire year with my savings and with a symbolic scholarship that he gave me for six months.
It didn't even cover the rent of the apartment where my wife, my cat and myself lived.
It's so true that we had to move to a cheaper place in an awful neighborhood. 

I wasn't able to stay at his lab for a longer period to fix equipment and to run many more experiments, if it was what he found it so disappointing. 

I also had to deal with my own classes. 
I was professor at the University and I had to prepare six hours of classes weekly and I had to review examinations a couple of times each six months.

I even taught almost the full course of a Master's Degree on which he was responsible.
I am not complaining. I see it as an opportunity he allowed me to have.  

No matter what, I never stopped running experiments. 
That's so obvious. There it is my track record of published papers. 
It's not inside my head!

At the last period of my PhD, he even refused to treat me like a colleague. 
He humiliated me when I was about to submit to review my last first author paper at his lab.
It was so absurd. He freaked out for a detail that I omitted systematically on my previous first author papers. 
(Of course, I had already done by myself the entire process of submitting my papers to the corresponding journals previously, and this was not the exception.)

It seemed that he waited to the last moment to have an excuse to made me mad. 
I repeat it: it was so absurd, 'cause it was mean to annoy me. 

One of his last PhD students that I met –never obtained the academic degree and was accused of plagiarism–, put my name on the acknowledgements of one paper!
He just copy pasted my own acknowledgements!  

(If he was so tough, why he didn't force the student to change the acknowledgments appropriately?)

I know this is an unfair world of appearances.

It's better to dress like a professional, than to be professional. 
It's better to look like a passionate scientist than to be a compromised scientist.
It's better to speak like a scientist than to write like a scientist.

I no longer understand it. 
I am really pissed off!

He just published a review.
Obviously, he's free to do that. 
He's expected to do so.

What pisses me off is that this review includes data of all the papers I published at his lab!
And this is the first time I know about it.
I am not overreacting. 

Why he didn't send me a freaking e-mail to ask me to collaborate?
(When I was at his lab, he e-mailed me all the time... even for humiliated me!) 

It wasn't so obvious that, in this academic transaction we had, I've would like to have another published paper? 
(I stayed at his lab more than I needed just because I wanted to have more published papers!)

I am not overreacting. 
He changed all my original graphs on this review!
At least, I could do that.
(Who would it be the most appropiate guy to do so?) 

Obviously, I would have written on the review if he asked me to collaborate.

(Do I have to mention that in all of my first author published papers at his lab, he forced me to include authors that, if you ask them "right now", which are the titles and the hypotheses of the papers, they won't answer 'cause they don't even know...?
Simple and plain.
Not less, not more.)  

He didn't say a word to me about this review!

I see it as a complete loss. 
Like a crashed car. 

I don't desire him the worst.
Life has its own ways to kill you at your most private moments. 

You Can't Fire Me Because I Quit