Here’s Some Stuff I’ve Done Recently

I’ve been learning how to make chiptunes, and that’s my most recent one. You can hear the others on that channel, too.

I’m very happy with this song, lyrically.

And yeah, this blog is pretty much dead. I’m keeping a new one, more focused on writing about not-just-how-I’m-feeling-at-the-moment stuff, and I’m liking that a lot. You can find that here. Recently I did a long and exhaustive post about the video game Tales of Symphonia, and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

A Few Words, Because They’re Important, As Is My Right To Say Them

I’m freaked out right now.

Yeah, it’s because of the election. But I’m less freaked out by the results than I am by the people who made those results happen.

And no, I’m not upset that they voted. Everyone should vote. And they had every right to vote the way they did. It’s the fallout from this all that is astounding to me.

We have elected a man who believes that freedom of the press is wrong. And when I speak to call him out on any of the horrific things he has stated publicly, I am met with a barrage of people claiming that he has the freedom to say whatever he wants.

They are absolutely right. But freedom of speech is not freedom “from” speech. Every action you make has consequences, positive and negative. Every word you say affects someone, somewhere in some way. And guess what? It is just as legal for me to be offended by the xenophobic remarks that man has said as it is for him to say them.

Freedom of speech means freedom of speech for everyone. Not just the people you agree with. Freedom of speech means that when someone says something I find offensive, I am allowed to call it out as offensive. I am not trampling on another person’s free speech by commenting on the things they said.

I have heard people cheer as a man on television said he plans to sue every media outlet who has ever said a negative word about him.

You know what? You people… you people who claim “freedom of speech” whenever someone calls you out for saying something offensive? You don’t believe in free speech. You don’t believe in the very thing our country was based on. You are not Patriots. I value our first amendment far more than you ever could. Free speech does not end at the people who look like you, who sound like you, and who think like you. Free speech does not end at anyone.

I am a Patriot. I am an American, and I believe in freedom of speech. Look at yourself. Look at how you’ve been reacting to the events of this week. Do you aim to silence those who disagree with you?

Do you really believe in our First Amendment?

 

No Future

I can watch you all
I’m so glad you could succeed
So much better than me
I’ve been trying so hard
To be the failure that I
Knew that I could be
I dreamt it in my dreams
But now I see the failure points
In this plan, there are no
Track marks on my arms
There is no blood upon these hands

I worry about everything
I worry about worrying
I worry that I’m gonna worry soon
But nothing ever seems to be
Anything worth worrying
About, I just wake up after noon

All this fucking time I spent
Sputtering ineloquent
All this value in not giving a fuck
The poignancy of giving up
The beauty of naivety
Well now it’s all just lost on me
I swore that I would never be
I’d not amount to anything
And older now, I finally see
That I was right,
And I’m just me.

Untitled

I don’t even want to be happy
No, I don’t need that
I just want someone to love me
And I don’t want to love them back.

Art and Drugs

Last night, I took my sleeping meds. I took them as normal! At least initially. Ambien gets you into kind of a fevered state of mind where you have impulses and you act on them and have almost no filter between those two things. And once that hit me, I apparently felt the need to take a couple more.

What a goddamn night it was.

I think. My memories are quite hazy. I didn’t engage with anyone, which is good. I threw up. A lot. I wrote a song.

Now, normally the garbage I write on Ambien is nonsensical and is filled with me mashing on the keyboard hoping that I will manage to get my point across through sheer force of will. I never do. Half the time I delete it all in the morning, the other half I keep it for the sake of laughing at myself. Last night, however, I had this fucking crazy breakthrough and wrote one of the most complicated lyrical pieces I have ever written. It’s seriously beyond me. It is a better song than I am capable of writing. So much so that me writing out the lyrics here is a futile endeavor because the way it is written doesn’t allow it to be expressed effectively through writing.

It’s a lyric that requires two people to be singing at once. They each are singing different parts, but there are select lines and words shared between both parts that are sung by both people at the same time and harmonized. I mean, I’m sure this concept has been used before. There’s no way I’m the first person to do it. It’s probably been used in countless musicals written by composers with far more talent than I will ever have. But this is the first time I have ever written something like this.

And, you know, it’s also… done well. And for a good reason. There’s an artistic reason that I have these two vocal parts separate and converge throughout the song. I’m comparing and contrasting two different lifestyles; two different kinds of depression. I’m following a character who has his life together but can’t manage to feel good and also a character who is a drug addict who uses substances to deal with the awful feelings. At the end of the first character’s track, he talks about the fact that through all his attempts at positive change there is “still/this pain.” The second character ends by saying he will find a way to “still/this pain.” and it’s all harmonized and sounds wonderful and goddammit I wish I could consistently write like this.

It’s kind of frustrating how deeply drugs are tied to art. For people who have either never used a mind-altering substance or have long since quit, the idea that someone needs to get high in order to make something sounds… it sounds kind of offensive, doesn’t it? It comes off like that person is just not creative or talented enough to manage to create without some sort of handicap. Either that, or it gives off the feeling that without drugs, you’re not a real artist. And that’s clearly not true! Drugs aren’t required to make great art. But I think it’s wrong to deny that they’re a potentially useful stepping stone on the path to creation. And I think it’s wrong to criticize people who use them for that purpose. I mean, back when I was seventeen and on all sorts of shit, I wasn’t using it to create, exactly, but I still felt a kind of artistic attachment to the process of getting high. I was getting high for the sake of finding new angles to see the world with. I wanted to feel different ways of thinking. Taking certain drugs felt like a 6-12 hour excursion into the mind of an artist. It felt like a performance art piece but… backwards? Like I was feeling for the sake of evoking a performance rather than performing for the sake of evoking a feeling. It was very bizarre and unhealthy but honestly, I learned a whole lot from it. And amazing art does come from drug use. And, you know, I think that’s probably okay.

