Max Headroom

Blogging is like having it out with the two separate personalities which already inhabit our singular bodies. There's the one that lives and does in the world and the one that the one that lives and does fantasizes over being. Not necessarily becoming--just being, for a few magical minutes. Just enough to cum in--a brief, hardcore sex scene amount of time in which you're someone else. The comparison to yourself could be very narrow or very wide. Perhaps your other is identical to yourself except they possess greater confidence and sexual prowess. Maybe it's a difference of having an extra 2 inches. When you write about yourself, you have to pick one of these perspectives. Which are you in your blog? The work side talking about the idealized side or the idealized side talking about the work side? By 'work' I mean 'world'. And by 'world' I mean anything from InstaPundit to Plasticbag.org, something informative, it doesn't matter about what, as long as the emphasis isn't on the author. While it's true that Plastic's author, Tom Coates, does make plenty of references about his own tastes and propensities, (some of them interesting); he's writing about his tastes, not his psyche or inner dramas. As a youngish, gay British man I know he's got some issues but he keeps them quiet--as that's the part of him that's doing the writing. It's the neurotic, frenetic whirling of his schisms that keeps him up at night at his computer, pouring out his ideas and opinions about everything from tech to movie reviews to future web trends. That's the work of the edgy, vaguely ambitious chap of whom he sometimes catches a glimpse, turning sharply in the opposite direction as he passes a High Street store window.

I want the idealized self. I want the lie.

I want it so badly that I'll become it.

Blue-white lightening, flashbulb flashes. Rain and Synthesizers.

Let's head over ground, I tell the driver…

Ancient Voices speak of fighting demons with demons, as a Second night settles over the City, illuminating the shadows with its darkness. I am standing at the edge, feeling the tug of skyscrapers between which an infinity is rising up…

…an inexorable figure calling to me against the background of the things that are here.

(And if so that something might happen, I were to make a vow?)

Kafka: The Blue Octavo Notebooks

(Beginning of the Eighth Notebook)

I am in the habit of relying on my coachman in everything. When we came past a high white wall, slowly bulging at the sides and at the top, and ceased to drive ahead, driving along the wall, touching it, the coachman finally said: "It is a forehead."




(link)

Breaking the Fourth Commandment...

My God is Biggie and he reiterated the old adage, "Never get high on your own supply," but the devil made me do it, and that devil's name is fuck-them-all-boring-ass-Omaha. His last name is Fassbinder. But whatever, I'm not going to talk about the last post, or any post or unwritten letters or mute rappers or the fuckin photgraphic memory that I no longer have. I want to write about how happy I am to be in this indie chick's room right now eating Rocky Mountain trail mix, our greasy fingers touching in the bowl while she let's me have all the M&M's. Why is it that I only feel like I'm gay when I'm fucked up? Wait, don't answer that one, it's a freebie. All I can say is that I'm looking forward to doing tons more fat lines with this chick in the tight blue jeans and watching The World's Wildest Police Videos and getting turned on by the 30 second phone sex commercials and compensating for all the energy, the handcuffs, the flashing lights and lives being flushed down the toilet without the benefit of a blurred out face or a floating blue fucking dot by calling up and ordering one of those albums advertised with the 1-800 numbers, fucking "In The Closet and You Know It Dance Hits" or "I Wish I Hadn't Smoked The 80's Away Crap Rock".

It'll be on when she hears me pay with a C.O.D. I think she's like, 17. I feel like chicken tonight!!!

Omaha tagging...

On mailboxes, World Herald newspaper boxes, Stop signs, boys and girls rooms, a city bus or two...

It's all virgin territory--a few OBEY stickers, but not much else...

I'll see if I can get a stencil or two whipped up. I'll peel off a few from my newly made wad and hit the local art store.

--T

KURL 2002

I’m in Omaha, Nebraska, selling grams and half grams of coke to indie rock kids and wannabe indie rock kids. Everyone is earnest and hardworking and very welcoming. They live in big, drafty houses with slanted windows and sloping wood floors. I stand out on the front stoop with my shoulders hunched and tree lined streets twisting all around me, a cardboard cup of sugary black coffee steaming between my hands. This is real America—closed off, hunkered down and full of food. You can almost smell the fat of the land. The indie rock kids have artfully disheveled hair and blue eyes. They think I’m one of them and are surprised to find out I’m from New York. “What are you doing here?” they ask, as they let me through the front door and lead me directly into the basement. In Omaha, all the action takes place in basements.

