somnambulatoritizationality

the descent show last night was....really cool. the lagerhouse is this DIVE bar in corktown (that's detroit: michigan ave and trumbull, for all you outoftowners) and we played second on a bill with great lakes swimmers and akron/family. the former sounded like elliot smith talking in his sleep and the latter sounded like clap your hands say yeah on acid. those are sort of compliments. i liked about 3/4 of what i heard of both. in fact the same goes for us. we were pretty good. 75% fucking awesome. 25% off key, offbeat, and generally just off. but overall, we were pretty tight. i finally FINALLY finally got a mic! it's actually a bottle cap with a wire coming out of it, electrical taped under my fingerboard, but i was loud and people heard me! people even said they wished i was louder. i think i'm doing all right by this band. i love playing. it still felt soooo much just like a performance. no rock and roll mythos left in me, i fear. and i definitely hit some wrong notes. but i'm learning that you can't get hung up on that. i mean i take it seriously. trust me, i take it really seriously. but enough people i trust and admire have told me i sound better when i just play, balls out, without worrying so much about specific missed notes, that i've started to actually believe them. i barely even get nervous anymore. is that a bad sign? i think it comes from hanging out with matt so much.

by the way, i have a story to tell you. it's a long one and it's not pretty. it's sort of blown over by now, so it's not so immediate. i posted a blog about it for approximately 15 minutes and then decided i didn't want to risk certain people googling themselves and finding it. so i deleted it. but i emailed it to myself. so if you want it, let me know.

i don't know why i titled this blog the way i did. i am so dirty right now. i haven't bathed, shaved, or brushed my teeth in at least three days. i have no clean clothes left. my closet, pete commented this morning, looks like it vomited all over my room. there are fruit flies that will not leave my dresser alone for some reason. i scrubbed the damn thing with bleach and they won't leave! maybe they're confused? anyway, i'm going to take a shower and go to work. love to you all.

only have enough gas left for the beer can to the bowl. what can you do but go on?

...hmm?

While wasting time this morning, I found this gem on gradschools.com, for Southern Utah University:

"The Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program in arts administration seeks to provide a practical interdisciplinary education that develops well-rounded generalists."

Well-rounded generalists, eh? That sounds great. But why bother giving the degree a title? I mean isn't that too specific? We don't want to get all nitpicky. I think "Master of Whatever" would be appropriate. Maybe "Master of Things, Like, You Know, Stuff". God knows we have enough specialists in this world without going and giving them a degree that might actually help them hone a certain skill or two. Expert, schmexpert.

11 days deep, 4 years later, 2 years 8 months 8 days and counting

yeah, it's going well. no, i haven't faltered. yes, i feel a lot healthier. no, the football game didn't depress me enough to make me drink. the only times i've come close have been times when i've been cooking. i made a delicious fresh tomato sauce the other night and all i wanted was a glass of red wine to go with it, but i steeled myself. not that it would really be that big of a deal to have one glass of red wine with dinner. but i am sticking to my guns on this one. only three more days to go. even then i'm definitely gonna cool it.

been listening to way too much folk music lately. i've been introduced to an amazing group of people over the past month. so many fantastic musicians and gigs and hearts. it's sort of funny that i never knew these people existed before. but now they are all i want out of this town. check out how cool brandon is, for example. in my opinion he is singlehandedly reviving good local music.

descent played at arbourfest. that was fun. i actually got heard by most of the audience, and while our reception was lukewarm at best, afterwards everyone was quite complimentary. it is lovely to play for people who really love music, and wonderful-er to play WITH people who love music. you know, who play just for the sake of playing. luckily there's one of those in my band. it makes it all worthwhile.

by the way--and maybe this should have been the subject--where were you four years ago?

