There is about 1/4th of Seattle that should consider themselves lucky tonight. This, the wettest & coldest Memorial Day weekend I can ever remember, at least they are not alone.
I've watched them in the bars all weekend long. Making out right there in the booth or filing two by two into the bathroom for a passion more private than the bar room allows. On cold rainy nights, it pays to not be by ones self. Even if it's just settling in for a few movies, cozy on sofas & kindred in mood.
Even my upstairs neighbor seems to be content this blustery weekend. I've heard the sounds of a porno tape running on an endless loop for the last three days. The moans resonating along the pipework between our apartments, His heavy footfalls beating their way to the bathroom every 20 minutes.
I am a lonely man, it's true. Even in a room of my closest friends I often times find myself cloistered in private thoughts, alienated from the discourse happening all around me.
Perhaps this is the effluvia of being a writer. Of placing ones self into this situation to begin with.
Solitude is my currency. The eternal outsider, peeking in at other seemingly content lives.
It's wet & it's cold & it's supposed to be summer.
I want to meet a girl & I can't even remember how to.
These empty hours of the early a.m. eat away at my very being.
I put up blockades, I push people away, I am afraid of trust so I don't do it.
When I meet a girl these days we rarely get 3 drinks in before I'm thinking about
what is going to go wrong if we end up in a relationship. Questions like these go through my head:
"Is she going to smother me?" "require too much of my time?"
"does she have a drinking problem?" "Does she already hate me?"
The last girl I was seeing left a few months ago, we were together for over a year
but it wasn't until we weren't seeing each other anymore that I realized it wasn't much of a relationship to begin with.
There was no passion, no long kisses on bar stools or any public affection for that matter,
definitely no dirty bathroom sex. Or dirty sex at all
It was a very well behaved affair & quite frankly... It was boring.
There were boundaries & rules & manners. All things that I don't equate with passion
but I was trying something different, I wanted a healthy relationship for once in my life
& I suppose I had one, but I felt more alienated with her the longer we were together & that's not
how I thought it was supposed to work.
Now I'm trying to piece some semblance of satisfaction out of saloon conversation,
I'm going to bars almost every night again. I don't know where else to meet girls
& even when I'm tired or cant afford it. I can't skip a night & run the risk of that one night
being the one that got away.
I know... Real healthy right?
But meant kisses are like a drug sweeter than any powder or elixir
& it's been so damned long since I've tasted that hunger. I fiend for it like a fix.
Everything in my gut tells me that if I want to be a good writer, I must suffer for my craft
Sacrifice my heart to it like an Aztec ritual. That I will be a perpetual outsider
an outrider to the warm orange glow of human happiness.
The best stanzas are writ with just as much blood as ink
solitude is my office space. Soliloquy my only conversation.
I'm not exactly sure where the notion that a writer has to suffer comes from
Probably in the beginning. Plath being the first writer that ever made me want to try it myself
I knew her biography. There is an authenticity to a work like the Bell Jar that needs no
acid test to prove it. From Plath into Sexton & her tragic career.
It seems like she took on the responsibility of suffering for the sake of selling books
For the sake of staying credible. Anne's audience didn't want her happy & content. Churning out safe sonnets in her later years & growing old with her children. They wanted the mania. Voyeurs to the volatile vehemence that her mental anguish fostered. They lived vicariously through it, & they still do.
In a more banal way. I guess that tv show My So Called Life had a little to do with it.
My favorite episode was always the "Mr. Racine"(I wouldn't get the pun in his name until years later)episode.
Where Angela & her friends get a new creative writing teacher & he sparks the wild desire of self expression in all of them before ultimately being fired for going too far.
Angela tracks him down outside of school & his life is a shambles. Going from job to job in his beat up little MG, his newest wife filing for a divorce. That, to me seemed authentic.
It is time for band practice, I will finish this later. We have 3 more shows booked for the summer
& it looks to be a busy one.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
So Fucking....
Sofa King Drunk
I am sure that you are fine
whatever that may entail.
