Beautiful, quiet nothin'

Posted on February 28, 2010 by

Standin’ here, admirin’ this bit of snow, that bit of grass. How it came to be here without any help, its aesthetic properties all shinin’ just as beautiful as anything that lot useda spend their whole lives constructing. That lot. Ain’t much left of ‘em now.

The last ones- the stragglers- they were all afraid of this, calling it “the end”. The end. All their concrete and an’ glowing lights an’ clocks an’ fences, they disappear, and it’s the end. But I look around here, an’ it’s not the end- it’s an infinite number of beginnings. Guess it was hard to see that from inside their fences, their glass caves an’ whathaveyou. Never did see many look up before all this happened. Hell, even when they realized all their so-called “oneness” with each other was for naught, that in “the end” it was of no more use to ‘em than a shitbrick, well… Guess they wouldn’t understand how to cope with somethin’ they done labeled as “nothing”.

Most of ‘em didn’t have the stomach for it, I suppose. They just kinda festered in their anthills, dying all slowlike, as if eatin’ by a cancer. Saw it comin’ from out here- little devices in their ears all the time, eyeballs attached to glowing shitboxes, and all their obsessions with each others. That was the most peculiar thing from out here: Their constant want of each other, an’ how they’d fit one another into molds all specific-like, afraid if they didn’t it’d be all unbearable. It was almost like they were settin’ themselves up for ruin, you know, all interconnected and comingled. I suppose, it could be said, their individuality died ‘fore they did.

But a few, they stumbled out. All grey skies and dead browns from their perspective, no doubt. And of course they strapped everything they could to their backs- that level of hypocrisy wasn’t lost on me. No sir. Had a good chuckle over it.

One of ‘em stopped here. Standin’ there, on its road, looked at me with the most ghastly ordeal of pity on its face. It kept sayin’ how much it wanted to take me with it, how it wished it wouldn’t have come to this. Wanted me to go along, play whatever role it thought I should have, be comfortably normal in its eyes. What a horrid notion.

It finally left- on its little road with its little belongings, more than a little embittered, no doubt. I feigned no sign of interest, an’ that seemed to unnerve it. ‘How could anything, standing out here all alone not want to be part of my lil’ world?’ I imagined it thinkin’ all over its precious concrete.

If I had to venture a guess, I’d say sometime after they done amalgamated into one another, they decided that there was nothin’ left to want outside their own selves. That constant interaction, their facades to sustain that interaction, the rubble after those facades collapse, and the never ending cycle thereafter. All that bein’ wrapped up in each other, gets to the point where yer just terrified of the vast.

See, they can’t take standin’ in the infinite. Infinite. It’s pretty literal out here- the colors and features spread out ’round you, shoot up in the distance, maybe roll down a few places; a stand of trees here, a prairie there, a glacier here. It’s everything. But that lot, lost in their growing and glowing specks, never could see that. Was the end of ‘em.

I stand out here, lookin’ at their failing structures and dying lights, and I wonder how anything could be so terrified of this beautiful, quiet nothin’.

Posted in Miscellaneous Nonsense | Leave a comment

Standin' at the bottom and the top

Posted on December 31, 2009 by

Hope and wonder, how it always starts. What’s along the road this go ’round? Some sorta unforeseen joy or terror? More broken lights? More sublime peace? You never know, you hate to predict, and honestly can’t stand when others do either. All you can really do is look at where you are, an’ what led up to this precarious moment.

Kinda all start the same, even this last adventure. There you are, looking down some vast expanse shrouded in black an’ shadow, occasionally glimpsing rifts and sun through bits of imagination. The beginning is always easy, you feel new and it’s so not gonna wear off this time. Or so you tell yourself, and it works a little. Makes the early slogging a bit more tolerable at any rate. It’s a welcome relief after the drama.

You press on, a bit further down. It’s like walkin’ a ridge in the dark at first, you really have no idea where it’s all going, just that it’s this way and you’re really not gonna turn around. Then it throws a chasm at you- somebody leaves, life becomes more than you can bear and all you really wanna do is go home. But you don’t. You don’t because then you’re going backwards and as shitty as forward looks, there’s light ahead and nothing but repetitious fail behind you. You know better- even if it comes in waves, you know better.

Then you catch up with that light that you’ve been starin’ at for months, and fuck if it isn’t glorious. First thing you do is one of most reckless, out of character acts you can, trying once and for all to get out of the goddamn twilight. Maybe you spend a few weeks shittin’ bricks in your head, but you get over it. Hell of a story at any rate. Wasn’t even your tent.

It’s always hard, staying in that light, even when you know it’s better than ever before. You can always see ‘em, off in the distance, these little spots that will damn everything you’re holding onto. Gettin’ caught in one, it goes dark an’ all you want to light the sky back up are the fires of everything burning to the ground. There’s no refuge from it an’ all you can do is hope it passes before you lose your head. Then it does.

Everybody that trips down one of these adventures has a few of these moments in the light. Or maybe I’m just projecting. But sometimes you find yourself, say on an empty mountain highway hauling ass at a sunset with good company and music so appropriate it’d be ridiculous if you weren’t euphoric, and you can’t help but wonder why life can’t be like this all the time. You share that light with so many people, it’s hard to bow out gracefully.

And like that it’s behind you, some distant sunset that really is over when it’s gone. It’s horrible, and the only thing moving your feet for the longest damn time is the hope of getting to the next one faster. But that’s not enough- you can’t move out here in the dark like that, it’s dangerous and this may, in fact, be bat country. Not that you’ll realize that in time.

