FORMER CITY

Dillon Geshel U.P.

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Where the pickup truck comes to a rest the road ends. The gravel two-track opens into a mud caked turnaround and the forest sways above the women in a warm, shaded greenery...

Last month I had a short story published in the first issue of Suchpress. Maybe you want to read it?

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How To Listen To Steven Michael Holmes' Debut Solo Album "Vacant" While Cooking Broccoli Cheese Soup Served Over White Rice

NOTICE: These are not instructions on how to cook broccoli cheese soup served over white rice. If you follow my cooking your soup will be a watery stool of near cheeseless broth, like mine. 

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Steven Michael Holmes' is a musician from Iron Mountain, Michigan. His debut solo album "Vacant" is for listening to while cooking broccoli cheese soup served over white rice, among other things.

Make sure it is the coldest day of the year. You will be home alone because the university where you are employed is closed due to inclement weather. Your wife, on the other hand, still has to work. It will be your duty then, being that you are home and with the time, to cook dinner.

You are not a cook. Call your wife and ask her how to cook broccoli cheese soup served over white rice. Listen carefully because you do not know anything about cooking, really. 

Now you can cue up "Vacant". Go ahead, do a little smirk/laugh about the title of the first track: Stay Warm. Get that out of the way on this -35 degree day before going any further. Try not to think about the irony too much, it will detract from your listening. On wards.

Bring three cups of water to a rolling boil. While you wait for the water to bubble over beat your hollow chest with open hands like drums in sync with the first track. Consider the upbeat nature of the riffs throughout and their clever absurdity when paired with the melancholic lyricism.

"if you'e not home stay warm tonight / whether or not you ever come home at all"

The water will begin to boil with the ascent of the songs final minute. It is the best sixty seconds of the song, a buildup not so different from the rolling stir of heated water over time. Pour in three cups of rice while the drums, piano, and guitar splash over you. The song is nearly over but it is the best part so listen closely.

Stir in three cups of white rice and remove it from the stove top. Cover and let sit until the rice absorbs the water. 

Your stove is small and inconvenient and because you spent the last four to five minutes playing drums on your body you haven't started to cook the broccoli. Drop broccoli in a pan and toss periodically.

Now would be a good time to begin boiling water for the soup mix but you only have one pan large enough, and you've used it to make the rice that's currently drying out. Let the rice and broccoli sit. Wait it out. 

Sit and muse. What better track than Still, There Is You for a good muse? This track was literally written for your wait. It begs reflection. Open the shades in the kitchen and peer at your half reflection in a frosted window. 

"in a forest of empty trees / a nest and a broken seed / in a forest of empty seeds / the cold earth beneath our feet / when nothing's left - still there is you"

Check on your dogs in the other room. Make sure to turn up the volume so Rural Hymns (instrumental) is still audible from your room. Find your dogs sprawled out on your bed in bright patches of sunlight, asleep before their dog senses bring their eyes open and upon you, slow like. Admire their adorability but not for long. Should you hover for more than a moment the dogs will expect something, a treat or a walk. "Vacant" is not for walking your dogs, so repress that urge.

Okay. The rice and broccoli are done; combine them into a bowl large enough for them both and rinse the used pot so you can start the soup mix. Do this quietly. Nothing is boiling at this point so take advantage of the silence.

Admire the use of a kalimba to accent the striking chords tagged on to the end of verses. Go ahead, let your arms freckle with goosebumps at your absolute reverence for the instrument and how it's used there. The song is devoid of any words. This is to focus your attention, again, on the kalimba, but also the violin. Enjoy it, because Rural Hymns (instrumental)  is a definite highlight of the album. 

But you've been too consumed with "Vacant", you're lost in it! Rush to the stove to keep the water from boiling over. Turn the burner to medium and add the broccoli cheese soup mix. 

Stir the soup occasionally, allow the steam to warm your face while the album comes to a close.

The wind outside, the real reason for the extreme cold, lashes at the thin walls of your apartment and howls with the sharp creak of its window's wooden frames. Remember now that you're alone, shut-in because of the bitter cold. Feel a bit empty, let yourself wallow. But also think of "Vacant". How it makes you feel less alone in its mutual solitude. 

