| Memoirs of a White Boy, written in cold blood with a toothpick |
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A poor rich boy coming right through Kim Gordon.
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| Limbo |
[09 Dec 2009|10:14pm] |
I flew into Phoenix from Santa Fe to meet up with my parents two hours ago. Before I knew it, I was in a hotel bar in Scottsdale watching a bunch of middle-aged golfers getting drunk to a hot jazz trio, living my fucking nightmare.
Looking forward to Festivus. This year, everyone's gifts will be cheesetastically Hawaiian.
Love, James
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| Self-Affirmation / Denial |
[14 Oct 2009|07:56pm] |
James, despite your being thrust into a wholly degrading job that in no way interests you, bare in mind: the thousands of dollars that you will receive is far greater than the money BET and/or NASCAR wouldn't have made had you not been involved in the project. Your work as a production assistant is inconsequential to the profit margins of either company. It's a horrible mentality to live by, but you don't have to continue the project after this season. Take the money, run, move, do something of value to yourself.
Fuck, do I feel dirty.
But it's not all that bad. The Flaming Lips are fuckin' back, baby! And not just in the sense that they're up and around, existing again, but that they also put out a kickass album, an album that is the absolute antithesis of the much hated (by me at least) At War with the Mystics. My complaints about the choice to make it a double album still withstanding, this is exactly what I was hoping they'd do after Christmas on Mars came out. And my confidence in them was fully restored when they blew minds by choosing one of the longest, noisiest songs of the album to play on national television last night. I wanna go see them at Voodoo with Stewie (who claims to hate them).
Love, James
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| What Drove Dave Chappelle Crazy? |
[22 Sep 2009|12:36pm] |
Ok, I guess I'll be the first to say it, but I'm personally getting sick of ironic racism. I understand it. In private, white people like myself indulge in the pleasure of an off the cuff "N-word" or Holocaust joke, competing with each other for the most tongue in cheek prejudice. I get why that's funny, but like anything you hear over and over again, it becomes less funny over time.
From a purely comedic point of view, shock value is lost when relying on the same offensive material over and over again. Instead of saving slurs for occasionally effective punchlines, in cases where irony is completely understood, I see so many of my peers falling back on it by default, making a vernacular out of it. And when you hear it enough for it to stop being funny, it starts to get a little offensive, honestly. I believe that the stereotypes and generalizations we're so familiar with are upheld not by the small pockets of genuine racists still living in America, but by the smartasses who pass them on to people who can't recognize the difference.
Then again, this is coming from someone who lives with a person who cracks jokes like a post-modern Hitler. Also, I'm trying to put 80% of the stand-up comedy industry out of business.
So no more ironic racism, unless it's really really funny.
Love, James
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| Peelander-Z |
[17 Sep 2009|10:45pm] |
Last night, Korey and I went to the Milestone to see this band:
I wanted to go because I was bored and this band was once featured in the Upright Citizens Brigade (the Japanoitretching sketch). It turned out to be one of the funnest things I've ever done. Towards the end, Peelander-Green let me take over his drum set.
This is why I don't go to big concerts. Also I'm broke.
Soooo many Mike!
Love, James
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| Street Fightin' Man! |
[15 Sep 2009|12:30am] |
Sorry for all of the bitchy posts lately. This is going to start out sounding like one, but I assure you it gets better.
Yesterday was an emotional low point. I wasn't angry or freaked out or nervous with anxiety, just completely paralyzed with negative emotions. The word "failure" crossed my mind a depressingly noticeable number of times as I lied around the house pretending to sleep. I'm not so harsh as to refer to myself as a failure, more referring to a few events which I'd considered failures in my life. I couldn't help it, but I was so sick of dwelling on the past. If I hadn't been bedridden with depression, I probably would've gathered all of the pictures, posters, CD's, old toys, blue jeans, and yearbooks in my room and set them on fire in my back yard.
