Angry Young Man Or Jules Was Right

Your anger (and by extension your energy) is a limited resource. Outrage is an easy way to collect people’s attention. Today’s example: The blowback about a black Ariel on Twitter? Probably a bot. The anger about a black Ariel on Twitter? Real. But what could those people on Twitter do with their energy that wasn’t diverted by one bot? The easy answer is “their jobs”, the actual answer is have more time for the people they care about, or for the issues they care about.

Social media (Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter too) removed chronological timelines a while back. What you see now is what algorithms designed by humans think you’ll respond to, which is stuff that’s already been engaged with a lot. Sometimes, that’s good. Person A is pregnant, Person B got a new job, that’s neat. Often, it isn’t. It’s “can you believe this shit”?

In fairness, there’s plenty of shit to go around. The Trump administration keeps a steady stream of it coming. I think the headliner there is putting asylum-seekers and refugees to this country in cages in deplorable conditions. It was a bad idea when we put Japanese people in cages during WWII, and it’s a bad idea now.

The question becomes can the person do anything with the anger they feel, not “are you angry”? Being angry constantly eats away at you, and I submit the history of my social life at Allegheny to prove it. There’s something more I’ll call insidious: Outrage feels good.

Like drugs, it’s a pleasurable feeling as it burns you out. Outrage was my drug of choice, and in retrospect, I used heavily. Now I see it happening to other people, and I want to tell them they can stop.

I hate that I need to double underline this point: You should care. Evil exists, and driving you towards apathy isn’t my goal. But set some boundaries for yourself. Make a list of things to do, whatever that means. If it’s calling up your congressperson, do it. If it’s go protest, do it. If it’s listen to survivors, do it. But please, I beg you, set some boundaries. Social media will erode your boundaries, and make your life more difficult if you let it.

Algorithms mean I might disappear, which I'm trying to learn to be okay with. Being engaged with is a great feeling, and I'm guilty of trying to game it myself.

A friend about how disappointed he was that one of his high school friends unfriended him on Facebook because of his political content:

"If you tire of me posting images of dead refugees - including children - I dare you to ask yourself why. If you would rather just focus on nice things, please consider how lucky you are to be able to do so. I loved seeing good friends and eating food today, but am still troubled that I went to an America party when today’s America is so difficult to celebrate."

I know exactly how both parties felt. Years ago, I stood in Ronen's shoes. It is difficult to celebrate America knowing the terrible things that go on in our name, and that's what's on my mind at the moment I hit post. Today? I understand that unfriending man more than I care to admit. Sometimes, I need a break.

Stuttering.

It was Brian Wood that got me to think about this directly again.

I don't know what your experiences are with this. I don't know what your experiences are with anything similar or more socially stigmatizing. If I offend you, it was not by design. Before I start, the usual prostration about how of all the ways in which our one life can be made more difficult, a stutter is preferable to many other things.



I stutter. It's not fun, but it's livable. My friends got used to it. Now, I run roughshod over the sentences I speak. I suppose it goes without typing that I allow myself to stutter obviously. (Some people hide it or get it ironed out. To each their own.)

Thanks to the stutter, I had to discover a vocal rhythm. That, I now believe, was the beginning of my "voice." When I'm on, my sentences sound, deliberately, a certain way. Lots of commas, some single word sentences. In other words, plenty of places where I can pause for dramatic effect or if the engine of my voice cuts out.

I learned a lot of things from managing the stutter, some good, some bad, most useful. If given a choice, I'd excise the stutter. I hate it, but the task is serenity.

If I sound frustrated, it's nervousness compounded by an actual and not figurative inability to speak my desires. Even when the words are right, I still can't vocalize them. The issue is not desire and fear intertwining to compel the speaker to choose to speak multiple words simultaneously, but having nothing come out at all.

It is as if all of the lubricant in the gears of your voice disappears without rhyme or warning. Or, most damningly, another impregnable syllable in the middle of the most unremarkable sentence.

The rest is merely embarrassing details: I have pride, the stutter doesn't allow it. Stuttering in front of people I'd like to stand up straight in front of is rough. I imagine pity in their looks, and I can't stand that. I doubt the stutter has cost me lovers or friends, but my mind uses it as an excuse to believe the worst. The stutter activates my shame, which more powerful than it should be.

I don't know if I've ever wrote about this. I imagine I must have, I've littered the internet with writing, but looking at the publish button feels fresh and relieving, so I suppose I haven't. How have you been, though?







For some reason, I don't find Elastica's "Stutter" terribly insulting. I think it's because I understand I believe the singer (Justine Frischmann) is talking about her boyfriend (Damon Albarn from Blur?) being tongue tied in her presence, which happens to everyone. That, and probably residual love for Phonogram. Anyway. Above image from adsoftheworld.com

Try Me, Oh God, Try Me

I write this to organize my thoughts and puzzle out how I feel. Patrick Kindlon was kind enough to show me the packaging, with an email chain from Deathwish Inc. founder and designer Jake Bannon at an October DRUG CHURCH show. This isn't a review.







