And maybe tomorrow - sound won't fill in for words to say

those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, those who do learn from the past are sometimes doomed to repeat it too. We're creatures of habit, predictable and conditioned. Part of this keeps us going, part of it holds us back, part of it means we're circulating in this endless loop.

This week has been me writing papers and drinking more tea than is probably good for me. My heating bill was high but I also got paid to feed the landlady's cat and shovel her driveway so I'm not stressed too much. My book club is looking at delving into the world non-western writers. In pursuing these options, the sheer volume of tantalizing tomes, the sheer volume of tomes untranslated into our native tongue, are overwhelming. So much that I'll never get to read.

I throw some more coffee mugs on the wheel, stop up at the record store, go home and read for class, it feels good to be alone and introverted after so much interaction. The snow makes me not want to go outside, and maintain this hermiting with the record player and a now-almost-clean apartment, and try not to think about all the things that stress, the things that make me feel dishonest with myself and others, wondering what is the most true and real response. The sun's come out and maybe I should shovel the driveway, maybe walk down to the water, maybe do something or other, to embrace the solitude that's been these decades and kill the longings.

got a gut feeling.

maybe it's the hormones, I could blame this on, that emotional roller coaster, but no, I was feeling this for awhile, already seeking a way to extricate, and evidence piling up only confirms that feeling intuited a month ago. I find it easier to bail sooner rather than later, all hesitations validated, all red flags signaling no. Creativity especially with others is a strange thing, and sometimes you just don't click with others and it's better to figure that out now than later, and I'm not convinced by concessions made, I don't want to make those concessions.

Explaining this over the phone at 1am makes no sense and makes me sound like a jerk, and it shouldn't bother me that a good friend might think less of me because of this unsurety about the motivations of others, that maybe rankles the most. I don't know if there's anything else I could do. I go back and forth between relief and regret.I hope I haven't lost too much here.

coming separate

I forget how hard and complicated being in a band can be, especially in the embryonic stages, and every project I've ever done has been stillborn or aborted. I don't know what this is, and maybe it's too early to tell, the last few times have been with relative strangers so it was easier to bow out early. They've got other projects, this is my only one and I want it to be something I love, I wonder if this is selfish sometimes, but I can't play what I can't believe in.

must I paint you a picture

So me and homie went down to see Billy Bragg last night, after hanging out on my front porch awhile, and decided we weren't interested in the opener so we wandered around Kent and I geeked out over all my old haunts and how much it's changed down there... the apartments where Devo lived are gone, the "pet sematary" art installation that me and my roommates loved is replaced by a big house, the swings on the playground that we used to haunt have been replaced by park benches to keep The Children safe, my old grotty house on College Street is still there, but the street was really quiet that night. We loved hanging out down the river, walking along in the darkness along the paths, something I would never do on my own, and bailed over a fence across the railroad tracks to get back like the punkass teenagers that we sometimes still feel like.

Maybe we were in the wrong mood the whole night, maybe it was the comfortable chairs and the relative affluence of the general demographic. Maybe it was that we're economically hovering a few grand above the poverty line and can only afford a reasonable quality of life because we live in an extremely economically depressed region, so it's hard to hear about "power in a union" and the "working class" when your experience with unions has been so negative and someone's singing about it who probably hasn't been in one for decades, and you're trying to figure out what to do as winter comes and work gets slow and you wonder how you're going to make ends meet.

Maybe because you know too much, and there's something a little embarrassing about watching a guy justify his kissing the Queen's hand because his mom likes the Queen, and talking about his cowboy boots and authentic western shirts, and lambasting the usual easy targets and talking about the working man and how England is so much better at everything, which is kind of crazy because even though it's got healthcare, it's still pretty damn anti-immigrant.

So Thatcher's dead, but there's a lot of other scumbag powers that be that are still alive that you could go after, but heaven forbid you offend that demographic by suggesting that the current administration might suck as much as the last one so let's just talk about crazy wingnuts right? Because both parties aren't pretty much the same or anything. It's hard for me to believe in power to the people when the majority of people are selfish mofos who don't care much for their fellow humans as long as they get what they want. Yeah, healthcare's important, but last time I checked your country and my country were getting cozy about surveilling on dissenters, but who wants to hear about that? We want to feel good about feeling smart and progressive! I do have to give him props for dissing Dawkins, but otherwise. Low hanging fruit's already been picked clean.

