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Thanks motherfucker!
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.
You should learn how to feel sad without actually being sad.
-Laurie Anderson’s Buddhist Teacher
Self-editing is humiliating. I didn’t start a blog called Going For The Throat to censor myself. There have been times over the years and I’m sure I’ll be called to do it again, for whatever dumb reason life may deal me at that moment. Admittedly, I’ve steered away from skewering certain individuals because it would’ve only esteemed them. Those come out in the wash, though. It took me a couple years but I was able to call out certain cunts on here who’s name I never would’ve mentioned before. Of course there are professional considerations, but if you’re a dayworker like I am you have very little control or catharsis-I’ve found that biting your tongue on a shitjob only rears in the end. You can abstain from speaking your mind but if some boss deserves it, it’s only a matter of time before your hands are on him in the alley behind the break room. Things have their way of working themselves out. Living in fear is worse than dying which might soudnd idealistic to you but any jerkoff who posts at least 600 words about himself on the world wide web every week isn’t playing with a full deck of practicality to begin with. What that means is if I’m crazy enough to dream it, you know I’m just plain crazy too. Self-editing, or censoring, is bullshit and I only do it if I’m at an impasse. If I’ve stared at the same post, and re-read it enough times to know it by heart, then it’s time to flush it and start anew. This isn’t poetry. At best, Going For the Throat is a gun-I’d only point it at you if I’m shooting to kill.
Greetings from the Hewitt Lake Club, Population 7. It looks like rain on Lily Bay, but it’s looked that way since 9. The sky is turning silver, there’s a low thunder rumbling and a high wind swaying the gingkoes and lone evergreen to the left of the screen porch where I write this self-censored post. Whether it rains or not means little. I’ll be wet by the time I get to the greasy barn and it’d be great to build a fire in the pod. Two days ago I would’ve had a completely different answer, with Ben in Brooklyn and the rain coming down it was just me and Blair sitting around the fire-in our pod, all day long. I was worried my resentments had ruined this trip, but woke up charged, on my day off yesterday, bounding out of bed at 6:30AM and writing over a thousand words about the horrid grind my life has become. Thank Christ that’s over with.
Out on the drive behind the cabin, by the garage where I sing, working on a tune called It’s Been A Long Time That I Should Be Far From Here-I realized something. Music, songs and songwriting, lyrics-these could be the last haven for wonder in these paling years. Fantasy. Myth. What I’ve rued since giving up the life-otherness, lust, change. Of course the fear is that perhaps I only use songs to help me through rough and large transitions. SWAMP EP, for example. I must’ve buried 3 exs alone by the end of The Winner, SWAMP‘s opening track. I resolved some issues I had with my dead Father in So Many Roads, acknowledged that I loved her in Back (I Want You) and laid out LA Telegram and Back In The Game like a dream map of the South, the Rockabilly Night and my new Spring in Austin ever dawning. I’ve penned some tunes since then and unearthed even more. I wrote down the titles to anywhere from 12-15 solid songs, songs that I’ve written that I like…which ain’t bad for someone who thinks he doesn’t write enough songs. So the fear is that, at the end of this ordeal, I’ll have 3 or 4 tunes that have helped me through, but I won’t be closer to my songwriting heroes. I’m sensing a theme here, and just wrote to Compatriot Cole this morning about never realizing what I call the Rollins ideal. Oh well. At least with songwriting it’s easy to keep in mind that it’s good work if you can find it. Songwriting is a different kind of spell-it’s writing and self actualizing but it involves the Gods on an intimate level. As a songwriter you can become anything (or anyone) you want to be. It’s instantaneous and only a fool could ask for more.
When peace comes it’s profound. The blood in my head sinks at the same rate as the sun, and I’ve expereienced dusks here both utterly sublime and completely ordinary. That’s all I ever wanted. I don’t need fireworks. I never wanted Heaven though I guess I settled for Hell. Didn’t I Brother. I never wanted a panacea or a cure all, but that could be depression talking (why bother trying to feel good when it’s such a short ride from the good life to the blues?). Know what I mean Sister? Life is…life. I got a good feeling about leaving this gig even if I only heard back from 3 of the 20 booking emails sent out from the greasy barn last Friday. I wrote another verse for an old tune and revisited one that’s been brimming from the heartlid before 10AM yesterday morning. This tenuous balance, periods of synchronous bliss coupled with torrid maelstroms of anger and irritation, sounds like life to me and of course there’s so much more I could do.
