Climbing the Mountain 2019.10

1. Born in Black – Laura Jane Grace and The Devouring Mothers

“Dancing towards the abyss
You and me, swallowed up by a black hole
In perpetual concession, infinite distance, eternal displacement
I cannot escape the pull
Fall into the collapse, let the time stretch
Doorways to the unknown
Where hurt becomes love, and pain is happiness
Born in black
We’ve only ever wanted to go back”

2. Jenny – The Mountain Goats

On the second bike trip Big S told me that she gave me this song because it was about me. That I’m a pirate.

“How much better, how much better can my life get?
900 cubic centimeters of raw, whining power, no outstanding warrants for my arrest
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, the pirate’s life for me”

My memory is riding with Big S along the C&O trail, on the right ponds that made up the old lock system, on the left is a line of trees. This song is playing and every time after he says “pirate’s life for me”, I would ride frantically to the song weaving from side to side of the path, in and among the grass line with frantic excited energy. I am a pirate, a joker and a free spirit, apparently I forgot.

3. Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton – The Mountain Goats

“When you punish a person for dreaming his dreaming
Don’t expect him to thank or forgive you”

I mischievously enjoy singing this song when the lyrics “hail satan” come on. Whether I am walking or biking it is such a hoot to think someone would hear and misunderstand why I was saying it.

4. Southwood Plantation Road – The Mountain Goats

“I am not gonna lose you
We are gonna stay married
In this house like a Louisiana graveyard
Where nothing stays buried”

I think a lot of these songs were me still getting over and moving past feelings surrounding Clarity. I listened to the Tallahassee album hundreds of times over. I can’t say much more about this song other than the lyrics above.

5. No Children – The Mountain Goats

“I hope I cut myself shaving tomorrow
I hope it bleeds all day long
Our friends say it’s darkest before the sun rises
We’re pretty sure they’re all wrong
I hope it stays dark forever
I hope the worst isn’t over
And I hope you blink before I do
And I hope I never get sober”

Oh I sung this song with so much glee, everywhere I went. The lyrics to this song are so great and disheartening. This is a song I listened to in early summer. “I hope you die! I hope we both die”

6. Oceanographer’s Choice

“I don’t know why I’m so persuaded
That if I think things through
Long enough and hard enough
I’ll somehow get to you
But then you came in
And we locked eyes
You kicked the ashtray over as we came toward each other
Stubbed my cigarette out against the west wall
Quickly lit another”

My memory is of listening to this walking in the strip district. I tried my damnedest to walk off my demons of my past relationship.

7. Broom People – The Mountain Goats

I often didn’t feel too great and in early spring. I mostly just walked around a lot and didn’t talk to many folks about what had occurred just a year prior. The previous two years haunted me quite a lot on my walks and alone in my room. It’s why I watched so much tv, it was why I would drink (not that I drank very much I just normally don’t drink at all), and why I would walk.

Big S was where I could become a babbling brook. I’ll forever be thankful for that.

8. The Mess Inside – The Mountain Goats

“We went to New York City in September
Took the train out of Manhattan to the Grand Army stop
Found that bench we’d sat together on a thousand years ago
When I felt such love for you I thought my heart was gonna pop
I wanted you
To love me like you used to do”

I’m certain this song is about Clarity as well.

9. Black Coffee – Mal Blum

“I got so high that I forgot
That I’m no better than I seem”

I saw Mal Blum with Big S and their coworker. I didn’t know Mal’s new album but I got into it once hearing it live. This is the song that caught Big S the most when it was playing. It felt too close to home for both me and her. I definitely was a hot mess when I met Big S and was no better than I seemed.

10. You Or Your Memory – The Mountain Goats

“St. Joseph’s baby aspirin
Bartles and Jaymes
And you
Or your memory”

Cheap high, cheap alcohol and complicated memories of his abusive step dad who just passed. The complicated memories and mourning is certainly what I relate to.

11. Painter In Your Pocket – Destroyer

“Where did you get that line?
Where did you get that look?
Where did you get that penchant for destruction in the way you talk?”

Big S is a big fan of this band and for some reason this song from the album caught my ear one time spotify was playing random music for me.

12. Dance Music – The Mountain Goats

“I’m listening to dance music
Dance music”

So nice and upbeat, am I wrong? “So this is what the volume nob is for.”

13. Dissatisfactions – Onsind

“There’s something wrong with me
I don’t think I’ll ever be okay
I just take it day by day (by day by day)”

Big S has been called inconsolable by several partners and friends.

I sung the lyrics above over and over again. While I was caught up in this song I was convinced that was true for me, that I don’t think I’ll ever be okay, I’m happy to say I feel like that is less true today.

14. This Year – The Mountain Goats

“I am going to make it through this year
If it kills me
I am going to make it though this year
If it kills me”

This song caught me one day when I was biking to Heart’s house where I was cat sitting. I biked as fast as I could to out run the feelings of this song. I don’t know where that feeling came from and I don’t really care to think about it but I biked so hard and fast trying to escape it.

15. Riches and Wonder – The Mountain Goats

“And I want to go home
But I am home”

Memory: I was cat sitting at Heart’s house for 2 weeks. I was there because the previous house I was living in was being sold so all of my things were shoved in a closet in a room that wasn’t mine, not to mention that Librarian was making me increasingly uncomfortable. At Heart’s house they have a “anti-inspirational quote board.” I wrote a play on these lyrics as my quote for the wall. “Sometimes you want to go home, Sometimes you are home, Sometimes you have no home.”

I wrote this because to celebrate my year anniversary of not having a home for a few weeks I once again didn’t have any place I could call home, luckily it wasn’t as traumatic as the last time due to the support of my friends.

16. Fall of the Star High School Running Back – The Mountain Goats

“But selling acid was a bad idea
And selling it to a cop was a worse one”

17. Going to Georgia – Laura Jane Grace (Mountain Goat’s Cover)

The house I was living at was being sold, I had to move all of my possessions from my room into another and then shove them into a closet. People came daily to look at my room, and everything in my room was up for examination or to be moved (and it always was moved). Every time I would leave my room I’d play this song, I was just looking for the cozy home and I had it in my old room but I had it no more. This lasted for a month.

I would alternate between John Darnielle’s version and Laura’s version. Laura’s clear loud voice cuts through me like a knife.

18. BA77 – Onsind

“Sick of ‘borders’, sick of ‘nations’, sick of racist immigration policy
Disregarded pleas for solidarity.”

This song is about Jimmy Mubenga an Angolan immigrant who was murdered by 3 guards from G4S security services while being deported from the UK.

19. New Year’s Eve – Mal Blum

“Hey, did you know you can check the time
Your call reaches the other line?
Hey, did you know that I know you lied?
So board it up and don’t even try”

I mostly understand this lyric but I really like the build up for when they sing these lyrics.

My memory from this song is this song playing on the Northside while I’m wandering around with Big S, and when the build up above happens I can’t help but sing along. Only to ask Big S if they know what that means. Resulting in Big S poking fun at me for being a sucker lyrics based on the way the song builds them up. Yes, that is true.

Looks Pretty Hopeful 2019.6

 

1. Temecula Sunrise – Dirty Projectors

Big S shared this with me on the bike trip, they said it’s written about folks squatting in new construction houses built just before the housing bubble. I’m always reminded of Big S’s commentary appreciating the responsible drinking lyric – drinking Gatorade to prevent a hang over “I live in a greenhouse and I am getting wasted, yeah. Temperature rising. I can feel it all the way down. And what hits the spot, yeah, like Gatorade?” I also texted Majesty about this song and asked him if he’d move to Temecula Sunrise with me, he responded appropriately.

Memory – Dancing my way from work to Trader Joe’s listening to this song on repeat. Jumping from and balancing on benches and planter edges while spinning around. It felt like freedom – the whole idea of living there and feeling some good feelings.

2. Benton Harbor Blues – The Firey Furnaces

This song is also from Big S, they know the best music. This song was on repeat for both of us for a week or two. The music feels like video game music at times and is upbeatish despite the melancholy lyrics.

Memory – Probably of the first few times I listened to this song with Big S. Sitting on the couch in my living room at opposite ends facing each other, our legs pressed against each other. We shared music like this for a couple of hours, it was great. Big S is reminded of riding their own bike in a snow storm to the mini mart in Chicago, “I rode a bike in the snow to the mini-mart”. Sometimes I imagine that.

3. Pais Nublado – Helado Negro

Big S played this at their house one time I was over, it felt calming and chill and I wanted more of it’s soothing words. I spent weeks listening to the album, This is How You Smile. When I was listening to this I thought I was finally breaking out of folk punk world.

Memory: Getting into work after a cool morning bike ride and warming up inside while listening to this album over and over again every morning. This was one of the first albums that I frequently listened to that was work appropriate.

4. Nothing Came Out – The Moldy Peaches

At our furthest point on the bike trip before going back sitting in an adirondack in Connellsville trying to find the motivation and desire to go back towards Pittsburgh. Big S played several songs on the speaker, I immediately asked that this song be replayed. So sad and whiny, I had to have it again. I spent the next couple of weeks whining these lyrics.