I am sure that eggs taste
just as bland when you are in love. I am sure the word forgive
means the same thing it always had
And babies cry in the mornings
and lovers need attention
and
and
The basic mechanics of life do not alter
just because you are in love.
You cannot pick up the embers of a fire
& expect not to burn your fingers.
Days always arrive in much the same way
& the moon still does not stare back at you.
Sofa King Drunk
I am positive there is nothing wrong with you
that a hug & a Bloody Mary
couldn't fix.
I am certain that when you finally slip off into sleep tonight
you will still awake
dissatisfied,
wishing that your dreams weren't just.
Cuts still mend rather slowly
& constant profuse bleeding
requires the use of a tourniquet.
Your being in love is not going to change any of that.
Red is still red & yellow
is still nauseating.
The sound of human lives is still
distracting with it's chaotic din.
Alcoholics will still go through their day
as alcoholics,
& you will still go through your day
being in love.
And that is the only thing
that is going to change.
I am sure that you are fine
whatever that may entail.
I am sure that eggs taste
just as bland when you are in love. I am sure the word forgive
means the same thing it always had
And babies cry in the mornings
and lovers need attention
and
and
The basic mechanics of life do not alter
just because you are in love.
You cannot pick up the embers of a fire
& expect not to burn your fingers.
Days always arrive in much the same way
& the moon still does not stare back at you.
Sofa King Drunk
I am positive there is nothing wrong with you
that a hug & a Bloody Mary
couldn't fix.
I am certain that when you finally slip off into sleep tonight
you will still awake
dissatisfied,
wishing that your dreams weren't just.
Cuts still mend rather slowly
& constant profuse bleeding
requires the use of a tourniquet.
Your being in love is not going to change any of that.
Red is still red & yellow
is still nauseating.
The sound of human lives is still
distracting with it's chaotic din.
Alcoholics will still go through their day
as alcoholics,
& you will still go through your day
being in love.
And that is the only thing
that is going to change.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
That's it... That's the poem
I know I'm not supposed to drink & post. But going over some poems for class tomorrow & I did an edit I really like.
The Poem
Scrambled eggs get so boring
That's it.
That's the poem.
Burn the pages as I write them
just to give the words
some brevity.
Slice off your face & sew it
onto the dogs neck
His tongue hanging out of your mouth
Panting.
I watched a young blind woman walk through the
park on a pleasant spring afternoon.
Her legs were tan
Her legs were shaven
Her beauty inexplicable
I followed her for four city blocks as she tapped ahead with her cane
I had never seen such alluring legs
God Damn you I am lonely
I sat back down on the sidewalk to seethe in shame
I am not the every man
I am just a very man
but I'm not man enough.
Waking up in my own bed
with some relief that the cops were not called
for what I dreamt they had been
My felonious feeling fleeting upon waking
My apartment not the crime scene
I thought I had seen
I am not a pariah lady, I eat breakfast just like you.
my yolk no more yellow
my toast no less burnt around the edges
The Worst Ever?
No, it gets worse
believe me.
Add: 2 parts bourbon
1 part low self esteem
Bring to a boil & let simmer over low heat
while whisking in
1 tsp. of my usual medicine
2 C. of your red affection
Like I said
Scrambled eggs get so boring
that is it
that's the poem
The Poem
Scrambled eggs get so boring
That's it.
That's the poem.
Burn the pages as I write them
just to give the words
some brevity.
Slice off your face & sew it
onto the dogs neck
His tongue hanging out of your mouth
Panting.
I watched a young blind woman walk through the
park on a pleasant spring afternoon.
Her legs were tan
Her legs were shaven
Her beauty inexplicable
I followed her for four city blocks as she tapped ahead with her cane
I had never seen such alluring legs
God Damn you I am lonely
I sat back down on the sidewalk to seethe in shame
I am not the every man
I am just a very man
but I'm not man enough.
Waking up in my own bed
with some relief that the cops were not called
for what I dreamt they had been
My felonious feeling fleeting upon waking
My apartment not the crime scene
I thought I had seen
I am not a pariah lady, I eat breakfast just like you.
my yolk no more yellow
my toast no less burnt around the edges
The Worst Ever?