Sorry for the hodge-podge, good Reader. I tried to salvage the high points of my charge and kept the low points of the original missive to myself. No good deed goes unpunished ain’t it though, ’cause now I’m out here in the garage writing this. I flew the screen porch and came out here to wrap this fucking thing. Our pod got too full of good vibes and company, no room for me and my bitterness, which, truth be told is only killing me. Jill just walked by and said I could turn on the light if I wanted to. I told her I’d just suffer in silence and we laughed, this 86 year old Artist and me, hard, because she’s right. I could turn on the light if I wanted to.
I’ve read your blogs. I’m not impressed.
–Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana
You call it terrorism, I call it patriotism.
-Jeremy Joseph Christian
…By the time that ad hit TV, AM radio had been taken over by “music” played by fake bands that were putting out fake pitches for “flower power”…completely divorced from the Nam, the military funerals we were serving daily in our parish church—where the caskets didn’t have bodies because the boys had been blown to bits, the heroin being shot by draft dodgers and vets alike over in the park across the street from my childhood home…and the police riots in Oakland against the Black Panthers….
–Anthony
Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over.
–President Jimmy Carter
I go inside her pants. I move my fingers. I do not talk. She doesn’t talk. But she makes a sound which I feel was an orgasm.
-Bill Cosby
Christ. Ain’t even been back from the island 2 weeks and already got them Babylon Blues. They’re playing Steely Dan at the bougie coffee shop and singing along in biker shorts like useless bearded choads. The heat’s reaching for triple digits out here on the patio and I’m coming down with flu-like symptoms-a soreness in the bones and spongy raw feeling besides, no doubt depression knocking and the ennui of prescience in these End Days. I am truly at a loss. I mean, before I left for retreat I was fucking exhausted. Now I’m on call in the middle of an 11-day shift. My sleep is fucked from 5 days in a row of turning a disabled man over in bed at 4 in the morning, and I’ve got 6 to go. It’s been a long time I should be far from here, and the irony is that when I finally decide I’ve had enough and it’s time to go, I find myself working even more and for longer (October), and gearing up for 21 days on the road. Christ.
There’s no consolation in the news. Nothing promising on social media. Everything is painfully bleak and bland, and enough to drive a man to drink. Know what I mean Brother? Lucky I have this time, though, and lucky we have each other. I’ll be posting a poem for the Black Lives Matter movement, on my pages and feeds. It perhaps offers very little for the struggle, if staying the question of where my outrage is and where it’s gone-why I lay on my back in the afternoon and can’t even be bothered to pick up the phone and call those hardons on the hill. They’re taking away our right to live healthy happy lives and they kill you out there on the street, in front of your daughter and your girlfriend, and nobody will be outraged or speak up for you, let alone the NRA, who heretofore couldn’t shut up about the right for people like Philando Castille to bear arms.
Musings on my neutered outrage and declarations at the end of the world aside, there are torch bearers out there-like Saint Shaun King and Jimmy Carter and Henry Rollins and Lamont Steptoe-and anyone telling it from the mountain and making ’em know. It should be noted. Whatever these good folks are on they should send some our way, right Sister? Blow some of the smoke of outrage downwind to weak dysfunctionals like us, who’re struggling in our own way with something on balance with the guilt of keeping our mouth shut while the Police declare war on black people and elected officials declare war on the poor. I’m looking for a way through, good Reader, because it’s gotten so dark and twisted here, and my only hope is in the dumb strength of my Irish Italian-American blood. We’re long suffering but hard to kill. I’m disgusted at this disease and that it has taken to this virulent level. I mean, it’s black and it’s in me and I can feel it acutely. Which is heaps better than waking up 3 months from now with a three hundred dollar bar tab, smoker’s cough and all my friends mad at me.
