WHAT?!

That’s the response I get when I am asked why I haven’t read many classic books. Shakespeare, Chaucer (yes but in HS and I was certainly not paying attention) Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher, 1984, Great Gatsby, and so on.

I read, not as much as I should. But because I don’t blow through books as much, I only read things I’m fascinated in. Bio’s mostly. It’s always been that way. Bukowski, probably too much of him. But like my music ingestion, I like to go chronologically. Book 1 to the last one. I haven’t gotten to 3 major Bukowski books, among most of his poetry, collections of short stories released during his life and compilations of things released afterwards. I enjoy immersing myself into things like that without straying. Although after “Women” I have yet to pick another up. Now it’s a Mr. Rogers bio. It’s warm now so I’ve been reading much less. Doing other things, side work etc.

But just because I haven’t read a classic, doesn’t mean I’m any less learned than anyone else. I was out playing music, recording, learning about someone else, editing or filming a wedding, fixing a car up or god knows what else. I am not sorry I haven’t YET read a 150 yr old book. I haven’t touched Hemingway YET. People don’t understand simply because i haven’t at the age of 27, that I never will. I was most likely too busy playing guitar or drums or watching others do it. I don’t know. I am not condemning anyone, but don’t condemn me. I’ve learned to switch from responding with, “No I haven’t” to, “Not yet.” I haven’t gotten to Hemingway yet. YET. Christ.

Let me live my life how I wish.

I lost it

One of my cameras Saturday. Oh man.

I left a message at the place, about 45 min from here and nobody’s gotten back to me. I can’t recall, but it was hanging off my chair, over my coat. So my point is that I would’ve certainly grabbed it if it was there over my chair. I don’t think it was on my chair. I think someone figured it was digital and scooped it up? Or better yet, I left it somewhere else in there, not the chair. I don’t know.

I wouldn’t care if it was one of the other two cameras I have because they aren’t sentimental. This one was my mother’s from many years ago. There goes my one lens as well. Damn. i don’t even want to think about it. Chances are it’s gone forever. I left my name and number on a message. Nothing yet. I should call back. It was a zoom lens, but shit man. I need to buy one for the canon I bought, and my mom’s lens for the camera that’s gone is trashed I think. So I’m out of luck.

Minolta 5000 god damnit.

Memory

It’s an insane thing isn’t it? Memories.

I used to have a steel trap up there, no longer. When I was a kid, through High School and into college I could remember small details of moments and trips taken long before, I used to be praised on it. Now, I barely remember names and if I told my best friend the story I want to tell them. I preface stories with, “I forget who I was talking to about this but…” and usually get a “Yea you told me.” After I begin. I worry I have some kind of memory issue these days. I attribute it to stress, but who really knows.

Not my point though. My point is it’s funny how the long term works, your brain in general. Funny how things come back and when, and how the memory changes over time. We have a tendency to alter for the better. We take our negative bits out and only remember the positive. Usually how terrible we were in the memory, or how bad things were at the time. Old flames come back, but without contention or frame of reference. Time removing all context as to why things turned out the way they did and why we were at fault.

Not only relationships, but bad times. Crazy times. Shit I did that was absolutely insane I wouldn’t think of doing now. Or things I was subject to I don’t know if i could handle now. How quickly we forget how painful things were. We tend to glamorize the past and amplify the good bits. Which is why so many people hearken and revel in the past. “The good ol’ days.” Well, we didn’t know they were the good old days and perhaps, maybe they weren’t that great. There were easily things I was worrying about and stressing over. Things I wish I had or didn’t have. Troubles and sad stuff happening, regrets and all. Things we forget over time. Today I actually thought of one I hadn’t thought of in a year. A work thing. Funny how that works.

But on another note, it’s brought me this odd, innate ability to write, and watch, and re-watch or listen or read and I don’t have much recollection of doing it. Sometimes to my dismay, horror or fear. But sometimes it’s nice. “Oh wow! That was pretty good!” It’s not fun re-learning how to play a song, but that’s the breaks. Which is why I don’t do it often. But it’s fun sometimes stumbling on something I listen to or read that I can do so from an outsider’s perspective, or someone reading it for the first time.

I find as I get older, my mind prioritizes things in order of what I truly need, perhaps not quite perfectly, but it’s alright at it. It deflects and refuses to contain any unnecessary information, sometimes to my dismay. Names of people I need to be cordial with, but truth being that I won’t see them ever again by the end of the day or week. Plans! Such important stories and plans. I don’t remember when my girlfriend schedules a damn dinner or outing with friends. “Do you want to go out Saturday with (insert friend, inevitably named Emily, so many Emily’s) and do (insert plans)” and I say yes, and forget. 3 separate times leading up to Saturday. Or when someone tells me they’re not going to be around X night. I forget.