“And besides, you’re probably holding hands with some skinny, pretty girl that likes to talk about bands,
And all I wanna do is ride bikes with you and stay up late and maybe spoon.”

5. In a Diner In Poughkeepsie – Quinn Cicala

My morning ritual consisted of waking up, showering, meditating, making an egg bagel sandwich and a fruit smoothie while singing along to whatever songs have caught my ear recently. I asked my one roommate that was home if it was annoying and she said she really liked it, she liked hearing me sing and express emotions like that. So when she was off pet sitting for a week and this song was in my ear and I recorded myself singing it and sent it to her. Turns out she very much appreciated that clip and has since replayed it for other people.

I think this song had my ear because of his longing to be laughing at a joke surrounded by all his friends, his somber longing and fear of death.

6. I’m not a good person – Pat the Bunny

This song became my motto for a little while. It honestly felt liberating because I’ve been trying to be a good person for my whole life and I am tired of trying. I just want to be enough (to paraphrase another song by this musician). Big S also took this song on as a motto, citing the lyric:

“I try to keep up with everything I know I should do, but then I fall to pieces anyway.”

Memory: Playing this song at work. I had just told my manager that I was going to send back my warranty parts to a company I was annoyed a but only after covering them in grease. He tried to tell me not to do that, I couldn’t oblige. Instead I covered everything in grease and played this song for him and said, “Sorry [manager’s name] I’m not a good person.”

Also I know this song on Ukulele and love singing it.

7. Ten Things – Paul Baribu

I thought often about this list he asks you to name, and I did my best to write it down. This was one of the few motivators in my life to get me out of bed, to get me to move forward and get up an out. At the time I wasn’t spending any time with anyone outside of work and bumping into roomies at home. My favorite part is:

“Name ten thousand reasons why you never wanna die, go and tell someone who might’ve forgotten”

8. Oh, Right. Damn It. – Sledding with Tigers

I found this song on spotify when I was first playing ukulele and easily learned the chord, got the song stuck in my head and around this time I realized how much I related to this song and how much I hated relating to it. I wanted to be over Clarity and didn’t like the way she treated me. But a part of me heard this and related. And it is one of the less than a dozen songs I know how to play on the ukulele.

9. Goodbye Lulu – Days N Daze

Despite my best efforts to break free from the folk-punk genre I couldn’t escape it, I did for a little bit because of Big S, Helado Negro, and Laura Jane Grace and The Devouring Mothers but was quickly brought back by Days N Daze and have been entranced by Pat The Bunny.

10. Never Coming Home (Song for the Guilty) – Ramshackle Glory

I appreciate him saying, “I’ve been smoking too much, because I am no exception.” I constantly think about being no exception when I give advice – wishing I could take my own advice, acknowledging that I am no exception.

I think I sung this song, especially in front of Big S to try and tell everyone that “I’m not here, I never am.” Because especially when I was listening to this song I didn’t feel present I felt lost in thoughts and hurt, constantly in “battle with the… way that I think”.

I sung this song over and over again. I sung this song on the bike trip. I played parts of this song on my ukulele. This song makes me feel so sad and distraught.

I sung this song so much on the bike trip it got to a point that I started making funny alterations on it like, “No room is as dark or stinky as ours is.” a commentary on the constant farting going on in our tent. Big S both laughed and bemoaned my singing this. But I remember my silly song catching their attention and distracting them from their own thoughts they were battling with.

11. We Don’t Get Tired, We Get Even – Pat The Bunny

The song caught my ear because of it’s hopelessness. At first it made me sad thinking that, “And I’d still be on the outside. Of the world we dreamed of building,” which honestly feels true. The first verse is so strong-willed we’re gonna fight even if we don’t sleep. The second part immediately acknowledges that “I can’t sleep anyway” and then confesses that he knows he’ll never belong. I asked Majesty about this and he concurred, that we’ll never belong – it relieved me a little to feel like I wasn’t alone in not belonging, it just feels really lonely out there. I often feel isolated from everyone and feel very little connection to others. Everyone seems to connect to me but I suppose because of my trauma I currently (nor possibly ever) will connect to the vast majority of people I interact with.

Memory: This song first caught my ear when I was biking around on this closed off bike path on duck hollow. If you go to a certain point you can climb on old equipment for loading things onto boats. I sat at the top of this perch (one time even with a hammock) and listened to this song on repeat and felt hopeless.

12. I Hate Chicago – Laura Jane Grace and The Devouring Mothers

This song was especially funny to me because Big S lived in Chicago, specifically Bridgeport too! (where Laura’s ex lives). Also my district manager at work moved here from Chicago and I jokingly threatened to play it when he came in for the first time.

I relate to this song because I felt/feel similarly about Philadelphia. I hated Philly so much, I hated every part of it, but I most hated that I went there specifically because my partner, Smiles, wanted to move there (not me). I have felt that same feeling Laura describes when she says, “Oh, when I head north on Lake Shore Drive. I fly and I close my eyes. And I reach the magic point. And I run for magic miles.” When I drove North on the Schuylkill Expressway when I was visiting Pittsburgh in preparation for moving here I left Philly and flicked it off and screamed at Philly. As Laura has realized and as I know, “this is just another divorce song.” That’s how I feel about Philly as well all you philly readers.

13. Some Rotten Man – The Taxpayers

This song makes me hurt. When I sung it I imagined singing it to Clarity, I imagined I was the some rotten man, I was nobody’s savior. It made me feel like I was being stood on, it reminded me of all the things I thought I did wrong and filled me with self-loathing, but at least I was “[her] oldest friend.”

“I know you could’ve done much better
I know I must’ve been a real fucking nightmare
Some rotten man
Nobody’s savior
Your oldest friend.”

14. Screamy Dreamy – Laura Jane Grace and The Devouring Mothers

I couldn’t listen to this album at all until I saw her, and let me tell you this is much better live than it is on the album, but it got me listening to the album. I listened to it over and over and over again.

This song caught my ear one sleepless night. I wandered on a wet fall night trying to find out where a path went, trying to make sense of what was going on in my life. I couldn’t stop listening to this song, over and over again. I was super out of my body and I didn’t really know how to come back down so instead I sung this song to myself over and over again hoping I would come down. I cried on the benches surrounding the baseball field on Heth’s playground.

This lullaby felt appropriate because just like lulling yourself to sleep there is no easy way to lull yourself into your body, you need some real patience, patience interrupted by frustration and agitation, or as manifested in this song, drums.

15. Riding For The Feeling – Bill Callahan

Big S played this song for me on the bike trip and they sung the lyrics, “again and again and again and again” to me, which made me smile and blush.

I relate a lot to the distance he is feeling with other people, wishing that someone would say, “who do you think you are?” It just feels very lonely, lonely with people, which is the worst type of lonely, there is nothing more lonesome that feeling alone with people – it is the most lonely you can get, lonely with no antidote.

My memory is one day at work when I stayed late this song came on I literally broke down and started to cry, I feel down on the ground and cried for the whole song, I only stopped because the song that follows it was just too upbeat.

16. Sink, Florida, Sink – Against Me!

I was learning this song on the ukulele when I first started hanging out with Big S, I was obsessed with the song and getting all the nuances of it right. We went biking on our second hang out and I sung this song for them, half way thru I got anxious at what I was doing and I abruptly turned off the path and took a shortcut. That break helped break the connection that I felt myself forming with them and then I finished the song when we rejoined 10 seconds later.

On day 3 of our bike trip I started to feel like I needed a break, like I needed to hurt and feel bad, so we rode alone for a while. I sung this song several times and felt sad. It makes me feel sad and reminds me about how much I miss the littlest one, I hear the lyrics, “Put a distance the size of the ocean, so now this heart can beat a skipping rhythm.” I used to think I took space from them because of shit I needed to do and that it was my fault. I understand the complexity of the situation more now.

I sung this song over and over again and felt sad, I just really missed the littlest one, and couldn’t shake her face out of my head. I cried and then I got off my bike and threw my bike down, I ran up into the hills where the old “coke ovens” were and laid down in the wet undergrowth and cried uncontrollably. Big S stopped and waited for me. When I came back to my bike laying on it’s side I felt so distraught and tried to kick it as I cried, I missed. My bike for a moment became the symbol of my distance and misplaced priorities. I love those kids – I also have very little way of showing them that, that also makes me feel good.

 

What The Folk Do I Do Now? 2019.2

1. From Here Till Utopia (Song For the Desperate) – Ramshackle Glory

The entire album, Live The Dream, is great as far as I’m concerned. I exclusively listened to this album from September to November.

“I don’t know where I fit between the vegans and the nihilists
That might be the first thing I’ve said that wasn’t a lie tonight!”

– This has described me for the last 8 years. I still don’t know exactly where I fit between the vegans and the nihilists, though I know I’m not a very “good” vegetarian so maybe I do know where I fit.

This song feels like having too much free time and not knowing what to do with it, it looks like grey, dead grass, lifeless trees, and decay as I walk for walking sake.

“My friend William came to with a message of hope
It went: ‘Fuck you and everything you think you know
If you don’t step outside the things that you believe
They’re gonna kill you.”
He said: ‘You think no one’s gonna stop you from dying young and miserable? You’re right!
If you want something better, you gotta put that shit aside.’”