At least this way I can get my arms around it, right? I can really have a go at taming the beast, maybe look into psych meds and self defense classes, start that post rock band with Doc and start blowing doors in East Austin and giving ’em the what for. The alchemy of this blog, the power of writing, never ceases to amaze me. In penning this post, sweating it out out here, drinking Hairbender and Topo and admitting these gnarly thoughts and dark kinks in my psychology to you, I have discovered that I do have hope, however myopic and self-interested. I have hope that one day I will feel better. That one day I’ll have taken this thing up a notch and I’ll be in better health, maybe even be in a place to serve. What the hell? Even a bougie place like this will play Randy Newman if you show up (and complain) enough. I hope that one day I’ll feel better. What’s wrong with that? Should I hope that I don’t? What’s tragic and funny is, with the way things are going, and the way the world is slanting darkly down, it’s a toss up. Do I assume the worst for myself, and only buckle in for more misery? Or do I get it together somehow, really put up a fight and claw my way up to the plateau for a better view of the end of the fucking world?
It’s lonely at the top. See you next week motherfucker.
I feel like I’m at a wedding in the suburbs.
-Yours Truly, on the Juan Pelota page as I write this post
I think you work harder if you’re haunted by some small darkness.
–John Darnielle
Faith in humanity is ignorance of humanity.
-John Staples
The bourgeoise had better watch out for me!
–Bad Brains
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
Am I right? Also, it pleased me to write the word fuck clear across the screen as a black leather choad laughed a plastic laugh and talked about “projections” and “growth” while sitting next to me in this boutique of a coffee shop. Now they’re playing My Girl. It’s too fucking cozy in here. WAY too many smiles. What the fuck is my problem? Am I angry? Depressed&Isolated? You bet. But tell me, what’s so good about the world that I should want to be a part of it? The Buddhists will tell you that hiding from the source of your suffering will only make it worse. All I know is, walking around out here on the street I feel like I want to rip peoples faces off, just to see what’s underneath. Know what I mean? In Philly they ask what the fuck are you looking at? In Austin they say How’s your day going? in a perky tone that communicates the very essence of non-comittal interaction. Christ these choads prattle on.
Psychologically, the windows of my well being are clearer than ever. I can see forever on a good day. The bad days still come around and cling, backwaters of anger and paralysis, no cure for but good rock and roll, a bourbon-or hot sex, fully clothed in the afternoon, zipping up and kissing her goodbye. If I hadn’t of broke my edge I might not know that nicotine doesn’t really help, with the anger or anything else. It just feels good, which is hard to argue with, especially as the days darken and the beast slouches toward Bethlehem. I should warn you, this post may be erratic. They’re playing all the hits here and I’m on my third cup of Hairbender. To paraphrase Uncle Hank, what you need never comes fast enough and when it finally arrives you realize you didn’t want it anyway. That’s how it feels, which is everything to a sensitive Pisces like me. I started this graph reporting on recent and sustained periods of clearness-but I couldn’t help myself and land in the black, hemtophagous days, killing and cruel time with the white people and their music in this cafe.
It’s good to be white. There aren’t any heavy ramifications to dumping Universal Healthcare because you don’t like the Muslim Socialist (read: nigger) who had the balls to change how we treat the poor and mentally ill in this country. What happens in public schools doesn’t matter, and the black vans and helicopters swarming sanctuary cities aren’t coming for your people. I swear I have enough hatred for boonie-dwelling, closeted racist crackers to burn the coast from D.C. to Jacksonville City. The climate change denying is baffling, but I guess if you don’t even notice a 70 degree week in the middle of February than there really is no way me or anyone besides Alex Jones will reach you in your bubble. If you’re wondering about my bubble, I don’t have one. I’ve been apolitical for most of my life and certainly for the life of this blog. I’d like to live my life in peace, and that includes not murdering others to do so. I’m sure this graph has painted me a target for the Nationalists out there, and the New Dumb. Might as well be honest, eh Comrade? I’m sick of the parade, I left the party a long time ago. The Left is fucked and waking up somewhere comfortable and quiet when they finally realize they have more in common with Blacks than they’ve ever shared with the ruling class. There is no doubt that men like Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell will be relegated to the wrong side of History, but where does that leave apathetic and apolitical jerkoffs like me, who’ve done little to none in the 17 years since W. stole the general election and wiretapped every phone, computer and home in The America?
I can’t say I’m much better, except I’ve been too battle weary, worn out by my own abuse, not reaching for a solution or the common good but holding out until the pain passes. I play rock and roll. I write poetry. I left Philly because I was fed up catching attitude everywhere from the public library to the 711-and Austin, the Velvet Rut, as good as its been to me, is looking more and more like an ad for L.L. Bean and the Americana and country music I came here for must compete with programmed beats and neon trash they pump in places like Plush and Pop.
