I don't like that word--creep. It's like how I don't like the word "awkward." Somehow it's a negative attribute to be different in matters of social convention. And creep is just one step further. It's someone who tries to approach others in their own weird manner. Someone who is socially ept, who approaches others, he's gregarious. But when someone is awkward, they become this very negative connotationed creep?
It's awful. Creep, or awkward--anytime I hear anyone talk about anyone in those ways I just want to punch them. It's not just jealously. It's a bit of jealousy, I guess, but it's also the whole "weird is bad" thing. By extension, it's the negative sanctioning of bad behavior by not being friends with these "creeps". Done en masse, it's spoiling anyone's happiness for not following social conventions. I don't like it.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
In love with famous people who can't write music
I like Adam Young a lot. I can't stand his music, but after reading his blog, I bet I'd love to meet the guy. And Miley Cyrus--I feel the same way about her. I'd totally go out with her or something.
It's kind of odd. A lot of the real hipster blogs I read are talking trash about them and their pretentiousness and character flaws. Guys, really? Just because they can't make music, they suddenly become bad people? Radiohead's my favorite band and yet I swear Thom Yorke is much more of a dick than any of these teeny boppers will ever be.
(It's why I hope I'll never be famous. People might start liking my character.)
It's kind of odd. A lot of the real hipster blogs I read are talking trash about them and their pretentiousness and character flaws. Guys, really? Just because they can't make music, they suddenly become bad people? Radiohead's my favorite band and yet I swear Thom Yorke is much more of a dick than any of these teeny boppers will ever be.
(It's why I hope I'll never be famous. People might start liking my character.)
Monday, December 27, 2010
The day I get into college I will start an anime review blog!
Somebody shoot me before I write this blog!
Remember me as someone who at least tried to love (and succeeded in loving) the higher-tiered works, but alas never fell out of love with the romantic escapism which saved the life of a former friendless middle-schooler hooked on My Chemical Romance.
Remember me as someone who at least tried to love (and succeeded in loving) the higher-tiered works, but alas never fell out of love with the romantic escapism which saved the life of a former friendless middle-schooler hooked on My Chemical Romance.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
I've been thinking: almost all the songs I write on the guitar make use of the following:
- Constant change between the pentatonic scale and heptatonic scale
- Constant change between 4/4 rythms that go in groups of threes (like x--x--x--x--x-x-) and 3/4 rythms, and occasional arythmia
- Many major triad chords from many scales, which all blend to sound cool and discordant
- A constant low note (E is easiest) that sounds on off-beats to keep rythm
The songs usually have that classical Spanish guitar sound, something like Radiohead's Bodysnatcher-esque songs (that song is probably what I base everything I write on). The scale is all Tool and the Velvet Underground. I wonder why the latter two; I don't even love them amazingly much.
(Wow, analyzing my own music--am I pretentious?)
Friday, November 5, 2010
Annica!
Everything is passing by so fast.
At the end of the year I'll leave this country and most likely not see my friends here ever again.
I won't miss them, I don't think. I'll be caught up in the moments in college.
The past is never relevant. The past is but an aching pang in my stomach.
Life is the now-moments.
At the end of the year I'll leave this country and most likely not see my friends here ever again.
I won't miss them, I don't think. I'll be caught up in the moments in college.
The past is never relevant. The past is but an aching pang in my stomach.
Life is the now-moments.
The thing about teenagers is most are at about the same place in life: struggling to find their own identities and beliefs and dreams amidst a sea of hormones, scared and pessimistic about the big corporate world and all its sharp corners ahead of them, but still mostly alive and making it through for those odd moments of bliss and friends and family. That’s where my own friends are, at least, and that’s where Holden Caulfield was, and that’s where I am. Now, the thing about this thing about teenagers is they are mostly conscious of this fact and resent it. I do, at the very least. I swear, if I ever become a writer, to never write a novel targeted at teenagers, because of the ridiculous ease of such a task. I say just add to your character angst and selfishness and self-loathing and we’ll be soft-hearted enough to sympathize, even me. Oh, sadly, me: reader of A Clockwork Orange and The Great Gatsby and Ulysses in my freshman year. Listen, every teen hipster has a soft underbelly. We’re all catchers in the rye, keen on keeping those of our kind from the cruel of the corporate nightmare, all hail the subculture. We’re all a soft-hearted, cynical, lost bunch. Exhibit A: me. My life. What can we make of it? At the moment, we have (1) my five family members fearfully grabbing at what is left of my descent into sinful bohemianism, fasting for me, pleading with me, inspiring in me a guilt which watches over every sentimental moment I can hope to have with them. And then we have (2) one of my closest friends constantly stealing the spotlight with his highly cultured tastes, his brilliant mind, his admirable morality—oh, I do worship him, but do I bore him with my vulgar and unintelligent chatter?
