Not Over Yet

A man I love put the war accurately and I will use his description:  it's like kicking water uphill.  Everything that cannot be prepared for.  The degenerating functions and spider glass fractures.  Kicking water uphill.  One more day.  Yes, your shoes will get wet and soak the cuffs of your jeans.  Some will get in your eyes and ruin your belt.  You might drop your hat and slip and fall flat on your bum.  Kicking water uphill.  You cannot quit.  It's going to keep coming.  Just have to try to keep your balance and keep kicking.  A little at a time.  It's okay to rest.




///Amorphous Androgynous - "Rocket Fuel"  and all for the want of a horseshoe nail

Undo Button

You've heard it before.  For this and that.  How about, after 30, you get to hit undo on one impossible to fix character trait?  Just one and it has to be something long established and impossible to undo because it is so far ingrained into the base mechanics of your brain functioning that trying to eradicate it will destroy layers upon layers upon layers of other vital systems and courses and circuitry that are highly desirable.

Consider it an inoperable cancer.  Because that is exactly what it is.  It will be the death of you and you cannot live without its growth.  Its eradication will mean your own extinction as well.  It will die when you do.  That.

If I had an undo button I would use it on my rage and aggression.  The seeds were planted and nursed to seedlings in youth.  Agitated and metastasized through adolescence and bloomed through young adulthood.  Now the tree of might grows in my yard constantly and every season I have to go in and clean up all the rotting stuff that falls.  Stare at them ripening knowing the best way to take care of it is to wait for it to fall.  Knowing I have to, must to, gots to, wait it out and tend to it and if it dies it will only be because my heart stopped too.  @#$% you, tree.  Well after my father dies, I will still have that tree peering in my windows.  Shadowing my kids while they play, picking up bats and swatting the little things every fall.  Kicking them around.  Wondering what they are and if they're edible.  Tasting them anyway.

Myself watching them, if they ever do land.  Firing cusses at him.  My kids will think that tree was always there, because that's all they'll ever have known.  "Doesn't everyone have a rage tree?"  "Why don't you cut it down?  The yard would be so much better without it."  I know.  I know.

I want an undo button for that.  The schizophrenia, the paranoia, the anxiety, depression, mania, twin poles, I can deal with those fairly effectively except when I don't.  The absolute rage is the hardest to bridle and if you screw it up people disappear and then so do you.  Forever.  I can't afford to make that mistake again.   Ever.

Year End Playlist 2014

January - Run the Jewels - Sea Legs
February - Sleigh Bells - Rachel Remix
March - Run the Jewels - No Come Down
April - Matt and Kim - Lessons Learned
May - The Sabres of Paradise - Smoke Belch
June - Deathgrips - Blackjack you don't pay attention, you're going to get whacked
July - Machinedrum - Loveking
August - Starfucker - Rawnald Gregory
September - Various - Listen to the Animals
October - Nneka - Heartbeats fuck when you want me
November - Miss Kittin - Happy Violentine oscar foxtrot november
December - Sylvan Esso - Hey Mami

Fault of circumstance.  Blood blood blood blood blood.  Machinedrum almost made it for a two'fer, but Loveking was pushed off of the list for Nneka.  The list is in a particular order.  I should offer honorable mentions and I will:

in no particular order

Junkie XL - Zero to Nine
Machinedrum - Loveking
Macklemore - Whitewalls
Junkie XL -  Blackjack
Goldie - Mother
Meaghan Trainor - All About That Bass
Daft Punk - Giorgio By Moroder

My brother tells me often "love and peace".  I appreciate the words.  I do.  Conscientious objection is not an option for some.  Draft dodger maybe.  Acceptable?  Yes.  For another time?  Yes.

Tired, Music, Studio Dust and Weekdays

I'm tired.  A lot of people are.  Just kind of beat.  It's not the usual beat.  The common beat.  You know the kind of beat I'm talking about.  The beat that runs from Sunday into Monday because you didn't do anything and you got tired near the end of the day because of all the things you didn't do, but didn't spend the energy to not do?  Is that the right way around?  Spent the energy to not do?  It's not that kind.  It's the kind of beat that comes from doing stuff and dreaming stuff with equal gusto.  I was going to say passion, but I feel like passion tends to connote a certain amount of emotional sensitivity that tends to drag meaning away from doing stuff and bend the beat toward a beatnik kind of over sensitivity that screams I spent my day doing nothing because doing nothing was better than doing something I don't believe in.  Whatever that means.  So I'm tired.  Just tired.  Days full of doing and nights full of doing and not enough doing to go around.  What it do?  I don't know?  What does it do?  Give me a few weeks and I'll tell you.