I’m getting depressed again. I been through certain avenues of the mental health system and through these cycles enough times to know. It ain’t me, Brother, Sister. What’s wrong with Jimbo is what’s wrong with the world. I’ve lived my life in the service of Art, and created Art in service to my blues. A couple years ago, while working on The Coarse Grind, fellow thinker, writer and Brother Bean Maguire asked me for some words on addiction. The thing grew into a monster in which I attempted to chronicle the savage road through depression and alcoholism to recovery. I’m thinking it’s time to dust it off and send it up the pole. I need a little distance from the blog, and what the Buddhists call detachment could be good for me-before I trash my job and my house, this town and everyone I know. The blog’s been cutting too close to the bone, and I could use some professionalism as I look for work in the Arts and plug into as many outlets as it’ll take to exhaust my anger and spare my fellow man. Thank you for joining me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m needed at a Black Lives Matter meeting.
See you on the streets motherfucker.
Fuck. Well, here’s part 2. SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS.
I always wanted to be a writer. That’s not to say that I always knew I wanted to be a writer. It is to say that for the last 22 years I have wanted to be a writer, but only actualized it and felt like one for the last 2 or 3. Depending on who’s counting and if it’s the inner critic I don’t want to know. That bastard. Too many times he’s shut me down. Told me I ain’t shit and that I needed to get drunk if I wanted to be like Papa (Bukowski) or lift weights if I wanted to be like Henry Rollins. The truth is I always wanted to be a writer but I didn’t know how. I mean I always journaled, but-did that count? Hopefully any writer reading this has felt the power of it, the magic of writing. In 20,000 Days On Earth, Nick Cave discovers that he can control the weather with his moods simply by writing about it.
“Now if I could only control my moods.” He sullenly adds.
Today’s installment of The Coarse Grind is a very Zen offering, so bear with me and don’t let me off the hook. Too often lofty advice is given for the reader to pore or fawn over while the writer’s slipped out to the alleyway to get paid and hail a cab. Same goes for Spirituality. The truth about spirituality is the same as the truth about writing. Both seem equally impossible, utterly unglamorous and something entirely different than our ideas about them. But both also are redeemed when you consider that their road is the only road and that’s the one we are on, good reader. That if you want to be a writer you must write. Simple, right? Perhaps. Do consider what can keep you from writing. Or worse-what can take the inspiration out of it until distractions become disasters that can physically keep you from writing.
I don’t need to tell you. You know your weaknesses. And I know mine. But the only thing that will keep you going back, sitting down and spending more long hours on the sinking throne is if you like what you’re doing. Old Hank B. said it must come shooting out of your fingertips, that if it’s difficult then don’t try. But old Hank R. would probably say the opposite: it must be hard, it must be painful, because you are a no-talent nobody who must get up hours before everybody else to be on par. Now here comes the Zen so hold on to your seat. Today’s Zen of writing moment is brought to you by The Boss:
“Be able to keep two completely contradictory ideas alive and well inside of your heart and head at all times. If it doesn’t drive you crazy, it will make you strong.”
There you have it, your religion. What about dogma? Because who among us wouldn’t rather have written than actually write?
Those 19 years when I wanted to be a writer? I knew I would be published when I first saw a copy of Rollins’ One From None. I knew it ’cause he knew it and ol Hank Rollins showed us how. Also (and here is why Bukowski is my Papa and his contribution to literature can never be underestimated) Papa told me that I could be a poet. I could write from where I was at. Which is right here, in my chair, in my house and from within the circus of my mind. 19 years after first seeing a copy of Rollins’ book and 15 after reading Papa for the first time, I started a blog. Then I knew it. I was a writer.
