24_Beneath The Fire: An Original Story

After a very fruitful discussion about writing with a good friend of mine tonight, I decided it was time to post a story.  This one in particular I feel is timely as some of my favorite bands are either in the middle of their farewell tours, or on indefinite hiatus, most likely never to return.  Please enjoy:

Beneath The Fire

I remember telling Allan: “This isn't a band, it's merchandise with a soundtrack.” He laughed and agreed and ordered us another round. We were standing at the back of the Ottobar, waiting for the opening sets to finish. The first band, a local act that was filling in for the last two shows of our tour, was good, but unrefined. They were all fire and passion and loud noise with no structure beneath it. They relied too much on gimmicks, but then again, we did too, when we were younger.

Even as I say this, I feel like my voice is cracking, but I need to say it. Even if it sounds hollow, I need to say it.

It was still early, but the crowd was beginning to fill out. It was a mix of everyone who had ever heard our music, from young and excited to old and jaded. I recognized a couple that I'd met on one of our very first East Coast tours. They had a child with them. I pointed this out to Allan.

“If we keep going, we'll have an entirely new fan base in ten years,” he said. We laughed, but it wasn't funny.

“Let's get backstage,” I said. We moved slowly through the crowd, taking our time, pausing to listen to a few more songs. The band on stage played their last song and for that song at least, they sounded truly together. If they'd played like that all night, they would have impressed me.

As the band left the stage, the crowd began to shift around and I felt their attention turn to us. A teenage girl who couldn't have been older than fifteen, bopped over to meet us. She stood in front of us for a second, silent and smiling.

“I'm Jack,” I said when it was clear hat she was too shell-shocked to speak, “and this is Allan.”

“I know! My name's Kelly and I've been looking forward to meeting you for so long,” she blurted out.

“It's nice to meet you too, Kelly,” Allan said. She turned to him and started to give the normal excited fan speech; how she has all our albums, how she waited outside all day to get in first, how she wants our autographs. I felt the energy in her voice, but that didn't have an affect on me any more.

As Allan and Kelly talked small, I looked up at the couple with the kid. The man nodded to me and I waved back. He said something to his wife and she waved too. He had a look on his face and I knew they wouldn't come over and say hello. In their smiles I saw a tiredness that was verging on bitterness. They weren't here just to listen to our show or see us perform, they were here to act as witnesses to our final moments as a band. They wanted finality. They would only be convinced that we were done once we played our hearts out and left them dying on the stage to be swept up with the rest of the dusty, cluttered remains of a dead show. I'd seen that look before, a hundred times on your face as you looked at me and your eyes begged me to convince you that what we had was finally real and would continue after we went our separate ways.

In Kelly I saw nothing but dumb, wasted sincerity. She suddenly seemed repulsive.

I waved back to the couple and grabbed Allan by the arm.

“Kelly, it was lovely meeting you, but we have to go backstage. Enjoy the show,” I said, pulling Allan with me.

“Are you OK?” Allan asked.

“I'm fine. Just got reminded of something I didn't want to think about.”

Allan nodded and kept quiet. These days, there's so much that him and I don't want to be reminded of. We headed back stage to get our shit together.

* * * * *

23_I Met The Internet

This past Brunchday (Sunday for the rest of you, but once you start working the 10 - 6 brunch shift, brunch just takes over), I had dinner with Kristen.  Visiting the vibrant locales south of Baltimore for work, she found a day off and made the trip up from Jessup, where the government contracting sprawl begins it's long, business park stretch down to the capital, to Baltimore proper, where we have mimosas.

It was a nice visit.  We went to one of my favorite local spots and shared a delightful bottle of California zin.  We caught up and talked about the fascinating way that virtual reality commerce has monetized itself in to an actual industry - so much so that Blizzard Entertainment built a marketplace feature in to their latest release, Diablo 3.  We had some amazing mac n cheese.  The Ravens won a very, very sloppy win.  (I'm not a football fan but FOURTH AND 29?)

All in all, it was a wonderful way to unwind from the torture of a long, drawn-out and relatively slow brunch shift.  It was remarkable only for the fact  that even though Kristen and I have known each other for well over five years, this was the first time we'd ever met.

Kristen is the first of my internet friends that I've ever actually met in real life.  I'm not bothered by the fact that I have internet-exclusive friends who I've never met. In fact, quite the opposite is true.  What if I meet one of them and they turn out to be complete bores, or insufferably annoying?  What if they get drunk off of expensive wine, are rude to the waiter and leave me with the bill?  What if the internet is the only place they have any personality?

Of course, seeing Kristen was nothing but pleasant, to the point where I would have been happy to order another bottle of wine and continue discussing the blurred lines between virtual reality and actually reality.  After all, that is what we were doing; a fact not so much hanging over our heads, but sitting in the back of my mind as an interesting point, a breaking of some sort of virtual fourth wall.  Amidst discussing our friends by their internet handles and not by their real names, were we to bring it up, we probably would have just laughed.

