Mood Surgery

I had some crazy fucking dreams yesterday. I don't even usually remember this shit.

In the first one, I'd just slid off some small slope of ice into what became a giant chasm with a river frozen-over far below. I was falling to my inevitable death for what seemed like forever before I became lucid enough to realize that this was a perfect instance to try and have a flying dream. I closed my eyes mid-fall, and tried to imagine a change of direction. When I felt the momentum shift around me, I opened them again and found myself soaring superhero-style over a huge expanse of boreal-type forest. It was breathtaking.

The whole flying thing still felt like it might be revoked at any time though, and I shut my eyes again, trying to maintain this soaring experience in some new and different way. I became fascinated with the dancing weirdo designs on the inside of my eyelids, and, coupled with the tactile sensation of still flying on the outside, I started to see the shape and colour and behavior of my thoughts flailing out of my head and into the universe. It became a different sort of flying. I had no control. My thoughts became these crazy long tendrils reaching far out into the void, and bringing back to me profundities to later be processed.

Then the phone rang.

I went back to bed for a little while afterward. Then I dreamt that I was stumbling out of bed in a hurry, for some reason, and fell flat on my face on the floor. My dog looked at me and said, "it sucks down there, doesn't it?"
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In the city there's a thousand things I want to say to you
But whenever I approach you, you make me look a fool
I wanna say, I wanna tell you
About the young ideas
But you turn them into fears
In the city there's a thousand faces all shining bright
And those golden faces are under 25
They wanna say, they gonna tell ya
About the young idea
You better listen now you've said your bit-a

Hey Paul Weller: fuck you.
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I want to see beneath the surfaces of people.

I can't decide if I want people to do that to me. Maybe if I saw inside them first.

There's so much more.
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Some wingnut on the Halifax locals messageboard called me "emo kid" a couple days ago in some boringly topical thread. I actually think that's pretty awesome. I imagine he stopped by and took a gander at this thing on the road to that evaluation, and, really, it's not that far off-base considering how I've been going on lately.

What I find funny is that this is the second time in the span of a week that I've been condescendingly referred to as "kid" by someone almost-certainly my junior. Weird. But, hey, go nuts; I don't act my age, and I certainly don't want to look it. People my age are douchebags. I get worried if I don't get carded every so often. If all goes well, I'll be screwing 20-year-old women well into my 40s. Or, y'know, ever.

Anyway, it's mostly pretty inane, but you can view the thread here. It's really nothing extraordinary, but I'm getting my kicks where I can find them these days.
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Well I sure dwelt on that for way too ridiculously fucking long.

It's funny how the most brief, unexpected, and completely-unrelated conversations can trigger such subtle shifts in the psyche with such dramatic results. I probably should worry that I'm even prone to this kind of random outside influence, but I'm not going to right now, because my stomach has stopped gnashing its teeth, and I actually sorta feel pretty good right now. And for no real reason.

I certainly still haven't come close to sorting this all out in my head, but I think I am no longer emotionally-encumbered by it. It was lame that I even was in the first place.

Y'know, though, I almost think I'm sorta glad that I spent all that time sitting around being an anxious, depressive chump, because it culminated in some evaluation of both self and others that I'm pretty sure was a long-time coming, and seemed stuck in a loop before. I'm sure this all sounds flaky as hell, but, honestly, I feel more lucid now than I have in I-can't-remember-how-long. Looking at things now, I feel able to confront some shit, and that's a start. I know I'm still gonna feel sadness and anger and pain and confusion, and that sometimes these things will take hold of me no matter what, but I'm seeing them for what they are, and that feels pretty fucking good. It's good to not feel manipulated, by yrself or anyone else, for even a minute.

Tomorrow I'm gonna get some of that Nicoderm shit. Seems like as good a place to start as any.

I am pained by one thing right now, though, and that is that, apparently, over the past few months, I have lost some of my, er, self touch. Fuck, dude. Chafe. What a wonderful time to be breaking in a new pair of crotch-hugging jeans.
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Fuck, I was hoping it'd take a lot longer than this for my sex drive to reassert itself. Now I'm being even more of a knob.

Ok, quick: recommend me books. Soviet sci-fi isn't cutting it as a distraction.
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In the struggle to maintain a composed exterior, I fear that my insides are going to fucking puree themselves.
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I've been getting all these mopey little twinkly song ideas. This kind of stuff is so far away from the various complex and/or assaultive rackets I've been making for the past few years, I can't even figure out what to do with it anymore. I figured -in the interest of at least distracting myself from this feedback loop of naval-gazing and flakery that is, quite frankly, geting a little old at this point- well, I figured I'd humour myself and try fleshing some of it out.