The man in me will hide sometimes to keep from bein’ seen
but that’s just because he doesn’t want to turn into some machine
Ahoy, good reader. Tis I, the rageful poet, about to turn it out and kick out the jams. I been kept too long, cooped up and strung along working for the man. I just blasted some Dylan and now all is quiet in the mansion, so I’ll sit down and get to work. It’s what I do. 600 words is sometimes all that keeps us from a landslide-ain’t that right Brother, Sister? It’s a shame that issues of interest are often times only tossed off by the Author. The problem with storytelling, last week, for example. I’m not sure I’m making a point most of the time and honestly I’m ok with simply making sense. I need to keep my pen and wits sharp, so I tie it on and have a go as a lion tamer and therapist. I peel my skull cap back, lower the fourth wall and invite you in. A most narcissistic exercise, this. Maybe D.C. Bloom is right but if it wasn’t for your devoted readership and wonderful comments I might hang it up. The answer may be to do it more but in the meantime I’m glad to be doing it once a week, while I remodel and even find another model altogether for getting my literary&journalistic ya-yas out. In short, I couldn’t be happier to find that what’s wrong with me has taken a seat at the literary table. This is literature, you know, you don’t believe me ask Brother Ignacio. Whether or not it’s journalism will be my charge and challenge in the dark “post-racial” New Century.
The old model was set by a 17 year old skinhead standing on his homey’s steps on a stupid night in the suburbs. It’s when I first saw a copy of Rollins’ One From None. Allot has happened since then. Things have transpired to disabuse me of my dreams, had me do a double think- which is what homelessness will do to a guy. Maybe I never had what it takes, I got scared and cold, sold out and went all in and the middle class jackoff caregiver before you is only a product of fear. If I hadn’t heard this story so many times I might believe it. I’m old, and wise, enough to know that life is made of choices we make and there are choices that are still being made. The music still plays. As tired and oft repeated are the voices of doubt within me, there’s a stubborn kernel of a dream I’ve had for so long it’s a part of me. It’s driven me, gotten me through the countless times when I thought I blew it, flipping burgers in Crum Lynne, working as a sexton at First Lutheran 17th&Spruce, a landscaper in the projects of North Philly and, the second longest job I’ve ever had, working as a busboy for the White Dog Cafe (2004-2005). Maybe I should consider my current gig as the second longest and reconsider that I’ve been working at my Art, however inconsistently, for 24 years since that night in Upper Darby when I knew I’d be a published poet. But here’s where things get screwy.
I’ve had 3 books published while working here and it’s been nothing like the 17 year old man in me’s dream to be a punkrock renaissance man, full time and on the road for most of the year-like Hank. It pains me to consider plugging in to another machine-an $800 1 bedroom apartment, a rental company requiring your income to be 3 and 1/2 times that, with 6 months prior rental history, while I’m making payments on a new car and being gouged by AT&T. The rub is, as much as it pains me, maybe this is the way. Despite myself and the dream, I’m able to be the Artist I always wanted to be, I just need to be nestled in somewhere, warm&quiet, working full time for a monthly payment that goes nowhere. If it’s what’s right, why does it feel like failure? Am I so fucking hardwired that I don’t know what is good for me?
Something has presented itself and it’s a return to my roots. Ain’t the best neighborhood and a bit out of town. Super cheap and solitary. The point is I worry, will I sacrifice too much comfort, and only be raw and uncomfortable out there below the red line-and my work will suffer? Or, if I choose comfort, and care for myself in the prescribed and proven effective way, working full time and trying to keep my head up AND do Art-will my work suffer? No easy answers here.
Looks like I solved the problem with storytelling. You’re welcome.
Took a woman like you
to get through to the man in me
-Bob Dylan, The Man In Me
Introjective depression – the autonomous kind, on the other hand, is characterized by intense self-criticism and there is frequently, then, an intense drive for achievement to offset the internalized sense of inferiority and self-scrutiny. These individuals can be extremely critical of others as well as themselves and can be intensely competitive, often achieving a great deal, but with little sense of satisfaction – no amount of external validation seems to satisfy the harsh and demanding person that they can be in relationship to themselves.
-Karl Stukenberg on Sydney Blatt’s Developmental Theory of Depression
it seems we lose the game,
before we even start to play
–Everything Is Everything
Got my walking papers. Guess this means the gloves are off. 5 years can feel like a lifetime or it can go by way too fast on shift, on the clock and working for the man. If it sounds like I’m complaining it’s because that’s my voice, I’m charged with it-fiery and riled and launching these missives through the barrel of a gun. It’s because the last thing I want to do is tell you a lie or waste your time. It’s this voice I honed and came to grips with, working for Mr. Fox. The job gave me a bedtime, gave me the morning, still hated but doable, forced me to eat meals and sleep and watch movies and be lazy. Above all it taught me what I need to be high functioning, and it’s hardly what I thought it would be.
