mrs. cold

kings of convenience’s “mrs. cold” was the soundtrack to a sunny sunday.  conditions were perfect for both running and daydreaming.  cool outside the sun’s rays and warm in their path, the air itself seemed to massage my skin with alternating strokes.  palm muted lead riffs in headphones gave the distinct sense of unreality and i spent the rest of the day trying to recreate that feeling.  pretending my voice was on perma-echo, i alternated between the garage and the shower to sing any words that couldn’t be held in.  i didn’t speak a word in normal cadence all day.

rebuild

the darker the place the tinier the speck of light needed to completely change perception. a few of the holes i carry in my swiss cheese soul were made opaque recently, filled with the malleable clay of a good friend.  working that familiar but still fresh loam through my fingers helps me forget about the other pieces of me that remain absent.  i hope they will also be filled one day.  those jagged-edged frames of emptiness are a real eyesore.

lost

last night was spend wandering through space, feeling like words or even a touch have to be twice as forceful to register.  in no particular order:

talk to some girl and boy at a bar as fireworks crack in the distance.  the girl knows several people i know through strange coincidences.  the boy plays soul coughing’s “circles” on the electronic jukebox.  debate with myself whether it would be better if it were actually the year two thousand four.  if it were i certainly wouldn’t feel like a boy scout without a compass.

pass two men in a parking lot and they tell my friend and me that we look like cops.  i get irrationally angry at this.  eventually i let it go without arresting them.

find myself in what is obviously a dive bar that for some reason has obscenely loud current pop music being played by a d.j. so out of place that he may as well have been spinning at a funeral.  even for this city it is a new low for the attractiveness of the patrons.  women either too heavy or too old dance poorly and eye my friend and me.  we leave quickly.

early morning on a deck.  sol beer and carnival popcorn from a blue plastic bag.  girls come and go between this house and another.  eventually i follow one to the other place and find it full of high school boys who are friends of one of the girls’ younger brother.  they are playing unlistenable music and microwaving food.  i stay for as long as i can stand it then leave, thinking to myself that happiness is elusive.  and relative.

one time a week

it is strange which muscle motions become habits.  in the course of driving my car i find myself reaching from the gear shift knob over to touch an invisible thigh.  it happens at random times and has no bias with regard to whether my mind is active with thought or turned off.  when i realize what i’m doing i immediately pull back, like the passenger seat is glowing red electric stove coil.  the only thing that gives me a sliver of relief from these constant burns is the video for gauntlet hair’s “human nature”.  i’ve watched it on a loop for several days.  i like when andy and craig smile at the end.   

splinter

my soul hurts.  it aches with the dull throbbing of a contusion under two fingers of pressure.  the fact that time is slipping away from me did not matter so much when that time was sucked dry of pleasure.  now it rushes past, taunting my parched throat with its oozy wetness.  i want to purr again at the end of the day.  and wake up without wanting to vomit.  

lady liberty avenue

tears for fears is the soundtrack of freedom, late afternoon in the summer until dusk.  it plays in my head when it’s not swirling out loud.  we made mojitos and used our tongues to keep the mint from kissing our teeth.  brazilian rum and citric acid  and bubbly water cooled by ice provided the gravitational pull back to reality between pages as we read aloud from choose your own adventure number three.  the left fork in the underground river is always the right decision.  we ended our adventure abruptly to retire indoors and recline at right angles on the couch as the last hot air balloon left for paris.  i have a feeling the professor would not approve.

baum boulevard

when a man’s an empty kettle he should be on his mettle

someone once called me robotic.  i think it was a comment on the lengths i go to not waver from my logic-based decisions.  even in the face of overwhelming emotion i try to do what is right and not what any particular urge pulls me toward. 

i hear a beat (thump, thump).  how sweet!

however, giving in to emotions is one of the greatest things about being human and i allow myself to become overwhelmed as often as i can when my actions in this state don’t affect others or have a small probability of negative consequences.