“Right now I’m selling drugs,” I tell them. Presently, I’ve got 24 tennis balls filled with coke in my canvas Army duffel bag. My guy in New Mexico (whom I met through my guy in Minneapolis, whom I met through a friend of a friend of Will’s) showed me how to pop open the balls along the seam and slide the baggies inside. Once filled, the balls still bounce and everything, although you probably wouldn’t want to risk smacking them around with a racket. My guy told me how kids toss the balls out of car windows to runners waiting on corners, eliminating the need for a suspicious exchange. How ingenious, I thought, turning the stuffed ball over and over in my hands, until the shape of the concrete gray seam burned itself into my eyes.

I sat on an under stuffed, stained couch listening to a skinny, pockmark-faced prodigy emoting his guts out over the jangle of secondhand guitars. No matter where I am or what year it is, the rock n’ roll story is always the same. The band try hard to be naturals while the significant others (in this case, all girls) drink PBR out of cans and cautiously snort tiny lines of the stuff I provided. Some of them are only 15—ill formed bundles of tits and hair and geo-political concerns. They stare at me and when I catch them looking they quickly blurt out that they like my bangs. I feel like telling them it’s OK, I don’t know what sexuality I am, either. Meanwhile, the guys invite me to shows, shows and more shows. Having a dealer around provides a much needed sense of validity. Now that the first wave of Omaha bands have made it big, there’s a whole set of kids eager to follow suit. They’re obsessed by Connor Oberst and Saddle-Creek Records and the scene that they created, but if you ask them about it they’ll flatly deny it. “Oh, yeah, I used to listen to them, before they sold out.” Over a communal meal of Boca burgers, rice and pinto beans, they solemnly inform me that they’ll never appear on MTV. Someone produces a copy of the NY Times magazine from last week, in which Conner Oberst is prominently featured. Everyone scoffs. “Getting into some corporate mag is not what this music thing is all about,” the lead singer states, “You know what I’m saying?” He stares at me, his eyes full of passion. I stare back at the line of whiteheads on his forehead and don’t say a word, my mind completely blank.

By evening the place is packed and I unload a few more balls. I don’t feel like a party so I borrow someone’s parka and go out to the garage with Kafka’s The Blue Octavo Notebooks tucked into my jeans. Lately, it’s all I can read. Out on the driveway I see some girls playing Double-Dutch in the setting sun. I wave at the mother across the street and motion to her that I’ve got the girls covered. She waves back and goes into the house. It’s amazing how trustworthy people are out here. I could be anyone. I light a spliff and watch the treetops burn orange. The telephone wires and TV antennas are in silhouette. I relax into the rhythm of the ropes slapping the ground. Behind me, in the house, New Order is playing:

“I lived my life in a valley, I lived my life on a hill
I lived my life on alcohol, I lived my life on pills…”

Suddenly one of the girls shouts and points up to the sky. The jumper stops jumping and the rope turners drop the ropes. They slink around on the driveway like live snakes before becoming still.

“What is it, what’s the matter?” I run over and look up.

“What? What?” I demand.

“There! There!”

Then I see it. Something burns brightly in the sky above our heads. An aluminum colored curl hangs out of the dark blue twilight, as silent and gray as a ghost. My mind immediately races through the possibilities: a trick of the light…a plane…a meteor or some other astronomical event. None of these seem to fit the apparition that we’re seeing. It’s happening! I scream out inside my head, but I don’t know what. There’s something oddly familiar about the shape. I feel a fear in my chest—the fear of being watched, but as the lone adult in the front yard, I quickly suppress it. The curl vanishes in the next instant, as though brushed away by an invisible hand. A few seconds pass before the girls turn to me, pigtails and puffy jackets, eyes wide and blinking.

“What was that?” they want to know. “In the sky. What was it?”