Then one a’those strikes of light hits. You don’t really notice at first, but everything glows a bit. Like sitting in a black room and slowly finding the walls, the windows. It’s still not light out, but maybe, just maybe, you passed through the real night. You’ve got the hang of traveling like this.

Eventually it’s close enough to the end that you check out early. You stop worryin’ about the earthly stuff ’cause you’ve had your fill and nobody is gonna stop you from quitting at this point.

You’re all in the middle of being done, ready to pack it in and restart at the top, when this thing steps out of the dark. You thought it was dead or gone or somethin’. Useda be here, standin’ here like this all the time. Then it wandered off like some sorta four year old with ADD. And how you yelled after it, in the most biting farewell you could muster. Maybe it left, but the air of it followed you about, dimming everything, however slightly and subconsciously. But here it is again, atoning for that. We’ve all grown up a little it seems, here at the other end.

And that’s really what it comes down to when the path stops. All you can do is look back. Maybe you needa shake it off, tell yourself to do better next time, maybe you can accept how you did this time. But you can’t tell yourself what the future will be, ’cause you’re standing here, looking down some vast expanse shrouded in black an’ shadow, occasionally glimpsing rifts and sun through bits of imagination.

An’ you keep going, into the unknown.

Posted in True Stories | 2 Comments

A visual feast

Posted on December 31, 2009 by

I’ve spent a solid portion of my existence in particularly large, dark rooms, with a bunch of strangers. Theaters, mind you. And those theaters have contained everything from mind-blowing stories, visual feasts, comedies nearly driving me to tears, and of course, absolute garbage. As a film student, it’s easy to become jaded to what’s out there, what is or definitely is not impressive, etc. So when I first saw a preview of Avatar, I was absolutely unimpressed.

Avatar, at first glance, looked like Fern Gully with space marines. I mean that’s a fantastically amusing idea, but for the last year I’d heard all sorts of whispered hype (growing to a proverbially goddamn roar in the last few months) about how revolutionary it is, how “OMG James Cameron finally decided to make another movie with a budget larger than most third-world countries”, and so on. And then I remember the trailer with these goofy-damned blue people running around. It was an uphill battle. Honestly, if it weren’t for knowing James Cameron’s track record of making solid, huge films, I probably would’ve wrote it off and waited for the DVD.

And maybe I would have if it weren’t for the fevor of a Cameron fan and fellow film student I know, who, when I told I’d probably just see it in 2D, flipped shit and told me my “head would explode”. Curious, and with the advantage of going somewhere for Christmas break near several metropolitan areas, I looked into what was available. Turned out we had an opportunity not only for 3D (fail, Bozeman, fail), but for IMAX; two technologies that by themselves have always struck me as pretty gimmicky (though I find IMAX more enticing) but together, combined with a true Hollywood film, well… Now I was interested, and made the trip with my brother and my father.

When we were walking out, my dad- who’s typically “meh” about movies- made the comment: “That was the coolest damn thing I’ve ever seen.” Which more or less sums up my feelings. I have never, in my life, sat in a theater and gone “holy shit” in my head with awe so many times.

Before I dive into the visuals, I want to make something abundantly clear: This is not a revolutionary or particularly innovative story and anybody expecting otherwise needs to re-watch the rest of Cameron’s films. None of them are. This is not a Coen Bros. film or a Kaufman script- if you want to be challenged by the plot, seek it elsewhere. That said, it’s engaging, extremely well-paced and well-directed (sans Weaver, who strangely wasn’t all there). That kind of solidness is what you should be expecting from a Cameron story, nothing more.

Now, here’s why people are raving: The visuals are jaw-dropping. Full-blown Mechs with live-action people seamlessly inside, all manner of futuristic technology and weaponry rendered believably right in front of you, dense rainforests- lush green in the day, but sporting an amazing neon color palette during the night, people riding goddamn dragons while shooting flaming arrows, mountains cloaked in mist floating near the fucking stratosphere, and that’s just the beginning. This is a behemoth of science fiction, nothing less, and for two hours and forty minutes, you will BELIEVE all of it. Make no mistake, this is the next evolution of computer-generated technology. From a technical standpoint, books could be written about this film: Green-screen compositing that is fucking flawless, motion capturing that is bar-none the best ever done; every facial expression and (very nearly) every movement is utterly real. You WILL forget that nearly half the characters and locations in front of you do not, in reality, exist.

As I said, I witnessed this in IMAX 3D, and that’s what really pushed this into a whole new realm for me. In terms of IMAX, the wow-factor is very simple: It’s a massive screen, unlike anything I’ve ever been in front of (and allegedly, our screen was smaller than standard IMAX).  In terms of 3D, that’s the other revolution here.

This film goes far beyond a few gimmicky shots that make you think “it’s like I can touch you!”. Hallways and rooms inconsequential to the focus of a scene stretch off into the distance, as though the screen were just a window. Characters pop-out, at times uncanny in their detail; I’m not sure if its a combination of the large-format and 3D, or just 3D, but there were moments that my brain understood the physical presence of something in the film the same way it does in reality. That may sound dull, but it’s exactly that sort of subtlety that sells the effect- most of the 3D is supplemental to the content. However, there are some real jaw-dropping moments purely by way of 3D and they are, of course, the environment. As the camera pans down with someone diving off an enormous waterfall, you feel it. It was enough to instill a (wonderful) moment of vertigo in me, and this is repeated ten fold for sequences with Avatars flying on the backs of pteryodactal-like creatures, as they soar over the landscape and, fantastically, dive straight down for it. Some of it is obviously showy, but you really, really won’t care.