i woke up around noon to pat calling me, saying he was coming home from work, saying there'd been a horrible accident in new york city and his office had shut down for the day. i didn't believe him. ten minutes later i had the tv turned on and was watching in utter shock as the buildings around the towers collapsed and people ran screaming for their lives. i called my father and made sure his family in new york was all right. everyone was fine but they still hadn't heard from my cousin, carolyn, who lived blocks away from the towers. (later that day we received word that her building was almost untouched.) in the days to come we'd all witness these scenes, over and over, in photographs, narratives, and live reports. there is no way i can describe the utter sorrow i felt for, well, humanity. i felt sorry for the innocent people who had died, i felt sorry for the people who had flown the planes, who had felt like this was the only way to get their point across. i wept for them all. it was so surreal to be walking through ann arbor those days and see incoming freshmen look around at the campus as if these buildings were either the only thing anchoring them. a few looked as though they expected everything to collapse in seconds. some were waiting for the punchline to a horrible joke. and eventually a lot of that grief turned to anger at what happened to our country, and is still happening. historians will look back and say the reaction to that event shaped the future of american politics for decades. bush has been able to get so many of his idiotic ideas across by taking advantage of a country void of a asinine sense of security. at the time, however, i was relatively unaffected by all of that. at the time, i didn't know what i believed, and i didn't really know what it meant to suffer the way so many were suffering. 17 days later, my father was hit by two seizures as suddenly as the Boeing 747s hit those towers, and everything that i felt for NYC was eclipsed by my grief for him. i will always wonder how my life would be different, as i'm sure everyone in new york, let alone the country, wonders. pretty much all i feel now about both tragedies is a hollow sense of loss, and the belief that that's just a part of life. i don't mean to sound callous. but i'd rather focus on the lives that are still being lost--right now--domestically and abroad--because of the two huge demons of war and disease. what are we doing, right now, that is empowering people to bring peace into others' lives? how can we do it better? that's what i think about today. that's what i think about every day.

autumn is almost here and it brings with it a solemn sense of remembrance. this year is going to be different. there is a whole new kind of sadness in store, with my mom and margaret being gone and all. but i feel incredibly supported and buoyed by mle, pete, and everyone else i know. if you're reading this, man, you should know...that i thank you.

three days and counting

ok. so some of you who know me well know that i frequent ann arbor bars. and some of you who know me better know that i can drink many people under the figurative table. i like drinking. i like drinking beer. i don't do it out of any special motivation to get totally blown out of my mind, i don't like to be so far gone i can't feel my legs, but i like the high and the freedom from social awkwardness i get when i'm drunk. things just...get easier. and naturally this is quite unhealthy, and there are many other ways to not feel so socially awkward (for example, hang out with people who don't suck), but drinking gets there faster. it cuts out all the bullshit and you can just start having a good time almost immediately. plus, and here's where it gets heavy, sometimes i get a little lonely, and sitting at home by myself doesn't quite cut it. sitting at a bar, where there are people, with a good book and a good beer, is seriously one of my favorite things to do. lots of people think i am nuts because i love to do this. but really, the scariest, most lonely feeling is the one you get when no one is watching you. (someone once told me that life was like a movie, only the thing you had to realize is that nobody is watching it but you. you can't wait for someone to applaud or nudge someone else and say, "i loved that part." no one is watching but you. in a way this can be comforting, in that you really just need to make yourself happy in order to feel fulfilled. it's your life, and no one can really criticize you for how you choose to live it, because it's your damn movie. but it is just so nice when you do have people watching, isn't it?) so i sit at the bar and let the bartender bring me what i want to drink, and i smoke cigarettes and enjoy the hell out of the evening.

here's my big announcement, though. i'm trying to not drink so much. lately it's been pretty ridiculous. i'm tired of waking up with a hangover all the time. i'm tired of passing out on couches. i'm tired of not remembering what i did the night before. i'm tired of the people i drink with. i'm just tired. tired of running away from settling the score. i just need some time off. i need a vacation from my habits. i need new habits. i want some new friends. i want to make up with old friends.

what does all this mean?

carol catherine is pulling herself onto the sobriety train and riding the freight car to freedom. freedom is 11 days down the road. we've been riding for three days now and we're starting to get restless. when you're sleeping on a gunnysack and pulling on a corncob pipe, the days get stretched out like the wichitaw skyline.

all right enough of that. yeah, so i'm quitting drinking for two weeks starting september first. i want to know what it is like to really be sober for two weeks. so that's now three days down and counting. so...if you want to be my sober buddy, let me know.

did i mention i love you?