The weather was perfect, finally. I ran outside and picked up my bike, ready to go to the park. From inside, I heard a distant voice: "Wear a helmet!" Ugh, parents. I turned around and had to tramp all the way back to the closet for my helmet. I clipped it on and ran back outside, jumping the two steps down the porch.
I swing my leg over the bike and rip off down the sidewalk. I'm pedaling as fast as I can because I'm afraid I'll be late to show up. All my friends are going to the park because it's the first perfect day of summer, and the pool is about to open. Everybody's going to be there, and I'm going to be late because I had to take out the trash and clean my room first. Parents! I'm flying down the sidewalk now, my feet going a hundred miles an hour. I can hear the wind in my ears roaring like a hurricane. Maybe I will make it on time, if I keep going like this.
Except: I still have to go down Creedy Hill.
I brake hard at the top of the hill, breathing hard. The hill seemed to go down forever, and down there, at the bottom, was the park. Down there, the pool and the creek and the playground waited. Down there, kids were lining up to jump in the pool, to zoom down the slide, to scream and slip and swim. Up here, I had only Creedy Hill between me and paradise, and Creedy Hill was a killer. One time, I heard about a kid who tried to ride a skateboard down it and ended up in the hospital because he went through a wall at the bottom. The last time I went down the hill, I walked my bike. In fact, I have walked down the hill every time I ever come to it. But I'm late--the only way to get to the pool in time is to ride down the hill on my bike. So I take a couple deep breaths and push off.
Already, I'm going too fast, and I pull on the brakes, but it doesn't slow me down as much as I want. I start to see the houses as a blur and the road races under me like I'm riding a rocket. I'm trying my best to steer straight down the sidewalk and not fall over, and the whole time my ears are full of such a huge woosh that I can't hear myself yelling. All of a sudden, I'm on the ground. WHACK. I can hear my bike crashing down the hill, and I'm gasping for breath. I stand up and check that my arms and legs are still attached, and when I do, whack! I hit my head again! Right above me, there's a huge, low-hanging tree branch that must have caught the top of my helmet and knocked me right off the bike. I pull the helmet off and I can see an enormous crunch in the top. Man, if I hadn't worn that helmet, the branch would have taken my head right off. I run to grab my bike and jump back on the bike, not afraid of anything. I'm super excited to tell my friends how I survived Creedy Hill.
Monday, November 23, 2015
Saturday, November 21, 2015
11.21b
I'm really angry at my mom this time. She's forcing me to do what she wants. Right now, I'm doing dishes. I pick up the plates and I slap them down. I throw the silverware into the sink so hard a couple of forks bounce out and clatter to the ground. I kick one, and it slides under the sink, way out of sight. "Ha!" I shout. "Stupid fork!" I squeeze the soap into the sink way too hard. There's way too much soap, but I don't care. I'm mad. I turn on the water and watch as the soap bubbles start to climb their way up the sides of the sink.
This is dumb, I think to myself. Mom won't let me go to the park today because I have chores and homework. I really wanted to play outside with my friends. The sink is filling up slowly with water, but the bubbles are climbing lots faster than the water level. The bubbles are piling on top of each other, taller and taller. This is dumb. I don't want to do the stupid dishes. I realize I don't know where that fork went. I bend down to find it, but it's shoved way under the sink in the dark. I reach in there and my heart starts to beat faster and faster as my arm goes further and further. I've found some kind of hole under the sink. I open the drawer next to me and grab the flash light. I get down on my hands and knees and I aim the flashlight right down the hole. It is a hole! I can see all the way back inside to the wall. On the right, I can see the pipes of the sink. On the left, I can see the fork, but further back, I see something strange. There's a small, dark furball. Suddenly, it turns and looks at me: a mouse! I shout "Woah!" and I jump back, crashing into the table behind me. A couple glasses fall off the table and the chair gets knocked to the floor. I was just surprised, is all. I look up and see the sink start overflowing with soap bubbles. They're falling all over the floor. Mom walks in and sees the mess.
"What are you doing!?" she shouts.
I start laughing as the soap bubbles drift down and land on the floor. Mom runs over and turns off the water. She gives me a look.