"it's not like you to run away from this / remember june when december hits"

Shut off the burner. Serve yourself a cup of broccoli cheese soup over white rice. Take notice--you used too much water in the soup mix. What you have made is not very good but I suppose still resembles broccoli cheese soup. So eat it. And stay warm. 

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You can get Steven's killer album here, do it now. 

[formercity]

My first short story publication, from October of this year. 

[formercity]

How To Listen To "Lightning Bolts And Man Hands" By Hymie's Basement

This song is called Lightning Bolts and Man Hands, by Hymie's Basement, a collaboration between Yoni Wolf and Andrew Broder released in 2003.

It is for walking your dogs in the finally here-to-stay snow. You'll still need to hear snow crunching beneath your feet, so make sure the song is not too loud. Only do this at night, too, on old side streets of small towns where fluorescent street lamps still flood orange against snow. Make sure the song is not too quiet as well. Adjust the volume so that you cannot hear anything beyond your immediate footsteps and the song pulsing in your ears. This is important because you should be made to wonder what creature or thing your dogs rear up at down dark driveways or atop bare trees. I know this may sound scary but it is important to do, because this is what the song is for.  Do not try to watch the music video during this time, especially if you are walking two or more dogs. It would be difficult and would impede on your experience of listening to the song while being alive outside. Two dogs is the perfect number of dogs to walk while listening to this song. Watch the video later to warm up from your walk.

For minimal embarrassment, listen to the line "You can slip on a banana peal to death" at 3 minutes and 13 seconds while your two dogs poop simultaneously, tugging both your arms in opposite directions while you stand watching for strangers on the sidewalk. The idea of death by banana peal slippage will counteract your unbelievable ability to look stupid. 

It is not important that you finish the song. If the song is not over and you are nearly home, continue on your way. As long as it is nearing the end you will be alright. Remove your headphones while you come up the stairs to your apartment. Hang them from your cold neck. Listen to the rise and fall of a booming organ during the last moments of the song while greeting your wife with a chilled kiss.

Consider the title of the song. It is a great title for a song. 

[formercity]

The Static Potential Of A Ski Mask

And today, here is another. More lyrics from a band that never came to be. I sort of jump around a bit in this one -- I started writing about the way violence against women is often portrayed in the media, how small town's often lament on a rapist's punishment, as if the men or boys committing these acts are the real victims. But I trail off, as I'm also interested in the masculine reaction to the oppression of women. Sometimes men (unknowingly, maybe) use this oppression to make it into a game of their own, where the women are all but forgotten. Like the super hero's quest for vengeance in a Hollywood movie.

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How many more Jane Doe’s must die At the bat of an eye Lipstick that crucifies The boys came home in mud We held them close and hid the blood Their sickness nurtured through ‘Cause their lives were wasted too One more careless report And I’ll castrate their hate

Yes this is reflective of male anger displaced Murder of the men involved, they scratched an itch Ski maks swell electric with a shock, that bitch Murder of the men involved, vengeance, no love No love, no love This mindless banter is the kind we use for feed Your rape alley is the cold blood that fuels me But no case can be solved through any bitter decree To silence is oppression And Violence an obsession No justice for the women Whose souls are seeping sands Through the tight grip Of a mans flexing hand

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True North

Taking a break from what I'm working on right now to get some of these old drafts out of the queue. These are lyrics I wrote for a hardcore band that never got off the ground. We practiced a hand full of times and wrote a few songs together. I was really into it, but we all ended up moving away from each other and so it never really materialized. Anyway, here's some words about rural violence. How we don't see it, even when it's buried out back.

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True North is the dead end of a cemetery It's the toxic pride your father threw up [before he] murdered his wife She's not your mother, he says she's not your mother She's the compost in fall at the back of the lot Spring is no ailment for crime [committed] amongst the already dead Remembered only as the secret that he can not tell A hidden scripture; no slab that tells  The story that he knows so well He knows so well

No compass bearing north is a science itself When the body of your mother turns the needle around You cannot teach truth like a story to tell We believe what we know 'cause there is nothing else

True north is a fogged mist of memory The violent ring of a bell What he's learned from God is a vision of hell  Where his father preaches hate from his cell

The only truth to be seen  Is well out of reach The upper branches of a birch tree The owls are not what the seem

He can't condemn the way he was raised He'll see the secret in the cemetery through to his grave What we can't condemn we will always repeat Now his own wife is buried there amongst the leaves 

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The Balancing Of Scales, Or Happiness Here And Anywhere.