It's awkward and strangely hilarious watching an old punk rabblerouser try to validate himself and act like he's all radical when he's got a big mansion in a crackerific oceanside town and writes get-off-my-lawn screeds in the newspaper aimed at those skateboarders who get in the way of big developers. And then to see the audience hanging on every word without necessarily questioning anything, and I wonder what the hell happened to me, have I really swung to the left of this guy? 

 And so  we're sitting off to the side, happy to hear the occasional song we wanted to hear, but feeling like it's not terribly fair to our fellow concertgoers ( no one was really sitting too close to us) if we're going to whisper snarkitudes to each other and be bent over trying not to laugh out loud, so we leave about halfway through, take another spin through the town down the sidestreets and past the grain elevators and drive back to Clevelandia laughing to stay up way too late again.

ivory towers and reflective powers

a friend of mine from way back when is in college now, and like me, reads a lot of blogs, and like me in my early twenties, quite the idealist with other earnest friends. I was kind of an older sister figure, introducing him to Fugazi and zines and other underground kind of things.

I take things more seriously than a lot of people, but even in my younger years, I didn't have much patience for those conversations about race/class/gender that were more theoretical than anything else, and often profoundly disconnected from the dynamics of the real world in any real sense. Not that things shouldn't be thought about or are unimportant, but sometimes I feel like these conversations, mostly between us people socioeconomically privileged to go to college and be connected to the internet, tend to get extremely circular and self-indulgent.

When you get off the Internet, most people aren't losing sleep over the things that young people care about on Tumblr, aren't arguing about tasteless Halloween costumes or something clueless that some guy posted on his Facebook page, but I guess it's always fun for people to feel smarter and more enlightened than others, hence Internet haterade. I still don't have patience for the competitions of the Suffering Olympics variety, if you trace back anyone's history you'll find out that their ancestors were screwed over by someone, and that everyone's felt disrespected or had judgments made about them because of how they look or whatever.

Evidently to total strangers this makes me an awful person full of white privilege, which if you know me, is kind of ridiculous because I geek out on history and anthropology and the ins and outs of others' worlds, willing to be the uncomfortable and awkward minority, to the point where I have empathy but only to a point, that everyone's got their issues, and to focus on just one place's is kind of myopic. If you go anywhere, people are racist and classist and judge by the gradient of your skin tone or what religion you practice or who your parents are. Not to invalidate anyone's experience, but it's a human problem not an American middle class cracker problem exclusively. Jerkitude is universal.  Besides, such conversations are always better had over caffeine or booze as it is.


And so I wonder if this is why, in tandem with my companions with whom I snark about all things brainy (Pynchon, Shakespearean English, obscure medieval history), I find maybe I prefer these things with those in my world who are older, because we've got less to prove and we've seen more of life and there are other stressors like how are we going to pay the heating bill this winter and what are we doing with our lives since we're perpetually underemployed and there are fewer and fewer open doors.

And I love eating dinner with someone else again, cooking the proceeds of our gardens, talking about how our days went, these life things that are so simple, the things that I miss about roommates and friends who worked on my side of town who used to drop in at the old apartment. It's so good to geek out over history and play music and listen to records again and laugh, I don't think I realized how much I missed this kind of companionship until it started happening again, it's hard to believe that it's 2 in the morning and I have to go to work the next morning, he's laughing as I back out of the driveway and almost run over his datura plant, but all that coffee would have kept me up as it was, and despite the tired eyes and the continued drinking of tea, I feel so alive.

once upon a time

Way back in the day, I was taking an AP history test junior year at the other high school and saw a girl wearing purple converse all-stars and had an instinctive feeling for some reason that I wanted to be her friend. A year later, we are seniors taking community college classes and learn that we have mutual friends from the punk-metal-hardcore contingent in our hometown. I was an elitist jerk about music back then and probably could have torpedoed anything right then and there but we ended up working at the zoo together for a summer, bonding over literature and rock and roll and a similar enjoyment of humanity's foibles.

