Take Your Medicine

…to live outside the law, you must be honest…
-Bob Dylan, Absolutely Sweet Marie

I’ve really let myself go. I’m doing my best but my best is paltry and weak. Nights I fall out, days I do what I have to. What I know, in my mind, is fear. It’s fear keeping me in line, not taking any chances. What I don’t know, in my body, is trauma, or the memory of it, the abuse that continues, that’s changed me and keeps me on a dark and narrow track. I tried to disengage from this blog. I shared poetry and performances and I wrote about others. Writing about others came home to roost when they started taking notice. Not so much because they took notice but for the kind of attention they paid to being what I felt was a hack anyway. It’s all fine and well. Writing isn’t a perfect art. Guns need to be cleaned and even then you’ll breach wide and fire into the blue—instead of taking down the enemy you only alert them to your location. My explanations only dug me in deeper. To the uninitiated, the newsletter I sent out last week made me sound petty and worse. There’s no excuse. It’s not funny anymore. Asserting masculinity can no longer be at the expense of femininity. True power never seeks without but always comes from within. We know this, and the world going to pot? That’s no excuse either. Ultimately, the truth is a good medicine. It’s often bitter and harsh but that doesn’t make hiding out in the dark any easier or any more sense being afraid. The truth hurts but it’s trauma that keeps us hid and a memory of pain that’ll keep us suckling at a lie.

This is the blog I’ve been trying to write—for weeks, the diamond in the mire and sticky dross of gossip and vituperation. I can’t live down that it worked, for a while, that I felt like I was living Mencken’s life of kings slinging ‘em down week after week. There’s hardly anything more satisfying than taking down the Goliath in 600 words. Nothing feels better than a bourbon in the morning either, but the real problem ain’t the hangover. The truth is the truth. When the light of day finds you it can feel like it’s cutting you down your cold middle, especially if you’ve been hiding out stanchioned in the frozen night. The light ain’t wrong, the light is the light. It feels good on your back and bids you enter the sacred spaces of dusk and dawn. The night is ok for poets and soldiers advancing, and alcoholics and sex addicts—me, I’m peeling back the layers. I quit drinking to get to the Real and oh boy have I. The fireworks, Doc, have started. I’m confronting myself, it’s dank and musty in here and like the song says there’s too many skeletons in my room today.

I been trying to dig myself out. Hang up the gossip column and get to the hard stuff. I fell into a hall of mirrors. I was so busy trying to convince others what an artist I was, when the truth is I was only trying to prove it to myself and either way I haven’t been an artist, haven’t been writing—not in earnest, anyway. I wrote about chronic masturbation at the end of the world, burying horrible xs and practically day drinking cocktails of resentment and woe, leaning grim and perverted beneath the masthead of this column. I was getting by, which, for a co-dependent, alcoholic, anger addict is ok. It’s better than getting fucked up or shacked up or using precious bandwidth on folks who can’t even comprehend the problems you’re railing on. It’s fine and well, survival. It’s what we know but, to thrive? Like our heroes have done, to thrive is far from this day to day I’ve taken on—delivery shifts and YouTube marathons, sugar gorges and late, musty masturbatory mornings. As deplorable as the Gossip was, and as trite that I’d be focusing on someone else are the endings of these posts. They’re always wrapping it concisely, in a bow for bullshit. It’s contrite and positive and 20th Century Essay Writing 101. Don’t leave your readers behind in the mess and quagmire you’ve lead them down—lift them up Good Writer. I can’t anymore, Good Reader. I can’t lift you up. You’re on your own. We’re on our own. This is our world now. At least I’m not having to explain, though–backpedaling into sexist doublespeak that was somehow supposed to defend a heartbroken romantic on the edge of Empire.

Sometimes the best you can do is call it, a bad hand is a bad hand, as she used to say, and probably still does, in her happy married life far and away from me and my mawkish bullshit. See you next week, motherfucker?

The Unrequited Sologamist

It’s actually kind of brilliant and dumb at the same time.
–Sologamy

That is that other snake’s super ultra lottery lucky day.
–Christopher Reynolds

I’m just not going to do it.
–Matthew Malespina

We couldn’t… we had no control over anything, and it’s just taken us a while to—it sounds weird to say—organize our emotions. Otherwise you just can’t live, really.
–Nick Cave

Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.
–James Baldwin

So I didn’t get in my 600 last week and I’m feeling it.  How fortunate I can pen 600 words, neat and fine, like I’m regurgitating a live snake, and get back to the grind and on with my life.  I didn’t realize what a service we do for each other down here at Going For The Throat.  I was up to my neck writing my resume and buying a car, and I thought it pertinent to soliloquize and do something in remembrance-offer something eternal up to the fading and ephemeral parade.  God knows Chris Cornell hadn’t been dead for 48 hours before some of my friends were judging me for suffering from depression.  Which is also a great way to segue into the grim admission-it happened again, I got depressed.

