Moonfest! I played vibraphone and drumset so well people were coming up to me all night saying I did really good and that I'm really cool and I feel like I'm on top of the world!
Spent the day with Ybru's boyfriend Bojacc and his best friend Ainejess. Got good coffee and croissants and walked downtown and went to the mennonite sandwich place for lunch. Then cleaned my room and hung out with Yzlin before taking acid. I really wanted to kiss Yzlin tonight. Took acid with MB, Ybru, and Bojacc and went to MB's room, had a really fun time just joking and laughing and kissing and having sex and she showed me a ritual she does before she goes to parties. We knelt before each other and rubbed rose scented balm on our throats and wrists and stared at each other and chanted "I am a magnet I am a magnet I am a magnet." I don't really believe in manifesting admiration from others but it reminded me of the mantra I always tell myself which is "I am a viking"--which is something I started doing after my dad told me that I should feel more confident because I come from a long line of Vikings and have warrior blood. So when I was saying "I am a magnet" I really meant "I am confident enough in my body that I do not need to prove to others that I am worthy of love because I already know that I am worthy of it" and when she was saying "I am a magnet" she really meant "I am attractive and alluring to others which will in turn give me confidence enough to have a good night." Then I touched her shoulder and said "tag" and ran out of her house and she chased me into the field where we ran towards the moon and listened to the party music which was reverberating off all of the houses surrounding the field and we went into the apartment where my friends were all dressed in white togas and screaming and moshing. Yro just today broke up with his boyfriend and cut his hair into a mowhawk and for the party gelled it straight up like a real punk. So he was wearing brown leather boots and a toga and a belt with a pouch and his hair gelled up into a tall mowhawk dancing--he looked like a warrior. We screamed in each other's faces and then me and MB ditched and went to see Ybru and Bojacc and Ainejess and we put tiger lilies in our hair which Bojacc had gifted Ybru after she got the letter congratualting her for getting into Boston University (she's transferring ); ). Then we drifted separate ways and I hung out with Yzlin. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life tonight. We hung out all night, holding hands in the field, dancing at the party where everyone else was also dressed in flowing white outfits, smoking weed, and looking out accross the mountains, breathing together as she dragged her black acrylic nails accross my jaw. She kept making jokes and laughing at them while I was being mostly silent because I was in the part of the acid trip where I was feeling anxious which made me feel bad and also made her seem even more like an angel. When we got back to the party we separated and I saw MB again and went back to her room and debreifed and slept. MB has bad insomnia so she read all of Orlando by Virginia Woolf (which she told me she started because I like Virginia Woolf so much which is really sweet) while I slept. Ybru said Bojacc cried in her arms all night because he was high and she was transferring.
Today was a depressed and tired day. I keep fucking up during orchestra rehearsals because I DON'T WANT TO BE THERE. I'm only doing it because the other percussionist's dad got really sick and they had to go to California. I'm playing crash cymbals, chimes, gong, and triangle and I haven't played chimes in a really long time and I keep getting the timing wrong because I have to make sure I'm hitting the right notes while not looking at the instrument so I can look forward and read the music and watch the conductor. Bleh. Acid hangover is so real. It was fight night tonight tho--the whole dorm house comes together in the common room and a different two people wrestle until we determine a winner. I hosted but I also fought Eikfran and won. It was hard work to fight on a bad hangover and I have rug burn scabs on my back, elbows, and knees. Yzlin and my friend Anele fought so hard both of their elbows were bleeding all over each other's faces. But fight night is always a blast. Sleep time I'm dead on my feet. Oh and also Ino covered himself in his own piss for performance art today on the lawn. Then he drank it. He says he collects it in jars for two days before the performance but doesn't eat or drink anything different leading up to the collection. If it were me I'd drink gallons of water and eat super healthy so my piss tasted better. He said he didn't notice the taste as much as the texture. Apparently it's grainy.
I woke up really late today but I got a summer job!!!! I'm going to be working at a farm/coffee shop/music venue doing sound for the music shows and working at the farmers markets. Its free housing AND I get paid AND I'm going to be working with other college students so I'll have friends AND its a farm AND has to do with music its literally my dream summer job. I went on a long drive with Ttergar--he's not doing too well. He got really drunk and broke half his front tooth off the other night. We stopped at a coffee shop and a yard sale but I didn't get anything both times. I love talking to him--he's my go to to talk about love and relationships and mental phsychosis. Then I went to songwriting class and listened to two great songs--Omeed Goodarzi came to do a muscianship talk and he said a song is like a mirrorball rolling down a hill--it never changes its shape but it gives off a multitude of new things each time it moves forward. He said its good practice not to let a song repeat ever--let it change in small ways all the way till the end. Time to lock myself in the barn and practice marimba until I bleed. I'm really worried the solo (Uguisu Kagura) won't come together in time for the concert (May 22). Wish me luck.
