curdwallow.

i'm once again situated with my family in the house i grew up in and it is a miserable, miserable place. unfortunate that it's come to that point, a place that's become stagnant and void of all progress, most happiness, and any level of generated energy or life. it's something of a shock to me that things can grow this stale almost right under my nose. watching this reveal blossom directly in front of me, i'm sort of curious how long it takes before you get to the point where you are not content with where you are, what you're doing, the people you're around, but you insist on allowing it to go unchanged. i see these people, my family, as only people. i don't see the unit looking after one another, loving each other, coexisting in a synchronized harmony. i see something of what i see in the everyday lives of the people i assist at work, at a black and white retail job. seems to be a lot of standing in line, arriving home until you leave, settling into nighttime television until you're no longer conscious.

i'm not out crusading, but i'm hungry.
i have people i want to see.
little stories i'm trying to keep up with,
fictional or not.

i've been fully moved out of brooklyn for about 31 hours. i've slept a night here, completely moved in. and i'm already itching. gotta go, gotta get out. it's making my eyes itchy, making my skin tweak. i already feel gravity bottoming out. it's a little terrifying. i feel like i'm being grown over by little bits of bark. like there are whispers in the little nooks down intriguing hallways and i'm getting a little deeper every trip, with fewer and fewer breadcrumbs.

it's all an illusion, obviously. there's no giving up. it's a sham.
aiming for june first. kind of want to go back to brooklyn. i watched beetle and dave debating about it mildly right before we left his apartment last week. and i started thinking about the reasons i'd want to be back out there, and i guess the number one reason i'd have to cite is that i loved it out there, because of how many rules of chaos applied out there, and how open the damn place was to possibility. i think about coming back out here, too. and being close to friends and work. and that's alright too, i guess. i didn't even give brooklyn all that much of a chance, either. and i want more of it, genuinely do. i want to work out there, somewhere out of retail. but regardless, i do want to live out there, or be out there as often as possible. i realized, too, that i'd been out there for more time than i was even in miami. and, that's a little odd. miami felt like an eternity. but it was just about 11.6 months. something like may through april. -- i've got about a month to get it figured out. i'll be alright.

hit a massive wall, creatively. i think it's just one of those weird moments of having no concept of where to direct the spotlight, what emotions to convey or capture. there's really no She who is gathering all of my butterfly thoughts in massive nets and making me breathe in gaping arcs of palpitation. i still remain focused on ensuring that all of my people are continuing to create at their sharpest, and never quitting for anything. dave was featured on the tattooed poets blog, brian has been churning out short stories here and there, beetle got the spiegel deal going, anthony always has something kinetic happening, musically. if nothing else, i want to keep them moving. keep that going. if i'm not personally churning something out that i believe in, i want to at least be midwifing.

i want to at least be midwifing.
i want. to at least. be midwifing.
christ.

good news, though, i have always written my best correspondence from this house or at the starbucks down the block.

i've got some faith it'll play out.

as you were saying.

in response to,
and to bolster
a friend's earlier bradbury post.

post-war fundamentalism.

never in physical action had i discovered
the chilling satisfaction of words.
never in words had i experienced the hot darkness of action.
somewhere there must be a higher principle
which reconciles art and action.
- mishima

a fall weekday, 3-4:30p.

(also purchased three records today:
horseback's impale golden horn,
sailors with wax wings' self titled, &
grails' deep politics.)
[droneisin]

kihlsuhn.

i took a chance on a new artist earlier today based solely on the photograph provided to advertise the upcoming show. the photo is not the one above. silje nes is categorized as "electronic" but i can't really see the commitment to that particular genre, though it's rare that labels fully make sense anymore. pretty happy with the purchase, definitely suits a need for the melancholy, background skyrocket of particular writing days. you can check out a track from the record opticks over here. i find that without taking risks on a lot of bands going forward, i'm not going to find anything new or interesting worth hunting for.

also, i randomly did 10 clicks on the randomized "next blog" train on blogger. here's what i found:

- poems by a priest.
- a family blog
- a christian watching her child grow up
- a spiritual journey by a pastor
- QUOTE. life iz whaz up... END QUOTE. for real. but another christian blog.
- a christian blog by a priest/fireman
- a christian blog
- a family's travel log, wherein they move to argentina... to found a church
- INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE CREATIVE ARTS IN INTERDISCIPLINARY PRACTICE ADVISORY BOARD
- and what seems like a minimalist blog by a minimalist woman writing in her own corner of the web for little to no reason. a post, in full, goes as follows:

So Ray is now recovering from a broken rib in his back, which punctured his lung in an unfortunate altercation(scuffle) with a patio table. I think Ray won,as the table is a goner and Ray is still alive to tell his side of the story. He's in pain but the doc gave him some good painkillers so he'll at least sleep lots while he's waiting to heal.There goes golf season.

it's always interesting to see who else is out there. am i doing it right. is there a point to blogging vs. webmastering. should i start separate blogs for separate themes. are there hypotheses i'm solving for in every post. so on and so forth. i have literally been blogging since before it was blogging sometime in the ninth grade, keeping an almost daily account of what i was up to, to then breaking down stuff going on in classes, to a college breakdown, to a music blog, to a full music website, and then pretty much back around to this. i get curious what makes me think something is worth sharing, or not sharing. where the filter lies, where the eager sharing voice speaks up.

i wonder how someone finding my blog on a random Next Blog clicking spree would describe my blog in a 4-8 word summary splatter. and would they read through just a piece or a month or a page? would they ever come back? what validates something like that? what am i looking for?

intentional massive.

above is a letter from bruce lee. it reads as follows:

I, Bruce Lee, will be the first highest paid Oriental super star in the United States. In return I will give the most exciting performances and render the best of quality in the capacity of an actor. Starting 1970 I will achieve world fame and from then onward till the end of 1980 I will have in my possession $10,000,000. I will live the way I please and achieve inner harmony and happiness.

that is how you set a fucking goal. i think currently, i have no goals or end points. no directed ambition, no target, no vaulting point. it's something i feel like i might have to start aligning myself with. i've essentially set some personal pieces of improvement i'd like to hit, and some general morals and values i'd like to stick by regularly. but there's nothing i'm aiming for, nothing that calls me back to the track. the last thing i can think of that was a set goal was the nanowrimo writing goal, and i fell off pretty quickly with it. i think setting and sticking to goals is something that ends up being a learned behavior as opposed to something you can just set for yourself and expect to follow. if everything becomes a plan, if everything becomes goal-oriented, i think you start to do your own microtracking, your own follow-ups on yourself.

if i wanted to lose thirty pounds in three months, i couldn't just set it and expect for it to all wind up okay because i've set it up in such a way. i wouldn't realize, at first, that if i didn't lose ten pounds by one month, i'd have to realign my plan to accelerate in the next. it's just a cloud goal i'd have, and by trying to make it all happen by the end date, the whole process would become a maelstrom of trying too hard or giving up altogether.

so when i say i'd like to have one writing project finished a month, i'm not going to be good at coaching myself, at maintaining the course, and doing the small check-ups that i'll have to do to ensure it all works out. and i think i'd like to get more into that practice, or at the very least, start HAVING a goal to aim towards so i can relate to a failure/success paradigm.

also.
shows coming up:
- omar rodriguez lopez on march 29.
- sidefires april 7.
- fairweather reunion on may 14th. [possibly most important show of my life thus far]
- portugal. the man on june 3rd.
- earth on june 16th.

and, um.
to kind of wrap this all up, here's a majorly appropos video.

a new beginning for ecosystems.

this is the most informative and the video that translated the situation to me most accurately. i've seen most of the others. this one actually has those moments of "i was JUST standing there" that have been time lapsed or more pulled back in other videos. this one screams authenticity.

volume, and damn the siren.

topographic analysis.

that
is
all.

urkenheuim hotel.

