Limit To Your Love

when was it? I guess crystal castles played here in march, josane wanted me to go with her i didn't have the money, i didn't listen to them then but i think they played since though its hard to tell as it always seems to be at terminal 5, the same venue, but lets just say it was august. August crystal castles played terminal 5 in hells kitchen and pictures went up on brooklyn vegan (a good site if you live in the city despite its obnoxious name) and alice glass wnt crazy and gave people death looks and i think hit one person and screamed bloody hell and drank jack daniels wiskey out of the bottle on stage and it was all quite violent except it was lost on the crowd of people who seemed mostly around sixteen, female, yeah i'm sexist too, high on weed maybe exticy, dancing, there for the bro-step dub-step as fuck openers and to general party.

yes i am bitter, everyones bitter, youre bitter too but all of this is not important.

I was not there. I just saw the pictures on brooklyn vegan. whats important is the internet trolls. all of them. who said 'her schtick is such a joke' they made sarcastic comments they rolled their eyes. And it got me thinking.

What is the nature of reality?

not bullshit, thats what I thought.

When is something someone does real or not?

Lets break it down. Nirvana's angst, we can all asume, was real. Why? Because as far as they were concerned there was nothing to be gained from it. The only thing they thought their violence would ern them is being kicked out home and ostracized from the comunity. for girls at clubs to look at them and say get some money and a unripped pair of pants and maybe I'll get back to you. They had everything to loose, social, politicaly, finacialy, from their violence but they did it anyway. that they were succseful from it was a fluke of couse, they never understood it themselves.

Now, Audioslave's violence we can asume to be false. They at the time had everything to gain from it. They could do it without anyone outcasting them, they could make tons of money from it, they could look cool. The could do it and look cool as all hell. So they followed the formula: distorted guitar + angsty lyrics + ripped clothes = violence. its just something they did. it took no corage.

But now, in essance, everything is ok, at least in our imploding hipster brooklyn. if you do something crazy people will asume you're more artistic than them so they will pretend its ok so they can seem more artistic than you. No one is going to get shit for anything. So anything can be faked. And we don't know whats real and whats fake anymore.

Alice Glass Could Be Fake. which is to say I could have gotten up there, yelled, and drank Jack out of a bottle, theres an easy formula. She didn't have to be angry and see the bottle sitting there and say FUCK EVERYONE and just go drink it on stage. because saying fuck everyone implys that someone wouldn't want you to do that, when its exactly what all the people in the audience and all the record exects wanted her to do.

but on the flip side it means everyones twice afraid of doing anything real, because now not only will half the world not understand and kick you out for it, the other half now will say your a phony, pandering. so now the real artistic of us, or at least the potential artistic in us, walk around with our heads down trying not to do anthing out of the orenary because if we do now we won't only hear crys of "YOUR A FUCKING WERDO" we'll aslo hear crys from our piers of "OH THATS SO FUCKING OUT OF THE ORDINARY ISN'T IT? YOU MUST BE SO FUCKING PROUD OF YOURSELF. I GUESS YOUR SO FUCKING ARTISTIC/BADDASS."

for the record I think Alice Glass is telling the truth. And as much as we can say that authenticity shouldn't matter in music, that its a rockist sentiment, it does matter. It does. It matters in music because it matters in real life, more than anything I can think of right now. tell the truth. don't sell yourself short. fuck them all. they can fucking die.

so carelessly there

Oh

In regard to many aspects of my life, my point of view and plan of attack seems to stem from that fact that my mother is a hack at what she does. That is, I think she's a hack, and have always thought that shes a hack. Don't get me wrong, she's an amazing person and the best mother a kid could ask for a great at a lot of things and all that, but at her chosen profession she is really not very good at all. And yet. And yet for a huge number of years she was employed in this field, and not only employed but making serious money, for a while over 100k a year. Now she hasn't been able to find a job around that since the dot com bubble burst in 2001, but still, that's ridiculous. But I always knew she was a hack and its always bugged me. And she has always urged me to learn to self-promote, to pitch myself and so on in order to get ahead.

So I went the other way and determined that if I get ahead it will be because I'm the best, to work on improving my skills instead of improving my means to convince people of these skills. And to work towards this not only in myself but to demand it of all things. To buy the product that is better made, not the one with the best marketing campaign, to always try to know which one this is. To find the best movies, not the easiest ones. To work hard to know the difference between something good and something bad. This is whats important to me.

