“Body’s aching as I lay awake;
And there ain’t no coming back;
Baby the only peace of mind;
That I could ever find;
Was when I’d hear you say it back;”
—From “Love Me” by Forest Blakk
When Forest Blakk was five years old, he received a gift that eventually altered the course of his life. “I remember when I was five and my uncle said ‘I want to get you a Christmas gift.’ And he opened up a catalog. It was a guitar and a mic; one of those cheap plastic Fisher Price things,” Blakk told me. “I wanted the mic and the guitar, maybe because it was two things. It was the biggest piece of sh*t I’d ever gotten. It probably broke in the first 30 seconds…But I still thought it was cool.”
In retrospect, this was one of Blakk’s happier moments growing up. Blakk describes a childhood rife with abuse and neglect. He describes his stepfather, who Blakk refers to as his dad, as a criminal who was an expert at manipulation.
“My dad was a gangster and a drug dealer…a sociopath. In order to become a gangster, you have to have those tendencies to not feel anything for people and to be so destructive without it causing concern,” Blakk said. “What made him so strong in his world was that he really understood what people wanted in terms of a love language. He was so sharp at figuring out what people needed and then withholding it from them. And in turn, people would do things completely out of character to win him over….I was always trying to win his approval.…It was affirmation I sought the most.
“And he made sure I never got it.”
Blakk also felt that his mother was vulnerable to his stepfather’s spell, causing her to neglect him and his siblings. “My mom would do anything to please him, including abusing us and putting us through hell….She so desperately needed love and affirmation from this man that she didn’t see that she had these three children and other people who loved her,” Blakk explained. “My dad went to jail when I was 12 or 13. My mom became a mess….she was always doing a lot of coke, smoking pot and hash. Just non-stop being high. So then when my father got arrested, she wound up taking a ton of anti-depressants and she just became a shell of who she was.”
Blakk suffered from anxiety and mood issues. He described feeling manic for days at a time. But most of all, he describes feeling isolated and alone, invisible to the world. “I’ve watched my dad pull a gun on a guy and the guy begged for his life….My dad got shot on our front doorstep. My mom beat the shit out of us. My dad beat the shit out of us. Yeah, I’m f*cked up; I totally get it….I wasn’t raised by people with morals and values who could teach me ways of thinking. I’m just missing building blocks of thinking. I have holes punched through all my systems,” he described. “I always felt invisible, from when I was a child to the minute I grew up.”
“And I’ve always had this weird lurking suicidal feeling that comes into my mind. It’s so bizarre. Twice it’s gotten to the point where it’s a little too close for comfort. It gets bad; I can’t move. I get paralyzed when that stuff comes in. It’s like you’re trying to stop those feelings and they’re deafening. It gets so bad that you can’t handle it.
“And I start thinking that the only way I can stop this is by taking my life.”
Rather than enduring the abuse, Blakk decided to leave home and lived on the streets for several years as a teenager. And while exposure to his stepfather’s manipulation was detrimental to Blakk overall, he felt that he learned the art of persuasion, which was very useful as a homeless teenager. In effect, being invisible allowed him to shift from situation to situation depending on his needs.
“I had my father’s charm. I learned how to make friends quick, or to have girlfriends so I had places to stay….And then I would clean the house or do whatever I could since the parents were letting me stay there. And I continued going to school without telling anybody….I did that on and off throughout my teen years. I learned how to live out of suitcases.”
When he was 15, his grandmother, his stepfather’s stepmother, took him in and allowed him to stay with her. What felt particularly validating to Blakk was that his grandmother didn’t judge him but rather, had the confidence in him and gave him room to make his own decisions.
“She took me in and saved my life. She didn’t get in my way. She didn’t parent me. She didn’t helicopter me. She just got out of my way and said you can stay here,” Blakk said. “‘All I ask is that you go to school every day’….And that was the most empowering moment in my life. She made me visible.”