It is somewhat hard to describe in words. In a nutshell though, as witnessed in 3D IMAX, Avatar is a visual experience currently unrivaled by any other piece of cinema. Personally, the only other thing in my life that comes close to touching it was the stage show for Tool’s 10000 Days tour.  It is, however, unfortunate knowing that it’ll be rare for most people to experience Avatar this way, particularly in the northwest where IMAX is almost non-existent and 3D is still somewhat hard to come by. But Avatar’s content, even 3D on a standard screen, is still liable to wow. I worry it’ll lose some luster in 2D, but I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve had the pleasure.

I don’t usually write film reviews, the reason being I usually feel like I’m telling people what movies they should or shouldn’t like. Some simply are not for everyone (most of my personal collection, in fact), and I firmly believe if you want to see something you should, regardless of what anyone else tells you. But in the case of Avatar, I think the sheer force of innovation and eye-candy contained within is enough that almost anyone can enjoy it.

Bottom line: Go see Avatar.

Posted in True Stories | 1 Comment

Oh, the horror…

Posted on October 31, 2009 by

Horror movies suck. If you were to take a sample of any twenty films labeling themselves as horror, chances are most of them would be awful, a handful would have some “ok” parts, and maybe one would creep you out for a moment or two.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of horror, but I firmly disagree with the current notion in popular cinema that movies need only copious amounts of gore and cheap loud-noises in the soundtrack to be frightening. Sure, these can be fun to watch (I honestly enjoyed The Hills Have Eyes remake), but scary? No. For that, they need atmosphere; they need to suck you into the reality of the film- via character, situation, use of imagery, or just sheer distress on your senses. This, is rare.

So in honor of Halloween, I’d like to share a list of what I feel are five great films that do just that- suck you in, and have their way with your senses. Don’t get me wrong, these aren’t “classics” (we’ve all seen those)- more like films you may have missed or overlooked that, in my opinion, deliver the sort of experience worthy of the season. From bottom to top:

- Signs. I remember seeing this in a theater the first time- some run-down thing in downtown Kalispell. But from the opening music until the last scene, I was completely taken in by it. Granted, I’m somewhat of a sucker for aliens and the “spiritual” overtones were lost on me at the time (I find them mildly irritating now), but in terms of making you feel the fear of isolation with something unknown all around you, Shymalan did it brilliantly. The way the wind moves the fields when you know something is out there, the focus on hearing “them” rather than seeing anything… And in addition to that, unique characters and a fairly compelling plot. If only he could still make movies like this.

- The Descent. Cave divers run into “something” while spelunking in an unmarked cave. I wouldn’t blame anybody for skipping over this, and honestly I would’ve done the same if I hadn’t seen Dog Soldiers (Neil Marshall’s first, and fucking brilliant, B-horror film). So glad I didn’t- it eschews all horror character cliches right from the get-go (all female cast, varying ages, mostly British) and drips with atmosphere as soon as they hit the surrounding woods (if you’ve ever found yourself in the middle of a dark forest on an overcast day, this is spot-on). There’s also none of that “caves are all wide open spaces” horseshit either- this place is claustrophobic, and only gets worse the further it goes. Sadly, there’s some obligatory “loud-noise” fake-out moments, but I can forgive that. And after the way they introduce the creatures, you probably will too.

- The Strangers. Like The Descent, The Strangers seems to have been dismissed by the general public, probably on the same grounds that the basic plot isn’t terribly clever (and it’s about as “true” as Fargo). But again, it’s extremely well done. Tension built through noise and subtle imagery (sans the few moments of gore, which was fairly used), antagonists that are surprisingly creepy due to lack of identity, and one of my favorite shots ever in a horror film (spoiled on the poster, but oh well). It’s a pretty simple concept- couple terrorized by some unknown psychotics wearing masks outside their remote cabin- but again, it’s all in the way it was executed (quite well).

- Mothman Prophecies. The first time I watched this I had trouble falling asleep afterwards. I was at least 15. All horror aside (this is probably better listed as a thriller), this is still the creepiest film I’ve ever seen. The imagery is outright eerie, the ambience equally so, and combined it produces this rather (wonderfully) unnerving atmosphere. What’s really well played, however, is the Mothman itself. Sitting somewhere between a physical entity and a purely psychological issue, it never manifests in full-form at any point during the film, leaving it largely up to your imagination. If this film doesn’t get under your skin even just a little bit, we clearly don’t understand each other.

- The Blair Witch Project. This is one of the most brilliant horror films ever made, and I don’t throw statements like that around for just anything. Yes, it’s shakey; yes, the characters swear more than they use real words; and yes, it just ends. But this film asks you to suspend your disbelief in a wholly different way than normal cinema: You’re not viewing a stylized story through a wall, you watching a recording intended to be real life. If you can’t accept that, you’ll be sorely disappointed. If you can, it’s an incredibly engrossing experience. By using no-name actors and largely unscripted dialogue, there’s a sense of fluidness to the characters that feels quite real; I don’t know how many of you have ever been stuck with other people in a panic, but in my experience it’s not a time when there’s a lot of intelligent conversation. It sucks you in. And the sound… If you have headphones or surround, crank up the volume. In no other film has sound so convinced me of the images on screen- crashes in the distance, the way voices echo through trees, even just the ambience is simply spot-on to real life. And finally, there’s no shitty latex monster, no cliched figure seen at any point- everything is implied. And for those of us with vivid imaginations, that’s the greatest gift a horror feature can bestow upon us.

These are, of course, opinions- normally I wouldn’t bother pointing that out (especially here, of all places), but horror is so ridiculously polarizing and subjective that I refuse to have the tired “oh that’s not scary” discussion with anyone. You may love these, you may hate them. But at the very least, they’re worth giving a look.

