when we get crazy, it just ain't right

Last night I saw Chromeo - who you might remember, I am mildly obsessed with - play at the Bowery Ballroom. It was a super fun show and watching Dave 1 perform live just cemented my love for him, for several reasons, which I will now detail.

1. He is awkward. Like, this man is not cool. He seems cool, because he dresses really well and he plays guitar and he writes music. But he is not cool. He sort of bumbled around awkwardly on the stage, and didn't seem entirely comfortable performing. Not in a bad way - more in a "I know I'm not cool but all these people think I'm so cool" kind of way.
2. You can tell he just fucking loves what he is doing. He was grinning like a goof ball the entire show.
3. He is so. fucking. cute.
4. They played a cover of The Eagles' "I Can't Tell You Why," and I just about fell over when he strummed those first five notes on his guitar, because I knew immediately what it was. I grew up on this shit. My mom has the Hell Freezes Over live album, which is a recording of the first concert The Eagles did after they "broke up" (or not, or whatever) 16 years prior. My parents owned (and still own) a giant speaker system that they keep in the living room, and I can remember listening to that album basically on repeat on Saturdays while my mom cleaned the house, and I pretended to help. Also, in the car. We listened to it non-stop in the car. It's so interesting to listen to a live recording of music before the studio recorded version, because the live version becomes your understanding of what that music is. I'm actually not sure I've ever even heard the studio version of this song. It seems appropriate that 15 years later I would hear it played live, for real, by the man I may or may not be in love with.



In conclusion, I am probably insane. And I have decided that I will marry Dave 1, and if I do not marry him, I will become him.

 Badass.

hipster hymnal

Apparently God is on Facebook. If I friend him, will he friend me back? When I post this blog post to my status post, will he "like" it? These are the questions I ask myself as I fall asleep.

Last night was part two of Zac's going away party, part one being a total shit show at St. Jerome's on Rivington where Luc Carl served us beers and I pondered how he used to fuck (and apparently maybe still does?!!) Lady Gaga before she was Lady Gaga. I don't even know if I've written about it here, but he is moving to New Orleans. Zac, not Luc Carl. Just for a bit is the plan and unlike most people his just for a bit usually means just for a bit. Not like when people say, I hate this job, but I'm gonna stay here just for a bit until I find something better, and then they work there until they're 60 and they retire and suddenly they wonder where their lives went and then they die of cancer or a heart attack or something caused by sitting at a desk for forty years while they were getting ready to quit to find something better. No, not like that. Just for a bit, then it's off with the winds.

Last night, Jenny showed us an amazing film she made about our friends and our lives in New York. I teared up once and stayed teared up for a few minutes. Then I laughed and felt OK, but just OK, and today I have an OK hangover, which is sort of worse than a whiskey hangover. When you're reading a book, finishing a chapter isn't nearly as painful as finishing the book itself. When you finish a chapter, it's on to the next one, but when you finish the book you put it down and just cry cry cry because now that book is gone forever and you can never see it again the way you saw it the first time you read it. At least that's what I do. I read books slowly.

Last night, I played guitar in front of people for the first time ever outside of my guitar class. I played guitar by myself in front of people for the first time ever. I was scared shitless, and it was only 7 people, my friends sitting in my apartment on my floor listening to my voice. It's possible that I have never been that scared in my entire life. Turns out, playing guitar in front of people is absolutely nothing like playing guitar alone in one's bedroom. You have to deal with a lot of things that just aren't  concerns when you're alone in your bedroom. I was emotional, and I was nervous, and I was a little drunk and tired, so I forgot lyrics and I flubbed up chords. But two months after the very first time I picked up a guitar, I played a whole song, and I sang, and everyone applauded and told me I did a good job. I felt bad that I messed up so much, but I was touched by everyone's support. I thought about how I could have done better, then realized I didn't remember a damn thing I had done, right or wrong. The only thing to do better is to keep playing guitar.

Last night, after everyone left, I watched Zac and Jenny re-enact a scene from that movie Salt with Angelina Jolie, which I haven't seen, in his almost but not quite empty bedroom. They were upside-down and sideways and their hands were in the air and tied behind their backs with invisible chains. They described a couple scenes in which Angelina's character kills the bad guys, and they laughed and I thought about violence in films. How sometimes, and perhaps more often than not, we suspend reality so that we can feel a certain way, because we want to feel that way, because we need to feel that way.

Like sometimes on my way to work I stop at the bodega on the corner right outside the 6 stop at 103rd street, to get a juice or a coffee or a water pumped with vitamins. Each time I go in, I do a delicate dance with the gaggle of folks gathered at the counter using their pennies to scratch off their cards promising them the opportunity to win their millions. They suspend everything about reality to focus on this one little hope, some double digits strewn across perforated cardboard, nothing but ink on cardboard, but it's everything to them. Most of them will never win, and they know it. They have to know it, somewhere. I fish a dollar out of my wallet to pay for my drink. A dollar a drink, a dollar a dream.

Sometimes long songs seem short, and sometimes short songs seem really long. I haven't decided which is better. I guess it depends on how we want to feel, how we need to feel, what we are willing to suspend on that particular day in that particular moment. My pause and play buttons for suspension, and I suppose thereby for reality, aren't working very well recently.

They're worn out.

now i lay me down to sleep

Sometimes I have this fever dream.

I walk around the edges of my room,

Tracing my fingertips along the walls,

Pretending they’re your body.

That way,

I would always be surrounded by you,

And I could sleep inside of you.

You would protect me from rain and snow and sleet,

And you would always keep the light on for me, 

If I feared the darkness.

You’d have a doorway,

And I could leave whenever I wanted,

But I’d always know you’d be there when I came back.

