For you podcast types, you get to hear a half-hour a day of Frank Edward Nora being Frank Edward Nora. Right now, he’s smelling chair-flavored wax. Experience the magic for yourself. Go test out iTunes 4.9 with it.
Speaking of lesbians, has anyone ever done “A League Of Their Own”-themed porn? I see a huge market for that.
“ELLEN SUE! ONE MORE!!!!!!!!! ONE MORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Gee, Ms. Rosen, thanks for the “Golly, I wish I hadn’t sold mine and the entire industry’s souls to Satan (again)”. It’s a shame that you probably got paid to write it and cost a lot of other people the chance to get paid with your short-sighted, ignorant stupidity.
I appear to have completely forgotten how to talk to girls in clubs. Like, I’m not even bad at it. I just don’t know how to do it anymore, and as a result, I don’t do it. I think part of it is that I don’t want to feed someone I find interesting or attractive anything that even remotely resembles the same line of bullshit they hear from everyone else, even if they like that line of bullshit (and while they’re usually successful just on sheer testing of the odds, I really have no desire to be one of these overly aggressive pigs I see out there, and really hope I was never as bad as some of the people I see…), and part of it’s also that I’ve just become a very shy person again. The fact that my hearing is shot in some ways doesn’t help my conversation skills, either. I dunno. I don’t know that hints, tips or what have you is going to help something like this, but if you’ve got anything profound laying around, give’r.
Hahahahahaha, I just bought Radar.
I haven’t gotten my “I want to have Jessica Coen’s Federletus” t-shirt yet, but that’s because I just thought of it.
More on hopefully weightier subjects later.
A friend of mine once said something kind of interesting about the things I write about myself. I’m paraphrasing here, and I hope I don’t mess up the wording too much because he reads this, but he said “You have a way of making people pull for you.” I was, and still am pretty flattered by that, but it’s probably for the wrong reasons. If I’m able to make people care about me by writing about my life, it’s got just as much to do, if not a ton more, with how I write about my life than it does with how I live it. There are a bunch of people in this world who live more compelling, interesting lives than I do, and are far more worthy of compassion than I am, but you might never get to know most of them even if you sought them out, either because they don’t write at all, or because they don’t write effectively. I wish that those folks got more attention and notoriety for what they do than they manage to (provided that they actually want it), and I should probably make a practice of writing about them more often than I do.
In the meantime, it does give me some (probably misplaced) pride in what I do to see that I can say things in a way that resembles how I feel and then have people relate to, react to and personalize what I say, even in situations where I’m talking about pretty difficult things or ones where all I’m out to do is show people the ugliest corners of the inside of my brain. At the same time, as nice as it is that I can say something and people can get it, as certainly nice as it is to have people rooting for me, and as grateful as I am for that support, it’s ultimately not what I want for myself, or for the people who care enough to check in on what I do. I’m a bit tired of being the underdog, tired of being “influential” to people who achieve greater success than I do (even though I’m proud almost completely without exception of them when they do), and tired of being the one with all this supposed “potential”.
If you want to know what I’d like for myself and for my audience, it goes a little something like this: I want to be able to knock your fucking heads into the tenth row every time you see what I’m up to. I want to see the comments sections of the various web sites fill up with the words “HOLY FUCKING SHIT.” and nothing else, written in all caps by everyone, possibly misspelled a few times because people were taken that far out of their game by whatever they just witnessed. I want to create universes on my lunchbreak like Jack Kirby always seemed to be able to do. I want to be able to explain what insanity feels like to people with 10 seconds of sound like Ogre, Key and Goettel could in their prime. I want to be able to completely and utterly alter reality without much effort, in the same way that some of the people who’ve come before me have altered mine. I want every high school kid in the world who’s worth anything to use my words as their senior quote, and have my name written on their book covers and notebooks. I want every single one of my creations to be a tape measure home run, a Rob Halford scream, a thousand hits of acid and the best fucking orgasm you’ve ever had in your life rolled into one. At least.
But, and yes, Simone, everyone I know has a big “but” too…I also want the chicken to come before the egg. One of my worst fears (not the worst, but it’s up there) is that people will love me for what I’ve done more than they will for who I am, because the former is more prone to being a phase than the latter. Trust me, I’ve lived through it a few times already, from both sides of the fence. Maybe beggars can’t be choosers and I should just be grateful for whatever kind of love I get thrown my way, but I’ve already told you that I don’t fancy being a beggar my whole life. I want great things for myself, and love that doesn’t hinge on my Q rating is one of those things.
When people love you for what you’ve done or what you’re doing, there is a constant threat that they’ll stop loving you either because you stop doing it, or because you start doing it differently. While I probably shouldn’t worry so much about a fear of this nature, and while in the end, the people who would bail on me either because of what I’ve done or not done already matter the least to me, I would still like to find a situation that exists independently of that dynamic.
