Cry Havok

My eyes water a lot more in my 40s.

I'm fleetingly aware that my emotions have been out of whack for most of my life. I'm still not sure what emotional health really looks like; without a model, I'm unclear that I'm doing it "right."  But the depressions are shallower and briefer, and I like to think the mood swings have improved as I age. (Although they started surfacing again a few months before Player 3 was born. Maybe they were more untriggered than resolved.)

Another sign that the terrain is shifting though, is how much more frequently I tear up at music—compared to the "never" of my youth.

I have a long-standing love of Bill Mallonee/Vigilantes of Love music. A few years ago, I noticed that just the opening chords of his song, Nothing Like a Train, make me moisten around the eyeballs. When I hear them, I relax. It feels like everything will be OK.

"Irrational" is a word that gets thrown around a lot, and feelings are almost by definition irrational. But there's no reason for me to feel "OK" about this song. It's a sad song. I just do. A couple of Dar Williams ditties do it to me too, and a tune by the Weakerthans. Something in the folk/rock makeup that turns the spigot, somehow.

Most recently, I've noticed it at church. The community we're settling into in Austin, Servant Church, does hymn standards much more often than my beloved Circle of Hope.

Circle's DIY ethos extended all the way to worship music. They wrote a lot of their own songs, and cribbed a few others. That was fine.

But hymns have been winnowed. You don't generally hear crap hymns. Since most hymns are more than 20 years old, there's a clear consensus on what the good ones are, and there's a nice catalog of them. You can sing the good ones on a rotation, and it takes a long time to repeat.

These old, tested songs, I did not know how deeply they had burrowed into the masonry of my heart. "Immortal, Invisible" is not what you'd call a tearjerker, but that thing unpacks majesty. Somewhere in the second or third verse, once it's good and warmed up, I need a tissue.

Will this phenomenon intensify? I imagine embarrassing myself as I get older, turning weepy every Sunday, more frequently dashing to hit skip on a shuffle play because I don't want to cry right now dammit.

I don't like that I've become this way. But also, I love it. I spent a bunch of years in a Cold War with emotion. Like an arm slept on, I can expect some prickle as this limb awakes.

BABYMETAL

I found this at boingboing, and it's pretty much got my head in a vise now. Amazacrazy.

Biting Elbows music video

This video is amazeballs and rated R.

Don't be fooled by the resting-state boobs--it's a violence thing. Amazing first-person violence that you should watch full screen.

Biting Elbows - 'Bad Motherfucker' Official Music Video from Ilya Naishuller on Vimeo.

The continued work of awakening

I dreamed last night that I heard Steve Taylor died, so I Googled him to find out if it was true, and to my horror -- surprise twist! -- there was no mention of Roland Steven Taylor on the Internet at all.

Now that I'm up, I don't know why that was horrific, but in dreamworld, this was like taking the final exam for the class you forgot you signed up for. OMG serious.

On awaking, I immediately went downstairs and let the dog out and checked my email. Sometime later in the morning, I checked on Steve. Nobody panic.

If you knew me well in college, you knew I was pretty into Steve Taylor. He was funny, clever, pro-Jesus, and he could do it all in song. My personal ambition sleepwalked through college... I couldn't say I wanted to do what he did. But Steve Taylor was a noise the direction of wakefulness.

Around the time I graduated, he released his best album, Squint, and then traded performing for producing. It was the mid-90s, we were all becoming different people at that point. I started working on Dungeons & Dragons for a living then. We've all been there.

In the mid-aughts I checked in on Steve again, and found he'd gone to movie making. He made a flick starring Michael W. Smith of all people, called The Second Chance. It's a buddy movie about a white suburban pastor and a black inner-city pastor. It's in my Netflix queue now, I'll let you know what I think at the end of the month after I watch it.

And today? Now? He's in Portland working on a Blue Like Jazz movie.

BLJ's author, Donald Miller, is someone else I would have wanted to emulate if his books had been around in college. I'm sort of glad they weren't. They could have misled a sleepwalker.

These days, I get a prickly feeling on my neck when I consider trying to create some piece of art for an explicitly Christian audience. It seems as though it would be easy for me. And financially rewarding. I could do funny, touching memoir for the saved set. I could do a passable Don Miller.

But as I start down that road, I think of Jesus talking:

If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

A whole chunk of text there, Matthew 5:43-48, has kept me up nights. That bite's got a lot of hard-to-swallow. Jesus tells you to be "perfect" in there. He tells you the rough truth that God makes the rain fall on the righteous and the unrighteous. And to me, he says that writing books for my brothers and sisters is not particularly what I'm called to do.

Look, God has a whole lot of things for a whole lot of people to be doing. I still love Steve Taylor's music and wit, and Don Miller is a decent writer. Don't hear me saying that what they've chosen to do is wrong or subpar or Not In God's Will.

But as my personal ambition rubs away eye boogers and stares into the bathroom mirror wondering when it shaved last, those noises... they're not for me to follow. I don't want to greet my brothers for a living. There's too many other people out there who need introductions.