– No seriously, fuck you and everything you think you know, if you don’t step outside the things that you believe they are gonna kill you, they almost killed me.

2. More about Alcoholism – Ramshackle Glory

I can’t tell you the number of times I rode down the street on my bike screaming these lyrics. At the time I didn’t have a boss. I thought twice about singing these lyrics when I had a manager, though he sung the lyrics out loud which just felt insincere.

“Aw, shit, I wish I had a job to quit
I wish I had a boss that I could tell to fuck off
Give me the satisfaction of a dramatic exit, and not just a long car ride and a short goodbye in a parking lot.”

3. Day Gaunts – Days N’ Daze

Started listening to this at work per the suggestion of a customer who heard Ramshackle Glory playing and said he can’t stop listening to Days N’ Daze.

“Bugs in the kitchen and mold in the sink
Chuggin’ down the whiskey and you never stop to think
What do we do tomorrow?”

4. Urine Speaks Louder Than Words – Wingnut Dishwashers Union

I found out when I was writing this that it’s commentary on the inaction within activist communities and how meaningless their action-less words are. Stating that instead urinating on authority figures will cause more change.

“But will somebody say is this resistance or a costume party? Either way I think black with bandanas is a boring theme.”

5. We Are All Compost In Training – Ramshackle Glory

“I eat meat and drive trucks and shoot guns and don’t trust in the federal government to solve our problems. You might think I’m joking, but I’m not a republican”

“So I’ll dig up the dirt and I’ll throw down some seeds, because the world needs more spinach, not more motherfuckers like me.”

I’ve song this song dozens of times riding along on my bike. All the while motioning like I’m digging dirt holding a shovel with my two hands. And then throwing down seeds with my right hand, as I bend over closer to the ground. I agree.

6. Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of Your Fist – Ramshackle Glory

This song helped get me through the hard times at the beginning of being gone. With my right glove-less fist thrust in the air I’d sing, “Your heart is the size of a muscle the size of your fist, keep on loving, keep on fighting and hold on, hold on, hold on for you life.” And I’d stare at my first, realizing how small my fist and therefore heart was and how I needed to keep on fighting, keep on loving and hold on for my life.

“Like the time that our friend Chuck came over to our house
He said he needed somebody to take care of his pets
‘Cause he was going out of town
I asked him, “Where,” and he said “New Mexico”
I asked if I could get a ride
He said: “No, you don’t want to follow me
Where it is I’m going”
He backed out of the driveway
That was the last time we saw him
‘Cause he drove straight to his parent’s cabin
And put a bullet in his head”

7. Misanthropic Drunken Loner – Days N’ Daze

“Cause relationships are overrated
Maybe I’m just tired and jaded
But I’m sorry I just like myself more than I like you”

After burning out, I spent a lot of time by myself and I’ve hated a lot more people that I’m used to. At the beginning I’d agree that, “I’m just far more comfortable alone.”

“Human beings are a waste of breath and
Don’t think I exclude myself
I’m an asshole just like you
Cause people are ugly and people are hateful
Destructive and greedy
We’re proud and ungrateful
The world would be so much better off without us”

8. I Listened – Apes of the State

This song is the first of Apes of the State that caught my ear. I love the earnest hopelessness that it contains. I have felt in increasing inability to listen and remember about other people and would adore singing this song to someone else – this is totally a move I’d do. I exclusively listened to them for a month or two.

“And how you make poor decisions with the people that you choose to date
And you’ll probably think I’m crazy for this and I’d tell you that I don’t give a shit but that would be a lie because I care
What you think about me
And I just really, desperately want to be your next poor decision
Your next poor decision
Your next poor decision”

9. My Idea of Fun – Wingnut Dishwashers Union

“Like if you don’t want to work, then that becomes your job
There’s a lot of overtime, there’s not many days off
I hope you know that I’m not trying to complain
It just gets hard to explain to people that I know, or kids who come to shows
That I just don’t want to talk about the office today.”

– It’s nice to hear this because I relate to it a lot. And have in multiple points in my life.

“And the cops say its a crime for people like me and those friends of mine to want to die
Like my neighbor in St. Pete
She’s been on house arrest down here
If she tries to leave her yard they’ll lock her in a cage for years
‘Cause sometimes she wants to die
And she shoots dope when she thinks she could die
And the law they caught her one too many times
Shootin dope when she felt like she could die.”

– The fucked up way we deal with mental health in this society. She can’t kill herself because that’s illegal so she self medicates by shooting dope when she feels like killing herself. But then she gets thrown in jail for doing that.

“Please help me be, please help me be
Please help me be enough
Fuck the law, because we’re enough…”

We’re enough.

10. Plate Glass Apology – Apes of the State

I feel this song so much. After obsessively listening to Apes of the State for over a month I realized what they were singing about and why I felt so drawn to their music, cause they are angry, hurt, breakup songs. The best part of this one is that it’s angry, it’s angry, and then it’s honest, apologetic and sad, but only for a few seconds before she gets angry again. Also her craziness of jumping through a plate glass window and stopping a car in the middle of the road feels so close to something I’d do.

“You broke my heart I hope you die, emptier than how I feel inside
And when you lay your head to rest at night I hope that you never fall asleep when you
Think of all the things you do I wish I could just hate you oh I wish all of
These words I said were true”

11. Tonight We’re Gonna Give It 35%– Against Me!

For months every time after I’d hang out with the kids I used to live with and co-parent I’d sing this song. As soon as I’d leave after visiting them, I’d put the song on and I’d shout, “My heart is anywhere but here!” I’d write it on my arm, I’d write it on my chest, and I would stare off into the distance, looking at nothing.

“I can’t believe how naive I was to think this could ever be so simple.”

My recent memory from this song is biking while singing along to this song. I was biking down Penn ave, without my hands on the bars as I often do, as I was crossing Main St the following lyric came on, “Dear Jesus are you listening.” I put my hands together like I was praying, closed my eyes, and turned my head towards the sky as I suddenly screamed those lyrics

12. Olde Tyme Mem’ry – Mischief Brew

Branching out from Ramshackle Glory and Apes of the State this song grabbed me. It’s a song I just want to sing along to, it’s not the lyrics so much as it is the way they are sung. The song is somber, lamenting the past, while at the same time these lament-ers who “settle for white rooms and hollow doors, paper ceilings, padded floors….”

13. Strangers – Apes of the State

“Cause sometimes the people who don’t know the things you’ve done are the only ones who will bother talking to you
Sometimes strangers are the best people to tell your secrets to
Cause they don’t know you”

– So true, I often tell all my secrets to people I’ve just become friends with – often the people I’ve been friends with longer don’t have the patience or the attention span for the secrets I want to tell them – that and they know the importance of them.

“And today I wish that I could put new glasses on your eyes so you could see the world the way I do through mine
Cause then maybe you wouldn’t wanna die you wouldn’t have to stick a needle in your arm
Just to survive!

Cause I see myself in every single part of you and I made it through
So I can’t just sit back and watch you throw away your life”

– This line hurts me because of how much I relate to it. It’s why I don’t have any energy for anyone these days. I used it all up, with a lot of it going to trying to put new glasses on her eyes.

14. Wherever is Your Heart – Brandi Carlile

This was the song playing in the kids car in September. Clarity told me so. I listened to it very briefly and never again. That’s until I heard the littlest one was listening to a song on the album and replacing parts of it with “Jenny.” I don’t know what song that is but I think that it is this song.

I listened to this song on repeat, over and over and over again as I started to regain my emotions, sadness was the first one.

“Even when you’re high, you can get low
Even with your friends you love, you’re still alone
We always find the darkest place to go”

Caught me and made me cry. It felt like it was right, like I had left my home and despite the fact that “your feet may take you far from me, I know wherever is your heart I call home.” I was alone in this world, wandering around by foot. I’d hear these lyrics and stare down as my feet as I walked. Miles I’d walk just to deal with my emotions, one night I walked 13 miles on a whim and never did I find home.

Eventually the song got to me, I pulled up my left sleeve on a cold autumn night, flicked out my blade and waited. I knew like so many times before I’d wait for days, putting off this feeling only to act upon it. It had already been a day and I didn’t have the stamina to outrun it. So after my arm had been chilled I heard the lyrics, “Oh god forgive my mind, oh god forgive my mind, when I come home, when I come home.” And I did 3 quick cuts on my arm. They all drew a blood that I regretted slightly when I was later in a convenience store restroom shoving paper towels in my sleeve so I didn’t get my hoodie covered in blood. This was the last time I cut myself.

Since then I’ve figured out how to deal with my emotions in a more productive way. My new favorite coping mechanism is singing. I sing all these songs all the time. That’s where my emotions go. Having never experienced a normal childhood and therefore never learning how to cope with existence, I now am experiencing being a teenager for the first time. It’s odd, but it’s going really well this time – even if it’s 15 years after it should’ve happened.

Against Me And Myself 2018 Mixed CD

For about 8 months I primarily listened to Against Me! It was a hard time, and it’s hard to touch all of the emotions that were present in that time. Music is the easiest way for me to have a snapshot of an emotion and this is a snapshot of that time.

