[1047] Curses

It’s late at the tale end of July 4th. I have no real sentimentality or ideas to offer around patriotism or the status of this country beyond thinking we’re still on the decline and on the way out.

I wanted to write about how I think it’s been getting harder to write.

I’ve been contemplating writing music. I listened to Ethan Hawk riff on poetry. I’ve written 1,046 things, not counting what I’ve deleted or designated “blog adjacent” with an “xx” in the title. Where I’m at is less in the analysis and trying to parse the players and response or responsibility. I want a riff. I want a phrase. I want a wall of sound that reverberates as good as any that I’ve put onto my playlists.

I went to a party tonight. I stopped being the person to invite and get to know everyone, but I’m still friends with Pat Patterson who has his eclectic group of creatives and weirdos. I belonged. It’s people who will look you in the eye. It’s people doing as unique a thing anyone could be doing that they’ll pass off as any ‘ole thing. I was told I could join the invite-only group to know about the semi-regular events.

Part of me has eschewed looking for fitting into a crowd like that. Sort of like with getting a girlfriend. There’s an inevitability that my weirdness or perspective is eventually going to turn someone off or against me. It’s not so much that I don’t enjoy them or don’t with to maintain a dynamic, but whatever it is that I perceive I’m getting from the relationship is heaps different from the artifice the other players were attuned to that I wasn’t.

We’re not in a play. We don’t have a set of lines and cues and lighting configurations to tell approximately the same story for however many weeks we’re popular. Each time you have your individuated stress or trauma or hopes and dream overlaying why you do or don’t engage the gathering one way or another. If you’re always “on” and looking to have your kind of fun or conversation, if you’re me, your confidence and comfort is going to navigate considerably less tactfully the conversation about whether or not Dave Chappelle is transphobic.

I think a big reason I don’t think too much about “expanding my network” is that I know I still have those connected people. I’m one text away from 25 people I haven’t met who are as close to “my people” as I’m going to get. But that’s not what I want to explore.

I feel like I’m running out of words. I need sounds and rhythms and noises modified to analogize a tight neck and wretched gut. My anger isn’t as honestly relayed in a thousand blogs as it might be channeled through Chester Bennington on stadium speakers. My previously-conceived-of angst or anxiety is deeper than that. Quieter. More encapsulating. I didn’t feel right trying to occupy “annoyed” or “angry” or “ungrateful” space walking a couple miles to return my umbrella to a car or staying extra late to a terrible baseball game. I still need to express and create though.

I texted my ex that the garden shed blew over. She sent back, “Ok.” I don’t want to assume she’s functionally abandoned the space, but I don’t really know what else to think. It’s like, of course she did though, right? Nothing I try to enable or support is actually felt or appreciated, so if I saw anything but overgrown bullshit with a blown over shed for all of the time and investment, joke’s on me.

I stopped myself from buying $500 worth of T-shirts last night. I had all the carts at check out. I did the math on time I’d need to spend at work with the extra groups I’ve taken on. I stopped when I considered all the the shirts I’ve already bought. I can go two weeks without doing laundry. I’m still going to shows this year with some of the bands I want merch from. I found it incredibly tempting to buy because of how many were sold out. There are thousands of small shirts many bands I enjoy can’t sell to their fat fans.

Spending money isn’t going to fill the hole. Pretending I need some kind of empathetic or affirmative response from my ex isn’t either. Getting enmeshed with the creatives has points of potential and light, but there’s often a reason those types find their collectives and version of the pageantry that I find reason to violate as quickly as any other.

It’s fucking Tuesday, man. I still have to work tomorrow. My concert schedule slows down considerably this back half of the year, so I have more time to either fight with projects on the land, or drink with creatives. The writer’s strike has helped me catch up on so much TV. I’ve tinkered on my piano and guitars. I even read a chapter in The Boys which I’ve been delaying until I felt I had the proper focus for the better part of a year. 

What do I really want? The insurance to impanel us. The ability to take off. To be out of debt because the debt is laughable, not inevitable, or a several months slog. I want to be able to host my own parties for parties of 1 or 2. I still want to go to bed when I please and wake up the same way.

Every day it feels closer, irrationally so or not. The sum total of my effort and perspective continues to compound and accumulate. I just need these last few pieces to fit.

