sometimes i feel really silly playing “mom” in situations with groups of friends, because i don’t want to always be the responsible one. in those cases, i’ll just kind of suppress the urge and let things go how they will. but then i’m constantly reminded that someone -should- play mom because when no one does, shit always gets all freaking whacky! i just hate always being the responsible one!!!
one time there was a huge party at aaron’s and everyone was gonna go outside to hit this pinata that luz had bought. the bathtub they have installed in their backyard was turned on, cause we were gonna use it, but then the pinata thing happened. it crossed my mind that perhaps i should make a note that the water was running, but everyone was all caught up in the moment and i didn’t want to spoil it, so i let it go. after pinata-ing, aaron was like, “shit! i think the water is still on!” and i was like, “yeah, i thought about that but i didn’t wanna play mom,” and everyone was like, “but you have to play mom in this situation!” and it’s just like, dammit, guess i do, cause no one else ever does.
anyway, i am back in portland. not that i really honestly wanna socialize with anyone at all. i want to socialize with no one. haha. i did circumstantially have to leave the house yesterday because errors were in town with mogwai, but today, i pretty much did not at all. only left to go outside for five minutes to turn on my car cause i haven’t turned it on in ages. feels good. only thing is i’ve left my bike in front of wonder ballroom for two nights now… sincerely hoping it doesn’t get stolen ;x
i also drank like, half a hot toddy yesterday and two sips of beer and got pretty drunk. sooo ridiculous. and soooo pointless cause i was drunk for like 30 minutes tops and instantly passed out as soon as i got home.
this morning, i woke up @ 7:30 to get ready to go to san francisco to help tinwin take some photographs for her wedding. i feel rather ambivalent about it, in retrospect. it is like, 5 pm. stuff kicks off at 6. i have been stranded in and around wedding activities for what feels like a million pointless years. so extremely pointless. i have just been drawing by myself for the past couple hours. it is pointless because everyone else is a bridesmaid or a groomsman and i am just a human, here by myself. they seriously asked me to carry a cellular telephone while they were doing a photo shoot, and it felt kind of insulting, almost! slavery! i know it is “help” but i’ve already helped so much, and especially considering i am not great friends with the bride… it feels unfair anyway, and i know one is not to be expecting of things reciprocated for good deeds but right now that sounds nice. and i feel like an alien; these people are so different from i, talking about their favorite tv shows, what latest crap they bought online… and it all leaves me with a sick taste in my mouth and an even deeper dislike and boredom for weddings, in general. such excess and waste, and it pains me, yet i know i am being a total pompous judgmental ass in saying so.
the other day sherry was brainstorming for an hp project in which they had collected demographics of music lovers and realized they are mostly my age or my peers’. the studies they found also showed that this (our) generation is particularly nostalgic and resonates w/ music from the ’60s. this i know to be true from personal exp. in the music industry. this they know not for they (hp) are disconnected. the goal, then, is to brainstorm ideas w/ which they can find an “in” to this demographic. and though that is, innately, what advertising is, it sickened me to no end. and i said this. and sherry said, “thanks for making me hate my job,” and i realized i was being an ass, yet i am so strongly disdainful of the particular brand of consumerism most americans subscribe to that, seriously, it disgusts all fibers of my being. and while i like to look nice, i realize that people didn’t grow up like me and don’t feel this way because they don’t have the same experiences i do. it is one thing to realize this but separating it enough so that i am not thoroughly disgusted by it all is damn near impossible. my interests occupy an extremely esoteric niche and so i look down upon those who run the hamster wheel… but it is just… so judgmental. and i hate the concept of hating upon others for that, but it cannot be helped.
2:47am
… or, at least, it is difficult to help. i am to help it.
this all compounded by more feelings of inadequacies, from: a) people asking me questions about me — in a very nice way, with nothing but positive curiosities in mind — which make me “unique” but also point to how much i don’t exactly fit in; b) purgatory; c) my realizations that i am kind of an ass in an unintentional sense; and today was just an overall bad day. like, a really bad day. blazing realizations of the fourth kind. discomforting blurry haze. inwards braindead daydreams. friend disconnection resulting in them asking me what was wrong — something which used to happen consistently all the time, and hasn’t really happened in a long time. these days are dark.
i am ever so proud of what i do, yet i am hollowed out… hollowed.