“That? Oh, that was nothing, just a satellite,” I say, quickly scanning the street to see if their was another adult in view. There were no moving shapes among the mailboxes, trashcans and parked cars—no one to run over to and scream, “Did you see that? What the fuck!”

“Yeah, we put satellites way up there in the sky, so they can take pictures and send pictures back. For TV.”

“We have a satellite dish,” a buck-toothed red head announced.

“See? There you go. No big deal.”

“We have 171 channels.”

“Really? That’s great. But I bet sometimes you still can’t find anything to watch?”

I joked around with the kids for a little longer—laughing with them made me feel better too. But I wanted to get inside. It was dark and cold and the street didn’t seem so friendly anymore. I went across the street and told the mother I had to be going, keeping my eyes low while she thanked me so that she wouldn’t see that I was lit. As I headed back across the street I heard the girls chirping about how they saw a satellite in the sky. “That’s nice,” the mother responded, before the door clicked shut. I breathed a sigh of relief. If everything was still OK in her world, than it was still OK in mine.

It wasn’t until an hour or so later, when I was counting my tennis balls and packing them in the middle of my duffel bag, that I realized the shape and color of the seam that had fascinated me so much was identical to that of the mysterious phenomenon I’d seen in the sky.

This sinking anthem, that you hold so dear...

When the kids had killed the man I had to break up the band.

The Fitzcarraldo,The TRUEBOY, and The Sterling Fassbinder

as found on patchmonkey.net:


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9/24/2002

The Snake, The Farmer, and The Heron

A farmer was once working on his land, when a snake came up to him and said he was being chased by a lot of men.
"You must hide me," said the snake.
"Where can I hide you?" asked the farmer.
"Just save my life," said the snake, "that's all I ask."
The farmer couldn't think of anywhere to hide the snake, so he crouched clown and allowed it to creep into his belly. When the pursuers came up, they said, "Hey you, where's the snake we were after, it came your way."
"I haven't seen it ", said the farmer. When the men had gone, the farmer said to the snake, "The coast's clear-you can come out now."
"Not likely," said the snake, "I've found myself a home."
The farmer's belly was now so puffed out that you would have thought that he was a woman with child. He was about to set off for home when he saw a heron. He beckoned to it and told it in a whisper what had happened.
"Go and squat," said the heron, "and when you've done, don't get up--keep straining until I come."
The farmer did as he was told and after a time, the snake put its head out and began snapping at flies. As it did so, the heron darted forward and caught its head in his bill. Then he gradually pulled the rest of the snake out of the farmer's belly, and killed it.
The farmer got up and said to the heron, "You have rid me of the snake, but now I want a potion to drink because he may have left some of his poison behind." "You must go and find six white
fowls," said the heron, "and cook and eat them-that's the remedy." "Come to think of it," said the farmer, "you're a-white fowl, so you'll do for a start."
So saying, he seized the heron, tied it up' and carried it off home. There he hung it up in his hut while he told his wife what had happened. "I'm surprised at you," said his wife. "The bird does you a kindness, rids you of the evil in your belly, saves your life, in fact, and yet you catch it and talk of killing it." With that she released the heron and it flew away. But as it went, it gouged out one of her eyes.
That is all.

Moral: When you see water flowing uphill, it means that someone is repaying a kindness.

Please don't put your life in the hands
of a rock n' roll band.

Daze Inn

…Over on the hotel television a comedienne handed out thousand dollar Bulgari pens like they were Snapples. I've faced the facts that my waiter is gone. I waited for him to bring home the bacon but he never came back. I’ve saved the last voicemail on my cell—even made a call to Verizon asking them not to erase it after the standard ten day period. In the message he’s telling me he’s going underground, where the angels can’t find him, and that he’ll be back soon. Strains of pop music and static chop up his words until all that can be heard is the amplified whirl of a modem. Or maybe it's his phone going out of range, a typical event out here. I pretend that he's been run over my an 18 wheeler. I press the phone against my ear--the impact and subsequent explosion sound like a tornado.

Got my spine, got my Orange Crush.