It’s tough to get better at being present when you’re always in your own head.

Astrocat Podcast - UPDATE 2

I did it!

I had It’s been real in and we went on for nearly 2 hours. A lot of tangents and off-track stuff, but I’ll cut it back. I want 2 more people in before I put it out. But it’s done, finally came to fruition. It’ll be tough going through it all, cutting it up, but it’s happening!

Now I have to get to advertising. I’ll probably redo the intro, as I recorded it prior to the interview, but I think it’s best to keep those things until after the interview. We’ll see!

Edit

Fuck it. Let’s pack it in, it was a good run.

I am washed up. I was hours away from finishing an edit, when Premiere went and decided to corrupt files, count them all as duplicates. Days, down the drain.

Spent my check on bills, counting on this edit to pull me through until the next check, or edit comes along. The further I try to fix it, the further it seems to get messed up. It’s getting to the point where I’m going to have to go back and re-sync all the footage, manually and RE-edit, RE-mix, and RE-watch 1.5 hours of a ceremony. For what? $250. That’s what. I care because I love doing it, but I’m doing it more so for the money. I need the money. I’m so fucking desperate for it. I’m no longer a professional. I’m a two-bit loser whose strapped for cash. I despise my job, but I’m not qualified for much else other than half-knowing the things I want to.

I don’t play drums anymore. Not by choice. It’s been over 6 months. I’m 27. What the fuck am I going to accomplish at that age? Buy a jam space, jerk myself off like every other washed up musician. I’m not playing, writing, travelling anymore. When I do, it’s guitar for a dad rock band. I’m upping my chops, to songs I want to throw up to. I’ve sold my soul. For what? I’m not even making any money. I’m not getting ahead. I’m the same place I was at 23, 24, just older now, more pathetic. It gets pathetic when a 27 year old wants to play in a band and practice and get good. Famous musicians die at my age. They’ve put out multi-million dollar records. I’m nowhere. I know it’s a finite amount of people who make it in their 20’s, but I’m not even trying. It’s difficult to be staring down the barrel of my 30’s with nothing to show. Nothing but a few shitty solo records, some shittier older records I may play a few drums on, and that’s it. Nobody’s listening. Nobody cares.

I was thinking today while frustrated over this edit, the lineage of why I’m frustrated. I need the money, I’m over my own timeline, this should’ve been done days ago. I really need this money, because I’ve spent all of mine. I have a significant other who makes substantially more, and is much more responsible than I. I would never ask for money, but it’s the problem. Too many things I want to do. All of them lead to what? Where? I get a jam space, then what? Nothing. I pay off some debt, then what? Nothing. I’ll just go out and buy more shit. It doesn’t matter. For what? To wake up to my bullshit job I loathe waking up to do. I’m not passionate about it, and there’s no upward mobility in it either. There’s no incentive to it. I’m not doing anybody any good. Starting with myself, and onto others. It’s fucking cold here. None of my perceived lines of future endeavors seem to lead anywhere. What am I doing with my life? I’ve done it, I’ve fallen into the trap and now I’ve also sunken in the self-deprecation trap as well. Repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating. I’m on repeat. In my writing here, my music, my art, my days, my life, my ideas, my dreams, my way of thinking, my mistakes, my saves all on repeat like a tape or CD player setup to start all over again and again after it exhausts itself. Perhaps a moment or two of relief, in reality, suspension of disbelief. Then once again, it begins again, the same old tired fucking record that nobody wants to hear.

It’s hard to go on when you know you’re only contributing to the content mill. Millions of stupid ass kids are pumping useless content onto the internet. I’m not special and I never will be. I’ll just be that guy who used to play in a few bands when he was younger. Just like everybody else. Just like every body else.

More so, it’s tough to justify caring about much of anything. All I ever wanted to do was make a difference. I’m just another schmuck. It’s so oppressive, this line of thinking. Why do anything? Why? What’s the point? I haven’t even started drinking yet. I told myself I wouldn’t, but today has gotten bleak. Why put out art? I’m nobody on the road to nowhere. No, that’s not true. On the road to mediocrity. That’s what. I can’t think of much else. You’re only as good as your last accolades, and I don’t even remember the last time I stood out in excellence, did anything extraordinary, excelled above the pack in anything for anyone. I’m just a “nice” person. I’m a good guy. I am good to people. That doesn’t make you good at anything though. Absolutely nothing. Fucking squat. I have no motivation to do anything anymore. I get in these moods more and more as time goes on.