Giving Blakk a home and helping him to feel visible was only the beginning of the positive impact his grandmother would have on Blakk’s life. She bought him his first real guitar which opened for him a world of expression and affirmation. “My grandmother asked me what I wanted as a gift; I couldn’t think of anything. No one had really approached me with that except my uncle when I was five. So since I liked the guitar I got when I was a kid, I just said, ‘a guitar.’ So she got me this guitar. It did something when I first played it,” Blakk described.
Having the guitar allowed Blakk to create music which went beyond feeling visible. By engaging in this active process, he was able to explore his deeper experiences and the feeling was so powerful that it felt to Blakk like a form of parenting.
“I remember hitting the strings and feeling something so deep inside my system. I could sit here for days and days and come up with nothing,” he said. “Some people call it their god or their muse….I really believe that there is something that will sit and torture me and eventually give me songs….She talks to me and it’s my job to listen. And when I do, I feel rewarded. Be patient and be kind and I will reward you with a word today….It feels like parenting in a really good way.”
While Blakk was having a curative experience with his music, he was having less success with professionals who he sought out to help him manage his mental health issues. In contrast to the validation he experienced sharing his music, he felt that some of the mental health professionals he encountered were less than validating.
“A lot of people go to school and become docs and shrinks. And that’s great because they can be really helpful in helping people generate ideas on how to get out of your way. But they can’t really empathize with you. I reached out to a psychologist to try and get some help. And I remember sitting in the room with her and ripping her apart in about 30 seconds,” Blakk said. “And it’s a survival mechanism from being homeless and understanding adults and making sure I was safe and not taken advantage of. And I remember sitting with a psychologist and thinking you’re here to tell me how to fix my life but you can’t quit smoking, you’re unhealthy, you’re an emotional wreck. And you probably became a psychologist for all of those reasons—thinking you were going to go to school and fix your own daddy issues—but you didn’t. So you’re over here preaching to a choir that you’ve never been part of. You’ve never gotten yourself past that point. And I cut her up in about 30 seconds and had no respect for what she was trying to accomplish.
“I can go get the book and get what she got.”
Eventually, Blakk found a psychiatrist who he found more helpful. One of the main reasons was that like Blakk’s grandmother, the psychiatrist didn’t judge Blakk’s approach to life. In fact, the psychiatrist suggested that many of the qualities Blakk gained from living on the street—including the ability to manipulate and persuade—were strengths.
“She was really good at her job. It took her all of 20 seconds to size me up. And I’ll never forget it, she said, ‘I know you’re really smart. And you’re going to get whatever you want out of this. And you’re going to say whatever you need to say. And you’re going to win. You’re either going to let me help you or just walk me around this. So whichever way you want to go, we’re going that way,’” he explained. “Within under a minute, she identified what I was doing. I needed to sit with someone who says, ‘Those aren’t problems. Those are things that happened to you and are you. You can use those in whatever way you see fit.
“‘Yeah, you’re a mutant; let’s figure out what you can do with it.’”
In addition to therapy, Blakk began to express his deepest feelings through music and found validation and solace that he was not alone. “I got that first sign of affirmation playing at a karaoke bar. I convinced these people at the karaoke bar to let me sing a song I’d been writing on a guitar. I had my heart shattered and I wrote this song,” Blakk explained. “I dumped my feelings into writing and it turned into something that I liked. And all of a sudden, I was getting applause; a public affirmation….And I’m being rewarded by people coming to me and making me visible by sharing their stories with me and saying, ‘Hey you’re not alone. I feel this too.’ They’re attaching to these words and sharing pieces of themselves. The world feels completely shattered when you feel like you’re the only one who’s broken. Having a bunch of broken people around you, you feel a part of something.”
Now he’s determined to use his music to help people like him who feel invisible. “Whatever it takes to make people feel visible. Because my selfish return is that I feel visible….I feel this weird responsibility to share it, to be like, ‘Yo, I get it,” Blakk said. “If there are 10,000 fans at a show cheering, but there’s one with their hands folded looking like they’re not connected, that’s the one I’m thinking about. That’s the one who may be feeling invisible. If I can make that person feel visible, wow. And I need fame and success to make those things possible. That’s why I get up.”