No, it gets worse
believe me.
Add: 2 parts bourbon
1 part low self esteem
Bring to a boil & let simmer over low heat
while whisking in
1 tsp. of my usual medicine
2 C. of your red affection
Like I said
Scrambled eggs get so boring
that is it
that's the poem
Monday, May 10, 2010
With Love & Trust & Friends & Hammers...
Every summer needs it's soundtrack. An album newly discovered just around the time the weather is getting nice & the days start getting longer. It's an annual ritual for me & it tends to serve as a time capsule, wherein everytime I listen to a previous summers soundtrack the moments & moods are encapsulated beautifully.
For as long as I've lived in Seattle the go to band for summer soundtracks has been the Hold Steady.
Though they have been together since 2003 or so, I didn't discover them until 2007. I was reading a review of something or other in the Stranger & they made reference to Hold Steady's Craig Finn's songwritng style as a mix between Bruce Springsteen & Blake Schwarzenbach(Oh... Both B.S.'rs) I found a copy of Almost Killed Me at the library. It was the end of the summer & I had only lived here a few months, I didn't know too many people, I loved album long story driven narratives. They helped me envision being with actual people when in my real life I was cut off & lonely 99% of the time. I was also drinking heavily every single evening. Mostly by myself. Hold Steady's stories about Holly, Charlemagne, & Gideon were compelling, I knew these folks, I knew the midwestern cities from whence they came & I understood their midwestern dreams. They had been disillusioned & lived in the scene too long, and so had I.
Almost Killed Me said everything I had always wanted to say into a microphone, but lacked a credible band to do so. I immediately stopped writing. I started drinking more.
By the start of the next summer I had graduated to Boys & Girls in America
Heather, my girlfriend at the time had it sitting on her cd rack. Now if it's not enough that I am stuck in my own head most of the time & am mostly self centered, I also usually hate other peoples music collections. Especially girlfriends music collections (until after the relationship, when I can listen in from outside of the situation with new ears, then this becomes it's own time capsule to me, & I can see the brilliance in her taste. I never said that I wasn't an asshole) I was drunk & sitting smoking by a window in her apartment, I was talking about Springsteen & going off on some tangent. I remember Heather calmly telling me that she had this mythical cd I had heard tell of. She put it on... I hated it.
Boys & Girls in America sounded to me initially like an inside joke that I wasn't in on. It was that damned song Chips Ahoy that seemed to negate the brilliance of songs like You can make him like you. For every Citrus there was a Southtown Girls that didn't blow me or the boys from Minneapolis/St. Paul away.
Days passed in a humid haze of hangover sweats and hunger pangs. The summer Seattle sun became the hot soft light, & the same kooks that can't cum but sure can kiss were the people I surrounded myself with. The album I initially couldn't stand was a blank canvas that I filled in with effluvia from my own life. Once I had made it mine, I began to love it. To see it's clever quirks & it's Thin Lizzy soul. Stuck Between Stations is the first song on the album, it's brilliance is immediate to the initiated. A song about the death of the poet John Berryman that starts with a quote from Kerouac's Sal Paradise. This was Lit-Nerd Rock, & Rock-Nerd Rock all rolled into one. It took up alot of time playing spot the references & then you sit back feeling smart & clever & pleased with yourself. I did alot of this to poor Heather, who was patient & feigned interest just enough to let me continue. It passed the time to the next summer & Stay Positive.