(the devil and god are raging inside me.) (brand new)
brand new will eternally mean a lot to me. and to so many others.
emo 4 lyfe. the stigma matters not.
i met my writer david today. first time in like six years (seriously) or whatever. it was a pleasant meeting; i treated him to lunch to say, “hey, thanks for being a writing slave for years!” in a sense, he was equally thankful, i think… but in a different way. from his point of view, it’s more like… he works a 9-5 job in a law office but loves music and writing, and this keeps that part of him alive. luckily, he is happily married and with child, even though he lives in the suburbs. i think it is a bittersweet thing, but ultimately sweeter than bitter…
tomorrow, tinwin gets married. hopefully i won’t be all depressed like i was at the last marriage i went to. haha. the lat marriage i went to, for some reason, really just… bummed me out… because it was so… generic… if i am to get married, you can bet that shit is going to be a fucking party… a unique one. i don’t really think so much about marriage because it is so far removed from my existence, but i assume that will change sometime soon, perhaps. everyone is always asking me if i am interested in marriage (and to an extent, surprised when i say that i do expect to be married sometime). it’s not an end-all, break-all for me, though, if marriage doesn’t happen. it simply doesn’t matter if the other person happens to be significantly against it. but i do imagine it happening, if only because it’s the best godamn reason for the coolest party on the planet…!!!! is that a horrible reason to get married? whatever. it’s as horrible as any other. ;p
anyway, for her wedding tomorrow, i’m going to help take photographs… that should be a good time. i am so different from all of them. but i guess it’s cool in my book to have as diverse a set of friends as i do.
aaron once told me that i was like no one else i ever knew, simply because no one else he knew would ever like the valley arena. hahahahahhaa. the funniest reasoning, but it makes sense, to some degree. it’s like how i can never find anyone who likes la dispute. most people simply aren’t that broad in their tastes.
i think that’s why redefine is cool — because it’s so broad because everyone contributes his or her own unique tastes to it, and sometimes they overlap. but that’s also what makes it difficult; when a publication is super niche, it’s easier for it to find its audience. when it’s casting a wide net, and has a shit ton of content, it’s also easy for it to find its audience. but when the net is cast wide and only reels in a few fish (horrible analogy, sorry) — which is our case — you can bet there’s an audience, but it’s a hard audience to find. but i feel like that audience is an audience that truly loves music. unfortunately, i don’t have any statistical proof of this, and the only proof i have is second-hand… an example being that we did an article and video series on metavari, and they reported to me that they sold a bunch of records shortly thereafter. now that is awesome. it’s awesome to see journalism actually leading to action…
i realized today that i am proud of what i do. really, really proud. this dawned on me because i was listening to our mixtapes (of which i would recommend the ones by atelier ciseaux, skrot up, and marjorie for valentine’s day… as well as my own icelandic ones, but that’s cheating, isn’t it?)
a lot of people i know personally have a hard time reading our publication just because they don’t recognize any of their names. i suppose the ideal point, though, is that we become like a boutique label, where we finely curate and filter through all the bullshit to give people, who will trust our opinion, what they want. we do the filtering so they don’t have to. i mean… someone out there appreciates this, or we wouldn’t have 400-500 unique visitors a day… but i don’t know who those people are, and i don’t know how i can find out. it’s an interesting quandary… but again… it feels good to have a product that i feel like is growing without my/our sacrificing any of our journalistic integrity.
when your friendship imploded, she told me she wished you would call… but that she was sure that you wouldn’t. she was so certain, and i could hardly believe it — that you could throw away a decade’s-long bond over the mishaps of a single weekend, or that she would allow you to. but i overlooked it, thinking, as i always do, that i was different, and we were different, and that it was the certain changed chemistries between the two of you that was to blame — certainly not you. it could never be you.
but to my great dismay, i guess she knew you better than i. i am the living portrait of naivete. i still find it hard to relate to your sudden, unanticipated departure from my life — and it stings all the more that i can’t even persuade you to stay — you, whose actions and thoughts i could otherwise relate to so well. but i am learning now of the volatile nature of things where immediacy is lacking.
feel similarly as we may, we may never know it, for this island of you resides so far away from this island of me, and the expanse grows ever wider with every thought removed from mutual possibility.
today was pretty much a day of that and screaming, “WHAT THE FUCK!” at myself.
everything is so much an unpredictable gamble at this point… i guess the only thing to do is attempt to do what is most virtuous and hope that karma is real and that everything will work out in that regard. hopefully bridges are not being burned as this happens. more than enough problems with friendships lately. i hope it works out.
haven’t had this happen to me before. i feel… simultaneously relieved and distraught. i guess it remains to be seen where we will go from here — how we will feel, how the pieces will go together… whether there will be jealousy or understanding or confusion or what? what…?… … … so, in the meantime, i will focus on cultivating the lasting, while avoiding the frustrating and the wishy-washy. time and energy need not be spent on this. if it will come, it will come. i guess…
above it all, my self-respect is stoked. mind prevails over heart — in thinking i am better than what is, not what was. reinventions of character will lead to realizations that it matters, or it doesn’t, in falling apart or growing closer. self-worth will grow while being denied, and the ultimate judge of lovers is time.
[and it's lovely how the proper words find themselves to you in the most serendipitous of ways.]