Against Me and Myself 2018

1. We Laugh at Danger (And Break All the Rules) – Against Me!

This song is screamed at the top of my lungs in the car, so loud that a friend heard and saw me jamming and texted me to send me her approval.

It also inspired this line in a poem from May:

Screaming punk lyrics in the car dreaming of being homeless. Wondering what the future smells like searching for convertible tights in the kids section of target.

“Mary, there is no hope for us
If this GM van don’t make it
Across the state line
We might as well lay down and die
Because if Florida takes us
We’re taking everyone down with us
Where were coming from
Will be the death of us”

I feel those lyrics. While I can’t relate to those lyrics anymore I know I did in a way that startles and terrifies me. “Where were coming from, will be the death of us” It feels odd and scary to me that I would feel suicidal feelings in such a way. People congratulate me for leaving the situation with the kids but I have to tell them I left because I knew the other option was dying. I knew those feelings would only get larger and larger and would end in an inevitable way. I didn’t decide to leave so much as I decided I didn’t want to kill myself and the only way to prevent that was by leaving – something I had been considering for many months.

2. Walking is Still Honest – Against Me!

“Can anybody tell me why God won’t speak to me?
Why Jesus never called on me to part the fucking seas?
Why death is easier than living?”

Walking over homestead bridge, walking through squirrel hill for hours, walking for hours and hours, every time I need. Walking until 2am because I can’t fall asleep.

I relate a lot to her, with spirituality calling me the Christian concept of god felt like it was constantly rejecting me. I spent years reading the bible, I went to several bible studies and studied an Evangelical Christian group for a class. It never felt right, and now I am rejected by most of them. which is pretty alright to me. I found my spirituality in Buddhism, it’s sufficiently empty and non-judgmental.

“Dear mother
This is just survival
Cannot promise your children everything
But you would lie so they can sleep tonight”

I didn’t listen to this song at first because of these lyrics, I didn’t hear them for a while or think about them because of how they may or may not reference Clarity and the kids. I continue to not really look into it while feeling it relate to me and my life with the family.

3. Cavalier Eternal – Against Me!

This song caught my ear and made me laugh, I sung this in the car, I sung this in front of the kids. I hid this from Clarity and I told my therapist I knew why this song spoke to me – because it was about Clarity, that was probably April that I told my therapist that, wasn’t but a few weeks later I told her I couldn’t do it anymore.

4. 1-800-237-8255 – Logic

“I’ve been on the low
I been taking my time
I feel like I’m out of my mind
It feel like my life ain’t mine”

I hated the second half of this song for a while, just like I always re-winded Blink-182’s song “Adam’s song” half way through every time.

5. Because of the Shame (Black Crosses Version) – Against Me!

I found this song after reading Laura’s book, I didn’t believe her at first that she didn’t write Thrash Unreal about CC. But after rereading it and listening to both songs, I believe it. The White Crosses version reminds me of Queen’s Album Made In Heaven, the Black Crosses version will make you cry with very little to separate you from her words.

6. Searching for Former Clarity – Against Me!

The first time I really heard this song was late April and I was at home in the basement. I played it at again and cried on the floor the type of crying that is angry and hurts. I cried and flailed about kicking random things in the basement, it was the hardest I’ve cried in years.

The second memory is a 9 days after I wrote the Poem, “Today’s The Day”

The day I want to kill myself
it isn’t the day I have a crisis
it isn’t the day I cry for hours
it isn’t the day I cut myself
it isn’t the day I am angry, miserable and filled with rage and hurt
That’s the day I want to scheme
to tie a noose
to make sure it fits over my head
to find a spot
to make sure it’s hidden from sight
to find a stump
to make sure it’s easy to knock over
to write a note
to cry and scream in frustration and hurt when I realize today isn’t the day
The day I want to kill myself is
when I feel the cool breeze over my face
when I can hear the birds chirping around me
when I feel calm and present in my body
when the day has gone well and there isn’t a thing in the world making me knock over that stump
That’s the day I want to kill myself
a good day a happy day
a day where I say that was a full life
a day where I say that was a good time
a day where one tear escapes my left eye and runs all the way down my cheek until it reaches my chin and then it hops off to land on and be absorbed into my shirt
a day where that tear has to run past a smile before I knock over my stump.

I went to Schenley Park, parked the car, called my therapist and left a voicemail as I had promised myself the night before. And I put on this song. I felt calm and collected. I smiled, I smiled as tears rolled down my cheek they were happy, relieved tears. “Not yet,” I told myself – fearing that I’d get too emotional and threaten the certainness that today was the day. I played the song over and over again as I searched the park for a rope, any rope to hang myself with. After walking for 2 hours I found a tent held together with ratchet straps and as I was surveying which one would be best to remove my therapist called back. I was fucking pissed and I told her so, she made me talk about it over and over again and eventually I tired of trying to kill myself.

7. 8 Full Hours of Sleep – Against Me!

“When you sleep no one is homeless
When you sleep you can’t feel the hunger
When you sleep no one is lonely in a dream.”

This song is my first week out of the house. No where to go, uncertainty around sleeping spaces and what and how I would eat food, with my main goals being meeting basic needs. Biking around listlessly in the morning before anything opened trying to find a place I could go, trying to find a place I could sleep following a hot, miserable, sleepless night with rain, mosquitoes, trains, and a fox barking. I found myself at the Cathedral of Learning on Pitt’s campus and chatted with a new friend on text as I tried to figure out how to survive in this new world.

“The sun’s always rising in the sun somewhere.”

8. The Disco Before the Breakdown – Against Me!

This song is about dysphoria

“And if you follow the jawline down over the heart. Because of your bone and muscle that make up your head to toe. it’s just skin and threat stitches and ligaments.”

9. Creature Comfort – Arcade Fire

This song is driving fast in the silver car, faster, faster! Maybe you can outrun these feelings, vooRRRRR, vooRRR, vooRRRRR. Or if not maybe I can crash into a median and die trying.

“Assisted suicide
She dreams about dying all the time
She told me she came so close
Filled up the bathtub and put on our first record
Saying God, make me famous
If you can’t just make it painless
Just make it painless”

This is a song I put on repeat, over and over again, this is a song that I would cut myself to as soon as I heard it a nice quick slice on my almost unscarred inner forearm – shit you are supposed to cut under your underwear, on your left lower abdomen the equals sign you’ve been etching in over time. What will they think at the JCC, what will the other parents think!

“It’s not painless
She was a friend of mine, a friend of mine
And we’re not nameless, oh”

10. Tonight We’re Gonna Give it 35% – Against Me!

This is my favorite song by Against Me! right now. She wrote it in Pittsburgh while Anti-Flag was trying to court her to sign onto their record company. “On a balcony overlooking nothing”
First I caught the beginning and I laughed at the lyrics, and read how much she despised bottled water and thought of how much I did esp at that time (2002) (not that it doesn’t make me uncomfortable now).
“We drank bottled water together, and talked business, I think I played the right moves.”

“My heart is anywhere but here”

“How tired I was from the past couple of weeks from the past couple of years, but it hit me all at once.”

I relate to so many parts of this song and I relate so hard to it.
My memory associated with this song is on a sleepless night, one I knew all I could do was walk if I ever wanted to sleep. So I drove the silver car fast as a rocket through the tunnel and over the bridge, eyeing up the Jersey barriers for future spots that I could crash with our crappier car. I parked the car at the top of the Homestead Gray Bridge. And walked over to it and dreamed of jumping, instead I just walked it. With this song on repeat. Tonight I was stealing hours from my sleep time so I could live for a few minutes. But I didn’t know how to live anymore. I only knew I wanted to die. Tonight wasn’t the night, I was to frustrated. Tonight was a night I had to walk down the bridge.

These were some of the first nights I lived in so long, one of these nights I walked across a long railroad bridge while a cargo boat past underneath me. I ran the final bit worried cars would see me, no longer scared I would fall through the rickety floor, I was more worried I would die before I was able to do this crazy shit again. I finished the night by burning a small American flag on the middle of the bridge as I walked back to my car.

“I can’t believe how naive I was to think this could ever be so simple.” (how I feel about the family)

11. Borne on the FM Waves of the Heart – Against Me!

I found this song on another night I stole the same night I was walking on Bigelow Boulevard past the french fries trying to finally find out where the sidewalk along it goes Something I’d been wondering for 4 years.

Packaged between, “Problems” and “Even at Our Worst We’re Better Than Most” This is the soundtrack of that night. As I walked on the sidewalk I found where I would hang myself. A quest I had been on for over a year. In one of the parts of this sidewalk near the strip district there weren’t any businesses but instead there were trees that would hide me, hide me from anyone seeing me. I would simply tie my rope to the fence and dangle against the concrete wall attempting to scurry up it until I could no longer breathe.

12. Even at Our Worst We’re Still Better Than Most – Against Me!

“You can have it all, I ain’t got the heart to fight, no.
Total exhaustion, complete breakdown. For the asshole I am,
apologies in full, please leave me alone.
Pull over the van, let me out.”