I am glad Steve is alive, though. Check out his movie blog.

Yo Mon

I watched the first disc of the G.I. Joe cartoon season 1 (1983) this weekend, and the primary thing I'm left with is the theme song played over and over in my head, except instead of the brass and strings of the original theme song, it's played with a steel drum that sounds slightly synthesized, like someone sampled it into a Moog.

I don't have time to expound on this, but yes, it is maddening.

Hijinx: I didn't know I thought that fast

I'm going to a game convention next month. Yesterday the organizer asked me to run Hijinx, the d20 mini-game of cartoon bands I wrote approximately one thousand years ago for Polyhedron magazine.

When the game came out in 2003, it met an audience brimming with indifference. A few people loved the humor and the gall of the idea. A few people hated it, and called it wasted space. But mostly nada.

It was my favorite thing I wrote that year though. I'm still grateful to the editor, Erik, who took the big goofy gamble with me, and Kyle, the art director, who made it look pretty good.

But when Kevin asked me to run it yesterday, I froze for a few minutes. Could I even do that? My embarrassing (but in retrospect, obvious) confession is that I never even playtested the damn thing. I wrote 20,000 words on inspiration and deep rules knowledge. Is it... is it even playable? Do I know what to do with Quickenstein's monster? Would I get stagefright? Sometimes I get stagefright!

A few hours later, without any conscious effort, I had a setup, a villain, a plot outline, and a crazy topicality which, I daresay, would make a fantastic new millennium episode of Josie and the Pussycats. Just like that. Inspiration and rules knowledge just showed up again.

So I said yes. Now I have to reread the rules and figure out if this thing is playable in the next two weeks. Loving my goofy ideas helps a lot though.

Uke cuties on YouTube

Danielle Ate the Sandwich is a cute ukelele player I discovered last year and then forgot about and then re-discovered today.

Below is a video where she covers Hall & Oates's Rich Girl, with a Scrubs breakdown in the middle. It's the kind of enjoyable that slips a smile over your mouthhole, like a reverse pickpocket.

Normally, I am of the opinion that God put YouTube commenters on Earth so that true illiterates have someone to look down on. For this particular video however, NESMonster has fully articulated my feelings by saying, "I HAVE SIX CRUSHES."*

Her original songs are funny and sweet and sad and once I listen to one, it's hard not to listen to more. Just in case you're like me that way, her MySpace site has a whole bunch you can listen to. There's also links to buy her music if you're inclined. I might be inclined.

However, I think I prefer the videos because you can watch her mug for the camera and wear costumes. You also see the backdrop of her trashy, lo-fi apartment. It seems to be an intentional choice, almost an aesthetic. It invites you to imagine things about her life, encourages you to think you're friends.

After watching a couple of Danielle's videos, and thinking you're some kind of Internet pals, you notice there's a well of young ukelele players all in each other's business. They're all handsome and/or pretty, and have senses of humor and are at least decent musicians. And they all seem to know each other, like there's a circle of young, quirky friends having a video hootenanny right in front of you.

It makes me want to join them. It makes me wish I'd decided to be a musician instead of a writer. It makes me want to MAKE.

Here's another one in case you're not going to click through and experience for yourself what I'm describing.

*Because my wife will read this and leave some cryptic comment, let me take this moment to assure her that all six crushes are on her and her alone.

Lucidity is becoming optional

Oh my gosh, have I listened to The Flaming Lips cover of Borderline a lot today. Like, seriously, if I weren't already me, I would have made me turn that off. I watched the video about three times, and then put it in the background while I wrote, and then tabbed back to hit play again every time it stopped.

After about 10 of those, it was time to download it. I just set it on "Repeat One" in iTunes, and it played and played and played. Now, about 10 hours later, I'm singing the Madonna version in my head. What the hell?

My wife is gone for the weekend, and of course I miss her, except that I don't miss her at all because I love having the house to myself. I can retreat so far into my cave that daylight becomes an ironic metaphor that you use to mock people who make the mistake of showing emotion.

Except that there's still 2 dogs I have to pay attention to, because if I don't they poop in the house and it stinks and I have to clean it up. That's when I really miss my wife.

If there's one thing I don't recommend it's getting your hand stuck in a vise. If there's another thing, well you and I both know, there's a lot of things I don't recommend.

I never even say, "Don't do anything I wouldn't do," because that means your only allowable actions are sitting in the half-dark and reading the Internet for 36 hours straight.

Speaking of which, I can't recommend that either, because I've been up for about 36 hours straight now, and you start making choices like listening to The Flaming Lips for about 4 hours in a row, and reading 50 pages of a Jack Handey book, and then leaving a rambling blog post.

Here's the video, if you want to watch it 9 or 1o times too:

The flaming lips Borderline

Huey Lewis

I got pulled over for speeding today, and as I rooted in my glove compartment for my registration, I saw a cassette tape.

Tonight, driving to the grocery store, I pulled it out and put it in my car’s tape player. (My car was built when they still put cassette players in cars.) I thought it was a mixtape, but incorrectly cataloged within was Huey Lewis and The News, Fore (1986).