—
theory to explain:
how you came to be this way,
strangers on the wine,
took his leave and stepped out of line;
took his leave and stepped out of line.
a girl he barely knew:
he bought her candy after school,
he leads you on the best;
you’re too young to understand the rest,
oh, we’re too young to understand the rest.
our old friends have gone their separate ways,
tried so hard by asking them to stay,
i’ve got to gather all my things,
but you’re too young to come with us out west;
you’re too young to come with us out west.
it’s scary, really. it’s scary that i can be here in portland, and i don’t feel like i’m missing that much from seattle. i lived there for like a decade, and let’s face it; all i really cherish is the city in its beautiful amazing glory and a tiny handful of relationships. that’s disturbing, in many ways. is everyone like this?
back in college, i never studied abroad because at the time, i’d felt so much that i couldn’t leave. i had my good friends and didn’t ever think that i would want to go study abroad — despite the obvious perks — because what i had was so good i didn’t want to leave and have it change and be different when i came back. i guess i grew up as a kid who moved around all the time, changing friend groups every year of school… i never really had the time to realize the importance of long-lasting friendships, or never cared to. the relationships i’d built in church in high school were also similar in that regard, but in so, so, so many ways, church relationships were not real relationships. again, with the few people that i actually still have things in common with the relationships last, but all the other one fall by the wayside because people thrown together in such a situation often just aren’t the same type of people. my group throughout most of college felt different. felt right… for better or worse.
but then i thought critically about what i had one day, and the bonds that held my friendship group together, and it turned less important, because ultimately, what we had was not something i enjoyed in many regards. the linking factors were me at the time, but they weren’t really me. this is with the first group of friends. with the second group of friends, shit just hit the fan, and it was unreasonable and uncontrollable, but it happened… and years and years of built-up friendships crumbled just like that.
since then, i have some good friends that i care about in seattle, of course, but it’s not a group of individuals. it’s singular individuals. and singular individuals are essentially what i have here, too. yes, here, the people are a bit less familiar and hence a bit less important. but i mean………… there’s not that huge a difference in it all. and that bugs me.
without an entire group to care about — which is what i had in college — the power isn’t there. the importance is lessened. because singular individuals are singular individuals who will move on, get girlfriends, get jobs, get busy, move away… you may have connections always, but you won’t always have companionship. companionship with singular individuals is fleeting. companionship with anyone might be fleeing, i guess… cause isn’t that the aim of it all?
hence, in some ways, being in portland is better at the moment. because companionship is there as i’m searching for more permanent companionship… probably. i’m not sure because this is the first time i’ve really dissected this feeling, but that seems like a fair assessment.
there’s not much i can do about this, i guess… i’ve always gotten along better with individuals than with huge groups, i think… i mean… huge groups are kind of rare to stumble across at this age anyway. but does this all feel bad? yeah, kinda. is there something to do about? i’m not really sure…
i wonder if, in some ways, that’s why traveling is appealing. traveling allows you to bridge your individual relationships with people… sure… but in ways that heighten the importance of the meetings so much. and it definitely bugged me for a bit when i was traveling, that you form these relationships or build on these relationships where you only see people for such a short point in time and that’s that. in some ways, those relationships are glorious, because you know the existence of people you can get along with on a really great level. the fact that that relationship exists in the first place is fucking fantastic. but in the long run, again, it comes down to circumstance and timing, and those relationships which could otherwise be so much more can’t be, and it’s kind of a shame.
what the fuck am i talking about now? this post turned from like a one paragraph thing into this hulking fucking essay about friendship. ah, well.
// what would i do without writing? writing’s the only way i can think… and there must be many people without an outlet like that, huh? that must exacerbate someone’s spiraling downwards… if you don’t have a creative outlet to work through, i feel like life could be really hard if you’re going through some tough ass shit… //
i’m watching…people who make noise — a documentary about portland noise musicians.
today:
drawing.
today:
sharing tomatoes.
today:
seeing bat for lashes.
today:
watching people snort aderall.
today:
talking to a really excited sociology major.
today:
consuming awesome free salad with sesame dressing.
today:
sneaking a mint ice cream sandwich into “the nest” (a bar).
today:
taking a late night drive to shoot some fun night photography.
today:
passing by a ping-pong table (with players) in the middle of the street.
today:
throwing a cup into a trash hole where a barista had just removed the trash bag.
today:
attempting to wear blue boots with a cowboy’s face on them (unfortunately too small).
today:
feeling certain for a moment while walking down alberta that portland rules.
today:
taking in careful reflections on relatively newly-formed friendships.
today:
staring at the computer screen wondering what to write.
today:
queuing up tons of blog postings for when i’m gone.
today (yesterday):
babysitting two dudes grilling balls on acid.
today (yesterday):
getting freaked by guy high on ecstasy.
today (yesterday):
dancing all crazy to drum n’ bass.
today (yesterday):
doodling in notebooks in bars.
yesterday:
reading at powell’s books.
yesterday:
being sure. then not.
yesterday:
driving too much.
yesterday:
dreaming.
living.
ps…
actual search term someone used to get to redefine magazine’s website:
“how much sex does john o’callaghan from the maine get a month”
… amazing… cause does the internet actually know that?!!!
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