Exactly, that is exactly what I wanted to scream every day after every conflict with Clarity for the last few months with the kids, I was just truly exhausted.

13. Problems – Against Me!

“An inventory has been taken of every belonging
An estimated value sold in event of emergency
The only back up plan in case it doesn’t work out
While losing semblance of coherence to a former self
You know I am becoming the choice’s we’re making”
This was my plan. I had a car, I had a no obligations. I was going to get my shit sorted out a little bit, sell a bunch of bikes and bike parts and then go on my road trip. Then my partner never changed the oil in my car that she drove all the time and it imploded.

14. What We Worked For – Against Me!

“May the likes of this song never make one fucking dollar, leave it for a demo tape to be played until it’s broken and be remembered for only what it was, that we gave ‘em hell”

“There is a distance beyond the freeway” was going to be the motto of my road trip

This song so much reminds me of who I was in college and what I believed and what moved me. And what is moving me once again, I understand that you give up on the idealist things that you believe, but I don’t want to, not yet. I want to live them for a bit more time, I still want to be a child, because it’s more fun that being an adult, because it’s what makes me glow.

“Sleeping under plastic stars glued to the ceiling…. But we gave ‘em hell”

15. Burn – Against Me!

“Burn burn burn, like they did to the anarchists at the stakes
Burn burn bun, like the histories they stole from us”

Laura said they never finished the lyrics of the bridge, which is why it sounds weird and she sings hurriedly, “One day patriot thugs will dance to songs of justice, and cringe and rack guns of shame.”
All I hear when I think about this is this famous picture of a Nazi book burning. This isn’t just a library this is the Library of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science. Hirschfeld was the founder of modern transgender theory, and it was his students who fled the Nazis and founded transgender advocacy in the US. This book burning was a theft of transgender history a theft of my history, a history that if played out differently could’ve easily drastically altered my life. #fuckfascism #noplatform

16. White Crosses – Against Me!

“I wake up in the morning and I drink from the fountain
I wake up in the morning with the same unanswered questions
I don’t know what’s going to cure my unsettled stomach”

This song feels like walking through Squirrel Hill, wandering around after dropping of the kids. Loud head banging music to forget my woes and softly head bang as I walk though the quiet streets of Squirrel Hill.

17. Thrash Unreal – Against Me!

“No mother ever dreams
That her daughter’s gonna grow up to be a junkie
No mother ever dreams
That her daughter’s gonna grow up to sleep alone”

Summer Love Playlist 2016.8

Here is my most recent playlist. While most of them focus upon a time in my life this one more seems to focus around a person in my life, Half Elegant (previously known as R). We were involved for 3 months, most of this time I wasn’t really into it. I was trying to find a balance between friends and lovers, we clearly weren’t friends and I didn’t feel like she was a lover. The balance was never reached. This is why the cd is being release now, it’s the end of an time period, the time period I call “Summer Love.” I can’t say this title isn’t ironically named, but I will confirm that “love” is a complicated thing with our without quotes around it.

1. Totally Confused – Beck

This is what I listened to at the end of Half Elegant and my relationship. Melancholy, raw, disorienting (other songs on the album highlight this). This is how I felt.

2. Skinny Love – Bon Iver

I first heard this in the Wire Tap episode Never Say I Love You. The episode has a segment about people in love, without their lover anymore. People holding on, struggling, feeling sad, and still feeling love. It is followed up by this song. I started to cry when I was biking home, I started to feel. Half Elegant made it hard for me to feel she just wanted too much. Now that we are apart I am able to feel what I wanted without holding back, finally. And I biked home listening to this on repeat while getting teary eyed and feeling love.

3. Betty’s Bomb Shell – Group Love

Earlier in the day (months ago) I felt awful, I tried to cut myself with my work keys, they weren’t sharp enough. I went back to work and when I finally left work I felt the same way. I looked incessantly at the ground looking for a piece of broken glass. When I finally found one I found out just how dull glass from the side of the road is, so I kept biking. I stopped in Arsenal Park and sat on the ground. I thought about what I should cut myself with while listening to this song. I played it over and over again and finally I found a pepsi can. First using the tab, then using a small piece of the side of the can I repeatedly cut small cuts horizontally on my arm. This is the biggest cut on my arm and it happened whilst listening to this song.

4. Signs of Love – Moby

I can’t remember when I listened to this song, but it is one of my favorites. It reminds me of staring at the sky and smiling while listening to another Moby song, it reminds me of biking along the river in Philly and crying to Moby. It’s happy, it’s sad, it’s melancholy, it’s real.

“I fly so high,Then fall so low”

5. It’s Only (feat. Zyra) – Odesza

I am long boarding on Ellsworth near Oakland. I am singing this song so loud. I’m singing this song to Trish, to Kelly. I’m singing this song loud and proud and I feel good, I feel sad.

I’m again on my longboard, it’s 2am and I’m back at it again, I’m in Oakland singing and carving.

6. Not In Love (feat. Robert Smith) – Crystal Castles

Half Elegant gave me this song. She listened to it after we broke up the first time after “dating” for a few days. We listened to it under 40th st Bridge and Half Elegant banged her head all around. She jammed to it when she was drunk and I came over. We were in the hallway of her house where there is a built in shelf that holds records and the music player. The lights were mostly out and she danced like a maniac. This is our song.

7. Sorry – Beyoncé

There are countless memories around singing this song. The one that is most recently and strong in my memory is with Half Elegant. It was the day we hung out with Jesse and tried to go to the pool. She was an ass. We were driving her home to drop her off and this song. I felt this song. I felt pissed at Half Elegant. As I drove my arms were out stretched leaning on the steering wheel with my middle fingers up.

“Middle fingers up, put them hands high, Wave it in his face, tell him, boy, bye”

8. No Role Modelz – J. Cole

“Don’t save her, she don’t wanna be saved.”

This is the lyric I heard when I felt Half Elegant trying to save me. This is why I started listening to this song. That isn’t exactly what Half Elegant was trying to say, but I’m still singing I don’t wanna be saved.

9. For Free (feat. Drake) -DJ Khaled

The beat caught me on this song, while driving around Fight for Fifteen workers to go to their conference. The song also constantly reminds me of Half Elegant. I must admit sex with her was the best sex I’ve ever had by a long shot. So good I thought I should pay her, especially cause she had no income for a while.

10. Panda – Desiigner

The beats of this song are great, the fact that he keeps saying Panda is hilarious. I first listened to this song because a Pittsburgh activist and USASer posted this on a Penn State USASer’s wall with the description, “I broke my bed while listening to this song.” That’s what I think of every time.

11. FUCKMYLIFE666 – Against Me!

I was getting gas on the Northside and I looked hot. Grey tank top, maroon tube skirt, brown knee high boots with grey leg warmers sticking out. This guy walked about 20 feet from me looked over at me and turned around. It puzzled me, but it made sense when he and his friends walked by and yelled, “that’s a dude.” I was mortified and eventually just put on my middle finger and stewed over it. The person next to me muttered, “She doesn’t have a choice.” which felt nice to hear.

I got in the car pissed and I put on Against Me! and started screaming along to them. As I was about to turn them off and then this song came on from their live album. The beginning of the song just caught me and I couldn’t stop listening.

The song also reminded me of an important fact, I had been trying my damnedest to “pass” as a woman for about 2 years. I’ve been slowly realizing I am a woman. But Against Me! reminds that I am a gender warrior. I am a woman and a man. I am here to fuck with your concept of gender. I am a trans-tomboy. As the shirt that Laura Jane Grace wears states, “Gender is over (if you want it)”

12. The Writings On The Wall – OK Go

Half Elegant gave me this song. I feel this song, this song often feels like our relationship.

“It seems like forever since we’ve had a good day, the writings on the wall
But I just wanna get you high tonight, I just wanna see some see some pleasure in your eyes”

I would listen to it most when I was sad. Because OK Go was staying to me, that it’s horrible, yes it is, but “I just wanna get you high tonight.”

My most recent memory and the one besides watching drunk Half Elegant dancing to this song is as follows. Half Elegant biked off in an agitated hurry to go no where and I stopped. I couldn’t handle the frustration she was expressing towards me so I stopped biking. Instead I listened to this song. I felt sad I was having a hard day and I just wanted to get high tonight, to feel some pleasure. Half Elegant came back and said in a accusatory tone, “Why are you listening to that song? Are you trying to say something? You know that’s a break up song.” The next day we broke up for the second time.

13. I Hate Hate – Reagan Youth

This song is amazing to sing along to. I song along to this endlessly along the bike path. I remember biking up past Millvale on the bike path, I remember biking down to the northside on the bike path, all the while I would sing this song for the haters. Because I hate HAAAAATE!

“I as in M, E, Fucking Me, Hate as in H, A, T, E, Hate… HAAAAAATE!