I'm tired though and it gets aggravating.  First world problems or something like that.  I never thought I would find myself whining to myself about transcribing my voice recordings.  I don't want to sit down and type at my computer, but I don't want to sit down and write down notes and write out stories with pen and paper either, but I don't want to transcribe my recordings because, as it turns out, that's kind of harder.  I've never said "what the hell did he just say" in reference to myself so many times in a row.  Doesn't help that I lost my data cable for transferring them to my computer.  And I could buy a card adapter, but I bought a shower curtain instead.  It's weird.  Am I dodging myself?  Probably.  Do you know how hard it is to do that?  Not very.  I'm easily distracted.  Especially when I'm tired.

I have a hard to stifle desire to make music.  Write songs.  Emo guilty.  I don't know the first thing about writing songs, but I can learn.  Task locked after a way.  I would say everyone is, but that's just not true.  Pretty sure I'm not waiting for anything specific.  I'm trying to turn routine into stability, but it feels like the only routine I can maintain with any faith is instability.  It's what makes me a good fighter and a bad fighter at the same time, because even instability can grow predictable.   I kind of had a little crisis mode thought track down on the low lying channels that worked its way up to the high line and caught fire across circuits.  What if I'm not a writer?  What if I've just been fooling myself for a decade?  And then I thought: well, it's been a pretty fun decade, set backs not withstanding.  Maybe all you have to do to live, the secret of life or something like it, is to do what you love and let everything else orbit it and sometimes you spend time on Titan and sometimes you stink up Venus for a little while and sometimes you dig ditches on Earth and go visit friends on Mars before swinging out to Saturn to ogle and then do some time on Io when you know when you can't be trusted to do anyone any good.  Anyway you cut it though the sun of desire still comes up and you put your helmet back on and check the pressure and the panel and kick on the boosters and go.  I don't mind that.  I don't think I don't mind that.

I've been trying to figure out what I need to do to find my music again.  Wherever it is.  It's not on notes between lines and bars and what have you.  I think that ship has sailed for the time being.  Not that I can't do it.  I just get pissed off hearing ridiculous compositions by people years younger and I know I'll just tear it up, spit on it, crumple up the spit on shreds and bean someone on the sidewalk with earbuds in their ears from my window, correcting for wind.  I'm still pretty good at that.  "Hey, douche!"  Smack.  Kind of a counter productive talent.  I can also flick a cigarette with 75% accuracy from two yards.  Bigby would be jealous, if he were real.  In a fight between Bigby and me I would totally win, or at least be the one still able to walk afterwards, cuz I would kick him straight in the dick like five times before he hit the ground.  I've been trying to find my music again though.  I used to play trombone and that little plastic flute thing that could only play eight notes, and that other thing.   Viola!  Not well though.  Music programs in sixth grade didn't teach you how to tune them.  I'm pretty sure my sixth grade music teacher was on pills most of the time.  She just sat at her piano, over weight, with ratty, burned up, lye blonde, wisps of shoulder length hair, playing chords and vaguely answering questions.  Didn't help that I was perpetually terrified of popping my eyeball with a snapped viola string.  For some reason I never got over that fear and the even greater fear of facing my parents who would say something like "this is why we didn't want you playing viola!  and staying after school!"

I don't get why they cashed out when their investment was practically over.  They pretty much took a steaming dump on every extracurricular I chased and then wondered why the scholarships didn't come rolling in like publishers clearing house with ten entrants instead of 10 million, because that is basically what scholarship competitions are.  Do people even realize how much nonsense has to go right to win that crap?  It's gotta be something on the scale of lower tier pro sports or Division three sports.  Is there even a third division in the NCAA?

