The Bad Days Will End

I’m a fuckshit.

Why is this still here?

I’m unsure of the metaphysics

Being published is only as good as the work you do. Lately, I’ve been suffering. Honestly, I’m the sort of spoiled soul that has to have ever hair in its right spot before I can spread my toes in the sand and be where I need to be. There are conflicts in my personal life which keep me from being as witted and creative as I would like to be. It’s funny, people tell me “If you’re so fucking miserable, why aren’t you at your best?” which is some terrible Hollywood bullshit that they may or may not have picked up from Little Miss Sunshine.  I don’t doubt that there are folks who are inspired by being miserable, I can be one of them, but I feel that creativity is best spurred when there is a sense of accomplishment and progression. There’s no carrot on the stick as far as I’m concerned and I act accordingly. I’ve been pissing on the same brick wall for song long I’ve forgotten any other means.

I’ve picked up photography again. A few years ago I borrowed a Nikon D70s from the art department and shot with it for most of the semester. Great camera, took some good photos with it. Unfortunately, after giving it back I had no camera of my own to match it and no money to buy one. The Nikon effectively made me outgrow advanced point & shoots, rendering them to be too frustrating and cumbersome. I farted with my Sony DSC-H2 here and there but found that I would have to put more than twice the effort to get a rewarding shot, if you could call it rewarding to begin with. I was very surprised to wake up one morning and find that if you applied for Sony’s credit card you would effectively be able to purchase their A-200K DSLR for $217. A well reviewed entry-level DSLR for less than most middle of the road P&S’? Looks like I just went from “fuck my life” to “fuck my credit rating”.

The A-200k really ended up being a sweet deal, even if the kit lens is the sort of thing nightmares are made of. I’m not a big fan of taking 400 shots to get 5 decent photos, only because your lens really isn’t good for much else other than taking pictures of flowers and grandchildren. It’s completely different to be fighting your gear rather than finding a challenge with it. But for now, I’m dealing with it.

While the best “cheap” lenses tend to be more expensive than the offerings of Nikon or Canon, there is hardly a shortage of above average glass for a sweet price.  Of course, I don’t exactly have a high earning job so even a $150 lens is a lot to think about.

Look at all dem words.

A thought

I don’t like to think of myself as a writer. Nor do I like to compare myself to my inspirations, like Hunter S. Thompson or Beckett, even if I see the parallels. There is me, and there is what came before me. I don’t think it is appropriate to find myself in a man who lived a way I can never understand or in words that I may never know the real purpose behind.

Probably because I’m not a writer.

Music

One of the things I do is contribute to a local media website, mainly music reviews. It’s easy, fun, and a nice way to pad my name. Personally, one of my favorite aspects is the monthly email that comes a week or so before the monthly meeting. We’re given a list, at least 30 albums, with typical A&R info and such. Since I find press release descriptions to be pretty hookey its much easier to use the bane of society, the savior of struggling musicians, Myspace.

Myspace is great for discovering new music and might be the only thing great left about the website. I remember listening to Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip’s “Thou Shalt Always Kill” when it barely had 500 listens. On the other end of it, you can see how the bloggists and the slick indie faggots like Pitchfork and Spin turned an interesting and novel hip hop track into a boring, bloated album proving that a stretched concept is nothing more than just that. And that is indeed the crutch of Myspace, it’s not too hard to make one good song, but to make an album of good songs takes more time than the catapult of the internet allows. Shame that it’s much kinder to bad musicians.

Take Heartsrevolution for example. Described by their PR as “mixing the visual ker-pow! of Japanese anime, grinding discontent of riot grrl & the intelligent disco breakdown”, there isn’t a whole lot to like, much like watching proteins break apart while your house burns down around you. You’ve got your busy 8-bit blips, moody girl with overproduced vocals and sullen attitude (and in this case, a possibly faux British accent), a “straight man” (usually a producer who’s constantly looking for his next bump, no matter the company), and some sort of thinly veiled aspect of grrl power via  questionalbe sexuality. I’ve seen it all before with The Millionaires and Crystal Castles. It’s this sort of inauthentic pandering that people who know better still eat the fuck up. It’s not that there will never be shit music, that there will never be music that isn’t riding a trend, it’s the choice to at worst, to pick the lesser of two evils. Would you sleep with Billy Corgan? Then why the fuck did you buy TheFutureEmbrace?

These days, with how easy and fast it is for pop music to change, people are less likely to own their choices, and thus makes the statement that “rock is dead” ring a bit more true. What happens is that you get this music thats so left of center, so out of the flow, that its more like posturing to say “we’re different” instead of “we’re ourselves” and in the end it doesn’t matter what you have in your bag, we’re all just going to assume its shit.

When I was young.

I feel really old for 22. It’s probably because of how I grew up, the experiences I had, and how I proceeded to make just about every horrible choice you can before leaving my teenage years. I didn’t have a lot going for me in high school. I was “that” kid.

Two decades ago being “that” kid meant “that kid who plays D&D who we beat the shit out of”. A decade ago it meant “that kid who listens to Marilyn Manson (or any other “scary” band) who we spread rumors about wanting to blow up the school, so we beat the shit out of him in hopes that one day he will”. I was really quiet growing up, I was the typical shy, A.D.D afflicted and socially retarded kid who used to run from class to class in junior high in hopes that it wouldn’t give anyone a window to beat the shit out of me. Which it didn’t. A few times, I didn’t even get to my first class before someone punched me out and I got suspended because I pushed the person away and that constituted a fight. I was so disliked for doing so little that, by the word of my fellow students, I was almost expelled for making a bomb threat. This was all just the 7th grade. By the 8th grade I was in S.I.P, the Student Intervention Program, which was the last step before expulsion for students who sold/bought drugs, performed sex acts, or had brutally beaten others. I was the youngest person to ever be enrolled into the program, at the reluctance of the school district, who were pressuring my mom to give me up in ways that were not just insulting to her, but to myself as well.

So I sat in the back center of a room and did my homework for 5 weeks. Since I was there for the sole reason that I got the shit kicked out of me too much, I didn’t fit in. The other kids didn’t seem to mind, or at least, they put up with me. None of us were really in a position to create static. By the time I left I started to really enjoy reading, which was something I would learn to do a lot while dealing with the inadequacies of the school district. It would take me a lot longer to trust people and to feel comfortable around authority figures, something I still struggle with today.

I feel lucky in some ways about being in S.I.P. From time to time I would bump into a kid from the program at the mall or at a concert and each time I would see the same person, they looked worse and worse. You could see mental disorders beginning to manifest on them like cold sores. It made for some tough comparisons.

I returned to junior high a week after Christmas break had ended. I remember walking walk to my first hour, a science class, and trying to not draw any attention to myself. I remember looking down at the threshold as I walked in and before I could even look up, I was laughed out of the classroom.

Sometimes

I think about all the friends I’ve lost and it makes me feel really alone. I don’t think its weakness to want certain people back in your life, but its pathetic to want the moments they took with them.

I can’t say that I am not pathetic at times or completely devoid of weakness.

True Alt Beauty

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