Everything has picked up so fiercely. I have a book chapter coming out, an article, an online course, a conference in three weeks, a huge multimedia project, a music project, a dissertation, a training goal, an interview show, and a full time project management job. I’m overwhelmed and operating in negative time constantly. I could use a few more hours daily. I can’t seem to let anything go, I need everything too much, but now I’m obligated to too much. I sleep less, I’m training less and that’s incredibly difficult for me to deal with . I can’t seem to get it all in, these days. It’s hard for girls to understand when I explain why I can’t hang out or go out more. I tell them it is what it is and they see that, and make their choices. It’s all fine with me, I’m detached. There are times when all I want to do is come home late, meet someone there and fuck hard and crash hard, and feel more balanced the next day. But that’s not going to happen without hurting people. So in the meantime I am hurting myself. I hurt myself to protect other people. I’m pretty sure this will eventually kill me. I’d still choose this.
Posted injournal|Comments Off on October 1, 2013. Two days of negative time.
I can barely move my arms today but it feels good. I did some serious moving last night, after my last meeting of the day, two large, very heavy bookcases. One of the bookcases was able to be dismantled and carried out as boards and planks. The other one, though, was one very large unit, long beautiful boards with maple caps, 8 feet tall by 6 feet wide. It had a base of solid wood and the total weight ended up close to 200lbs. That was the case I was taking home, the case that belonged to my recently deceased advisor.
I had two volunteers to help me move it downstairs, out of the office building, and to the curb, where another friend was going to come with a pickup truck.
We struggled to get it out of his old office. The thing was significantly heavier than I anticipated, but at least there was an elevator to handle the 6 double-tall floors.
We slogged it along, inches at a time to the elevator doors and…
… there was no way it was going to fit. Way too tall, way too wide. Everyone’s question at that point was: what the hell do we do now? But my question was:how the hell did Frank get this thing up 6 double-tall floors to his office?
There was only one option, as I saw it: carry it down the stairs. No one liked the idea, but sometimes you just have to go for it. I convinced everyone it was possible and gave them a pep talk. It would be fairly epic to carry such a massive thing down 6 flights of stairs. Also, Frank would have enjoyed it.
So step by step we went, sweating and grunting and toiling and straining, people giving us crazy looks, especially the Deans as they headed home. After about a solid hour of brutal lifting and straining, we were down. One more staircase to go to the curb. We took a 5 minute break along the way.
Eventually my friend showed up with the rental pickup and we got everything in the bed. I sat in the back and held things with my arm out of the little sliding window. It brought back memories– I’m not sure what or why, but I know I’ve done that a few times before, back in NH.
When we got to my place, it was clear the problems were only just beginning. If it didn’t fit in my work building’s massive elevator, it certainly wasn’t going to fit in my residential building’s dinky one. Oh, we tried, but even that was weird. It was very obviously too big, but when you’ve come so far, you want to try everything possible.
It was also too big to fit into the stairwell. So, I was fucked. Me and one other guy. The only solution was to saw it in half. I went with the guy who rented the truck back to his place on 83rd and Amsterdam and helped him move the boards and planks from the other bookshelf into his place, and then he drove me back to my place with a giant rotary saw I could borrow.
I moved the whole thing back outside onto the sidewalk and began scheming for the cutting. How do you safely cut something 6ft across and 8ft high?
The more I looked at it, the more heartbreaking it seemed to cut it up. The whole purpose and beauty of the thing was that it was made of long, natural, thick pieces of wood– the expensive kind people don’t use anymore. Cutting it seemed somehow sacrilege.
Long story short: we went for the stairwell. Inch by inch, and actually cm by cm, we maneuvered the giant, 200lb thing up the stairs, adjusting its angle, its pitch, its tilt, and rotating it within millimeters of the walls, the corners, the angled ceilings and the pipes, and sprinkler systems and flood lights and walls.
Somehow, miraculously, it ended up in my place. It took two hours of careful stair climbing. It was ultra-rough on the shoulders and I won’t be training today, just in case. Once in the room its entire size seemed to change, as if once it made it to is final location it could assume its true form, and it practically filled the room up, dwarfing every other piece of furniture I have.