To understand the impact of Stay Positive on me, it's important to understand the context of my life at the time. Summer 2008. It seems like a lifetime ago. I was clean, I no longer used drugs it's true, but that's a damned far sight from having your shit together. I didn't know this at the time, and before I come in saying the very first song on the previously mentioned album changed my life... I will attempt to give you some perspective. I needed a change in my life, I needed purpose. I was off of drugs but all I did was work & drink & this lifestyle was quickly losing it's luster for me. I no longer wrote because I was afraid of the implications, I was afraid I couldn't do it without drugs & if I couldn't... What was I? Besides, the Hold Steady already said everything I had wanted to say. Heather was still with me, but I was always distant & moody. I wanted a change & I didn't know how to go about it, she didn't have any ideas either. I spoke of some far off film school I might attend, or some possible military career. Anything but cooking all night every night, waking up hungover. Stuck in this cycle. Paying the rent forever & over again, it was enough to make terminal heroin addiction seem like a viable option. I've always needed my girlfriends to be part mother, part nurse, half nun, half whore... It might be a very Victorian construct, but fuck it, it's true. I didn't know how to ask Heather to be this, I might not have been wholly conscious of the need myself. But I felt shiftless & wasted. I had lofty thoughts & ideas, with no clear way of making them happen. Everyday I felt my age or older & I knew I couldn't last. Enter Constructive Summer at the beginning of summer 2008. While starting the band & the novel & going back to school was still a year away for me this song was the seed that was left to germinate in my head. Part of the catalyst for the change I desired. The idea that every summer, every year you can start your life fresh ,all you need is a few hammers & some friends who love you, then you can sit by the skyline with your friends looking down at your creation & laugh while you all share a bottle of wine. While it's true that I am a sappy & sentimental man, this message in this song literally makes my eyes water with unfettered joy. Those of you who know me, know that this is rare.
It is an anthem to change, and exactly what I needed at the time. For me the inherent possibilities of actions, any actions gave me the will to take charge of my own life & where it was heading. A year later when starting work on what would be the French Letters, it was this song that was always on my mind. The chorus chanting in my head as we took the bus down to the Rainier Brewery to record. A few weeks ago I remarked on the way to the studio that I had often wondered if the band would be together by the summer. The remark got an odd reaction by the rest of the band, & I did a poor job of explaining what I meant. I had meant the feeling of accomplishment & satisfaction the characters in Constructive Summer were talking about in the song.
The Stay Positive album became my St. Christopher's Cross for the duration of that summer. Although I didn't have anything in motion yet, I knew I was going to do "something" & whether that was a shooting spree or a film, it didn't matter. I cheered up a little bit. I had the beginings of a purpose again.
I understand what I'm saying. It's akin to some British musicians in 1967 listening to the Rolling Stones & saying "Damn man, that's what I wanted to do... Might as well give up. American blues riffs cannot possibly be stretched any further!" I am pessimistic & I am also a fatalist. What someone else even hears in this song is still up to interpretation. I only know what it did for me. It gave me hope at a time when I was grasping for mere threads of it.
This was supposed to actually be a review somewhat of the Hold Steady's new album Heaven is Whenever. I didn't make it that far. I need to stay on point, stick with the narrative. It's the poet in me that likes meandering off of the thesis. It's been a heady day.
Hell, it's been a heady week. I need to climb out of my own mind for a moment. Talk to people, kiss a girl, breathe fresh air. I might get around to actually talking about Heaven is Whenever & how I don't like it, yet. There's a song about a waitress I enjoy, waitress loving is the kind of loving I understand.
There is a new Hold Steady album, & a brand new summer getting ready to at least hold tight. The truth is I am lonely. I probably always have been. That's why I look to records to define seasons for me, or books to defend me.
Wow. that's a fun note to end this on.
For as long as I've lived in Seattle the go to band for summer soundtracks has been the Hold Steady.
Though they have been together since 2003 or so, I didn't discover them until 2007. I was reading a review of something or other in the Stranger & they made reference to Hold Steady's Craig Finn's songwritng style as a mix between Bruce Springsteen & Blake Schwarzenbach(Oh... Both B.S.'rs) I found a copy of Almost Killed Me at the library. It was the end of the summer & I had only lived here a few months, I didn't know too many people, I loved album long story driven narratives. They helped me envision being with actual people when in my real life I was cut off & lonely 99% of the time. I was also drinking heavily every single evening. Mostly by myself. Hold Steady's stories about Holly, Charlemagne, & Gideon were compelling, I knew these folks, I knew the midwestern cities from whence they came & I understood their midwestern dreams. They had been disillusioned & lived in the scene too long, and so had I.
