Will
Mark MansonSözler ve Alıntılar
I wanted to please and placate him, because as long as Daddio was laughing and smiling, I believed , we would be safe. I was the entertainer in the family. I wanted to keep everything light and fun and joyful. And while this psychological response would later bear artistic and financial fruits, it also meant that my little nine year old brain processed Daddio's abusive episodes as somehow being my fault.
As much as we all suffered under Daddio's militaristic views of love and family,nobody suffered more than my mother. If two people being in charge meant everybody dies,then that meant my mother could never be in charge.
The problem was that my mother wasn't the type of woman to be commanded. She was educated,proud,stubborn and as much as we begged her to please be quiet ,she refused.
Once,when Daddio slapped her, she egged him on.
"Oh,you're such a man! You think that hitting a woman makes you a man,huh?"
He hit her again, knocking her to the ground.
She stood right back up,looked him in the eye,and calmly said, "Hit me all you want ,but you can never hurt me."
I have never forgotten that. The idea that he could hit her body but somehow she was in control of what "hurt" her? I wanted to be strong like that.
I didn't lie about my perceptions,my perceptions lied to me. I would get lost ; sometimes I would lose track of what was real and what I had made up. It became a defense mechanism - my mind wouldn't even contemplate what was true. I would think , what do they need to hear to be ok?
For me ,the border between fantasy and reality has ways been thin and transparent,and I've been able to step in and out of each effortlessly.
While I took extra special care to please my father every chance I got,harry mimicked my mother's behavior. Starting at a young age,he preferred to just stand up and take the beatings.
The way the piano was situated onstage, I had eye contact with Gigi the whole time. Morris Albert’s “Feelings” was ringing through Resurrection Hall for an audience of two hundred people. But I was only playing for one person. And the look on her face . . . I still struggle to describe it. The words “pride” or “approval” are pale and inadequate. I can only say that I have been chasing that look in the eyes of every woman I’ve ever loved ever since. I’ve never felt more certain of someone’s adoration. All my career, my performances, my albums—everything—has been a relentless, unbroken quest to relive the delicious purity I felt when I played “Feelings” at Resurrection Hall for my Gigi.
I didn’t have to do anything different; I didn’t have to be anything different. In that moment, just as I was, bum notes and all, I was enough.
When Harry left, it was just as painful for me as Mom-Mom leaving. I wanted to be with her, too, but I was too scared to leave. It only solidified my deepest insecurity. I could no longer deny the truth: I was a coward.