Let’s move on. %

I think you’ve figured out what it is, self. You don’t really feel like you did when you are a teenager. You were miserable as a teenager. You had plenty of friends, you were getting laid, you even got into the school you wanted at the end there. There was money for records and books without much real work. Still there was a kind of constant crushing depression. Now you aren’t depressed in the same way at all, even though money is low, work is…work, friends are rarely seen, getting laid seems not a remote possibility. There were periods where you were thinking more clearly. It’s about the company you keep, or in this case, do not keep. It’s not a revelation about religious or sexual orientation, you’ve just got poor judgement about who to hang onto and who to run away from. Like anyone you truly have something in common with, who might get you somewhere you actually want to go; those people get ditched for some obscure reason. Even now, you’re thinking more having to tell someone to fuck off because they aren’t the type of person you were talking about. That is the bigger concern than going nowhere forever. Forget that. The bad news is you aren’t currently around the right the people, the people who used to be all around that you blew off for no reason. But the good news is you aren’t around the wrong people. The people aren’t wrong themselves, you’ve just got entirely different agendas in life and didn’t want to admit it. You’re on the right track now. Put that stupid doohickey at the end of this bullshit and get back to work. %

Things are coming together, and by “things” I mean brain cells, specifically, mine. Looking for someone’s address today, sorry I didn’t do postcards this year, found my old card list, used to send out a bunch. Maybe I’ll do it for New Year’s. But I found this old mini-journal, I starded doing lj in 05 I think and I deleted almost all of it but I wrote a lot. It was mostly crap but it helped. I forgot how much it helped cause I found stuff from 04, stuff I just typed up in Notepad (very short entries) and I was completely zonked. Then I remember at some point after that I had the txt files up for download…dumber than the writing. The format is kinda interesting, if you take it as an art piece. Some of it is like that, intentionally poetic or abstract. But then some is just bullshit. If I let myself write more I think I would have figured this faster.

This past year I’ve been thinking about how I’ve almost regressed to being like I was as a teenager and it was really starting to bug me, but now I see I was actually thinking a lot more clearly then. Like I really thought about a future career up to a certain point, then there are years of random nonsense. Completely lost. That’s all I’m going to say about it.

But records, folks. We can talk records. Working on some drafts. And a hard drive reformat. %

I know I need to get more professional. It’s what this whole having-a-website thing is about isn’t it? Having my shit together is Plan B, that’s all I’m saying. Whatever dumb job pays the rent is fine and I’ll make my completely unaccessible art/music to explain my own life back to me. Maybe, maybe (of course) it could make me famous 100 years after I’m dead. That’s the dream! But it’s just not working out. I walked out on too many of those dumb jobs. It didn’t used to matter, you could take some time off and walk right into another job a month later (only way to get a vacation anyway). But these place are a lot pickier now. The unbelievably stupid dream is dead. Let’s be clear, I wasn’t looking for a showbiz “break”, I mean a break like finding a winning lottery ticket, one of my relatives dying (after winning the lottery—not a rich family—and also deciding they liked me enough to actually inherit anything, just as unlikely). Or there’s always marrying a lottery winner. (Assuming a conventionally rich woman would be too smart or high class to fall for me…still holding out for this one tho. It’s statistically most probable and no has to die.)

But the time has come to begin thinking about trying to begin trying to get a real job. Yes, I could live with my parents indefinitely and continue blogging and working odd jobs, making only enough money for gas and multiple credit card bills. But that road only leads to easily earned respect—blogging is widely accepted the only true valid art form of the 21st century—but it’s too easy! I’d just be coasting.

I dunno where the fuck I’m going with this, I gotta walk my dog. Peace. %

12.7.84 Oklahoma City OK […] During the second set, the crowd was that curious college type. They have what I call “R.E.M. Sensibilities” and Black Flag has a tendency to make them react in strange ways.

I’ve had this example in my head since I read Get In The Van a couple years ago about contradiction in writing and how blogging and the internet in general—having everything everyone has ever said on record being easily available—is destroying any young person’s attempt at achieving emotional maturity and enabling everyone else to sink even lower, to the point where everyone can act like a bunch of 5th graders and no one even thinks it’s weird anymore. Problem is, the example doesn’t exist in the book the way I remember it. There’s two R.E.M. references in the book, but they aren’t close enough to have anything to do with each other (somewhere later he’s simply listening to them while writing: “R.E.M. on the stereo”). The way I remember it, he’s coming down a lot harder on the fans, then soon after he’s grooving out to them with no qualification. It’s not exactly scandalous however you embellish it but I figure, if this was a blog he’d have to have some bullshit in there like “hey guys, I know I said these R.E.M. people could never do what I do and that I would destroy them, but you know…the band does have some catchy tunes.” The comments would be apeshit. Backpedaling would be demanded, yet not at all accepted. Anytime he did anything: “Rollins? That fucker can’t even make up his mind about R.E.M.” Nonsense.

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