I have a vague idea of the direction I'm going to have to go.  Samples.   Lots and lots of samples and loops, but also keyboard and MIDI instruments.  I already have some of the tracks laid out in my head.  That's the easy part.  The hard part is the hours and days and weeks it takes to get it laid out on my computer.  I'm going to do it though.  And I'm going to pick up reading music again in a few years.  Or, I should say, a few years after I start doing that because I know the time will come when I can't find the sample I want and the realization will dawn for the second time, dawning first here, that it will ultimately be easier to create the exact sound I'm looking for instead of looking for the sound already out there and bending it to my will of production.

I'm getting behind though.  Behind on the various projects.  Time is at a premium lately and I'm trying to restructure my time expenditures to better reflect the end times of another year.  The heady days of Summer are gone the fuck out the door, nigga.   Time to start burning the winter fat and make something real that I can hold up to my eyes and review and turn over and do better again.  Masturbation is not that thing.  When the hell did I start masturbating so much?  It's gotten to the point where I have to check my hand for excess lotion before I go out in public.  That's not healthy, right?  That's the other problem though.  Two hours a pop is way too long for masturbatory purposes.  The pursuit of the perfect orgasm is a waste of time because I know where it is.   That little switch in my head that says "alright, just pick one and let's get through this," broke a long time ago.  That has teamed up with my easily distractedness and my absolute focus on making the best iteration of an experience or nothing at all to explode my masturbation budget into a time deficit that sucks the rest of my day into it like a hole in the space time continuum.   You've got a problem when you wake up and think "alright let's rub a quick one out before breakfast" and you're washing your hands at lunch time.  Defeats the purpose of waking up, dude.  Get it together grouch.

My studio is accumulating a disconcerting amount of dust.  This needs remedied.   Soon.  The itch to produce something, anything, is getting unscratchable and we are not under any circumstances doing crack again.  With crazy people.  To make up for it.  That's like asking someone to scratch an itch on your knee and they punch you so hard in the cheek they blow one of your wisdom teeth out.  Sure, the itch is gone, but damn.  I would have gone to see a dentist for that shit if I knew you were going to do that.  And second of all, I thought we agreed on "not the face."  It's cool, though.  It's not.  I have got to get my creative hands dirty doing before they turn on me.  Operation Danny's Attic, the Outride missions.

I've been getting excited about weekdays.  For televisions sake.  It's a fine time of the year.  Sports, cartoons, sitcoms.  New episodes of this and that.  And then it occurred to me why other people don't necessarily get as excited.  They're taping it, or catching it later online.  Technology sucking the fun out of life.  The death of the viewing party.  DVR killed the video star, would be an ironic throwback title to it, if ironic is the right word.  Maybe dated fits there too.  Sad times.  Remember when Seinfeld episodes were still new?  People probably had to VHS them and before they could do that they had to master their tape machines and make sure their television was on the right channel.  I wonder how many people taped Friends by mistake and shot themselves in the face in their bath tub with a glass of wine balanced on the side by the bubbles that same night.  I'm not saying Friends was that bad a show or Seinfeld was that good.  They were just that far apart.  After the Seinfeld finale I'm sure Monday night suicides probably spiked for a few weeks and then dropped dramatically.  What do you mean the saga of Kramer has reached it's conclusion???  Can't remember the last time I used three question marks in a row, but I'm sure my computer could tell me.  I've got to clean my studio and fire up the factory.  They may not respond to coaxing, but I'm fed up coaxing with words.  It is time to put the boot to them.

Anyway, the point is, there's a lot of work to do and the work doesn't care how tired you feel or where your identity crisis lies or how you feel about what you think you might be terrible at or good at.    Until you do it, you're going to wish you did and once you've done it you're not going to think back and say something like: "man, I wish I hadn't spent so much time caring about and doing something I care about and enjoy doing."

Call it a cold start.  I don't know how it ends.


///The Flaming Lips - "Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung"

Development

I haven't transcended, but, God knows, I've tried.  I will keep head banging.  I will because there's no other way.  Explorations and serial failures.   I did not use to approach writing as work, because I never got paid to do it.

It was a hobby and still is.  What changed inside myself was perspective.  That and doing more reading.  The reading has been tremendous.  Just opportunities to see the constructions in different light.  Not even different light as much as opportunities to see the same constructions spun by other brains in the same kind of light.

