8/25/2024

Unfortunately, a great deal of us are born with hearts and minds. Even more unfortunate, a greater deal are cursed with neither. Most people don't like me, but most people aren't worth being liked by. Don't mistake that for nihilism, I'm anything but a nihilist. The few good people you meet make everything worthwhile. I think the true entry to adulthood is realizing that every adult you thought had everything figured out was winging it too. I forgot how good silence was. Recently when I work out, which is my meditative time, I've been enjoying silence, apart from the usual ambient sounds of Los Angeles that all become easily tuned out with time. Even car crashes fail to phase me in Glendale.

I wonder why I'm making this album, *who* I'm doing it for. I'm not doing it for me, I'm a slave to it. Really I'd rather give up entirely. All I want right now is to be in a bar in Golden Gai getting drunk with strangers and swapping stories on some night adventure, maybe some woman would stick my finger in her throat again, maybe I'd see juggling corn dogs and catch one in my mouth and strike riots of laughter. Maybe I'd be free somewhere where no one knew my name or cared and I'd disappear, on some intransient journey. I don't really do the things I want to do, I do the things I have to do. I seem to both understand myself and paradoxically fail to understand myself. To whom do I owe this piece of work? No one. Yet I know I have to complete it because if I don't, no one else will. When I was a young man I was so fixated on someone 'beating' me to it. Now I realize it doesn't matter and it wouldn't happen because the thing I'm chasing is mine alone. Then I wonder what's the point if no one is going to listen to it anyway. Yet still, I think of when Vincent Gallo talked about Buffalo '66 and thought that if only in 20-30 years some weird kid watched that movie and it inspired them to do something beautiful and great that it was worth it. I wept to that movie and maybe I'm one of many kids. Maybe really, I forgot why I started: to try to change something in the world, and if even in vain it's still an attempt which is better than the cowardice of resignment. Against all odds I hope waves of crashes and vibrating strings save us from ourselves. I crave human connection and understanding but I also want nothing to do with anyone. Maybe really what I hate is myself, but that's okay. I have all these wonderful people to love. What a beautifully mad world.

My birthday is 6 days away now and it feels like the past year went by in a blink. I have no idea what we'll be doing or what I'll be doing, but hopefully it'll be wonderful and strange. Maybe this is all I have the energy for writing today. I've so much more work to do today, wrapping up click tracks that still need to be refined for drum tracking in a month. I'll leave you with a poem I wrote recently.

Song Of Despair

My suffering is my own you can’t take that from me.

For every naked screaming lunatic in the street,

when the bombs fall and I drown in flames, 

we sing this song of defeat. 

Though it resists being written,

for every barefoot child that inherits this whirlwind,

for every pot bellied Oilgarch,

how could we forget every daring perversion to consume you?

Wanted it all, cost was not a concern you had.

Pull out your gun.

Yeah shoot everyone, 

and turn it to pornography.

Blackrock taught me not to freely give a fuck.

Youth get the rug pulled over cultural dementia.

No peace, save for those who sleep.

The rest jolted awake soaking in fear, 

and circling the drain,

a song of nothing. 

I don’t believe in anything