marina — fear and loathing

Beautiful performance. Particularly the saxophone at the end. I don't listen to Pink Floyd very often —

I had a period of several months in my first semester of college where, due to my roommate's cancer treatment, he went to bed quite early, and I didn't make many friends immediately, so I spent some long nights laying on the top bunk 2 feet from the ceiling, listening to Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, and hopeforagoldensummer's Heart of Art on repeat. Koss headphones strung to an iPod Video I'd been given for participation in a half-baked media studies pilot program. A long season of stopped-still wandering

— but they wrote some truly heartfelt, genuinely strange music.

I also read and enjoyed this piece about making the album.

I can't wait to be able to sing along at the top of my lungs again. I hope I can sing at my new place without driving my neighbors insane

So lovely. This album captures a truly special creative moment.

Turns out I made a post with this song last February. Another loop around.

Well, here's the song anyway.

and the next one:

Ernie's been with me this year. Today I looked at what will probably be my apartment a month from now. I've only lived in a place by myself, that I picked and cared about, for about 6 months of my adult life. I was 19, and had a very strange half year living by myself in a little square house on the outskirts of Milledgeville, Georgia. A lovely little place. I push-mowed the lawn, trimmed the hedges, met the neighbors. Made dinner, did homework, wrote music. Didn't have internet except what I could skim from my neighbor from one spot on the stairs. Had a dream about a web site called "I Love Sitting on Chairs dot com," told my friend Erik about it, and at his behest I made it, using CSS for all the styling, thereby stumbling one step farther down that rabbit hole. I lived around the corner from the first group of friends who'd live in the same big old house; stupidly in love with half a dozen women who probably loved me back but I couldn't move so they didn't either; and so, so pent up and hurt and wishing I felt like I had any sense of what to do with myself. Ignoring the mirrors; terrorized by a vision of a witch tearing back the sunny shower curtain and stabbing me through the heart with long fingernails; playing Earthbound on a 14-inch purple CRT sitting on a floor cushion. I had sex for the first time; she missed her period immediately, despite there being no way; turned out she just had such low body fat that she stopped menstruating, but that was two weeks of misery that stretched into a year of confusion and then another 4 years of happy cohabitation. Receding into myself, getting darker and weirder and howling out songs in the middle of the night. Still, wanting to be happy. Feeling the deep breaths of contentment between tight-lung grips of despair.

So now, technically able to afford it, I'm going to rent my own apartment. A lovely, spacious place. I feel excited to "be an adult" again, and terrified of failure, of not being able to keep up the charade of productivity. Resentful that I still can't invite friends over to see it. Feeling like the total reset of my life that began a year ago is entering a new phase.

I'll take a picture with Ernie when it's real.

Five Iron Frenzy has a new album out, and it's full of antifascist anthems. It's great. It's also got me listening to their back catalog, including this song that comes to mind often when I need to rev myself up for something.

Five Iron's a funny band. They're a "Christian band," often writing overtly about or to god. I was still a christian in my interior when I learned about them, so they're one of like three bands still grandparented in to my despicably-godless present taste. }:) I don't have time to go into it, but the thing I want to say is: more than maybe any other band, they've managed to achieve feelings in some of their songs that approach whatever the material sensation of the "sacred" might be. Their songs can still lift my heart in a specific way; a feeling of aspiration, of there being something special about being alive, and that it's nice to remember.

Some of their songs are just silly. Some of them are solid rock songs. The singer's voice is one of my favorites. They've always opposed the abuse of power ("Riot Gear") and conservative interpretations of christian doctrine (too many songs to list). For their new album to consist almost entirely of songs clearly and directly criticizing the modern right wing in all its guises... I'm grateful for it. I hope there are christians listening.

And today, as I discuss moving into my own apartment for the first time in years, I feel the terror of instability yawn beneath me. Can I really maintain a life of day-to-day productivity? Well, I've been doing it for quite a while now; I reckon I'll just have to keep doing it. And as overwrought as it is, as far away as I feel from this sentiment, this is how I want to feel:

"Hulking, smashing, I come crashing, nothing like when I was small. That feeble coward that you knew has undergone an overhaul. I am unstoppable. I am the cannonball."

I do wish that most of my favorite songs weren't about regret and loss,

but,

well

"Never define yourself by choices others make.
If no one said it yet, it would be a shame. That ends right now.
You're not alone in pain.
Never alone in pain."

They're playing this whole album on a ticketed livestream this Friday. I think it's gonna be good!