i hate music

i used to love it, now i hate it

useless, self-indulgent bullshit

sandalwood dreams, troll the zen bridge

i'm sick of not measuring up - when i think i did something great, outside opinion is that it's crap - when other people say i did something great, my opinion is that they're full of shit - never the twain shall meet

i'm sick of trying to be a producer - nobody asked or suggested that i do it, i took on this great task myself, thinking it would not feel like a task, but a labour of love - it was for a while, but now it's become a labour of raping myself in the ass

no, you didn't ask me to take this on, i can't cast blame outside my fevered ego, but all i can say at this point is, go hire rick rubin if you want it done right - i don't know what i'm doing, i'm not up to the task, i'm sick of treating it like it's important and worthwhile, and worth pulling all nighters for - it's devastating to get that creative rush, and work all night on something, and find that i'm no further ahead when i land back on the ground - having to re-do, re-do, it's never good enough - and why would it be? what can i expect, it's pathetic, this fragility of mine, my inability to deal with reality - this RPM thing, maybe i'll release it later, when i've got some drive back, if that ever happens - i don't want to work with other people anymore, and try to read their minds - i'm totally burned out, i don't even want to work on music anymore, fuck music

the worst part is how people try to be nice, but i see the effort involved, the strain... i got no one to be angry at except myself, and i'm not meaning to separate my self from people - we do this for our own benefit, avoid drama at any cost - i know this, i hate drama - i know when people are bullshitting me, you can't bullshit a bullshitter - and jesus, what do i want, a fucking ticker tape parade? i guess that when i devote myself to a project like this with religious intensity, there develops a craving for an appropriate level of validation - i try not to make assumptions, but it's also hard not to assume that if there was anything like a shared appreciation for my work, i would know - and i know how moronic i'm being letting this letdown feeling run rampant - at times like these i WISH i was a cold autistic calculator bound to my own self-generated holodeck program like people think i am, then i wouldn't have to feel like such an idiot spinning around in this loop

i'm on the verge of hitting the "burning desire" button, but, nah, i don't think so - i don't want to - i dread what would happen - stranger danger - i don't want a bunch of anonymous life-coaches showing up on my digital doorstep - maybe i just won't use, i don't have to use over this, and i don't want to - i'll just be miserable... so i didn't get my validation from the universe like i said i needed "or else" - i got confirmation of my mediocrity instead - of course that would happen - it's supposed to be a lesson i guess - fucking lessons, fuck you and your opportunities, i'm going to exercise free won't-power and opt out, my hand is not out, i'm too lethargic to learn - i feel like leaning on fatalism and growling FUCK IT! but i don't feel like running out for drugs, the idea is horrific, the way it would compound this negativity... i'm thinking about it constantly, but i can't imagine getting any relief from it, even in the early stages, i wouldn't enjoy it, at most i would reach a delirium with a heavy solvent stink before the grinding comedown

pit boss

one is in the fate groove, one is in the sawtooth, one is in a wagon rut, applying leverage to send selective bloggers flying, as a scheme to hedge bets, but the application was filed in triplicate centuries before it was a gleam in one's eye - throwing your hands in the air doesn't mean you don't care, just that it's impossible to know what to do, and even if you did, it would require re-aligning the poles, and mackin hos, and finding good cheer in hardy barley which ain't in the cards as far as i can see

between the serts and the trazzies and the whatnots, i think something may be wrong with me, physically for sure, and therefore by extension, mentally - these symptoms keep adding up, to what i don't know, i'll call it a slagheap, a droolslathered muckscape, if this is health then the ideal isn't worth a dime - i hope it's a disease of some kind and not my right mind, the kind that tricks me into thinking there was never any healthy living, a new-age devil to play the villain in that fairy story - well smurf villages are becoming real, briar showed me, maybe i can pin my problems on gargamel, an easy target

either way i'm against myself - the cycle of self-flagellation - the bio-feedback makes everything worse, useless information, enough gnosis for a bird's eye view of the nursery, ages since demolition, nothing to see here but a union stymied mob connected crew on another no-show job, no evidence or even inkling of anything other than the loop - it's enough for a life-time, i guess, i didn't ask to not be born, so, forty years of this and it'll be a fait acompli, the self-contained cycle, from here it has a horizon underground, but it's been a while since any sort of purge, what doesn't kill it, me, one, you, her, them, makes the strength weaker, the dark and drowny logic of its spiral, so hypnotic that i'm still in the trance: it all becomes clear when i say that i'm a machine for producing phlegm - and it doesn't explain the allure of those magic faders on my fingers, the worst drug in the world that's more immediately addictive than anything ever, the amen corner chorus for acapela floor splatter

