Getting stupid

I think that I might be having increasing difficulty trying to "describe things with words" or something. Like, I am supposed to write a blog post for the band about how we are playing a show at the end of a bike ride. This seems insanely difficult. I can't even think of how to explain it or talk about the other things involved. I think that 8 years ago this would have been "fucking easy". Now I am so scared to even try that I can't try. I would rather not ever . I lost track of my thought. Writing the press release for our DVD took 5 days. I think I forgot to put in every relevant detail possible. I think the way I tried to market the DVD by describing what was on it was the worst ____ word I cannot think of possible.

Tonight I find out if I am an alcoholic. Not shaking yet.

Heh heh heh

Christmas Time

It's snowing, Daniel busted out the acoustic guitar, I busted out the "Piano Horn", keeping my eyes parallel to the Earth, we sang and travelled together in a van.

Feel better now

It's snowing.

I have been feeling really good lately. About everything, and despite a lot of bad things that are happening to the people I love the most. Which is good timing because I finally feel in the position to be able to not be a burden on the people I love, for the first time in a long time. I haven't been writing much recently, maybe because I have a girlfriend again... I started this blog right before Danielle and I broke up, and I stopped just around the time I started dating the anonymous German detective. I guess writing things always seems stupid after you've just talked about what you were thinking to a person close to you. Or just having to place yourself so far out on the dramatic limb while looking back at your partner sitting near the trunk staring at you. Feels silly. But I think it's also because a lot of the ... I don't know, despair I felt for the last few years has quickly been slipping away. I don't feel like there's much to write about. I wanted this blog to originally be something funny and a running account of what I did, cause I could never remember. Now that seems stupid, even though I wish I would do it, I can't just sit there and type it out. So it was really became this thing to talk about frustrations I guess. And recently I haven't felt frustrated. Actually I feel like I was in a cloud for a few years, a very big cloud, trying to see things a different way because I knew the way I saw them was the most right and accurate I had seen them in my life, but was somehow not representing what I instinctively felt to be reality at the same time. But I couldn't get out of it. Every action seemed like a feeble grasp at something not even real, worthless, a farce, totally pointless and self-conscious and failing. The only emotion I could enjoy was palpable, deep sadness, because I felt that I would never feel something approaching even simple satisfaction or joy again. And I really didn't feel those feelings, much.

There are two things that happened I think. I guess I'll start with the band. We released our new album. It's good. I know it's the best and most emotionally telling thing we've ever made. And aesthetically it fits too. The artwork is 100% tied to the experiences that went into the music. The album is a true album. It is a singular, cohesive piece (although not everyone was able to see that heh). We were all satisfied more than ever before. I was so excited. We had a new label that people had heard of. The album didn't leak 4 months early. People were buzzing.

So. It came out. It sold 1765 copies the first week. Dismal. I mean, that is like really horrible. Our album that leaked 4 months early doubled that. It sounds like a lot, but when you think of all the shows we've played, how many people know, if just 1 person bought one in every mid sized city and bigger we should have done more than that. So we were really disappointed and confused and immediately knew there would be no new opportunities for us as a band. And literally that week the press stopped, emails stopped, everything stopped, it was just like radio silence. Once they smell that they can't make money off you it ends. I think Skeletonwitch and Immortal doubled and tripled us. It actually felt surreal or like a counting mistake had been made. It was just depressing, like, we are probably the only band out there who doesn't put up some bullshit facade to their fans, does things differently, and everyone goes MIA when it matters the most for us. At least that was the immediate reaction I had. In 4 days of touring we played to more than 1765 HORSE fans, in 4 cities, out of the like 300 it's possible to have good shows at in the US... so, what happened? We were sad. We had big merch orders lined up that got more than halved because of the poor sales, that we were expecting to be able to live off of for a few months, or in my case, pay straight into my credit card balance. Suddenly we realized we would be broke again because the "industry perception" of the band was so badly damaged by a shitty first week. Anyway... I guess we are a "download" band. I don't know. I actually still don't get it. I don't know why our fans, which I would consider to be a higher caliber of people than say, fans of bands who sell records, won't buy our music.

Well we went on tour and the turnouts were great. Better than we were expecting. And it continued through Europe and now on this tour. Last night we had our best show in Salt Lake City ever. Like 100 kids singing along, the previous record was probably like 8. And everyone saying "your new album is my favorite". Which is funny, cause everyone has heard it, but no one bought it. But!