Almost Killed Me said everything I had always wanted to say into a microphone, but lacked a credible band to do so. I immediately stopped writing. I started drinking more.
By the start of the next summer I had graduated to Boys & Girls in America
Heather, my girlfriend at the time had it sitting on her cd rack. Now if it's not enough that I am stuck in my own head most of the time & am mostly self centered, I also usually hate other peoples music collections. Especially girlfriends music collections (until after the relationship, when I can listen in from outside of the situation with new ears, then this becomes it's own time capsule to me, & I can see the brilliance in her taste. I never said that I wasn't an asshole) I was drunk & sitting smoking by a window in her apartment, I was talking about Springsteen & going off on some tangent. I remember Heather calmly telling me that she had this mythical cd I had heard tell of. She put it on... I hated it.
Boys & Girls in America sounded to me initially like an inside joke that I wasn't in on. It was that damned song Chips Ahoy that seemed to negate the brilliance of songs like You can make him like you. For every Citrus there was a Southtown Girls that didn't blow me or the boys from Minneapolis/St. Paul away.
Days passed in a humid haze of hangover sweats and hunger pangs. The summer Seattle sun became the hot soft light, & the same kooks that can't cum but sure can kiss were the people I surrounded myself with. The album I initially couldn't stand was a blank canvas that I filled in with effluvia from my own life. Once I had made it mine, I began to love it. To see it's clever quirks & it's Thin Lizzy soul. Stuck Between Stations is the first song on the album, it's brilliance is immediate to the initiated. A song about the death of the poet John Berryman that starts with a quote from Kerouac's Sal Paradise. This was Lit-Nerd Rock, & Rock-Nerd Rock all rolled into one. It took up alot of time playing spot the references & then you sit back feeling smart & clever & pleased with yourself. I did alot of this to poor Heather, who was patient & feigned interest just enough to let me continue. It passed the time to the next summer & Stay Positive.
To understand the impact of Stay Positive on me, it's important to understand the context of my life at the time. Summer 2008. It seems like a lifetime ago. I was clean, I no longer used drugs it's true, but that's a damned far sight from having your shit together. I didn't know this at the time, and before I come in saying the very first song on the previously mentioned album changed my life... I will attempt to give you some perspective. I needed a change in my life, I needed purpose. I was off of drugs but all I did was work & drink & this lifestyle was quickly losing it's luster for me. I no longer wrote because I was afraid of the implications, I was afraid I couldn't do it without drugs & if I couldn't... What was I? Besides, the Hold Steady already said everything I had wanted to say. Heather was still with me, but I was always distant & moody. I wanted a change & I didn't know how to go about it, she didn't have any ideas either. I spoke of some far off film school I might attend, or some possible military career. Anything but cooking all night every night, waking up hungover. Stuck in this cycle. Paying the rent forever & over again, it was enough to make terminal heroin addiction seem like a viable option. I've always needed my girlfriends to be part mother, part nurse, half nun, half whore... It might be a very Victorian construct, but fuck it, it's true. I didn't know how to ask Heather to be this, I might not have been wholly conscious of the need myself. But I felt shiftless & wasted. I had lofty thoughts & ideas, with no clear way of making them happen. Everyday I felt my age or older & I knew I couldn't last. Enter Constructive Summer at the beginning of summer 2008. While starting the band & the novel & going back to school was still a year away for me this song was the seed that was left to germinate in my head. Part of the catalyst for the change I desired. The idea that every summer, every year you can start your life fresh ,all you need is a few hammers & some friends who love you, then you can sit by the skyline with your friends looking down at your creation & laugh while you all share a bottle of wine. While it's true that I am a sappy & sentimental man, this message in this song literally makes my eyes water with unfettered joy. Those of you who know me, know that this is rare.