[995] Check Yourself Wreck Yourself

When you’re practicing a piece of music, you’re rehearsing a behavioral language. Whether you get to a place where the song sits somewhere besides the notes on the page comes after the work of making it into a song in the first place. You have to go slow. You have to be deliberate. You have to be persistent. You have to look for resources when you get stuck. You have to open and re-open the notes so they can be built into your instincts and recognition patterns. Only then do you manage some “mastery” or get the license to “cover” and remix it. Any art form requires the same general approach. The abstract artists can probably draw anything less abstract considerably better than the “modern artist” who throws paint at the wall. The novelist has ten times as many ideas that made their way to the trash or were borrowed from than books published.

I finished watching The Hand of God just before watching The Worst Person in the World. They are both the “slice of life” kind of film, following a person at a transitional stage of life and the often awkward or shallow observational place they occupy as they try to “figure things out.” Both movies, highly-rated, are surely indicative of a familiar fledgling sensibility that’s enshrouded the last several generations. They’re a point of view privileged to discuss a struggle from a taken-for-granted perch of wealth and options.

I don’t discuss privilege in the way I feel most people do. I don’t view it as this kind of scar you acknowledge to write-off whoever’s view or work you’re discussing. It’s merely a point of view and a head nod that it exists with it’s own influences and pitfalls for how you may think. I identify more with those of a certain access and wealth than those in genuine poverty. That’s okay. If I can’t identify that, I don’t have a prayer of translating how I behave or how I think across that experience barrier.

I look for words that do what I can’t. I can’t make you understand me. I can’t make you feel like me. I can’t give you confidence. I can’t increase your IQ. I can’t make the artists and philosophers who mean the most to me into something digestible and an earnest reflection of their “independent” value. This is where I start in every interaction I have, be it with media, myself, or you. I identify what I can or can’t control. It’s not always conscious, but it has been a deliberate practice for so long, that I just hit the “D” key on the piano of, “That’s not my problem” or, “I’m not capable of that.” I don’t scan, count back, or hesitate until I start writing. I feel that after you talk to thousands of people over many years, particularly about their problems or various crises, you get that deep appreciation and earned short-cut to certain “best” answers or practices.

It’s not privileged information, per se, to learn how to play an instrument or read music. It’s there, freely available, in many forms, and you can go slow, build your instincts, and get pretty far. James Taylor can’t read music, and you don’t have to assume he’s learned how to speak and translate the language. He’s put in the time and practiced “something,” that many of us aren’t in service to our respective arts or desires.

I get frustrated with how long things take. I don’t want to drive a second longer than I have to. I watch most things sped up. I see myself flub a note on a new song I’m trying to learn, and I instinctively get shitty with myself that I can’t make my fingers respond in exactly that way that would suggest I’ve mastered what I’m trying to do immediately. I know my brain doesn’t work like that. I know I have to take the time to make the pattern. I know I can and will eventually, but I still manage to “hate the journey,” when, in the moment, it’s exactly showing me what I don’t want, even while simultaneously existing as exactly what I need. You learn from mistakes. You learn from brushing against boundaries. You learn when you practice “openness” for all that can spill in while you’re working.

I think sometimes this frustration for the time obligation gets confused as a lack of empathy for how long it takes others to learn something. I don’t ask myself very often, “Compared to what?” What does it mean to “feel” like I’m “not learning fast enough?” It might be understood as lying to myself. If I’m trying to speed through a passage I haven’t etched into my instinct, I’m practicing a lie. I’m getting in my own way. If I profess to want to play this song, and play it well, why am I rehearsing a barrier? Why am I letting myself take even longer to get it learned and shown-off in public? It begs deeper and more explicit questions.

Do I want to learn the song? Yes. Do I want to learn it “quickly?” Well, maybe not. I’m someone who struggles to be moved by much. If I’m practicing something new, that was kind of the point already, just to have something new. Once I learn it, I fall into a familiar problem. I’m no longer practicing a new song; I’m hunting for a song that makes me want to practice. Isn’t that a lot to ask of a song? Why is the song motivating me in a way I can’t on my own? We can chalk that up to the miracle and intangibility of any given song and how you relate to it, or you can write dozens of blogs explaining how your “normal” life and obligations obscure and interrupt the time it takes to intimately relate to music.

Music kids are weird. Whether they come from a household where their parents pathologized music and forced their kid to practice, or they just found themselves utilizing the necessary practice as a way to work compulsive or obsessive tendencies, if you’re able to do impressive things on an instrument, there’s a decent chance it’s acted as a stand-in for lesser-understood things you might otherwise be obliged to practice. It’s a bedrock cliché the slew of famous musicians with drug problems, abusive relationships, or mental health struggles that are endlessly mined for deep catalogues and hits. Can you turn your bad break-up into three #1 albums? Can you make others’ hearts race like the cocaine made yours?