Today I rode 7.9 miles on my bicycle. It felt like a lot more than that because the first two miles consisted of ascending an old highway that seemed to never end, another climb hidden behind every false celebration of summit. I looped around the township on old highways that once held pockets of farm land, now just big old homes surrounded by fields without cattle. It’s beautiful and every home I see on these rides I wish was my own.

Towards the end of my ride I came upon a girl kneeling in a front yard overgrown with dandelions, counting the ones she held by stems in her hand. A brother, maybe, just as young, was shouting something at her from a tree. As I approached they both stopped and stared until I passed, their voices behind me resuming with the chirp and holler of birds.

What else. I started this blog to keep myself writing regularly. I find myself often in spells of reading that for some reason excuse writing. Or at least that’s how I often see it. I may not have written anything for the day, but I finished a book, maybe, or read a couple of essays. As someone with aspirations to write more frequently and seriously one day, maybe the emphasis on consuming rather than creating is an important one right now. Either way, I’m trying to find a balance. Hence the blog.

I was talking with a friend recently and he said “We play music right now because we’re in our twenties, we can do that. It’s later that our creative focus lends more to writing, maybe in our thirties.” I think what he was talking about was obligations. And the lack of them when we’re young and without any immediate and important engagements, like a family. I suppose that’s partly true, for some people. It reminded me again of mediation and balance. It’s possible to live beyond yourself, to care more about another than any bone of your own being, and still find personal satisfaction and fulfillment. I like to think it works for me.

I finished my under graduate degree about a month ago, and since then, I’ve had a strange calming sensation with where I’m at with my life. For the first time in years, I’ve felt no immediate need to leave this small and wooded corner of the world. I can’t articulate it very well, but it’s like my perception of place has changed, and I think it has a lot to do with the people who’ve been close to me for a long time and those who’ve only recently graced me with their presence. They help me forget what I detest about this place, and in turn remind me that notions of ‘place’ as a reflection of happiness is a trick of the brain. I don’t need to be in any particular place to be happy.

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Everything All At Once And Always

There is so much happening and quickly. I've got less than four full weeks of class left until I graduate and then it's all energy focused on the wedding that follows. For now, I'm mostly trying to pass the last of my STEM credits, writing HU papers in between,  desperately finding the time to work, and taking care of wedding things on the weekends.

And there's the new city come June, I'd hope. If all works out the fiance and I will find jobs south of here, moving in with my brother and his girlfriend. We're house hunting. 

One of the bands I play drums for is releasing a new EP really soon and just booked our first couple shows in some time. Another band I play with, the louder one, is playing a couple fests in the next few months. Excited for that. 

I've been writing about music a lot for the Midwest blog. Looking at the week ahead, it always seems completely improbable that I'll have a review or interview ready to be posted, and yet I come through. If you care enough about something you'll make time for it, always. I also recently found a blog to start publishing reviews not as focused on the Midwest. They're based in the UK and I'm really impressed at the quality of the writing and the site's design. It's not something I find that often in hardcore and punk blogs. 

I can't wait to finish school. I'll write about whatever I want and work and live with my favorite person and soon to be wife. 

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Effing Blah, Blah.

Gosh it's been awhile since I've taken the time to write here. I had the urge moments ago to update my blog, and regardless of my work load tonight and for the rest of the week, I knew if I shook the impulse I wouldn't get it back again for awhile. So I best take it. 

I've been playing shows. Lots of shows. More shows than I've ever had the opportunity to play before. It's silly, maybe, how different that means in this community as opposed to most others in the lower 48(47 excluding my own? An expression we maybe don't think enough about. I am not thinking enough about it), I'd imagine. Between the two bands I'm playing with we've been playing three times a month all year. We released our first EP for one of the bands the first weekend in March, and we're taking the rest of the month off to practice. I think we're all really happy with the music we've been creating lately and we don't wanna spoil that. We're stepping back, looking at what we're doing, and asking, what else? How can we make this better? We're writing new material. 