just to register emotion: jealousy, devotion

recently i listened to “evil bee” by menomena, a song about yearning to be a machine.  the amazing bass breakdown and overall musical genius of that song made me yearn instead to be human. i think, however, i got the point quite clearly.

lawrenceville love letters

tender, new amsterdam, cantina, thunderbird.  atmosphere, dive, courtyard, smoke.  time flows differently through the hours of a warm night, weaving in and out of conversations and skipping long stretches like a needle moving perpendicular to the groove.  the boys can’t help but let portions of their tightly guarded happiness reserves escape in the form of smiles.  the warmth makes the dark no longer menacing but womb-like, erecting temporary barriers against reality.

signifcant & sublime

saturday emily and i went to a local art gallery in the basement of a house.  it was the opening for an exhibit featuring regional art teachers’ work.  i was impressed both with some of the pieces and with the open bar.  my favorite piece was ram skull with stripes by josh criswell.  it reminds me of austin, texas.

after art we sat in the car outside emily’s house for about twenty minutes trying to decide which direction the night should take us.  bouts of silence broken with discussion, followed by whispers, then building to crescendo.  imagine the conversation as the spoken word equivalent of “breakers” by local natives.  it was awkward yet perfect, the stuff of larry david situational comedies.  i’m not a sadist so i wouldn’t want to drag out decisions like that all the time but when the perfect storm of factors causes a simple choice to be much more difficult than it ought to be it’s hard not to enjoy it from ten thousand feet.

the black keys

is it sad that the black keys song i’m most into is the tobacco remix of “i got mine”? i don’t think so as it is just as slimy as the original, with attitude dripping down its sides.  it does add, however, that psychedelic and noise mixture that i love from tobacco.  and it has lost any resemblance to the sound of strings being plucked.   

i caught the black keys last night at the consol center.  it is never quite as good to see a band in a huge venue but i liked it. my favorite two songs were “sinister kid” and “everlastinglight”.  “sinister kid” had so much swagger.  the rhythm was sharp but the guitar was warbly and that made for an awesome contrast.  the bass didn’t come through like in the album version so it sounded a lot more like they played it as a twosome (even though a backing band was there).  two huge disco balls and hundreds of beams of light danced around for the falsetto-only “everlasting light”.  it was like prom at the school for the ordinary-challenged.

morning

the loss of a friend is a shock to the system.  you have to learn to breathe again in an unfamiliar environment.  you have to weave duct tape and booze into a barrier to prevent your insides from spilling out of the hole in your chest.  most importantly you can’t give up hope that you will commune with them again. i have and i have and i haven’t.

take me dancing! (boom boom boom boom)

was it apparent to anyone else the major flaw in patton oswalt’s facebook post about humanity and good and evil? it is possible that the post was meant to inspire and in that case it did the trick. the trick, however, is on the reader if they are comforted by his words.  he writes:

“But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago."

it is not in the nature of good to destroy.  good is rather compelled to help and nurture.  because of this and the nature of the world there will always be evil.  and while the good may outnumber that evil it is still no consolation to me.  the reason humanity is still here is because never before in human history did evil have the access to extinction-level technology.  and when the tissue is dead both the virus and the white blood cells die, no matter the ratio. 

wow, that was gloomy.  anyone up for some wham! on vinyl?

to be young and wild and free

a few days ago i went back to college for alumni weekend.  it was warm and full of pollen and the buildings smelled like college.  there were no lack of nametags or mammoth tents and the flagstone paths revealed the way to me whenever my memory failed.  i retraced the dutiful steps of an engineering boy and the wobbly steps of a fraternity boy.  as i listened to smashmouth playing live in the quad i realized both that pop music has regressed in the last decade and that my mindset has stayed relatively the same.  i still love the beauty of logic and routine.  and i still love the beauty of the unknown and chaos.  mathematics in fluorescent light and day-drinking in the sun.  training in the morning and stumbling around with random faces from the past at night.  i don’t find these things a contradiction.  