There is a major conceit to Try Me. The conceit is this: Try Me revolves around the early life of Angelique Bernstein, or as she now calls herself, Jeanna Fine. 

It is told primarily through two interviews which focus on her life before she came into the porn industry. These interviews speak frankly about the multiple times she was raped, the oppression she faced after having sex with women and her life choices. The interviews are not, in my opinion, salacious.



Put crudely, her life's been rough and hearing her speak about it is compelling and depressing. Try Me is easily the most brutal thing Deathwish has put out this year, last year, next year or perhaps in any year the label will release music.



To anticipate the snark:

-Yes, I'm aware that the devastating nature regarding frank discussion of rape (a sadly common experience) speaks volumes about the castles in my mind about the place of aggressive music in this world.



I step around those interviews in my repeated listening, like landmines. You ought to hear Try Me once, straight through. It will not be a pleasurable experience, but you will talk about it. For better or for worse, my thoughts of Try Me are in the shadow of those interviews.



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I should talk about the music.

 Try Me is 11 tracks, of which two are interviews and nine are songs.

Of the nine songs, three are over five minutes. Of those three, one is "Dingo Fence", a 10 minute song where a double-vocaled Patrick mostly yells "All the dumb cops, they get what they want." "Apport Birds" is six minutes and feels like 20.



The nine songs on Try Me are fairly divergent in terms of length. Three push past five minutes, two hit four and the balance are three or less.

 SELF DEFENSE FAMILY indulges their shoegaze and drone influences on all of these songs, to greater and lesser effect throughout. "Turn the Fan On" is technically four minutes, but the song part ends at about 3:15, with the rest being a guitar riff repeated and the sound of a dripping sink. It's effective, and while the game of spot the influence becomes tedious (and reveals how narrow my comparisons are), I remember BLACKLISTED employed a similar trick on No One Deserves To Be Here More Than Me. This is not to say BLACKLISTED invented it…



"Mistress Appears At Funeral" sung by Caroline Corrigan is an unexpected highlight. Her voice, as the lead, is a surprise and the cooing harmonies help everything glide along. It's about the discomfort of a mistress at a funeral and being unsure what to do with the emotions and the prying eyes and judgments of the other mourners.



I understand how to process the shorter songs, so I therefore believe I like them more. I prefer "Weird Fingering" to "Aletta," but I know better than to think SELF DEFENSE will play "Weird Fingering" live. 

There is also the sound of a cell phone notification going off somewhere on the record that takes me out of the experience.

I cannot listen to Try Me like a traditional Deathwish record. It is ugly. It is uncomfortable. It is worth a $6 digital download, I believe. It is worth something more than money: your undivided attention.



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I ought to talk about the packaging.

It includes photos of Angelique Bernstein or Jeanna Fine at different stages in her life, one as a fifteen year old girl, others as the woman she is today. Both show nipples. 

After hearing the interview, I understand why they are there.

I am made uncomfortable by the inclusion of the photo of the fifteen year old Angelique Bernstein or Jeanna Fine with her visible nipples. I'm aware discomfort and an absolutely bare projection of personhood is the point of Try Me. I wince and cringe at it. I avoid looking at Try Me's packaging for that reason.

As for the ethics of the use of the interview, I have no idea. Angelique Bernstein or Jeanna Fine is credited as a SDF member, the interviews are not catty, and what's said is direct. Her voice appears to be authentic. Given how centrally she figures to the art, is she entitled to whatever meager royalties Try Me will generate?



- - - - - - - - - - - - -



Try Me is a good record, where good means effective. I can think of nothing like it in what I listen to. Deathwish Inc. owners Jake Bannon and Tre McCarthy are right, I won't listen to the interview more than once. But Patrick and guitarist/producer/engineer Andrew Duggan are also right, I won't listen to that interview more than once because I am scared of the interview's power.

In short: Try Me is the first Deathwish record to inspire genuine fear and actual panic.






Try the song, "Turn the Fan On." It can work as a single. It's very, very bleak, but it gives you very much the tenor of the record.

...But We'll Find It Again

Wednesday's and today's title are related. They're a Much the Same lyric, at the end of their fantastic record called Survive. Survive is a deliciously old-school skatepunk record, with modern production and some the best lyrics involving cell phones I've ever heard.

The song itself (Picking Up The Shattered Pieces) is about trying to rekindle love, but since I'm such a romantic I'm seeing other things in it. I leave for the States in a couple days (six) and it's dawning on me, what I'm going to find when I get back. I'm going to find my cell phone, a voice I haven't heard in three months and I wanna see if I can stretch that out to four, a couple friends from college, a kid I used to hate from college, the bitter, grey city I swear I love but have lived in too long, the Starbucks on the corner, the bar, the "low" music, the high culture, the museums, the boredom, the terror and the self-loathing mixed with self-pity.