I’m tired. I’m tired. I’m tired. Tired of running the rat race. I was screaming this sentiment of the last few paragraphs at 26, 25, 24, 23, 22. I am the same fucking person. Struggling and fighting in the same damn place. I know I do it to myself, but I don’t know how. I’m self aware, but yet cannot pin down in my mindset where I’ve gone wrong. How have I let this go on for this many years? I might “learn” or “grow” or “learn from my mistakes" but i just, know not to do THAT again. I find new ways of putting myself in the same exact place I’ve always been. I’ve always been ALMOST great. ALMOST buddy, almost.

Almost is a kind way of saying, not at all.

My car

I’ve just gotten my loan down to 4 digits. There, I said it.

Imagine? I never could. Remember? October/ November of 2017? Damn, who’d of thought. It’s a good feeling. It’s not much off the top, but it’s enough to make me feel like I’ve made progress. Actually, my account’s pretty bare, but I only had $14 above 4 digits. $10,014. It wasn’t time for my next payment, but I decided screw it, if sending an extra $20 that way toward my car would bring it below 10k and make me feel good by seeing a “9” when I’ll i’ve been seeing is 10 or 11 or 14, then damn I’ll do it. Impending interest might bring it back up temporarily, but from next week on out as long as I stay on top of payments, then I’ll be motivated by seeing that big fat 9 instead of a 10. That makes me feel good. Real fucking good.

Nearly makes me forget all the other loans I’m not paying for right now…

One step at a time.

Astrocat Podcast - UPDATE

An Update!

I’ve reached out to two people so far about it, it’s really up to scheduling at this point. My mics and remaining pair of headphones are in tomorrow, so a test run and then getting people through the door. I didn’t want to at first because it’d be too easy, but to supplement, I might pull in my old friend Matt Minigell who would arrive and would converse with me in a heartbeat. But I wanted to make this a bit separate and get a few strangers in the can, interviewed and the kinks worked out on this new endeavor, before I bring in old friends, does that make sense?

I’m thinking early May, alas, another delay, but a realistic timeline at this point barring any unforeseen bullshit or Murphy’s Law coming into play. I have a list of folks, but I need to double it, triple it. Not everyone’s close or available. It’s going to be paired down real quick. I want a solid 3 months of two shows a week and a little bit of traction before I go out for others, before I feel comfortable. It’ll realistically start as once a week. That seems realistic. I’m scared out of my mind of approaching unknowns, people I don’t know. Damn.

But here we go.

Jaaaammmm man

Did I mention I’m in a “Jam band”? I didn’t? How funny.

Yes, it’s true. However, i’d call it more a primitive dad-rock cover band. There is little jamming involved. I’m trying to steer this in a different direction than yesterday where I spiraled into an existential crisis of sorts. But it ultimately leads there doesn’t it? I never wanted to be here. Unless I make it to 59 and decided, fuck it, I’ve done it all, join a cover band. Nah.

Here I am, 27 and in a band, my only band or outlet for performing at the moment live or otherwise. I haven’t been recording much lately either. That’s a problem. The only good coming from it, is I get to play guitar, learn new chords, and up my chops as a player where I never had before. We don’t play out much. I have twice now with this group and only once as the lead/ rhythm guitarist. There is another guitar player, but he enjoys soloing over anything else and pretty much does that over everything, so yours truly needs to hold down the back bone with the bass player. Thankfully, that guy is classically trained and knows his stuff.

Also, I’ve put together a pedal board I’ve built. I’ve only got two on there, a crap distortion and a chorus, but humble beginnings. I need a tuner, tube screamer, and a few other things I deem necessary to the new sound. Same as the old sound? I think not. Same as the dad rock sound? Certainly not. Same as will fit my non-existent budget? Definitely not.

I painted it blue, the board. It took me a few nights over the course of a month, mainly trial and error in realizing I was missing primitive tools to finish the job and going to get them. I used curved edge 2/4 for part of it which was a mistake. As I needed to glue two pieces together on the horizontal end. But I made it work. I poly’d it, velcro’d and it looks okay. Mounted a proper power supply, and slapped some stick on the back of the two pedals I have and woopie do, I’ve got a board! just plug it in to a strip or wall and off I go, into the night. I’ve yet to use it in any setting other than making sure it worked, so practice tonight will be the inaugural go at it. Is it sad I’m mainly worried about getting blue on his basement carpet? I mean, it’s got poly on it, the bottom too, I think.