for the first time in what seems like years, but could just be months, i've been able to take multiple days off and call it a 'vacation'. i've known about it for a while, but didn't book a trip anywhere. there were a few concepts i'd had but one of them is nothing but brash begging for disappointment, one was something i'd wanted to save for a friend and i which didn't work out, and the last requires a car for multiple days, something i'm not currently able to acquire. so it's just me and the world here, brooklyn and long island. all the missed and ignored media i've had for months. some writing i've done. some thought lines to unravel. performing, essentially, what the body does during sleep. the kind of maintenance that requires little effort but sets all the pieces into regiments. defragging.

the first day of my 'vacation', though, saw me at a hospital for a decent portion of the day as my mother was having some respiratory issues. she's a heavy smoker, super serious about the addiction, really fairly major part of her character, and it's starting to catch up to her. it's sad to watch all the things you hear about in books and commercials and television and knowledge in general being acted out directly in front of you as opposed to diagnoses and diagrams and stock footage. while she was in with the doctors getting a ton of tests and what not, she told me i could take her car and go do something else, go home, etc.

i went record shopping. picked up the new lupe fiasco, the new get up kids, radiohead's kid a, minus the bear's omni, a record by sunn0))), and liquid swords by GZA. sick pull. a week prior i'd picked up this is hell's weight of the world, the new earth record, glos' harmonium and the recently disbanded depreciation guild's spirit youth. i think i posted last week about wanting to have a collection to be proud of, etc. i guess that's something that constantly changes with your taste and your growth, but these records all seem to be solid solid pulls. i have two boxes of CDs that i have to go through to see what are actually pieces i still want in there. needless to say, i spent a ton of time with all of those. the new lupe record, lasers, is going to be massive. i'm trying to get as many plays through it as i can before it becomes ubiquitous. though lately, i'm very much barred from all of the outside influence. it took me a couple weeks of listening to kanye's track "monster" before someone told me that the single had been played to death. good news, i guess? i'm also starting to take bands a lot less for granted. where at one point, when i'd see a band taking off, i used to kiss them goodbye, sort of like a minor league manager would shake hands with an upcoming ace, knowing full well he'd never be through the system again. now i know i have to see them as much as possible, appreciate them as largely as i can before they disappear. it's becoming almost an epidemic, bands who are doing the right thing, pushing boundaries or at the very least steeping themselves deeply in quality ideas and influences, deciding to call it quits after all of their invested time doesn't yield the same kinds of rewards that they used to. the underground is almost nonexistant. all indie means is it's not completely massive yet. it's a weird industry. but braid has reunited, is doing their thing again and i'm very excited to catch them a few times in their second wind. same with the get up kids, and even glassjaw. important bands are answering the absence. that can't be all, though. can't have the same old stuff on repeat. classics are and always will be classics, waiting on a shelf or on a harddrive for us. but it needs to stay fresh. there needs to be progress. and with lupe's record, i feel that. there's a little more digging that has to occur. but i'm willing to do it. eyes on the liner notes. hungry, always. internet wise, i just saw a new youtube trailer for the lead singer from misery signals' new project called solace which sounds incredible. and the guy who did the song "black and yellow", wiz khalifa has a pretty dope mix tape called kush & orange juice which is somewhat viral right now. with all of my free time, i've had the chance to check it ALL out, in depth, give it solid listens. give it the respect it deserves. very excited. even rediscovered a band called sweek that does the whole russian circles/explosions in the sky thing rather well. their record the unbelievable cinematic crash from '05 is legit!

watched a decent amount of movies as well, so far. mala noche by van sant, mister foe with jamie bell and i just rented four lions, a movie from britain that actually satirizes terrorism. i remember seeing the trailer a while back and it looked great.

finished reading fahrenheit 451, and completed both little big planet 2 and killzone 3.

also, will be printing copies of MMX: THE MOLESKINES starting tomorrow.

off 'til monday.
stoked.

of the earth.

wow. i only needed to see this photograph to need more, but this guy's story (myth or no) seems to be something that makes me want to be a floating phantom on his shoulder. in the introductory piece to the link i'm going to provide, it gave me these morsels of information, all of them more eye expanding than the last:

- he wore a suit made from leather boots he FOUND
- he slept in caves
- his race/origin is unknown, but portuguese or "black" has not been ruled out
- he was driven mad by either economic ruin or a broken heart or both

gold. i see titans of the street like this on a fairly regular basis during my commute. and there's something about sitting down and talking to them that gives me the vibe that i will take something from it, not valuable in any way other than rich, possifiction. because who knows. regardless of what may run rampant in my imagination, half of what these guys have seen or thought because of what they've seen, is probably just as good, if not better.

more:
“If there’s any place left where you can keep your secrets, with the Internet and everything out there, it should be your bones.”

slow to standing.

challenge yourself. it's something that we'd all put on a coffee mug if we could, sitting at our little dinette in our little apartment, something that we could look at and feel good about, just because we've seen it, and bought the mug, and think that way a little bit, and admire it, and quasi believe it. but really, there's a kind of fatalistic fire that i've been engulfed by over the course of the last few months as i've been staring around at me across the people who i know are capable of massive things and massive thought who are just sitting on it, and pouring the contents of their mugs into their stomach and going to work. and then we go to work. and it's very serious. and we get home. and put together little parties for ourself until we have to get up tomorrow and restring the puppets.

i have been the Messenger of the Great Excuse on a fairly constant basis. justine called me out on it in a pretty sterile moment in front of dan smith, something about me completely stopping my creative process while we were together. getting home, watching tv, accomplishing nothing. filling the mug. dave called me out on it i think it was during the onslaught of birthday facebook wall posts with something like, "here's to all of the projects that we should have started but have never finished" or something along those lines. i am fully accountable for that entire process. and in the last year, i've "put out" some things i've been proud of, stayed motivated and active, and have continued to build this kinetic force of building hands that i am a bit addicted to. not entirely looking for fame or infamy because i'd eventually fuck that up too. just want to leave behind a library to validate my existence and to chronicle the things i've thought and felt and been able to spawn. even if just amidst friends. to let them know that the possibility is there.

there are a few things that gripped the lower wrungs of my ribcage in this year in particular that didn't hurt or kill me or injure me, but they definitely had me full on by my entire frame and showed me a few things i might have been meant for or against.

my grandmother died in january, and to be honest, it's not even a matter of losing a human being who i'd had a history with. she was a woman related to me and a lot of the older pieces of my family have stories about her, but for my little branch of the family, it meant nothing. she gave birth to my father and walked away. his sisters and brother raised him in her household while she kind of watched from the outside. as i grew older and understood what kinds of implications that had on his entire life, and related a lot of the stories and events i had been present for and grasped the weight of, i started to realize that i had no built-in commitment to this person. i kind of allowed a lot of my contextual obligations to fall off and started to react accordingly. and i'm at where i'm at now, where out of respect for the family members i do honor, i made myself present at the first ever funeral i've ever been to. and i wasn't just that 29 year old oddity standing on the outskirts, i definitely approached people i haven't seen in a long time, paid my respects, engaged them in conversations about their lives, the particular context and so on. aortal bookkeeping, on some level. but in that room, i started to get a massive grip on mortality. not the idea, so much, that i was eventually going to die and would no longer get to do the things that i wanted to do or experience, but moreso that i would never get to allow the people around me to really know how i felt about them. and really, that's the kind of memories that i want to pass on to others. sheer validation. the concept that i've noticed what they're attempting, that they were appreciated, that they're beautiful in all the ways they had anything to do with. they're white hot intelligent when they went for it. that i recognize that they went for it. things of that nature. i want everyone to know their fullest potential, and i'll do whatever i can to bring them to it. i want to be the one holding back the sheet metal until the last fucking second while everyone's slipping underneath, moving forward, surviving on, against an oncoming horde or inferno. i want to make sure they're all going to make it.