But now I know that I have no reason to be depressed. I've invited failure my whole life because of my aversion to the popular idea of "success." Where that word provoked cringing images of shit eating liars, anything but seemed like a preferable alternative. But both words are completely objective. I can attribute a lack of personal progress or knowledge to the way things have played out so far, but why do that? If for some reason I become bogged down again any time soon, I'll know it's because I'm not living up to my own expectations and I can easily fix that. And if I am living up to them and still feeling depressed, I'll know it's because of something chemical, in which case I'll probably get that checked out. But for now, I've discovered some delusional kind of confidence and I plan on riding it out for as long as possible.
I've been looking for a job for about a week now, before and after Greensboro and Boone, but I don't want that. I haven't heard back from anyone so far and I feel as though I'm going to have the same lack of success I've always had. Don't fucking care. I'm writing down and practicing every song I know on guitar. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to go from location to location and sing for money. In my head, where minimum wage is still $6, I can match that with someone tossing me a quarter once every two and a half minutes and I won't have to compromise a fucking thing.
Around this time in his life, a major turning point, my brother was running for public office. Despite 45% of the democratic primary, which any 20 year old should consider a great success, he subjected himself to a measurable form of competition and has been getting progressively worse since his loss. He didn't have to, but Sam focuses on the negative far more than I do. I, on the other hand, don't have any goals that can't be attained. My goals are merely actions, and any kind of work towards them is a success. Failure is totally under my control, and I refuse to personify it.
No need to be disillusioned
Since the criteria's been compromised
Give power to your delusions
They are just waiting to be realized
Love, James
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[14 Sep 2009|08:09am] |
After retrieving my phone today, I went on a long drive to charge it (I only own a charger for my car) and wound up around Concord Mills. I remember there being a Sunglass Hut in there and, being someone who's never spent more than $12 on a pair of shades at a TJ Maxx, I thought I'd go in with a $20 gift certificate that was accidentally sent to me and come out with a new pair of sunglasses. Boy am I ignorant. Imagine my surprise when five consecutive tags priced Ray Bans at +$150. Then I thought, I must be at the expensive end of the store, and moved on only to find other brands priced in the $200-300 range. I knew that rappers and Johnny Cage spent that much on sunglasses, and I remember once talking Adam Stout out of spending 200 euro on a pair of Terminator glasses at a department store in Spain. I thought that was a European thing. But I couldn't help but immediately look around at the potential customers, as ordinary a group of people as you'd see in any part of the mall, and think Are any of you really considering spending $300, $200, or even $100 on plastic, glass, screws, outdated and dubious optical "innovations" that you don't even need, and a prestigious brand name? I had my answer as I witnessed two suckers ring up in the span of five minutes.
Are we going to sacrifice the idea of popular fashion in the coming bad years? Are we going to realize what an impractical illusion it is or is it only going to gain strength as a difference between us and them? Jus' wondering. I think the world is going to be less aesthetically pleasing. With that in mind, I'd like to become a model.
On a much, much less serious note, here's my favorite dance jam of 2008 backed by a music video by none other than Tim & Eric's Eric Wareheim. Fucking hilarious. The loudest I've laughed in months.
http://www.dancefloordale.com/
Love, James
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| Ill Literacy |
[11 Sep 2009|03:07pm] |
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Fear of a Black Planet on a disintegrating cassette |
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I have a confession to make: I don't know how to read. Sure I have the ability to interpret and convey written language, but I've struggled with reading novels, novellas, articles, scripts, essays, textbooks, even comic books my entire life. As much as I want to read more--a lot more--I'm often too distracted by my own thoughts to properly register any information. I can read fast or slow, but when I look back on pages I've read a minute prior, the phrases and details I recognize are completely arbitrary, if I recognize any at all. My inability to pay attention is frustrating to the point that I put down a book and daydream for a few minutes several times an hour. Even in the rare cases that I focus on a book well enough to understand what's going and pick up on the thematic implications, my mind will start drifting off on my rapid, uncontrollable free associations for pages at a time.