It's ok. Because it finally made me be able to fall out of a gray area that I had been in for about 4 years. The big cloud. Which was... is this band my job? Am I failing at being able to simply exist on this planet? To provide for myself? For 4 years there was no good answer. There was always an if or a but or another hope. This time I knew, we made the best thing we ever made, we released it properly, we failed. We still managed to lose every prospect of being able to support ourselves financially. So, sitting in the bus in Europe I realized, this band is not my job anymore. And I am not failing at my job. And I never should have tried to make it my job or defined my success in life by thinking about this band as my living. Or maybe I should have, because I guess going so balls out with what we did made me make all the decisions that led to me being able to see the world, see people, get some form of still severely-limited scope, get jaded, be unable to have conversations with almost anyone except beautiful smart women, blah blah, that I wouldn't take back now. But... yeah. This band isn't my job and thinking of it like it was was "ruining my life". I was never so depressed. Maybe because I had never actually tried hard for something and felt I had failed, had wasted my time in a sense. Because, whatever artistic or practical view you have on life, and whatever intangible successes you have had, you still need to eat, pay for a place to live, you need money. If you borrow money constantly and think you don't need it, you still do, you're just a fucking loser. I have credit cards that ballooned again in the last 2 years. And it gets you down, losing $17,000 in two years to sustain your touring life. If you can't pay for it, you probably shouldn't be doing it. At least not year after year, hoping that the next album you won't get sued, people will buy it and you'll get some royalties, some merch orders, be able to pay it back. When you realize you can't, you failed. You take it out on your fans, they obviously like it but they stole it from you, of all bands.... But you know deep down they don't get it, how could they possibly understand the time investment, the bodily investment, the mental investment, the wear and tear, the repetition, the disillusionment, the fun, the highs, the lows, the mind-numbingness, the loss of the ability to have memories, the degradation, and how a band actually makes money? They don't know anything, just like you didn't until you had been touring for 3 years straight and you still knew next to nothing. So it doesn't make you feel any better and you know it isn't their fault, and in fact they are the only ones preventing you from being a total failure.

Thinking of the band on those terms, trying to use it as my vehicle to survive, ruined so much of it for me. And I guess to be fair it also drove me harder, but it wrecked me mentally.

Sitting in the bus in Europe I realized the only time I was really, really happy to be on tour was when it had nothing to do with my financial situation. When it was something I did in my free time. When there was no success or failure, just music and performance and seeing the world. And really everything felt like a success, even talking to a random person from 3 hours away. And trying to tour full time was the next logical and almost necessary step. But now the next necessary step is to not tour full time, to not try to "break" this band, to not think of this band as my job and to think of cities as markets and define success and failure in dollars and album sales and merch rankings on a website and myspace plays. Or else the band will die. And I'm not saying we lost sight. Those things all come with the territory when something is your job, unless you are a complete idiot. But I don't want it to be my job anymore.

I realized we have amazing supporters, a true cult, they know our stories, they know why and how we are different, they know all the misconceptions about us and that they are bullshit. Haha, now that we are known as "the coolest band in the world" and "the greatest band at touring, ever", we can sit back and pick and choose our tours. Only go to places we want to be, only work with promoters who want to work with us, only tour with bands we are in love with. On our own terms. We aren't asking anymore. We are the commodity.

So. Now that I know this band will never be my job, it feels like a huge burden was lifted off my back. I actually feel better physically. I'm able to think of this tour as a vacation and every single show is fun again. A lucky opportunity to be in every city and see people who I probably won't see as much anymore and appreciate them.

That was long.

The second thing that was much more immediate was reading a book. Probably the exact book I needed to read for years but if I had read it earlier it may have been lost on me completely. Anyway in Birmingham I was at the bookstore with my friends Aina and Hara and I felt like reading something "high school", to see if those books were worth reading when you're that young and if I would get more out of them now. So I got the Great Gatsby and A Farewell to Arms. I read the Great Gatsby and it was good, like a perfect novel. Whatever that means... It just felt like it. I think the things that changed since high school were that teachers focused way too much on "symbolism", they just fucking tore apart the book into these stupid simplistic metaphors. Which weren't even supposed to be metaphors (I don't think), just awesome imagery and feel. And really the book was about people and these subtle tells. Which, with that subject, I guess there's not much that can be taught in a classroom.

So I was happy with the book and then I started A Farewell to Arms, which I never read. I came in with a hatred of Hemingway because one of my favorite authors called him a poser, but I knew I hadn't read enough to back it up, so I was trying to convince myself I hated him for a good reason. Looking for flaws. The thing that drew me to the book was it said "a love story"... (I had no idea) and there was a quote- "a book completely devoid of sentimentality". I was wondering when I read it "what does that even mean?"

At the end of the book I was completely devastated. I cried so hard in my bunk and I couldn't stop. I still don't even know what was happening with me. There was the plot element, this risky journey, the love, the tragedy, the beautiful life, the perfect settings, it was almost as if you wished something this beautiful, something that would be able to create something so horrible, could all happen to you. I came out of crying feeling light.