Now normally this would mean whisky and cigarettes, maybe a lost weekend with a loud and crass Betty who only cares enough to kiss me on the cheek before leaving me in a sad and soggy torpor.  In the new age, depression can look like too many days indoors, Brother, and nights of shoddy and sore sleep.  You heard me, not only am I depressed, it’s manifested.  I threw out my left shoulder and my head is raw and pulsating.  It’s all enough to make a fella fall off the wagon because-what’s the difference, right Sister?  I don’t know what this is, this phase, but I’m burning new pathways down the middle of my brain the hardway.  I’m thirsty and miserable but a dry drunk at least.  Allow me the bold alacrity to say, other than the fact that depression is a medical condition and a disease, the thing that brought it on this time was the Lie.  Or, the many lies that came tumbling down covering my ass living here and working this job and this situation I am in.

Fact is, no one’s to blame.  Folks love me in their own way.  It’s never enough but besides the fact that I ain’t ever satisfied, people are who they are.  My situation has stagnated but it’s all so strange.  What I am trying to say is while walking through old Austin this morning I could’ve cried thinking about the last 5 years of my life.  But see, I was also out there, in the territory, walking under the tall oaks and staring out into expanses that don’t exist on Judge’s Hill.  I was way out on Burnet, walking from my mechanic’s to a car2go on Allendale, smelling the fresh morning air and getting philosophical texts from a sexy blonde in Dallas.  My sadness was there, it was palpable, but so was the magic.  Something I can’t and would never explain.  The best way to describe it would be the strangeness of mortality, the impossibility of you, the uncanny and profound nature of survival.

This is the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere, worked anywhere-you name it.  The fact that I was 37 once, way back when, when I first interviewed for this gig in a pompadour and black pencil tie, makes me incredibly sad.  The fact that I got my shit together, published three collections of poetry and prose and wrote at least 600 words and a letter to the post every week can’t and should not ever be taken lightly.  If I were to pull away from the writer’s desk and step into my living room, I can pick up a copy of each of my books and hold them in my fucking hand.  That’s not nothing, as my lovely Sister Sarah says.  It’s something.  And the fact that we’re here, you’re reading me, we’re not hanging ourselves but hanging it on the fucking wall week after fucking week, is not nothing and more than something.

It’s everything.

See you in Paradise motherfucker.

543

Welly well well.  The axe has fell.  It’s do or die.  The publication schedule of this blog went from daily to every other, twice-weekly to weekly and then sadly to nothing at all.    Allot has happened since the last time we met on here, but it’s no excuse.  The pathetic truth was I am unable to write when I’m happy.  Better, I am unable to post to Going For The Throat when life is good.  Anger and depression, isolation and rage were this blog’s raison d’etre.  I railed against: politics, the big business of news reporting, the music industry, rock and roll, ex-lovers and dream lovers, the catastrophy of a world gone wrong, spinning wildly barging in and obliterating my sensitivities.  The blog was at best a refuge and at worst a whipping post, some anchor in all the madness, my own way of framing trouble and the bad blues, wrapping it up and nailing it down to 600 words.  The other thing that kept me from posting on here was the usual suspect of transparency.  While I have had to amend my stringent policy of never editing anything I post, I never wanted to keep anything from you, good reader.  With the fourth wall down, we were finally able to BE together, from Philadelphia to Bahrain, ATX to the PDX, from NYC to Dublin, Norway to New Orleans.  I never lived down being a soldier for the New Journalism even though I was certainly a card carrying member.  As mentioned, most of the time spent on here was trying to rope the bull.  I couldn’t offer any critical thought or reassurance, the darkness was full blown, I had ’em on my neck and I was flanked on 3 sides with only one round left.  I was dealing with my own blues.  While they bled in Syria and died of thirst on the Great Continent, and the police in this country averaged 3 deaths a day on their watch in 2015.  We all said our peace and moved along.  It was a temporary fix, but one I couldn’t afford and barely stomach.  I’d already been cheating my brothers and sisters by not answering the Call, I’d be good and goddamned to participate in the general jacking off that passes for activism in the New Century.  All that said, it’s great to be back.