Today was really beautiful. I've been trying to wake up early but haven't quite reached that goal. I think it would be nice to wake up with the sun but I haven't quite figured out how to do that because its too rainy and cold to sleep outside and I only have one small window inside (I live in a dorm room). I went to breakfast with Yzlin and we talked about how we would want to be buried. She told me she cremated her father and asked the crematorium if she could keep his two gold teeth and they said no. I said my dad wants a viking funeral at Lake Michigan so I'm going to set his ashes in a boat and set it on fire and push it out into the lake. My mom wants to be buried in a way that is least harmful to Earth so I want to just bury her body straight into the ground without a casket or anything. Then we went to her room and played music and talked about capitalism and religion and art for a few hours. We haven't really talked ever so this was the first time we got to know each other through how we think about the systems in the world. Then MB took me into the woods and showed me three really big tip-up mounds and an abandoned tree-house and these wooden benches someone had made by piling logs. We followed a dried-up stream out of the woods. Now I'm off to play Uguisu Kagura which is KILLING ME. ITS SO HARD TO PLAY.
If anyone asks religion is being used as a vehicle for capitalism because people are assigning moral values to behaviors that support capitalistic regimes! Oh no I stole something I'm going to hell!!! Oh no I can't kiss girls I'm going to hell!!! Which coincidentally supports an intolerance for deviance from a normative culture that requires a compliance to patriarchy which is a foundational tool for capitalism!! Oh God only gives people who work hard money you must be poor because you didn't work as hard as me :(. It has nothing to do with the wealth I was born into or my race or gender :((. If anyone asks also when being born inside a capitalistc government the secret to life is learning how to identify every kind of shame you were ever taught and then eliminate it you will feel wildly less anxious and depressed. Books are really good teachers for this. Today marks the start of Capitalism Week which is just finals season. But I allow myself to get stressed out which I don't normally do because I go to a liberal enough college that if I ever need an extension my professors will just give it to me. So I'm always telling myself there is literally no reason to ever be stressed when I am on this campus. But there's no escaping it during finals. Another aspect of Capitalism Week is that I'm allowed to buy myself as many coffees, snacks, and other vices to get through which I also don't normally allow myself to do. So I bought my first pack of cigs since December. It's been raining all day and I haven't done laundry in weeks so I've gone barefoot everywhere and have just kept a pair of slippers in my bag for when I need to go to the dining hall.
‘Queer’ was for us not a sexul label but a political badge
SUCK IT CAPITALISM WEEK I DID IT!!!!!!!!! Worst week ever but some small highlights. I liked being in the library with Ele yesterday. Its really easy to have fun with him and talk to him about stuff. I want him to be my best friend but I think he likes being a bit of a loner sometimes. I'll just keep annoying him anyways. Danced in the rain in the field at Sunfest which was nice and got drunk with Anele because Ytreraff is away nursing Evoli through her concussion so she actually wanted to hang out with me again instead of focusing so hard on Ytreraff. A blissful night that will not be repeated for a while. Pisses me off though. Everytime we hang out now she's always like wow I miss you and I'm like if you really missed me you would make an effort to hang out with me fucker. I digress. The tree outside my window dropped all its petals which makes me sad. I didn't sit in it once while it was in full bloom.
I've been feeling low. Trying to wake up at 8:30am and made little signs on top of my alarm clock that say "Don't you want Nick Brooke to be proud of you? DON'T GO BACK TO SLEEP" and "Don't you want Joe Alpar to be proud of you? DON'T GO BACK TO SLEEP" and finally "Don't you want Michael Dumanis to be proud of you? DON'T GO BACK TO SLEEP" with goofy little drawings of each of them. It really worked this morning to be honest. I woke up at 8:30 (or 8:45 to be more exact) and read a poetry book and remembered my coffee machine and cleaned it and had my own coffee instead of d-hall coffee this morning. Moved my bed by the window yesterday so I get to fall asleep hanging out the window and wake up and drink my coffee with the birds. I've been feeling low because I have been sleeping through my classes (again) and am thus dissapointing my professors despite the amount of homework I did last week. Plus I've been tired and unsocial this week even though I didn't really hang out with people all that much last week. I really wanted to hang out this week so my unsociable mood has made me dissapointed with how I am spending my time. Plus my marimba solo is a mess. Plus...no actually that's it those are all the reasons I'm feeling low. But whenever I spend time not having fun outside and lock in on little personal projects by my lonsome I'm reminded of when I got really hyperfixated on baking when I was little and all I wanted to do for my birthday was bake my own cake and all my friends wanted to go outside and hang out and I refused and after I baked my cake my mom got mad at me for not wanting to hang out with my friends for my birthday and I felt bad and cried and then some time later went onto the back porch and found her crying and I asked what the matter was and she said "I'm sorry I made you cry on your birthday" so of course spending time on this website project has also been making me feel like a little kid who wants to bake a cake alone instead of hang out with their friends. There's dew in the grass and my dad waiting for me at home whom I miss very much (I haven't even had the time to think of him lately. I miss him very much.) and a musical commune to work at over the summer and new people my age to meet who are just like me and poetry to read and write and music to release and perform and people who care about me very much. I'm feeling very grateful on this morning with my homemade coffee and Simon and Garfunkle on the CD player. I think if I want anything enough I can get very easily which makes me feel depressed.