"Okay," I say. "I'll do the dishes."
This is dumb, I think to myself. Mom won't let me go to the park today because I have chores and homework. I really wanted to play outside with my friends. The sink is filling up slowly with water, but the bubbles are climbing lots faster than the water level. The bubbles are piling on top of each other, taller and taller. This is dumb. I don't want to do the stupid dishes. I realize I don't know where that fork went. I bend down to find it, but it's shoved way under the sink in the dark. I reach in there and my heart starts to beat faster and faster as my arm goes further and further. I've found some kind of hole under the sink. I open the drawer next to me and grab the flash light. I get down on my hands and knees and I aim the flashlight right down the hole. It is a hole! I can see all the way back inside to the wall. On the right, I can see the pipes of the sink. On the left, I can see the fork, but further back, I see something strange. There's a small, dark furball. Suddenly, it turns and looks at me: a mouse! I shout "Woah!" and I jump back, crashing into the table behind me. A couple glasses fall off the table and the chair gets knocked to the floor. I was just surprised, is all. I look up and see the sink start overflowing with soap bubbles. They're falling all over the floor. Mom walks in and sees the mess.
"What are you doing!?" she shouts.
I start laughing as the soap bubbles drift down and land on the floor. Mom runs over and turns off the water. She gives me a look.
"Okay," I say. "I'll do the dishes."
11.21
Snatch the orbs from their sockets. Immolate them. Flay the soft flesh and grind the bones! Listen to their lovers screaming—the air torn from their thin frame, racked with a frail and tintinnabulate, membranous death-terror, the screams a shattering, reverberant paean to the artistry of death. Revel, friends. The destruction entire of a human soul is delicate art made not of pigments and tonal assonance but art of a more methodic kind. Invest time, build belief, mythologize the future that seems all but inevitable, and as the mind bends its construction under the weight of the old narrative, dynamite the foundations and watch the integument burst, pressure released, motes remaining, as the old story of an animal heart evaporates as the cognitive brain betrays itself a thousand fold with each new contortion, battling to fit itself into a shattered mirror. Better to be ripped into two main halves, the blood only falling out as the heart seizes and shakes, the mind still sensate, than to have the soul desiccated, silicate, wind-blown, barren, dead. Better to die in pain than live without it.
Thursday, November 19, 2015
11.19
I'm making baked potatoes in the oven. I remember the first time I did this for you; you were so amazed that such a thing was possible. This time, you're not here. I am growing to hate all my memories of you because they are all individual notes of a dirge that started long ago and only now has built to its pernicious climax. No emotional swell of orchestra and organ can go on for this long. I can't stand it! My heart will stop! And yet I listen on, because I must. I've bought a ticket to this concert and I will stay. My potatoes will probably be exquisite, but they'll turn to ash in my mouth as the terrible chords crash around me, shaking me, drowning me.
I miss you.
I miss you.
Monday, November 9, 2015
My Acolyte Journey: 2014.4
Harbinger.
Anberlin. This song is absolutely full to the gills with things that people want to hear. We'll live forever. We'll be together. These are the myths that people love to tell themselves. Heaven is just this extreme level of wish fulfillment. Reincarnation promises eternal life. Collectivism promises togetherness. Success will make your legacy last an eternity. Love will keep you from drifting apart.
The song is a dream state, though. The musical intro drifts, disconnected and out of time, finally picking up urgency with the singer, but never losing the underbeat of the dream. We're told that people are paid to feel free, bribed to be content. We're told to fall asleep. We're told that life isn't all perfection: we need who we would bleed for, a sacrifice unnecessary in a true dream.
This song's words and sound echo the dissatisfaction I feel today, and perhaps have felt for a very long time. I was exhausted and the dog rolled up on me and whined at the edge of my bed at 6:30. I've been awake for two and a half hours doing nothing, fervidly wishing that I would crash, exhausted, back to sleep. I'm afraid I'll never sleep in again. And in my current angry mood, I'm pissed at everything: God, Feminism, Ben Carson, Moberly Middle School, and Watson. [Brief aside: I wrote that on Sunday morning, became disaffected by the blog itself, and then stayed up until the small hours doing Lord only knows what.] Maybe it's the perfect time for a disaffected song that reflects my generic brand of disgust, or maybe it's absolutely the incorrect time to be wallowing in self-constructed misanthropy, further echoing in on my psychosis in an increasingly torpid stupor in which even the intrusion of minutiae is unbearable.