The daily tugging of this blog I had been feeling suddenly lifts and none of it matters as I have found a flow.  The words are coming easy. They’re quick words and urgent.  I can feel it.  There is lots to uncover.  I have so much to share.  On the other side of the void of my absence, caffeinated and writing in the easy afternoon, glad to be alive but unsure how long this can go on.  Of course I’m talking about blogging, ’cause I’ve been shook.  I don’t know what to report on when everything is fine.  No bull to rope, no petition to tend, nothing to nail down and send down wire into the hungry land.  Looking at the word count it seems I’ve done it for today and it’ll have to be good enough.  For today I have won.  Hope to see you soon.

Your Blogger,
Jim Trainer
Austin TX

 

The Friend Catcher

The number one thing that makes us grow as human beings is pain.
-Damien Echols on spending eighteen years on death row for a crime he did not commit.

Jimbo 🙂  Thanks so much for the letter and poem.  The thought and intention put into it is palpable and exactly what I needed.  I forgot how powerful words can be in this form.  Thanks for reminding me.  I’ll say it made me feel inspired and pheonix-like, ha ha.  I’m going to keep it with me on the road.  I’ll keep you posted too.
-Brother Chris

Y’all sure know how to make a guy feel loved.  And it’s just like you said you’ve got to be the love you seek.  Which is lofty and idealistic and perfect for an old romantic like me.  And there needs to be a saying for when good shit keeps happening.  Am I right?  I mean, we know the hits keep coming is a good one when the shitstorm is raining down and the mud is rising up.  There’s Kismet, that wink from out in the unknown saying ‘Yass‘ ‘Go Forward’,  or ‘Word’ … I’m not examining this journalistically, but do we not have some colloquialism or turn of phrase for when good fortune continues to arrive?  It just gets better and better?  You kidding me?  That’s a go-to, for me, when the shit’s so bad you gotta attack it with marrow scraping sarcasm.  Ultimately, when you’ve spent the last 25 years battling depression you have the luxury of not feeling bad.  Not ever feeling good, mind you, and when I say not feeling bad I mean not feeling like there are two tons of hot metal slowly pouring down from a white sky of pain and just when you’re numb as a statue, the sun sinks, the heat gives and you’re left like some life-sized figurine, the night air sticky and humid and giving the copper of your flesh a patina of green.  I don’t know the parlance of victory or strength, let alone the unassuming joy in eternity’s sunrise. All I know is I haven’t smiled so much in a very long time, last night, beginning to read all your wonderful comments.  As a recovering depressaholic I’m loathe to hang my hat on any kind of cure-all but it sure is nice when I rediscover and Y’ALL REMIND ME THANK YOU VERY MUCH, what this work is for and exactly what we’re doing here.  With the blog and the everything, what is it, we’re sending out, to other souls like radio, to connect.  Could it be that you, my followers, are all part of my generation?  Does that even fucking matter?  I’ve made connections with folks I never would’ve even met, and I continue to connect with them in profound, life affirming ways.  My letter to Brother Chris, quoted above for example.  Maybe I’ll reprint my initial letter to him some Letter Day down the road when I can’t come up with  even a pastiche of a blog like the last one (let alone a slick 6 or mean 8).  All I wrote to him-all I did-was shine back what he had only been shining out.  I wished him well, in print and earnestly ( I can’t even begin to describe my joy about the power of the written/typed word, so I won’t ).  I wrote him a letter.  Remember those?  Before all of this, ever went down?  Before the Terrible Century, back when rock and roll meant so fucking much and the attention and the girls were only caveats?   We played it like we meant it because we fucking did.  Now that that storm of anger/August has passed like a warhead, and I can walk down west 6th with a little Philly in my step, I’ve caught up on sleep and I can dig my heels in a faceoff with my anger, do work and get back to the grind.  As far as your boundless love and strength, sent to me vis-a-vis Facebook and etc.,  y’all sure know how to make a guy feel loved.  Oh, and I never had a problem with anger as an emotion.  Aho.  It’s just that I’m too old to be missing sleep over it.  My needs in service to the body are many.  In some kind of cosmic joke, my hatred and anger have raged on and only grown ha ha ha but the body is tired and soft.  But also wisdom has been accrued, even all those fuckaround years when I thought it was a curse, I have done nothing if not gotten wise, and I can’t unsee it which of course was the problem…oh christ I’m a riot eh?  From the depths of loathing to the christ like idealism of a poet.  Believe me, I know all about being me.  Which could be a perfect beginning to wisdom, Know Thyself.  And as a superstitious X-depressaholic I’ll play it safe, hedge my bets and say that on my good days I have found a way to put rock and roll into writing.  Songwriting, well, let’s open that can of snakes some other time, eh good reader?  When I say y’all are keeping me alive you have no idea how true it is.  We keepers of the flame, old punkrockers and yogis and wives and laborers.  Oh yeah and the last part, the alive part…with my phasers set to choke the last 2 weeks I had forgotten to be that wisdom.  Alive.