Lieblings Farbe

After a few, flat sober days, my new thing is to score weed in every city or town that I stop in. What constitutes a stop when you're on an award tour? I don't know. It's longer than pulling over to take a piss though. I think the qualifying thing is to have at least one meal. That links up nicely because waiters like to puff. I've got my pitch down. It works best if it's an off hour, so the place isn't packed with everyone running their ass off. I put my "smoke with the best of them" look on--shooting for a cross between Ferris Bueller and Notorious B.I.G., but as a girl. I wait until halfway through my meal to start in with the smiling. Once the heavy lidded soon-to-be-provider comes my way, I make some idle chat before throwing it down, "Soooo, what do folks do for fun around here." Usually, if I've put my chips on the right spot, the answer is something like, "Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I like to get HIGH..."

The rest, as they say, is blue bud history. So far I've got Fairplay, CO and Espanola, NM. I'm working my way down 285--as South as I can get by scamming rides.

Speaking of colors...I finally read your mega-post from the other day, Sterling. Not that I'm not verbose myself. That's one of the things I'm working out on this trip--how to maximize my word usage. I want to go back to my original plan of posting in pop culture phrases (see first entry of this blog) but I need to rework the idea. The important thing, however, is to never forget that first and foremost words are visual objects--elements of design.

With that in mind (and it won't be for much longer, as I take another hit and stretch out on my Days Inn balcony with a view of the highway), I'm into the look of both your graphics, Sterling. While rough, they're clean and concise, which is what you want. I'm even into the mistake you made. You want the name of your album to be Favorite Color--lieblings farbe is favorite color -- as in meine lieblings farbe ist orange. Liebling Farbe--which is what you wrote-- is like liebling ( Lovely) and Farbe (a last name, like Smith or Walton). So is farber or farba. It happens to mean color, just like Goldstein means gold stone. Your "Liebling Farbe" is like "Lovely Smith" as a title, and not "Favorite Color".

Get it? It's not what you intended, but I like it nevertheless. Actually, maybe it even works better. And it's so typical of you, Sterling. You've turned over this new leaf and you're trying so hard to be honest--to be for real, that you end up saying something you don't mean. You're all about the importance of being earnest in a century of fakers. I've still got your back, don't you worry. I remember back when we were kids, and you kept practicing wheelies on that fly BMX of yours. My parents wouldn't get me a "boys" bike, but that's another story. I remember the instant when you broke your knee--grimacing face, exposed rows of teeth. I still wonder--where does the blood go when it's spread across the sidewalk? It's washed away...washed clean gone, like all those cream soda and Wise potatoe chip afternoons when we sat barefoot on the couch after school and picked out how we would look from MTV, and picked off our scabs and drew guitars with impossibly long necks--the shape of the inground pool we'd share as rock stars.

Later.
--t

Fairplay

Overheard in a diner in Fairplay, Colorado, where all the ditches have names:

"What are you going to do? Rob a 7-11 late at night with bright lights and your face on video? Or are you going to pick out a faggot with another faggot in the park after it closed, sucking each other's dicks in a new pick-up with a nice stereo system, who aren't even going to call the police because they're afraid somone will find out they're gay...Now tell me, which are you going to choose?"

OK, Fitz, point taken--the NaNoWriMo link from hell is gone. I got confused and for some reason thought it was the official site of NaNoWriMo, which is NaNoWriMo.org, in case anyone's interested. I was going to post the correct URL on the links list, but had a change of heart. If my personal code of decorum prohibits me from posting a site as masochistic as crack recovery.com, where alongside the typical quasi-religious recovering addict testimonials are flashing pictures of fat rails and pure white rock, then I should also draw the line at an organization encouraging well meaning souls to write an entire 175 page novel in one month. The site lists coping mechanisms and helpful links to fellow participants, which is a little like offering a bandaid to someone you just stabbed in the eye with a rusty nail.

Sterling, I didn't read your post from today, although the title intrigues me...I'm on batteries out here and it was too fucking long...

FYI Angry White Girl is history. NaNoWrimo 2002 has taken its place on the props column. Those people are some masochistic motherfuckers. 175 pages--you've got to give it up.

Super-unique, super-deep designers need apply. If Blogger looks good, we look good. The site is a kind of packaging, just like your fucking car.

C'mon man, design something hot. For those of us with talent and drive, this blog biz will be happening.