I started writing for a online music and culture blog that focuses in on the Midwest. Up until now, they've only ever covered indie and folk music. They've been doing that for two years now, and S, the sites creator, approached me about expanding their coverage to punk and hardcore music. I was elated. I have secretly always wished he would ask me. Although the blog is run out of this microscopic town, it's gained notoriety across the Midwest and clearly doesn't contain itself to this local and mostly nonexistent music scene. So, it's an outlet I wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity to utilize. I tried something like that once, more focused on the culture and perspectives of hardcore, but it never made it beyond my own insights. I was never able to solicit any submissions. I confess, I didn't try hard enough. I don't usually try hard enough. I am awake sometimes at night in the dark and I think to myself, I do not work very hard at most things. It's a irresponsible cycle of neglect that leads to sadness and in turn more neglect. I am shapeless. 

I am making a short documentary on a close friend of mine who is intensely bipolar. I cannot get him to talk about it. I don't want to say, talk about your medical diagnosis'. It's a project I'm working on for school and am very glad to be working with two other students who know how to talk to C better than I do. They are calm and welcoming and some how able to pull things out of C that I don't think he even knows about himself. When I am behind the camera, listening closely with headphones for any unwanted noise (traffic outside or neighbors locking and unlocking their doors in the apartment complex, his elderly neighbors watching porn loudly, he tells me), I am thinking, they are so good at what they do. They really saved the film. They swooped in when i couldn't get him to open up and brought the neglect out of C. I think I will stay behind the camera and watch them create magic. 

Someone once told me that to be a boxer you have to enjoy the pain. That there is a violent pleasure to be salvaged when your body has nothing left. The numb pulse of your jaw after an ardent and impassioned fight. I'm going to talk more about that in an album review for a band from Ann Arbor. I listen to them and feel like I've been punched in the face and then everything is tingly and swelling and okay because sometimes we're defeated. But sometimes we won't stop dancing even when we're being elbowed in the gut and kicked in the head because we're impassioned. 

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This Day Is Every Day And Thank You For That

On most nights, when I come home from work, I walk through the darkness of the kitchen and into the dining room, always illuminated with light, the table a mess of papers and open text books. Everything is scattered across it's wooden surface. There is something I can warm up and eat that was cooked hours before. There are the dogs, running and yelping for the front door to see who's entered their home. And there she is, entirely consumed in the mess of it, her twelve hour clinical shift at the hospital only the half of the work. She is somehow still awake and slouched over the table scrawling notes on medications and some unknowable patients diagnosis. 

She'll come to life, if only for a moment, when the opening and shutting of the door is coupled with the dogs ecstatic howl in a swarm of distraction that brings her out of the mental hold of an over worked undergraduate in nursing school. She'll push the chair out from under her and stand to stretch, yawn. Her arms reach somewhere above her head and her fingers clutch open and close. Come here, hug me, I've missed you. And she finds it in her to smile, too. 

Yes, she is still wearing her scrubs. Her shift ended hours ago but there is no time to change. She puts them on at the beginning of every semester, just to recall, maybe, that no, they are not flattering. I won't hear about their bland, unfitted cut again. Not for a few months or so because now she's in the thick of it. It's not of much concern to a girl working twelve to fourteen hour days between school and work. 

What I don't tell her, what I forget, shelved somewhere in a summery recess of my mind and clouded by our busy schedules is how pretty she is. She could be draped in curtains and I'd know the body beneath it like snow hiding the fall. She's all colors.

I remember when I first thought there might be something between us. How I thought I'd be dating the prettiest girl around, and god damn I thought she was beautiful. Her bright hair dropping just to the side of her face, her eyes an indescribable color, and her face so freckled and defined by her jaw bone you'd swear it could cut your hand if you pulled away too quickly.  And you might say that's shallow in some way. But it didn't feel much like that to me when we started to date and she filled any shallow cavities in my brain with her wit, her overwhelming pursuit for good in this world, her face and chest flush the first time she told me she loved me. 