But it’ll be great. It goes almost to my ceiling, is old, dark wood, is 6 feet long, and only about 1 book deep, so it doesn’t really take up any floor space. It’s exactly what I’ve wanted for years. That it came from Frank, is just extraordinary. I’ll have it forever.
Now I just have to find a place to put it.
Have a great Day o’ Frig, hope you’re up to interesting things this weekend and these days. Fall is a good time for everything, so hope you can go do it all.
Duck
Posted injournal|Comments Off on September 27, 2013. Two gallons of sweat.
Excellent class last night and a swift sprint home. Stopped by the new taco place on my walk up and grabbed 4 chicken and guac’s. The place is great and the price is right. It’s Chinese run, so making friends with them has big payoffs: free extras, including a Mooncake!
I downloaded the Logic X upgrade to prepare for writing new music for the new project. I spent about two hours configuring it last night, and it’s excellent so far. Great new visualizers and the guitar processors are new and sick. I haven’t seen much written about the software by guitarists so far, though it did just come out a couple months ago. This is going to make working with audio much faster and smoother and seemingly of much higher quality.
My entire afternoon is full of meetings, 1-2, 2-3:30, 4-5 with my boss, 5-6 with a client, and then a friend is parking a pickup in front of my office building so we can load two great, big, tall bookshelves and take one to my place, and one to his. Both bookshelves are coming out of my recently deceased advisor’s office, and it’s a great thing to be able to take it home and fill it with the books of my dissertation.
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Still feeling out of sorts, but getting by. Just need to keep training and everything else will work itself out.
Posted injournal|Comments Off on September 26, 2013. Thor’s and Packed.
I’m all mixed up today, out of sorts with things, feeling like I don’t belong here, but unable to say where I should go.
At jam on Monday we played quietly and it was OK. At the end I was excited to tell one of the other jammers about the new Godflesh track and after we’d all stopped playing, I played it for everyone. Sounded sick. Tickets already acquired for Oct 19th.
One member of the jam band started playing guitar over the top of it. I was already frustrated with him because I think he plays too much, seems to always need to be heard, and he doesn’t listen enough. Suddenly I said: “Hey, you’re kind of ruining the song.” And he stopped playing. He texted me later saying he was deeply offended at being spoken to like that. I said I could have said it differently and apologized. And now he’s acting like a whiny little bitch about it. Truth be told: he was ruining the song. I care far less about this fallout than I once might have. I don’t know if it’s because I’m feeling less about people these days, or just him, or just fed up with most things.
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In the past and over time I have given people a hard time about top-10 type music. When I hear popular tracks everywhere, I get seriously agitated. The sound of commercial music makes me want to be explosive and violent. Why is that? It’s because there’s nothing there, in that sound. The industry is so fucked. All those songs are written by one or two people, and for the sole purpose of appealing to teenagers. It’s formulaic, like Hollywood. There’s no art in there, and it’s just beyond me how anyone can listen to it, knowing what it is, knowing that the performer who wears the face of the song had literally nothing to do with the song, and is merely a pretty object.
Is that too extreme? What if I could prove it to you, would it change anything?
It’s not art, there’s nothing artistic about it. It’s like if Monet sold draw-by-numbers versions of his painting, and the person who connected the dots was made into a celebrity for having done so. Why? Because it makes someone else, the person who corporatized the art, lots and lots of money. But what does it do for the art itself, or for human expression, or for anything else at all? It does nothing at all. It’s so fucked. It’s just beyond me how anyone could listen to any of it while knowing what it is and what it was made for.
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Class tonight and then home for writing. It’s nice and crisp outside and perfect for training hard, long runs where you don’t have to worry about getting too dehydrated.
I’m in a bad way lately. I feel healthy and strong and it’s best for people to stay away from me. I’m dangerous for everyone right now.
Posted injournal|Comments Off on September 25, 2013. Out of sorts.
Sorry Monkeys, I didn’t come through on my update last night. Jam went long, and then pizza and yadda yadda.
Let me tell you about the show on Saturday.