Yet.
I would love for someone to find a private moment and pull me into a hug with a grip that communicates the immediacy and the passion of the truth of it: some relationships last forever. Because right now things are hard here, now.
I wouldn't buy this, for whatever that's worth now. I haven't bought any music for a year or more now. I didn't even buy any at McKay's, and it's ludicrously cheap there. I don't think "I would buy this" is a good metric any more. I'll find one for the next forty, but for now just understand that I wouldn't buy this song if it were offered to me for a dollar.
Anberlin. This song is absolutely full to the gills with things that people want to hear. We'll live forever. We'll be together. These are the myths that people love to tell themselves. Heaven is just this extreme level of wish fulfillment. Reincarnation promises eternal life. Collectivism promises togetherness. Success will make your legacy last an eternity. Love will keep you from drifting apart.
The song is a dream state, though. The musical intro drifts, disconnected and out of time, finally picking up urgency with the singer, but never losing the underbeat of the dream. We're told that people are paid to feel free, bribed to be content. We're told to fall asleep. We're told that life isn't all perfection: we need who we would bleed for, a sacrifice unnecessary in a true dream.
This song's words and sound echo the dissatisfaction I feel today, and perhaps have felt for a very long time. I was exhausted and the dog rolled up on me and whined at the edge of my bed at 6:30. I've been awake for two and a half hours doing nothing, fervidly wishing that I would crash, exhausted, back to sleep. I'm afraid I'll never sleep in again. And in my current angry mood, I'm pissed at everything: God, Feminism, Ben Carson, Moberly Middle School, and Watson. [Brief aside: I wrote that on Sunday morning, became disaffected by the blog itself, and then stayed up until the small hours doing Lord only knows what.] Maybe it's the perfect time for a disaffected song that reflects my generic brand of disgust, or maybe it's absolutely the incorrect time to be wallowing in self-constructed misanthropy, further echoing in on my psychosis in an increasingly torpid stupor in which even the intrusion of minutiae is unbearable.
Yet.
I would love for someone to find a private moment and pull me into a hug with a grip that communicates the immediacy and the passion of the truth of it: some relationships last forever. Because right now things are hard here, now.
I wouldn't buy this, for whatever that's worth now. I haven't bought any music for a year or more now. I didn't even buy any at McKay's, and it's ludicrously cheap there. I don't think "I would buy this" is a good metric any more. I'll find one for the next forty, but for now just understand that I wouldn't buy this song if it were offered to me for a dollar.
Friday, November 6, 2015
My Acolyte Journey: 2014.5
Heavenly Father.
Bon Iver. This song rivals many of my favorites for being utter gibberish. The religious references are tired and useless, the imagery is confusing, and the word's message is almost banal. "It's definitely lava," the singer sighs, and we're left wondering what exactly is lava? The relationship? His father? There's no context and the pronoun leaves me empty. I didn't understand the song the third time I read through it, and lyric genius is no help. This one was annotated by a drunk sloth. I had to struggle to find what meaning there was.
So I read the song backwards.
It's better. Listen, I don't know what the songwriter was thinking when he wrote these lyrics, but either it is gibberish and I'm sane or it's genius and I'm missing something. I want to assume the writer wasn't throwing refrigerator magnets at a whiteboard and writing down what stuck. Look carefully. "A safety, in the end, is all that he offers: Heavenly Father." It makes more sense than reversed. Now we know that the Heavenly Father is nothing more than a single point of safety for the singer. Let's go forward expecting him to seek that safety and slip from it, pointlessly, because it's not complex enough for his needs. He spends forever "up here" (heaven? I don't think so?) filling his time with fear. We learn that his loved one left him and that's why he's depressed. He let her go. "You turn around now and you count to 10, but you're free now, 'cause I'm a known coward in a coward wind." He's not going to chase. "Won't you settle down baby here your love has been! And I'm free now. I was never sure how much of you I could let in, but you're free now." He gives back the love and explains why he's letting go. He gives permission for the other person to leave. "And I don't need to go where a Bible went ever since I heard the howlin' wind." He feel a need to follow a Bible when he's such a coward. That coward wind has pushed him right out of the safety of the Heavenly Father.