We had long long-distance conversations, and long late night drives around the city that have already been chronicled. I enjoyed her so much that I introduced her to my friends, and she got close to them too. My friend who played in pop punk bands who came out later on (and probably broke many a punk rock girl's heart if the anecdotal evidence is to be believed), my roommate, a guy I knew who turned out to be a huge huge creep (the only time I've ever wanted to inflict serious harm on another human was some things he did).

In 2005, a bunch of us went to see some punk rock together, she met the guy she married this past Saturday there for the first time, though he has no memory of this. A few years later they met again, and the sparks kindled, and it was kind of crazy to be there to celebrate with her family and my old crew of friends from the Kent days, seeing where we all are now, in various stages of employment and love lives, less scruffy than we once were, more confident than we once were. 

My roommate was in her wedding party, the park was beautiful, the music good, no one made me dance. We talked and ate and set off those floaty glowy balloons, and then I sipped cheap beer on the patio of the punk rock bar with my homie who's now in Chicago until I just got too tired and had little to contribute as it was by that time. I don't find weddings stressful anymore, I celebrate them like birthdays and with ones like these, there's ample time to laugh.

the way you treat each other really makes me feel ill

 Sometimes I wish I could tell other people they're being myopic when they harp on their pet issue and don't see the larger picture of ye olde shite being messed up muchly. But that's a fool's errand, and therefore I get the catharsis out in big riffs and taut punk rage.


echobelly - scream

REM - crush with eyeliner

the verve - so it goes

radiohead - lucky
ride - howard hughes

lush - superblast

wire - mannequin

mission of burma- progress
stiff little fingers - suspect device
the pagans - street where nobody lives

the wipers - D-7

the gits - beauty of the rose
the clash - I'm so bored with the USA
X- the phone's off the hook (but you're not)
soft boys - I wanna destroy you

the ruts - dope for guns
the undertones set - you've got my number (why don't you use it), teenage kicks, family entertainment, hypnotised

billy bragg - to have and to have not / help save the youth of america
the adverts - no time to be 21

sleater kinney - turn it on
discount - sleeping motor boy
tomahawk - waratorium
torche - in pieces

50 foot wave - long painting

nirvana - lounge act
fugazi - burning/give me the cure
jawbox - lil shaver

god machine - tremolo song

quicksand - how soon is now?
screaming trees - witness

too much beauty to sleep

We used to go on Cleveland drives all the time when we were younger, when we were twenty, of let's see how far this road goes and what's on it, we've never been to this neighborhood before let's go there, oh wow, how did we end up here ( in the projects at 2am on Martin Luther King Day, in the spooky dark national park listening to Patti Smith's Horses and feeling a sense of hauntedness, cruising through subdivisions cranking Jay-Z channeling the id of teenage boys, singing along to bad classic rock and slap-happy, listening to Minor Threat and yelling die yuppie scum at dressed up art walk denizens.

We found all sorts of strange beauty on these travels, and never felt afraid for the most part, because the car provides a tank-like sense of relative invincibility that bikes and two feet do not have. We haven't done this in awhile, with work schedules and in her case a significant other and my life's been one thing a minute too.

And now we're older and there is more weight on us, and we have no music, and so much to catch up on, and there are no new streets because we've traversed every neighborhood so many times over, and she goes into every hood in Cleveland for her job, so we cut through East Cleveland where all the streetlights seem to be out but the traffic cameras are everywhere, where the towering hulks of abandoned apartment buildings and decaying mansions loom on the periphery.

We'll need gas and a bathroom at some point but despite our intrepidity, the darkness is so intense, the heat and the corners make everything seem to throb with a what will happen next and we drive past no-tell-motels and storefront churches and I wish I felt like I could shoot photos without feeling like a white-privilege voyeur, and the eastern suburbs lack the sense of landscape, or it's the 1950s kind where things never really took off and half the store signs are for businesses no longer there, and we get late night waffles and talk about everything that's been going on, processing through the bad, laughing at the good, with little nostalgia given how I get sentimental about these things I love so much and we turn in earlier than usual, around 2am instead of 5am, and I wake up late the next morning feeling like half the day is gone.