And here for you.
Trainer
Austin, TX

Universal Love&Hate

Sometimes the silence can be like thunder
sometimes I wanna take to the road and plunder
Could you ever be true?  I think of you
and I wonder

I quit drinking in February. But I made the decision to in November. Like a true alcoholic, I tried to drink on, thought my shrink and everybody else was wrong, I could have a drink every night and be fine.  But after a fated 13-hour bus ride from New Orleans in February (and leaving on dubious terms to begin with), I had 4 drinks at the bougie store, effectively doubling my limit in a matter of days.  Of course it was good to see Brother James and to drink a few with him on a rainy day in the Quarter.  But I couldn’t rely on myself to keep it on a leash.  I loved drinking way too much and besides, all it took was a real bummer of an end to my vacation and a stressful journey back to send me over the limit and into my cups.   I had built up announcing that I quit drinking in my mind.  I would let you know ceremoniously and in a big way.  Oh well.  It’s fitting though, I’ve left the party from the backdoor and now I’m gone.

Sobriety hasn’t softened me or made me copacetic and bland.   The truth is I have uncovered a well spring of anger and hatred once I got out of the hole.  I’m done feeling sorry for myself and now I just hum on a steady flow of hate and agitation.  I feel misunderstood by most people which isn’t anything new, I just don’t have an instant remedy for it.  And my work on the spiritual path has paid off.  For example, at brunch this morning, instead of flipping the table over, I restrained myself and sat awhile in my anger.   The folks I was dining with would have to deal with me being uncomfortable, closing my fists and looking around like something feral and mean.  I didn’t have to hide.  Nor did I want to.
So I’m at odds with the world again.  Just like old times.  8 out of every 10 people I meet and interact with every day won’t get me and, now that I’m not drinking, the ones who could at least humor me while engaged in the pastime of consuming alcohol have moved to the outer circle as well.

…my comrades in arms, I bid you farewell… 
-J.Wheeler

Ultimately, my suspicion about vices has proved to be true.  Without a go to, without a release, I have discovered a fount of anger and agitation.  It’s ok I know what to do with it.  I’m still smoking, which makes even less sense.  I meet awkwardness, boredom and the aforementioned hatred with one burning, a cigarette in hand.  I smoke so much sometimes I need to take a couple ibuprofen for the headache I get from the nicotine.  Triple nickels have made it hard to quit.  On the road, when I was smoking Black Spirits or worse, it was easy to envision myself as a non smoker. I couldn’t wait to quit.  But as soon’s we pulled in and unloaded the Boss, I took the van around the corner to the bougie store for a pack of 555s, State Express, my luxurious damage.  This post is meant to clear things up between you and I.  I’m doing well.  Never better.  My hatreds are still burning, strong.  If I haven’t forgiven you I probably never will but an apology is never a bad idea, unless of course I don’t like you, in which case do us both the favor and just ignore me.  I’ll do the same for you. At the party and at the show.  Just fuck right off.  She knows who I’m talking about.  Don’t you worry good Reader, you and I’s solid. Thick as thieves.  I’m gonna need you in the coming days, when I’m at rope’s end without anything to grab ahold of.  I wish I could ascribe to some kind of universal love.  I wish I could take ‘er easy.  But I never have and probably never will.  “Too intense” is their problem.  I am awakening and it’s painful and that’s fine.  If pain is the price then I’ll gladly pay.  I’ll stay true to myself even if it means I’m the bitter Buddha, at the dark end of the guru spectrum, getting my ya-yas out with an inexhaustible work schedule and rock&roll.  You heard me right, it’s time to get the band back together.  It’s been too long.