Anywho, dad rock songs, jeez. Got a gig in 3 weeks and I’m nervous about getting things nailed down proper and respectable. Two run-throughs are not enough to call it done and well practiced. Certainly not when I now have to play the main parts, and sing a lot of them. Even the ones I don’t sing, they’re guitar heavy and I need to be on the ball. Oi vay. Uh huh. It’s made me get my crap together though guitar wise. I need a new set of steel on there and a battery. My damn guitar requires a 9v UNDER the pick guard, believe that shit? I’m not going to jinks it, but I’m changing it prior to the gig anyway. 2nd last practice went really well. We hadn’t in a long long while and I was worried. But we have a female singer and we mainly practiced 3 or 4 new ones she really wanted to do. But now she’s not going to be AT the next gig. So it’s all for naught. Hell. Hell on Earth. The room we’re playing is big, high ceilings, wood floor, tall windows and doors, and lots of reflective surfaces. It’s going to be an outright shit show.

But we’ll just roll with it.

Off to work

I’m washed up. Hit the wall, ceiling, door, cement floor in the basement. I mean let’s be real here.

I’ve spent the last 4-5 years worrying about where I’m going to eat next, figuring out where I’m going to sleep and how I’m going to fend off debt collectors day to day. So busy scrounging for each little piece each day that I wasn’t thinking about my life, where it should be. Too busy to notice I let myself slip away, completely. My sense of where I wanted to be disappeared and now faintly out of sight and no longer within reach.

I always point out comically in animals, or small children, the moment when the light fades from their eyes. The moment when they realize “Oh, this is it. This is all there is.” It only gets worse from here on. Not everything is possible. Perhaps my dreams won’t come true or worse, perhaps I don’t really want my dreams to come true after all. I’ve lost my passion for some of it. Now I am those who came before me, lost in space and time in this place we live in. Stuck in the mistakes we make, in the life we forgot we were making while we were making our greatest attempts at staying alive and barely afloat.

Instead of spending every waking moment fulfilling my dreams, I’m in a cube, not even a cube, a “pod” listening to 30 others type, and chat about nothing. Dinner, what they made for dinner, acquiring ingredients for dinner, whose over for dinner, how dinner tasted last night and what it might taste like tonight or tomorrow. What time dinner will occur, how dinner will be different this time and that’s just dinner. Listening to boring, monotone wastes of space “yes” someone to death in conversation. Yes, Yea, yea, yes, YES, yesss, oh yes, yea, exactly, yea. mhm, yea. An assault on my eardrums. A slow reminder I am not supposed to be here.

But I am, I made this happen. I dreamed last night I got an offer at a previous place I worked at. Apparently that’s how miserable I am here. It’s a monotonous job. But I chose it. I did because I needed stability and I still don’t have it. Why? Because I keep chasing some, half-baked, recycled, 5th generation, white washed version of what resembles what’s left of my dreams. A fucking podcast. A day late and a dollar short. Everyone’s doing it. My reasoning may be different than most though. To get down and document the history of an artist’s journey. So much lost history. In a local scene, these things are never known, lost to the generations and gentrification of the cities where venues are replaced with boutique stores and Chipotle’s and “startups.” Band’s crazy story’s buried in turmoil, college attempts, moving apart, getting jobs that take precedent over the band. Some groups don’t know that the next practice will be their last until years on when they simply don’t remember. Too busy, too broke, too fed up. Like me.

What the fuck am I doing? I’m no more stable here than I was a year ago, two, three. Same shit, different set of walls. The stakes are higher now. With every passing week I delay and delay and more and more obstacles are set up by life. Nothing slows down but time speeds up exponentially until I wake up and it’s 2020, 2025, 2040. Fuck. What have I done? Nothing but excused myself and excused myself for why I haven’t done IT yet, whatever IT may be. I sit here and write during work when i should be working. No, fuck that, when i should be chasing. But to do so needs money and money means work and work means I need to work enough to make what I want and that needs hard work but I ain’t working hard because I’m not passionate so I skate because I’m miserable and I’m miserable because I’m not doing what I want day to day so I work and go home and drink and wish I wasn’t here and this is the circle of excuses.