do not open until

there is music reserved for singing alone

there is music reserved for whispering with a heavy heart

there is music reserved for humming while running

and running and running and running

there is music reserved for projecting with the top down

there is music reserved for chanting with the boys

and then there are the junior boys

and then there are the beach boys

oakland zoo

the greatest thing about experiencing grizzly bear in person is hearing the multi-part vocal harmonies start softly and gradually gain strength until they feel like a subtle but firm shove backward. the second best thing is watching and hearing a flute at a rock and roll show.  i experienced both veins of gold on saturday.  i made sure to angle myself so that the shove pushed me closer to the person i was with.  

dilation

when is a couch not a couch?  when it frames a certain space in which time moves at a different speed than that of the ordinary world.  when four arms and a blanket all intertwine like orange-white strands of molten glass.   when the floor is made of lava and the thought of leaving is so absurd that it is immediately gone with the next breath, like a stray eyelash (but without the wish). 

papercut/lovebug

it rips through the skin so fast the aftermath smells of friction.  the involuntary drawn breath ensures that this smell permeates the nostrils.  several moments free of exhale follow like children.  and the inevitable gravity-influenced tear-shaped crimson drops taste warm and metallic.  it’s always deeper than what seems possible for such a delicate thing. 

rat vs. snake

today i received a reply to a message i sent five years ago.  this made my eyes well just a touch.  obviously i am fond of the written word and these words took some serious time and reflection to create.  it was immediately apparent that they were naked and honest as well.  i read the reply first as my 2013 self and then again as my 2008 self, attempting to determine whether or not i’d changed in that window of time.  i concluded that i had not changed (perhaps due to my own stubborn stance on the concept).  but it was amusing to think of my natural responses to those words as both current-me and five-year-younger-me.  for example, with regard to a statement about a nearly-blinding eye infection my 2008 reflection would have streamed, “eye -- lazy eye -- silversun pickups – music video with that girl with pixie hair – i wonder where she is now?”.  but now my mind goes something like, “eye – aye – bands love it when you yell ‘yar!’ at them – minus the bear – cat’s cradle – girl in the front row – i wonder where she is now?”.  

float

i haven’t gotten a whole lot of sleep in the last week.  i am not, though, compressed to the ground with the weight of missed dreams.  instead i float slightly above the earth as my reality has become blurred with the stuff of reverie.  and during the few hours i do get to rest i have a greater sense of peace as the melancholy sound of knife grazing glass (scraping the bottom of the jar for the remnants of something whose color or consistency i could no longer recall) has faded from my ears.  i can see it again.  it is thick and blood red. 

heart cooks brain

my grandma and your grandma

sitting by the fire

my grandma says to your grandma

i’m gonna set your flag on fire

my heart’s the flag.  
every time i pass a mirror i expect to see burnt orange lick behind my green eyes.  

lights down

i recently had one of those conversations where everything besides the other person gets its fader dialed way down.  you know the kind.  light, sound, and time cease to exist as physical entities and become abstract notions.  there is beauty in cadence and in unspoken conclusions.  when it ends and time can be measured again you are astonished by the amount that has passed.  you wonder where it went but the hoarseness in your throat partially answers your question and the smile on your face completes it.  and then, of course, the house lights come up.

h3n2

moving through the day like a zombie

no bend to my legs (that requires energy)

motivation seeps in slowly from panda bear and electronic mail conversations

keystrokes swirl the haze around my brain

liquorice, mango, watermelon -- these are markers

smell my whiteboard sketch and then hand erase

see my condition on my palm

hurray for vague

you are an artful concept, balancing on a fence post, losing your majesty with one sturdy breeze. too many details blow hard from the lips of the novice.  too few suck the meaning out like a fan in reverse.  you make poets of the misunderstood and you make fools of the pedantic.  like alunageorge says: “i don’t need you givin’ it straight to me”.

