All these musicians presenting sad portraits of suburban isolation.
All these kids are relating to it.
Is anyone learning anything?
Is anyone changing anything?
Gaggles of limping hipsters searching for nothing together.
The one with the most ironic t-shirt wins a free shitty beer!
"Sweet! I didn't want to face my fears tonight, either."
Arcade Fire Real Estate Ducktails Atlas Sound Deerhunter Animal Collective Panda Bear Dan Deacon MGMT, riding the wave of post-traumatic schooling syndrome.
"Hey, remember how much it sucked to be oppressed every day as kids? So do we! Oh, and we've got vinyl.. and American Apparel shirts! Buy them and wear them like a badge of exhausted apathy. It's called indie, so it's okay to consume."
This nostalgic-reflux is out of control.
A bucket of antacids is all they have to offer.
Puuuuuuurge! Get it all out!
All your answers are in there, somewhere.
It's messy, yes, but it must be done.
Can we DO something instead?
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Thursday, October 7, 2010
I, a faulty chromosome, do hereby swear....
I am limiting myself by trying to reach people through music.
First, they have to like the sounds I make. This immediately turns away a large number of people, as the noises I tend to produce are off-putting (to put it mildly).
Second, even if they enjoy the music, they also have to take the time to not just hear the lyrics, but really contemplate the meaning of the words (nirvana comes to mind, as there was a case when some guys raped a girl while singing the song "polly").
I'm not saying that I will stop making music, just that I should not waste so much time trying to make it "perfect." It should not take a year to make an album and another year to create the artwork and press it and promote it.
I am going back to bedroom recording. It makes the most sense and it always sounds the best to me. No more listening to "professionals" telling me what's "the industry standard."
I am abandoning the idea that there is money to be made in music. I am accepting that I will never make money, and I am glad to be freed of that noose. I just want people to be able to hear it and enjoy it. That was always the point. I hate money. Its existence forces you do terrible things that you wouldn't otherwise even consider.
Here's to a resource-based economy and free music for everyone!
First, they have to like the sounds I make. This immediately turns away a large number of people, as the noises I tend to produce are off-putting (to put it mildly).
Second, even if they enjoy the music, they also have to take the time to not just hear the lyrics, but really contemplate the meaning of the words (nirvana comes to mind, as there was a case when some guys raped a girl while singing the song "polly").
I'm not saying that I will stop making music, just that I should not waste so much time trying to make it "perfect." It should not take a year to make an album and another year to create the artwork and press it and promote it.
I am going back to bedroom recording. It makes the most sense and it always sounds the best to me. No more listening to "professionals" telling me what's "the industry standard."
I am abandoning the idea that there is money to be made in music. I am accepting that I will never make money, and I am glad to be freed of that noose. I just want people to be able to hear it and enjoy it. That was always the point. I hate money. Its existence forces you do terrible things that you wouldn't otherwise even consider.
Here's to a resource-based economy and free music for everyone!
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Craving to be coddled so we feel fake-safe, 'cause we can't quite coalesce and fix this mess they made
Dear friends and strangers, kids and adults, humans and curious aliens, etc...,
I've spent most of these past 738-ish days in hiding, buried beneath a muck-heap of memories of discolored photos and fuzzy vhs tapes full of recorded tv from 1989 with the commercials still on them, taking every precaution possible to eschew “normal-people” life in favor of attempting to form a cohesive explanation as to what is currently preventing me -- as well as the bulk of our approximate generation -- from ascending that oh-so-invisibly-indeterminate hump called progress.
Well, after an exhaustive analysis reserved for only the most passionate of labcoat’d scientist (the kind that don’t bother with such frivolity as nose-hair trimming, tendrils intertwined with the mustache-portion of their beards), I found the answer (and it was undeniable):
At least eighty-seven of our some-hundred-and-some-odd-pounds are surely our terrified little elementary-school'd selves grasping onto our ankles for dear life, begging to not just be heard, but answered (oh, I’ll try not to trip over my feet as I backpedal a bit to explain).