The audio quality of a 22-year-old tape in my car’s decade-old deck was predictably lacking. But I think I prefer it that way. Altered, muted, discernable, but distorted.

I’m trying to plumb what it is about Huey Lewis that appealed to me. I started listening because a girl I had a crush on liked the band. But my fandom has outlived my infatuation by a good 19 years to date.

Huey Lewis’s songs bear little resemblance to my history or inclination. In high school, I genuinely did not know that “Whole Lotta Lovin’” was about sex. I was slightly afraid of drugs and drinking alcohol. It is possible for me to be less rock ‘n’ roll, but to do so would require me to actively identify as something else—country or folk or classical or something. I’m as far from rock ‘n’ roll as ignorance and benign indifference can take me.

Even though Huey and I are pretty far apart, I don’t think I would have continued to like say, Duran Duran or Madonna if I had decided to listen to them because of a crush. I can't yet identify why that is. The music didn’t speak to any experience I had. I can’t even say the music is qualitatively “good,” although a few songs are hella catchy. It’s just that it’s mine.

Huey and the News still tour. They’re still a working band. According to Wikipedia, they have/had a plan to record a new album this year, and seemingly out of nowhere he did the theme song for Pineapple Express. Huey is well into his 50s—closer to 60, really—and the guy is still working.

Twenty years is an unprecedented amount of time for me to have artifacts. The idea that I have memories and feelings associated with an item 20 years old seems... singular. I have few intermittent moments with Huey between high school and now. It’s like it traveled through time.

Play through, Huey.

Another Jonathan Coulton Post

Here's a New York Times article about JoCo and the phenomenon of the Internet's effect on B-level creators. The author wants to suggest that the price of putting you in touch with your niche is hours every day of contact with them: answering emails, updating message boards, and appearing at online "events."

This is certainly ONE way to do it, and I am ready to believe it's the best way. But is it the only way? That level of interaction is exhausting.

This is not entirely academic for me right now.

Misery Loves An Audience

I was listening to a They Might Be Giants podcast on the way home yesterday and it contained a song that is catchy, and at the same time, a little awful. If you are a fan of TMBG, you will know this is not uncommon.

Aside: People whose opinions I respect have subtly poo-pooed TMBG for years, declaring them “only OK.” I used to think, “There must be something I’m not seeing that makes them less than great, because I think they're great. But maybe they’re not.”

Then on the train I thought, "Hey, you know what people whose opinions I respect? Screw you! I don’t know what your problem is, but this is great stuff. It speaks to me, and it’s inventive, fun, and thought-provoking, which is just about the most I want from art.”

Return: In this song, Renew My Subscription, John Linnell sings a song about (among other things) taking medication for psychosis. Many first-person TMBG songs are not necessarily autobiographical. But as I listened to the lyrics I realized: If this is not rooted in something personal, then the guy has done hella research. And really, it’s probably just personal.

They go:

I saw the thing about the heartsick shut-in
thought that I should cut in
and tell you ‘bout how
it woke me from a lifelong daydream
while I’ve been aging
you wrote it all down
though I recognized the words when I read them
I know I never said them
to people out loud

One, this is about aging. Two, this is about self-recognition and expression. Three, I didn’t write down the psychosis part of this song. Download the podcast through iTunes to hear for yourself, or you can follow the somewhat complicated procedure through their site at TMBG.com. Or you could buy their Venue Songs album; the song is there too.

I started thinking about TMBG’s catalog, and realized that a lot of their songs, a whole lot of their songs, are about being alienated, confused, or mentally unwell. Even when they’re obviously talking about someone else (Meet James Ensor, Metal Detector) that person is still not your role model. Regardless of subject, their interest is in unwell people.

The music is fun. The lyrics are clever. And these guys did a children’s album, and they’ve got great senses of humor, and amid all of this, you can easily get caught in a life size smoke screen around the melancholy and disconnection.

TMBG’s first couple of albums were more nakedly unsettled, but it seems like they lived some life, and went through a period of trying different things. I recently heard on another podcast that they were returning to playing older songs on tours, songs they hadn’t played live in 10 years. Renew My Subscription reminds me that they may be returning to the cleverly crafted expressions of alienation and perhaps songs about genuine insanity from their early days.

Furthermore: I began to put that together with some other artists/writers/musicians whose work I’ve recently plumbed deeply enough to realize that even though their output is fun, they’ve got a layer of sorrow/anxiety/unrest behind it.

I’ve always worked hard at concealing my misery in creative ventures -– including this blog. No one wants to hear about how depressed I’ve been, I think. That shit’s depressing. And even the people who want to be kind instead of disparaging or noncommittal, few are helpful when they try. Some people’s help just hurts more. So keep that away from the light, right? Deal with it solo and just give them what they want to see.

But listening to my favorite band on the train I discovered: The art needs to be miserable if you’re miserable. If misery is the truth you feel, then you have to put that in there. Trying to avoid it makes bad art. More often, avoiding it means you don’t do anything at all.