Good Reader.
Congratulations. With your help last week’s post on Medium exceeded the average number of views Going For The Throat receives here. Your readership is keeping me alive. I am especially proud of this week’s post, Boil Water Order, and I think you’re going to like it.
See you on Medium motherfucker.
Proud and excited to announce this week’s post is featured on Medium! Please go there and show me some applause (icon of hands clapping at the bottom of, or just beside, the piece). Feel free to leave a comment, too, so they know we have arrived.
Thanks motherfucker!
It’s been a while but I am at a loss. The world may have gotten in more than it usually does but I haven’t been without inspiration since the early days at Going For The Throat. Those days the crisis was real. If I didn’t make it as a writer I’d be stuck behind a bar or working hospice for 9 an hour. Dressed like a Hershey’s Kiss on campus or test driving the Golfquick LE in Sugarland. My definition of “making it as a writer” is broad and wild. I can sit down and come up with 600 words out of thin air, and by keeping it simultaneously all too and not personal at all, the thing will find its legs and walk its way into you. The archetypes are free to roam. The fact that I’ve become a character in my own story, coupled with a 10-ton outrage and Black Irish honesty has made Going For the Throat a success. My definition of success, too, is unorthodox-but if anything is true about my 20+ year career trekking down the savage road of New Journalism, it’s that the medium is the message. That means that I’ve got my transmitter, just like in my Radio Days, and I can feel you out there listening. I’m a writer so I write. I still got a day gig, one that’s winding down, and I’m not 100 on what’s in store. I’m booking overtime-I hope to play every night and write every day. That’s been my dream and charge for as long as I can remember. “Writer’s Block” is less than a memory for me, but waking up today, fully clothed, in a dead confederate palace with all the curtains pulled back-is taking me back to when I knew I had to be a writer, and tried to do every day what I now do every week. Back then it was 1,200 and pure agony. I volleyed the imminent avalanche of self-hatred that would fall if I didn’t become a writer with the agony of coming up with 1,200 words every day. There was beer involved. And cigarettes you bet. It worked but it drove me out of my mind.
I’m just as fond of those hardbitten scoop days for what happened away from the desk. Hopping fences, getting shitty. Falling through the Night Kitchen, driving down dark barrio streets with my tongue in Gwendolyn’s teeth. My hangovers were grim back then, nothing compared to what was coming. It was beginning to get old but I saw no other way to assuage both the loneliness of writing and my utter dread of never becoming a writer-as the money ran out. I caught some breaks. I got a good job. I met Rich Okewole and Najla Assaf. I found my community. I was taken in by the good folks at the IPRC in Portland (and taken right back out by Trump’s America but that’s another story for another time). Perhaps my hesitation to pull the trigger this morning is indicative of the end of those Salad Days as a struggling writer. The gravy train has left the station. Of all my myriad blues and woe, movement seems to be the answer. As proud as I am of what I’ve become, I’m terrifed here at the midway. Possibilities that ain’t been realized won’t be and I could die at any time.
It’s got me shook. I quit my gig of 5 years, should be out October 1. I bought a car. I enrolled in this year’s SWRFA and sent 22 booking emails out into the Live Music Capital of the World, even canvassed West 6th. Survivors Wisdom tells me it’s time to grind it out, hit the road and stop being such a pussy. Maybe the truth is that struggle is over. Not this one, but that one. The battle with self can conclude. It’s I and I and a good night’s sleep contending for top place on my list of priorities. I’ve found myself. I am who I am. Cruel time has showed me who I am and branded me with the wisdom that there’s not enough time to change that now.
We both know there would never be enough time but that didn’t stop us before ain’t it though. We rebelled. We clanged against the deathhead, came for the Gods and offered them the head of the King. We bled for it, we had something to prove. It was useless, futile and fatal and the biggest waste of time. We squandered our youth. The youth is gone. It’s time to get off social media and take to the territory. Our lives depend on it. I got witchy women mixing up the medicine for me and an Ayurvedic scholar laying out a diet plan. I got Brother Don on the telephone and Sister Sarah at the other end of a computer screen. I’ve got friends like blood, holding vigil and corroborating and besides all this big love-a fear of death that is all too real. The prime motivator. The best time to hit it was a long time ago. The next best time is now.