It's been ...  refreshing.

Refreshing and disconcerting.  It's been a very thorough, bridge crossed, work in progress.  I can't recall being this high over so extended a period of time without gumming up the workshop.  It has been silly even keeled.  You and I

Where are your papers?  Where is your documentation?   Where is your passport and your photo identification?   Where is your veteran of foreign wars certificate and your color bar?  Where is your jacket and your weapon?  Your cap, your boots, your wares, and your ounces of drug deals and your tears for times only you can relate to?   Where the fuck is your memorial?  Where are your headphones?  Where is your ethic and your lorn and your degrees?  Where did you leave your books and, holy shit, where did you leave your other set of keys?


///Skrillex - "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites"    ...you don't need to hide, my friend, cause I am just like you...

Seventy One, Count Down to Twenty Seven

Ten days until the clock ticks over. I don't expect anything fantastic. It will be nice to be one again. I don't like being old. It takes too much energy, too much reflection, even the effort to look forward. A time consuming affair, the growing old. The metering. The constant gauging if older is keeping pace with wiser and if wiser is keeping pace with double faults and if ... how many times did I almost die this past iteration?

Let me see if I can recall. Not going into detail, but trying to recall. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Hmmm. Eight. The ninth time is a stretch so I won't count it. It was just before the tenth time, but even that one was more of a panic than a definite thing. So we'll leave it at eight. I believe I did say at one point that if you're not nearly dying more than ten times a year, you're not living hard enough. At the same time, though, that was a much more reckless me. Not careless. There's a difference. Intent is plastic explosive.

Not that I am that much more reckless then. Maybe, more unconscious. I do have some things to take care of in this body before I go skipping off in my next one. The seventy first birthday step. I definitely miscalculated how many birthdays I could pack into one year. Seventy one sounds about right. Well, seventy three, come day zero. Nothing like a midlife crisis at your twenty sixth iteration. Mostly I suppose I am trying to work out a way to celebrate my last iteration in tandem with my last birthday, so it'll take some fine tuning. Some years of fine tuning.

I think this year I'll go for eight day spacing. See how that turns out. I can't remember what happened on my last birthday so I assume nothing. Checking... no results found. Nothing is right. This iteration I want, I want to be a real trip. A real jumping off point to wake face up in a river with nothing but stars, beloved. It's going to be great. It might be my delusions of grandeur. My all knowing, all loving, stupidity with no regard for real or reasonable conclusions. Maybe I'll go get my ears pierced or something. There must be something to mark the occasion this time. Maybe a 27 shot poem. I was thinking about a 54 post facebook status. Maybe both. Because I know no one is taking me out.uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum, <<< thats what my kitten typed. His mark for posterity. I'm not going to die. Because I have a kitten to take care of now until he is at least a cat. So that's good timing. No space for oopsies for a while. So I'm kind of forced to commit to another year. Happily so. Apparently kittens don't like less than 55 degree weather. The little bastard keeps shivering. I can see my breath. Which means I should probably get to bed soon. But anyway, where am I going with all of this? It's been a long time since I had reason to be excited about a new iteration. A lot has changed. A lot has stayed the same. I'm going to continue to reflect on it as the days tick down. Hopefully with more clarity than I am mustering now. Trying hard not to muss new year resolutions and birthday wishes. Trying to aim low and let the reciprocating action of my mental Kalashnikov land me a headshot this time around. Don't force it. Be the leaf. Be the leaf in the wind, and for eulogy's sake don't die before dawn. In terms of goals though, gotta set goals, I have a few for the upcoming set of birthdays. Finish the crappy book I started to write. Make the mistakes I don't need to make when writing the second book. Get laid by people I can remotely care about. Embrace the dark side, and by dark side I mean myself. Consider flaunting it. Take more pictures of myself and distribute accordingly. And take a fantastic drug trip on something, anything, without dying halfway through. And finish the tricky dream hunt. Because that kind of big game hunting blows back and backfires way too easily. Not huge goals. Just real ones. We'll see what happens. ///El-P - "The Dance (Instrumental) ...one more year at the never ending prom