Today we made a big dinner, went out for red wine, bread, and ingredients for red sauce mozzarella pasta because today is Yzlin's birthday! Her long, black acryic nails looked nice next to my fingers covered in last night's tattoo ink. I think I just feel friendly towards her right now but I can tell she wants more. We ate our home-cooked meal outside at the picnic table and set it up with flowers and the candles I used in my marimba concert and a red table cloth. All the dishes were hand-made by Naijul. I've spent a lot of today sewing a suit for graduation and just got back from a dance show where people had box TV's on their heads and were fully nude making out (bumping TV heads together) while someone else was sweeping bags of trash. She kept looking up a the audience while she was sweeping shouting the names of people she recognized in the crowd and the whole time I was like why isn't she calling my name? Now my friends are setting up stuff for the bathroom show--amps in the shower, micophones by the sinks, drumset by the toilet type-a deal. I'm gonna go in a bit after I finish writing and take my shower and make myself a coffee. There's a lot I want to remember. Yesterday I had my marimba show and it ent very well! MB picked me wildflowers and bundled them in burlap and lace. Everyone really liked our original composition! Its a song with two 4+1/3 marimbas, a vibraphone, and two floor toms. Oh, last night we played capture the 30 rack (Genesee) in the VA building with a bunch of people and it was fun sneaking around the building with friends scheming. I almost captured a beer I snuck through an open hallway and ran full speed but then at the last minute I slipped on water (I was barefoot and had no traction) and fell hard and hurt my ankle. After that I had the option to get high and go around the catacombs, play True American with all the seniors, or hang out with Yzlin and Anele. I've been trying not to smoke much weed lately because it makes me depressed so I chose True American. It was fun they hid a handle of vodka in the VA building and we had to find it, had to leg wrestle, do a talent show (we stacked three of us on each other's shoulders a sang three-part harmonies), scream the national anthem, find random objects around the building and carry them back as souvenirs, play a varition of 2 truths 1 lie, etc. Thursday me and Yzlin hung out all night watching movies. During dinner Ytreraff drove the van onto the End of the World and we all watched the mountains ate dinner and I started sewing my graduation suit while Yreraff and Ele played guitar and sang Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea album front to back without stopping. The sunset was gorgeous and bright pink. Wednesday I helped Ybru with her short film and then went to the lake with her and MB and swam and pulled swigs from a bottle of rum until the pizza guy called and drove back with MB and I's whole bodies out the car windows kissing in he wind where Ybru couldn't see. We ate pizza and I did homework until the sun rose. On Thursday I chainsmoked cigarettes with Yzlin and Anele on the dock of the lake and talked. Just silly hypotheticals and how we perceive and handle nostalgia. Then we went to the art show opening (barefoot in our swim suits) and it was very beautiful. Monday I got high and talked to Ybru and Bojacc about gender. Sunday Yro, Naijul, Yzlin, and Anele and I drove to a reservoire in Williamstown and swam half-naked drinking beers climbing trees. We picked wild ramps and sang loudly on the drives there and back. Its the first time Yro and I really connected as friends again after I told him how I felt about him. When we got back we laid on a duvet in the sun listening to Feist I was only wearing boxers sunning Anele was making a zine about our friends' bad habits. Then we went to D-hall and made pesto out of the ramps we picked and ate it with baguetes. On Saturday I played Sage Symphony all day and then did room crawl with Ele and Retpor and it was actually really fun we played an alcoholic game of spoons, and a game where everone had to say the wildest thing they know about the person to their left. I said the person to my left once hooked up with this notorious guy who used to live in Stokes dressed as a box of marlboros and had to shimmy sideways into his bedroom. I got very drunk and then at some point in the week I was at the DCB doing a practice-run of my marimba concert to Yro, Yzlin, and Anele in the DCB at night and then we took beers to the roof of the DCB and talked about gender again and I had a two-hour Balkan performance earlier that night (don't tell but I got a little bit high for it with Ymtom.) That's it for now.