My good friend and longtime metalhead came with me to check out Malevolent. The show was at a venue I hadn’t been to before, called Paper Box. It was probably an old paper factory or something. It was sort of a pain to get to (out in Bushwick), but once inside I liked it immediately.
There were two stages set up, one in the large entry room, and one in a side room. There was a large open air space in the back for people to light up whatever they had.
I saw my friend who plays for Malevolent right away and he called my name out. DUCCCCCKKKK in a nice metal growl. I went over and we did that dude hug and I introduced him to my other friend. It was at that point my metalhead friend realized that everything I had been saying about my friendship with the Malevolent guy was true.
He brought me back stage and we had a some beers, one band to go before he had to take the stage. The rest of the band was back there, but I didn’t even know what to say to them. In the presence of metal greatness, I am especially humble.
Eventually it was time for them to go on. They came out on stage for sound check and people filled the main room quickly.
The crowd was mixed. The original Malevolent Creation was formed in 1987 and they released some great records in the early-mid 90s. Because of their early origins, there were fans at the show who were probably in their 40s, which is less usual at a death metal show. For other metal it’s very normal to see every kind of person imaginable, but death metal is usually a little more particular. You either hear it, or you don’t, and unless you grew up with it, you probably don’t, which means the crowd is typically very young.
But at this show, there were plenty of long-time fans, mostly wearing the jacket of the early death metal scene in NYC. You might have seen it before– adorned by biker-looking people. It’s a giant “X” with N/Y/D/M written in the quadrants, very gang-looking. But it’s just for the music.
The NYDM gang weren’t the only ones there, though. The new generation of death metal fans were there, in great numbers. Young angry men and the occasional metal babe, all eager to finally see Malevolent play. They’re way more popular in Europe and are constantly touring there.
With no introduction the band launched into a classic and everyone went ballistic. I stayed front and center and my friend on guitar locked eyes with me constantly, which I must say was a bit of a thrill.
The fans got violent and people smashed into everyone and everything. I stayed on one edge the pit that continually formed and both took and gave some good shots. One taller metal head came gunning for me at one point and I straight armed him in the neck and he went up off his feet and landed flat on his back on the ground. People rushed over to pick him up before he got trampled. When he got up I averted eyes and just looked at the stage, enjoying the music, and there was no further issue.
The band completely tore it up, doing 75 minutes. By the time they were done, the audience was exhausted and dehydrated, stumbling around like they’d just sprinted for an hour straight. The band was in the same state. I followed my friend backstage again.
“How was the sound from the floor? The monitors sucked.”
“It was sick. You guys destroyed the place.”
“Awesome, man.”
The lead singer came in and gave me a big hug, which was disgusting and perfect. He was drenched in sweat and smelled like Jack Daniels, which he had been sipping throughout the set, straight from the bottle. All I could muster up to say was “Thank you”, and he said “OK brother”, and that was all.
I sat back there and hung around for a while and we chatted but everyone was completely spent, which is the way it’s supposed to be. I left to find the friend I came in with and we took off, allowing me to preserve my Sunday for all the work I had lined up.
It was a thrill, and a great privilege, but it doesn’t end there.
The Malevolent guy texted the next day. They leave on tour Tuesday (today) and come back Oct. 11 and when he gets back, could we get together and work on some new material, a new project.
I said fuck yes.
He said he was thinking something really dark, something to make The Shining seem like Katey Perry. I said something to make a rotting funeral mishap look like Mardi Gras. He said to come up with a name and I said I would. He said we need to do at least three songs for the demo, and that he’d take care of the rest. I said let’s do it.
So, in addition to trying to finish my dissertation, and do two full time jobs, I’m now working on a dark metal project with the lead guitarist of Malevolent Creation. We begin writing in the second week of October.
I’m not sure how I’ll be able to handle everything, but this is the kind of thing– a kind of experience– to make time for. So that’s on the way down the pipe.
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I had excellent training last night before jam. I’m up to 225lbs for 20 reps on deep squats, which was something I never thought I’d be able to do. My legs are huge and muscular now, intensely vascular from all the high rep work. They’re probably getting too big, although I still feel fast and my kicks are as good as ever.