I've tried several techniques that proved fruitless, changing the tempo at which I read and being conscious or unconscious of it, experimenting with indoor/outdoor environments, levels of white noise and/or music, different kinds of music, but none of it really makes a difference. The only time that I read really well is when I'm overloaded with distractions and fully committed to ignoring them, fighting them off, but that's such a headache.
I'm not sure what the problem is. The easiest answer is my willfully unmedicated ADD, but I've always been able to adapt to it in other aspects of my life. I've also come to the belief that I might have been misdiagnosed and either have something analogous to ADD or nothing at all. Regardless, all of my hobbies entail some degree of writing. In fact, I think I consider myself a writer above anything else, which is why my difficulty to truly grasp any kind of literature is so disheartening, even shameful.
Love, James
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| Expressionism |
[09 Sep 2009|06:48pm] |
Lately, I've been too overwhelmed with emotion to write anything worthwhile. I actually threw something I'd written into the garbage, which I don't think I've done since getting back papers in high school.
In the meantime, I've been getting better at drums, which requires the least amount of thought and emotion of anything I do, but I'm also looking back at the things I'd written before the nervous episode I had last month. I found the last thing I'd written, which pretty much fully describes the state of mind I was entering:
In impressions of the faces that I failed to convey
I identified the feeling that I fought so hard to share
Though I struggle to express it in a satisfying way
I can fully understand it by implying that it's there
Basically, there's a mood inside of me and I don't have a word for it. I can only describe my inability to describe it. And through trying to draw the perfect emotion for Cat, more or less the one I've been trying to locate with writing and music, I've come so close so many times only to miss it completely, and I can't figure out what, specifically, is wrong with it.
Ok, let me try to break it down:
"In impressions of the faces that I failed to convey
I identified the feeling that I fought so hard to share"
I press down hard when I write or draw. After countless attempts to draw the perfect face for Cat, I flipped the page to continue my work, only to recognize vague, simplified versions of the exact emotion I was going for in the impressions of a dozen nearly invisible cartoon cats. But it's a particular mood that I've been trying to express in almost every outlet of creativity.
"Though I struggle to express it in a satisfying way
I can fully understand it by implying that it's there"
I've yet to replicate a solid version of that emotion. It occurred to me that I may be aiming for something that eludes sense or physical explanation, and that I might go crazy trying to pinpoint it, especially since it's a feeling more or less of having that feeling figured out. But maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe the fact that I've internalized this emotion and can locate it within myself is enough to find confidence in it and use that confidence to express it continuously without even knowing it.
Oh man, I think I just figured it out.
Love, James
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| 21st |
[01 Sep 2009|06:00pm] |
So I have three and a half months to plan for my 21st birthday party. I've been looking forward to it for a while, not so much the ability to drink (which, let's face it, I already have), but more for the party itself. The party I always imagined was like an old school outdoor children's birthday party--complete with a clown, pin the tail on the donkey, water balloon fights, etc--only totally stocked with booze. Although, a few potential problems have crossed my mind recently. First of all, it would be really cold, seeing as how my birthday is in the middle of December. Second, no one lives around Davidson any more, and I'm not sure how reasonable it is to ask my friends to drive here from all over the state. That's also never a good time of year to throw a party as it is, as most people have strange holiday plans. I can't throw it early because I'll have to legally be able to drink and I also think I'll be in Hawaii right before I turn 21.
So yeah. Not sure what to do. If I could rent out a well-heated and agreeably driveable location, that would be wonderful. I've got at least three months to figure this out.
Love, James
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| Fun With Shaving |
[31 Aug 2009|11:45am] |
 
Beard is gone, completely. I look like a shaggy-haired baby face Huey Louie newsie boy. Basically.