Yet I know I'm trying too hard. The author wrote "Heard about a day where it dropped the know/to go another day as we learn to close," which makes no sense forward or backward. He wrote "Heavenly Father/is whose brought to his Autumn/and love is left in end." That's corroborated by two websites. I don't think it's a spelling error. I'm trying too hard and I wanted to find meaning but it's not there. It is gibberish.
I think it's "'Heavenly Father' is who's brought to his Autumn" and "I've been up here filling holes with fears," but that's clearly wrong. It's "whose" and "hulls." I hate lyrics transcribers today. Ignore me.
I think I demand too much of my music. It's like: Heavenly Father is perfectly serviceable. It even sets a beautiful picture in my mind. It's a moodscape and it does its job. But I constantly expect the words to mean something. Am I out of my mind? Did I get hit in a soft spot as a child and I'm left wanting desperately to make connections with the random jumble of words some man I've never met is singing so passionately and so hollowly? I feel like this song may have broken me, and I don't know what to say. I've never seen the movie the song was written for (Zach Braff), and maybe a lot of the references like "lava" and "wind" would make sense if I had, but I don't want to. I want a song that holds itself up. I want a song that helps me somehow after I've listened to it. And if that's unfair because I liked the video games Dear Esther and The Graveyard. Maybe I've just been programmed so well to look for meaning in lyrics and poetry by my academic upbringing that I'm missing something elemental and foundational in this work.
Or maybe the lyricist who wrote this piece was a drunk sloth. We may never know.
Bon Iver. This song rivals many of my favorites for being utter gibberish. The religious references are tired and useless, the imagery is confusing, and the word's message is almost banal. "It's definitely lava," the singer sighs, and we're left wondering what exactly is lava? The relationship? His father? There's no context and the pronoun leaves me empty. I didn't understand the song the third time I read through it, and lyric genius is no help. This one was annotated by a drunk sloth. I had to struggle to find what meaning there was.
So I read the song backwards.
It's better. Listen, I don't know what the songwriter was thinking when he wrote these lyrics, but either it is gibberish and I'm sane or it's genius and I'm missing something. I want to assume the writer wasn't throwing refrigerator magnets at a whiteboard and writing down what stuck. Look carefully. "A safety, in the end, is all that he offers: Heavenly Father." It makes more sense than reversed. Now we know that the Heavenly Father is nothing more than a single point of safety for the singer. Let's go forward expecting him to seek that safety and slip from it, pointlessly, because it's not complex enough for his needs. He spends forever "up here" (heaven? I don't think so?) filling his time with fear. We learn that his loved one left him and that's why he's depressed. He let her go. "You turn around now and you count to 10, but you're free now, 'cause I'm a known coward in a coward wind." He's not going to chase. "Won't you settle down baby here your love has been! And I'm free now. I was never sure how much of you I could let in, but you're free now." He gives back the love and explains why he's letting go. He gives permission for the other person to leave. "And I don't need to go where a Bible went ever since I heard the howlin' wind." He feel a need to follow a Bible when he's such a coward. That coward wind has pushed him right out of the safety of the Heavenly Father.
Yet I know I'm trying too hard. The author wrote "Heard about a day where it dropped the know/to go another day as we learn to close," which makes no sense forward or backward. He wrote "Heavenly Father/is whose brought to his Autumn/and love is left in end." That's corroborated by two websites. I don't think it's a spelling error. I'm trying too hard and I wanted to find meaning but it's not there. It is gibberish.
I think it's "'Heavenly Father' is who's brought to his Autumn" and "I've been up here filling holes with fears," but that's clearly wrong. It's "whose" and "hulls." I hate lyrics transcribers today. Ignore me.