i have personally always written letters or stories or put things out expecting a response. even just last night, when i was talking about the whole new stand-up comedy endeavor i'm going to start to approach soon, i guess i was sort of hoping someone would say, "i agree with your attempt. it resonates to me. i have high hopes in your endeavor." but i have never received the kind of echo that i'd hope to get. i can only do the best thing i can with what i've got. and if i'm going to try anything, i'm going to do it based on my own reaction to it. if i feel that it's shit, it's shit. and i'll create again, and improve. and again and again. bigger and sharper. carved up and more beautiful. irrefutable. i want it always to be something i'm proud of. i want it to be done because it's done and what i wanted and not because i had to. i'm seeing so many more opportunities out there, and not just things to be looked at and held up against. everything is interactive and small. and hilarious. there is no good day for anything to happen, no right moment. sometimes you just have to sit next to the fat guy on the bus. this is what's happening. i've always waited for the formula to solve itself and calmly insert the variable and have it smoothly coagulate. always. i'm exhausted with the waiting for the lead up, and the pause in a conversation for myself to insert what i'd been waiting a week to say. it's 2:45 in the afternoon and i think you're beautiful. you just might enjoy something i've got.

and last night, for the first time in what feels like a year, myself, dave, brian, and anthony were together in a quiet room in our own space, sharing these massive thoughts and concepts and ideas. we were starting with catching up, but actually spoke on and on about different themes and issues and so on and it's something that was completely unreal. the group of friends i've known has always existed just behind the doors for me. and it actually made me really sad to see that it's still in tact, it still exists, it's still a reality. but we've all kind of shut the doors a bit. it made me feel that every single one of my friends is too busy to pick up the phone to hear something i've got in store for them. i was told, "that's just how it goes, i guess." but i can't agree to it. i refuse to. i have a social life. i have a job that i work, and it's not some part time gig. i don't shirk responsibility or chores or requests or my cat or hygiene. i have the same amount of time in every day that every one else has to deal with. and i still have the time to put together these dream journals, the poem, the mix cd, to handwrite the tracklistings, to copy the stuff i'm handing out, to cut and compile it, and to keep working on more. to ingest films and records and to feel a way about them. i guess it kind of made me wonder about what i might be doing wrong, what i might be leaving out that everyone else is keeping in. i want to reflect things off of these people and build massive temples of light. but i end up feeling like that six year old neighbor knocking on the door to look at your baseball cards. again.

i wrote her a letter.
i compared you to her.
you will never hear your name.

bonita.

sometimes i wish i could put my head back against a surface and roll my eyes back really slowly and softly, like some kind of ocular trance condition. I'd groan deeply and gutteral like, almost animal in origin. the foam will pull and lull out of my mouth through gritted and tired teeth, and a slow machine of gyration would work through my chest cavity like some voodoo priestess shaking bone pouches to ward off a tribal war. I wish upon this action, i could reach out to all the ones i love, and all the ones who have seen the mind I've exposed to them, and they would know to listen, and deeply. and when i was collected there in my seat, knuckles now perched in a vulture's gnarl, i would transmit the audio around me, so rich in humanity, and pure untainted comedy. there are things that need to be heard. things that make me regret ever seeing them, because they are being seen alone.

"it was just a reg'lah day. juss a reg'lah day. I didn't feel no way, no body bought me nothin, nobody call me or nothin, it was juss a reg'lah day.

juss a reg'lah. day."

a poem.




I miss all of you.
I'll go foamy for you.

limbs to pompei.

so much has changed. it used to be that brooklyn was a novel concept. and for a while, it was this different type of place that was living up to all that it used to sound like. tons of weird folk, artist folk, who were into their own little things. i spent a lot of time at home, and then commuting to work with a car. drove everywhere, passed so many things as lane segmentors. these weren't locations, they were set pieces. as the summer starting waning, i began to walk a bit more, getting the slow realization that the sun would be disappearing soon. walking place to place made me start to take in so many more places. i think i learned more about the area i live in in a month or two of walking from point A to point everywhere than i did in the months that i did driving. and now that i'm without a car and i'm relying completely on the transit system, nothing seems too far, nothing seems out of reach. even things that are so close, down the block/around the block/under the block, it's all fully tangible. this place is meant for change, meant for me. so many options out here. and it looks like for now, i'm going to have to be taking it on alone. that's fine. because i know i don't want to leave. i know i want to stay out here. and the only thing i'm missing is my crew. the kind of love and respect and energy that comes from my people out on the island. i love this place and i'm hoping we stay right here. and i do plan on taking my opportunity a lot less for granted. this is the kind of place that a person like me can gel. let's do it. we out for the gusto, man. we tryin' to keep it raw.