So I'm on the road: headed Southwest. I've got my titanium laptop. The wind has a lick of the mountains to it. You can smell the rock.

I'm sorry about the Thalys shit

I want to apologize to anyone who linked to the original Thalys link, the target of which was "every second presses into the one before like train cars", posted on the Forth. I didn't realize that it would install that program onto your harddrive. I got one too. Ourvir, Suspendir, Quitter. Sorry. The link is different now--it's a TGV picture gallery. I think it's a Belgian site. Actually I just checked and it might have fallen off. Fuck it.

I'll tell you though, it's nice to think of trains. Especially now, that I'm going travelling. My head's full of travelling songs. Sterling stole my Magnetic Fields, Charm of the Highway Strip. We've got that in common--a love for those blurred, yellow lines. Baby, I was born on a train.

I can see you now, with your pommade-thick, bleached hair and leather jacket. Kind of like Kathy Acker. But with those Yankees batting gloves and the beat-up orange Beemer. Blasting Serge Gainsbourg out of the suped-up speakers. Back in the day, but not too far back. You were badass, you were scary to be around. Sterling Fassbinder used to like to drive.




The point of all this nostalgia is to let you know that I'm hitting the road. Minnesota's over. But I'm not ready to go back to Brooklyn. I want to see some different things. I'm also super out of it. I feel like my brain has been washed in cold water and hung out to dry on a taut, fiberous line. Truth be told I need to regain my senses. I didn't drink when I was around Will. He never said I couldn't, but as I was talking his ear off about how it was such a problem, it seemed that getting blasted would be in poor taste. I wanted him to think that I had a problem but not a REAL problem, like I couldn't keep composure without at least some late night brandy to take the edge off. Instead I worked on convincing myself that I'm too physically ill to risk getting drunk. My stomach's in ribbons and my lungs feel full of cheese. I decided that I have to pull it together before I go back home.

As I didn't tell Will about this site I guess it's alright if I point out that he's covering the financial details of my trip. Nothing he couldn't afford. Willingly or unwillingly (no pun intended.)

But I feel too fucked up too talk about him right now. I miss him like crazy and it's only been a couple of hours. He's working late and won't even know I'm gone until past midnight. That's fine. You know--it doesn't concern me, not a bit. This is how I am, by tomorrow I will have forgotten all about him.

"You're my friend," I told him, looking straight in his eyes.



It doesn't concern me. It doesn't concern me.



C'mon, Sterling, you know how it goes. I see what you say--and I say it better.

Damn, that DJ made my day...

I do miss you, Fitzcarraldo...

You're always there to point out every last thing. You don't miss a goddamn second. It's because you're so still, like a tortoise on a rock. Meanwhile for me it's a blur--every second presses into the one before like train cars shooting around the bend.

"Where can I see some of your writing?" Will demands. We're standing beside the couch. I have my hand on the pillows.

"I don't know," I answer.

"What does that mean? Where are they?"

"I can't tell you."

I'm not ready for him to know about this site. Or about the products and the philosophies. I came out here to think, I tell myself. But time is passing and like the end of the movie fade-out, soon I have to make my way back to New York.

Will wants to know about it, he wants to solve the problem--make it come true regardless of the fact that I have to be somewhere. Somehow this is a failing on his part. I try and impress upon him that the difference is, for the most part, geographical.

"It's about what goes on there. It's the stage. The frontlines. You guys are safe out here." He looked at me blankly. I went on,

"You just wouldn't understand what I'm making there."

It’s a call, a necessity. The blind blur of hummingbird wings. We spent the weekend watching the flower head fill with syrup. We got restless, overripe—we tried to play board games but couldn’t concentrate. We were tired from nothing, happen-stance. The subject was the pole we danced around, delicately, on sweet insect feet, the ends of which are sharp—like fire pokers, blowing-up into dust,
--that dried-out wood with just one thrust.

You’ve got to just let your body move to the music, let your body go with the flow.

Everything works like this: an excretion, followed by a yearning until the filling-up.

“I ended up working with red markers a lot, ‘cause hey, if there’s gonna be bleeding…”

“It said it was “bleedproof’; it wasn’t.”