I’ve published 3 books in the last 5 years, written hundreds of blogs and letters, and played more than 120 gigs, not counting spoken word and storytelling gigs, since I was hired on. I’m glad to put it this way, and catch a rare reprieve from the inner critic. The first sentence of this paragraph riddles the inner critic with buckshot, stuffs its mouth with gauze and sends it 6 feet closer to Heaven. I might not be Henry Rollins but I’m gaining on him. The pace is fucked. I’ll never be happy with how long these things take and that’s probably because I’ll never be happy with myself. I feel like I’m behind before I even wake up in the morning and wonder of the wisdom, sung by Lauryn Hill, in that song from days past. But there’s so much more to it than that.
Up against it as we are, fucked and doomed to play their game should be enough to motivate, and it does. The specter of death, terribly advancing on us from the day we’re born should be enough, and it is. Never being Henry Rollins, never being good enough, has been fine motivation these slipshod and lean years-I know where it’s gotten me but I draw a blank when I think about what’s next. It’s because you can’t build on a negative. Anybody who’s ever quit anything knows that not doing it is only the beginning. You must substitute it with something you are doing. Quitting smoking, for example. Of course, I had to first stop doing it. Once I did the space opened up for something else. Saying FUCK FUCK FUCK in my head seems to work, until I rupture a blood vessel, but certainly got me through terrible and troubling hours at the IPRC a few weeks ago. At every step of All in the wind‘s production I was struck with the anxiety of never living my dreams-a great dread that neatly incorporates my fear of death and incredible lack of self esteem into a thorny and torrid cocktail called WHY I WORK ALONE.
Fear of dying will get you out of bed in the morning. You bet. A voice in your head telling you you’ll never be anything, never were anything, your parents were right and just because you left your hometown doesn’t mean you got away can also be great motivation, but not in the long run. I’m 41 and I feel like I am just getting started. Yogic wisdom tells me that all we are ever doing is getting started, and completing tasks with the quickness of Shiva’s wheeling hands. The twisted cocktail of death and low self esteem, and the example of great men like meteors burning across the small town sky of my psyche can be potent, virile and all the ingredients needed for a bomb-but I feel like I’m gonna need a fire and for a fire you need fuel.
Work in media suits me. It’s probably the only kind of work besides performing in which I feel like I am making a change. I’m struck, sitting here, that it was just over 5 years ago when I decided to do something meaningful with my life and said goodbye to the bars with a few answered ads for Caregivers on craigslist. In the last 5 years I was able to produce consistently as an artist by going to sleep at a certain time every night, and getting up at the same time every morning. I had to make enough money to fund the first pressings of All in the wind and September , and have enough spare cash to fly out to the many unpaid (if not thankless) gigs in Philly and Louisiana. HAAM paid my healthcare premiums but I was only able to get behind the trouble in my mouth with a begrudging loan against an inheritance from my mother, who sent me a check made out to the dentist. Which is nothing I want to get into now. It should be noted that I’m sitting on a lengthy backlog of posts, inspired by the prospect of being on RawPaw’s payroll in the Fall of ’14 and a request from Bean Maguire to recount my savage road to sobriety. The point, now mangled and drug down this winding graph, is I only did it with a whole lot of gumption, even more bitterness and a little bit of luck.
I discovered what I need these last 5 years. What I want has never been in question, but the crossroads of dread and inspiration at the hated age of 41 has me asking other questions. Like, how will I hit 20 major cities a year and maintain my bedtime? How can I possibly create without seeming to be in control of what happens within my own 4 walls? Simply, maybe I’m not Rollins. It’s not exactly in the cards to be on the road for over 200 days a year. Knowing what I need is a start, knowing that it’s fuel is even better, and how I can be at my strongest and even ease the grip of this dream, live a little and breathe is healthy, and necessary. the area of pause, as Papa put it.
Bukowski, as close to an example and road as I have, lived most of his life at War, but the man knew how to rest, too, and the author’s photos on his later works showcase the hard earned, worn and warm smile of Hank-a man aware of his limitations and therefore resting fully in his own power, if not in love then at peace.
Everything is political.