There is time in the garden, and time catching up on sleep, and time spent pondering the universe with good souls, and walking up the street to an afternoon noise show where folks were friendly and I felt bad for holding my ears through half of it even with earplugs, and it was interesting, it reminded me of my prof who was in Fluxus back in the art school days but I'm just not a noise kid. I like noise with structure, I like songs, I like things that don't remind me of going to the dentist or hanging out next to a jet engine but that is me and purely me. 

I got the art stuff out last night because me and one of the radio girls wanted to get all collagey and I couldn't come up with anything, I need to not be so rusty with all that, it's just that when the days are this golden and lacking in loneliness, it's hard to.

things I never thought would happen

As mentioned in the previous post, there were two awesome shows going on in Fair Clevelandia on Wednesday night. As such, I went over to the gallery in Chinatown because my friend putting on the Evens show said he might need some help getting everything ready. So it doesn't seem so weird and awkward when I'm shaking hands with one of my early-adulthood heroes, because we're moving a wrought-iron canopy thing to the side, figuring out the logistics of the stage, and loading equipment and merch up a freight elevator.

I felt a little embarrassed when it was disclosed that I might be seeing someone else play that night but I ended up sticking around, sent his sister down the street to my favorite source of pad thai, watched the soundcheck, drinking cans of coconut water instead of eating dinner, working the door, taking money and distributing wristbands and then watching the show.

The fans were almost all my age or older, a few straightedge kids, a couple of families, people wearing t-shirts of 80's punk and hardcore and metal bands. I got to watch the show, sang along with the songs I knew, songs that were tightly wound on record and full of intensity live and relevant to the troubled times that we find ourselves in, of increased paranoia and surveillance and instability.

We were encouraged to sing along though I think a lot of us are way more familiar with the old bands, but everyone knew better than to say so. And he went on a digression about how awful drones are and how awful our powers that be are for continuing to use them to traumatize Pakistanis so mad props for that. He gave shoutouts to Charles and me and I'm glad no one knows who I am, because I'm pretty sure I blushed because this is something I never imagined would happen, ever.

Afterwards, I ended up running into a fellow congregant from church, of all people, the guy who is 75 and a former southern baptist minister from Alabama whose son is friends with a bunch of Dischordians and who invited him to the show. I always wondered why he liked my Billy Bragg take on the trad hymns and it makes way more sense now. The smallness of the world is kind of mind-blowing.

We marvel at this, and trade stories of DC and Cleveland with Ian's sister while I watched a line of kids take pictures and get their albums signed. I picked up the records too, but felt too shy there but got a parting shot in the parking lot because I want to remember this. We helped them load up at the end of the night, exchanged goodbyes, and hugs and I drove home too euphoric to sleep, so I hung Christmas lights on my balcony and talked on the phone because it was so beautiful out.

And then I wake up, clean the apartment, hang out with the family, and head over to the neighbors across the border to watch the fireworks, which I missed because my beater was turned away at their nice apartment building, so I missed most of the pyrotechnics but got to watch 'The Warriors' and talk tuneage so all was good. Eight hours of sleep in the past two days. It's a good thing it's dead at work today, though I think I'm still running off of afterglow and caffeine. 

negasonic

If I believed in jinxes, I'd say I'd jinxed the Peonage, because the usual peeps are being wack as usual, between the politicking of bored women and the usual straunge ffolke and the general ennui of the weather changes.

We’re not interested in idle talk
(Wily Kataso!)
Sitting around too long ain’t good for people
Too much malicious gossip
Too many uncalled-for words
Talking too much clap-trap
I tell you
I said we’ve been sitting around too long

Talk talk talk a lot
And that’s all you’ve got
Thinking you know best
Give my ears a rest

Take your tired tone
And yourself back home
Now you’ve had your say
Move yourself away

Oh my goodness, the clownery is overwhelming. All those layers of power and general nastiness and fiefdoms and factions. I'm already running on four hours of sleep and all this isn't helping.