What is the nature of the necessary and obligatory work? It’s a foundational question. Are you on a hero’s quest, or a balancing task? Do you need to wake up, or allow yourself to sleep? Can you acknowledge when you’re, maybe not out of questions, but certainly arriving at the ones that consistently ask you why you haven’t fucking done something by now? There is no “fix” save the eternal obligation to slowly practice in the directions you think you want to go. Keep asking yourself if you even recognize where you are. Reckon with the nature and layers of your hidden dishonesty. It’s a dishonesty realized in as many ways as you’re willing to look. Maybe your stomach drops, jaw clenches, or you race to complete something you know explicitly you haven’t practiced as you should.

I’ve learned how to better appreciate “the journey” more than the destination. That’s taken practice. It’s why I enjoy practicing new songs at all or learning new facts or watching new movies. I’m not one to watch a series I like over and over or fall asleep with the same movie every night. I want to keep evolving and seeing how robust and familiar my concept of an identity or foundation might exist in other things or people. The heartbreaking part is two-fold, both in rarely ever being recognized, and struggling to see or hear how anyone else is trying to be. At least the movies, songs, and books exist. I could criticize David Lynch and find his process and message indiscernible, but dude is doing something, and with help I can discover it’s not just him going insane.

If I’ve discovered any remote wisdom in life, it’s that you have to do. So I do. I write. I work things, well in spite of my worst or best ideas about myself or how I’m spending my time. I have monuments of my acts and effort literally surrounding me. “…faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.” I don’t have or need faith. I need work. I need meaningful work that I can attend to and that I can utilize to celebrate my instincts when I might not be finding the patience to put them on display through a mastered song. I don’t need to hear how poorly you understand your circumstances, I need to hear what you’re working on. Your “political opinion” is mute when you vote for fascism. Your high-minded ideals regarding “violence” bleed to death at the end of a weapon. Your fierce proclamations of “freedom” are consumed by the infinite icy void or virulent fire, whichever catches first.

I know what your problem is, every time. You pretend. You pretend to know more than you do, then you double down and pretend that you aren’t playing the “I know more than I do” game. You don’t humble yourself in your ignorance. You don’t allow yourself to slow down where the work of humbling yourself can begin to take place. So you run away, into walls, into people who will give you new language for constructing complex excuses, and as far away from “another obligation” as though you’ve accepted the first and only one that matters to make the rest make any sense.

When I’m not learning the song “fast enough,” I’m pretending it’s a worthwhile goal to “learn fast,” that I’ve ever bothered to define “enough,”  that real learning can take place like that altogether, and that I don’t have a small death I’m not exactly crazy about on the horizon once it’s learned. I also pause movies I’m enjoying 5 or 10 minutes before the end. I collect books I’m enjoying and refrain from completing them until…I can make peace with the idea they’ll be done.

 I’m not trying to sabotage myself, but if I refrain from ever looking at the nature of how I’m working or what I’m working on, I’ll never admit, discover, complete, or change. Thus, when you refuse to work, and profess to be “trying,” I know, immediately, the nature of the lies that lend themselves to your own self-sabotage. You over-burden a story about “what you think” that has very little analogous representation in the world. It’s a story formed by machinery you’ve not trained slowly, deliberately, to give you a decent representation of what you’ve been observing or working on in the first place!

Therefore the struggle, the familiar - universal flail - depicted across mediums and critically acclaimed sensibility gets to sub in for the work you’re not doing. Watch the masterpiece over and over like a child building into its foundational sense that good will triumph over evil or the square piece goes in the square hole. The happy ending is inevitable when you’re not looking for a sequel about the days and years after.

I want to learn the song, and hundreds more. I want to learn them even if I never get around to. I demonstrate that I want to learn them by practicing, and spending money on the tools to learn them “correctly,” like on weighted keys that build the muscles in my wrists, and software that facilitates time in front of notation. How do you know I want to learn the song? You see me post videos of me practicing and getting it approximately right or not-quite up to speed yet. How do I know I want to learn the song? I turn the nature of my work into a story about how it reflects across the levels of things that are more meaningful than whatever might be making me money. Can I hate my job, and see how the money for the tools can be a more emotionally compelling story than a spiral of stress, dread, and waste? It’s a simpler question when you can ask how the song or garage or business endeavor is coming along. When you can either point to your work, or commit yourself to co-opting someone else’s, what more is there to say?