–Ian MacKaye
I’m glad that quote reached me from the mouth of one of the greatest intelligences of our time. I’m sure Angela Davis or Terrence McKenna or Camile Paglia has said the same thing, but it wouldn’t have mattered much to me because, except for my punk rock allegiances, I was apolitical. You know, too cool to be bothered. Besides being on the wrong side of whatever side there is, I never stood for anything. Politics were boring. Activism was never as fun as bombing through the streets of Houston in a black Bronco with young trust funded Republicans, smoking meth and spouting on about the evils of socialism. This is gonna be hard to reign in. Especially while the most gorgeous young lady sits in front of me at Ford Food&Drink in downtown Portland, eating a tangelo and sipping tea in blonde curls and elf boots.
That’s right, Portland, and I fucking love it here. Anything could be a step up from last week-being called a peasant by the boss and caught in a flame war about Kanye-for Christ-West with a Democratic choad from my past days delivering rich kids luggage in the hills of upstate NY and New England (love ya Nate!). That, combined with the news these days made it a banner week for shittiness. The only glimmer was listening to Father Ian on Tuesday and getting the fuck out of town and flying into the Emerald City on Wednesday.
I still haven’t got around to being political yet. I’ve been balls deep in the design of the new book, waking up every day to find hours of work wasted, gone, and unusuable but rebuilding the book Mr. Miyagi style, my skills sharpened from failure after failure with Adobe’s Creative Suite. There are some glitches, it’s true, but dealing with their Help Center for hours only to be told it’s not a fault of the s0ftware was time I didn’t have. I had to get 150 book blocks printed by end of day Tuesday, and board a plane with them on my shoulder at 10am the next day. All while on shift, you know, the peasant gig, and shutting it down, cooking dinner for the old man, cleaning the kitchen, doing laundry and packing. I guess it could be worse. In fact I know it could, which, as stated last week, is the change in me.
This blog is completely self mired and utterly self referential. I count on the readership of sensitive folks with anarchistic and anti-authrotarian tendencies who feel my pain. It’s been nothing short of wonderful sharing the plight and the pleasure of being a poet with you, and, best of all-it kept me inspired. After all, I’m just a song and dance man, a performer-and this blog has been more a stage than anything else. As far as being inspired, never having writer’s block as long as the main character in my writing is me-I wouldn’t exactly call it a deadend, as here I sit, 2,000 miles from home, in a cafe full of hipsters in sweaters listening to indie music, with 611 words written at the stroke of noon. Jackpot and Hot Damn, as Dr. Thompson would say, victory over idleness and blues and for the simple fact that I got out of bed and made it into town and wrote all this down without a cigarette. I’m useful, I’m writing and I’m communicating. Thanks in no small part to you. But when I hear the clarion call almost daily, and it’s been revealed that I’ve been sidelining it for most of my life, well I knew that much and it was in fact a deliberate choice, but that it’s not acceptable anymore and all I can do is write…I’m thankful. Purposely. Resolutely.
Ian MacKaye was right. I’ll always need to get it out, get it down and “frame the agony”, somehow come to grips with the nowness and immediacty of everything. Seeing Uncle Hank on Tuesday night reminded me what initially attracted me to the man. He talked about being a hyperventilating borderline child who was on Ritalin until he was 18. I remembered something about myself that I almost forgot. I am what you call “too much” (but never how my cuntface X meant it). Some of us are too much for this life, we can’t contain our energy and love and enthusiasm and pain. Life is too much, the world is too much, it’s all too much. So, we lift weights or do Yoga or run or smoke and drink and fight and fuck or, simply, write. I’m still glad to be here with you sharing these long hours on the sinking throne. I know the pump is primed. I know that, if informed (thank you President Elect Trump) I can write about anything. I can’t be lazy though, and a Facebook and HuffPo diet have made me feel like I was doing something when all I was doing was being outraged. Outrage is ok, until folks like Ian and Henry Rollins and Robert Kraft show you how work gets done. And if you have a tendency to be outraged, like I do, it’s gonna be a long night.
Stay tuned for some incrdible news about the new collection and rest assured, for this week at least, about the political nature of your work, your striving, your song and your poetry.
I speak here of poetry as a revelatory distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean-in order to cover a desperate wish for imagination without insight. For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.
-Audre Lorde
Going for the Throat 