Fear and Trembling.

I remember seeing a song called Kill My Compass somewhere. I think it's by Daytrader (ex-Crime In Stereo), but who wrote is less important than that its existence, at least for this piece.

The title, Kill My Compass, unpacked, is about destroying a guiding mechanism. I took to that, and a particular issue of Secret Warriors and thought "fuck it." So I made a list of all the things I thought I needed or convinced myself I needed and decided I wasn't going near them for a week.

The first to go was Facebook. Not difficult, but really just a matter of not logging in when I typed in the URL. I missed an opportunity to go out with a class of mine but that was about it. I didn't miss out on any important communication not paying attention to it.

Next was alcohol. Much harder, and reinforced, repeatedly, by a pretty up and down week. I got thrown a beer by John Henry from Darkest Hour and then plain old emotional turmoil. But. I decided, at once, one night, that I was taking the bottle of Baileys out of the fridge and giving it to someone else. I decided I would stick to it for the week. Not a drop. I stuck to it.

Oddly enough, it wasn't hard to say no to alcohol offered to me so much as not reaching for it on my own.

But this week is the iPod. The portable music device I've had strapped to my pocket for literally six years. With it, I've run through multiple continents, most airports, scary places I've never wanted to see again, St. Peter's and also Brooklyn. Going out to buy milk from the corner store made me twitch and I hadn't even left the room.

I shook as I went down the stairs and started chattering, nervously, about an issue over which I have no control the minute I left the building. I tried not to think about the constant stimulation my brain was getting for the last say, half-decade and the feeling of nudity and... to suddenly be without it. I needed, or at least felt that incredibly strong desire to have something in my ears, something to chew up the time.

(Which is the wrong way to think about it, of course. Bolano's mediocre poet in By Night In Chile wrote a book called As Life Passes Me By.)

It occurred to me, talking at a mile a minute, I was talking not because I needed to figure something out, but that I desperately needed some noise for my head. I was scared. Terrified, so I let my anger just run wild with my tongue. I'm sure the people thought I was crazy.

Walking down to the grocery store itself just took longer and felt annoying. The Fray's "How To Save A Life" coming on in the grocery store didn't exactly help. It's an earworm, which makes plain just how much like math making a hit is. Walking up the hill without music wasn't so bad. Getting out the door was the hard part, so going back up was, slow, because of the 6,000 ml of milk in my backpack, but I didn't have quite the same nervousness and anxiety of walking down the hill.

I smiled as I hunkered down in my room, putting the milk in the fridge. I'd did it. Today, after classes, I'm taking a ride on the bus to get gelato.

Also, I stepped in dog turd. This seems to be a theme. Hopefully, by this time tonight, I will not have stepped in dog turd.



"I'm not afraid of the price I pay." Of course I am, but that's why I choose Face To Face's I Won't Lie Down, because at the moment, it's aspirational. Plus, its opening sounds a lot like Jimmy Eat World's opening to Big Casino. But! Turn loud and do what you have to.

Magic And Adventures (No, and Yes Respectively)

Wednesday, man. I nearly got into a fight and stabbed. There's more to the story, but none of it is quite so interesting or entirely mine to tell. Then, after not sleeping after that, I go to Dublin, have a pint of Guiness while my flight is delayed and head to Williamsburg, in Brooklyn, in New York City, where I currently am.

I don't have full control of my schedule. Or: I don't know what I'm doing or where I'll be for sure from day to day this weekend. You've heard of playing it by ear, yes? I'm actually doing that. There's something exciting about that feeling of improvising the schedule that makes a city seem more real and somehow also more magical.

I don't believe in magic.

A Phonogram fanzine asked the question: When did I know music was magic? It's not. Or, it is, or can be. It is what you make it. Which is one of the actually deep things I've ever read and then repeated. It's music. It's just that. Phonogram made me do it, but Phonogram doesn't blind me. We call it magic because we don't have the backbone to admit it and do it ourselves more often. We mistake transportation mixed with inspiration for magic.