One of the reasons I like Angry White Girl is the links. Like this one, Rate My Kitten.

Kurt Cobain didn’t have David LaChappelle.

Now you’ve got break dancing moves in rock n’ roll videos. The sneakers are retro. It might also feature one or more people wearing ska style bowling/work shirts, the kind with name badges. Others wear T-shirts with ironical phrases spray painted across the chest. “HEAVY METAL GHETTO”, “KILL ELECTROCLASH” AND “NIKE WHORE”. Some have thick hair cut choppily, others shiny crewcuts—still others insist on sporting artistically gelled bangs and spikes. No matter what, however, they are all wearing the same “dirty” denim jeans.

FM Nation, a show on MTV, features real kids as real stars.

8 Mile features a real star as a real kid.

Infinite bandwidth=infinite blog.

Notice how none of us wrote anything on Halloween. That’s because we’re all fucking vampires. Fitzcarraldo, Sterling Fassbinder and myself, TRUEBOY. The “T” stands for nice.

I’m dreaming of a city. It is my own invention. I put the wheels in motion; to make THE BIG DECISION.

I feel a weight upon me—shadows on my veins—even way the fuck out here. On Hallween evening the sky looked like it was colored with plain white chalk. I was out in the front yard having a smoke. Will won’t tolerate cigarette smoke and I don’t blame him. Everything is neat and stacked and polished in a nice, not overly fastidious way. It’s comfortable. His L.L. Bean wearing, horn-rimmed glasses employees eye me cautiously as they move between the kitchen and their offices. They seem to know that I could potentially destroy everything; ruin this place with stenches both real and imaginary. I don’t give a shit about them, but Will is the master and I am his guest. The one that was unplanned and unannounced, who over a week ago literally just showed up on his doorstep. So I smoke “all the way” outside. I won’t light up on one of the many terraces, even when no one else is around. It’s gotten so that I like my little trips across the front yard—my feet aren’t used to walking, so they seem to bounce and float over the hard cold lumps of soil. I can smell the grass that grows in huddled clumps on the front lawn. It’s making its last sharp exhalation before entering a frozen slumber. The last stand: I stare at the twisted tops of the thick, poking stalks.

As the sun sinks everything turns black and white—except for the shiny cars spitting exhaust as they turned the corner. In the backseats are kids in homemade costumes. People are artsy-craftsy out here. Large chested, smiling Nordic types abound—baking and cooking and pouring milk. It’s just like everyone always says it is, only tougher. Sewing and cooking don’t make you homey and nice. When I think about it, what I’d really like would be to live in a landscape just like this, but without any people around. Just this house and nothing else. Maybe the pristine white columns of the Art Institute down the street. Icould set up a studio there. A factory with turntables in the middle. At 9 o'clock a line of long white busses would pull up and drop all the people off to work for me until 5. I fed them lunch of course--benevolent dictator.

I can hear Fitzcarraldo in my head: “How could you want to be completely alone? Out in the wilderness? No services and no amenities! Jesus. Where it’s seriously out there you don’t have cappuccinos or draft beer. What would you do without…”

…breakfast weed. Redthread indeed…

The used bookstore in Minneapolis...

Most of what I've bought and subsequently "read" (my attention span's too fucked not to skim long paragraphs) was fiction—old favorites I’d lost along the way like Dostoevsky’s The Possessed , Will Self’s Grey Area and Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son. I also read a lot of specialty magazines—music, art, skateboarding, anything with a strong internal logic. I told Will that I was becoming obsessed with figuring out the way things work—I have this strange new desire to learn how to read architectural diagrams. “But then again, not really,” I told him over California rolls. “I don’t want to really go through the trouble of learning that shit.” All the same, I realize I’ve wasted a great deal of time studying ephemeral notions based on scattered opinions. I've picked up things here and there without actually concentrating on any of them in particular. Anything that is truly systematic takes years to master. There’s an overpowering depth to the layers of technicality found on the average, professional blueprint.

In the weeks after 9/11 I was struck dumb by the beauty of things that were manmade. I craved intricacy: I wore expensive lingerie under my baggy jeans, so that every time I squatted to take a piss I could lose myself in the meticulousness of the pornographic detail.