It is an anthem to change, and exactly what I needed at the time. For me the inherent possibilities of actions, any actions gave me the will to take charge of my own life & where it was heading. A year later when starting work on what would be the French Letters, it was this song that was always on my mind. The chorus chanting in my head as we took the bus down to the Rainier Brewery to record. A few weeks ago I remarked on the way to the studio that I had often wondered if the band would be together by the summer. The remark got an odd reaction by the rest of the band, & I did a poor job of explaining what I meant. I had meant the feeling of accomplishment & satisfaction the characters in Constructive Summer were talking about in the song.
The Stay Positive album became my St. Christopher's Cross for the duration of that summer. Although I didn't have anything in motion yet, I knew I was going to do "something" & whether that was a shooting spree or a film, it didn't matter. I cheered up a little bit. I had the beginings of a purpose again.
I understand what I'm saying. It's akin to some British musicians in 1967 listening to the Rolling Stones & saying "Damn man, that's what I wanted to do... Might as well give up. American blues riffs cannot possibly be stretched any further!" I am pessimistic & I am also a fatalist. What someone else even hears in this song is still up to interpretation. I only know what it did for me. It gave me hope at a time when I was grasping for mere threads of it.
This was supposed to actually be a review somewhat of the Hold Steady's new album Heaven is Whenever. I didn't make it that far. I need to stay on point, stick with the narrative. It's the poet in me that likes meandering off of the thesis. It's been a heady day.
Hell, it's been a heady week. I need to climb out of my own mind for a moment. Talk to people, kiss a girl, breathe fresh air. I might get around to actually talking about Heaven is Whenever & how I don't like it, yet. There's a song about a waitress I enjoy, waitress loving is the kind of loving I understand.
There is a new Hold Steady album, & a brand new summer getting ready to at least hold tight. The truth is I am lonely. I probably always have been. That's why I look to records to define seasons for me, or books to defend me.
Wow. that's a fun note to end this on.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Back to the band....And the Hubris of Diarists.
Johnny Naffah had taken way too many classes for Fall quarter. He had to be up by 8 am every morning & this put our newly formed band into quite a little bind. Along with varying work schedules with the school on top, he just couldn't make practice sessions. Luke asked his wife Courtney to sit in on bass one evening, we switched Puglisi to guitar.
While I had initial apprehensions about having a married couple in the band, Court took this opportunity to show us that she was a competent & talented musician in her own right. My fleeting thoughts to Fleetwood Mac quickly subsided as she plugged in a bass guitar as large as she was & plucked out a perfect staccato... This might actually sound good.
I quickly dubbed her "Criminal Courts". A band has to have a rapport to work well together. Nicknames are always important. it breaks the tension of the moment, forces someone to not take themselves too seriously.
Her bass style immeadiately reminded me of old school hard core, laying down the bones of the track so that the song could form the flesh around it. This approach to our songwriting style gave us a rhythm we previously did not have.
In Johnny's absence we quickly penned out the songs that would form the basis of the beginnings of our set list.
The sessions exist under the name "Handsome Mike & the Tagalongs" We were filling the canvas of songs like "West Ashley" & "Dead Letter Office".
There is a one off on this session that still amazes me to this day. It's a stream of consciousness poem called "Oh Romance" With Puglisi riffing over my freestyled lines. I break off into the absurd talking about masturbating a memory, I begin giggling, he plays solo's in the vein of mid 1980's Mtv metal...Even ending the song with the final refrain from "Sweet Child O' Mine" It's a fun session.
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/User/My%20Documents/Downloads/Handsome%20Mike%20And%20The%20Tagalongs/Handsome%20Mike%20And%20The%20Tagalongs/Oh%20Romance.mp3
So here we all were. Bastards in a lounge, except suddenly we weren't all bastards anymore. We had a girl in the mix.
I had a name I had been keeping under my hat for quite a few years. I have always been taken by the Victorian era & the writing that it had produced. The onset of World War I spread European slang from one continent to another, phrases picked up in trenches became the dialect of the day. Sheep gut prophylactics used to come packaged in little manila envelopes. Like a tiny letter. Anything "blue" or sexual was considered "French" at the time. Oral sex when asked for at a brothel was called a "French Kiss" & so condoms were referred to as French Letters. It was a perfect name for a spoken word band. And now it had it's perfect implication. The band who had changed it's name every week finally had it's moniker.