Love, James
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| Back from Florida |
[31 Aug 2009|07:54am] |
I wasn't looking forward to Florida because, having gone to places like that with my mom before, I was worried that I was just going to be getting drunk on a beach with a bunch of tourists the whole time. Quite the opposite, though. We spent maybe a total of two hours on one beach reading books and the whole place was practically deserted. The Keys weren't nearly as trashy as the parts of Florida I'd been to. The diving was great. I saw some huge-ass baracudas, lobsters, and a massive Green Morray Eel. On the second day, we got to go diving without a guide. We had some great sea food; stone crabs, coconut-encrusted yellowtail snapper, and one of the best lobster tails I'd ever eaten. I also got a quick tour of Miami and was amazed at how well I knew my way around there from playing Vice City. Really, it was that similar. I even got to walk inside of Ernest Hemingway's fishing boat...and disgrace his typewriter.
I got home last night feeling way refreshed. And since I'd been away from all of my vices for a week, I decided to give them a rest indefinitely. Basically anything that wastes my time. I don't think it'll be a big deal, although last night I dreamt of myself smoking weed in at least five different scenarios. What the fuck? I've never dreamt of anything like that before. No virtue without temptation, I guess.
Love, James
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| In Miami Tonight |
[26 Aug 2009|09:15pm] |
Couple of things:
It's strange to stand in the middle of a metropolis, look up at all of the high rises, and think to yourself Wow. None of this would be here if it weren't for cocaine.
When flying, at least on Delta, coach is now referred to as "Economy Class." Thanks to my Mom's loyalty to Delta, we're frequently updated to first class and were today. But in light of the name change, I couldn't help but think of implications. First class, it would seem, is above, before, and/or seperate from the economy. Nothing has changed up front, all of the ridiculous pampering and complimentary everything is still there. Economy class, on the other hand, has had to make sacrifices with the collapse of its namesake. Getting a pillow or blanket is impossible, and on some flights you even have to pay for snacks and non-alcoholic drinks. Should we really be perpetuating, even in something as ridiculous as using commercial air travel as a direct metaphor, the idea that the upper crust is unaffected by the recession while the less fortunate become less comfortable to accomodate them? I feel that the change only reinforces the differences in a negative way. "Coach" seemed to mean Same shit everyone else gets, while first class seating was some ridiculous luxury. "Economy class" seems to imply Less than, but even worse, implies by juxtaposition that first class is something to which we should be aspiring.
Probably reading into this too deeply, but it's not the first time I've thought about it. That would've been a few years ago when I rode on a plane that was one undivided cabin with no class system from an airline called, get this, Com-Air.
Anyway, the Illuminati are trying to control our brains with airport semantics, so wear tin foil on your head.
Love, James
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| Going to Florida |
[24 Aug 2009|02:36pm] |
My mom and I are taking a dive trip to the Keys a little later this week. I'm being nice, I hate Florida. Of course, the Keys are supposed to be way nicer than the parts I've been to, but that's what I'm worried about. I can't stand being around escapist fantasy vacation spots.
Speaking of hating escapism, I've decided that I need to finally come to terms with a really dark secret of mine. I'm just not sure what to do about it or who to turn to. I've never told anybody and I'm worried about how it will affect my family.
Love, James
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| Fun |
[14 Aug 2009|09:54pm] |
I'm on the back porch at Summit. A few minutes ago, the entertainment started to play "I Will Follow You Into the Dark," to which the girls at my table began to sing along. During the first chorus, I put on my most sour face possible and loudly blurted out, "YOU KNOW WHAT BAND I HATE? DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE!"
I've been wanting to do that for two years.
I am such a hater.
Love, James
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| Hate Speech |
[14 Aug 2009|07:01pm] |
I've been being a real hater lately, just not enjoying anything and not relating to anyone because I don't have the money or energy to invest in all of these shallow, overhyped "cultural events" that totally slide under my radar. I'll admit that I've been being a little self-absorbed, but everything around me just seems really transparently hollow, soulless.