I think I demand too much of my music. It's like: Heavenly Father is perfectly serviceable. It even sets a beautiful picture in my mind. It's a moodscape and it does its job. But I constantly expect the words to mean something. Am I out of my mind? Did I get hit in a soft spot as a child and I'm left wanting desperately to make connections with the random jumble of words some man I've never met is singing so passionately and so hollowly? I feel like this song may have broken me, and I don't know what to say. I've never seen the movie the song was written for (Zach Braff), and maybe a lot of the references like "lava" and "wind" would make sense if I had, but I don't want to. I want a song that holds itself up. I want a song that helps me somehow after I've listened to it. And if that's unfair because I liked the video games Dear Esther and The Graveyard. Maybe I've just been programmed so well to look for meaning in lyrics and poetry by my academic upbringing that I'm missing something elemental and foundational in this work.
Or maybe the lyricist who wrote this piece was a drunk sloth. We may never know.
Thursday, November 5, 2015
My Acolyte Journey: 2014.6
Haunt (Demo)
Bastille. In an epic stretch of five months, I have left this project utterly dormant. Now I shall return, since Stephen has graced me with a 40 for 2015 and I'm now officially a failure.
I'm a storyteller. I try to hook my students with well-told stories about my childhood so they'll write stories too. I talk about when my brother beat the dog to save a bird's nest and I felt my mind carom between two conclusions as I learned what was going on. I talk about my sister pushing me from the treehouse and thinking, even for that spit second, that she had killed me, after all. I talk about canoeing down a river with Russell and losing both paddles in a swift bit of the current and throwing myself out of the boat after it. I'm a storyteller by nature and I love feeling people's energy build and tense as the story breaks open in front of them. But: to date, the most universally captivating stories I can tell are those of my past relationships. Maybe it's because I'm so candid about how I was feeling and what I concluded from the terrible things I did and felt with the girlfriends I've had, but I don't think that's all of it. I think stories of past relationships get such strong reactions not because they're enjoyable or interesting, but because they're resonant, like stepping inside an enormous bell and having the outside struck, again and again, by someone else.
I think romantic relationships--and especially sexual relationships--cause scars or change so deep and fundamental to who we are and what we want as young people that my peers will always be transfixed by a well-told heartbreak. When somebody hears a story about love lost, their first and immediate reaction will always be to connect it to some story they've thought they locked away.
That's Haunt.
I would buy it, but I haven't. I'm not buying music. I need to change my metric, since I have Amazon Music and I'm likely to have Google Music and the whole world is changing. My students don't know what a CD is. My mother can't believe I don't know how to start an LP. I like Bastille. He's great.
Bastille. In an epic stretch of five months, I have left this project utterly dormant. Now I shall return, since Stephen has graced me with a 40 for 2015 and I'm now officially a failure.
I'm a storyteller. I try to hook my students with well-told stories about my childhood so they'll write stories too. I talk about when my brother beat the dog to save a bird's nest and I felt my mind carom between two conclusions as I learned what was going on. I talk about my sister pushing me from the treehouse and thinking, even for that spit second, that she had killed me, after all. I talk about canoeing down a river with Russell and losing both paddles in a swift bit of the current and throwing myself out of the boat after it. I'm a storyteller by nature and I love feeling people's energy build and tense as the story breaks open in front of them. But: to date, the most universally captivating stories I can tell are those of my past relationships. Maybe it's because I'm so candid about how I was feeling and what I concluded from the terrible things I did and felt with the girlfriends I've had, but I don't think that's all of it. I think stories of past relationships get such strong reactions not because they're enjoyable or interesting, but because they're resonant, like stepping inside an enormous bell and having the outside struck, again and again, by someone else.
I think romantic relationships--and especially sexual relationships--cause scars or change so deep and fundamental to who we are and what we want as young people that my peers will always be transfixed by a well-told heartbreak. When somebody hears a story about love lost, their first and immediate reaction will always be to connect it to some story they've thought they locked away.
That's Haunt.