See, ever since I could talk, I’ve had mouthfuls of meaning-of-life-type questions for whoever would listen. Only problem was, no one would, as my “silly” queries were dismissed every time. I was scolded at school for using logic (“but should or shouldn’t a poor person steal medicine to save their sick mother is a dumb question! Why can’t the doctor just be nice and give it to them?! Yeah, but whyyyy?”). I was spanked at home for committing “sins” (see: not being “perfect”). I was shamed and scared and starving for the truth, but -- instead -- kept getting fed fanciful-fallacies-under-the-misguided-guise-of-trying-to- “protect”-me-to-the-point-of-them-being-absolutely-undeniable-lies “truth,” and my head began to rapidly fill with nightmares of swirling confusion.
Did no one know the answers (my parents must not have, otherwise they wouldn’t have split up)? And if this were true, why not just be honest and say so? Maybe they were too full of pride to admit to a child that they didn’t know? That we were both in the exact same perplexing boat (full of holes, only one oar, both arms bitten off by sharks with only a gumball-machine compass to guide us)? Or perhaps there really was something wrong with me? I was having a horrible time trying to navigate my bones around this planet, and everyone else seemed to be doing okay (or so it seemed, as I was told that only girls and "fags" talked about their feelings)? Oh, I wished someone would have had the decency to say “you know, buddy, most of us barely have a clue what we’re doing, and we’ll probably screw up a bunch of times trying to figure out what‘s best for you too, but let’s try to be friends and work together so both of us can become better people, yeah?” But that never happened.
So since no one would help me, and since I didn’t want to risk writing my worries down and having someone find it, throw it away, and send me to a church/hospital to strap me down until I learned to forget them, I decided that -- if I wanted to make it out of childhood alive -- my best plan would be to become a good liar, trying not to stick out too much while I snooped around like a secret social psychologist, leaving my future-self elaborate mental notes to guide us both toward the truth.
It would be a grueling gauntlet, but I had to be certain that I wasn't devoured by the barrage of brain-washing (from Sex? Magazines? TV? Name-brand jeans? I didn‘t know?!) so that I could avoid transforming into yet another do-nothing blob-of-a-grownup (corroded in chip-crumbs and cynicism) so I could retain the youthful vigor and resourcefulness necessary to safely purge, properly puzzle-piece, and coherently decode all the soggy screeds I had been (hopefully) memorizing.
And I did it! Oh, the ridicule was often high, and the loneliness was sometimes unbearably looooow, but I survived, and I finally found the facts I’d been after for so long (and I’ve never felt happier!). Now, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who can’t relate to what I’ve been saying, or maybe my mere mental distress was a frolicking cakewalk compared to the damp dread you had you had to endure everyday? Either way, what I'm about to say effects us all:
Okay, so every day we try our very hardest to feel alright (amidst billions of advertising dollars spent to convince us that we are not). We’re overwhelmed and confused (subconsciously struggling to make sense of a lifetime of abuse), and yet, still forced to flop out of bed face-first most mornings, exerting so much energy just to feign a smile during the day so that -- by the evening -- we lack any strength to actually help our cause, resorting to placating the monsters away with the cheapest, most mind-dumbingest medications and activities we can('t) afford (repeat, repeat, repeat…). But why? How did this happen to us?
Well, if you’ve noticed, each generation seems to be more and more incapable of “growing up,” spending ridiculous amounts of money on nostalgia just to have something in their lives to touch that reminds them of a time when things felt less frightening (toys, tattoos, t-shirts, even the music that we’re making is blatantly aping our old tapes, flooded in faux-hiss and distortion so that we can barely decipher that so many singers are squealing variations of the exact same theme: “Save us from all of this! We need help, but we don‘t know what to do?! We wish we were young forever so we didn’t have to face this!”). Because when we dare to shut everything off for a few minutes and just listen to the wind between our ears, we know we can hear the same voices, and we understand them too, but we don‘t want to talk about it, so we shut them up because we never know how to help.