My brother, after repeatedly saying in spite, "James can't accept the fact that I'll never love him," this past year, now thinks it's funny to say, "I love you Jamie," or, "You're the best brother ever," and try to hug me really hard. Oh, and did I mention that he's being sarcastic to a nauseating degree? I really can't stand that shit any more, as it's incredibly hurtful. I don't think I can tolerate him like I used to. I don't even love him. In fact, I hate him. There, I hate my brother Sam. And seeing as how he's abused me physically and psychologically ever since I was three, made me lose my faith in God in Elementary School, completely defeated every notion of justice I ever had, and been, in general, an unprovoked source of senseless antagonism my entire life, I feel as though that hatred is justified. Do I want to? No, of course not, but I can't help it. I just can't forgive him any more. I don't have the heart for him, and if he's going to be such a childish waste of potential his entire life, then I'll just stop caring.
I had a bit of a nervous episode last Saturday. I was trying to work on Crumb when I began to write this down:
While writing “The Human Crumb,” I’ve become very uncomfortable with mining my personal history for material, even if it is autobiographical in an allegorical way. I’ve placed way too much significance on Crumb as a representation of myself and been inadvertently thinking of my life and everything in it as a symbol. This of course reveals the obvious and depressing reality that life does not follow convenient, fulfilling story arcs. None of the struggles I’ve endured have ever resolved in a significant or enriching way, if at all. I feel I’ve learned and inherited nothing of value. And through the lens of black comedy, I’ve come to realize just how ludicrous and miserable my family life has been, especially throughout my late childhood.
I think I really needed to just write that down and see it in front of me. After a brief pity party, I sort of felt like ...So what? I considered the life cycle in seasons. I figure my life is about 25% over at this point, that's one season, right? But I feel like my life began in Winter, not Spring. So good news, Spring is just around the corner for me. I already feel renewed. I'm in love and I'm gonna do something about, goddamn't.
Love, James
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| TV on the Radio |
[13 Jun 2009|01:36pm] |
were awesome. So were Dirty Projectors. The set list was intelligent and unpredictable and the full-band versions of older songs were all amazing. Great performance and showmanship all around. Really rhythmic and movable. That's all I have to say about that.
Love, James
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| So... a Steely Dan concert in Durham? |
[09 Jun 2009|02:14pm] |
A few weeks ago my Dad asked if I wanted to go to a Steely Dan concert that's happening as of this post. I reluctantly said yes and looking back on it, I have no idea why. I guess I was just trying to be polite because my dad's seen them like 80 times in the past year and talks their live show up as the greatest thing since golf. Since then, I've been dreading the day I had to go to it. I brought it up once, thinking I'd successfully gotten out of it. However, today rolled around as if nothing had ever happened, and mom and dad are disappointed that they left without me.
Ok, so, I've always had a mild aversion to Steely Dan. They were never really a group I thought of when it came to bands I dislike, but I can safely say that their music has never really done anything for me. My first tack with my decision to go to this concert was I'll just give Steely Dan a serious try. It won't be so bad. But upon listening to my dad's old albums, I came to the conclusion that I really don't like them. I saw some YouTube footage of the band's current live set up and I found it equally uninteresting. My dad insists that their live show would make me a believer, but I don't think that he could understand, as I tried to explain to him, that a lot has happened to the idea of a live performance during the 35 years of music history that I care about and he's chosen to ignore. Short of being a reunion band, the worst kind of live performance there is, a concert like Steely Dan would just be a boring, one-dimensional wankfest that I wouldn't want to see any band perform. For example, Radiohead, a band I loved since the beginning of my life as a serious music nerd, has the live sensibilities of a classic rock band and hence, I was bored to death by one of my favorite bands of all time. On the other hand, I hardly think that seeing a sextogenerian junkie manage his way around a keytar and a mic while Steve Gadd, the Neil Pert of adult contemporary jam music, taps a shit load of skins is going to make me a fan of a band whose music I already dislike.
