6.30.2013

Sad or amusing or both...

Thinking about the girl in DC I wrote about a few months ago. Our incompatibility can actually be explained in song. Both of us are massive fans of Chic's work with Diana Ross.

Her favorite song from that period:

Mine:

Oh well. Nice doesn't cut it.

6.24.2013

Twee started earlier than you think it did

Fuck Calvin and his cardigans...

6.22.2013

Patience

Again, just writing to write. Open the tap, yeah, some foam comes out, but it's the only way to get beer, too.

So I had my studio apartment in DC up until October 2005, which means that that whole story about the girl and the question about Yoko Ono and Pharmacy Bar took place in Novemberish, 2005. After that, I lived at home for a while, and then moved in with a friend in Silver Spring, MD, a few months later, around March of 2006. Silver Spring was ok. I was about a mile's walk from the metro station, and most of that walk was along a highway with no sidewalks.

There was a club in Silver Spring that had just opened up around the same time. I have no idea if it is still there; can't even remember the name. It was opened to be the kind of place I would never want to go to. Bottle service, "modern" furniture on the cheap. Fusion snacks. But the place was not making enough money. Apparently, not enough douchebags around. So some good promoters had the chance to experiment. Well, a little.

Anyways, summer 2006 I had the chance to go and hear Roy Davis Jr. play some records. It was a fun night. Good music, and good people. Roy played a lot of good records that night, but the one that stood out, was, of course, the rarest one. That's just how my taste is, and I hate it.

I went over to the DJ booth to figure out what I was hearing. It was one of the rawest records I had ever heard, and seemed to exist in this perfect place between Chicago house and UK synth pop. I was told that the record was unreleased, was something made for Ron Hardy, and that Hardy had given the tape to only a small handful of people, and that one of his dying wishes was that the tape would not be shared by any of the people to which it was entrusted.

I only remembered the name of the artist, Jamie Principle. Jamie's work was, of course, familiar to me. Years earlier, I had found a Trax vinyl with "Baby Wants To Ride" and "Your Love" in the used bin of a small record store in Amherst, MA, and had gladly, eagerly, handed over $20 for it. I had never paid so much money for a used piece of vinyl in my life, and have never given it a second thought.

Time went by. Discogs became more informative, more music was available for perusal online, Youtube got big, and yet, I kept hunting, kept yearning for the record. Only in 2010 did I get a glimpse.  A heavily-edited version was pressed. Of course I bought it, but I also knew I was only getting a piece, a preview, a condensed version, a screenplay, not a novel.

It was only in 2011 that I finally, finally got my wish, and the demo version, given to Ron Hardy probably 26 years previous at that time, of Jamie Principle's "Bad Boy", was finally available in full on vinyl. Of course, it was mine immediately.

I can't tell what the record sounds like to you. But to me, it has lost no magic. It was worth the wait. Because it sounds like what going out used to feel like. The possibility of danger. The possibility of the unexpected. The feeling of being somewhere you aren't supposed to be, doing something you aren't supposed to do (but not in a narcissistic way, if that makes any sense). It sounds like all the important nights of a life, those nights when the end can't be anticipated at the beginning, those nights when the routine is broken, and not in a routine way.

So here it is. If it sounds amateurish, underproduced, like some weird hallucination from a basement paneled in cheap wood, well, yes. Exactly. Exactly!



Bonus Cut:
I had an interview at the University of Chicago at some point in late 1998 and totally fucked it up because I found out that the admissions counselor had been a regular at the Warehouse in her youth and asked too many questions.

6.20.2013

I Love You

Really.

Thanks for continuing to come back.

I don't have much to say again.

But you knew this already.

I was reading my archives and I realized (again!) that I have been concerned with the same things for a very long time now.

I want out, but I can't get there. Maybe I won't. I like me, but I get scared of continuing to be me sometimes. I blame Tolstoy. Levin after Kitty's hand is still Levin. I didn't want to know that. Belief, remember?

I have been sick lately, and when I am sick, I relieve myself of all pressures to do or be (of course, those pressures are the real sickness for me).

I decided I was going to watch the TV series 24 all over again from the beginning. Just because.

Surprised?

Regardless of the possibility of contaminating my soul with right-wing propaganda, I like almost anything with spy/noir aspects.

I made it through season one. And then, halfway through season two, well, this is pathetic that I am recounting this. There's this scene. An agent of some unnamed country located in the Middle East is in the process of helping the protagonist prevent war. And a bunch of rednecks come and beat him up. And, before the crackers come, I have to turn it off. Because, embarrassingly, I know I will be moved.

Fuck, I still care.

I reset my browser. I won't try to watch TV again for another month. Hopefully I will get some reading done.

But I digress.

Thank You.

6.11.2013

Hello Friends

Hello friends.

I had a good time in Montreal. Sort of. Dreams are freedom, dreams are oppression.

What I mean is that, ok, I have always been haunted by the idea that there is someplace for me out there. And there sort of is. A record store. A handful of bars and bookstores and... well, also people, though all the people in my life seem to be moving away from one another. I have a friend in most of the major cities in North America, and even some of the minor ones, but never more than one, of course.

So Montreal, and more specifically, MUTEK. Well, I knew what it was but I had to go anyways. And what is it? An underground electronic music festival catering to both dancers and chin-scratchers. I may post the whole story about it, someday.

Suffice it to say, it was pretty alienating. There is a fundamental difference in desire at work. I want one thing, many more seem to want something else. I would argue my desire is better, but it didn't matter. I was outnumbered.

The first night, I stayed all the way until the end. The next nights, no. And that was the crux of it. I sort of felt liberated, in a way. Like, no, I don't have to go to London, or Berlin, or anywhere. If most of the underground electronic scene is now dominated by jet-set nihilists, then my apartment and my record collection could be enough.

So I'm no longer oppressed by dreams, but what could exist in their stead?

Within a week of my return from Montreal, I went to the Dope Jams grand opening party. There is now a record store filled with Paradise Garage classics and weird, dark techno in a town of 638 people in upstate New York. In some ways, this is brilliant. Move out to the country, find a place so cheap, you can do exactly what you want without compromise.

And yet, isn't it one? There was a lot of joy at the party, a sense of relief. But also a sadness underneath it all. Tough Brooklyn natives in tears. Over records. Just like the "good old days", only lonelier. The psychic costs of preserving culture in this century are very high. Holding on to one's emotions in a world constantly demanding performance...

Is it bad to be addicted to a drug if that drug is one's own humanity?

No. But towards what end?

It felt good to be around people who understand me again. But what is it that we understand?

Now that I am no longer haunted by dreams, the real ghosts appear.