And so we hide as best as we can, tons of us relying on drink or drugs because we still aren't quite prepared to deal with our ugly reality alone; we’ve been scouring for the truth for so long, but couldn’t find it, and -- before we knew it -- it found us, repeatedly ran us over without remorse until the pain of it’s reality was so inhumanly unbearable that our bodies couldn't handle the stress without a helping hand to cover our eyes. And we know that what we’ve been molded into is a sorry shape, and that we’d like to feel closer together (to some/any/everyone!), but when over half of us come from divorce, and were taught next-to nothing of unconditional love, or empathy (or anything that could aid our brains in getting along with so many differently-thinking people), alternatives to give us the energy and patience to learn how to make everything okay aren’t quite clear.
But what we are pretty sure of of is that flying away to heaven just abandons us here on earth (not to mention that worrying about which word what group of people from where hunk of land uses to refer to who they call God is a waste of our when time). What we are starting to understand is that fancy-pants'd politician’s promises of change aren’t solving our problems (just making more war, producing more poverty, blinding us with blah-blahblahhhhh). And something we can absolutely guarantee is that no amount of money will ever be enough to save us all, because the only way one person gets rich is by one million others staying poor to serve them. And we are so sick of aspiring to that level selfishness.
Oh, we try to aim for little victories (organic, 501c3 sweat-shop free!), but even if we're lucky enough to land a job that doesn't require us to take a shame-shower at night, we can’t ever seem to keep up with all the wrecks our culture keeps creating (and I know this may be difficult to understand, as we’ve been trained to think it’s good when more jobs are created, and have grown used to a health care system that focuses on treating symptoms instead of
preventing the cause, but that is not a cure!). It's nice, and necessary, and noble for now, but not nearly enough to bring about the level of healing we desire for the people on this planet (which -- ideally -- is as close to one-hundred percent as we can get, right?). So we keep plugging up our side of this leaky dam with bubble-gum, hugs, and duct tape, meanwhile, diverting the floodwaters “somewhere else,” drowning entire towns on a daily basis. So do we really need to wait for it to burst on us before we do anything about it?
No! We must begin repairing the structure of what is causing all this harm right now, and it is up to me, you, and the infinite capacity of our human creativity to think of clever ways to compel others to help us (and boy, do we have the technology to!). But since so many of us were conditioned from such a young age into believing that “this shoddy old dam is the best shoddy old dam because it’s our shoddy old dam and -- since it’s the only shoddy old dam we know -- we must fight all who question our intentions in preserving it, even if it means our deaths,” our brains can barely handle the imaginatively-tall task of accepting something completely new (something that works with nature instead of trying to beat it into submission), . This is why we must strive to unlearn every lie we’ve believed for our whole lives! It’s the only way we can ever reclaim our strength so that we can use what we learn to pull each other up and remind one another every single chance we get that we have nothing to be afraid of (that we never did!). And to do that, we must understand this:
Fear is not real. It is just our brain temporarily confused by language, mistaking worry for truth. We can be healed with the proper education, but without it, we are left feeling weak and utterly hopeless. This is what is happening, and this is why real change never seems to come.
See, no one is “crazy,” or “depressed,” or “addicted” at all, because words are not things (sticks and stones!), so we can’t possibly be these sloppy adjectives others label us with (and if you’re currently leaning on chemical crutches, please try to use their powers for good by studying yourself from the inside and you’ll see that your woes were nothing more than a poor perspective you accidentally believed!). Because we know this world needs our help. In fact, many of us already know exactly what we’d like to do, but we’ve been so shamed into believing that our dreams are "unrealistic" (or "weird" or "nuts" or “too expensive“) for so long that we actually think "because that’s just the way it is" is a real answer, so we give up.
But nothing has ever been or will ever be “just the way it is.” We learn! We adapt! We evolve (and we must never forget this)! Nearly all human advancement starts from a tiny voice saying "You know, this doesn’t seem quite right. What if we tried it this way instead?" And yeah, many were killed for merely questioning who was in charge (and if they weren't killed, they were tortured and shunned, and went mad from the isolation and rejection!), but we can’t let fear stop us from doing what we know is right anymore. And if none of us stay quiet, none of us will feel alone in our efforts. So I am done craving to be coddled just to feel fake-safe, because I know we can fix this mess together.
