In the fall of 2003, I paid $5 to see Sage Francis perform at my small college in Pennsylvania. After graduation, Sage’s “Hell of a Year” – on repeat – got me through the depression of post-graduate-underemployment, then the first year of law school. It was a happy coincidence when I started to ride; Sage has probably used the most cycling-related lyrics out of any MC in history (a particular favorite is from "Pressure Cooker": "Hyperventilating praying for the end of days to come / By selling survival kits, New Testament Bibles to Zionists / And training wheels to professional cyclists"). Late last year, when I finally got around to listening to his newer music, I replaced “Hell of a Year” with “The Best of Times” and “Make Em Purr.”

Remember in the last Lord of the Rings trilogy, when Frodo is essentially red-lining for about four hours? If you combine that with the lyrics from “Make Em Purr,” minus the sick cat, the result is a pretty good description of my life for the past five months. Riding used to be how I dealt with a string of dead-end jobs, getting bullied for having a Japanese face but being too American, and slowly losing the majority of my friends. When I got too sick to ride, I thought my world was over. I was bitter and angry that it couldn’t keep my head above water for more than three years. In hindsight, it’s an unreasonable demand – I don’t think any amount of solitary riding could have kept me upright – but that didn’t do much for the crushing depression that followed. It felt – and still feels – like having my heart broken every single day. I sat in front of my immobile bike and cried and cried and cried. I stopped going outside. I stopped doing much of anything.

Maybe if you stay still long enough, that kind of depression will make you bottom out, break through to some other side where your brain overloads on sadness and you inexplicably become capable of taking care of yourself again. I don’t know, because instead of waiting it out, I started to self-medicate with food art.

It’s silly, I know, because rearranging crumbs on a plate isn’t exactly meaningful. It doesn’t make beautiful music. It doesn’t help me build those skills I probably need to get that job I should probably apply to so I can start climbing that corporate ladder to further that career I should probably have. It doesn't even make me feel better half the time, and I doubt it makes me a better person. But like Sage’s music, it does the nearly impossible: it keeps me from drowning, and that counts for something.

Sweep the head, breaking bread with the best of 'em

Crumbs left under the table for the rest of 'em

Song: Cheat Code

Artist: Sage Francis

Materials used: bread crumbs

Years ago, a comment on my blog said something about how my writing had become more introspective since moving back to Tokyo. My mental response had been – I still remember it now – that when you’re in a shitty situation, you realize the things that matter most to you.

I shouldn’t blame Tokyo, per se, for my lack of happiness. It’s more the combination of an inclination towards sometimes severe depression and the social ostracization of being different. The bike helped tremendously, until I got chewed out too many times at a bike shop for “being stupid.” I remember standing in the middle of a Tokyo street, crying so hard I could barely breathe, sending smoke signals in the form of desperate emails to two best friends. The bullying, the harshness of being different, of being too independent or foreign, the hints that maybe I should change who I am…it all sucked. A lot.

The bike kept me sane for a while, but this past winter, I hit a new kind of low. The kind that keeps you indoors and off the bike and barely above “slightly functional.” Save for those two short visits from Adam, I couldn’t remember how to smile.

I never believed that clinical depression was something to be proud of, because though the moments are sometimes too rare, I like to be happy. That’s the other side of it; when you can get your head above water for a bit, depression helps you realize what really makes you happy. It’s makes you a little braver, too, to tell the people you care about that you love them and that they make you happy. It encourages putting a song on repeat all day – no matter how pop-y – and to paint with food, if that’s what it takes to keep the monsters at bay. If dancing around my apartment to British boy bands, classic punk rock, and American indie rock between painting portraits of pro cyclists gets me out of bed, then that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Bikes still feed my soul, but these past few months, I remembered something else. When too many people are shitty to me and I start to break a little bit inside, I can always use music to patch it up until I’m good to go.

I believe there’s very little a good bike ride and a bass line can’t fix. When I need a second wind, good coffee and punk rock have always delivered. So let’s start there.