An Apology

I’ve only got so much in me
That I can say I’m sorry
So I’m not sorry now

I’ve only got so much time
That I can say I’m sorry
But I’m not sorry now

And maybe I’ll drown
In the lake by your house
Or maybe I’ll drown
In the river
But I don’t think that I will die
In quite the way that I want
I’m afraid, and it’s all that I am
Sometimes

I’ve only got so many words
To try to say that I’m sorry
But I won’t say I’m sorry now

I’ve only really got today
To tell you that I’m sorry
But I can’t say I’m sorry now

And maybe I’ll fall
From the tree in your backyard
And maybe I’ll fall
From your rooftop
But I don’t think that I’ll die
In quite the way that I want
I’m afraid, and that’s all that I am
Sometimes

I have scrawled
Out on my bedroom wall
If you’d maybe indulge me
“I don’t know if it’s what I want
But I can’t seem to go on
So I’m sorry for what I
Should be sorry for.
I hope you’ll forgive me
For whatever I must be forgiven for.”
But I trust that you’ll never see
So as of now, I’m not really sorry

Holly

You’re the first in a long time

Like a Christmas of off-white

You’re not quite

But you’re quite close enough

Oh, I’m less than I was

When I was in love

With the feeling of love

And not exactly in love with you

But I do

Depthless

I don’t know who you are

but I can’t go very far

without falling apart

you are, you are

just an image of you

I wish I could see through

you are just what you do

and you do, you do

it’s all according to plan

well, I do what I can

but you know I can’t stand

who I am, and I am

just an image of me

disproportionately

I am so ill-conceived

Can’t you see, can’t you see?

Like a constellation

I am just what you perceive

a collection of points

across a vast and empty sea

and I tried to look inward

but there’s nothing inside me

So don’t tell me that you fucking understand

who I am

I wouldn’t do that to you.

Thank You, Mr. Wilson.

The man who got me started playing guitar passed away from his cancer just the other day. He died young, too. He was the music teacher at my high school, but that’s not giving him enough credit. He was so much more than just the music teacher there. He was the reason people were passionate about music at my school. He had huge classes, but always found time to help every individual who was struggling. He was much more concerned with the students than he was with having some perfect curriculum, or whatever.

He was also the most talented musician I have ever met in my life. He could have done anything with his talent. He could have made money as a studio musician with ease, if you want to argue that achieving fame is too reliant on luck. But he used all of that talent to teach instead. And he taught so many people. I knew so many people who played guitar because he taught them. He brought music to my world, and to hundreds, if not thousands of others. He was a fantastic teacher, and all you had to do was be willing to learn.

There’s a lot more I could say about him, I just haven’t had much time to process all of this. This is… this is the first death in my life that actually brought tears to my eyes. I’ve never felt a real connection to anyone else who has died in my periphery, but Mr. Wilson taught me the one thing I have that really sets me apart from other people. He’s the reason I can do something that not everyone in the world can do. Sure, I’m not the greatest in the world at guitar, but if I didn’t have this skill at all, I might have killed myself out of sheer lack of confidence before now. I don’t know that for sure, I guess, so I’m not going to say that I’m alive because of him. But I do feel more alive because of him. And I know he brought that feeling to so many other people.

I wrote a bit of a song about it. My feelings about it are very jumbled up right now, and I’ve always had a difficult time writing about death. But this is what I got, and it’s dedicated to Mr. Wilson. Thanks for everything.

---

There’s no such thing as ghosts
But my room felt so damn warm
when it should’ve felt cold
There’s nowhere that we go
And I know that you were trying
God, I’m so afraid of dying

I wish the world was where I was
For those years that you knew us
But the world will never know
what I know

But I
know
You’re fine
now

I am where I am
I have what I have
It’s the one thing in my life
that I’ve worked for
and I have what I have
and I am who I am
This is the one thing in my life
that I have worked for

And I
can
do anything
now

From my first C chord
to right now

And I
know
You’re fine
now.

This Isn’t Very Good, but Whatever

You hate everyone
who ain’t rich, perfect and white
but Jesus died with darkened skin
penniless, and right
He said to all the angry people
“Why can’t we all just get along?”
he is a god I don’t believe in
but even he believes you’re wrong

I read your fucking book
and nowhere does it say
to treat somebody different
for being girly, poor or gay
Who are you to judge
I see you covered up in cuts
they are the things you haven’t done
yet, and they are sins in their own way

you cut your hair so short
because you are a manly man!
and your parents told you to
and you followed everything they planned
You are not a person,
you are just a machine
who are you to hate
on me?

I read your fucking book
and I just can’t figure out
where the hell you can get off
with all the bullshit that you spout
The god you are obsessed with
said none of those things
It’s the devil that you must
be worshipping.

I used to believe in god
I prayed every night
I prayed that everybody else
would be okay, be alright
I hoped that someone out there loved me
I once believed that he did
I know now that I was
just a stupid kid.
I hate you more than
You hate who you hate
I wish you the worst and
I hope you make a million mistakes
and they don’t let you in in the end.