Finding Reality 2016.4

It’s that season, the season where I release my new playlist. This it the third playlist in a series that happened (probably not entirely out or chance) to match perfectly a series of classes being offered at the Shambhala meditation center. I took the first two classes: “Who Am I?” and “How Can I Help” (with correspoinding playlists called “I am Who I am” and “What About the World”). The last class is called “What is Real”, I didn’t take this class but I ended up making a playlist in the theme of it anyway. This playlist for me catalogs a time of a lot of tension and disorientation, a time when the friends I trusted weren’t trustworthy and the reality I was experiencing wasn’t really reality. I’m talking mostly about Spaced here. I haven’t talked to her in about two months. With her I have also lost Chem and other friends. But in return I have gained my reality, it’s not as nice as Spaced’s reality is at times but it’s mine and it’s with me all the time, not intermittently. With that reality came a lot I have regained my trauma’s and problems and have now been able to work through them more readily. And finally I have started to realize I deserve better. I deserve friends who understand me, I deserve friends who I appreciate, I deserve to be treated well all the time.

Sadly there is one song that isn’t on youtube but it is available right here it’s song number 4

1. Harvest Moon – Poolside

This is what Jamie listens to. They have a pretty decent taste in music, especially chillin’ music. This song feels like hanging out in the kitchen on those long mornings when we would chat about our lives and views on the world. This feels like chillin’.

2. Crave You – Flight Facilities

Another from Jamie’s pandora station. A more sensual song, but with a similar feel, just chillin’. I can kinda see Jamie dancing to this song, or at least saying, “yeah dripping in gold.” Honestly these first two songs remind me so much of another memory.

I am in the bike shop on Sunday in the winter over two years ago. It’s snowing, it’s cold, the manager has gone home, no customers are coming in. K puts on some music, Surf music. We listen to this beachy, poolside music while staying warm inside and watching the snow fall. Feels perfect.

3. Seattle Party – Chastity Belt

I got this song from Fia, Cha’s roomie in Asheville. They are super cool and have an awesome taste in music, honestly that is where almost all of the music on this playlist is from, so props to Fia for having awesome taste in music.

This song also reminds me of driving on the interstates near downtown Pittsburgh. I’m not doing too hot, I’m feeling overwhelmed like I want to change everything in my life. Chastity Belt is calming me down, and letting me know it’s gonna be alright.

4. Dear Liberals – Lee Reed

IMPORTANT REMINDER THIS IS NOT IN THE YOUTUBE PLAYLIST FIND IT HERE

This song was passed onto me by one of the BLM activist in the area via fbook. Every once and a while I need a reminder where I am and where I belong. All of the lyrics of this song are amazing and spot on.

“Putting green products in their shopping carts like their spending habits could ever offset the suffering”

“Fuck a liberal”

5. Formation – Beyonce

I don’t really know what to add to this song, but apparently Hillary Clinton Keeps hot sauce in her bag *throws up in mouth.*

6. U – Kendrick Lamar

I am in my room about to go to sleep but I have just come to understand this song. I’ve skipped over it for months but now I feel it. I don’t know who he is talking about but it hurts. His hatred and this person, his love of this person, who is it. I get on rap genius and it hurts so much more.

He is singing about himself. *cue tears*

I listen to this song on repeat and cry myself to sleep. The following day it continues to haunt me and I listen to it driving home from work. I hate myself, I hate myself more than you ever could. I hate myself so you can’t hate me more than I do. I hate me so that you hating me means nothing.

7. Blackstar – David Bowie

This song makes me feel so much. I am a black star, I want to always be a black star.

This is the album that David Bowie released before he died to complete his performance. This is also when I found out very underreported facts about how he statutorily-raped 13 year old groupies, while at the same time we all were getting to know about Cosby’s wrong doing (while much worse he notably isn’t white).

David Bowie was such an amazing, free, fantastical figure to have. I loved his music and his style. He flies his black star flag proudly and reminds all the queers and freaks to be themselves and be proud. Thank you Bowie. I am a black star I will do my best to pick up where you left off.

8. Dirt (with Aesop Rock) – Tobacco

This song reminds me of a hilarious memory. I am half way through my art piece, “Molestation.” then I hear Aesop says, “It’s my duty to inform you,” and I slow my work and begin to focus on the music to hear what he is going to say next, “Honey bunches of oats is the greatest cereal every created by man.” And I burst out loud laughing, I just experienced some horrible thoughts writing “I still don’t feel safe.” hundreds of times and this is just hilarious. At the same moment Heart calls me because I texted her something somewhat disconcerting, and I can’t help but answer the phone laughing.

9. 2 Thick Scoops (feat. Serengeti) – Tobacco

Before I figured out how to download them I listened to them a lot on youtube. I would continually replay this song at work. I remember being in the awkward cubby hole I was shoved in using one of the computers at work. My view of a wall that almost entirely surrounds me and I’m there just replaying this song hidden from almost everyone.

“And dream of changing my name to Zack”

10. Forever Heavy – Black Moth Super Rainbow

This song feels like biking to work, biking home and trying to silence some overwhelming thoughts. Thoughts about Spaced mainly but in large part I just needed a break from all the fucking drama in my life. I couldn’t handle it and Black Moth Super Rainbow would shut it out just right.

11. Still Life – Slow Magic

Much the same this song quelled my crazed and paranoid thoughts, it calmed and soothed. I danced to this song on my bike. Dancing my arms around to the music in the breeze. This song freed me of these problems and let me float.

12. High You Are – Why So Not

This is some more surf, poolside music that is so perfect for the winter time, again via Jamie. This is one song where you have to sway, if not full out dance along.

13. Youth Group – Slow Magic

Slow magic is another band that Fia gave to me.

14. Melt Me – Black Moth Super Rainbow

I spent a lot of time listening to Tobacco, because they rock, and because I had the pleasure of seeing them live at Spirit with Jamie and more friends.

I had to put a lot of Tobacco and Black Moth Super Rainbow on this mix. I’ve been listening to it pretty much constantly since I found them in Asheville.

15. Grease Wizard – Tobacco

This song gets me going every time and I am reminded of the first time it caught my ears at Green Gears. I played it a bunch of times that day and jammed out every time.

16. Orgy Drills – Tobacco

This song is wicked. This one caught my ear when I was doing the planning for my Molestation art piece. When I was listening to it church bells were going off in the background and it created a really cool effect. I knew there were church bells going off but wasn’t sure and couldn’t tell which sounds were them and which were from this song.

This is dark, this is perfect for Molestation that I drew about a month ago.

This says “I still don’t feel safe.” well over a thousand times.

17. Mortal Man – Kendrick Lamar

This song really affected me, especially because he asks a question that I can’t completely answer it, or at least not how Kendrick wants me to, “When shit hit the fan is you still a fan?” I think of how I feel about Bowie when I found out what he did. It hurt, I couldn’t just forgive him for it, I still acknowledge what he did but I’m also still a fan, a huge fan but it hurts me.

“I freed you from being a slave in your mind, you’re very welcome
You tell me my song is more than a song, it’s surely a blessing”

This question really hurts me. These songs will still have the impact they do if Bowie did or didn’t do what he did, if Kendrick does or doesn’t get “framed” for something. But it tarnishes their credibility. I understand why Dominique Francon in the Fountainhead buys gorgeous art and destroys it, why she tries to destroy these wonderful creators. Because this things they create are better, more pure than any human could ever be. People will only tarnish their pure and amazing creations. They create an archetype that is unachievable.

What About The World? 2016.1

Here is my first mix of the year! I had a lot of free time, listened to a lot of music and popped this out a little earlier than I had hoped. In the last mix stated I am who I am, so the next obvious question in my mind was well what about the world? This mix answers that question, promptly.

1. Worst Behavior – Drake

Memory: Saturday is a hard day to motivate myself to do much of anything. I spent the last few Saturdays trying to go shopping before having panic attacks. Today is much the same. I feel the world crushing me, hating me, gawking at me so I don’t leave the house. Finally I realize I need to get out and go somewhere. I get dressed up all fancy, I put on Spaced’s green dress, a brown skirt over top, and knee high tan boots on. I get in the car and drive to REI listening to this song on repeat screaming, “Mother fuckers never loved us.” My hatred of “normal” people is overwhelming, I guess you could call this confidence but it felt more like hate. Either way I strutted my stuff and loved myself despite the world. And I am reminded of Kendrick Lamar when he sings, “I know you hate me just as much as you hate yourself.”

And in another positive note after realizing how defeated I often feel I did one of my rituals. Get all prettied up and go shopping. A big “fuck you” to the society that gawks at me.

2. Tell Your Friends – The Weeknd

This guy is a dickhead, but he hates everyone and does whatever the fuck he wants. I like his style. Fuck everybody and go ahead and tell your friends about it. I’ve cared too much about what other people think about me.

“I do shit like I want, don’t need no blessing”

3. Hold On, We’re Going Home – Drake

Thanks for calming me down there Drake, I was getting pretty revved up. I listened to this guy for a good while, I would’ve put the song Hotline Bling, or Energy, or Started from the Bottom but this one caught me the most.

4. Borders – M.I.A.

M.I.A. challenging us on all of our shit. Ask yourself, “What’s up with that?” The video features Syrian Refugees and is stunning to watch.