they left a full fish head on our kitchen floor while we were all in coffee hour crying about how all the seniors are leaving. Kcbe made a shower outside out of plexiglass and wooden beams and stood in the cold and the drizzling rain pouring candle wax all over her body. She was wearing a plaster cast around her chest with red strings hanging down and a whole candle melted to the middle of her chest. Sometimes she repeated the phrase "are we burning or are we lit" about police brutality and the white gaze. Which was insane because all I could do was watch her get hurt and do nothing about it which I guess was the point. And I loved how the candlewax, the thing inflicting pain on her and a product of civilization, was the only thing keeping her warm and in that way protected from the elements. The candlewax dripped accross her legs like rain and birds were screaming. I performed at Earth Sky Time yesterday and wore Ydted's huge brown lether jacket which had pokemon cards in the pocket and shredded it on the marimba. The mountains were misty and all my friends were there. He drove me home and let me keep Umbreon.
Had a bonfire for MB's birthday. I got really high to dull the pain of pushing in bigger guages and sat against my tree looking out at the many fluffy dandelions, vibrant green grass and the sunlight was shining through the hanging leaves. Yzlin was walking up to me and I said "it is really really pretty" and she smiled really big and said "thank you" and I didn't correct her. Then we sat together in silence and I followed a thought until I was too high to remember what I was thinking and then did it again and again and she said "what are you thinking right now" and I knew she wanted me to say "I'm thinking about you" but I wanted to be honest so I said "my thoughts are really scattered" and I said "what are you thinking about right now" and she said "you" and then she admitted she had a big crush on me and I said I had a small crush on her and she said that was fine and I said I'm not looking for anything serious and she said that was fine.
I played songs from the album I've been writing for a show and bombed terribly and then me and Yzlin went home and kissed.
Home sweet home. Went to Lake Michigan today with my dad. I'm trying to make banners of charcoal drawings but I can't find any blank canvas fabric. Writing songs. Rewriting Bernadette Mayer's Midwinter's Day because I don't think it's very imaginative and its good practice. Finalizing summer plans. I want to buy a vibraphone but I have no money (am currently in credit card debt).
Tonight was the best night of my entire life. I just arrived in the Catskills (remember how I said working at the farm I was talking about earlier was my dream job? Well my gut told me to quit and live alone housesitting for my friend in the Catskills so I did. I was so scared that I was just going to be bored and lonely this whole damn summer. (I arrived yesterday). BUT I researched good punk venues nearby and I found this place in Woodstock that does open mics every Monday night and I decided about two hours before it started "hey that sounds great." Got there and spent the whole time at the bar psyching myself out like "should I play should I not play" but I did and everyone said I did really great and had an original voice and this old guy came up to me which this very powerful seeming trans woman said was a very good musical contact to have and he said he loved my stuff and did I know that he got Laurie Anderson her first exposure and did I want to come to his hippie arts coloy in the mountain this week. And on top of that I met the boy I am going to marry tonight. He was a bartender who caught my eye right away and he played last tonight and was great. We only said good job to each other but I'm definitely going back to that bar. Magic is so real. Oh and I forgot to say that nearly everone who was left in the bar at the end of the night shook my hand and one guy told me I paint with sound!