I better see you on the streets motherfucker.
Hank was always great with the mundane
you couldn’t help but think
after all he’d been through
boredom was a prize for him-
as close as he could get to
being content.
His work helped you appreciate
small and uneventful moments
the minutiae, the drab, the slow
&still moments
when the war is over & you’ve
won yourself
when there’s nothing left for the
world to take
and nothing at all to prove
Hank knew
and the Buddha knew
and now you know it, too.
Oh, the work I could get done if my heart weren’t so full of hate.
–David Sedaris
I know this is not Church, but get close to the Lord. The world is getting close to the end.
–Little Richard
If it could happen then — in 1980 — then it can happen now.
–Scott Crawford
We love your voice.
–Rebecca Loebe
I’ve been clean and sober for over 2 years, but you’d never know it looking at my apartment. It looks like I been riding with the King, drinking with Papa and partying with Guns ‘N Roses. My kitchen doubles as a place to type, much like Bukowski and Hunter Thompson’s did-but don’t ask. Boxes full of Farewell to Armor and Anthology Philly (WragsInk), September and All in the wind (Yellow Lark Press) are underneath the War Room table. The black nest of power cords, USBs and chargers beside it ain’t pretty either, and it’s a fire hazard besides. Topo Chico bottles and La Croix empties christen the floor like cities and the bedroom at the back of the mansion is sinking in a cyclone of fitted sheets and pillows. The bathroom is gross and there are piles of clothes everywhere. “Dude clean” is apt and I’d do well to get a maid-but then I’d have to pre-clean, like Doc does, and her visits would be another deadline for me to stroke out over. I have no excuse and no one to blame. It’s a fucking mess in here.
The last 4 days on shift were an epic and colossal laziness, a laziness I needed to recover from, which is why I’m sitting here at 3 in the afternoon sipping cold coffee in my sleeping cargos, writing. The world is out there and at large. But I couldn’t get to sleep until after 2 last night, when I finally pulled earbuds from the phone and left Uncle Hank and Mike Patton mid-show. We’re not even halfway through the summer and I feel fine. The new lease starts 8/15 and I’ve got a flurry of shit to get cracking on, none of which I started, or even attempted to, since we last spoke. As per usual, I sat down to write this with the intention to bag my bad blues, let you know what’s bothering me and get right to it. Besides being beholden to a deadline, and despite all appearances of transparency at GFtT, there’s a lot of shit I’m loathe and even ashamed to admit. Mostly it’s how I haven’t done much with my time, that I’m depressed and stuck winding down the end days as an indentured servant. I’ve squandered precious time, that for the last couple years I only sensed running out, winding down, acutely and terrifyingly-fuck.
My other blunders, faults and peccadilloes-I’ve been writing them down, just haven’t posted them here. They’re in a file called FVK Daily, a draft of a blog post like this one except it goes on and on, listing and enumerating all my dirties and lust, all the venom and corruption that haunts me daily. Maybe it’s my Catholic upbringing, or the imperative of Natural Selection to never be satisfied-but I feel like I can do it, get it all out and fix what’s wrong with me simply by writing it down, posting it or etching it in ink on the lined pages of a store bought yellow bound pocket spiral I call LIGHTNING/RENDERING. It’s a tradition that dates back to 1992. I’d buy a notebook at CVS, its color informing me and setting the tone for our time together-me and my Friend the Journal, who would be with me, help me to manifest, worship and smash my idols, and self-actualize. It’s the power of writing, good Reader, and poetry. It’ll never fail to get you out of a jam-that is, your head, and help you to fetishize your pain and cast your journey with pomp and grandiosity. It’s how we mythologize, and how we make ourselves heroes, how we hang it on the fucking wall, find and take from a sense of place, which in turn gives us a sense of ourselves-our shape and color, our small graces and thunderous foibles, our smokes and charms, our roaring and our lightning, the drums of the arena calling for your head in the black and endless rain.