mental filling

i often wonder about people whose paths i crossed for the slightest of duration decades ago.  the less back story i know the better.  perhaps a cross facial expression or a physical contortion frozen in my mind forever are the only image i have to start from.  filling in the time gap with their own personal experiences and trials and jubilation is a kind of stretching for the brain.  it requires both creativity and a pathological adherence to the notion of injustice.  no one’s fate is completely neutral.  it’s difficult for those of us who like our scales balanced but rewarding nonetheless.   when a snapshot-human’s story ends in death i am saddened.  but every once in a while a face from the past will rise above and contribute something beautiful to humanity.  i am, however, disappointed by most of their choices in life.

damaged film

i remember a day in early 2000 where i was watching a girl and she was watching a guy who was not me and he was creating some half-assed acoustic rendition of a filter song that should have been 'take a picture' but may have been from an album not yet released and all i could think about was how stupid i would feel if he turned out to be richard patrick. in hindsight, that would have made perfect sense and would have certainly validated both my comparison and my general displeasure with the scene and i'm now wondering why i didn't force the issue a bit more.

of course, there is no way this is possible - i'm much younger than richard and he's from fucking ohio, of all places. i'd like to think that i've never seen someone from ohio before the hour of 9pm, or at the very least, that i wouldn't remember the occasion.

ambivalence turns me on and turns me off

i’m changing the record every minute.  i can’t get through a song.  dreamy is burst by raw melodic industrial which is shut down by scuzzy dance.  that gives way to jagged guitar over bass-driven riffs with cowbell which yields to baritone guitar delay-pedaled into surf rock.  my turntable reflects my state of mind.  i need something to push me from my perch on the apex of the roof.  pain or pleasure, either one is better than purgatory.

chance

later this year the iconic monopoly iron token will be replaced with a cat.  i’m not sure i like what that says about modern society.  i can think of few greater pleasures than putting on crisply pressed shirtsleeves underneath one’s vest and running a finger over the peaks and valleys of the elbow-adjacent crease.  perhaps this is more about animal family equality than slacks.  cats have always taken a back seat to dogs in human society and maybe this is hasbro’s late answer to the terrier.  the feline lobby is powerful.  i’m loathe to consider any feminist angles on this because even if the iron is taken away the thimble remains.  plus i just don’t see the world in antiquated sex-defined roles.  i have en vogue’s mandate “be gender-blind, don’t be so shallow!” taped in my locker. i guess i’m just glad the robot wasn’t chosen to replace the iron because when artificial intelligence becomes sentient that would be reason number one to use humans as chessboard pieces.

thimble for life.

hand over your heart let’s go home

my cactus has a single flower for the first time four years.  its petals are both deep pink and delicate vanilla-white. they so contrast the utilitarian prickly green spines that it seems an impossible pair.  such beauty delayed for thousands of days is a form of mild torture not unlike waiting desperately for a glance from a crush. the sheer length of anticipation and brevity of the payoff reminded me of “all summer in a day” by ray bradbury.  when i first saw the petals unfold today my eyes welled.  they are dryer now but i still can’t look away.  

new pop sunday

even though i didn’t care much about this year’s superbowl i still tuned in to columbia broadcasting system’s coverage, keeping it in the background throughout the afternoon.  as i was twirling around playing the bass part to the rapture’s “out of the races and onto the tracks” i noticed ray lewis being interviewed by shannon sharpe.  i took five to pay attention and immediately regretted it.  when ray was asked about his involvement in a double murder thirteen years ago his answer was he couldn’t have been involved because he’s had so much success since then – and his god doesn’t allow evil people to be rewarded.  i’m so sick of morons thinking they can understand the motivations of deities.  it’s as annoying and widespread as townies who pronounce the word “color” like “kyeller”.  the game wasn’t much better but at least there were two things that eased its boredom: kaepernick’s rocket arm and the power outage midway through.  really, though, the highlight was the calvin klein seamless underwear advertising campaign featuring matthew terry.  no seam?  i don’t fucking believe it.