Talk soon,
Duck
Posted injournal|Comments Off on September 24. 2013. An update!
The Red Sox. Why do I follow this team? I’m not really an enthusiast of pro sports. I don’t like the industry around it, the commercialization of sport, and the spoiled brattiness of most professional athletes. The idea that someone gets $100 million for throwing an inflatable ball through a basket–even if they do it especially well–is an absurdity that transcends what can even be described. The experience of it is both something to marvel at, and something that should cause a profound sense of shame in our culture that chooses, of all things, to celebrate these people and in this way. Given the problems of the world, the billions of people born into hopeless systems of depravity and often torture, and knowing it’s largely because of a system of resource distribution and protection that we invented and still participate in, it is sickening to think about the ball-and-hoop thrower getting paid in a single day what would alleviate the suffering of thousands of people, often for years at a time. The reason it exists that way is because of greed and the henchmen of big business. Sport is business, here, and for that two hours of vicarious victory that Americans are willing to drop $50-$300 for, the authoritarian controllers of sport create the greed machine.
So it’s fucked. And on top of that, it’s often unnatural to even enjoy these professional games. Put a random person in front of an NFL game and see how “entertaining” it is for them. At what point do people become so interested in such a truly dumb sport that they’ll create rituals and festivals around it? It’s something you have to learn to like, and that’s a decision you make. Making the decision to pay attention to a sport like the NFL requires a fitness in the society that comes to worship it. People must largely feel empty enough that latching on to socially and institutionally created and identity-based constructs becomes a better alternative than, say…
What. Doing something?
Besides, it’s a tradition! It’s beer and loudness and chicks who try to fit in, no one really sure exactly why they care if the little ball goes through the weird poles, but who wants to be left out? After all, people are cheering!!
But it has to be this way. I don’t blame the fans, even if they don’t know why they’re fans. They’re doing what they’re supposed to do. It’s good for the bars when people fill in. It’s good for the merchandizers to build young fanatics. It’s good for exploitative labor forces to have something to calm and pacify and distract their workers and lessen the chances of a mass realization at how they’ve been duped into working so hard to give someone else obscene amounts of wealth that really should be in their own hands.
/Rant. (sorry monkeys.)
I grew up with the Red Sox. My dad and I would do work– painting the house, digging big boulders, planting trees, raking leafs, planting seeds, stacking fire wood, and so on, and usually, if it were summer, his little paint splattered radio would have a Red Sox game on, and those were good days.
Boggs hits a long fly ball! Deep deep to center field! Way back, and…!!
I can hear the voice very clearly. The voice of Joe Castiglione, coming in through the static of AM radio, all the way from the mystical land of the Big City, Boston, a place I had never been to but had seen on a black and white TV.
For most of my life the Red Sox were perennial losers. They would have a good team that somehow could never secure a World Series championship. They called it the “Curse of the Bambino“, a reference to how in 1919 Ruth was sold from the Red Sox to the moribund Yankees through a shady deal involving financing a play (or something). After the sale, the Yankees became one of the best teams in baseball and pretty much stayed that way until the present, and through my growing up years the Red Sox didn’t win a world series again. There was always hope that the curse would end. Listening with my dad, I’d secretly cross my fingers and say little prayers for every batter, every pitch, so that the Red Sox might win the game.
In 2004, of course, they won the World Series for the first time in 86 years, after a dramatic comeback against their arch-rivals, the Yankees. They were down 3 games to none in the championship series and came back to win 3-4– a feat of faith that had never happened in baseball history. They won the world series again in 2007, and that happened when I was in NYC. I couldn’t externalize my happiness too much in this town, though.
New Yorkers are suffered bunch. Their team basically buys the best players every year, essentially creating an All Star team every single season. They’re supposed to win every year. They have more championships than any other team, and it’s part of the reason the rest of the country calls the Yankees the “Evil Empire.” No joke: there are some teams in the Major Leagues whose entire salary for the entire team is less than some individual Yankees players make per year. So when the team loses, the country rejoices, and the New Yorkers are extra bitter. “But we bought all the best players! Why aren’t we winning?!?!”