She says it again now when we hug and I lift her and her back cracks in one hundred places. We are half way between the kitchen and the dining room. Where I'm standing is dark, but the brightness of the dining room is spilling over into the kitchen and warming me, a transfer of heat maybe traveling through our hold. From her to me. Our enormous hold. I tell her I love her too and I don't let her go for a whole minute but it's only a flash in the realm of things to come and have passed. She steps away from me to return to her work and I think of her scrubs and her naked skin beneath them and how nearly four years later all I want when work is over and she falls asleep at the table with med sheets pressed against her forehead, everything she has to give exhausted for the day, is her. 

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Somehow I Ended Up Writing About Cops

It's twelve degree's outside and snowing. It's been cold all week and didn't snow at all until last night. The roads are covered in ice and blanketed by a thin layer of snow. My little car doesn't like this very much at all. Sometimes on my way to school the car starts slipping, dancing side to side across the highway, always flirting with an accident with oncoming traffic. Some how I always manage to regain control before its initial loss becomes fatal, or I end up in a four foot snowbank that softened the impact and am able to push my way out. My car is made almost entirely of plastic. Someday if the road conditions prevail my car will fracture and explode into tiny red slivers, leaving no dents or scratches, but probably nothing being left behind at all. 

I've never been in a car accident. I've never even had a ticket, though I've been pulled over on a number of occasions. The most memorable of which was when I was only seventeen. I had very recently got my drivers license, and I was driving around in my caravan while my younger cousin and his friends leaned out the side doors, completely opened, and screamed obscenities at drunks wandering about from one bar to the next. When the officer pulled me over, he asked me first what the hell I was doing. Not knowing exactly what to say and trying to avoid the whole situation of the doors being wide open with teenagers hollering from inside, middle fingers flying high, I said, "I just got off work, I'm on my way home." That was true, too. It was late and I was working at a local restaurant that had us closing up for the night between eleven and midnight. I don't remember how I met up with my friends afterwards but we were on my way to my house. 

Of course, what makes the story great, is the officers satisfaction with my statement. He said, "Oh, okay," and peered into the car to get a better look at all the other kids. Some how, my answer was, in his eyes, a worthy excuse for why there were children, only moments ago, screaming and hanging out of my van while it drove through down town. It was also funny to me, that when he peered into the van, he was able to name off every kid in the car, and did so in a tone of voice that suggested, of course it's these kids. These god damn skateboarding kids. He'd seen us all before, many times throughout the summer, kicking us out of skate spots and writing down our names, or whatever names we had given him on that particular day, in order for him to keep track of who was where and when and what the fuck they were up to with those mother fucking skateboards. I didn't get a ticket. 

I had a cop pull me over once and tell me that the air freshener hanging from my rear view mirror was illegal. He had followed me for a few blocks, at which point I just pulled over, because I don't play that game, and they never like that. "Why'd you pull over? You avoiding me? I never turned my lights on." If I know it's coming I'm not going to drive at night with their headlights three feet behind my tiny car, glaring into my car and blinding me. It was one of those pine tree looking ones, the kind you can pick up at just about any gas station, the kind that you hang from your rear view mirror. "An obstruction of view," he said. A slow night for him, I thought. 

When I was a senior in high school, my girlfriend and I decided to explore all the places we never made it to growing up in a northern town littered with abandoned mines and thick forests. We decided the best way to go about that was to go camping, a different location every weekend. There were always lots of other kids that came with us, and over the summer I had acquired something like eight or nine sleeping bags that had been left in my caravan. We always took the caravan camping. 

We carried axes, hatches, fire wood, and tents, all of these things scattered about in the van all summer. We also came across a lot of mannequin heads, somehow, the kind used at hair salons with full heads of hair, and burned them on our trips or ran them over or shut the back door of the van on the hair of them so they would hang from it while we drove around town. And so, that's another interesting story about being pulled over.

I was leaving a super store parking lot one night, which are lit up like a baseball stadium, and forgot to put my headlights on. Almost right after pulling out the parking lot, a cop pulled me over, and I knew immediately what I had forgotten.  I showed him that the lights worked, at his request, and then he came back to the drivers seat window, and peered into the car. Axes, machetes, and mannequin heads, some half burned and hairless. He had to ask. It would have been weird, maybe even a better story, had he not asked. I explained to him that my step mother was a hair stylist, and we had a lot of them lying around, and the axes were for our camping trips. I pointed out the sleeping bags to further make sense of the blades. I didn't get a ticket. 