If only one person gets what I‘m saying, it’s okay. You will be able help someone else, who can help four more (and on and on until it becomes exponentially unstoppable!). But we have to keep talking about this in any way that we can. People will roll their eyes and call us names. Sometimes, we’ll find ourselves getting angry and impatient, but we have to
remember that we all have a hard time not wanting to hide from the horrible truth, and the only way we ever get better is when someone cares enough to recognize this, and guides us in the most gentle of grandmotherly-loving ways (are you sure you don’t have room for just one more piece of pie? Okay, well I’ll just put it right there on your plate in case you get hungry later). And I think you’ll begin to see that the more you understand, the more understanding you will be able to be. And it will feel good.
I hope I made some sense here? I know it’s a lot to cram into your face at once, but if this was the only time we ever got to talk, I wanted to try to say as much as I could about how I felt. This album has been a sort of musical chain-letter to you, so now it’s your turn to do exactly what you know you want to do, but feel too afraid to (and this time if you don’t, people you care about really could die!). Just please, remember to breathe, and take little breaks when your head starts to hurt (and it will, but don’t worry, that’s just your brain growing!).
Thanks for listening. Keep trying. Hang in there. C.U. @ the pool. K.I.T. Y.B.F.F.F.E.A.E,
Eric Paul Dalke
PS: To find more help, visit: zeitgeistmediaproject.com -or- thezeitgeistmovement.com
PPS: I'm sorry if retracing my steps have accidentally left size-10.5 honeycomb'd- tennis-shoe-tread stamped on a few faces. I did not mean to hurt anyone. I don’t resent or blame or wish to insult a soul for the harm they've caused, so please don't be offended by a single word, okay? I know you meant well, that you tried your best to raise me right using only what had been taught to you, all while your brain was simultaneously trying to undue the damage caused by your own lousy upbringing. I wasted a lot of teenage time resenting you for withholding the truth, and I had to run away for a while so I could rid myself of the fears you inadvertently heaped upon me. But once I did, once I found all the fantastic facts I had been looking for all my life, it was easy to feel sorry about ever holding a hateful thought about you, and I was able to see through the ridiculous grown-up suits you'd been hiding underneath to reveal the scared little children you were (maybe even still are?). So if you ever feel like talking about it, I will always feel like listening.
I've spent most of these past 738-ish days in hiding, buried beneath a muck-heap of memories of discolored photos and fuzzy vhs tapes full of recorded tv from 1989 with the commercials still on them, taking every precaution possible to eschew “normal-people” life in favor of attempting to form a cohesive explanation as to what is currently preventing me -- as well as the bulk of our approximate generation -- from ascending that oh-so-invisibly-indeterminate hump called progress.
Well, after an exhaustive analysis reserved for only the most passionate of labcoat’d scientist (the kind that don’t bother with such frivolity as nose-hair trimming, tendrils intertwined with the mustache-portion of their beards), I found the answer (and it was undeniable):
At least eighty-seven of our some-hundred-and-some-odd-pounds are surely our terrified little elementary-school'd selves grasping onto our ankles for dear life, begging to not just be heard, but answered (oh, I’ll try not to trip over my feet as I backpedal a bit to explain).
See, ever since I could talk, I’ve had mouthfuls of meaning-of-life-type questions for whoever would listen. Only problem was, no one would, as my “silly” queries were dismissed every time. I was scolded at school for using logic (“but should or shouldn’t a poor person steal medicine to save their sick mother is a dumb question! Why can’t the doctor just be nice and give it to them?! Yeah, but whyyyy?”). I was spanked at home for committing “sins” (see: not being “perfect”). I was shamed and scared and starving for the truth, but -- instead -- kept getting fed fanciful-fallacies-under-the-misguided-guise-of-trying-to- “protect”-me-to-the-point-of-them-being-absolutely-undeniable-lies “truth,” and my head began to rapidly fill with nightmares of swirling confusion.