windows down

yesterday it was fifty five degrees fahrenheit at midnight.  one of the many times i woke up during that night i walked over to the window.  looking at the moon and sky there was no indication that it was the dead of winter.  it was difficult to fall back unconscious because i couldn’t wait to wake up and drive to the gym windows-down.  i suppose the lullaby music i picked didn’t help as it left my hair wind tousled on the pillow:  “summertime clothes”, “when i’m with you”, and “an ode to maybe”.  everything is better with the windows down.

two dimensional friends

i’ve been spending more time in my music room lately so i decided to do some redecorating.  one set of posters down and a new class of inspirational laminated paper up.  hanging posters always ends up being an all day job.  having guitars within easy reach it becomes quite necessary to christen each poster’s attachment to the wall with at least a few bars from the band imprinted upon it.  inevitably something is not quite right and there is time spent fiddling with dials and throwing falsetto lyrics about.  by the time the adhesive settles all the bands have heard several covers of their own work and i’ve lost hours of my day.  i wonder if things like this help my progression as a musician or if they just help my progression toward a divorce from reality.  my stylist says my hair has been growing faster lately.  it could go either way.

cranberry raspberry

this article discusses the reason why humans remember the third decade of their lives with much better clarity than any other time period (via unfogged). i think the theory of the reminiscence bump coinciding with the period of identity formation has serious credence.  i have another theory, though.  i think that the level of a human’s perceived hope is proportional to the sharpness of their memories. very early on we are incapable of understanding what is beyond our environment.  during childhood we may see what we can’t grasp but we have no immediate hope of attaining it.  however, when the freedom to roam and explore and make bad decisions comes rushing at us like a dam bursting in early adulthood everything is perceived to be at our fingertips.  the immediate hope of something better, something different, something unknown fills us.  we lose that hope slowly as the marrow of our destiny ossifies.

i started drinking diet snapple at nineteen.  i’m not sure there is a clearer memory in my head.

boomerang

the warm virtual embrace of a long lost friend found again is like leaving the snow and stepping into a dark cozy pub where everything has a citrus tint. the smell of wood and slightly stale spirits is easily recognizable and the worn flat wooden chair backs cause a familiar twinge in the spine.  but in relief of the semi-bright areas lie the shadows of unexplored crevasses waiting to be bathed in the light of conversation and anecdotes.  the excitement of the new and the comfort of the familiar blended together and hand rolled.  

the denim room

i have a denim room.  it’s not actually made of denim, of course.  it is painted dark-washed textured blue.  there are also silver dragonflies stenciled over top.  the room existed in this way when i bought the house and i had always planned on changing it, but in a surprisingly human fashion i have become accustomed to it over the years.  it is whimsical and it allows me to break the confines of a self-imposed benjamin moore prison.  i have been spending more and more time there lately, listening to music and watching the walls and ceiling.  i dare not sleep there, though, for fear of the dragonflies coming to life at night.

waiting

“the easiest way to bring the future to you is to forget everything.”

“lose awareness and lose the notion of waiting?”

“something like that, but with an eject button.”

“i’ve always wanted to push one of those.”

“forgetting is never as easy as you’d think.  it’s a game of hide-and-seek and misdirection with the one entity that knows you best.”

            “my go-to place was the neighbor’s shed.  the rats…”

“but when you get it right you wake up one afternoon and future is in front of you and every second in between has not been counted.”