some people think it's a robot - maybe a turing machine, so they'll call it an honorary soul - but if it acts like a robot, those analog folk can't be blamed for thinking along those lines, can they? if it don't throw no big flashy empathy party, how can it be thought to be empathic? they'd need an almost saintly level of empathy to extrapolate that ability to the calculator

i think if i just plunge that cast-metal shovelhead down into the coalpile again the delightful kaJUNK of that crunchy gravelly black stuff aflyin into the furnace will make everything burn bright for another interval, or at the very least, the experience will allow me to get away with that assumption for a temporal period to be determined at a later date... this train ain't headin that way, no, intelligence isn't even on the line, but that's what you get for hoppin on, boy... shoulda read the tag, didn't it say something about, something? boxcar young adult told me that, you know? yeah, you know him, he's got that cheek-length head of hair you thought was the gold standard of cool when you were ten - yeah, you know what i'm referencing, don't be denyin

what's all up with you anyway? you just angry cause you don't got a hobo name? okay, i give you one - ima gonna call you: "MC disc jockey" - yeah, hehe, that's the one - you MCDJ - no, i like MC disc jockey better - whadayou think boxcar douchebag beard? yeah, suit him, don't it? no, you can't be "boxcar transient", we got too many boxcars in this boxcar - i get confused m'self sometime - i get confused bout a lotta things - like am i black, or white, or pirate? whada you think boxcar douchebag beard? nah, i ain't no puerto rican, that's fo sho, you be trippin again - i remember my first twistareefer

Retinal Grain

yes, i've finished a new song tonight...
Mike Hodsall on guitar
Janet Smith on violin


listen

desperate cause i have no inner strength
deprivation, in a hibernation
bed bugs help me to hallucinate
same old nothing, dead weight

you ask me why i'm so quiet
you ask me why i'm so quiet
it's not my place to speak to you
i speak only when spoken to
i speak only when spoken to

i don't hate them, i just look that way
i love them too much, i was made that way
it's not the grimace of misanthropy
it's precognition, it's my destiny
don't wanna be who i'm supposed to be

i'm sorry i'm so sick
i'm sorry i'm apologizing unneccessarily
i'm getting used to vomiting
it doesn't purge anything
except the day's overdose

desperate cause i have no inner strength
mercy fuck granted 2028
it's a date, it's fate
made a good enough impression for a second to cash in
post apocalypse

no reason to stay awake
no reason to stay awake
bedbugs bedbugs

i'm sorry i'm so ill
a desperate invalid
you wear designer clothes
i take designer drugs

i'm sorry i'm so ill
a desperate invalid
i can't take care of you
you won't take care of me

i wish i could take care of you
i would i could be the one
i wish i could take care of you
what do you do with the drunken sailor?
too bad for me you got someone

reptilian riddle
in a limousine tryptamine
reptilian riddle
in a limousine tryptamine
don't ask me what it means

bless one

i guess one does sound like that sometimes ~ when the fog clears, there's still the meds and amino acids intermingling - leaning on the rusty wall, chips of oxidized tin flaking down my shirt collar

there's been moments of bliss, a kind of joy that is natural and pure, so clear, like glacial streams, that doesn't smack of this or that, that doesn't need to be called this or that - so, there's that - there's things to be grateful for - there's the fact that i'm really doing it this time, doing the next right thing, and i could keep doing that

then there's this fact, that there are trials coming that are beyond my imagining right now, that will really test me, and my willingness, and my strength - cause i'm in the glow of fresh recovery – and on top of that, as lady luck would have it, infatuation with a girl, but maybe a cool infatuation, like a cool breeze, and maybe there's glades of love beyond the hills, hazy on the horizon, lovely things, that are always mirages aren’t they? or whatever that is, love and mirage and the baby carriage, and there's categories - maybe one doesn't have to say it, maybe me and her, we don't have to create roles, or even be aware of them, we could de-telescope to a pre-natal garden ~ when one is green, one is growing, when one is ripe, one starts rotting -~- and what of it? does that devalue the youth, or re-value its rare slice of the cycle?

i know i can ride out the storms, get through the moments that test me - there is only this moment? that never seems all that profound to me, it's not clicking - the felt presence of experience is over-rated by sages - except when i'm in that kind of tight embrace with her that i know i've never had with anyone else, there's glades of unsaved waves, and amazing things on the horizon, maybe the labyrinths could dissolve - maybe tonight’s irritability is a blessing, it certainly could be

and besides that, now i get to sleep - been working overtime on waking life, exceeded my quota, now i get to sleep and hopefully not sweat, it's not too late to trend in a desired direction, but that's up to the good and orderly, which has often been an insoluble problem for me, best not to get involved with that brand of trigonometry

poco adagio

Sometimes a new paradigm can sidestep a jinx - even when it's talked about. Sometimes it can't be seen but approached with a blind stagger.