Did no one know the answers (my parents must not have, otherwise they wouldn’t have split up)? And if this were true, why not just be honest and say so? Maybe they were too full of pride to admit to a child that they didn’t know? That we were both in the exact same perplexing boat (full of holes, only one oar, both arms bitten off by sharks with only a gumball-machine compass to guide us)? Or perhaps there really was something wrong with me? I was having a horrible time trying to navigate my bones around this planet, and everyone else seemed to be doing okay (or so it seemed, as I was told that only girls and "fags" talked about their feelings)? Oh, I wished someone would have had the decency to say “you know, buddy, most of us barely have a clue what we’re doing, and we’ll probably screw up a bunch of times trying to figure out what‘s best for you too, but let’s try to be friends and work together so both of us can become better people, yeah?” But that never happened.
So since no one would help me, and since I didn’t want to risk writing my worries down and having someone find it, throw it away, and send me to a church/hospital to strap me down until I learned to forget them, I decided that -- if I wanted to make it out of childhood alive -- my best plan would be to become a good liar, trying not to stick out too much while I snooped around like a secret social psychologist, leaving my future-self elaborate mental notes to guide us both toward the truth.
It would be a grueling gauntlet, but I had to be certain that I wasn't devoured by the barrage of brain-washing (from Sex? Magazines? TV? Name-brand jeans? I didn‘t know?!) so that I could avoid transforming into yet another do-nothing blob-of-a-grownup (corroded in chip-crumbs and cynicism) so I could retain the youthful vigor and resourcefulness necessary to safely purge, properly puzzle-piece, and coherently decode all the soggy screeds I had been (hopefully) memorizing.
And I did it! Oh, the ridicule was often high, and the loneliness was sometimes unbearably looooow, but I survived, and I finally found the facts I’d been after for so long (and I’ve never felt happier!). Now, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who can’t relate to what I’ve been saying, or maybe my mere mental distress was a frolicking cakewalk compared to the damp dread you had you had to endure everyday? Either way, what I'm about to say effects us all:
Okay, so every day we try our very hardest to feel alright (amidst billions of advertising dollars spent to convince us that we are not). We’re overwhelmed and confused (subconsciously struggling to make sense of a lifetime of abuse), and yet, still forced to flop out of bed face-first most mornings, exerting so much energy just to feign a smile during the day so that -- by the evening -- we lack any strength to actually help our cause, resorting to placating the monsters away with the cheapest, most mind-dumbingest medications and activities we can('t) afford (repeat, repeat, repeat…). But why? How did this happen to us?
Well, if you’ve noticed, each generation seems to be more and more incapable of “growing up,” spending ridiculous amounts of money on nostalgia just to have something in their lives to touch that reminds them of a time when things felt less frightening (toys, tattoos, t-shirts, even the music that we’re making is blatantly aping our old tapes, flooded in faux-hiss and distortion so that we can barely decipher that so many singers are squealing variations of the exact same theme: “Save us from all of this! We need help, but we don‘t know what to do?! We wish we were young forever so we didn’t have to face this!”). Because when we dare to shut everything off for a few minutes and just listen to the wind between our ears, we know we can hear the same voices, and we understand them too, but we don‘t want to talk about it, so we shut them up because we never know how to help.
And so we hide as best as we can, tons of us relying on drink or drugs because we still aren't quite prepared to deal with our ugly reality alone; we’ve been scouring for the truth for so long, but couldn’t find it, and -- before we knew it -- it found us, repeatedly ran us over without remorse until the pain of it’s reality was so inhumanly unbearable that our bodies couldn't handle the stress without a helping hand to cover our eyes. And we know that what we’ve been molded into is a sorry shape, and that we’d like to feel closer together (to some/any/everyone!), but when over half of us come from divorce, and were taught next-to nothing of unconditional love, or empathy (or anything that could aid our brains in getting along with so many differently-thinking people), alternatives to give us the energy and patience to learn how to make everything okay aren’t quite clear.