Happy Halloween.

Posted in Miscellaneous Nonsense | Leave a comment

One metal evening

Posted on September 21, 2009 by

09-18-09.

Spokane, WA.

The children… Wow, the children.

Standing in line for an hour and a half (venue set-up time fail is made of fail), it became apparent that we were in the minority of attendees over the age of 21. Significantly over, mind you. I’m not sure how to feel about that- in part it’s kind of disappointing to not look around and see an amalgamation of At the Gates, Dark Tranquillity, Soilwork and other such classic Gothenburg bands plastered onto shirts, but instead a lot of young, clean-shaven chitlins wearing very new looking In Flames apparel. Granted, there were enough respectable newer names (Amon Amarth, Killswitch, etc), but standing in line for a show from one of the original melodic death metal bands, it felt as though their origins were some distant land that the crowd wasn’t aware of. But scenes change. Quite frankly, I’m happy to see a mob of kids into In Flames, regardless of which incarnation it is.

The Faceless takes stage. I haven’t been privy to anything approaching true death metal on stage (or even influenced by it) in a long while, so just the sheer brutality was enough to leave me smiling for the first few minutes. Properly mixed heaviness is something to appreciate: the double-bass wasn’t moving my clothing, but it was enough “oomph” that you knew somebody’s feet were plugging away at lightning speed behind the kit. Guitars that aren’t made of mud, vocals that aren’t under-mixed… Wonderful. But this isn’t generic death metal- despite the vocalist’s Cannibal Corpse shirt. Somewhere between the second or third song I found myself in some sort of trance, alternating between members in admiration. It’s easy to forget how much skill this brand of music requires when it’s not crushing your face from 40 feet in front of you. Playing at hyper-speed, rapidly changing times and tempo (making it look absolutely effortless), yet still maintaining moments of groove and (thankfully) having a vocalist who knew what he was doing with his throat (or rather, not doing). Definitely a proper start to the evening.

240 pounds of man, scuzzy hair down to his shoulders, and a beard scruffy enough to compete with most bums. Denim jacket covered in patches. The sort of man that, very clearly, drinks a lot of beer. Grooving riffage pours out of the amps for the opening song. He opens his mouth. Out comes falsetto. This is 3 Inches of Blood. By all accounts they’re pretty straightforward metal- nothing terribly original, but definitely the sort of group that gets on stage with the intention of having a good time so that, by proximity, you will too. Great fun to watch, and it IS most certainly something to behold- anyone that can pull off Halford-esque falsetto in true form deserves recognition, even if it’s not typically my listening preference.

Five guys wander onto the stage, mostly clean-cut and looking straight off any college campus (mostly; the guitarist in a sleeveless Opeth tee threw things a bit). Set-up takes a little longer than it should considering things are already an hour behind, but soon it gets underway. A thick wall of noise and energy issues forth. Between the Buried & Me. I have to admit, after the first two openers, my ears were starting to disagree that the high-end of the audio spectrum existed anymore, so things got fairly muddy during their set as far as I could tell. Whether that was a set-up issue or my dying hearing, I’m not sure. Either way, as with The Faceless, these are class musicians. I probably spent most of their set in awe of the bassist- very rarely during any sort of metal is the bass doing anything independent of the guitar, but he absolutely kicked that stereotype out the window. Which was to be expected- BTB&M definitely put the prog into progressive death metal, moving not only between various metal genres (death, thrash, metalcore), but also into some strange variation of psychedelic prog-rock, complete with clean vocals (which I thought were on the strained-side; as if over-compensating for being low in the mix). It can be (and for me personally was) very hard to keep up with, considering I don’t know their material very well. And it seemed like it would all be cut short as they announced “this is our last song for the night”, seemingly early in the set. Not true. Fifteen minutes later, they wrap up White Walls to a crowd of screaming In Flames fans, by far one of the standout tracks of the entire evening. It had been awhile since I’d listened to Colors (the album), but having gone back just now to hear it again, as awesome as it is, that build at 7:20 is nothing until you hear it live. Just jaw-dropping, and it was great seeing a sea of young metalheads that agreed.

So all the openers are down, and we all know what’s next. Understandably, it takes In Flames a fair bit longer to set-up, what with being the headliner and having brought their own (blinding) light show. Not that this stops a handful of dunces from chanting the band’s name in moronic feverency; yeah, let’s just skip the sound check, great idea.

Lights drop, a teaser loop of the very distinct synth from Cloud Connected comes on, band takes the stage, and things kick into full gear from there. Here’s the setlist to the best of my remembrance:

Cloud Connected
Embody the Invisible
Pinball Map
Disconnected
Delight and Angers
The Hive
Alias
Crawl Through Knives
Square Nothing
Leeches
System
Drifter
Come Clarity
Clayman
The Mirror’s Truth
Take This Life
The Quiet Place
Reflect The Storm
My Sweet Shadow

I have to say, the first third of the setlist surprised the living shit out of me (and anyone familiar with the band before 2002 likely was as well). Embody The Invisible? The Hive? I was prepared to hear one, maybe two songs from anything Clayman and before- not this, and especially not within the first half of the set.