I’m sick of love, I wish I’d never met you
I’m sick of love, I’m tryin’ to forget you
-Lovesick, Bob Dylan

The Problem With Creative Non-Fiction

The blog is a bust because you’re afraid she’ll read it? You’re Jim Motherfucking Trainer! You’re a bad ass. You wouldn’t edit yourself for anyone!
You’re an artist-you take inspiration as it comes, its part of the process. Without sharing, you pretty much have a diary.
You’re promoting your work, it’s part of the business. This is your career. You gave her your heart, don’t give her your career.
Write. Publish. Blow the fuck up, and she can stay home and smoke pot and pretend she’s Anaïs Nin while you’re out there doing it.
-My good friend Red

Aho good reader. Been a minute. Only took me 13 false starts and a shit ton of self-flagellation but, here it is-a long overdue missive from the iconoclast. “False starts” is a bad way to put it and “13” is weak on the outside. I’ve penned allot more than 13 posts since the last time we met on here, but they’ve only sat in the draft folder. I’d love to try and bring it back for you-it’s good writing-but it’s out of context and, in some cases, months old. A diary indeed.

The Problem With Creative Non-Fiction is the very thing I have found it most useful for-its transparency, its immediacy and its honesty. These things assured that I would never run out of material and never have writer’s block again. As long’s I got up in the morning there would be something to write about. And it’s done wonders ridding me of the enemy, be it my own agony&blues or the myriad of unreasonable tyrannies thrust upon sensitive souls like we. Aho. Bosses have met their end here, and phony rock&rollers, goodtimers, pols, police, any and all comers but especially the Big Business of News Reporting and my ex-girlfriends. And therein lies the rub, good reader. ‘Cause sometimes I don’t want to be seen, and going to war with your enemies only esteems them.
Perhaps the Buddhists are right, the best living is done with compassion and the ultimate expression of the human heart is a flowering. Not a stonewall or with venom, but in love. That’s a fine vision and a noble path. One I hope to really be making tracks down someday. But in the meantime I couldn’t find anything equally true and suited for the public. And I was sunk in hatred. Pocked with it, tell you the truth. I had the blinds down for 90+ days of a hateful season. My cocoon swelled like a cyst with venom but I had no release. I wore out my friends and it rained all the time. The fiction didn’t stop, mind you. Neither the movable feast and parade of beautiful women passing through my life and my days here. Point is I was swoll with rejection. I had it streaking down the boulevard like a scavenger and striated on my abdomen, lying destitute on my big red bed. But I couldn’t report on it. I was fucked.

“You know, you get up there on stage and talk about how all these crazy bitches did you wrong, but you’re the one who’s crazy. You know that, right?”
-Madi Distefano, Co-Curator, PoTTy Mouth

Aho, betty. Ain’t lost on me. A couple things, though, sweetheart, and here they are:
I’m a Pisces, I’m squirrely. And I was born in the Year of the Wood Cat. We rabbits avoid confrontation at any cost. We’re always nosediving it back into our holes, and quickly. We’re he luckiest sign of the Chinese Zodiac, although, again, the rabbit’s luck is less his divine providence than his diligent and meticulous work ethic.
I’d rather be a rabbit than a snake-but I’ve shared more than a glorious summer with a fine woman born under that sign. She was svelte, naturally, and she had the ability to molt off the world and its petty concerns. She was a Gemini as well so she had that mutable magic working for her. Weekends with her are etched on my heart. I won’t be soon forgetting her as she is tied with Papa for number of poems written in tribute. Ah but I was so much older then. But I’m not 25 anymore. Christ I’m not even 35 anymore. And the summer is over.
The other thing is I never explain my work. I might talk about it, in the right context, such as with my Editor or good friend The Reverend. But I will never, ever, EVER explain my work. Why? Well, first and foremost, it’s writing, and it’s meant to be read. Now, if you hear me reading it on stage or on the air or whatever, then it’s the same thing except you have the benefit of nuance, and subtlety can be ascertained.  Basically there is no difference except you are entreated to an even better reading of my work if you see it performed live or on film. The key word here is reading. As mentioned, it is writing. And as such it is meant to be read. Not discussed with you or anyone else. I can’t think of anything more simultaneously gratifying and utterly insulting than someone asking me, about my work,
Did that really happen?
Of course it did. You read it, didn’t you? The other reason I will never explain my work is because. Motherfucking because. Keep in mind that this goes both ways. I’ll never explain my work but nor will I ever use my writing as a dishrag and be petty and with “computer balls”. I assure you, if we have a problem we will discuss it in person. Unless you’re not really worth my time-which is the real reason I haven’t been posting to Going For The Throat these last few months. It just wasn’t worth it.

Stay tuned to Going For The Throat for further installments of “The Problem With Creative Non-Fiction”, including Trainer’s contributions to RawPaw and its PLOG, his lecture at Texas State last June and missives from the Terrible Summer while out on the road in Hot Springs, AK, New Orleans, LA and Hostile City, USA this winter.