We have (3) another friend who has opened up to me recently. Another, because—get this: every year I have maybe half a dozen people opening up their deepest, darkest secrets to me and thinking of me as their best friend. Oh, of course, I love them opening up. I do. And I love him. But when this sort of thing isn’t reciprocated, I just feel awful and drained. Or at least I think that’s the problem. And then we have these three friends over here (4), all quite happy people, and my favorites of the bunch. Little do they suspect: I feel horribly inadequate around them. Why? Every attempt to express affection comes off as stiff and unnatural, especially around that one girl. Now I withdraw when I see them, for sake of self-respect. Ah, selfish me! Do they suspect I dislike them? Lastly we have (5) a long distance relationship devoid of all feeling, Along with (6) a possible online crush--a sad girl of 15 who looks for comfort--to compensate. In summary, then: this current life is one defined by: five family ties, five close friendships, one online friendship-on-the-brink-of-romance, one stale long distance romance— all pervaded by sinful sycophancy, self-consciousness, and a (not entirely unfounded) sense of inadequacy. And guilt over it, mind you: I realize in all of this that I am committing the horrible and heinous offense of forfeiting authenticity for acceptance, paving the first tiles on the way to a corporate hell of act and tact. Continuing the example, I add to this tangle of thorns a something called “school,” which attacks every already-stressful afternoon social encounter with reminders of unfinished work from the night before, or failed subjects, or unsatisfying SAT scores. I fight it, of course. I scorn this Tool of the Man and all its worldly values of wealth and power, I tell yourself you don’t care and your highest goal is to own a bookstore and maybe a cat. But my stomach tells the truth in aching pangs: I, simply incompetent and in denial. Finally, in my room alone there are my attempts to escape with naïve dreams of childhood—my goals of life on the road, of offering ear and shoulder for come-and-go friends, of living for the miraculous and mind-boggling people that populate every corner of this stark existence!, of dying a savior—now crumbling away at the edges—Dear reader, behold, Exhibit A, (proudly written in a silly sort of mock-pretentious style that may quite possibly have been stolen from a certain narrator in a certain favorite novel, and excuse my temporary lack of identity)—such is the life, I think, of the mess that is the teenager; caught between a drive for authenticity and identity and an endless love for friends and family, fighting the gears of the corporate machine, picking up the vestiges of values and dreams after their foundations have fallen away, and for the first time getting fleeting glances at the still ineffable face of empty, such is the life.
We have (3) another friend who has opened up to me recently. Another, because—get this: every year I have maybe half a dozen people opening up their deepest, darkest secrets to me and thinking of me as their best friend. Oh, of course, I love them opening up. I do. And I love him. But when this sort of thing isn’t reciprocated, I just feel awful and drained. Or at least I think that’s the problem. And then we have these three friends over here (4), all quite happy people, and my favorites of the bunch. Little do they suspect: I feel horribly inadequate around them. Why? Every attempt to express affection comes off as stiff and unnatural, especially around that one girl. Now I withdraw when I see them, for sake of self-respect. Ah, selfish me! Do they suspect I dislike them? Lastly we have (5) a long distance relationship devoid of all feeling, Along with (6) a possible online crush--a sad girl of 15 who looks for comfort--to compensate. In summary, then: this current life is one defined by: five family ties, five close friendships, one online friendship-on-the-brink-of-romance, one stale long distance romance— all pervaded by sinful sycophancy, self-consciousness, and a (not entirely unfounded) sense of inadequacy. And guilt over it, mind you: I realize in all of this that I am committing the horrible and heinous offense of forfeiting authenticity for acceptance, paving the first tiles on the way to a corporate hell of act and tact. Continuing the example, I add to this tangle of thorns a something called “school,” which attacks every already-stressful afternoon social encounter with reminders of unfinished work from the night before, or failed subjects, or unsatisfying SAT scores. I fight it, of course. I scorn this Tool of the Man and all its worldly values of wealth and power, I tell yourself you don’t care and your highest goal is to own a bookstore and maybe a cat. But my stomach tells the truth in aching pangs: I, simply incompetent and in denial. Finally, in my room alone there are my attempts to escape with naïve dreams of childhood—my goals of life on the road, of offering ear and shoulder for come-and-go friends, of living for the miraculous and mind-boggling people that populate every corner of this stark existence!, of dying a savior—now crumbling away at the edges—Dear reader, behold, Exhibit A, (proudly written in a silly sort of mock-pretentious style that may quite possibly have been stolen from a certain narrator in a certain favorite novel, and excuse my temporary lack of identity)—such is the life, I think, of the mess that is the teenager; caught between a drive for authenticity and identity and an endless love for friends and family, fighting the gears of the corporate machine, picking up the vestiges of values and dreams after their foundations have fallen away, and for the first time getting fleeting glances at the still ineffable face of empty, such is the life.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
How to create your very own Jandek-style album:
The musical process:
1. Detune every string on your guitar. Strum an open chord.
If any two strings retain any semblence of concord, repeat.
2. Take an audio recorder and turn it on.
3. Press random frets and strum erratically.
4. Scream your thoughts on the first thing that comes to mind--
be it Jesus, drug trips, or days of the week coupled with the names of famous European cities.
1. Detune every string on your guitar. Strum an open chord.
If any two strings retain any semblence of concord, repeat.
2. Take an audio recorder and turn it on.
3. Press random frets and strum erratically.
4. Scream your thoughts on the first thing that comes to mind--
be it Jesus, drug trips, or days of the week coupled with the names of famous European cities.
The cover art:
You have a choice here.
You have a choice here.
You can take a poorly-lit picture of:
1. Yourself,
2. Buildings,
or 3. Furniture.
1. Yourself,
2. Buildings,
or 3. Furniture.
-
-
Bonus Indie Creds:
Send this guy a copy of your record, along with a genuine Jandek record.
Ask him which is which.
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