            “i wonder why it takes so long to piss at this club.”

rules change

not as though i needed empirical evidence to support this, but the fact that my immediate reaction to the track recommended by t.price in this post was related entirely to the fact that npr used a service named rdio (pronounced "arrr-dee-ooo") to deliver it speaks volumes about the current state in which i find myself.

are we really going to start referring to the omission of vowels as innovation? have we already reached that point? should i even care? t. price's recommendations are always highly considered, but i'm too worked up to focus on this one. what ever happened to napster and the year 1999?

beach monster

everything about strfkr’s beach monster (it’s the last song at the bottom) screams, or, more accurately, deliberately coos comfort.  the background hum of conversation and the clinking of glasses appeal to the basic human need for social interaction, making the listener feel enveloped by the soft downy padding of vocal static and the occasional laugh.  slide guitar is intrinsically adagio.  it may, of course, become unresolved at some point but it always finds its way back to its root before the song’s end.  the use of delay on the vocals conveys a dreamy half-reality where one can be both in a railroad tunnel and in bed at the same time.  in addition the modulated vocal harmonies recall wholesome radio ads from the nineteen thirties.  most importantly, though, at two minutes in length beach monster fills the gap nicely between swigs of single malt straight from the bottle. pace is the trick.

daily routine

having tried to figure out why i am not more famous through years of deep introspection i can still find no reason.  i thought perhaps a glimpse into hunter thompson’s daily routine would reveal some glaring differences but, alas, no.  we are like two swigs of the same bottle of rum.  the only things i found odd were the amount of orange juice he drinks (clearly embellished) and blended scotch?  don’t make me vomit up my breakfast snow.

bright lights

having spent the last few years enduring the unflinching weather patterns of londontown - omnipresent gloom at its best - there is a feeling of comfort that comes with my first winter back in the southern portion of these united states. i missed the sun and i believe it missed me. 

as to the dynamic nature (not to mention fate) of the wardrobe that i had built to handle those conditions which are now in the past - i continue to keep an open mind when it comes to assessing challenges.

we like to party

            i’m not into beyonce but i’m into caroline.  and i’ve been into kool a.d. ever since that one time i found myself in a taco bell inexplicably after being in that pizza hut.  i was pretty confused since i was actually trying to get to k.f.c. to steal wet-naps.    

            here’s caroline and chairlift with kool a.d. reaching deep down for soul with “party”.  this is absolutely the only band i want to play my wedding.  well them or some drunk guy with an ipod.  

lava rainbows

i think the accompanying sound for sunlight through leaded glass in the morning is a warm acoustic guitar being picked or lightly strummed.  for midday the best match is ethereal synth or human voices in harmonies.  think “gypsy woman (she’s homeless)” or “wouldn’t it be nice”.

my leaded windows splay tens of small rainbows across my floor in the afternoon.  today i hopscotched between them pretending they were lava, singing along with “digital love”.  i didn’t need to hop on the way back in the other direction, of course, because my shadow quenched them before me.  i still sang though.

velocity

i don't listen anymore. 

there is an awareness that sound exists but i'm into simple packaging - demands, acquiescence, objections. these add up to something, i'm sure, but calculating the sum always feels more elusive than assuming the meaning of the parts. 

i need to move faster, think less, consuming only what is necessary. there is a question of whether it was engineered to be this way from the start. the facts seem to point away from the affirmative, which concerns me less than one would think. the speed is intoxicating and i feel anything but obligated to consider alternatives.

paper

my favorite part about books is their static nature.  they are outside time. they are fluid, free to be followed backwards, forwards, or in random discrete jumps.  find the sentence you last read before the end of the world and be welcomed back without bias.  with a few flicks of the finger and a flutter of air the scene can be replayed.  it is an amazing feeling when you realize you can trick the universe and replay sections of your life again in real time, finding that same happiness that existed chapters ago.  of course this is only possible under the right conditions and it is ever so delicate.  i’m going to savor mine until i lose balance.

when you take a sip you buzz like a hornet

restringing a guitar is probably the most calming repetitive task i know.   the smell of spanish cypress compels me to hug my guitar’s body warmly.  the feel of the peaks and valleys of the wound bronze strings running across skin provides a sharp contrast to the smooth wood.  the chirping of skin sliding over the strings recalls the sound of sneakers against the floor of a gymnasium.  the first pluck of the new string produces a buzz that is felt in that one place deep in the chest.  you know the one.  i find it impossible to be upset by the time the last string is in place.