We buy books to distract ourselves and self help books to make us feel better for making excuses and don’t actually help us DO ANYTHING but for a brief period of time, pull the wool over our heads but make us believe the curtain has been LIFTED and I WILL do something about it, TOMORROW WHEN I GET UP I’M GOING TO DO IT, FINALLY. But nothing. ever. happens. We skate by briefly on the elation and feel-goods that we are so changed by this thing we read in a book or online about changing your life that we just forget and weeks go by and you’ve still. done. nothing. Nothing has happened so we decide the book didn’t work and try another and THAT one will be the one. THAT one will work. Rinse and repeat.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. By which case we’re all fucking insane hypocrites. I’m a hypocrite, and so are you. You fuck. I keep getting emails, buried in emails. Little letters and numbers combined in order to form words that make me miserable and I don’t care to read but will make me more miserable if I don’t so I do. Email was invented as a digital hamster wheel keeping us docile and miserable and chasing the end of the work which will never occur. Because after you’re done there’s more work and if you’ve finished all your work and there is no more that’s the end of you and go home, we have no need. You’ve been replaced, fired, let go, laid off, outsourced, canned, terminated. We’re streamlining, downsizing, downgrading, downshifting, cuts, setbacks, trimming the fucking fat, “reorganizing,” readjusting, re-calibrating, rehabilitating, redistributing, refining, rehashing, repossessing, redacting, recycling, re-PURPOSING, REALLOCATING, reassuring. Underutilized, under staffed, over staffed, over margin, overstated, We’re losing. Go home. Go fuck yourself.

What’s it all mean? What’s the point? Is there one? Now someone wheezes and everyone ignores, annoyed, quietly wondering when the appropriate time is to ask if they’re OKAY. WHEN can you fucking get up and go die quietly somewhere ELSE. There are no walls here, no doors. GO AWAY and make noise. The woman who won’t shut the fuck up walks by slowly with a shit eating grin on her face, like a predator looking for her next prey she’ll waste another 23 minutes talking about her son or daughter to, as I pray into my screens (yes, screens) that she doesn’t lock eyes and laser focus in on me, reeling me in to another useless, uninteresting conversation about her shit husband or shit kids or shit house or shit car. But i’ve slowly stopped praying about it, because I’ve become a pro at avoiding her, I have built a tactic. A surefire way to avoid her as she walks by. Like a guard and a prisoner who has a secret he needs to hide. A form of survival in a way.

Nobody fucking cares. Stop. This place swallows souls. Recycles them into weather-worrying, deadline driven, shells of people. I desperately want to wipe my desk clean of all work apparatus, replace with microphones and sit people down who’re scurrying to “meetings” and “conference rooms” and ask them what they wanted to do before the light left their eyes.

As if they’d even remember.

More more film

It happened. Of course it happened.

The second order of film got messed up. A single roll turned out. 4 rolls got trashed. I think my camera battery dying had to do with it. The lens wasn’t focusing properly and I thought nothing of it at first, until the whole thing died all together. But it never told me the battery was dying., It said it was full until it kicked it, that’s the only explanation I can give it. I scored another camera free when I came back, no lens yet, but it needs a bit of work. But damn right? 4 whole rolls from Ireland. Daaaaammmnn. Thankfully the one roll that came back was a big day in our trip. So that’s the silver lining. But 2 whole days in Dublin, gone.

Actually, I’ve suppressed it and prefer not to remember. In terms of what I snapped that are now lost to time and approx 25 yr old machinery. I haven't told her yet. She’ll be devastated. I haven’t 1 because of that, 2. When I found out, she was on a major scrap booking convention with printed copies of the first 5 rolls I got back. Devastated, let’s not go any deeper into the losssssss.

That being said, the photos that did come back were incredible. I mean, Ireland did most of the work, but I bought some stocks I hadn’t used yet which I’ve mentioned here before, but more than the average 2 or 3 shots a roll came back better than expected, artistically speaking. So there’s that.

more film

I don’t have any reason to in terms of the present, but I’m currently telling myself that it’s officially going to be “OK.” I still haven’t gotten the film back that I’ve shipped last Sunday, I believe they received it Tuesday or Wed, and then we had a few back and forth emails regarding a discrepancy in the way I submitted the payment. So there was a bit of a delay, but I thought for sure it’d be here by Friday, but no go. Now it’s 3 days later on Monday, over a week after putting it in the mail. I am nervous.

Mainly that 11 whole roles of film either didn’t turn out good, or got fucked up or something. They usually turn it around within 3 days tops. But this is a bit much. I did ask if i needed to send more money, (slide film costs an extra buck than the C-41 process) But the response I got was just an “okay cool i’ll let them know!” Nothing about my offer. So as far as I know, they’re still working on it, or holding off, or burned them up for all I know. Who really knows!

But you know what, it’s going to be okay, maaaannnnn.

Pick up

Your feet! PICK THEM UP. One thing gets on my nerves more than anything is when people draaaaaaag their feet. Jesus H. Is it psychological? Was it from childhood in order to announce your presence? You work in an office. That sound is like nails on a chalkboard to my ears which are bleeding now. Please for the love of shit, pick up your feet.