…Before pressing on, I’d like to take this moment to air some thoughts on what’s obviously coming here: I love In Flames. Everything from Jester Race through A Sense of Purpose. In metal circles- particularly ones that respect the early Gothenburg scene- that’s tantamount to coming out of the closet. At a bar full of loggers. In rural Montana. I saw it plenty of times on Metal Forums and it usually turned into a flame war. But I realized something at this show: In Flames- in both forms- has colored a huge part of my life since Junior High: Embody the Invisible and Brush the Dust Away were staples of my mp3 collection ever since I started thieving my brother’s music collection, I can’t count the number of times I listened to Clayman while working out (hah) or driving to school- same with Reroute To Remain, which was one of the first real “metal” albums to lyrically impact me as a young teenager. My point is, I could separate In Flames into two different bands if I wanted too, but to me, it’s one band with different qualities, and whether it’s the beautiful dueling solos and seething vocal rage of them in the Colony-era or the grove oriented riffage, vulnerable clean vocals and screams of post-RtR, I enjoy it. Period.

Anyways, as much as I’d like to think everyone is capable of that duality of opinion, it’s just not so. There was the obligatory man behind me that shouted for “Biosphere” (hadurr), very obviously wasn’t going to get his way (three more followed from Come Clarity and Sense of Purpose; I giggle), and left. And most of the folks up front nodded politely along to stuff like Clayman and The Hive, while getting all sorts of into Delight and Angers and Quiet Place. But that’s fine, there were plenty of us pleased with everything.

Also worth mentioning are some Anders-isms:

- Early in the set he was talking to the crowd, stopped mid-sentence and asked a man up front if he was “filming this for YouTube”, told him not to lie, asked for the man’s camera, and pulled it on-stage, panning around the crowd (“say hi to YouTube Spokane”) and back to his face to rapturous applause. Lucky bastard.

- “You guys on the balcony need to kick those old people, get them moving around.”

- “I love you Anders!” – some woman from the balcony. “I love you, and I want to impregnate you.” – Anders

- (introducing Come Clarity) “This one is for all you Scorpions fans, because Scorpions are the greatest band in the world!” as he grinned half at us and half at Bjorn (who shook his head in disgust).

And so things went- they pounded through each song with all the ease of a band that’s been at this for nearly twenty years, clearly still having a blast with every bit of their material. Even Anders, whom I’ve doubted in the past as having a good voice live, hit all his choruses and perfectly balanced his early growling with his newer screaming (something I feel he did on the latest album as well).

They close with My Sweet Shadow. I get lost in Ander’s screams, the band’s enthusiasm for a song that’s always been intense for me. It doesn’t reek of “live closer”, but somehow, it’s fitting: An oddly emotive synth line, start-stop riffing, and a quiet build-up to a soaring chorus. Perfect ender.

So we piled out the door, content (“that was a fucking outstanding show” – some girl, as we were leaving). At least I was, what with my revelation and all. I always thought of In Flames as a band I casually listen to, but for whatever reason I could never admit that wasn’t true. Letting the raw emotion of a live show wash over, it was retardedly obvious just how untrue that is. I’m a fan, no exceptions.

And nothing is more metal than kicking off a three hour drive at 1:30 in the morning, armed with energy drinks and Lee’s “diverse” taste of keep-me-from-hallucinating-shit-while-driving music, then sleeping for a solid (!) two hours on a couch before a full next day (including another 3 hours of driving).

Yeah.

I need more weekends like this.

Posted in The Sound of Muzak, True Stories, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Fall Backwards

Posted on September 15, 2009 by

See those leaves up there? Bein’ all golden and still under some blue sky? I do. They’re not actually there, and in fact may be some amalgamation of photos and distorted recollections, but I still see them.

Some basement underneath those leaves. School. Smells like paint. Not exactly high-art but hey, it’s the “fun” class. Walked down the street one time- mid-afternoon in September. Inane small-talk with some older kid who listened to vaguely the same sort of irate teenage-angsty metal I was just getting over. Ended up being better friends with his little brother three years later. Weird. But there we were, leaves rattling in the wind across the street while we marked up the side of a hardware store. Six years ago. Still there- ripped off Microsoft Office clipart blown-up on a wall, our names immortalized below them in what could probably be considered copyright infringement. Don’t know how many other bodies even notice it anymore, but I do. Grin and read the names every time I see ‘em.

…There’s a heat to the sun coming off the afternoon sky. It’s apparent after stepping off a bus ripe with the smell of diesel and chitlins tired from school, quiet on their way home. But I step out, onto pavement, and it’s all the same to me. Grass is still green, maybe the tree out front has lost it’s leaves already but, eh. The dogs bark. They’re retarded like that. But we love ‘em. You see ‘em? I see ‘em.

It gets colder. Golden brown lying dead on the ground, under an equally dead sky. Maybe it was growing under that weather, not thinking it was “sad” like art conditions everyone to, but grey skies and cold fall weather feel like home. Feels like waking up early enough that Dad isn’t home from walking his gun yet, playing Tribes in an excited haze all morning because I have the winning ability to wake up before my brother.

Some late evening. It’s dark out, it’s a little early for such tomfoolery but so it is. Clearly the summer is over. There’s no doubt school tomorrow. Same bodies parked in the same chairs, same actions going on on television. It’d be on late, I’d get locked off to bed and then what’s a kid to do? Radio, bitches. Wave of the future. Laying straight up, headphones on, still feeling like I’m “up” and out in the living room. Can you hear it? I still do. If you need a glimpse: Helps Both Ways. Mogwai.  Nostalgia for my American tradition from a group of Brits. Ironic.

Working evenings, you can see it dim outside. Puddles grow in the parking lot outside the florescent cart-corral, gaze out at it on my way to move small colorful objects around a large, colorful building. On some masochistic level one can enjoy it- don’t have to worry about anybody but you, the task is simple enough and… For awhile, there was that one. Didn’t think anyone could be so giddy with half a sentence, it was adorable. And innocent. Leaving early, but not before it’s dark and brisk out- football season, mind you- to find a receipt taped to my window with the proper change amount circled with entirely too many arrows on it. I still see it.