5. How Much A Dollar Cost – Kendrick Lamar

Memory: Walking home with my longboard on New Years Day I’m feeling this song, I’m singing this song on repeat. Then someone yells, “Walk of shame baby!” I uncontrollably turn towards his direction and have a strong middle finger pointed his general direction. This only increases my passion in singing. And it reminds me,

“You’re lookin’ at the Messiah, the son of Jehova, the higher power
The choir that spoke the word, the Holy Spirit, the nerve
Of Nazareth, and I’ll tell you just how much a dollar cost
The price of having a spot in Heaven, embrace your loss, I am God”

All the freaks, the queers the homeless people are god. You shit on me and you are costing yourself a spot in heaven. Embrace your loss, I am god.

6. Black Me Out – Against Me!

Memory: I’m on a long overdue backpacking trip. It’s been months since I’ve gone and I’m feeling super anxious and struggling hardcore with depression. I wake up on the first morning, make my breakfast, struggle to eat it and then I lay my body on my knees. I feel a 400 pound weight on my back. I can’t move I can’t do anything even though I’m in the beauty of nature. Eventually I find the energy in me to go back to bed. I’m laying on my sleeping pad trying to find the motivation to wake up and it’s just not there. I turn on my phone and since I’m way to close to Johnstown I have service so I peruse instagram. Then I text Morty lamenting the situation I’m in. Finally I put on some music in hopes that will stir me. Two sam raging arongs later I ound the camp site screaming this song. My depression has turned to pure hatred and I’m so pissed off. I dance through the campsite to this song a few times before getting on my way. I’m depressed, but I admit it, I’m pissed off but I felt it.

7. Tellin’ The Mind – Delta Spirit

I love this guys. I spent some time going through all of my mixed cds and making sure I had a backup of them and I realized just how many songs by them I had on various cds. That’s when I finally acknowledged that I really like them as a band, and I feel glad that I didn’t brush them off as Christian Hipsters as Mustache did before he deleted them from his computer.

Memory: Standing on the balcony of Union Transfer I looked out on the band. This was my first real concert, this was my first time getting out like this and having a good time in a while. I’m standing next to a new friend of mine and I’m so happy she invited me, I’m so happy to be living again and being happy. I felt lost in Philly post “divorce” but now I’ve found friends and some happiness.

8. Scott Get the Van I’m Moving – Cayetana

These ladies rock. I listed to them a lot when making art, and even made art specifically based on their music. This song in particular sticks in my head because I made a piece of art for Cha’s going away present to this album. I showed her it as it was dripping and played her this album. A bunch of others enjoyed it as it finished dripping and then this song played. Someone pointed out that this is the perfect song, and it was.

9. Your Lips Are Red – St. Vincent

This song takes me over. I can feel myself shaking right now to this song. I can see my mental state quickly changing as I navigate through Giant Eagle to this song. Suddenly everything is much more harsh, I feel obstinate towards the world. But then I remember, “your skins so fair it’s not fair, your skins so fair.” And I calm down. Also important to note this is the song that helped me finish the piece called, “Suicide Note” featured in the last post.

10. “Heroes” – David Bowie

This song is significant in two ways. This song is the song that Charlie, Patrick and Sam listen to when going through Fort Pitt Tunnel going into the city. Sam is standing up with her arms out stretched and Charlie says, “I feel infinite.” I watched that movie this month, as a freshman in college I read the book 6 times. I related a lot to Charlie with my friends who were seniors, having been friends with druggies but not doing drugs, but I had forgotten he was molested. I watched the movie and cried through the whole thing. I found myself realizing what I had yet to face. I was distraught and found myself obsessing over the movie for the rest of the day until. Spaced talked to me that night and I slept on her couch. It was a hard day but I got it out. (And yes, that day I drove through the Fort Pitt Tunnel with this song blaring)

The second memory is to a different version of this song, it’s the Philip Glass Remix that is excellent. In it I’m a junior in college and I’m with Smiles, one of the two people I’m seeing. I introduce this song to her and dance and sing along while it is playing. I’m having the time of my life, I’m immersed in this song. I point out the lyrics, “Nothing will keep us together,” because it makes me feel free and amazing it also speaks to the nature of our relationship. “We can be us just for one day”

11. Later – Dr. Dog

This song feels like Philadelphia. It feels like the Schuylkill River bike path. It feels like wandering the streets in Philadelphia. It feels like Smiles. Reminds me of the pushover I was and still am, cause “I’ll sit around and wait for you, I guess I really will, sit around and wait for you.”

“It never works, you said you’ll call me later
And then you never ever do
I just can’t sit around and wait
Can’t sit around and wait for you
Now I’ll just have another cup of coffee
I’ll sit around and wait for you”

12. 8 Good Reasons – Sinéad O’Connor

Memory: I am having a difficult night and having trouble getting to sleep. I am distracting myself on the internet when I stumbled upon the news that Sinéad had tried to kill herself. She left a message on facebook saying she was going to do it and she was found in time to save her life. Then I felt compelled to listen to her most recent album and found this song. It hurts every time I listen to this song I can’t help but think about how she tried to kill herself, it puts this whole song in a much different light.

13. Asleep – The Smiths

This song is from the Perks of Being A Wallflower. I could never listen to it before because it was too sad. But once watching the movie I found it irresistible.

Memory: I have just watched the Perks of Being a Wallflower and I’m balling, it was hard, it hurt. I’m driving around town and I am listening to this song on repeat. It’s funny because at first I don’t realize that it’s a suicide note of a song at first. The song makes me sad, but it more calms me down and becomes ambient music in the background. It’s a soothing song, a song I listen to when I can’t get to sleep, a song I cry softly to.

14. Wild – Beach House

This song is the perfect picker upper after Asleep. I spent days listening to this album and this song soothes me into a dance turning around my downer mood to a content one.

15. Amor Fati – Washed Out

And finally a equally soothing even more upbeat song to get you on your way.

Welcome Back Black Dog

Everything is great. I’m hanging out with my new friends Spaced and Chem and I needn’t worry about a problem in the world, I feel like I’m their third musketeer. Then they fade away for their reasons and I see them less frequently. I hate it, their reasons frustrate me and I focus on that, still missing the point. I hate them, I hate my attachment to them, I hate them for leaving. Then I ask why? I avoid answering this question for days. I tell myself to stop focusing on them and focus on myself and on my body, suddenly I know the answer to my question. I hate them because when they leave I am left with myself. I am left to face my problems and feel my feelings I’m forced to focus on myself instead of other people.

It’s not that I necessarily need validated by them or supported by them but it’s quite literally that I lose myself in other people. I become completely intertwined in their life. I take on their problems, their concerns, I check how and what I’m doing in contrast to them. I think about them all the time. I think about them this much so I can’t think about myself. But when your goal in life is to become a fixture in someone else’s life when they are absent for too long you are suddenly lost.

At first I thought that I was losing my identity. This isn’t true I gain my identity, I gain my problems and my burden. It’s all too much for me.

I listen to Adam’s Song by Blink-182 on repeat. Just a few days before I listened to this song and enjoyed the last verse. This song is written about a 17 year old that is about to kill himself. The last verse slightly changes the lyrics from lamenting about how the past was better to excitement for days to come. I restart it before it gets to the last verse. I did like that verse for a day, I’ve hated it for years though. I’ve never put the song on repeat because I always did it manually before the upbeat verse comes on.

I listened to this song a lot in Philly. I would ride my recumbent bike to work and play this song over and over again. For a very long time when I would sing it I couldn’t sing the line “tell mom it’s not her fault.” I would get all chocked up and start to tear up. It was so hard because I couldn’t help but imagining how I wanted to say that to my mom, to tell her, “it’s not your fault.” Thoughts of suicide were obviously heavy on my mind at this time.

Next I listen to an old Reply All podcast, What it Looks Like. The podcast is about depression and about how people get through it. The person it focuses on at first is Jamie Keiles a writer and at the time a student.

At one point she comments on the never-ending inwardly focused tormented thoughts that she got caught in. “If I could just figure out why I’m sad then I could become less sad then I would be happier but I have to keep thinking about why I’m sad.”

Then Reply All’s host PJ Vogt comments on his experiences with depression. One of his friends hanged herself not to long after finishing high school. She had skipped her senior prom to take a first responder class and always carried surgical gloves with her because she always wanted to be ready to help anyone that may be hurt. Despite this in her suicide note she lamented that she couldn’t help people as much as she wanted to. This is exactly how I feel so often. I care for others before myself. I see how dangerous this mentality is but breaking it is another story. I think this is a trait found in many depressed peoples. The endless desire to help other people, without recognizing the need to help yourself.

PJ goes on to talk about how he was depressed and suicidal for a long time. “For all that time I just thought that everybody’s brain was like that. The same way I genuinely can’t imagine that anybody doesn’t always kind of want to be eating potato chips. I also just thought that anybody’s brain faced with a sufficiently difficult problem would suggest that one easy solution would just be dieing.” I expressed the sentiment that everyone feels that way to a friend when he told me he was depressed in high school, turns out that isn’t true.

When PJ was numb or depressed he would go to a folder that contained things from his friend who hanged herself. Because to him feeling sad was better than feeling numb. That is where I am and I can’t stop myself. I’m digging deeper into depression unable to figure out what will get me out and doing all the wrong things.