But, y'know, I've sorta realized that in order to create that kind of heart-on-sleeve, super-personal kinda crap, there is a certain level of one's own bullshit that one must first buy into, and I think I was only ever able to do it when I was younger because I was too naive to realize that that's what was really going on. I would have balked at this notion. I would have said I was just being honest. This is really a selfishly-inflated kind of honesty, though. I think. I dunno. Does that make any sense? I mean, I'm really not saying that this is a bad thing. Lots of people make lots of great music this way, probably without ever thinking as hard about it as I am now. But... and here's the thing, I guess... an awful lot more people churn out an awful lot more cringe-inducingly awful music, and we'd ALL benefit from it if these folks subjected themselves to some of this scrutiny I'm blathering about. There is a fine line between self-aware and self-absorbed.

I dunno. Whatever. For the time being, I don't really have anything better to do anyway, and it's not like I'd ever play any of this stuff for anybody. It's kinda fun, in a morbid, picking-scabs sorta way. Heh, maybe I'll even dig out my acoustic guitar. KC would be proud.

I need more excitement to get my brain back on track.
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All I wanted was a life of danger
No fake blood
The stranger the stranger

I think I'd like to meet Chris Thomson. I wonder if he'd think it was really nifty or really lame that I wanna cover a Monorchid song. I wish I could figure out which band to do it in. One of the ones with Tobias, I suppose. I hooked up with him and started This Mess because he listed the Monorchid as an influence. And fifty other bands I'd never heard. But as soon as I saw the Monorchid in there, I knew something important was going on.

I've been rocking the Pixies album Trompe Le Monde this past day or so. It is inarguably their shittiest shit, but it's still pretty fucking outstanding by anybody else's standards. I'm having fun with it because it's the only one I didn't play the living shit out of ten years ago. I wonder what people who were into this band in their actual time are doing now. The guy who got me into them just got out of prison, and only has one arm because of smack. I kind of just realized that the Pixies are the nu-Beatles. Gross.
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We interrupt yr regularly-scheduled emo to bring you an emergency dose of awesome.

Check this out, yo.

To listen to a cool new song by This Mess alumnus and all-around wunderkind
William Erving and some big-city fashionista pal of his, click
here. The song is called "1080." It's right there, dude. Take heed: it might fuck yr mother.

To listen to a cool new song by my reclusive-genius pal and aspiring supervillain Popeye Khan, click
here, go to "music," and hit "Megalo." It's right at the top. Don't be a retard and not check this out. I played in bands with this guy for years, and nearly ten later I find out he doesn't just pwn me at everything else, he pwns me at lyrics too.

To listen to a cool new song (is this getting old yet?) by local all-stars the Holy Shroud, with whom I am only passing acquaintances, click here. I'm assuming this is an unmastered cut from the album, 'cause it's sorta muddy, but these guys are top-notch live, and I don't doubt that the finished product is any less so. Most of you already know all this shit, though. I'm pretty sure one of their guitar players thinks I'm a dick, but whatever.

Ok, yeah, that was getting old. At this point this might be a little old too, but if you haven't already, you should also go check Dogday out. Click on "music," numbnuts. I gotta go to bed soon, and I can't spell everything out for you. This is Crystal and KC from the Hold and Nancy and Seth from the Burdocks, who, respectively, have albums recently and soon to be released. The former is pretty much everything that doesn't suck shit about punk rock today, and I expect no less from the latter in the realm of upper-case Indie Rock. Dogday reminds me a little of Portastatic, but without the living-in-mom's-basement vibe. I saw these guys for the first time last month, and I was laughing the whole time at what I thought was KC wearing a sweater-vest. It turned out to be an old hoodie with the sleeves torn off and a GG. Allin patch on the back. Waddaguy.

We now return to our regularly-scheduled programming.
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In a culture of willful self-deception, anger is a gift. An opiate for the terminally-aware.

If you have an inkling of what I mean, come see me make mouth-frothingly angry music with renewed conviction at Stage 9 tonight.

I've had my brain on "shuffle" for a few days now. It's been playing me some crazy tunes.
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I don't know what to do. I can't even sleep. Everything's churning. The walls are oppressive, but I feel that public eyes would crush me. How do I get this off my mind?

How do I get this out of my heart? I'm not even supposed to give a shit.

No matter what I do, I'm going to ruin something. Maybe everything. This is the worst feeling.
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