also, for the time being, i've lost my entire music collection. wait. not really. kinda. see, i had it all on an external hard drive which was destroyed physically. but luckily just before that, i'd put everything onto an ipod which i had been using as my library. which, by the very same individual, is now wiped as well. so i'm now separated off into my own CD collection which i have to re-rip and relocate. it's all separated and in many different places since i moved out here. so i bought a bunch of CDs online the other day, something i haven't done in quite some time. mostly because i started to take that whole process for granted. the physical copy is such a requirement for me. the collection, the display, all of it. the last two places i've lived, i haven't gone too over the top with it. it's been very much an afterthought. but once we figure out where we're going to be in a month or two, i'm going to ensure that i have my CDs, DVDs and books displayed with respect. and i'll need a writing desk as well. and that portion, i don't care if it's some dismantled lumber pile arranged and attached with staples and paper clips. as long as it's something i can arrange myself in and be able to lean forward onto it at the ideal height and writing angle.

gotta gotta.
yeah.
just gotta gotta.

a body duct.

Babylon line. Departs Jamaica, 10:35a.

A woman behind me is talking about how she doesn't believe in christianity anymore. Comparing it all to oprah. Her mouth is outrageously full with food. And that she's going to be practicing buddha. Asking "where is that being a good god?" And as she's trying to figure out all of this stuff, she starts to stray off into a story about her husband or someone who spent time with her, got his citizen papers and now wants to bounce. Great! Priceless! And her mouth is so filled with whatever it is she's eating that i can't understand what she's saying 2 feet from her, let alone what this other person must be hearing across trainsound and cell phone clusternoise. She just asked what sign is he. Cool, that's great. "Let it be natural" she says. Ohhhh and she just brought up getting a divorce! And alimony. And!!!! She just said she's not sure how it's going to work, because you have to swear to god, but she swears to buddha. And since... she... I'm in love... since she is now buddhist, she will sleep better and think easier. And her spots in her skin are going away. Breast exam. Health plan. Yaddayadda. And her husband calls her on the call waiting. And oh god, she switches the line. And she's on the phone with him now. And when he was down and out, she made him go to "doctor school or whatever." And no, he doesn't understand. Not at all. It's not fair. And he's forgotten all the good that she's encouraged him to do. What does he mean by she's so emotional, asked 5 times successively. His name is luka. Loocha? Lukuh? Loo-ka. Silence, going on 3 minutes. And. He's hungup on her! The crowd. Goes. Wild.

cold webbing.

i was unbelievably afloat for about two hours today while commuting home and then resting when i returned to the apartment today. too much caffeine. far too much caffeine. the kind that made me feel boiled over and living weeks throughout my single moment to moment passing. i'm now out of the spell, but feeling bombed out and starry eyed, and begging for the effects to return. i get there sometimes. it spurns on creation unbelievable. i am massively inspired by just those golden moments, the ones where you're electrifying all of those points you'd wanted to comment about and the miracles you want to portrait onto maps and canvases. there's a demon who leads me back, though. one to escort me over the threshold i'd gone through.

i've made a new commitment for this year, and i can only thank my unbelievable crew of friends who are artists or who aren't. some of us create, some of us build, some of us charge onwards just for the sake of the forward momentum's existence.

for me, one of the funniest things on earth and in humanity is the act of taking one's self too seriously. however. it seems that most times when i'm pushing myself to be as confessional as possible, as earnest and pure as i can, i am taking myself more seriously than most people i interact with on a regular basis. i find myself blindtyping, not looking at any of the words coming out, not thinking or reconsidering or editing, and i feel alight with profundity and inertia. then i stop, if only for a second, and i look at what i've written, think about what i'm saying, think about my standards, think about those reading it, and i want to go back and dash it all away, ruin it, spit on it, mock it, spoof it, parody it... it's a fucked existence. not that i'm at all tortured. i've definitely started finding an okay meeting place between the two, and i think i've become aware at how hypocritical a lot of it can seem when i come down to being my most judgmental. i'm trying to keep present in that going forward, and i feel like it's my biggest opportunity to grow from.

really, there are few people i surround myself with who would oppose to me writing and being open as i am... and also few people who are in my circle who would be disappointed at me keeping even just a few of my judgments to myself.

no poet and no artist who has ever created something true and pure has ever stopped themselves because they felt it's coming across as too genuine or too honest. and anyone who's ever said anything to that extent about another's work is just another step outside of the kind of person who art has ever been created for or spoken to.

let's be this, all of you.

over here.

three star wars reimaginations from olly moss. outstanding.

alphionics.

fan.



click for more.

