I don’t want to still be feeling this way. I want to change, I need to change, but I can’t let go. I can’t let go and it’s making me crazy and ruining my chances to find something new. I have something new and it’s getting all fucked up because I can’t let go of what I had. I feel so fucking doomed.
The American Dream™ is dead.
It limped off to the bowling alley
down the street
before the building was demolished.
It bled to death at lane 7,
in an uncomfortable plastic seat.
The pins nearby melted away
as balding men and old women in gloves
rolled heavy balls down waxed hallways.
The Dream™, coughing and wheezing,
saw tiny polished boulders
knocking the teeth from numbered skulls.
Its eyelids grew heavy.
Its hands went stiff and cold;
They would never grope for a hamburger again.
I’m sitting here in a dark room. My laptop is on a lazy susan. I am eating a burrito with a tiny fork. There is an oddly colored cat in my lap licking my shirt.
Just another Sunday.
I get so tired of this fucking life sometimes. I’m not going to end it, I know things will get better later, then get worse again. I know that the ups are worth the downs, but right now I’m feeling the opposite end of this spectrum. Right now I’m feeling that these downs are truly worthy of the ups that created them, which is saying something. It feels like those ups are so far away. I know that life is a yin-yang. It comes in giant waves of awfulness with little scattered bits of pleasure and happiness. Then life comes in waves of greatness and growth with little bits of the bullshit mixed in. I’ve just had a lot of change-ups, more so than I’m used to, in the last year.
I’ve been put through all kinds of bizarre trials that I wouldn’t wish upon anyone, friend or otherwise. I’ve seen and felt and dealt with many disturbing things the bulk of which I don’t feel particularly comfortable or interested in mentioning here. Disturbing people, disturbing practices, and disturbing decisions which I had to make.
I also fell in love, slowly, without projections or illusion. I really felt comfortable in my own skin around an intimate partner. I felt I was finally ready to share my life with someone. I experienced such immense beauty, such groundbreaking earth shattering life changing excitement and warmth, that I wonder now if I will ever manage to feel that again. I felt I was growing tremendously strong from it, that we were growing together to become an unstoppable force. It was all I needed just to hear from her to feel like everything was going to be okay.
Yet it was ripped away suddenly and without warning. I recoiled in shock and horror and denial. I began smoking and drinking compulsively and heavily. I largely and rapidly regressed from the strong and happy person I was becoming to a bitter and frustrated person worse than I had been in years. Sometimes, still, on these lonely nights, I feel like the whole fucking thing was a grand illusion; some beautifully wretched drama crafted by a schizophrenic wizard, manipulating our minds and bodies like marionettes whose strings reach to the heavens.
Still, despite all this, despite all of it raining down on me in a foreign land where I had nothing and no one, I forced myself to push on and keep living. I pulled myself out of the hole, slowly, and started to truly enjoy life again. I put my love and my loss behind me and moved on. I practiced hard to develop a capacity to communicate in Spanish. I found wonderful places with wonderful people and had a hell of a time partying with them. I exposed myself to new cultures and new ways of thinking and living. I started building a new life for myself halfway across the world. Yet somehow, just as I had found myself on a new peak on a new mountain, after all that climbing, after starting to shape my own life how I wanted, life happened back.
That’s one thing I’ve learned from all of this; life will always happen back. You can make your own decisions, you can shape and craft and build your life however you see fit, but you will always have life happening back at you. You have to learn to roll with the punches and reshape your plans. In my case, I was practically forced to deport myself back home.
Now I’m back at square one. I’m alone, broke, and all I’ve got to show for the things I’ve been through are a handful of stories, and a hole in my gut where this all used to live. Sometime it all feels so unfair I want to just fall apart. Then again, sometimes there’s so damn much beauty and wonder and pleasure in my life that I simply can’t imagine being anyone else.
Life is like that. It’s an extreme balancing act and we’re all along for the ride. You can get off the ride anytime, but why do that? I’ll take pain over oblivion any day; pain isn’t permanent.
Well, it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe. And it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe, If you don't know by now. When the rooster crows at the break of dawn, Look out your window and I'll be travelin' on. You're the reason I'll be gone.. Don't think twice, 'cause it's alright. Well it ain't no use in callin' out my name, gal..
Like before.
And it ain't no use in callin' out my name, gal..
I can't hear you anymore.
I wish there was somethin' you would do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay,
But we never did too much talkin' anyway..
But don't think twice, 'cause it's alright.
Well it ain't no use in turnin' on your lights, babe.. Lights I never knowed. And it ain't no use in burnin' your lamp, babe.;
I'm on the dark side of the road. Well, it's lonesome travelin' down the lonesome road; I once loved a woman, a child I'm told. I give her my heart but she wanted my soul.. But don't think twice, 'cause it's alright. So I'm ramblin' all by myself babe, This time, maybe more. And I can't use nobody else, babe.. Whatever you claimed before. I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind; You could have done better but I don't mind.. You just wasted my precious time, But don't think twice, 'cause it's alright.
Inexperienced,
inefficient,
insufficient,
supercodependent,
this shit.
Indifferent contingent hinged on misfit fortune,
sonically ideologically deficient,
difficult deficit,
sucking the breast of it,
taking the breath from it,
I’ll be the death of it.
Suck a sung song from the air,
take care,
elaborate, collaborate,
then stab it in the
throat.
or not.
I am taking over as the sound manipulator for the band. Now I just need:
I will also remain the painter for the band, and Sevag is still in charge of live performance visualizations/projections (and has a lot of badass ideas for that, too) as well as being drummer. Then there is Josh, the guitarist and main songwriter; Martin, the Saxophonist and token ginger; and Cole, the chilled out badass bassist. We may also take on a piano player.
We are, at this very moment, recording a demo.
This should be interesting.
This was never allowed.
This is not right.
This is not what was intended.
What is it?
What has it been and what will it be?
Who are they and who are we?
Performing in the red light of a secret stage.
The sound escapes
Surrounds, creates,
Drips and drops,
Caught on tape,
Curling.
Unfurling in the wind,
The window lets it in,
Though It tends to stay and float about,
Without restriction,
Transcending diction,
Depicting its own world of fiction.
Try to touch it.
Go ahead, try.
I dare you.
Grab that song by the tail,
Hop on, and ride it back
To the place you wish you were.