Shrieks of Paradise, Correspondence&Rails#18: “Ain’t it good to be workin.”

Jim Trainer
709 Rio Grande Street
Austin, TX 78701
512-203-6288

Editor
Raw Paw, The PLOG

10/15/14

Hello!

I am excited to pitch for your consideration as contributor and columnist for the PLOG. I am a 39 year old blogger, journalist, published poet, singer-songwriter and ex-Pat punkrocker.

When I started blogging, I simply wanted to exercise my columnist’s voice. I put myself on deadline. I forced myself to come up with 1,200 words, neat and fine, every day. With the advent of social media, it seemed that immediacy could supersede objectivity. I was thrilled. We could in fact become the media. I could write from where I was at, like all my journalistic and literary heroes had done.
Creative non-fiction was always where it was at for me, but I had no idea of the fount of inspiration I would uncover in the blogosphere. Here was a medium which I needn’t offer an introduction to the reader. I needed no back story and the main character was me. This was a boon to my writing. The fourth wall had come down for me as well. I would never have writer’s block again.

Current themes at Going For The Throat have been (but are not limited to): being a writer, the creative process, day labor, the struggles of sensitivity, rock and roll, current events/politics and literary criticism along with poetry and prose.

Topics pertaining to breaking through, pushing past your limits and getting to a place of habitual expression could be of great value to writers, would be writers, creatives and anyone seeking creative expression. Obviously this type of content would not be time-sensitive. I believe it would largely be adult content. While I never censor myself on my own blog, I am quite open to editing and creative input. As such, I’ve cleaned up the language in some of the samples offered below and offered them as published and in their entirety in the links as well.

I’ve had success supporting my posts with photos from Instagram. Facebook has been the main source of traffic to my site. I am always looking for ways to build and enhance my aesthetic, however. My grand vision is to be full-on, a one stop shop containing all forms of media. In the meantime I couldn’t be happier that I can continue to write on an electric typewriter and just snap a photo to present to the digital world.

Thank you for the opportunity to pitch this; and to the wonderful David Jewell for putting Raw Paw on my radar. I look forward to hearing from you and reading future issues of Raw Paw.

Jim Trainer
Austin, TX

attached&pasted below:

excerpts and links from

-13 DAYS
https://jimtrainer.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/13-days/
-On Poetry
https://jimtrainer.wordpress.com/2014/05/06/on-poetry/
-Interview with 1349
http://www.verbicidemagazine.com/2010/11/30/interview-1349/
-I HATE ROCK AND ROLL
https://jimtrainer.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/creamsugar
-Kingdom Found

https://jimtrainer.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/kingdom-found/
-Don Bajema’s Hero
http://www.philadelphiastories.org/don-bajema%E2%80%99s-hero
untitled (a poem)
https://jimtrainer.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/untitled-3/

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New blog up at Going for the Throat (http://tinyurl.com/nhkarx5) about gettin this rig unwound and finding work as a professional writer. Aho. #writer #writing #writingprocess #blog #blogging #PLOG #rawoaw #typewriter

A post shared by Jim Trainer (@goingforthethroat) on Dec 16, 2014 at 11:45am PST

The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!

The ruse is up. Satya motherfucker. It’s high time to disabuse myself of my own delusions. Might as well do it here and in writing, which is how I come to understand anything anyway. We’ve been down this dirty road before. Today we’ll be dismantling my belief in change.
I been blowin it out with big boys of Lonestar and Sapporo. Same old story. Same old song. My blowouts now are pretty harmless, relatively speaking. In my late 20s and early 30s a blowout was a catastrophic event. I was bored with life and I had an anger problem. The light of day was painful then and my furniture was never the same. I was a madman, the madman of 10th Street and any friends I still have from the Never Ending Summer of Evil Kanevil are true blue. Their love has been tested brother, believe me.
There is no limit to the amount of havoc&destruction you can cause with the single-pointed focus of dying before the age of 30. After 30 I had no excuse but by then Hostile City was closing in on me. Whether or not I escaped certain death by leaving Philly it is certain that I was born again by the time I stepped boot to Texas soil. There is my life before Austin and my life after. I probably drank around 9 beers last night, starting with lunch and ending with a nightcap after dinner. I was safe asleep, in bed before midnight and other than feeling a little crispy this morning, I’m fine. This wouldn’t even be the beginning of a blowout back then. Also, bourbon. And coke. And xanax. It’s comical what constitutes a blowout now but I ain’t laughing.