I remember when I would devour war movies like pringles - even fantasize about being in the shit. Sure it would be horrible, sure, sure, but what a fucking thrill! This thrill-craving extended to any kind of violence or carnage as long as I was safely away from it. There was something stylistic about the kinetic energy of steel on flesh, blood splatter, bullets, smoke, destruction of any kind, that turned my crank. The same way chemicals do today - that same stubborn obsession that laughs at reason and rationality.

I went through a paradigm shift in the last ten years - without expending any conscious effort to bring it about, or even realizing that it happened until recently. It involved an expansion of empathy, and a deepening of knowledge, about suffering, about the human condition, about the different ways people think and feel. A lot of that “knowledge” I knew before, and I had reason enough to know that suffering is a consequence of that thrilling carnage, but feeling it is another matter. This empathy was a downer quite often. It soured my enjoyment of movies and 3D shooters and everything I used to live for, because I would be forced to identify suffering that I would feel no obligation to before, when I had the ability to be distant. It took the fun out of my passions, and after a few years, it completely killed the craving for them.

Today, I heard some sad stories at my NA meeting. The woman who was jonesying to leave the hospital room where her dad was dying, so she could get out and use, so she could numb the grief for at least ten seconds, and go from there... The guy who gave up his wife and kids - I know these people. And even now, when they tell their horrible stories which I can relate to, with just a smidgen of extrapolation, I still feel the thrill of that destructive power, combustion of chemicals, flooding of neurotransmitters, stark consequences good and bad, kinetic energy!

But lately, more and more, I feel the dark and bitter tragedy of it all. The ratio changes a little more each day, on the whole. But the dynamics are so spiky and serrated and sea-sawing between insanity and sobriety. And there’s so many stumbles and step backwards for every little patch of ground gained. I can only hope that this new paradigm mirrors the last one, where I graduated from half-hearted aims at mass murder. I did say “half-hearted” mind you - whoever might take that the wrong way. But “half-hearted” is far too close for comfort, coming from a later, more-seasoned vantage. But Christ, not nearly enough, cause there's so far to go, so little peace of mind, and sometimes I splinter chips of skull into my brain trying to get past a blockage - when the whole time, the blockage is on its merry way out of my head on its own terms. That's as spiritual as I get these days.

win it ba ck again

"win it ba  ck again" the sign said

with a gap between the 'ba' and the 'ck' stick-on letters

like some gang of pro-bono hobos

gung-ho for the lottery industry

had vandalized a gas station for the purpose

of pimping gambling, just that

no particular casino or scratch and win

"win it ba  ck again"

sounded so desperate as a proselytization

some amateur solicitation for dreaming through gaming

win what back?

the soul you lost in the '80s?

the crack you vaporized?

"you're a winner just for playing"

the sign said to me, "and not hating the game"

really, you, win hope, right here on freshwater road

just for hearing the message, yo

double or nothing

whatever you lost (and we're sure it's a lot)

you can win back in equal measure

you can be a fat cat like wall street wants

that's what wall street wants, in fact

that's all wall street wants is fat cats

some conditions may apply

painful reminders

artistic expression
reminds me of ego
"look at this thing i made, aren't i awesome?"

ego makes me do things for instant gratification
reminds me of drugs
"look at this drug i took, aren't i awesome?"

drugs remind me of hangovers
"look at this pain i've caused, aren't i the scum of the earth?"

that's why it's hard to do anything creative when i'm down like that
it's painful
maybe i should play bach, instead of trying to improvise
but that takes work, playing bach, requires a lot of memory
i did manage to get a few good feelings while improvising
when i'm this depressed, i get more expressive than practically ever
even though it's hard to play even a note, it's the tragic feeling
of nothing having any value, nothing i do being of any use
no light at the end of the tunnel, no more chances
but i put it all into the music, that feeling sometimes
i guess it helped, a little, just now
as does writing, a little
don't want to lie down, i haven't earned it yet, haven't lived enough normal life
for a day yet

why do i get pissed off

at people who play music
that i don't like

when i actually even like it

it's MY music - you're not allowed to like it!
territorial pissings

i'm not like them

but i can pretend

lucky rocketship underwear aren't gonna work

i look desperately forward to the time that they will - i remember times when they have, but no date has been set, it's so indefinite