You’d hold onto all my things for me,

My whole world inside of you,

And that’s where I’d want it to be.

That’s where I want it to be,

Because sometimes I read you’re welcome as thank you,

And sometimes I feel my weight pulled onto the Earth when I’d like to fly into the planets.

Because sometimes I stumble through the roses you send,

I lay them out to dry and then I tack them to my walls.

I hope you don’t mind.

unipulse

Seeing a girl snort coke out of her purse at the LCD show made me wonder

How much art is made

To keep the drugged masses at bay

We are a drugged culture. We live in a culture of alcohol. It's considered normal. I've seen more people lose themselves in an alcoholic oblivion than I care to count. I like nights like tonight when I get high off music, thumping bass pulsing under my toes and through my veins and into my brain. Synapses firing and starting up again, refusing the trespass of fatigue. I don't feel tired when I dance. I felt like I could go on all night, except my feet hurt. But I could just remove my shoes and keep going. When music moves me, it makes me move. A bass drop is a vitamin B12 injection directly into my eyelids. I forget who I am, where I am, who I'm not, where I'm not. I am just alive. I am just bouncing. I don't feel happy, or not feel happy. I don't feel, I just am.

a stroll in dumbo

I am obsessed with the rain because I can’t hear it anymore.
I am obsessed with the clouds because I don't see them anymore.
I am obsessed with my childhood because it won't have me anymore.
I am obsessed with my childhood because I’m trying to reclaim it.
I am obsessed with myself because it’s all I’ve got and know I'll have forever.

I am obsessed with the universe because it is the only immeasurable thing.
I am obsessed with the female orgasm because it is the only immeasurable thing.

I am obsessed with you because you give me hope in the dark.
I am enthralled by you because you don’t like to think of what you do to me.
And I am in love with you because only the thought of you turns me inside out.

Only that.

southern hem, northern haw

what i feel when i'm playing guitar is completely cold and crazy, like i don't owe nobody nothing and it's just a test just to see how far i can relax into the cold wave of a note. when everything hits just right (just and right) the note of nobility can go on forever. i never tire of the solitary E and i trust my guitar and i don't care about anything. sometimes i feel like i've broken through and i'm free and i could dig into eternity into eternity riding the wave and realm of the E. sometimes it's useless. here i am struggling and filled with dread—afraid that i'll never squeeze enough graphite from my damaged cranium to inspire or asphyxiate any eyes grazing like hungry cows across the stage or page. inside of me i'm crazy i'm just crazy. inside i must continue. i see her, my stiff muse, jutting around round round round like a broken speeding statue. the colonial year is dead and the greeks too are finished. the face of alexander remains not only solely due to sculpture but through the power and foresight and magnetism of alexander himself. the artist must maintain his swagger. he must he must he must be intoxicated by ritual as well as result. look at me i am laughing. i am laughing. i am lapping cocaine from the hard brown palm of the bouncer. and i trust my guitar. therefore we black out together. therefore i would run through scum. and scum is just ahead, ah we see it, but we just laugh. we're ascending through the hollow mountain. we are peeking. we are laughing. we are kneeling. we are laughing. we are radiating at last. this rebellion is just a gas our gas a gas that we pass. 

 

ya bangin on my heart's wammy bar

the vibrations reverb verb verb through my fingers

i get down on my knees

for you

I am peaches in September, and corn from a roadside stall
I'm the language of the natives, I'm a cadence and a drawl

I am a town.

 

Sitting in a bookstore in Dumbo, I see a child walk in.
It smells like ice cream! he exclaims.
I don't smell it, but I'm sure he's right.

I awoke from a dream.
I had been dreaming of Patti and Basquiat.
I awoke with menstrual cramps and hobbled bleary-eyed to the bathroom.
I went in and turned the light on but it blinded me so I shut it back off.
I was still asleep, really, as I felt like I was Patti and Basquiat, or at least belonged to them.
Or perhaps they belonged to me.
And I thought I was giving birth to them.
I thought about Just Kids,
How it was my second mother,
How my natural-born mother birthed me
And how that book birthed me again,
Anew.
For without it I would not exist.
I moaned in pain,
Thinking I was somehow returning the favor.
I thought of Patti hunched over shredding her guitar.
 I thought of how Basquiat died at only 27.
I thought of people with PBR tattoos.
I debated whether or not to take a pain pill.
I turned the light back on so I could see my blood,
Make sure it was the right kind and not the wrong kind.
My eyes cleared at last and I wondered how long I had been in that bathroom.
The sun was up now,
6 AM in Harlem, 
Birds tweeting.
What kind of vision was this?

Weeklong Series: Young Love, Part Five

For the last day of the series, I picked a card Jacob got me for one of our anniversaries. We dated for 5+ years, and we celebrated each passing year like we were legit, married adults. It obviously didn't turn out that way, but we spent basically every waking hour - and sometimes, when we were real lucky, sleeping ones as well - together and we were completely in love so it seemed only natural. We bought gifts and cards and had "fancy" dates at our favorite restaurants.

This card had a puppy pile on the front and he drew a heart on the front of the envelope. The words inside are among the most direct ways I've had a person express his feelings to me. They are simple, clear and lovely - as well as being defiantly youthful, hopeful and naive - a great way to sum up the week.

--

Hey!
   I gave you this card because I knew the feeling that you would probably get from seeing the picture on the front. It is probably the same feeling I get sometimes from you... but more often I have several feelings of that sincerity and warmth for every single time I really gaze at you. Those feelings, I think, will always be there; I really hope they will. I hope I give you everything you show to me, because you are so rich with emotions that you give. I have been deepening in tenderness to you everyday since I met you. You are a beautiful, warm person to which I would love to eternally hold hands with...

With so much love,
Jacob