I'm on a mission to never agree

someone on the Internet let me know that it's Ian Mackaye's birthday today so I decided to unleash my inner Dischord Records fangirl and play his bands' music for an hour an a half on my show this morning. I've done previous birthday tributes for Kristin Hersh and Bono, but I got some frustrated callers who begged me to play something besides U2, so I did. This time, I let the good people of Clevelandia and the Internet know, and that they could request non-Ian stuff but one caller assured me that he'd be more than happy to hear a whole bunch of Minor Threat and Fugazi so I felt validated enough to carry through.

Back in my straightedge days, I had mad respect for Ian and dreamed of doing some kind of regional label as awesome as Dischord. That came to nothing, I enjoy the occasional glass of wine or beer now and then, but the music's held up wonderfully. I got a copy of Minor Threat's complete discography in the mail from a friend who gave up his earthly possessions and it immediately conjured up memories of riding shotgun in my high school homie's beat-up Honda cruising aimlessly around Parmastan. I put Fugazi on every punk rock mixtape I ever made but no one shared my enthusiasm nearly so much, and I guess the vocals can be an acquired taste.

I find I still listen to 13 Songs, The Argument, and Repeater the most, but some of my most favorites on Red Medicine and End Hits. Red Medicine used to be on the jukebox in the bar below the student center at Kent and I'd inflict that noise-punk that gave me such pleasure on the ears of bros and watch them clear the room to that and Surfer Rosa. Times have changed, but the songs almost seem more powerful than ever now.

april is the cruelest month

Among the usuals last night, I couldn't explain, couldn't pinpoint the source of what's been hovering at the edges of my overfiring brain. I am thankful that they've had those dark nights of the soul too, and can listen without offering platitudes or enabling the angst.

What brings this on me and makes me want to melt away so much?
Those heady existential questions, maybe the obligations, or the lack of sleep, or the girlhormones or who knows what. A vacation couldn't come soon enough, sometimes I wonder if I'm just getting on everybody's nerves or gotten everything wrong, sometimes the lack of obligations makes me feel more obligated than anything else.

all the love in the world

My sister's having me over for dinner tonight, so I'll get the love of my nephews and hang with the folks and maybe decamp to Algebra or a greasy spoon for some homework time and tea, we'll see. Life is pretty damn good, no need for single awareness days or gross candy or self-indulgent pity. Just big riffs and little babies. I see way too much drama around me to desire anything more than what I've got.

Though I love my misanthropic yearningish tunes. I don't think my inner teenage goth kid will ever grow out of it.

the drag

It's the time of the day when I'm most tired, the blood sugar plummets, the caffeine starts exiting the system, and I've been feeling like I'm swimming in a fishbowl way too long, and everything just makes me a little more nervy than usual and I find myself trying harder to maintain this smile, which turns to scowling when crossed with too many space cadets and the usual clowns. I don't want to make conversation, your attempts at chatting up are as unwelcome as a middle finger.  Those who don't know me very well think I'm happy and kind and gracious all the time. I wish I was. That mid-afternoon is always my low-water mark. I haven't been what I want to be, and the harder I try to not be a jerk, the more exasperated I get all around.

I am so tired, and maybe a little burned out. The world depresses me and sometimes it's hard to believe that God is good when I see what I see. I haven't been sleeping well, which doesn't help, neither does the runny nose, the stuffed-up brain, the ennui of winter and illness and not enough sunlight.  So yeah, that double-whammy of emotional and physical and maybe some spiritual weariness thrown in for some good measure.

I am thankful, I guess, for divine intervention into my suckitude, for tuneage, for naps, for herbal tea, for coworkers who are honest enough to tell me when I'm wrong and kind enough to not make me feel worse, who put up with my strange strain of crazy and the fits of melancholia. I'm thankful for movie nights and friends and that soon the days will be longer again. I can't wait for those days.