All I could think about was the main character. How he was probably the best person I had ever thought about. He was outside of the cloud, I knew it, and I felt he had been in it. I didn't know what it was that I was drawn to. And it came almost immediately. Everything that I had spent 4 years asking myself, struggling with, always coming to the conclusion that nothing matters, but you have to live anyway... this sort of uneasy compromise. To him it was like, taken for granted, not even worth mentioning, not even thought about mentioning. It was fact. It was like, oh, yeah, the sky is blue. It was there the whole time, but never discussed or worried about or even thought about. The existential despair was not discussed. It was a given, such a given that it was not worth examining. Unlike my other favorite books where the characters basically struggle with metaphysical bullshit and come to no conclusion except doing a very good job showing how sad things can be... To him, it was an assumption. You are aware of gravity, but not thinking about it. Rarely even acknowledging it, although subjected to it constantly, it plays no part in your consciousness.

All the questions, all the pondering and despair and frustration fell away. The cloud was gone. I knew the way out. To be completely "devoid of sentimentality" in a way. To really stop thinking about it, questioning everything that simply just "is that way". It doesn't matter.

A perfect day is a perfect day.

This kind of makes me like Miller Lite more

It has rained like 68 separate times today. The storm lacks cohesion, I give it a 5.5/10. All my clothes are soaked and hanging around me in my bunk. My entire bunk feels wet too but I think I might just be imagining it.
We have been in England for 5 days and I am happy to say I formed a little routine. Every morning I wake up at 9 and then take a 4 hour nap starting at 11. Then I get diarrhea halfway through our second song every night.
The routine is getting too comfortable. I need to shake things up a bit.
Last night we went to a little bar in Glasgow and "danced the night away". I feel like this could be the "defining moment" of an American's youth or maybe even entire life but it seems like something I wouldn't think of ever again in 60-80 days.
It is cool when someone tells you about something you did and you forgot you did it.
It is weird how things might actually be more fun to remember than to actually experience.
Here are some western culture questions I think I am struggling with:
Am I living in the past?
What does it means when I can't remember what I did the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time I was in Sheffield on the 4th time? Should I be excited about the 5th time?
If you keep making new memories instead of repeating the same ones every day, will it eventually be impossible to make yourself "do" anything?

Does anyone know the answers to these questions?
:(

Ppppppppppppp pPpppppppp pppppp pppp ppppppp ppp



So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.
-Nick Carraway

the chunnel

I'm on a bus inside a train underwater.

My life

I am scared

I'm supposed to fly to Germany in 6 hours. I had a really horrible dream and had to get out of bed and turn on all the lights and eat something, and it's still not going away. I was in the big dark hall with a glass ceiling. It was dark cause it was night. I was watching a movie after we had played a failed show in there. In a bed. Then this invisible squat fat piggish guy with pants and human arms and hands but no torso and a pig masquerade mask came. He was very evil. I was asking everyone who it was. He was there for a while not doing much. At some point I remember violently trying to kill him. Like axing into where his head should be. I made dents in the invisible body. I shattered his mask. He got very stern with me and told me to put him back on his plateau. I put him back. He was bouncing around up there going higher and higher. There was a password that was ignorance151617 or something, someone yelled it at me. I dreamed that I woke up in the bed I was in in the dream and my mom was there and I was like wake up I had a horrible dream and woke her up but the words came up like my mouth was stuck together and I couldn't talk. My breathing was really slurpy and disturbing. She asked if I needed water and left to get it, then I was alone and still couldn't talk and dreamed that I woke up in my own bed. I got up to turn on the light but my hand was deformed and I couldn't fit it between the furniture and the wall where the switch is. Then I really woke up in my bed and went to the bathroom, shaky. My left eye was stuck together.

I went out to the kitchen and needed to read something. I saw The Mini Page and a thing about bees. I started reading "Vanishing Animals" with a picture of a bee.

In America in 2006, honeybees began abandoning their hives and disappearing. No bodies of the missing bees have been found. No one knows where they went or what happened to them.
Each year since then, there have been more of these strange disappearances. Experts say that more than one-third of all honeybees have disappeared in the United States.
One day bees would be swarming around their hives, apparently healthy. Then, all of a sudden, all the worker bees would vanish, deserting their hive, the queen, honey stores and young bees.
Other bees would avoid the deserted hives, not even trying to get the honey sitting there unguarded.
Scientists call this strange event Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD.

:(
By now I felt very, very scared. Looking for the pig guy in the backyard and the dark parts of the room every time I looked up. Every hair on my body standing on end. Why was the Mini Page writing about something this horrible? I looked at the top and saw the article was by the Founding Editor. Then I read the first paragraph.

There is a big mystery in the world. Animals are disappearing, and no one knows exactly why. Bees, bats, frogs, and other amphibians are vanishing.
There are a lot of ideas about this. Experts believe the disappearances and deaths are happening for a mixture of reasons.
If so many animals are in trouble, it may mean the Earth is in trouble too.

The article only gets scarier after that. Bees are very important and so are bats and even frogs. They are also very old and mysterious. I am very scared and I don't know what to do. I don't think I want to know what the animals know. :(

1765

I feel like lashing out.