I’ve hired a life coach. Our overarching goal is to help me make the leap to becoming a full-time artist. We’ve broken it down into simple, everyday steps. First up are my beliefs and habits about productivity. I should mention that my life coach is more on the spiritual side then the business side. We don’t discuss personality types or business models; we don’t tangle with newage (pronounced sewage) or any douchey-corporate terms and strategies. For example, one of her suggestions to increase my productivity is to sit and do nothing for 5 minutes every day. It’s a very Zen approach-to do more, do less. What Taoists call “effortless action” and what I call taking the longview.
Taking the longview is accepting that the rest of my life will be devoted to creating art. It’s a forgiving view and useful, too. Instead of trying to be a journalist, poet and songwriter today, I instead schedule a little time to write this morning, with a break in-between, then attempt some research and promotion this afternoon, blow it out on the Epiphone and finally end the day with some poetry tonight.
Aho. The longview. It’s what was so roundly missed for all those years on the dayshift as a raging alcoholic when I felt like I had to get it all done and now. Plus, it’s hard to plan on days you don’t know you’ll live to see (or that you so dread living to see you get fucked up anyway). Of course there are many reasons to carry on the way I did for all those years but that’s another story for another time.
All I know is that a piece like this falls so short of my journalistic aspirations it may as well be a long, more thought out&better written Facebook post. Christ, the entirety of this blog could be viewed as such and maybe the bastard Doctor is right anyway, blogs are passé.
Whether or not blogs are useful tools of the new journalism or merely bloviating scrapbooks, there is no question-I’m ready to take the leap. But until I can push through these issues I’ll be delegated to the roof with Dylan’s first album blasting down Judge’s Hill and flanked on either side by a cup of Megadolo black and a pack of Nat Sherman MCDs. Baking sessions on the roof with the keys burning the skin off my fingers.
I’m not saying this blog is on hiatus. Just that I need to figure some things out. Like a way to get off the roof in 110 degree weather, for example. I’ve reached my goal with this blog anyway. I have systematically dismantled writer’s block and put that bad bitch to bed. I know that on any given day I can sit down and screw it on, smoke and cough and scream and squirm until I have 800 words, neat&fine.
I have contemplated the mountain. I’ve kicked, scraped and fucked my way to the top. Now it’s time to take the longview. Look around, up&down the chain. Sadly, my daily sessions smoking&coming up with a missive for you have come to a close. I just can’t bring myself to do it anymore. It’s no failure of myself as an Artist. I’m no less of a writer. I’m just making a different decision-one that has terrifies me when I think about giving up my 20-year-old crutch but exciting when I think of the Artist that I can be.
Here’s to hoping some new way will emerge and I’ll be able to devote more of my time and more of my life to the fucking beast of writing, without being delegated to the roof and smoking like an AA member.
Besides, I’m as bored as you are with these blogs about change and self-help. At the very least we’ll do away with the by now, oft-penned and most hated apology blog. Hell, maybe even write about stuff that interests us. Over 4,000 people marched on the Capitol on Monday and it makes me proud to live in a town where folks are exercising true democracy. Not only that, but I just got back from the hometown with enough love to shut down any idea of opposition and shred anything in the way of living the life I choose.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a kinghell fun. I’ve had a blast catching up with 20 years worth of neglect of the craft of writing. These long hours on the sinking throne are never boring. But as the temperature climbs into the triple-digits, the rooftop ain’t gonna cut it anymore, Brother.
Stay cool pretty babies. It’s time to go back inside.

We don’t need no water let the motherfucker burn
burn motherfucker burn!

Celebrating National Poetry Month

People say I’m crazy. They have no fucking idea. I’m out of my balloons, as Bobby Lemons would say. Good old Bobby Lemons. The Mayor of 10th street. The years I spent in South Philly were a mad slipshod blurring of the lines between love&death. I was crazy enough to live there and I was crazy enough to leave.  Aho. I pulled stakes and closed a chapter of my life that will always  affectionately and ruefully be remembered as “The Never Ending Summer of Evil Kanevil.”
Now I live in Paradise.  Sometimes you got to rattle your chains. Am I right, Brother?

A little bit of madness goes a long way and a lot of madness goes nowhere fast. At this late stage of the game, some of us are taking our Crown while the rest are just taking shit. Oh well.  Had I not been there it would all be for naught and you probably wouldn’t even be reading this blog.
I miss the days of amour fou and ruin.  It’s amazing the things you can accomplish with the single-pointed focus of dying before the age of 30.  But then 30 hits and you take a look around.  There comes this feeling of gratitude.  You get to the top of the mountain and suddenly you see the chain.