My theory is that someone who falls in love with you when you’re at your absolute worst probably won’t be disappointed if things improve from there, as long as you’re just as caring, compassionate and decent in the stars as you were in the gutter. It’s not an absolute, and there are mitigating factors (time management and jealousy being the big ones I can think of right now), but it still makes reasonably good sense to me, having seen how differently people treat you depending on where you rank on the socioeconomic ladder at the time they encounter you.
There’s no guarantee that everyone I’d meet at the top would play the fickle sycophant, but having spent a decade mostly at the bottom, I can tell you that when people tell you they like you here, they tend to mean it, because they don’t have shit to gain from you by doing it unless they’ve figured out that you have talents that interest them. Those types are getting to be pretty easy to see through in my old age, though, and I’ve been working on limiting the amount of energy I let them bleed from me.
Lots of people tell me to pour my energy into my work, and to work on myself, but when you’re not only lacking most of your energy, but also pretty much all of your ability to focus, that’s kind of shot to hell. I’m doing what I can on those fronts. Obviously, in spite of what’s going on, I’ve assembled what I think is a reasonably accurate, objective picture of the condition I’m in. I don’t think I’m bullshitting myself or anyone else about my strengths or my faults. Feel free to correct me if I’m you think I’m wrong there, but know that most, if not all of the so-called “obvious” answers have been followed to a dead end and be respectful of the fact that what may work for you or a lot of other people might not work for me. I don’t always nail that last bit myself, but I do try.
With that in mind, in spite of my desires, I am working at an admittedly lethargic pace on my music, but I also just had 2 synthesizers start doing really bad shit to me, and have only figured out what may be wrong with one of them so far. (Ian, email me about the SY-35 if you see this, so I can get an idea of what a replacement might run.) I also need to get my bass fixed or replaced. I should do that soon. My live show, like most of the plans I had for the first half of ‘05, needs a lot of work, because it’s sort of hard to develop a performance when you can’t breathe or get out of bed. I learned how to sing without needing to breathe last year, but not being able to breathe AND being in constant pain is a little much for anyone to deal with. There aren’t a lot of excuses that hold water in my book, but I’m thinking that poor health (especially if it’s not because of intentional, ongoing neglect) might pass for one. I’m working on it, regardless, and hopefully, the worm will turn in the right direction this time.
I have other ventures in the works (one of which I was throwing around ideas for last night…would any of you show up for a club night that I ran?), but the important thing projectwise is the music. Again, though, it’s very hard to focus on just about anything right now, except for the one thing that everyone tells me I shouldn’t be focusing on. Everyone’s mileage varies, I suppose.
Alright, enough about me for one day. Go listen to some Creedence or something.
(This is going to be a fun read. Apologies for dumping it all on the world two days before we’re supposed to be all happy and celebratory, but I really need to try and purge what’s in my head and heart from my system. Roll up your sleeves…)
According to most peoples’ watches, I have way too much life ahead of me to feel this fucking finished. By finished, I certainly don’t mean “accomplished” or “complete”; it’s more like “too weak to fight back anymore”.
I am physically, mentally, and emotionally worn out to probably the worst degree I’ve ever experienced. If we’ve talked recently (or ever), or you’ve ever read something I’ve shared and thought “wow, he’s pretty bright”, know that I have absolutely no clue how to use whatever you saw in me to make any kind of a life for myself at this point. I know just enough about enough things to get myself into a lot of trouble attempting to do them, rather than succeeding at them. I’m almost completely without the ability to focus my time, energy and attention on anything for the length of time it takes to finish things. I look in the mirror, and I see someone who’s sad, bitter, angry, paranoid, and disgusted, someone who’s just about completely given up on themselves. I’ve speculated over the years that “now would be a good time for some fucked up cult to try and recruit me”, but I think I’ve finally hit the point where even the recruiters for the Church of Scientology or the Moonies or the Baptists or The Oxford Group or whoever would be like “fuck it, even if he had money for us to steal, we couldn’t work with that”.
I’m a wounded fucking animal that seems to have lost the ability to heal, and that’s before we even get into the physical condition I’m in. I’m really not in the mood to discuss that, though. If you know, you know. If you don’t, I’m sorry, but I’m just plain tired of talking about it, especially since I still don’t have any answers. Suffice it to say that I experience some sort of physical discomfort nearly every waking moment of the day, and that I’m either going to run out of time or run out of things that could be wrong with me but aren’t at some point. Hopefully, I run out of the latter before the former. I’d hate to give my detractors a reason to throw a parade, since parades suck and they do too, even (especially?) when they’re right about me.
