Well this is weird. I know it has been a long time. More than one year of silence.
What have I been doing? Good question, tonight at ten. No one will understand that reference.
To answer, I don't know man, I have been playing a lot of video games. Since last writing, I have played a lot of JRPGs aka time sinks. I went from never playing a Final Fantasy to owning all of them on multiple platforms. Same with the Dragon Quest series (though I don't own those game on multiple platforms).
I have also watched a literal fuck ton of movies. My Letterboxd recap shows a little less than a movie a day for the last year and a half. I own so many Criterion Collection discs and I am burning my way through some of the finest creations on film. I am also watching a lot of new movies. I am one of the few people I know who tries to see things in a theater. Call be old fashioned, but it is a much better experience than watching at home. Catch me watching Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One, Barbie, and Oppenheimer in theater very soon.
Lastly I hav been trying to read more. I have a pull list at a comic shop and I keep up with a handful of titles (No super hero stuff, cause I want my stories to have an ending). I am a big fan of the Hellboy character and all of the things spinning around that, as well as various titles from Image Comics. I also try to read novels. Good ones at that. I have been picking titles from the list of Pulitzer Prize winners in fiction, as well as the National Book Award winners. I also have been a member of Oprah's Book Club, because goddamnit that woman can pick a great book.
What have I not been doing? Playing guitar, writing songs, writing this blog that no one reads. I have barely been going to concerts in an effort to live more frugally. A notion my body and mind violently rejected as I have developed a nasty habit of buying decks to play You-Gi-Oh! or Magic the Gathering. I enjoy those games, but they do not help my mental well being. At all.
I recently saw a friend who asked how I was doing, I answered with the usual bullshit non answer because that is what people do, and his response was, "Sounds like you have not been playing enough guitar." He was absolutely right. I made a point to play guitar after work on Friday until my strumming wrist was sore, and my fretting fingers were indented from the strings. I played my favorite guitar, a black Les Paul Jr, my first legitimate guitar. Even though it is no longer as black as it used to be, due to ten-ish years of pretty heavy play, it still feels good in my hands, still sounds good turned up loud running through an overdrive pedal.
As much as I enjoy video games, or books, or movies; they do not fulfill me. They distract me for sure. They help me get through a boring job. But they do not make me feel whole. If anything my reflection over the last few days would tell me they leave me more empty and lost than anything.
Last night I went to a very expensive concert at a baseball stadium, and met a date there for the very first time. So many things could have gone wrong. The weather could have changed and rained on the whole night. The bands could have been boring or bad. The girl could have not dug me. Oh god, she could not even show....it has happened to me before with much cheaper dates.
But the strangest thing happened; the entire night went very well! I arrived in a light rain, but as soon as Death Cab for Cutie started playing, the weather took a turn for the better. The rain and the haze cleared up, and I saw some blue sky. My date showed up, absolutely beautiful, in a green top and a colorful skirt. She is much much shorter than me, but I am a giant. She is cool, we have a good time, laughing and listening to some good music. Death Cab for Cutie was the weakest performance I saw last night, and that is saying something because they sounded great, but goddamnit they did not play "I Will Follow You Into the Dark". I did get to hear "I Will Posses Your Heart" so it wasn't a total wash.
Next up was The Flaming Lips, a band I was curious about, but was the least interested in, entering the night. Boy was I wrong, they played an album from 2002 in its entirety and (based on an Apple Music search) was apparently their most popular album. The songs were kick ass, the lyrics were weird as shit and I dug every moment of their performance. I absolutely will try to see them the next time they come through town. Biggest surprise of the night. Hands down.
The final band of the night is The Killers. They opened their set with "Mr. Brightside" and I give them all the props because it takes serious balls to open a set with what is arguably their best and most known song. Like nothing quite matches up to that song, and I am pretty sure they know it. In my head I could not help but think that the rest of the set would be downhill. Yet again, I was wrong. The set was huge and bombastic. Brandon Flowers' voice sounded huge and powerful in all of the songs. The set was unabashedly optimistic, and I think it was exactly what I needed.
We walked out and parted just outside the stadium, as we drove separately. Coincidentally we do not live far apart at all, and had I known, I would have just suggested we go together. For the first time in about 6 months I think this one could actually develop into something, I have been wrong before, but maybe, just maybe, I will get lucky this time.
Where am I with the music?
I have a completed EP of music that I am calling A Loaded God Complex (Yes, I am always this obnoxious). Six brand new songs, about my relationship with organized religion, especially christians, and the people who claim to be christians. It has been finished for a long time. I have the art made and everything. I need to release it and then get back to making something new. If I put it in writing on the internet it has to happen right?
I guess time will tell.
That is all for now.
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