This blog ain’t about being crazy on the streets of Philadelphia.  I’m tempted to touch on the particular and startling lunacy of a journalist who reports on the news with a story about how he couldn’t give a fuck about the news-but it only gets worse and I’ll spare you.  I ain’t goin down that rabbit hole.  I’m in a good mood today and it’s National Poetry Month.

My point is, after battle, after War, after trivial half-love and virtues that needed to be proven, we rise.  We discover a no more worthy adversary.  We find that despite our bitching and moaning and haggling and hustling down the beat ends of dirty streets, there really isn’t anything standing in our way.  I’m mostly speaking to those of us living in the First World (as if anyone else is reading this).  Whatever misery it’s been honey, and whatever was so heavy Jack, put it down.  Come take your Crown and sit with us  in the high rooms.
There’s room for us all.
-Hot Snakes

Rattle your chains.  Get free and die laughing.  Or, peck-peck-peck your way through the lead tumblers of the late night, like I do.  Send me a poem and I’ll post it.

Because fuck ‘em that’s why.
–Sicko

Put your motherfucking game face on and read some real killers this month.
–Josh Britton

We’re all mad here.
Best,
The Boy Bandit King

The Other Kind

There are two kinds of blogs that I will always dread&abhor.  One of them is thee hated self-promotional blog.
-from Going For The Throat on Friday

The other kind is what Ms. Hipstercrite has coined a selfie.  A completely self-referential blog utterly mired in ego, embarrassingly candid and terribly assuming.  The truth about the Global Village is that we must insinuate ourselves and hip the world to our own tastes&political views and individuality and whatever-the-fuck.  I’m guilty. I admit it.  And worse.  I’m trying to parlay it into a career.

In the meantime the morning comes early for a live-in caregiver.  Shower day.  I had the old man shit, showered and shaved before 9am.  And now the golden hours, the 150 minutes or so when I can tap the black tar, screw it on and get it off.
I ran out of material on Friday.  I guess these things happen when your mission is to publish 800 words every day.  The well will run dry.  In attempting to avoid shameless self-promotional blogs I can get into some real heart-on-sleeve horseshit.  Bloviating personal history or the oft-repeated trope of a waterhead writer.  Aho.

Friday’s blog was a real doozy.  This highwire act I do on here everyday can either be the best game in town or something to tip the scales over to the suicide-option side.
That’s why I’m redacting it.  Fuck it.  I shudder when I give out my business card knowing that the home page on this blog is like the armoir in my grandmother’s bedroom growing up.  She had wigs in there.  And lingerie.  And big fat Mom-Mom bras.  And playboy magazines and cartons of camel straights and little bottles of liquor&hair grease for Pop-Pop.  Right beneath the portrait of Jesus flying along beside the truck driver, protecting him.  I found a lot of interesting (scarring) things in there and I will never be the same.  I’ve seen things from in there while hiding as a pudgy Italian kid that could turn your hair white or make you pray to your Jesus to please, please make me clean again.

My point is, while the anti-hero of this blog might be me (or an idealized and vengeful version of me), he ain’t exactly who I want to be.  But by some strange twist of fate I have found an inexhaustible source of material and it’s writing about writing.  Blogging about blogging.  The inspiration is the writer’s search for inspiration.  Perfect.  But it ain’t easy.  It’s like burning the heart for fuel or tightrope walkin in two ton shoes.

The stockings&heels and perfumes and wads of 20s in my Mom-Mom’s armoir were real.  What my sisters&I weathered in that house growing up was real even if it’s all over now.  While I may always hate writing blogs of a purely self-promotional nature, I will always hate blogs that reveal too much even more.  And on dry, sexless days when the world’s stupidity is greater than gravity and another deadline slowly grinds the enamel down, I will abstain from drawing on the enormous storehouse of my personal history.  Try to steer clear of Planet Jim until I get my mojo back and we can just let the music play.

Will I be able to report the cold hards to you on the daily?
Can I give you 800 words every day, neat&fine, without meandering down memory lane and sharing stories about the whiskey&sex and Jesus I found in an old armoir in my Mom-Mom’s bedroom growing up Catholic in Upper Darby?

I’ll try.

You know, I tried, I tried to keep it short
I know, it took too fucking long.
-Minor Threat, Think Again