I like to believe, sometimes, that if only the geographical entities that these things occurred in were still legally “home” to me, everything would be alright. Like the other normal kids who can still “go home” in a physical sense. But those things above? They can’t be repeated. It’s hard to accept- and I still don’t half the time- but physically, home “was”.

Home is in a memory. And I can live with that, because I still see it.

Posted in Miscellaneous Nonsense, True Stories | 1 Comment

Ire: Activetards/Socialtards

Posted on April 25, 2009 by

Every once in awhile you meet some of these creatures that live and breathe outdoor “excitement” and can’t stand being cooped up. They’re the ones that mock the nerds whenever they walk by, or ridicule anyone whose existence doesn’t revolve entirely around interacting with humanity. You know, fucktards.

Oh sure, getting outside is great- healthy, fun even. I plan to do just that most of the summer and enjoy the SHIT out of it. And socializing can be nifty too-  but it’s that smugness of “hadurr hadurr I hiked seven miles up hill both ways before coming to a ten hour shift at work, what did YOU do today?” or “man, I totally got hawaaasted with a bunch of strangers and to music so staggeringly appalling it makes the Holocaust look like a good time- you know, YOU need to do it more often!” that makes you wanna punch cute animals and punt infants.

Example A: Two kids walk by talking (very) enthusiastically about their gaming escapades of the day (Left 4 Dead, and for what sounded like many hours) and Activetard to my right goes “wow, sounds like THEY had an exciting day.” Hey, you know what else is exciting? Standing this close to such a failure of a person. It’s almost awe-inspiring to see someone so blatantly ignorant that they’re revolted by people with different lifestyles. No, they don’t climb mountains in their spare time. You do. I know, your insecurities as a bwig-twuff-male make it hard to understand concepts such as “diversity” and “cooperative team-play”, especially since both can take place *gasp* in-doors and outside the reach of the sun, but you can always keep your mouth shut. How do I know that? Why, because it’s what you do when your aversions are within ear-shot! And how.

Example B: A foreign exchange “student” asks me what I do for fun, fails to grasp the answer of “whatever I want” (she’s from the former Soviet Bloc; concepts of freedom must be difficult), and proceeds to tell me that I should go to clubs, because “that’s what they do in cities, like L.A.” Well, pardon-fucking-me and my poor understanding of American culture, what with having lived here my entire life. You’re right: I should really take part in popular culture, just because it’s popular, more often. Just think! I could wear the EXACT same thing as 90% of all guys on campus, I could fuck things that look like easy-bake skeletons with breasts, I could waste all my money on alcohol, I could go around claiming that people who create basic rhythms with electronic software are “talented” AND blast said “talent” at such ludicrous volumes that it makes normal eardrums quake in their boots, I could type lik th1s- holy fucking balls, that sounds like a blast! See, here I was thinking I could do whatever I found personally fulfilling including, but not limited to, NOT taking E and getting raped over a toilet, speaking and typing like I’m not a four year old with mental defects, not interacting with ignorant elitist halfwits, bullshitting with random friends, watching a movie, appreciating the quiet beauty of solitude, and other fantastic stuff that serves the purpose of pleasing “me” and not fulfilling whatever lifestyle I wish everyone else to perceive that I have.

I’m certainly not defending the sort of people that play WoW all day (because suffering through non-enjoyment for actual enjoyment =/= fun; also: addiction), and I firmly believe that being at least semi-social and active is, at the very least, a plus for mental and physical health. But choosing to remain ignorant to technological or non-social pleasures in life as if it were the CORRECT option, is completely asinine. But hey, at least they know how to listen to really shitty music all the time and brag all day about why they have zero energy. Maybe that’s more useful than self-enjoyment that doesn’t revolve around an “image”.

What the fuck would I know? I run a website.

Posted in Vehement Rants | 2 Comments

Eight

Posted on April 18, 2009 by

Broken. It’s that feelin’ of wellin’ up like so many irritants inside are tryin’ to rip your mouth open and scream the apocalypse. What would they scream? Hatred, death, somebody help me, a hug? Somethin’. It’s a convolution of shit that’s mostly incomprehensible and it’s easier to just sleep it off than to actually sittaown and deal with it.

I didn’t even know the dude. Really. Sure he hung out at my place, but he mostly said a lot of stupid shit for attention and all we ever did was make fun of him. He was too gooda soul to do anything but shrug it off in real life, though. Only ever saw him snap once at someone and it was rightfully so. Hard to be backwards in a backwards community, that was always a point of respect. But who am I to patronize ‘im? I didn’t even know him. Still affects me.

Somma us like to pretend we’re invincible. It’s really only ever to a point. I can watch ‘em die off in the distance all day long, but as soon as it comes within grasp, there’s a certain pressure attached to it. Can’t shrug it, can’t just say “fuck it, didn’t know him”. ‘Cause the truth is that we did know each other- hell he was aware of one of the biggest plights of my life, more so than any friend I’ve made in the last three years ever will be. But I still didn’t know him.

Existence gettin’ stamped out is no big deal in itself. Your neurons stop shootin’, the brain quits sending signals to the body, physical functions cease, you grow cold, you bloat, you decay. There is nothin’ fantastical about this. It’s the stamping out, that’s the real thing. An active memory turning into a stale re-run. That’s what gets me every time.

I still dream in Troy. It’s the most wonderful thing. It was such a vibrant, familiar part of formative life that there really is no going stale. All this death, it’s somethin’ similiar. These existences that crossed into mine- however briefly in some cases- were tied to my view of reality, and a bit of the world that was otherwise going to continue on for a long while is crumbled up, and tossed out.