[987] 2 For The Price of F Uh? N

 

My mind’s still buzzing, so let’s see what’s on it.

Tonight’s was a good show. It was only a good show. The opener picked out a 9-year-old from the crowd and said something like, “You can be anything you want to be, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise” before getting the crowd to collectively say, “Happy birthday.” She said, “This one goes out to those who only follow their own rules. You’re perfect just as you are, don’t ever change for anything.” Go figure, I just looked her up thinking she was young, but she’s actually performing under an alias, because I recall enjoying Juliet Simms. She’s a considerably better musician than she is thought leader.

 I hear pretty often at shows how much, “We’re all in this together.” Are we? You have very deliberately and purposefully put all talented women on your tour, and none of you even mentioned voting, fighting, or doing anything beyond singing the words to your songs. What are we in together, precisely? The collective delusion that music actually saves us or guitars kill fascists?

It’s getting a little exhausting, and I have many more shows left this year. Clearly, we’ve chilled in our daring self-expression and freedom to speak to how fucked things are. Either we’re collectively hopeless, or we consider it pointless and are just trying to get a few headbangs in before the wandering Proud Police come to actually bang our heads. I don’t respect people with platforms more protective of their brand than the environment that allows them to cultivate one, at least, for a little while longer.

I’ve felt kind of inspired. Making the few phone calls to doctor’s offices made my overwhelming fatalism feel practical and accessible again. I’m discovering how I want to massage my pitch. I’m filling in blanks on a spreadsheet. It’s a nice little to-do while I’m waiting around for my only meeting of the day, and if I get even a handful of yeses or decent conversations, I might start pocking my days with a few more $20s.

A bunch of my new stuff arrived. Books, games, tools, and a big cot because I’m sick of waking up with back pain. I feel poised this weekend to work more outside provided the weather doesn’t take a turn. I got a vest that lets you attach icepacks to it. I have, probably about $1000 more to spend before I have everything to complete the wood shop and most of the fence. That would still only put me working until November to get out of debt.

-------------------------------A couple days later----------------------------------------------

Band of Horses is playing in front of me. I've sat in an exploitively cost prohibitive seat that was not the one I paid for, but is definitely one of a set that I've been idling in a shopping cart, refreshing now and then, for the last two and a half hours... just in case. I'm alone. It's my 29th concert or comedy show this year. Band of Horses just ended on the one song of theirs I sorta knew and do like.

Is this fun? Have any/all these shows been "worth it?"

I ask the questions not because my motivations are unclear, but because of some portions of conversation I had with a friend last night. She conveyed that going to so many shows back-to-back would be overwhelming or exhausting and that she only really likes shows where she knows all of the band's music. I feel where she's coming from. 2 years ago when I bought expensive VIP tickets to Riot Fest it was because My Chemical Romance had gotten back together and were headlining. I expected that to be "my concert" or "my gift to myself" for the year.

Things changed. Everything locked down. People you didn't think were gonna die, did. All of a sudden, if you have a chance to capture and experience, "now" became more real. So, sales started up, and I started buying and planning. The first few concerts this year it was required-enough to have a mask ready. Industries tied to music that came close to the brink started to roar back to life.

There's a few things at play for how and why I do things. I like to familiarize myself with "everything." I like to collect things, so even if real tickets are a thing of the past, printouts can go in my little book. I've been pushing myself to be more open to things that I would have reflexively ignored or dismissed like every band playing that I didn't come to see. I like getting to know the areas the concerts take place and having a decent plan for getting around. I like not sitting in my house all day. I like having easy "interesting" clout for lazy conversations with people who don't do anything. I bring books to read between sets and for before the show starts.

Today, by chance, I have a headache as an area worked on during my rolfing appointment is being disagreeable. I accidentally drained my truck battery before the show idling in the parking lot trying not to sweat to death. I live no less than an hour away from every show, and today's is the second farthest venue. I stay mildly tense I'll have to vacate my seat until about the middle of the headliner's slot. Who's paying $568 to see half a show that isn't sold out?

I won't remember the headache until I read this back. There are hundreds of cars that might jump me, if my little jumper doesn't again, if it's needed at all as it was back and running before I left to come inside. "Fun" doesn't really apply to the "life" things that happen while you're trying. Living in a state of existence that has to question the reliability of your shit isn't fun by default.