Like Adrian I have somehow been able to work harder towards my goals recently, I don't know why. In that past month I've improved at guitar at speeds which are stunning to me. I've been able to keep up an extreemeley consistant workout routine, I've been teaching myself to cook good food everyday, from ingredients bought at discount, so I don't have to choose between decent health and buying music anymore. I've watched a lot of movies, got a job, a girlfriend.

That being said, I've been able to do all this with what feels like only a marginal amount of work. I can only imagine what I can do with further effort, but whatever it is I need to do it. Now is the time to get ahead not just by being surprisingly good, but by being the best. By working the hardest. And I intend to do it.

and if there is a god he still loves you

Maybes

my head is in patterns that have started to get choppy, its rearranging, and I'm hoping its getting my life somewhere new.

yes no

Djed

I've been getting a lot of shit for my music recently and its getting to me. mostly because one of the big things I was looking forward to with being home for the summer was not having to hide my music, being able to play it loud and talk about it with out compromise. aloud to be passionate about what I'm passionate about. and yet I feel persicuted on all sides, from my family from my friends, I've been acused of pretention and of mocking other peoples tastes - things I've worked hard to avoid, I've been laughed at, eyes rolled at me, I've been not taken seriously. I feel isolated again, maybe even more so than at pratt, because at least there I knew better enough than to play anything for anyone. Here I thought people would be cooler with the stuff I like and it set me up for getting shut down much more often.

the worst part is I've been acused of not genuanly liking the music I listen to. it happened once back in new york and then again today, by someone I respect. "I mean, be honest, you don't actually like that stuff". that hurts the most, and on a base level.

and the problem is, I didn't even think my tastes are that far out, at least not much farther than at any other time to explain this suden jump in persecution. I mean, last summer I was in a blissful shock and awe over Sunn 0))), and noone seemed to get on my case. This summer I listen to dance music and loads of The National and some alternitive hip hop.

so let me level. I LIKE THIS STUFF. saying otherwise would be dishonest. its not work for me, its what I love, and if I have to hide it in order to contiue listening to it I will. I'm sorry if it sounds crappy to you but I really truly wish you would shrug it off and think "I probably just don't get it" and to each his own and all that like I've been doing with you and your music. This is killing me.

never die

Alice Practice

Toy Story came out when I was four. they released, of couse, toys to mimic the ones found in the movie about toys and insead of making woody as he is in the film, cheep cloth, big plasic head, pull string, five phrases, cutting edge technology cira nineteen sixty three and charging three or five bucks a peice they put out these even cheeper made rags of toys and the same for buzz lightyear and I thought, well, these are a frail reproduction of a frail reproduction of a cowboy. an imprint of an imprint. and it was the same all around me. instead of real restarants we had things mimicing some perverded fantasy of the fifties. instead of real adventure we had jeans pre faded and pre ripped. instead of musical instuments we gave our kids fake press-button guitars. instead of real fights we had fake apologies forced upon us. maybe it was just the nineties, it was the age of artifice. maybe it was the boomers not wanting anything to fade, wanting to fake it forever instead of letting anything go. maybe not. and imprint of an imprint of an imprint.

and thats the problem really everything is trying to be something else that it isn't. borrowed. instead of posters trying to look the best they try to look like something trying to look the best fifteen years ago. Instead of groups trying to get the best sound they can they try to get the sound of groups from '94 trying to get the best sound they can and not doing that well. Los Campesinos said, in that thing they do where they say something not deep at all and completely ovious that for some reason no one has the courage to say out right because of how imature it sounds, they said "they've apropriated everything we've ever loved, dressed it up in quotations and fluff".

And so it ocurs to me that nerds these days are no longer doing what they do because they're smart and rejected by the mainstreem, they're doing it because thats what they preceve nerds as doing, and they think of themselves as a nerd. Which is to say, most nerds these days aren't smart at all they just think those things are cool. most artists don't get art at all they just think its cool too. most people who listen to weird music don't get anything at all.

in high fidelity (fuck me for thinking to refreance this. fuck this.) theres a line about him feeling like the guy who shaves his head into a mohawk one day and swears that he's always been a punk. and I think - thats every punk. What do you think they were born that way? They just up and shaved their head out of the blue before you met them. Everyones a poser, those you think are the real things are just better at posing consistantly, keeping they're story straight, ridding themselves of any human incosistancy in they're chosen characer.

you see I used to use that little bit whenever someone acused another of being a poser or a fake - to defend the attacted by saying we are all posers equily so you can't be a dick to this guy in particular. but now I see it another way - we are all posers. we are all a decreped pile of phonys - too self councious and self ironic to even use the word phony based on its connotations. the world is made up of echoes of echoes. jocks pretending they're losers pretending they're the oppresed poor pretending they're glamorous millionares pretending they're rebelioius angry punks pretending they're well read anarchists. imprints of imprints of imprints.