I'm reading Kraken now, which is festooned with actual, for real magic. (For the record: I haven't used the word festooned in a long time. Good word.) It is a book which could not exist without magic. Phonogram's is only gilded by it. The people's lives are kissed by magic but not consumed by it. Phonogram adds color.

But. Phonogram's magic is something that colors or enlivens, once you already know an area. There's a song, by Crime In Stereo called Barfight on Bedford Avenue. Having now seen Bedford, I now understand better the tenor of the song, having seen this place. It's about fake friends and superficial bullshit and having now stepped foot in that place, the song gains weight and specificity.

And that's magic. Well, sort of. It makes life interesting and more colorful. But that's not magic. That's doing things and existing and saying yes to things and not no. I don't view that as magical. But there's something new and exciting about saying yes to things. So much so that I'm staying somewhere else tonight and I'm willing to be uncomfortable to do it. Man: What am I doing?

I know what I'm doing: Adventures. I just don't have to believe they're magical.




Of course, I can't find Barfight on Bedford Ave, so here, have, a live version of Not Dead, which has some appropriate lyrics for the magical adventure: "It's in the west. The pacific sun descends. It's in your best friend's basement. It's in your head."

Oh, Look, An Adventure.

I don't want to talk directly about the whole adventure I was on. Hopefully, by hyperfocusing on moments, it'll give you an idea of the intensity of the experience, positive and negative.

The adventure I teased ended up being more than I could have imagined, not all of it good. There were moments when I questioned the choices I had made up till a point and moments when I simply ran like hell. I can't talk about all of it. What I can say is that I ran through the streets of Leeds terrified. I strolled through the streets of Leeds, full and satisfied. I walked through the streets of Leeds confused and pointing at a map.

(Also, and most importantly, the truth is so much less satisfying than whatever your mind is filling in. I was there, I'd know.)

I never had a shot of espresso before. I had two in 45 minutes in Leeds. I hardly ever dance. I danced for hours. I had a plan for getting into Leeds that I thought was pretty bulletproof. I arrived at the first hotel, beleaguered, roughly 2:45 a.m., after landing in a completely different city an hour after I was supposed to arrive. I thought on the plane that the entire trip was an opulent indulgence, likely to end in brooding failure. I woke up the day I was leaving, still questioning how I had gotten so lucky and feeling like I'd made a few good decisions in my life.

I got confused, twisted around and lost my bearings for an hour in an industrial park at midnight and only regained any sense of composure was when I realized I was in a Bane song, running (with my mind screaming at me) through an Audi dealership. I asked a question worth asking of writers. I looked through a supermarket in wonder and looked at my bank receipts in shock.

I saw a friend I hadn't seen since 2005 and saw friends I never met before. I had the bus taking me to the Leeds airport get a flat tire and still arrived with hours to spare. I had some of the best luck I've ever had with some of my worst decisions. There are highs, there are lows and in Leeds, the inbetween was irrelevant. It existed, but it doesn't really tell anything about the experience of adventuring, of wandering through for real arcades to find places I was told about on the internet, plopping down at a coffeehouse with no idea what I was going to order or being terrified the cabbie would let me off miles from where my hotel was.

(He didn't, and was kind enough to go out of his way to take me directly to the hotel. Arrow cab company, fyi.)

The epic adventures aren't about the destination, but the journey. Lord of the Rings wouldn't be half as sweet without the huge spider or the Naz'Gul (illegal in 42 states, stolen shamelessly from Telltales' poker game) or the talking trees. I live in the real world, so spider queens, Ents and zombified humans riding dragons are right out, but the thrill of being somewhere new, with someone you only kind of know for an experience you have few parallels for, I think, crosses over nicely.




This is the song that saved me, eight years later. This is Bane's Sunflowers and Sunsets.