I don’t have any answers this week. I don’t have any answers most weeks, and I’m loathe to wrap this in a cute or poignant way. It’s the end of the world. Thank you for reading.
…it all just seems so sensationalized.
–Aziz Ansari
I know ppl like u think it’s “cool” to theorize about quantum fluctuations, but the heat death of the early universe isn’t something to romanticize.
–Frances Bean Cobain
…I say hey Janet
you are the one, you are the sun
and I’m your dutiful planet…
–Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
This Guns N’ Roses weekend is over.
-Your Writer on Tour with Ironwhore, July 2005
Waking up with a hardon is the best thing to happen to me in years. Never mind I quit smoking, drinking and the Life, that I’ve published three collections of poetry and prose and survived as a working singer songwriter for the last 5 years, or that we just wrapped 4,484 miles pulling in to Hippie Town at 9pm last night. Waking up erect is good news from the Gods, like we’re gonna win this thing. Know what I mean, good Reader? As we were leaving Austin 19 days ago, it dawned on me that I probably have arthritis, if not in my left middle finger, then certiainly on my right thumb. Anyone reading this blog on the regular knows I haven’t caught my breath in over a year-and there are other, less savory conditions and maladies that’ve fell on me in these paling years, not the least of which being a lack of libido. I let it all slide, rather than jump through the bureaucratic hoops of health insurance that only led nowhere-but decreased interest in sex was, at the time, viewed as an improvement. Sex seemed to always land me in trouble somehow, and, by and large the partners I had were colossal wastes and the biggest drains of my time, on my health and my career as a day worker, writer and performer.
The truth is I’ve let a lot of things go. I’ve insulated myself from the world with this gig. I’ve maintained at minimum, and pushed harder when I needed to, but when I look back at the last 5 years and think about the fact that I’m 42, I’m terrified and disgusted-the former boring through nights pocked and shot through with anxiety, and the latter beating the opposite sex to the punch. I couldn’t fuck and I didn’t want to. It’s called depression, and low self esteem, which can intermingle in a vicious cycle that the worst people will blame you for, but actual compassion for, even if welcomed, can veer too close to commiseration and in any event is a shit substitute for understanding. The silver lining is the coffee’s done, it’s time to wake up, this gig is over in less than 2 months and, like the Buddhists say-the best time to start was last year, the next best time is right now. Lest we forget, I taught myself how to write these last 5 years, and the dream of being a columnist has been realized, thanks in no small part to you and your wonderful Readership. I’ve got a 2009 Monk’s Robe Orange Honda Element and a Tacoma Guild. I live in a post-gentrified Paradise and every dumb ailment and malady I’ve mentioned can be treated by swallowing a pill-ok, I still need to look into why I can’t catch my breath, it’s true, and wish me luck as I enter their world and try to get the help I need.
This blog has always been the balloon to my wet cement blues. I talk myself down from the noose here, and you read me and it’s perfect. Healing myself with my own medicine bag, sitting down to type and hang it on the fucking wall, feeling supported and, most of all, seen by you is terribly important to me-a rudder in the shitswells of a dark and calmitous world, the biggest boon and best thing to happen to me in years besides waking up with a hardon this morning. Oh yeah, that. It seems like the weeks get away from me. I mean, sure, I work full time, and I just spent 18 days on the road with my Boss, but time gets away from me-that is, the time to address the many peccadilloes and tragic breakdown I’ve been skirting since I turned 40. I feel like I should address it, tacitly, get up on it like Ahab, and chronicle the savage journey I’ve undergone since deciding to stop being depressed (I am NOT saying that this decision cured my depression AT ALL). Brother Bean has asked for it, in the past, and I feel like I’d do well to bring it back for you-hip you to the saga of a working class ex-Pat punkrocking rockabilly New journalist with a a whole lot of time on his hands, a new car and a rekindled libido. I’ll still try, good Reader. You bet. But I’ve got to wrap this. I still believe in my dreams and I feel like I’ve got something to live up to, until the next time we meet, so I should get cracking.
May your crown be a halo. See you next Thursday motherfucker.
Going for the Throat 