Hanging out with my friend was fun. She’s funny and we can talk pretty much indefinitely. The funny David Cross video that The Black Keys played before they came out was suggestive of what I gather to be their brand of fun. I have fun with the idea of tearing down institutions that have failed. Almost every show I’ve been to at The Comedy Attic has been fun. Hanging out with my dad is fun. I’m fun.

To me, fun springs from the spontaneity of the interactions between conscious beings. All of the concerts have been “good,” and a few “more fun” or “funny” because of the personalities of the performers. Another friend of mine was at Earth, Wind, and Fire and we got to dance together after I’d had a few beers. I don’t normally drink when I go to shows. You combine day-drinking, dancing, and one of the most energetic shows that brought everyone to the dance floor? Yeah, quite fun.

I have a tendency to turn everything into a kind of grind. I can’t just play a video game. I have to buy every iteration of that game and set myself up for weeks of dedicated playing so I can really appreciate the differences or story. I can’t just listen to music. I have to download everything from every artist I’ve remotely come into contact with, keep them all on shuffled rotation, and go out of my way to buy new equipment to house my entire library. It’s not enough to vibe with and repeat my favorites. What if my next favorite song is on tomorrow’s playlist? Even building things. I stop for long periods of time when I suck the fun out of it, and the playpen nature of my aim, and it turns into a “project” that takes too much planning or energy or sacrifice like battling the elements when I’m not in the mood.

Is anything I’m ever doing that fun?

It wasn’t that long ago we were at a roller coaster park. Seeing new coasters is fun. Drops are fun. The speed is fun. Going around a section and losing your phone isn’t fun. The coaster locking its harness down too tight and pinching your balls isn’t fun either. Getting knocked around violently on a wooden coaster until you get a headache sucks. Riding them back-to-back until you’ve memorized every turn and start to get sick slowly chips away at the fun aspects. Is a roller coaster fun?

I think I’m just approaching the realization that it’s a poorly conceived question that we habitually utilize in attempting to understand whether to do something. We ask kids if they have fun, they pretty clearly say yes or no. We don’t evolve our capacity for fun linguistically, so a night out when you’re tired might get a trite, “This was fun!” under a picture, whether or not you recall nursing a beer for hours, barely talking, and wishing you were in bed.

There’s fun, for open-minded types, in novelty, but as you get older, how much really feels that new? Eventually, if you’re paying attention, you’ll discover that even the process of learning something new or seeing something for the first time gets familiar. When I go to learn a new song, it’s fumbling in the dark, slowly recognizing the pattern or getting my fingers in order, anticipating the next lines that I couldn’t get the first few passes, then repeat repeat repeat until I’m barely thinking about what I’m playing or singing at all. The “fun” has to evolve, because while I’m certainly always learning, the motivation to start playing an instrument is fundamentally different than the one to continue doing so. I know how to play, but do I want to write songs? Do I want to perform? Do I want to practice and study in a dedicated way until theory matches instinctive physical capacity? I do, but that gets expensive in attention resources if nothing else.

During the concert, I got a call about the continuing-to-rage dumpster fire that is DCS. More dedicated and good people have fled. They’re trying to fuck with my friend’s years-long effort to stabilize the kid. It may be time to attack. Now, we’re talking real fun. It illuminates the nature of that evolved “fun” concept. It builds in work, consequences, and accountability. Is it more or less fun than going to concerts? It’s simply a prospect that I might get more or less out of depending on how I approach it and what I notice as it unfolds. So goes everything on the roller-coaster.

[403] Corner of Scene and Done

I think I'm constantly yearning for something that feels “authentic.”

There's this terrible sort of missing out but at the same time excited feeling I get when I watch documentaries by and about bands. The most famous names today either were influenced by or apart of the literal foundation of all music. The worlds they grew up in I envy, for all the technology and “options” of today.

If you were a punk back in the day, it was you and 30 people you saw all the time. You didn't know about scenes in other places. Your struggle was real, your cause was local. If you were in a band, you might have been in 1 of 15 who started on their own label before there were labels. You got all of your friends together and cut and folded the album holders. You defined looks, language, and dug from the depths of your outcast soul an identity that would grow to be inseparable from the story of humanity and its musical evolution.

Go even farther back and think of the blues or jazz. You rallied around a style for identity. You got so damn good that you couldn't be denied in a climate when everything was trying to fight you. You could be the first, the best, or rely on your signature style or look.