Upon recounting the story to a friend of mine, she looked, if not aghast, at least shocked that Kristen and I had never met before.  I shrugged it off and carried on, not wanting to interrupt the flow of my current train of thought to explain the length of time I've known Kristen and recite the standard criteria for considering yourself truly friends with someone; discussing exes, having deep conversations, having silly conversations, and all the other things that friends do when they begin to see themselves as such.

Perhaps I am a product of my generation, but it has never really occurred to me that having internet-exclusive friends is a strange thing.  Now that Facebook and social media has stripped away much of the danger, allowing us to double-check how "real" our friends are depending on how many pictures they have, the quality of their status updates, etc, I certainly advocate it.  After all, we spend an exorbitant amount of time contacting each other electronically anyway.

But I have always been one to blur the lines when it comes to traditional views on relationships.  Rigidity never interested me and why it would interest others is beyond me.

And that California zin really was great.

- Kid

22_Intelligence Is Sexy: Part 1: The Startening

NOTE:  This post was written Friday morning.  Being on vacation for a few days rocks, but not in terms of updating the blog accordingly.

I have to say that I'm feeling fairly stereotypical today. Sporting a Travis Bickle mohawk, I'm sitting in a diner in Pottstown, Pennsylvania waiting for a tattoo appointment. I understand that I'm not nearly punk enough to call myself as such, but for the God-fearing, camo-jacket wearing denizens of this particular wood-paneled, egg-slinging establishment, I might as well be Sid Vicious's ghost come back to haunt them with my inability to play the bass guitar.

However, a thought occurred to me. Shortly after writing this, I intend on jumping on the HuffPo or finding a newspaper and reading about some current events. Does that make me punk? It's true that the punk movement cannot be separated from strong political leanings. Not that the Sex Pistols were paragons of political awareness, but it has been a long standing staple of punk music that you must know at least enough about politics to be pissed off about it.

In that sense, many, many (too many) Americans are punk. Too many Americans know only enough to be pissed off (thanks a lot, Fox news), but far too few know enough to in any way turn that anger into anything that could be useful. It's enough, I suppose to scream and shout and get it off your chest. It's not useful when that screaming and shouting and getting it off your chest turns in to an actual political movement that has divorced itself of facts, reasoning, logic or understanding of the current political climate and instead focuses on a ridiculous feeling of victimization somehow felt by many, many white Christians (translation: the largest demographic in the country) that stems from the fact that they have to pay taxes like everyone else.

And here's where intelligence comes in to it. Because, I believe in this day and age, if you want to be a punk in the rebellious sort of sense, the best thing you can do is to become intelligent. And not just “Hey man, I read this one article one time about how much a bomb costs and now I'm a military bureaucracy hating anarchopunk freegan with horrible, horrible white-boy dreadlocks!” sort of bettering yourself. I mean reading lots about lots.

For instance, did you know that Thomas Paine himself was all for Social Security, public schools and Medicare? Ya know, those things that the standard Tea Party member would burst a few veins getting upset about. And the real problem isn't that they're being told an endless, factually desolate narrative by Fox news and Drudge report, the real problem is that they simply don't know. Honestly, how many people have ever really read “Common Sense”? Or can name another one of Paine's works? I can't, but that's my point, isn't it? Here I am using it against the Tea Party when I don't really know much about it myself. And that, folks, is not Sexy.

And so I'm starting a new segment: Intelligence Is Sexy. Now, there are limits to this. It's not like we"re going to learn quantum physics (or even anything approaching Pre-Calc). We can, however, try our best to learn at least one valuable, proven, intelligent thing in a time period of a week or so. That's where you all come in. I am now accepting ideas for areas that we should all brush up on. Obviously we're not going to be able to read Bolano's 2666, nor are we going to become world-class horticulturists in one week, but we can at least start.

So now it begins: Tell me things I need to find out about and let's do it together. If we can't, we'll say why. Because, it's not necessarily about knowing that much, but also about being able to find out, should we need to.

And by the way, this diner, the Ice House, does a surprisingly excellent Eggs Benedict. If you ever find yourself here in Pottstown and need breakfast, come here.  And they also make their own donuts which, I'm not a guy with a sweet tooth but HOLY GOD they are GOOD.  Like, worth a trip good.

- Kid

21_Losing It

As part of the Fall of Awesome, my monthly goal in this, the tenth month of the year, is to lose ten pounds.  That seems entirely realistic, which means that I am going to, very unrealistically, aim to lose more.  Because I can be an over-achiever when I want to be.

So far I've lost one pound.  Winning.