I'm going back to behaviors, that for better or worse are comfortable or fundamentally obscene. I remember hearing (whether this apocryphal or not, I don't know) the phrase getting comfortable with being uncomfortable when I was going out on college visits. I'm not sure that's true now, but instead that I accept the discomfort as a part of the machinations and gears of life.

And part of the mechanisms is writing. I get a sick sense of pride in how I write. It has a rhythm. I've chosen to write in a style that (hopefully) is hard to mimic. If the paper isn't in the same tone, teachers will know. I write in a way that leaves a mark that is apparently fun to read. Because having a distinct voice and having it be terrible isn't that good. I mean, it at least can be improved through work, but does anyone want to be known for having a style that's more abrasive than it is pleasurable? I don't.

Also, I sipped some tea under the vast expanse of powder blue sky, trying to figure out what I wanted, when it hit me: This is December. Grim, harrowing, austere December and I'm outside with my wet hair, a royal blue Descendents longsleeve and a pair of jeans. This is pretty nice.

This is Picking Up the Shattered Pieces, the song I was referring to. A live version, because it doesn't have random minutes of not-music at the end of it. Plus, it's uploaded by the singer. Also: I wanted to end on a positive note, since I don't think I have in a while, and this is pretty nice sums up everything I want to say.

Getting Off Of Square One

There's a file on my desktop called The Question, James. (It's an .RTF.) Inside are less than 10 questions with what I'm going to be doing with all the free time on my hands this week and how I"m going to use that time to either do something good for me, or get ahead on my work or figure something out about myself.

It's more boundary pushing. Trying to force myself into it. Tonight, I'm going to one of the drinking places in Rome alone or with someone. But I'm fucking going, regardless of who else is or isn't joining me. The place I'm staying just lost 95% of the people there, and I'm one of the few sticking around for the next ten days, which means that I'll either go crazy or do something cool. On the plus side, this means that I'll go to a bunch of interesting places in the guidebook that I wouldn't have time to hit up otherwise.

They say "take advantage of the time", but I'm never really sure what it means aside from go to places that guidebooks like and do thinking that will produce results other people will like or at least find productive. Which, for the most part, is good. I finished another book, and not 2666, either. It's a book called Headspace: Sniffer Dogs, Spy Bees and One Woman's Adventures in the Surveillance Society by a Brit, Amber Marks.

It paints a real ridiculous picture of our State apparatuses, that they're all looking for ways to intrusively investigate as many people as possible in increasingly ridiculous fashion, ranging from sniffer dogs to "sabotage salmon." Yes, really. There were parts about Amber Marks in there, about her friends and acquaintances as she threads her way through security personnel and paranoid, suspicious MI5 types.

(Before I forget, I have to acknowledge how ridiculous it is that I already have a massive reading commitment on my plate and I still find a place on it for a book on surveillance through a non-traditional filter. It is pretty nuts. Bodies are dropping in 2666 like sideways rain and it's getting pretty hard to tell who's dead and who's alive.)


Turns out those surveillance services are all looking to nature for their inspiration, using ideas that just feel too ridiculous for the sci-fi of the 1970's. I don't want to spoil it, so I won't say much more than I already said, it's a funny reveal, chapter after chapter. They're also pretty indebted to pseudo-science, which makes me wonder, if this is what PhDs and smart people believe, what that I take for granted in 50 years will be considered ridiculous? Probably a lot more than is fashionable. I mean, I know I was dumb five years ago, but I'm existentially embarrassed having it pointed out to me. This time, 2015, I know I'll shake my head at what I'm writing right now. Science is always moving, but not always in the right direction, so this book provides a sweet little reminder not to get too excited about what I believe.

I never would have bought it otherwise, but it was on sale (I got that, a book on Al-Sadr in Iraq, by Patrick Cockburn and a copy of A Book of Five Rings, the classic by Miyamoto Musashi for five Euros) and the cover was really unique and the different bright colors lined up nicely. Published by Virgin Books, it's a strikingly informal read, but pretty well researched. Of course, the research isn't cited directly, but placed in the back of the book, which makes it hard to quote.

To be fair to those surveillance services, they live in a world where a threat can materialize out of literally anywhere with heads of state, who, as expressed by Tony Blair (talking to Jon Stewart on the Daily Show), sleep at night with the fear that any kind of chink in the armor will be exploited (or perhaps already has) by terrorists who will acquire any kind of weapons they can get their hands on, the more powerful, pernicious and destructive, the better.

They don't want it on their conscience that they let down the people they're administrating, says Blair. I believe him. I may be naive for believing that. But at the moment, I'm looking from the outside in. And maybe in the next five years, I'll know.

90's godfathers Face To Face playing Jawbreaker's Chesterfield King. Uhhhh, that should be a no brainer, listen to it now. But on the off chance it isn't, Chesterfield King is one of the first Jawbreaker songs I ever listened to. It is about a girl, not being able to kiss her, ending up at a 7-11 parking lot, where the narrator gives a toothless woman a cigarette. Anyway. Listen to it. It should make you D'awww.