2+2=5=god is my summary of kirkegaard's spiritual outlook
you must believe in spite of rationality to get near the place that god exists
that's sort of how cyril thinks too, i think, or feels
he says something like: if there was no necessity for faith
there would be no power or point to god
that makes sense to me, but it also seems coldly utilitarian, self-serving
it's paradoxical, kirkegaard would agree

i can neither feel or think to any purpose these days
poisoned in mind and body
and certainly soul, wherever that is
this is a bad place to be
but there could be chasms even below that
maybe that knowledge is keeping me alive
or the thought of lucky rocketship underwear being useful
like in some barely remembered happy enough time

trying to get healthy
been coughing for so long
i threw my smokes in the garbage
which i've done many times
i thought, let's see how i feel when i get my next urge to smoke
i'll look down at the garbage and think about digging them out
if i think long enough, i'll decide not to
anyway, i thought to force some future thought
maybe i won't take that shortcut to thinking i normally do

upon reflection, i realized i also had to tear them up
because if there was the convenience of pre-rolled tailors lying there
i would probably dig them out

existential xmas

a sort of camusian "why not?"
sure, why not, it'll do

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that's why pencils have erasers

rubber pretense - but it's a cleansing feel, to wash away the words that shouldn't have been said - light hurts, but it's been worse - might be a resolution, no damnit, it will be a resolution, i resolve, even jumping the gun on the new year - well, new years eve itself doesn't count - or maybe it will - it's just another brick in the wall, all in all, rubber pretense - i need an accountant to add up all the damage i've caused, maybe then i'll get the picture

the terrible prospect of struldbrugian necessity

the struldbrugs are immortal beings, or near immortal, as i remember – they live on an island once visited by gulliver – they’re a race "cursed" with immortality, living long past any sensible limit, growing more and more decrepit in both mind and body, wishing for their misery to end - i guess it was swift's way of, stating, something

those are the shitty years, denis leary said – but anything would be preferable to death, wouldn't it? therin lies the reactionary posture, the necessity for believing in the void

but you wouldn't attempt to string out a beethoven symphony as long as possible would you? water it down to nothing to make it last as long as possible? you wouldn't pad it with mediocre beethoven for longevity, you'd be happy to have heard a great symphony, and accept that it was over - it was as long as it needed to be, right? a well written symphony, not a note too many or too few

but, what if you were never ever ever going to hear any music again, for eternity? then might you string out medicore beethoven? that's the more crucial question, in this context

and plus, most of our lives aren't beethoven symphonies, some of them are too full of crap, or cut short abruptly, as least that's how it seems to me - so why not rage against the dying of the light?

"and accept that it was over..." (and go home) - well, when you extend the metaphor like that it doesn't sound so bad - what is home? where i was before i was born? a realm of spirit? but that's manichean, right?

what i mean by the title is that the idea of this being necessary, for intellectual logic, or emotional logic, or whatever... is sort of dreadful, aweful, uh, et cetera... nevermand

safe house

dark house, lonely house, safe house, with a hidden door, not well-hidden
and one window - and a bed

safe house with a lego replica - some cleaning to be done, but 24 hours to do it
some more ill-gotten rest in the safe house, unconscious fingers might accidentally
turn down the guilt knob at some point

short-lived activities in the safe house, waiting for time to stretch again
or contract - not under contract - it's the off season

convalescence in lausane

i'm a lazy mexican - you can't see me
i'm not even life-like, i'm a cheap knockoff, a statuette
an inanimate object, so you can't see me
if you thought that was a human being, you're hallucinating
run along, go about your day

i'm impenetrable - there's nothing to worry about
i'm immortal, probably, or thereabouts, every day's a holiday
please ignore me today, i need to rest
rejuvenation, i'm trying to be all things to all people
but it makes me tired, to do that

good morning world!

or actually, forget i said anything, just leave me alone

President of Vice

muddled, so sa so mu-muddled - all i can think to do is write and write, even though writing feels bad and muddled as well - so often it's exasperation and desperation that move me to write - maybe it'll feel better later, maybe it'll seem worthwhile - material and words are dark magic at the moment, a lot of trickery i don't understand or care to

but i get cool shivers here and there, those are nice - they're like the woodsprite matrix, those cool shivers - the fairy dust that exists nowhere except in this ultra-rare limited-edition cerebral cortex that i wear like a fashion statement - only in there - it's a neurocortical pathway in many dimensions - when the subject thinks of the woodsprite matrix, it shows up on brain scans the same way as optical information received through the retinas, only dimmer - like an imprint

i need nice things very badly now - people are nice, even mean people are nice in their own way - should i kiss the viper's fang? material isn't so nice, but it could be kind of nice with some spice - it's something tangible anyway, when living in my head is so torturous

i've got a killer idea for a drawing though, i want to follow it through - it's what i need at home, a window into another world

can't stand some of these conversations i hear around me - such immense possibility, to get involved with people, and yet, the frustrating implausibility of it - i can't get in there, i won't bother - i just want to lie down, i've done my time - this computer is so slow - the duck is dead - the party's gettin' low rent