The Red Sox were on their way again in 2011, leading the whole league until the last month of the 5 month season when they just collapsed– the greatest collapse in sports history– losing over 20 games that month, and missing the playoffs. They fired the manager because the whole team was in shambles. Filled with spoiled celebrity players who signed for the money. The following year, last year, under a new manager, they came in dead last in the league, winning just 68 miserable games. Towards the end of the season they made an incredible decision to get rid of $250 million worth of big shot, bratty fucktard celebrity players. More the half the team was traded away, and they fired the manager again (a New York manager for the Mets in recent years, incidentally).
This year was supposed to be what they call a “rebuilding” year, where they spend very little on the team, bring in young, inexperienced players from the farm system (the AA and AAA leagues connected to the team from which Major Leaguers come from). No celebrity trades, no big bucks involved, rebuilding the team from the ground up. They hired their old pitching coach who was managing Toronto last year as the new manager.
From early in spring training, there was something special about the team, and players commented on it from the very beginning. They all got along extremely well. They played relaxed, confident ball, and to everyone’s surprise, they started winning games right out of the gate, despite the absence of those big, expensive baffoons they offloaded after the collapse.
Other things happened. The team stopped shaving, they stopped buttoning their shirts all the way up. They started getting raggedy and built an incredible reputation for toughness, almost becoming legendary in a single year– players playing with broken bones, players letting the ball hit them for the sake of getting the free base. They’re not getting paid to do this, so why did they do it?
The players say it’s because they became a family, and they started playing for each other, and for the people of Boston who endured so much during the year. There was the collapse, the losing season, the Boston bombings– it was a city down and out, with a new team of ragged ass ballplayers who love the sport.
What better time to do your best for the sake of doing your very best, for the thing you believe in.
Incredibly, they’ve lead the league almost the entire season, bewildering the country. Last night they clinched the Eastern Division Championship, leading the Yankees, which outspent almost every team in the sport 2x over, by over 12 games. They had 7 final games against the Yankees this month alone, and won 6 of them.
They have seven games left in the regular season, but they’re already division champions and it’s great. They weren’t supposed to be a winning team, but they’re probably the best in baseball right now. Even with significant injuries to key players, they found a way to keep winning. They have more comeback victories than any team in baseball. They have scored more runs than any other team. If they win the World Series this year, it’ll be the largest single year turn around– from worst to best– in baseball history.
So, I’ve been following along. I think my dad would be happy with this team.
Last night I was home. Despite having paid for video streaming of the games, I listened on the radio (which streamed through the computer, thankfully). The announcer, Joe Costiglione, is the same guy who announced the games I grew up listening to. Hearing him greet the players in the clubhouse after the game and hearing them describe what it’s like to be a part of this team was a nice moment for me. I just sat and listened until the broadcast ended, trying to visualize the atmosphere.
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Tonight I got guest-listed to the Rage of Armaggedon Fest over at the Paper Box in Brooklyn. My friend plays lead axe for Malevolent Creation and after the show I’m traveling with the band to an after party. Can’t wait, and glad I decided to get rested up last night so I can make a go of it tonight. I won’t be drinking much because I’m in a training cycle right now, but two Jacks will be OK.
I have an extremely full workload right now and will need to come in tomorrow (and I’m in the secret office right now) so I’m sort of hoping it doesn’t go until 6am like it did last weekend.
Hope you’re having a great weekend, and I’ll let you know how things went as soon as I’m back up and around.
Duck
Posted injournal|Comments Off on September 21, 2013. Good news and a good night anticipated.
Took the day off. It’s going to be a long weekend. I’m hanging out with Malevolent Creation tonight in preparation for their first NYC show in over 4 years. Tomorrow night I’ll be backstage all evening, and then we’re all going over to Duffs, likely until Sunday morning. Gathering my stamina now.
Have a great wekeend.
Posted injournal|Comments Off on September 20, 2013. F.O.D.
The last two days have been chain-linked obligations morning till night. I haven’t even had a chance to train. But it looks like things might be able to return to normal, now.