And it feels like right around the time I was born we were already well past the point of no return. We didn't need to go outside because the new and fancy internet was here. What music did me and my friends rally around? Smash Mouth. Let's all get together and form a ska band and rage to Smash Mouth covers!...No thank you.

I think I just want that simplicity of motivation. I want more restrictions. I don't need to hear every rock and punk song. I don't want to print my own fliers from a "music" template. I don't want some guy a Youtube giving me the tools to mimic exactly how Eddie Van Halen laments that he played Eruption. I just need to see a show that blows my mind, get a shitty guitar, and hang out with my friends until we discover how to suck a little less each day. It speaks to my revulsion towards “indi” in general. Indi to me means you got confident in your boredom and ability to play with Protools.

Where does my generation get to be authentic? Where do we get to carve out our identities? The music back then was a rally, not arbitrary “protest song.” I can feel the passion they had just in their descriptions. I can't even remember the last time I met someone with a fire in their belly about anything that mattered. I know 2 people who are crazy enough about their music or journalism. I know a few who are basically satisfied their job lined up with what they studied in college. The vast majority is people getting by with some thing or another that pays the bills.

We're the ones not starting families until late. We're the one who can't afford anything. We're the ones who've had so much information pumped into our heads that it feels like this impersonal mass that has to be summarily dealt with more than understood. Do you think the electronic music scene feels as “authentic” as the grassroots of previous eras? Or is it closer to having a mascot of an E-ridden sorostitute with “PLUR” tattooed to her ass? And can't it be argued half of that scene is just skimming off the hippies?

We're the “techies.” Woo hoo. Bound by our mutual ability to laugh at old people who don't realize we shouldn't be getting paid for “maintaining their company's online presence.” We're the failed Occupy movement. We're the “too unappreciative of what we have to vote” crowd. It's almost cooler for us to have never heard of our parent's music or movies than it is to appreciate why so much of what we have today sucks so much dick. That may be the people a few years younger than me as I feel I have more in common with older generations than I've ever had with people even a few years younger.

We're stuck in cultivating online personalities, not digging in and fighting for who we are or what we like. We're like old rich white people, taking up a craft or a hobby and smiling too big and clinging glasses for all we've accomplished this week by finally uploading all our pictures to Instagram AND facebook. Even found the time to download our Shazam queue!

You don't get to be a guitar legend, an iconic comedian, or groundbreaking anything it feels like. When you flirt with those lines, your entire history can be used against you and the standard for proof will shift under your feet. Louie C.K. is big right? Why? Certainly he's hilarious, certainly his style is what we all do; dryly lament our circumstances while we beat the word “awkward” to death. Who's the best singer in the world? Stupid question right, because Beiber is the biggest brand, Gaga is underrated, and The XX speaks volumes to your utterly stoned mind. Don't you love how their name isn't a name! It's commodities and gossip.

It's why things feel so fetishized. You're independent breakout company who seeks positive values from it's members as it breaks down barriers and hopes to peel back the layers of corruption and waste is actually you paying too much for T-shirts and unnecessarily registering for an LLC after getting a little too much money for Christmas. Your fancy future sounding job title used to just be called “shit kicking secretary” or “runner” if not “boy.” But you have to be working on something right? You have to be achieving, contributing, and growing. If not, how are you going to make other people envy your updates? How else can you feel a marginal amount of pride in anything you've done?

This is why I want to disappear and wander. I think I hack away more and more of my identity or potential usefulness or “purpose” by disappearing behind blogs, books, and arguments I'll never get to have. I think it increasingly soul crushing that when I'm in a mood to be personable and talkative, someone would legitimately call me out as being on coke before they could believe that I might just engage with a crowd in a positive way from a positive mood. That girl really let me down the other night...

Or maybe I just picked such a lofty and complicated goal that I feel adrift. I envy the idea of simplicity, not the missing out on a chance to get spit on by Henry Rollins. Well, that could still happen, but probably won't be with him in a dress in a grimy D.C. basement. Still, I sense a kind of purity about the pre-digital era, and not in some overly romantic sense that's ignorant of the history that happened around burgeoning scenes. I imagine being genuinely afraid of being drafted would put a damper on a Beatles concert, for example. And who the hell could we produce that comes up with such great names!? They're the beat! It's right there in the name! Or The Rolling Stones. Literally, calling themselves rock and roll. Who wouldn't want to kick DJ Numark in the balls this instant?