And regardless of the marginal loss, I do feel lighter.  I know that there have been varying reports on whether exercise actually improves your mental health (most sources say yes, Vice magazine says no, so in my sphere of influence, this is a hotly contested debate), but it's certainly helped me.  The Orioles still being in the series also helps.

There's something about the chill in the air as well.  The temperature in Baltimore at the end of October tend to represent the coldest it ever gets in South Africa.   Yes, it can snow there, but it is rare (you should have seen my facebook feed when it snowed in Johannesburg earlier this year) and the temperatures don't stay cold for long.  But here, once that October breeze starts to blow, you can kiss your air conditioning goodbye, because it's not going to be needed again for at least six months.

It's a reminder that I am here, not there.  That that was before, not now.  It's another reason I feel lighter.  That happened, and I helped it happen, but it is in the past now for me to look back on, think on, and hopefully gain something from, but it is, primarily, in the past.

Now I can concentrate on my new love:  a new writing project involving dissent against a military bureaucracy that aims to take control of all facets of American life, a doomed love affair and, of course, robots using car batteries to get high.  Duh.

- Kid

20_Wish Me Luck

Tonight, I embark on an epic adventure.  Sure, I'm only physically traveling to Station North, but that's not the point.  The point is that I'm going Off the Map in terms of things I've ever done before.  New bar?  No.  Strip club?  God no.  Something that doesn't involve alcohol on a Saturday night off?  Now you're just being silly.

I'm going to pitch a rock opera.

Now, I've written lots of music in my life time (some of it alright, even) and I've written lots of stories before, but I've never written a play, much less a rock opera.  Epic journey to uncharted territory indeed.

Tonight I'm off to the Baltimore Rock Opera Society's Pitch Party the Second.  While my initial pitch did not actually make it in to the round that will be judged at the party itself, I have been assured by the heads of the BROS that it won't be hard to find interested people at said party.

So off I go with little to no experience in the intended medium, to act like I know what I'm doing to people I've never even laid eyes on before, armed only with my own confidence and the fact that once I pay $10 at the door, the promise free beer.  Sounds like an epic quest to me.

Too bad I don't have a giant cardboard battleaxe or a viking helmet or something.  They love that kinda shit.

- Kid

19_Fall of Awesome

Hey!  Lady Trivia!  Are you watching this?  I'm blogging about you!  Yeah!  You!

We win.

So what's the title about anyway?  What is the Fall of Awesome?  This is!  And you can be a part of it too.  Yesterday, I woke up to the most pleasant surprise I've had in a good few weeks:  when I walked outside, I was not instantly hot.  After this summer, that was a wonderful thing.

So this fall, I've decided, will be the Fall of Awesome.  Every day I'm going to do one thing that I think is Awesome.  This could be running before work or doing laundry, or it could be catching up with an old friend I haven't seen or talked to in a while.

Which is sorta what I'm doing now.  Except Lady Trivia is busy blogging about me blogging about her, so we're not doing a lot of catching up at the moment.  So stop reading this and talk to me, dammit!

- Kid

18_Super Lyrics Time! (Part 1: The Fourth Wall)

These are some lyrics I wrote years ago for a song called "The Fourth Wall", which was part of a concept album I was working on:

"Your voice is fading
Drying like the ink that's on this page
As your memory bends at the corners
And doubles over
Into the double space"

They're pretty damn good, but the music never was.  The melody was cute, but it was a shameless attempt to copy Deathcab's Tiny Vessels.  (Still one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard, and worth trying to imitate, so give me some credit.)

I'm saying this because for a long time tonight, I stared at this page, writer's block consuming me.  (NOTE: You have to understand, the reason writers are so good at conveying emotion is because writer's block is the same problem that many non-writers have:  the inability to truly understand what it is you are really trying to say.  People do it every day, they sit and get angry or frustrated not because of something someone else has done, but because they don't know how to really put in to words what they are feeling.  Even if that something is a good thing.  Us writers, however, are used to it.  We're practiced at not having any idea of how to put into words what we are feeling.  So we are also practiced at breaking through those blocks.  Take that, world.)

And so, it took me a while to break through, until I remembered a conversation I had earlier tonight with one of my South African friends.  He broke up with his girlfriend (another close friend of mine down there) two months ago.  And I just found out about it tonight.

Faded voices.  Memories doubling over into the double space of long-distance communication.

That is how most of my information has come to me these days.  If not second-hand, than over the phone, or over the internet.  Rarely in person, rarely in a timely fashion.  My best friends have become voices on a phone, random oddly timed facebook chats, status updates and emoticon ridden texts.

I suppose it would be fine if it was good news, because there is no distance too great to stop good news from being awesome.  But bad news?  Quite the opposite.  Any distance, even arm's length, seems too great.

Strange that it seems like all the lyrics I wrote four years ago come back now to be relevant.  Maybe I was smarter back then.

- Kid