The last chapbook of poetry I had written while living in Charleston SC was called "Dead Letters". Most of our early songs were from this period. The chapbook was supposed to be published by Semantikon Press in 2007. I hadn't heard anything form Semantikon in years. I figured it was a perfect way to get those pieces out into the public.
It takes alot of hubris to be a diarist. A journal writer, a blogger.
It takes alot of nerve to be a writer in the first place. To only tell your side of a story. Henry Rollins, while I'm not such a big fan any longer, said it best on Black Flags' live album from 1984 "Who's got the 10 & a 1/2?"
"It takes a long time to make a story short..." He says "It takes a long time to make a story what it is..."
Henry is correct here. It does indeed take a long time to make a story short. But that might not always be the pressing issue. There's a certain type of person that needs to lay their life out in crude cuneiform to make it make sense.
There's a certain type of person that finds this exercise cathartic in a way. Most people traipse over the little mistakes in their lives hoping that noone else notices. A diarist is not that sort of being.
A diarist dissects. Always picking apart the mistakes. And always only interested in their own point of view.
There is a certain stigma attached to what I'm doing here. People might react differently around me if they know I'm going to write about it later. It's human nature, when a recordist is present people display what they would like to see presented.
I lost a girl over this blog ostensibly. I don't believe it. The reason that is.
There were a few issues between us, but there is always a few issues between anyone involved in a relationship. It comes down to a series of compromises & what you are willing to give up ultimately for the other person.
The idea that I might someday write about her proved to be too much to hear her tell it. And because I am the diarist I get to make it so.
That is all I will ever hear out of our final conversation. Self centered or not, I was saying it takes alot of nerve to do something like this.
I was flipping through an old notebook yesterday, looking for old poems that might be turned into new songs.
I found a little note I had never noticed before, inscribed at the very end of the notebook by a girl I was dating in Maine 10 years ago.
She had drawn a little picture of herself & under it she had written
"Left alone like this for you to look back on... I hope you write me right. I hope you remember that I really liked you, but I couldn't let myself love you. Forgetting the fucking, there were things in between that looked just like life... I hope you don't forget that when you write."
And just like the hubris inherent of a diarist, I have never once written a single thing about her until just now.
While I had initial apprehensions about having a married couple in the band, Court took this opportunity to show us that she was a competent & talented musician in her own right. My fleeting thoughts to Fleetwood Mac quickly subsided as she plugged in a bass guitar as large as she was & plucked out a perfect staccato... This might actually sound good.
I quickly dubbed her "Criminal Courts". A band has to have a rapport to work well together. Nicknames are always important. it breaks the tension of the moment, forces someone to not take themselves too seriously.
Her bass style immeadiately reminded me of old school hard core, laying down the bones of the track so that the song could form the flesh around it. This approach to our songwriting style gave us a rhythm we previously did not have.
In Johnny's absence we quickly penned out the songs that would form the basis of the beginnings of our set list.
The sessions exist under the name "Handsome Mike & the Tagalongs" We were filling the canvas of songs like "West Ashley" & "Dead Letter Office".
There is a one off on this session that still amazes me to this day. It's a stream of consciousness poem called "Oh Romance" With Puglisi riffing over my freestyled lines. I break off into the absurd talking about masturbating a memory, I begin giggling, he plays solo's in the vein of mid 1980's Mtv metal...Even ending the song with the final refrain from "Sweet Child O' Mine" It's a fun session.
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/User/My%20Documents/Downloads/Handsome%20Mike%20And%20The%20Tagalongs/Handsome%20Mike%20And%20The%20Tagalongs/Oh%20Romance.mp3
So here we all were. Bastards in a lounge, except suddenly we weren't all bastards anymore. We had a girl in the mix.