I am Who I am Mix 2015.3

1. Partition – Beyonce
“I sneezed on the beat and the beat got sicker”

2. Devil in a New Dress – Kanye West
“We love Jesus but you done learn a lot from Satan
(Satan, Satan, Satan)”

Kanye West shares a good deal of my views on Jesus and the use of the upside down cross. And to fill you all in I’ve been recently obsessed with upside down/St. Peter’s crosses and made myself earrings that I’m wearing right now.

3. Runaway – Kanye West
Let’s have a toast for the douche bags
Let’s have a toast for the assholes
Let’s have a toast for the scumbags
everyone of them that I know.

4. Metamorphosis: Three -Philip Glass

I would often intersperse listening to Kendrick or Kanye with listening to this album by Philip Glass. It’s an epic album and makes you chill out and feel quite epic at the same time. I’ve finally listening to enough of Philip Glass to throw him into one of my mixes.

5. Man in the Mirror – Michael Jackson

This song caught me one day in the car. It also spot on reflected my views on change:

I’m starting with the man in the mirror
I’m asking him to change his way
And no message could’ve been any clearer
If you want to make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change

6. The Fall – Rhye

I’ve heard this described as one of the best break up songs. It’s so positive and soothing yet that is what he is talking about.
I love this album and found myself soothed by it many times.

7. Alright – Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick rocks, recently he replaced Kanye West in my listening habits. This song is especially good and up beat. But we gon’ be alright.

“Wouldn’t you know
We been hurt, been down before
Nigga, when our pride was low
Lookin’ at the world like, “Where do we go?”
Nigga, and we hate po-po
Wanna kill us dead in the street fo sho
Nigga, I’m at the preacher’s door
My knees gettin’ weak, and my gun might blow
But we gon’ be alright”

8. Blacker the Berry – Kendrick Lamar

This song is too dense for me to explain but I sincerely love it and would suggest decompressing it on genius where they dissect each part.

I relate a lot to his anger of white mainstream culture:
“You never liked us anyway, fuck your friendship, I meant it”

“You hate me don’t you? I know you hate me just as much as you hate yourself”

And I appreciate him calling himself a hypocrite for “weep[ing] when Trayvon Martin was in the street,” shortly before saying “sometimes I get off watchin’ you die in vain.” To briefly explain this he is hating a culture that in the words of his grandmother hasn’t changed because “shit don’t change until you get up and wipe yo ass.” Yet remembering that in no way does this validates killing such peoples. (In my mind this isn’t hypocritical but reminds us that bettering yourself is equally important to destroying the system oppressing you.)

I would often shout along to this song expressing my frustration at white culture in the same way I wish I would yell at others on my own behalf related to transphobic treatment I’ve received. Which makes me think of the song Transgender Dysphoria Blues by Against Me! which would be the next song were it not already on a prior mix.

9. Baby I’m an Anarchist – Against Me!

Not only is this Against Me! but it is also something I faced frequently. I have had my anarchism tested from time to time and I ran into numerous debate infatuated socialists who made me even more fervently anarchistic. The condescending know-it-all nature of socialists is frustrating. Not to mention that they are predominately white men (need I elaborate?) that makes me think of them as the left’s libertarians. Well meaning mean who think they know better than the working class and want to “help” them.

I’m an anarchist and will always be. It inspires how I relate to people and how I structure my interactions small to large. Just to note since many people compound anarchism with overthrowing the state. This is stupid, an anarchist friend and I talked briefly about this and how we thought the government should be socialists for now and less authoritarian and bureaucratic.

10. Hey Mami – Sylvan Esso

She is another soothing voice that talked to me when I was loosing it and when I wasn’t.

11. The Neighbors – St. Vincent

This song inspired some interesting art. I also listened to this album repeatedly.

“How can Monday be alright
Then on Tuesday loose my mind”

12. Depreston – Courtney Barrett

Her musing caught me. I find it entertaining, though often quite negative.

13. Atlas – Dawn of Midi

This music borderline puts me into a trance. Very good.

I Lost it and My Roommate Made Me Stay There

[NO BACK STORY]

Saturday afternoon:

I’m feeling really worked up and don’t know it. I go on a bike ride and end up suddenly feeling, feeling sane. My thoughts had been racing all day but I hadn’t minded it, now my mind is clear. I sit down on a bench and start reading In the Dust of This Planet. Sleepiness rolls over me and I finish the next page before laying down my head. I close my eyes, shortly afterward the world begins to shake. I let it. I feel my thoughts, my feelings and just let what happens happen. Twenty minutes later I wake up and bike home listening to Sylvan Esso. Nothing seems real.

A copy of a copy of a copy. The world is far away, just like the narrator describes in Fight Club.

I bike home.

Along the way I dash in and out of traffic, I’m mostly safe, but safe like you are when playing frogger – you obviously don’t want to die, but it’s not real. It’s only half real to me, I’m only half there.

To bring myself down I scream Could I Be by Sylvan Esso.

It only furthers the rift. The world isn’t real, but I know it is.

Two blocks from home a women is walking her dog, the dog is peeing. I look at her. She looks at me. She smiles. She’s real, I’m in the real world. I continue biking and she disappears. That moment is gone forever, just like how reality feels right now.

I make it home. I see my roommates and I make it clear to them that I’m crazy. I refuse eye contact, now they aren’t real either.

In my room I finish listening to Sylvan Esso’s album while lying in my bed trying to take a nap. Instead thoughts start badgering me, memories start coming at me, Diane starts trying to molest me. “Get the fuck away from me!” I yell, “Leave me the fuck alone.” The thoughts are trying to get me to do things I know I don’t want to do. They are trying to take things I like and exploit them to make me do harmful things like cut a upside down cross into arm. “Get the fuck away!” I yell.

My thoughts are racing again and my perfectly organized room starts to get to me. I throw off the covers and run over to my dresser. Pulling out two drawers I throw them on the ground kicking around the clothes that fall onto the floor. “Almost enough,” I think. Then I go over to the bookshelf and toss all the fiction and spiritual books on the floor. Success.

I begin listen to The Weakerthan’s song Watermark on repeat. Now I know what I have to do.

I run down stairs and slam onto the floor as I slip on the wooden floor. Laughing hysterically I get up and run to the basement. I find the lavender paint, some painting equipment and sheepishly bring it upstairs, hiding it so my roomies don’t see it. I again refuse eye contact, I’m in another world and cannot be brought back, not right now.

I scamper upstairs once I find everything and begin my project. Two song lyrics are inspiring me.
“We sit and watch the wall you painted purple.” – Weakerthans
“Paint the black whole blacker.” – St. Vincent

“It’s just lavender, it needs to be darker!” I think. So I run downstairs slipping again on the floor and falling down. I get back up and grab brown a black paint and return to my project. Blending the lavender and brown I get a nice dark color in the center. Building the circle bigger and bigger I switch the song on repeat to The Strangers by St. Vincent. I’ve waited 3 years for this moment. I grab the black paint a tub to stand on and begin painting the title of this piece: “Paint the Black Hole Blacker.”

The black paint isn’t as black as I’d like, it’s to thin. I keep putting more and more on and realizing the paint is running. “Yes!” I scream as I see the amazing look the running paint gives to this piece. I keep painting more and more, bigger and bigger. I add more brown, I begin splattering brown, black, lavender all over it. Just what I’ve always wanted, It’s done.

I show it to my roommates and they are not sure what to think. They are fearful, excited, happy and concerned. The new one, Da Hottie, sides with crazied happiness, the feeling I’m expressing. Jamie sticks with concern longer, but eventually gets happier. They both take pictures of it and Jamie begins sharing it. My friend Von begins expressing concern, simply texting “shit” as a response to seeing the picture that Jamie sent them.

After a little while of laying in my room alone basking in the glory of this piece and the feeling of being crazed Jamie comes in. They sit partial on me and ask, “Why is Von worried about you?” I pause and realize I’ve finally been caught, and am relieved. As we start talking Jesse helps me realize I am not losing it, I am not caught, I am free, I have gained something from this whole experience. I have been trying to paint this on my wall for years. I always resisted it. Now I’m becoming more impulsive and more real, more aligned with the true me.

I haven’t lost anything I gained this painting on the wall. I sit with that a while, Jamie leaves and I keep sitting with it. I lay down and try to take a nap, listening to music and relaxing I realize that I need to leave, I need to run. I pack up my stuff and get ready for some sort of outing. I go to leave and Jamie stops me. They ask me where I’m going, why I’m going and when I’m coming back. I can’t answer any question but I still want to leave. I say I’m anxious, and hungry and just need to get out of the house. They ask how they’ll know if I’m safe. I say I just will be, and that they can call me and I can call them.

After a protracted fight about whether I should run or not Jamie reluctantly gets me to stay. I stay with my pain and crazy and tell them what has been going on in my head. I stay with my feelings and am forced to acknowledge what is going on, forced to treat my body with respect, forced to be present. They force me to face my pattern of running and to be with myself.

I eat some food and I find a quote of where I am:

Only now are you going your way to greatness. Peaks and abyss, they are now joined together for all things are baptized in a well of eternity, and lie beyond good and evil.
-Nietzche