But what we are pretty sure of of is that flying away to heaven just abandons us here on earth (not to mention that worrying about which word what group of people from where hunk of land uses to refer to who they call God is a waste of our when time). What we are starting to understand is that fancy-pants'd politician’s promises of change aren’t solving our problems (just making more war, producing more poverty, blinding us with blah-blahblahhhhh). And something we can absolutely guarantee is that no amount of money will ever be enough to save us all, because the only way one person gets rich is by one million others staying poor to serve them. And we are so sick of aspiring to that level selfishness.
Oh, we try to aim for little victories (organic, 501c3 sweat-shop free!), but even if we're lucky enough to land a job that doesn't require us to take a shame-shower at night, we can’t ever seem to keep up with all the wrecks our culture keeps creating (and I know this may be difficult to understand, as we’ve been trained to think it’s good when more jobs are created, and have grown used to a health care system that focuses on treating symptoms instead of
preventing the cause, but that is not a cure!). It's nice, and necessary, and noble for now, but not nearly enough to bring about the level of healing we desire for the people on this planet (which -- ideally -- is as close to one-hundred percent as we can get, right?). So we keep plugging up our side of this leaky dam with bubble-gum, hugs, and duct tape, meanwhile, diverting the floodwaters “somewhere else,” drowning entire towns on a daily basis. So do we really need to wait for it to burst on us before we do anything about it?
No! We must begin repairing the structure of what is causing all this harm right now, and it is up to me, you, and the infinite capacity of our human creativity to think of clever ways to compel others to help us (and boy, do we have the technology to!). But since so many of us were conditioned from such a young age into believing that “this shoddy old dam is the best shoddy old dam because it’s our shoddy old dam and -- since it’s the only shoddy old dam we know -- we must fight all who question our intentions in preserving it, even if it means our deaths,” our brains can barely handle the imaginatively-tall task of accepting something completely new (something that works with nature instead of trying to beat it into submission), . This is why we must strive to unlearn every lie we’ve believed for our whole lives! It’s the only way we can ever reclaim our strength so that we can use what we learn to pull each other up and remind one another every single chance we get that we have nothing to be afraid of (that we never did!). And to do that, we must understand this:
Fear is not real. It is just our brain temporarily confused by language, mistaking worry for truth. We can be healed with the proper education, but without it, we are left feeling weak and utterly hopeless. This is what is happening, and this is why real change never seems to come.
See, no one is “crazy,” or “depressed,” or “addicted” at all, because words are not things (sticks and stones!), so we can’t possibly be these sloppy adjectives others label us with (and if you’re currently leaning on chemical crutches, please try to use their powers for good by studying yourself from the inside and you’ll see that your woes were nothing more than a poor perspective you accidentally believed!). Because we know this world needs our help. In fact, many of us already know exactly what we’d like to do, but we’ve been so shamed into believing that our dreams are "unrealistic" (or "weird" or "nuts" or “too expensive“) for so long that we actually think "because that’s just the way it is" is a real answer, so we give up.
But nothing has ever been or will ever be “just the way it is.” We learn! We adapt! We evolve (and we must never forget this)! Nearly all human advancement starts from a tiny voice saying "You know, this doesn’t seem quite right. What if we tried it this way instead?" And yeah, many were killed for merely questioning who was in charge (and if they weren't killed, they were tortured and shunned, and went mad from the isolation and rejection!), but we can’t let fear stop us from doing what we know is right anymore. And if none of us stay quiet, none of us will feel alone in our efforts. So I am done craving to be coddled just to feel fake-safe, because I know we can fix this mess together.
If only one person gets what I‘m saying, it’s okay. You will be able help someone else, who can help four more (and on and on until it becomes exponentially unstoppable!). But we have to keep talking about this in any way that we can. People will roll their eyes and call us names. Sometimes, we’ll find ourselves getting angry and impatient, but we have to
remember that we all have a hard time not wanting to hide from the horrible truth, and the only way we ever get better is when someone cares enough to recognize this, and guides us in the most gentle of grandmotherly-loving ways (are you sure you don’t have room for just one more piece of pie? Okay, well I’ll just put it right there on your plate in case you get hungry later). And I think you’ll begin to see that the more you understand, the more understanding you will be able to be. And it will feel good.