I had a name I had been keeping under my hat for quite a few years. I have always been taken by the Victorian era & the writing that it had produced. The onset of World War I spread European slang from one continent to another, phrases picked up in trenches became the dialect of the day. Sheep gut prophylactics used to come packaged in little manila envelopes. Like a tiny letter. Anything "blue" or sexual was considered "French" at the time. Oral sex when asked for at a brothel was called a "French Kiss" & so condoms were referred to as French Letters. It was a perfect name for a spoken word band. And now it had it's perfect implication. The band who had changed it's name every week finally had it's moniker.
The last chapbook of poetry I had written while living in Charleston SC was called "Dead Letters". Most of our early songs were from this period. The chapbook was supposed to be published by Semantikon Press in 2007. I hadn't heard anything form Semantikon in years. I figured it was a perfect way to get those pieces out into the public.
It takes alot of hubris to be a diarist. A journal writer, a blogger.
It takes alot of nerve to be a writer in the first place. To only tell your side of a story. Henry Rollins, while I'm not such a big fan any longer, said it best on Black Flags' live album from 1984 "Who's got the 10 & a 1/2?"
"It takes a long time to make a story short..." He says "It takes a long time to make a story what it is..."
Henry is correct here. It does indeed take a long time to make a story short. But that might not always be the pressing issue. There's a certain type of person that needs to lay their life out in crude cuneiform to make it make sense.
There's a certain type of person that finds this exercise cathartic in a way. Most people traipse over the little mistakes in their lives hoping that noone else notices. A diarist is not that sort of being.
A diarist dissects. Always picking apart the mistakes. And always only interested in their own point of view.
There is a certain stigma attached to what I'm doing here. People might react differently around me if they know I'm going to write about it later. It's human nature, when a recordist is present people display what they would like to see presented.
I lost a girl over this blog ostensibly. I don't believe it. The reason that is.
There were a few issues between us, but there is always a few issues between anyone involved in a relationship. It comes down to a series of compromises & what you are willing to give up ultimately for the other person.
The idea that I might someday write about her proved to be too much to hear her tell it. And because I am the diarist I get to make it so.
That is all I will ever hear out of our final conversation. Self centered or not, I was saying it takes alot of nerve to do something like this.
I was flipping through an old notebook yesterday, looking for old poems that might be turned into new songs.
I found a little note I had never noticed before, inscribed at the very end of the notebook by a girl I was dating in Maine 10 years ago.
She had drawn a little picture of herself & under it she had written
"Left alone like this for you to look back on... I hope you write me right. I hope you remember that I really liked you, but I couldn't let myself love you. Forgetting the fucking, there were things in between that looked just like life... I hope you don't forget that when you write."
And just like the hubris inherent of a diarist, I have never once written a single thing about her until just now.
A retort to T.S. Eliots "Sweeny Among Nightingales"
Among Nightingales
Sweeny
sits smugly among his nightingales.
Me,
I choose to drink myself companionship.
Salud to you, old friend.
This cold current of discomfort is no casual acquaintance.
Awkward social circles is the soil in which my seed is sown,
holding up the walls in the corner of the room
a new wallflower
waiting to bloom.
Dust
vodka
disaffection (what sustenance!)
withdrawn and demure
with two shoes planted firmly in the floor.
Above a certain aspect
and a table to drink you under it.
To stand stoic, festooned in odd blooms
doomed to blossom into this sad strange shape every evening.
While Sweeny giggles in gales
among his girls.
Sweeny
sits smugly among his nightingales.
Me,
I choose to drink myself companionship.
Salud to you, old friend.
This cold current of discomfort is no casual acquaintance.
Awkward social circles is the soil in which my seed is sown,
holding up the walls in the corner of the room
a new wallflower
waiting to bloom.
Dust
vodka
disaffection (what sustenance!)
withdrawn and demure
with two shoes planted firmly in the floor.
Above a certain aspect
and a table to drink you under it.
To stand stoic, festooned in odd blooms
doomed to blossom into this sad strange shape every evening.
While Sweeny giggles in gales
among his girls.
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