[formercity]

Dentistry And Hardcore And San Francisco

Next week is supposed to be my fourth and final visit to the dentist in a string of painful and probably avoidable procedures. I had two crowns put on my teeth when I was supposed to have root canals. I told the dentist about the unusual amount of pain I was having from the temporary crowns and he went ahead and put the permanent ones on anyway. Yesterday I had to go back to get the nerves taken out of the tooth and a week from today they're going to fill it. I am more afraid of the dentist now than I ever was as a child. And I have always been afraid.

From the moment they sit me down in the enormous chair, it's leather cracking and curling at its edges, I start to sweat and tense up. When any sort of drill enters my mouth I swear to god my eyes roll back. And the Novocain, the needle. I mean, I'm pretty thankful that the procedure is mostly free of physical pain after the initial three shots of Novocain into my gums, but those initial shots, the very beginning of the hellish 45 minutes to follow, trigger and heighten my anxiety. I've never liked needles. I cannot think of more than a couple places on my body that would be worse to have a needle than in my mouth. 

When I got home, numb and drooling, I could not stop sweating. I had to force myself to sleep because the lifeless touch and feeling of my face makes me sick to think about. I hate nothing more than having to go to the dentist. 

This week, I've only got classes for three days. I have Thursday and Friday off for winter carnival. That means all the fraternities and sororities build snow statues and get wasted and it is not fun to be on campus. I will say I am going to use this time to catch up on homework but I probably will not actually do so. I'm supposed to be working on an Errol Morris style interview for a film class, in which I film and conduct an interview with a subject and try to achieve success beyond the passive 'talking head' approach. 

I'm playing two shows in two weeks at the end of this month and the beginning of March. I'm excited about that. One of the shows is going to be my hardcore bands EP release show. We've printed 50 little empty booklets with our band name and release title on the cover to sell with the CD's, probably for like 6 bucks each or something. I'm psyched about that as well. That's what hardcore has sort of always meant to me: an empty booklet, make your own meaning, fill it with words and ideas. So I suppose we're trying to promote that attitude in hardcore. 

I've been consuming San Francisco through memoir for the past couple months. Dave Eggers, James Ellroy, and Stephen Elliott have all had me itching for the city. I cannot wait to visit this summer and see about moving there in a year or so. If you came across this blog searching San Fran tags, answer me this: What other writers from the San Francisco area should I be reading? 

[formercity]

Murder Lighting / [PANK] 6 / John K Samson

[PANK] 6 today. It's got the prettiest cover out of the lot of 'em, that's for sure. The colors seem to shout Write Bloody and that's okay with me. I started reading it on my walk to class today and began with Frank Hinton. It was one of the first names I recognized in the contents page, and also, it's a pen name. We don't know who she is so that's somehow appealing in a distant, unreachable way. Her story is about a couple living in a flood damaged apartment. It's always raining and their always bored so they have sex and think about other people. Meteorologists and milk men. 

Last night my girlfriend bought John K Samson's first full length and I've been listening to it all morning. If you don't know, he's the singer and lead guitar player for Winnipeg based band The Weakerthans. He's one hell of a lyricist. He's also got a book coming out this month, which is a compilation of The Weakerthans lyrics and some additional poems he's written. I pre-ordered it a week ago. You should too. 

I'm having fun with hyperlinks today, as you have probably noticed. I don't know. I supposed all of those links lead to something that has something worth reading if you feel at all like you've wasted your time with me. 

I'm writing this from my lab at school. The computers are close together and I if I can't find a corner to settle into I won't stay. I think most students work on homework here. I usually just read online and blog. I have trouble writing fiction here. The whole room is lit up with murder lighting and I'm always seeing people I know who wanna know what I'm up to. My eyes hurt when I leave the building. Sometimes I come here before classes in the morning, around 8 am, and no one has turned the lights on yet, and it's okay then. 

[formercity]

There Is Too Much Of Me

I think today is the first time I've really had trouble filling this text box with words. Makes me wonder if this is the end of another short venture, another blog of mine to be abandoned in cyber space. I don't seem to finish much. I get overly ambitious at times and think everything is a good idea. So I create websites, half written fictions, start bands. I guess that's sort of evident in my decision to write about this inability to follow through rather than anything else right now. 