As adults will grow and maturity showsThe song makes me feel melancholy and hollow, but the song itself doesn't make me think of losing anybody. The words do. The way I relate to music is so liminal, so interstitial that I never had a chance to relate Haunt so very strongly with an emotional loss in my life. Honestly, I have a better chance to relate to Chopin at this point than to Bastille. I've just heard him so little at critical moments. I love it, though. Something in it makes me want to scream the words, even though I don't know them. Something terrible makes me want the song to crash and cry.
All the terrifying rarity of truth,
As you turn to your mind,
And your thoughts they rewind
To old happenings and things that are done
I would buy it, but I haven't. I'm not buying music. I need to change my metric, since I have Amazon Music and I'm likely to have Google Music and the whole world is changing. My students don't know what a CD is. My mother can't believe I don't know how to start an LP. I like Bastille. He's great.
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
11.3
Burned. Battered. Bashed. Crisped. Crushed. Close to dead, I drag my near-corpse back to friends and seek for help. I got in a fight with magic and I came out alive. My friends, the cousins, failed the light and failed me.
We burst into the room, full of swagger and uncareful of enemies. We knew the magic touch of the foes we faced, and we felt prepared. Immediately, my ally rushed straight through a mage, cutting her to the ground, his greatsword flashing. I felt secure. The mages' eyes bulged and they turned to face us. That's when everything turned upside down.
The meek firebrand, Udara, sat, useless, for what seemed like forever in a tangle of tentacles that burst from the floor. The swordmage, Magnus, fell into a pit that opened below him. I stepped clear of the tentacles and avoided the pit and swore under my breath. I pumped arrows methodically into the mage in front of me, scaring him, drawing his allies' fire and electric shocks and sword thrusts. I'm alone. With a bow. Four swords and three wands point at my soon-to-be corpse and I scream through my teeth.
Sarenrae, why do you put your servant in the fire? To purge impurities--God, what have I done!? What impurity can I be accused of?
I pull down power from Sarenrae, drawing from it like the first drink after a desert spell. I heal myself with her energy, patching the holes, salving the skin, stitching the slices. I throw shot after shot into mage after mage and slowly lose my life.
As I sag to the floor, the diplomat-mage Udara and the sword-mage Magnus crawl from whatever corner they cowered in and finally show their faces. I channel the last of Sarenrae's gift to heal their simpering slices. Magnus shows his worth and cuts down the lightning killer.
Three arrows: one death.
Three arrows: one death.
I walk away. I drag my near-corpse back to friends and seek for help. I suppose I might be too hard on them, but I felt very alone. I'm glad Sarenrae was by my side.
We burst into the room, full of swagger and uncareful of enemies. We knew the magic touch of the foes we faced, and we felt prepared. Immediately, my ally rushed straight through a mage, cutting her to the ground, his greatsword flashing. I felt secure. The mages' eyes bulged and they turned to face us. That's when everything turned upside down.
The meek firebrand, Udara, sat, useless, for what seemed like forever in a tangle of tentacles that burst from the floor. The swordmage, Magnus, fell into a pit that opened below him. I stepped clear of the tentacles and avoided the pit and swore under my breath. I pumped arrows methodically into the mage in front of me, scaring him, drawing his allies' fire and electric shocks and sword thrusts. I'm alone. With a bow. Four swords and three wands point at my soon-to-be corpse and I scream through my teeth.
Sarenrae, why do you put your servant in the fire? To purge impurities--God, what have I done!? What impurity can I be accused of?
I pull down power from Sarenrae, drawing from it like the first drink after a desert spell. I heal myself with her energy, patching the holes, salving the skin, stitching the slices. I throw shot after shot into mage after mage and slowly lose my life.
As I sag to the floor, the diplomat-mage Udara and the sword-mage Magnus crawl from whatever corner they cowered in and finally show their faces. I channel the last of Sarenrae's gift to heal their simpering slices. Magnus shows his worth and cuts down the lightning killer.
Three arrows: one death.
Three arrows: one death.
I walk away. I drag my near-corpse back to friends and seek for help. I suppose I might be too hard on them, but I felt very alone. I'm glad Sarenrae was by my side.
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