I hope I made some sense here? I know it’s a lot to cram into your face at once, but if this was the only time we ever got to talk, I wanted to try to say as much as I could about how I felt. This album has been a sort of musical chain-letter to you, so now it’s your turn to do exactly what you know you want to do, but feel too afraid to (and this time if you don’t, people you care about really could die!). Just please, remember to breathe, and take little breaks when your head starts to hurt (and it will, but don’t worry, that’s just your brain growing!).
Thanks for listening. Keep trying. Hang in there. C.U. @ the pool. K.I.T. Y.B.F.F.F.E.A.E,
Eric Paul Dalke
PS: To find more help, visit: zeitgeistmediaproject.com -or- thezeitgeistmovement.com
PPS: I'm sorry if retracing my steps have accidentally left size-10.5 honeycomb'd- tennis-shoe-tread stamped on a few faces. I did not mean to hurt anyone. I don’t resent or blame or wish to insult a soul for the harm they've caused, so please don't be offended by a single word, okay? I know you meant well, that you tried your best to raise me right using only what had been taught to you, all while your brain was simultaneously trying to undue the damage caused by your own lousy upbringing. I wasted a lot of teenage time resenting you for withholding the truth, and I had to run away for a while so I could rid myself of the fears you inadvertently heaped upon me. But once I did, once I found all the fantastic facts I had been looking for all my life, it was easy to feel sorry about ever holding a hateful thought about you, and I was able to see through the ridiculous grown-up suits you'd been hiding underneath to reveal the scared little children you were (maybe even still are?). So if you ever feel like talking about it, I will always feel like listening.
PLEASE READ BEFORE LISTENING
(this is what I wanted people to read before listening to my album):
I’ve struggled thinking how to say this in a way that you will be sure to hear because we've been raised in a culture that tries to shame us into believing that doing anything with sincerety just makes us pretentious party-poopers; that -- if we’re not spouting jaundiced jokey-jokes or giving a "whuddya gonna do?" shoulder-shrug immediately after talking about anything having to do with real life -- we should learn to either "lighten up" or "calm down. So please understand that I will be pouring my stupid guts out here at a loss trying to get through to you, hoping that life might make a bit more sense for the both of us if we can manage to actually connect before this thing is over.
Because these songs were not made to be your background music, or licensed for commercials to help sell you more stuff you don't need, or to be played in a tender-ish moment of some film full of 'attractive-yet-quirky' white people, or blasted at your party (or pumped on any dance floor that's larger than your bedroom rug, for that matter!). This is reflective music. Critical listening music. Secretly-cupping-the-earbuds-hidden-underneath-your-shirtsleeve-in-school-or-work-or-church-because-it-screams-actual-truth-and-reminds-you-you’re-alive music. Unabashedly-dreaming-out-loud-to-each-other-about-how-that-sensation-we-feel-of- monsters-mauling-our-soul-isn't-just-a-cute-metaphor-for-feeling-"crazy"-but-a-legitimate-manifestation-of-humanity’s-desperate-attempts-to-be-heard-so-that-we-will-be-propelled-to-work-together-and-help-save-it music (is that alright?).
In these next fifty-seven minutes, you will not be judged . You won't need to check your reflection to make sure that your bangs are falling just the way you think looks the most flattering over your forehead, or adjust the inflection of your voice to blend in with the company you keep, or cover your mouth when you find something funny because you don’t like your smile or your teeth or your gums or your breath or the sound of your laugh (or the wrinkles it causes) because in the next fifty-seven minutes you and I will be invisible scientists observing only abstract words and ideas, catching and inspecting each little bugger that floats, flutters, wizzes, wiggles, bounces or buzzes by us with nothing less than pie-eyed delight. But before we can begin, a have a polite request to ask:
Could we please be alone?
I mean power down your phone (then hide it in a drawer!), shut off your computer, unplug your television, get comfortable, close your eyes (you can read the other pages after it’s all over), press play and just listen.