I played a show Tuesday night in a slightly larger city two hours south of here. It was maybe my worst performance with that band. I was completely sober when we played, and it sort of freaked me out, as I've taken to drinking before shows since I turned twenty-one last July. It takes the edge off. I'm not as nervous. So that's where I placed the blame when I was stumbling over fills and missing cues to pause or end a song. Of course, all of these fuck-ups just added to my nervousness, each song getting worse as my anxiety heightened and multiplied. In reality, it's because I haven't been playing drums enough. We didn't play together as a full band at all before the show. We're all living in different parts of the state right now so it's difficult for us to get together and practice. 

Driving home from the show I was thinking about neglect. I would have played much better if I was still playing drums everyday. I know it's strange, but for some reason I've never made the connection to my own ability to play with individual rehearsal. I thought about school--I'm not going to do well if I'm not studying--Why did I never make that correlation with music? Maybe because it's something I really enjoy. I never wanted to think of it as work. My brother plays lead guitar and writes most of the songs. He's always meeting people who come to our shows because they love what he's doing with music right now. I hate screwing that up. I start to sweat when I really think about. I get ambitious and then I forget.

It's mostly at night when I'm thinking these things. The night after a show, when I'm no longer super tired from the show itself, but can't stop thinking about how bad the show was. Or if I don't write at night, I fall into the same sleepless cycle. I'll lay awake and play through entire songs in my head, reminding myself then where I screwed up and how I can avoid repeating that mistake. I'll count the number of songs we have in my head. Wonder why we don't really have a web presence. We should have a Facebook. Write lyrics away in my head somewhere that won't be remembered in the morning. Half dream about playing out more for crowds other than bars. 

Last night was very much like this. I got to thinking about Blake Butler's Insomnia, and how I never seemed to have much trouble sleeping until I started reading it. Which isn't true at all, but I've become more aware of the room dark, something not right about me being awake. And that's how my brain rolls over, from music to writing, my other abandonment. I started an online blog/journal about perspectives and culture in hardcore not too long ago. I wrote two posts of my own for it and never ended up getting any submissions. That was a year ago. The site's still up, the domain name just waiting to expire, my posts full of broken links. I had trouble getting people interested. A lot of people in forums and other punk blogs got excited and wanted to write articles but there was little follow up. At one point, Pat Flynn, formerly of Have Heart, was going to write something. He was super excited to be asked to write an article rather than do an interview. I never heard back after that. 

I thought about writing this post last night when I couldn't sleep. There is something else about that time of night, when I'm half asleep with dreams but unable to bridge the gap to actually nod off. I get super ambitious during that time. For example, this post was initially going to be a review of Insomnia: A Portrait of Nothing that circled around my own sleeplessness and the thoughts that accompany it. I was going to submit it to HTML Giant's reviews section, and it would be accepted (dreamz). Had I been more awake, maybe I would have thought about how I had not finished the book, wouldn't for maybe another couple weeks with school the way it is right now. Funny to think about now, seeing as that sort of makes this post another reflection of intentions forgotten. 

But, there is this. It excited me. We played a weekend of shows across the state with this kids band a couple years ago. They we're way good. I had no idea he was a writer. 

[formercity]

Some Day Fictions

There are stories I keep off the page. Some day fictions. Combinations of words and thematics that I'd rather wait to write when I feel like i've really honed the skill. Then they will be good.

That's probably a lie, more like an excuse not to be writing. No harm in revision. I should really be writing these stories now, submitting them for publication with hope for feedback from editors. Feedback is what I am aiming for. I am not above it, obviously, because I've never had a national publication. I get so excited at the prospect of kind words of improvement.

I haven't actually submitted a short story for publication in over a year. I know that the stories are not there yet, not ready for print, and I guess I'm trying to save myself the embarrassment of rejection. I think, an editor I admire and respect read my piece and did not see it fit for his magazine. He knows my name now and can affiliate it with bad writing. And I do not want to dissapoint.

More excuses, I know. It's been difficult for me to know what to do next with my writing. I work with a piece of writing until it's as far as I feel like I can take it and I don't know what to do with it next. None of my friends write. Most don't read. I've exhausted all of the creative writing courses I can take at the university I attend (which are taught by a small press super hero of mine). I don't know who to approach so for the past two years I've just been aggressively consuming fiction from small press (mostly online) journals. I've emailed said professor about maybe looking over some of my work, but he's far too busy of a guy. I sort of felt bad for asking him.