I'm bitter tonight. some drunk adults are making noise outside my window. sometimes I need to say things extreemly childish, sometimes I need to be honest to myself and say it anyway.

scares will heal soon

Hajnal

so it seems to me that in many situations there are three main points of view, and these seem to be affecting a lot of things in my life so I'mma gonna dissect them.

the first one, for the sake of this, I call the General Self-Antagonizing perspective (or the depressive's perspective), which states that whenever something goes wrong it is my fault and I as a whole am bad because of it (or that I am a whole am bad, as demonstrated by this failure).

the second perspective I call the General Others-Antagonizing perspective (or the cynic's perspective), which states that whenever something goes wrong it is completely the fault of the other people involved in the situation, with little or no fault my own.

the third point of view I call the Specific Antagonizing perspective, which states when something goes wrong it's my fault and I should change it.

now to put these in better conxtext, lets say you realize that the friends you are hanging out with don't match you at all and are generally making you feel terrible:

The Self-Antagonizing person would think there must be something wrong with me that I don't fit in with these people, I must be not normal, and I should change myself to be more accepted.

The Others-Antagonizing person would think people in general (or people my age, or people in this country, etc. etc.) are horrible and don't understand me and I wish the world was better.

and the Specific Antagonizing person would think how the fuck did I get here these people are terrible I need to find a new group.

so this has become a problem in my life you see. to many people I know think they're a horrible un-lovable person on the slightest criticism, and to many people I know are angry at the world for cheating them, for not allowing them to win every time. fuck this shit. you are an amazing person, and there is a lot of goddamn room for improvement.

these are love songs and grief songs

Iron Galaxy

so theres this thing called 30 days of music and I'm sure you've herd about it and though I don't know where it started I think I first herd about it through Kieron Gillen (just like everything else, the guy's half my mentor we've never met) and then trough the blogs of a couple of my freinds and my god I follow too many blogs at this point and I miss the time when it was just me jackie adrian parker and then travis. anyway. as my friends post I think about what my responce would be, I would post it myself but it would be one more thing for me to silently obsses over and it would end up being another incedibly self absorbed and self indulgent thing to add to my long list of self absorbed and self indulgent things that I already do including - hey! - this blog. day 15 I think was a song that describes you and I thought when it turned up, shit, no way. ran through a hundred songs in my head, I guess I don't listen to to many songs that describe people in the first place, or not many that describes guys. and I thought maybe the only living boy in new york to be compleatly romantic and self indulgent the matt sheehy cover in particular maybe (here) but no that sucks. and I couldn't think of anything else we are beautiful we are doomed, no rain, loser, abel, these kinds of things. and today I was thinking about the boxer, another simon and garfunkle song, because my mom mentined it while we were tlaking about the national and their album boxer. and I thought, the boxer.

the boxer was this song that followed me in a weird way when I was a kid, in that I had a strong affinity for it, a strong affinity but I didn't know what it was. and occationaly someone would hum it or it would come up on the radio and I would jump out and catch them and get them to tell me what the song was because for some reason this song remided me of when I was little (littler, I guess). and I would try to hold that in my mind, hold "the boxer by simon and garfunkle" but for some reason it never worked. between the ages of five and - probably - twelve i was curiously inable to remember the title of this song. between the ages of five and twelve I somewhat unknowingly chased this song. and, very unknowingly, in more than one way. you see, this song described me. or described what I thought I was, but probably was not. the quiet lost boy from new york who tryed to be stoic but had the scars from every thing he'd lost and was leaving now himself. thats who I wanted to be or thought I was. It takes a five year old of a weird demeanor to think that he's lost something significant and sad in that kind of way, I was weird.

and though I feel my personality pulled in a million differant directions these days thats still what I think of as the old stuart, the stuart I was at five. small, quite, honest, kind, fair, and stoic and intelligent. sad and lonely and trying to be strong. with a scar across his left eye. wishing he could go back to new york.

I am not the boxer anymore, nor do I want to be, at least not compleatly. now I'm trying to be a dosen other songs now I hope I am to angry to be sad in that way, to miss the past when I was 3. now I don't listen to the boxer.

new york is evil at its core