Zero -~-Crosser, or, everyone is better

the heart strings can resonate loudly if i let them... there they go...

i wish i could draw you - that would seem worthwhile, if i had the ability - once upon a time, you let me into your life - i can hardly believe it in retrospect, how did that happen? me of all people - i remember how it felt for a while - like being in heaven - presumably - and that feeling faded and i got complacent in the relationship, as most people do, but it still felt pretty pretty good - it would have worked for me - oh well - i sold my share for credit default swaps, or something, i dunno - this economy confuses me - justin said it makes sense for a while, then the econ textbooks come out of the blue with all this abstract strangitude and you're screwed

there ain't no devil, that's just god when he's drunk - apparently we're not nutty bunnies after all, we're just college guys

fyi, i attempted suicide - not really, but it makes a good story
the kind you can't share with certain people
but strangers, sure, giddeyup!

i'm only as sick as my secrets, someone told me
so i spilled the secrets, but i still felt pretty sick
almost felt like i needed some new secrets to feel a bit better, so i did that
but i still felt sick

my tapeworm doesn't run me, but i run my tapeworm sometimes, for fun, presumably - a fun run, is the idea, i exercise my parasite - but it don't come to no good

clench, relax, clench, relax... clench
cardiovascular masturbation
going up the elevator of perception today, the
eternal moment...

been a long long time since enlightenment - don't feel entitled to it anymore - but a past self could serve as well as a future self - for a role model - i was better then, like everybody - healthy, compared to now, in a lot of ways, although i wouldn't want to bring the naivete of those days to nowadays

i'm seeing nelson's front street in my mind's eye, even feeling nelson's front street in my mind's... whatever it is - our deepest fear is that we are all powerful beyond measure - all-powerful, or we're all powerful? what did nelson mandela mean? hmmm...

i drew a tower stretching into the sky from the perspective of an observer looking upwards, cause i can draw buildings much better than people - it felt alright - i might like to draw a good poster-sized version to put up on my empty walls - something that means something, or that i feel something from, an image - no pattern virtuosity, but a big bold statement of some kind, that's what i need - i also drew a person today, imagine that, who can be clearly seen to be lifting himself off the ground by his own bootstraps - he's actually levitating - i like that drawing - the ridiculousness of it - the impossibility - a cartoon paradox to express my dread and hopes and the confusion of it all

it's pretty okay to work here, when i don't want to yell SHUT THE FUCK UP! at people around me - that happens a lot, but otherwise, it's alright - maybe i need to vent somehow - like by doing this, for example - i got a bad attitude, sometimes - like i wrote this rant about the guy who walks around with earphones blasting pantera so loud that everyone can hear it - i wrote: fuck your music - it stinks of you - i'll gladly grant you ownership - wear it, advertise - be a buffoon - walk around, walk proud, look around to see if anyone is recognizing your coolness - rest assured, they are, how could they not, with music that cool? and it reflects your coolness for choosing it, like it's an identity - i remember when i was ten, i empathize

then i wrote: "presumption on all sides", to admit how presumptuous i was being about people's motivations and thoughts and such - i was sitting at a table with a bunch of people at the love of learning center - well-read people in dire straights, intelligent people - i couldn't presume any kind of superiority in anything, really - "everyone is better", i wrote - "but right now i've got no patience to listen to people who aren't addicts, or who say they're not, drug-a-logging about the crazy shit they used to do... byee..." i don't know how to spell that newfoundlandism, where they say a heavily-accented "boy" to finish every sentence

i drew a cloud bank regressing to the horizon behind the tower - reminded me of that drawing i did with a girl that i had a thing with years ago... and she wrote a song about it too, "my dragonfly" - so i wrote "no shrine" - i'm not building a shrine to anyone, though i do write about people from the past quite often, usually in codes

no, there's no crak on junk street and that's okay, it's a peaceful day, i've made peace with that, in my way, which is half-assed, but that's better than no ass - you know, i can't live with myself like this - i can't live like this with myself - there's a better place for me - i don't have to die first - there's a tower - writing these words is a first step