Now, in a few seconds, we are going to be kids again, okay? Our hopes will not be contingent upon money because we will have no concept of such things to weigh us down. No one will scold us or tell us we’re “wrong” (or ”weird,” or “stupid,” or “silly,” or..) for a single thought we have. We will just float through time and space, and the universe and all it's possibilities will seem infinite again.
Ready? Set...
Thursday, February 12, 2009
music: my bestest friend.
I have never had a better friend than music. When I was confused, music told me it's thoughts. When I was frustrated, music showed me that it was too. When I thought I was crazy, music said to me "I feel the exact same way you do!"
The only problem was, I was raised by a very (VERY) Christian mother who forbid me to listen to anything even slightly objectionable. Even a seemingly innocent bubblegum oldies song was to be turned off at the mere mention of "making love" under the objection that -- if they were not married -- it was a sin, and you shouldn't be listening to people who are saying that that is okay."
There was even a book purchased (that I still have on my coffee table for all to enjoy) which rated each and every band that exists on a 12-point rating system of evil. Evil, everyone's favorite dysphemism. Insert it in any sentence and your fearful opinion of something becomes infallible F A C T.
Now, I understood what she was trying to say. I fully agree that most song lyrics are bland and hackneyed and just plain stupid, but this did not stop me from looking past that, past the "evil," and appreciating the music itself.
So instead of believing her, it taught me how to be resourceful:
This is why I started a band. I wanted to help. I wanted to give back. I couldn't bare to think of how many others just like me were suffering the same fate, desperately looking for a friend to tell them it was going to be okay.
And it is going to be okay. What you might think is bad right now will actually be laughable to you in less than 20 years. And if you survive (and you can if you want to), you will be better for it.
Everyone is just scared, that's all. And isn't there a certain comfort in knowing that? We all just want more friends to tell us everything will be fine.
Well, here I am, offering to be your friend, telling you:
"Everything will be fine."
So go listen to a happy song (it doesn't have to be mine) and do whatever it is you dream about doing!
The only problem was, I was raised by a very (VERY) Christian mother who forbid me to listen to anything even slightly objectionable. Even a seemingly innocent bubblegum oldies song was to be turned off at the mere mention of "making love" under the objection that -- if they were not married -- it was a sin, and you shouldn't be listening to people who are saying that that is okay."
There was even a book purchased (that I still have on my coffee table for all to enjoy) which rated each and every band that exists on a 12-point rating system of evil. Evil, everyone's favorite dysphemism. Insert it in any sentence and your fearful opinion of something becomes infallible F A C T.
Now, I understood what she was trying to say. I fully agree that most song lyrics are bland and hackneyed and just plain stupid, but this did not stop me from looking past that, past the "evil," and appreciating the music itself.
So instead of believing her, it taught me how to be resourceful:
- i feigned interest in Christian music so that I could be allowed to get a walkman for my birthday (and then taping over those tapes with what I really wanted to listen to).
- because I did not ever get an allowance, I never had money. And so, I would need to find ways to achieve free music (and mind you, this is the early 1980's). And so: copying friends albums + the Mt. Prospect Public Library.
- also,my dad was a great help, and would smuggle tapes to me whenver he could).
- hide the devil's music underneath all of the Michael Jordan posters that covered my ceiling.
- make up fake names of Christian-sounding bands in order to go to evil concerts.
- run an old pair of red-and-blue gameboy headphones underneath my shirtsleeves and sit with my head resting against the cupped earbud inside during all hours (especially during school and church!).
This is why I started a band. I wanted to help. I wanted to give back. I couldn't bare to think of how many others just like me were suffering the same fate, desperately looking for a friend to tell them it was going to be okay.
And it is going to be okay. What you might think is bad right now will actually be laughable to you in less than 20 years. And if you survive (and you can if you want to), you will be better for it.
Everyone is just scared, that's all. And isn't there a certain comfort in knowing that? We all just want more friends to tell us everything will be fine.
Well, here I am, offering to be your friend, telling you:
"Everything will be fine."
So go listen to a happy song (it doesn't have to be mine) and do whatever it is you dream about doing!
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