This reality of mine, of yours, it’s all there is. And it exists only as long as those who partake in it stand within it as well. But one by one, it will disintegrate out of memory. And after this place is over-run by the next one, nobody will recollect it.

It’s really a bizarre concept to blame these consequences, this welling of emotion, on somebody I didn’t really “know”, but whom I knew. And it prolly wasn’t even proper to do so today. Somethin’ of a lie really.

‘Cause today was a mishmash of wrongs, not just the one. You get to a certain point- all these things you don’t wanna be doing, but that you feel you “have to” do for people you tell yourself you care about but really, you don’t. Obscure childlike crushes and high school-ish jealously? A class whose politics and idiocy has shockingly spilled over and encompassed your every free moment and you don’t even LIKE the point of it? It’s like being forced to paint a really shitty picture with half a brush.

I realized today that there’s was no why for all of this. The “how”- the too distraught with life to even speak to an old-friend I never see in person these days, the mental collapse shortly thereafter, being within five seconds of grabbing my shit and leaving town, the wasting of two hours on a beautiful afternoon doing shit for a doomed project and another four in some half-cognitive sleep-like state trying to forget the whole affair- is just foolish. I find myself in the “golden age” of my life, doing this. This.

Broken. That’s what it came down to. It wasn’t workin’, so I stopped the bleeding. Maybe there’s consequences for all this, academic/social ones for this micro-reality I call school. But maintaining sanity and peace-of-mind is larger than that, and sacrificing either for anything so unsubstantial is an utter waste of life.

Eight. Eight bits of my reality severed and tossed out with uniform speed. That’s the thing with all this death… Makes you wanna live. Sounds a little cliche, sure- but when I look ’round and see these walls, these politics, these uncaring minds…

I can’t help but wonder what I could find elsewhere.

Posted in Miscellaneous Nonsense, True Stories | Leave a comment

An update on the lack of updates (again)

Posted on April 13, 2009 by

You may be wondering (yes you, both of you) about my definition of “rebooting” a site when I haven’t been arsed to update it in two months. So! Here’s an update on just why that is:

In the last two months, I’ve been attached to three different film projects. Given that this is what I intend to do with the rest of my life, I’m quite content to spend all my energy on such things before anything else. Those projects are:

- A web series that, I think, will be online by the end of the month. “I think” because there were apparently some legal issues with the Native population (sadly, it didn’t involve blankets) last week which forced one episode to be canceled completely. We still have two left, so, maybe I’ll be able to share that eventually. However, there’s very much a reason I refer to it as Project Clustfuck- the concept is, for lack of a better term, retarded, and three-fourths of the class cannot participate in the weekend shoots (jobs, having lives, etc) which causes all sorts of lovely scheduling and pre-production issues. But aside from that, it’s dandy.

- A documentary I wrote and directed concerning Yaak, Montana. It’s not eating my timestuffs right now, given that I’m not editing it, but it was for most of February/March. We also shot it in full-HD while it was actin’ all wintery up there, so it. Looks. Gorgeous. And I will most certainly be spamming it online when it’s done.

- A short film a friend of mine did locally. Shot on film, which is quite an adventure in backasswards technology. It has been a hilariously long weekend that ended today with our crew of about 12 crowding a sidewalk and having a gun waved around. It was fantastic.

I also pitched a senior film for next year, had it handily rejected, and have since worked the system into allowing me to do it under the guise of “independent study”. But yes- it involves monsters and people stranded in the forest after an apocalypse. Sounds like win to me.

And throw onto that a healthy dose of other classes with homework and regular exams, a job five nights a week, and you have the very reason I usually choose to collapse into a fit of House or Atlantis during my nightly hour of free time.

But there’s light at the end of the tunnel, so I believe there are actual updates coming. In the meantime, I’d like to say Happy Easter with the following trips down memory lane:

March 27th, 2005 – Happy Easter!

April 14th, 2005 – My public flogging of a mentally incapacitated commenter on the above post.

And here’s Raptor Jesus:

Good day.

Posted in Miscellaneous Nonsense | Leave a comment

Roads

Posted on February 1, 2009 by

Have to go to nowhere. Why? ‘Cause it’s dark an’ I can. Specks up there in the black hangin’ above the cold air with a crescent night-light. There’s a sense of warmth right now- love, even. For anything an’ everything. Lotta people don’t get that on their own, but I’m not a lotta people. And it’s not satiated by other folk, but by an aimless wander into the dark. Me, a bright yellow strip, some post, the specks above, and a bit of gas.

Useda have to answer to somebody when I did this. Sneak it ’round, pretend I was over-worked. Nah. Maybe it began with after-hours, I dunno. Iron Creek. Freeman. Lake Creek. Home. Then it became a contemplation of her… And then just a ride into the sunset, or a dead-of-night excuse to listen to something beautiful in the middle of awe.

Some folks call it nowhere, like they’d rather be somewhere. I don’t understand that. It took a good 15 minutes, but I finally got out here to nowhere, outside lookin’ in. Golden ants. Buncha dots herded around an even bigger dot, way out here on a part of our big dot that everyone forgot. Most of ‘em down there have no desire to wander up and look down. Even fewer would be grinning like an idiot while they did it. I’m not most of ‘em, though.

Iron Creek. Freeman. Lake Creek. Home. That’s where it used to be. The specks in the sky were innumerable back there. You look at ‘em and you can’t really think of your spot in it all, just that there’s so many. So many things you haven’t explored. And it’s wonderful.