So much has happened I don't even know where to start. My first week of work was insane. It started fine I hiked hand-crafted wooden chairs to different locations in the Chatham woods for an art installation Annea Lockwood is doing where she records noises of nature over the course of a year and then turns the recordings into a music composition in an effort to bring respect back to nature and as a call to action because it is dying. I held one arm as a boy held the other and we moved slowly. I learned about his recent heartbreak, his dreams, his fierce competitiveness, and his meticulous disposition. I'm not sure what he learned about me. We took a break in the creek and I hung upside down in a tree to make him laugh. He has since moved to Europe. I realized about a week into my job that I have been working with the drummer of Pinegrove and didn't know it. He's the sweetest person in the world. I met the drummer and bassist of Fugazi--the drummer brought his iconic massive silver bell and the bassist looked pissed off the whole time. But the set was incredible. They played their "The Messthetics and James Brandom Lewis" album. I met the SO percussionists and they did a show in honor of Steve Reich and on one tune they played complex rythms on chord sticks and I almost cried. After playing "Drumming" a guy from SO who knows I'm a percussionist came up to me and said "how'd you do?" and I didn't know what that meant at the time so I stammered "I don't know" and he kindly excused himself from the conversation. Afterwards Matt Gold told me how the structure of "Drumming" works and I realized I failed a test and felt extremely embarassed. On Sunday I had to get to work at 4:30am and do a Brian Eno inspired piece that Phil Kline wrote where he set poetry written by kids in the area to ambient music and burned it into about thirty cassette tapes. We all pressed play at the same time on the boomboxes and hiked the meadows as the sun rose to celebrate the summer solstice. Cassettes naturally unwind at different rates so the music overlapped over itself and it was very beautiful. My coworker Janet said that she wished she could have just listened to the birds, and Matt agreed. He said some of us like to make noise and others like to listen. But I thought--aren't we here to make art? We can sunrise hike at any time. The boomboxes ritualize the human spirit interacting with the earth. But when I started to say this I was wording it wrong and Matt excused himself from the conversation. Last night I went to The Colony's open mic again and played a song Nick Brooke said could be my career starter, but I messed up a bit and in the end didn't get as much praise as the first time I sang. However, I did meet some more new people. Paul MacMahon bought me a red wine, and I hadn't given myself enough time to eat before I left home so I was trying to feed myself with the liquor and felt dizzy but filled up on adrenaline. I purposefully start the song kind of minimalistic and then it gets bigger and bigger until it bursts at the end, so a lot of people came up to me afterward and said "I didn't expect it to be so good." As I was leaving I noticed some guys hanging around and one woman named Beatrix. They were on some drug but I didn't ask what and were smoking pot and talking about music so I stayed. This one guy who kind of looked like a nervous Elijah Wood attached himself to my hip and as we talked about how he backpacked through Michigan and busked the streets with his banjo he didn't look me in the eye once. Some guy who was clearly gay was out of his mind speaking incoherently to me but then had a moment of clarity and said "it was good, but I think you could do better." And that got me interested so I said "in the verses or the chorus?" And then he lost his clarity and started babbling again. Anyways they told me he was out of his mind because his wife left him and that really shocked me. And since Elijah Wood was such a demure guy and since Beatrix was there, when they asked if I wanted to go to the bar downtown with them I said yes. As we walked through the neighborhood they grew up in in the dark Elijah Wood told me about how the guy with curly golden blonde hair just got out of jail and everyone was excited that he was back. Apparently he had gotten in trouble with drinking and driving and ran from the cops. At the bar I met this other guy who turned out to be a drummer and I had a rum and coke to soothe my hunger pangs and the bartender was talking about tantric Buddhism and Elijah Wood was talking about being poor. The guy who just got out of jail after a while came over to us and said he was leaving and implied that Elijah Wood and I would go home together. I tried very hard to mask how appalled I was by that assumption and asked him to drive me to my car. As I was driving home my tire completely blew out and thankfully a woman who I discovered was passionate about archiving music drove me home and I called the tow truck company and they said I couldn't just give them a rough estimate of where my car was I needed the coordinates. But I had no exact coordinates and no way of getting to my car. In the end I had to bike 12 miles to the car to get the coordinates and then it got towed and I hitchiked back home. On my bike ride I found a perfectly intact dead butterfly and I stopped and put it in my sweatshirt pocket. His head was beautifully multicolored and his wings looked like multicolored oil spills. Well I soon forgot he was there and I took him out of my pocket at the end of the day and found him smooshed, only one wing intact. As I smoothed my hands over his wing his head jerked to the side and I realized he had been dying in my sweatshirt pocket all day and I had been mangling him. He died face down on the couch. I also found a chipmunk struggling in the plastic garden netting so I took him in my hands and cut him free. He played dead so I got to hold him like a pet--his body was much squishier than I imagined it would be and he felt very fragile. Sort of like how I imagine it would feel to hold a heart in my hands. As soon as I snipped the last line of netting he ran into the trees.
I need to be in New York City so Eicgra and me can start our band. I need to make art with someone else. I can feel that need in my bones.
I also have realized now that I am living on my own that I am homosexual in the man way. I don't really think I was ever sexually attracted to women, I think I just always liked human connection no matter what form. But I know with guys its different. I say "homosexual in a man way" instead of "straight" because my romantic trajectory feels very similar to that of a gay man. Being with women because I look like I should and women are often more attracted or forward about their feelings to me than men and then having my first sexual encounter with a man in college and realizing "oh this is different" etc. I have no idea how I'm going to tell MB. I'm hoping MB will compare it to Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethrope and find it romantic. I'm happy I don't have to force myself to just go through the motions with sex and romance anymore. What a relief.
I have not done a good job of feeding myself and anytime I have a good meal I can feel the energy coursing back into my body like a drug.