Regardless, I probably would've gone with them, but my back has been bad enough to affect my sleep lately. In fact, I've been spending the last few days in some kind of drowsy half-reality. Back to the subject at hand, live music really gets on my nerves when I'm not enjoying it. What's a greater source of antagonism than loud noise you hate that demands your attention, especially when you can't leave? As I feel right now, I couldn't be at a bar or coffee shop with live music. I sure as hell didn't want to spend a six hour round trip in a really uncomfortable car seat just to be delirious and headachey at a big, crowded rock concert, not enjoy myself, and have to tell my dad why at the end. Instead, I can let him grow resentful with his fantasy of me seeing Steely Dan and saying, "Gee Dad, you were right. Will you buy me my own copy of Pretzel Logic?"
But I'm writing this down because I still feel bad about it. It's something that he wanted me to see, but I refused simply because I didn't want to put up with eight to ten hours of physical discomfort. Wait a minute, as I wrote that down, it seemed totally reasonable. I guess I just feel bad because I know I would've made the same decision had my back not hurt, that my detached and cynical views on music, an art I care about probably more than anything in the world, led to a decision that triggered selfish and guilty feelings that I'm not used to processing.
Or maybe I just didn't want to see Steely Dan because I think they suck and it's not as big a deal as my parents have already made it out to be. I'm conflicted as to whether or not I should feel selfish or bad, which in turn triggers more ambiguous guilt. I think I just hate feeling like a bad person some times.
Love, James
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| Subattacul |
[26 May 2009|10:59am] |
I've been in Greensboro for the past five days. We were supposed to go to the beach, but things happened.... oh well. Really, I just wanted to get away from my crowded, cluttered, noisy at 7 in the morning house and the stress of the LMS race weekend. Also, it helped to hang out with an adored group of people for a week and not have to deal with a totally depressing social group for once in a while. My back has gotten better, or at least I've had better things to think about.
I don't think I like drinking. Not that I have an ethical problem with it, I just can't handle more than a couple of drinks in one night any more. Even in a group like this where I love the people I'm consuming with, I just don't like the disconnected feeling of alcohol. It's not like it's that big a deal, I just get all teary-eyed thinking of the great nights I've had getting smashed with close friends. But it's not like I can't still participate while drinking... well, responsibly. Also, every party needs a driver, I 'spose. Anyway, Summer in Davidson is no time to decide you don't like drinking, but I don't even know who's coming home. Oh! The plight of a resentful townie.
I've been really opposed to any sort of compromise lately, well outside of the realm of things that are sensibly arguable. I just think that this is the time to do things how I want to and live out my crazy art fantasies and ideals. Mostly, I'm seeing the people around me learn to get used to compromise, as a means of doing what they want later. But more often than not, people lose sight of their passions in lieu of a job, family, and "real world" viewpoint. I'm told by my elders that you normally don't do something that makes you happy, you just get used to being sad, or you distract yourself with routine until you forget what happiness really is. That's just the way it goes and you learn to make the best of it.
So, do my opposition to this grim prospect and my current lifestyle reflect a strong will to carve a path for myself and misfits like myself, or are they just symptoms of laziness and a refusal to acknowledge reality? Integrity or immaturity? Maybe that doomy real world viewpoint and lifestyle is an inevitability, but I hope more than anything that I can prove otherwise. I guess my goal in life is to serve as an alternative example. To prove that living some crazy, artistic, nomadic lifestyle is, if not completely successful or comfortable, possible.
Love, James
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| SiStar |
[21 May 2009|09:03pm] |
So my goal for the past year or so has been working with CASIO's and using them in seriously artistic contexts. I've noticed that I take way too much time planning art. But as far as music now, I've finally constructed a crude, comfortable, highly accessible and mostly analogue work station that makes coming up with songs relatively easy. I jam with myself at 120 bpm and then convert those lo-fi cassette recordings to digital samples and elaborate. With SiStar and Boss and Cat, I have outlets for immediate art, which is good because I hardly make any progress when I spend all of my time planning and not practicing.
Love, James
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