CHRONO-CUBISM.

i'm a resident.

so this guy went to haiti for zombies. it's something you'd think sounds one hundred percent absurd, unless you've read serpent and the rainbow, which... hold on... doesn't necessarily SOUND BELIEVABLE or PROVE zombies, but it's weird enough and has enough things that [appear to be] facts (especially before the age of irony) that it warrants some thought. at the very least for the pharmacology of it. and yeah, the whole haiti/voodoo zombie is only a bit of an inspiration for the romero zombie.

right?

regardless, zombies have had a huge influence on a lot of people i respect. i have always been intrigued by the dark piece of WHERE and WHAT zombies imply, which is a state of complete chaos, complete 0. post-apocalypse is one way to describe it on a worldly level, but anything, any moment of complete classlessness, complete need to survive based on your skill, your rationale... a grand leveler, and an absolute reset: this is the place that, regardless of source, regardless of cause, and especially regardless of scale, i feel you can really see self-empowerment and the rise of passionate, motivated individuals. right, but be that as it may, zombies have always been a massive subgenre of that setting. pieces like the 28 X Later series, The Walking Dead, Resident Evil, so on and so forth. there's just been something about all zombie fiction that no matter how horrible all of the inbetweens are, if i see something that claims zombies are involved, i at least have to give it a shot. which is what brought me here.

the host, Hamilton apparently, is cool. seems like he knows how to host a show. his voice gets a little obnoxious when he's narrating things for too long at a time or if he starts pronouncing things with the "OH MY GAWWWWD" drawl, but he's pretty funny, keeps it light. my favorite part, honestly, was seeing literally how serious the haitians took this stuff. just as a culture, how much they engulfed themselves in that culture. which is odd, considering when i see those in the more "western religions" get this passionately involved,i call the same dedication ridiculous. but yeah, for that reason MORESO than the zombie portion of that, it ended up seeing. the ceremony towards the beginning? worth it. the reveal of a zombie later on (through the pink door)? ALSO. TOTALLY WORTH IT. it's a little more than an hour long, so it's heavier than a quick youtube toss, but with the interest there and with the right kind of night (i had it bookmarked for about three weeks to a month or so?) it could be a good sit-down.

you learn a bit about puffer fish ingestion too. and they also mention things about scopolamine, something i've linked to a documentary about on this blog (maybe somewhere else?) which is essentially a drug that somewhat hypnotizes the user for hours at a time.

berlin.

been a fan of band of horses since i heard them on the zune that was in the first gamestop i worked in. i think they had two songs on the preloaded playlist which was a major distinction of the time. i had "everything all the time" downloaded, but purchased "cease to begin" and that really cemented the deal for me. i'm a fleeting fan, i don't pump them that hard, i don't really know the lyrics or the songs from to back, but i am a big fan of what they do. very very reminiscent of the shins. haven't heard their new record "infinite arms" yet. i wanted to bring this up many months ago (i'm guessing by the comments i'm linking to in may). this particular radio interview i was listening to really inspired me in such an unbelievably positive way. just the outlook, the stance, the gracious manner in which they presented themselves. i remember having this conversation with at the very least beetle, but it definitely might sound familiar to a couple others when i bring it up to them. i finally thought to look it up and have it embedded, and i realized that really, when listening to it, there's no sort of philosophy or suggested level of thought or approach that they go forward with. it's just, and i hate to say this, but the energy they're putting out there that's so believable. so genuine. and it was something, a moment, where really, i would really be happy to come across half as grateful, precise and crystalline as they are.

starts @ 6:20.
live performance of 'no one's gonna love you' @ 14:01.

shit.