We had a class last night and I went with the professor and a group of TAs out for a couple beers afterwords and had a blast talking about pedagogy and self discovery. It was excellent. We left the lecture hall at 8 and left the tavern at 11, I got home in time to see the Red Sox lose in 12 innings to Baltimore, brush my teeth, and go to bed, wake up at 8, be at the staff meeting at 9, and now I’m here, able to update you all.
I forgot to follow up about my friend who went to burning man this year. He had a great time, it seems. He’s a big proponent of hacker spaces and collaborative culture, and that seems to be a major aspect of what that event is all about.
But, it’s not. Sorry Monkey holes, crash and burning man.
I won’t start an argument with you about it now. If you go there for the week of partying and dancing, that’s fine, it’s great for that (and also getting STDs, according to all the clinics around San Francisco that report the thousands of returnees hitting up the clinics to get treated for every fucked up genital disease imaginable). But if you’re into that kind of thing, that’s great for you.
Just don’t pretend that it’s some kind of hyper-radical experiment in human society or radically self-expressive culture. It’s not.
My friend, who did have a good time there, also explained that there were vehicles that only let hot babes onboard, and there were whole “neigborhoods” that were just filled with luxury RVs, driven there by various jackoffs who are there to chase the party.
“And so begins a week of Facebook pictures of filthy, semi-nude, middle-aged people wearing aluminum foil in their hair. #burningman“
The festival has become a glorified corporate retreat— with tech CEOs pulling up in luxury RVs and float-building outsourced to TaskRabbits. Attendees aren’t even making new stuff any more, they’re buying it and bringing it, just like everything else there.
There are nicer places to dance, better places to meet people, definitely better places to see and experience great art and great “out of time, out of place” immersion, better robots and flame throwers and excitement and danger. Go and find that stuff, and make that stuff. You don’t need a swarm of “burners” to make it happen. Make something else happen someplace else, and then let it go before it’s wrecked, like this festival now is.
Can’t believe it’s thursday already, jesus.
Posted injournal|Comments Off on September 19, 2013. Delay of Game
I stayed on campus to work most of the day. A chick called later in the afternoon, I had forgotten I said I might be free. She was on campus too and came to meet me. I didn’t want her to see the secret office, so I came out. The day was crisp and sunny in the late afternoon and we walked down Broadway to 5 Lamps, a new-ish bar/restaurant with outdoor seating down in the 90s. I had on my gray pants and my Perfect Hoody with black Limmers. She was wearing tights and a sweater thing that went down just enough to cover the top half of her ass. We sat and chatted and had a good time. Here eyes were huge and pretty and brown, which I like. She told me all about her training as a varsity volleyball player as an undergraduate at Columbia. After graduating last year she started an internship at a film studio downtown where she gets hit on every day by what sound like the douchey-est fucktards imaginable. I’m not sure why she told me about her problem getting hit on all day, but there’s no doubt it’s true.
We walked up Riverside Drive, stopped at the Harlem Piers to look out over the water for a while, and then went back to my place. When we walked through my neighborhood, people looked. Was it because I was a white guy with a mixed girl? Or was it just because she was attractive?
We went up to my place and lounged around chatting more, and I put NIN on. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but it didn’t matter. Her brown skin was smooth and her lips were so soft and smooth and large. We listened to NIN after moving to my room and afterward we both collapsed. I walked her to the subway about an hour later, she kissed me on the cheek goodbye, and then I walked home to check the Red Sox score, shower, and pick-up my room. I felt relieved and satisfied, but numb to everything.
It’s Monday around noon and it’s getting colder outside. I’m happy and content, but concerned about my growing disconnectedness from women and sex lately. I seem to want it all the time, but I don’t want a relationship with anyone. I wish I had at least one person in the same situation so I don’t have to worry about hurting anyone.
Don’t get close to me.
Posted injournal|Comments Off on September 16, 2013. Raucous night.
Think about experience; how we understand the acting self; how we represent life in time and space; how we judge value in material, political, and cultural life; what we choose as our controlling purposes; and how we shape and situate our efforts in life and for what aim.