Houses, lotta them dark. A few lit, mostly dim. Families inside, prolly calmly watching somethin’ together. Seven years ago maybe- a truck, a CD of bands I’d never heard the likes of then, and the ability to use a credit card, but they’re still like mirrors, those houses. I see a kid in military fatigues hanging out in the back, standing on the wet grass looking up at the stars with some airsoft and a camera in his hands, askin’ “what’s next?” and talkin’ about life with the most unlikeliest of best friends. That’s really how I came to be out here, in nowhere.

But in the journey here, there was a road that played out like this one looks: kinda patchy and dark an’ lots of potential for a furry innocent creature to completely ruin the trip. I wasn’t looking at the sky- well, maybe at first I was, ’cause that’s where I saw it all going. Layin’ there with Of The Room and letting it wash over… But my eyes got tripped down. That’s when that loop became an after-hours release for the head. Autumn to Ashes. Nothing peaceful. Lotta people do horrible things to ‘em selves in those times, out there in the dark starin’ at the road with nothin’ for you but some headlights, and I coulda. But I didn’t. Music, it seems, was self-flagellating enough.

Sparowes. Red ones. I don’t really even care for the album but this song fits the mood. A plodding sense of wonder at 45 miles an hour, yeah. I miss her. I really do. All that miserableness passed- not as long ago as I woulda hoped and it’s still a lil’ bit of a ghost wound, but I can live with that. There’s a coupla white bags sittin’ there in the side now, but there’s still snow outside. Maybe it wasn’t dark and it was a few months earlier in the season, but insteada my sustenance for the week sittin’ there it was an adorable thing trying to get out the door with her seatbelt on. Mosta those memories- the stalkin’, the crack-addled convos, the floor sittin’- get overshadowed by the latter halfa the road, but they’re still there. Thankfully.

It got past all that eventually, drivin’ about in the dark. Or maybe it never really changed and I just got used to it, saw the beauty in solitude. Iron Creek. Freeman. Lake Creek. Home. There’s no golden ant-farm out in the distance, no endless valley before you; just trees, imposing mountains- the occasional rabbit with down syndrome- and a few random dark residents (save that crazy big property at the bottom of Freeman and everyone’s favorite Rankin plot). I’m not saying what it is now is bad, just that the old road felt more welcoming, like a piece of family. You know where you can and can’t go, what has guns and what’s an empty frame built by rural whores, and so on. It’s like sittin’ in the dark after the shows over and starin’ at the last coupla burning embers in the fire at the side of the living room. You’re never lost there.

It all starts to look the same when the geography is made of vanilla. I certainly wasn’t trying, but I got lost. Gigglin’ at it. Like I said, most people wanna be “somewhere”, but I’m content to explore nowhere. I don’t recognize these hills, this pavement or these turns an’ it’s a little unnerving since I wasn’t trying to get here, but nothin’ to get desperate over. Happenstances like this are worth pursuing, and maybe my greatest fault is turnin’ around like so. Used to do that outta fear, but tonight… Nah. A grinning nod. I’ll come back, ’cause I don’t know the whole path, maybe never will, but one night I’ll take it as far as possible just ’cause I can. But I got things to contemplate, and a monster-high to work off. Next time, lad.

I still revisit the old roads, wander down ‘em and try to see ‘em anew. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Mostly an excercise in nostalgia, which can be maddeningly sad. I ‘member drivin’ up that driveway to hang out in a pack-rat living room, ‘member when that kid lived in their trailer closer to the road with a batshit crazy sister, ‘member sleddin’ down that hill with a formerly straight-A and sober friend, ‘member the jaw-droppingly gorgeous (older) girl that lived down that hill an’ sat quietly on the bus for years. Strange is wishing these things would go on, stay there and never bugger off into the recesses of my mind. But what’s life if it just stays the same? Would these memories mean anythin’ without time and distance between them and I?

So I turns around. Steps with Christmas as a Christmas gift bangs outta the speakers like it did after Dead Winter day and a few days before the first of many disappointing run-ins with a certain midget. But I’ve had my turn of grinnin’ like a kid at the moon and stars with Laura from the speakers, Sparowes, Esmerine. I coulda kept goin’- maybe I should have (and I certainly wish I had now, but that’s the come-down talkin’ I think)- but I’d had my share and I wasn’t feelin’ greedy. I’ll explore that road in good time. I got the sense that there’s plenty left.

I derive inspiration from this. Don’t needa companion for it- another presence and especially a talking one would ruin it. As it is, the only ruiner is that out here- next to a big golden ant-farm- you can’t stop an’ chill, look up at the skies like that kid in the fatigues in his backyard, ’cause somebody will bother you with misguided philanthropy. Yeah, I’m fine, no, I don’t need assistance; get back in your 4×4 diesel and keep ignorin’ those stars up there in the cold night sky, those things that make some-a us understand how beautifully small we are and how wonderfully long the road out ahead is.

…You know, I useda sit here like this, in the glow with them stereo-phones playin’ something calming, talkin’ into this box with inspiration for revolution and ire, or just contemplation, like here an’ now. It’s a wonderful return to a road I kinda forget sometimes- one that has all sortsa off-ramps to other ones. One of those ramps was a handful of poor words that I stomped into a retreat, then a few months later those words weren’t so poor, an’ I started to listen to ‘em. Already talked about that road, though.

Thing is, all of ‘em are intertwined like that. Lotta folks call it nowhere out here, above the dots and in the black, lookin’ backwards and upwards all at once. But I can’t help smilin’ at all this. It’s somewhere to me.

Posted in Miscellaneous Nonsense, True Stories | 1 Comment