Lots of things have brought me to this point, and ultimately, the responsibility for dealing with them falls upon my shoulders. Plenty of it’s my fault. I’ve taken horrible care of myself, used poor judgment more often than I’m proud of, and done more than enough to alienate people in my day. Some of it, I didn’t have any say in. My parents, though well-meaning, did shit to prepare me for life, and the state’s attempt at “educating” me was beyond fucking pathetic, but I can’t just point the bone at them forever. There isn’t a damn thing that they or I can do to change my first 18 years now. It happened. Worse things happen to plenty of people when they’re kids. Some of them end up with life skills, and some have gotten shafted on those like I have. Either way, we still have to live for as long as we’re given to do so, and I’m not doing such a great job of that. If you were to kick the crutches out from under me and remove the safety nets that I have in place, I’d be dead. End of story. That has to change, but I’m feeling really exhausted, distracted and disconnected from the strengths that I know I have, so I don’t know where to start anymore.
A good part of my problem (more than likely, aside from the physical problems I have now) is and has always been that I really hate being alone. It drives me off the rails. I used to use telephones to deal with this, and then, I showed up on the ‘net and shifted gears to this place, but now it’s getting pretty tough find people to talk to and listen to. Maybe I’ve gotten my “drive them the fuck away” skills down to the science everyone always said I would, or maybe it’s just a matter of all the people who would stay up all night finding lives that don’t allow for it anymore, but it’s getting quieter out here, even as more people seem to finally give in to the ‘net by the day.
I don’t need to have the whole world available for me to pester 24/7, though. I’ve so often said that I just need to find one person who gets what I’m about and loves me for it. I’ve met a few people who were pretty good, but it didn’t work out so hot for whatever reason (plenty of which, in retrospect, looks like my fault). One of those people, I’d walk through fire for without a second thought. Alas, I’ve gotten the impression that she’s not so comfortable with me feeling this way, so I’m pretty sure that feeling the way I do isn’t healthy for either of us, or for my prospects of having a life with anyone else as long as the feelings in question are still as strong and prominent as they are right now. Knowing this doesn’t stop me from dreaming, though, and it probably won’t until someone comes along that does want me despite my faults.
Then there’s the part of me, after reading this back, that really doesn’t like myself for being the kind of person who’s stacked the deck so firmly against someone who’d take an interest in me romantically. It makes me feel like I’m looking for a glutton for punishment rather than a lover, a friend, a partner or an accomplice, and that makes me pretty sick. Yeah, like that’s somehow a change from how I feel. Right.
I’m probably in no shape to deal with that level of involvement with another person, since a lot of the time lately, I’m in no shape to deal with getting out of bed. I’m not the kind of person who can settle for anything less than a real, strong connection on the companionship front, though, and on my good days, I’m not the most patient person in the world. Right now? I have no patience left at all. I basically go through every waking moment of my day with some part of me wishing I were in someone’s arms, no matter how distracted I am by other things, and at more than a few points during the day, either due to the pain or the bullshit, I end up having to stop whatever I’m doing, laying down, and hugging a pillow until I fall asleep, at which point I’m blessed with dreams about armies of the living dead trying to kill everyone more often than not. I never thought I’d say this, but I’m getting pretty fucking tired of seeing armies of the living dead trying to kill everyone. I really hope this doesn’t adversely impact my enjoyment of the Romero flick coming out at the end of the month.
But yeah, I do just shut down, lay on the couch or in bed, and hug a pillow because I don’t really have many other options. I don’t cry when I do this. I cry when I watch movies or listen to music sometimes, and sometimes I cry as I’m writing things, but crying because I’m affected by anything else other than art doesn’t come that easy to me anymore. So I lay there, and I wish that things were different, that there’s someone who could read this or hear it from me or see firsthand just how far gone I am and still see enough worth in me to love me more than anything else in the world. I guess everyone has to have a dream. Some people want to be rich, some people want to be famous, some people want to save the world, and some people want a family. I would like all of these things, but I’d selfishly trade them in a heartbeat for one person who truly understood me and loved me despite that understanding. No matter how much I try to think about other things or deal with other things, I am completely and utterly compelled to return to my single-minded, destructive obsession with the idea of having someone love me.
Maybe that’s why I’m dragging everyone to Coney Island again, the place that will ideally be my final place of rest (specifically, in the ocean, directly between the sites of the Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel) if I’m not too evil to die. I go there to see if I can get my wish. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to figure out where the Blue Fairy is hiding there, and no, I will not look in the fucking mirror.
Happy birthday to me.
-S
http://www.livejournal.com/users/scottcrawford/
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It’s not like you couldn’t see this crap in the sidebar, but I feel like being redundant today.
1. Sinatra would’ve done an awesome version of Motley Crue’s “Girls Girls Girls”. Seriously.
2. “The Killing Moon” by Echo And The Bunnymen is really amusing if you arbitrarily replace words in the lyrics with “pants” as you sing it.
Congrats to qDot on Slashdong’s writeup on Wired.com. Don’t let ‘em see you sweat, kid.
Status, motherfucker!