I admittedly read more from the blogs in these magazines, lots of essays. I don't know why. I'm much more interested in writing fiction. A commenter in the thread of an HTML Giant post said the other day, (and I'm paraphrasing here rather than digging through posts) " Everyone wants to be a writer, not a reader. " 

I don't think i've romanticized the writer to that extent, but maybe I see a bit of myself there. I should read more short fiction. 

[formercity]

I want to leave this snowy place.

I am in a university library on a Sunday afternoon. I am thinking about San Francisco. There is homework that is not getting done. I can probably not move to or afford to live in San Francisco without finishing my degree. You see the problem here. 

I've been reading The Rumpus ever since Roxane Gay published her essay on the carelessness of sexual violence in the media and her addition to the Where I Write series. She is an alt lit crush. I met her once before I ever followed her writing and I didn't know then that I would later be sort of obsessive. Sometimes I read her and feel closer to my girlfriend. I don't know how or why but that is powerful.

It wasn't until earlier this week though that I started reading work by the websites founder, Stephen Elliott. I really like what I've read from him so far. The essay he wrote about his little brother coming to visit him in the city and the short piece on San Francisco have had me itching. I want to leave this snowy place.

I ordered The Adderall Diaries from another library last week and am excited to read it. It's arrival will mean I will do less homework, again. I just thought of both of these writers getting google alerts about this post and it excites me, for some reason. I don't really know anything about google alerts but I think that's what it's for. 

This weekend my girlfriend and I went out, just the two of us. We ate way too much food at a restaurant I used to work at. All of the cooks are frat kids and terrible co-workers but the food is great. It's also a micro-brewery. I saw at least three of my former professors there. The humanities department loves micro-breweries. We went to another one down the street for a drink and I saw a couple more professors. I just reread this paragraph and thought for a moment, fiction is easy. This, is work. This is bad writing and forced. 

I also got drunk and went snow skating. We drove around campus and rode down hills and off ledges. We got over a foot of snow in the past few days so it was pretty great. We ended up getting kicked out by an RA at one of the dorm halls for skating a loading dock. He doesn't have any sort of authority, but I have a class with him and didn't want to make it weird between us. He was wearing a hood that zipped over his face and had a skull design on it. Maybe he thinks that will make up for the badge he was missing. We said okay and left for home to play video games and drink more.  

The campus police here, they carry guns. They fought for many years for the university to give them guns. We live in a college town that would be scarce of any industry at all if it wasn't for the university. Something like 45% of the cities population is employed by said university. When the students go home for the summer, people lose their jobs for awhile and there is no one around. We nestle back into our tiny corner of the world and live on the beaches of Lake Superior for our two (three if we're lucky) months of summer. When the university caved and gave the rent-a-cops guns they said, "Okay, but you cannot have bullets." I have a terrible bias towards small town cops and I know it's not right but they make it difficult for me. 

This summer I'm going to San Francisco. One of my best friends just graduated from U of M and moved out there. He got an internship at a skateboard magazine (it's really like, the skateboard magazine). He is literally living out his childhood dream. I am so happy for him. His lady friend moved out there a few months before him. He went to visit her before moving there for good, and just walked into the magazine offices and asked for a job. He talked to them for awhile and they hired him. So I'm going to visit him and that should be pretty cool. I'm really excited to meet people out there and maybe make friends I like and can talk to about things of mutual interest. I'm so jacked on checking out the libraries. When I finish school in a year I want to fly out there again and apply for jobs at them all. 

[formercity]

The Static Potential Of A Ski Mask Or Male Anger Displaced Twice Over

I have been thinking about the static potential of a ski mask. The human head swelling electric with shock, a tight and warm itch for murder. Inside a dream and under the mask I am killing other men. I am killing men who know the itch.

I am watching Dexter too much and reading about the swarthy man. I am male anger displaced but focused in the opposite direction. Murder of the swarthy man in revenge of the woman is not justice. It is male anger displaced, made into a game for men, the women somewhere forgotten, gone.