possible titles include “true heroes never die,” “bros 4 life,” and “true bros get shot the fuck up together”

highly rec’d.

interior decorating; or, a space within which to call one’s own spade a spade

new apartment. sitting inside all day, on the computer, smoking marlboros in my room. kinda feels like i’m back at aubin’s in nyc, except…well, except i’m in vancouver and i’m paying rent here. even bought a copy of interview today. big desk space. feels like i could get some writing done at it. feel like i might start ’submitting stuff’ to some magazines so i can (like i said to adam in conversation) “start getting all those rejection letters i deserve.”

my Abe’s Penny piece is out now. i don’t see it on the website, but i would think that it will be up there soon. EDIT: it’s not going to be published on the website, but you can get yr mitts on it HERE. some of you may recognize it as a now-deleted post from some months ago. i think that’s ok. it was an important slab of writing for me. came at an important time. changed some things. some things were changing. most of this blog is just a forum for me to air the laundry i can’t bring myself around to actually sending to anybody else, anyhow. glad to get something down hard and hand held.

the future is the now and now is the future and i/you/we/they/everybody is public/published/pummelled/bumbling around. and this isn’t news and despite my efforts to craft that sentence into something besides a tired re-hash of an already-boring semi-truth, i don’t like it. i’ll leave it anyhow.

listening to a lot of neo (not neo?) shoegaze stuff right now…

Blessure Grave – Shadow {download} (via pinglewood)

Relics – What To Feel {download} (via p4k) (haha)

dead cats hanging from poles

ya’ll remember halloween.

“a byword for literary and artistic decadence”

Here. An explanation. “Feeling a lot like Baudelaire” was stolen from a song by Peter Laughner. My brother-in-despondant-arms, Ian, at SibLINGSHOT, introduced me to Laughner, and if you want to know more you can know more. I’m not going to pretend to be any sort of authority. I’m just getting to know the long-dead, fucked up young man myself.

So, it’s a stolen sentiment, like most of them, but it rings true enough. Anything rings true enough, if you feel like it should. Baudelaire was decadent and vain and provocative and influential and misunderstood, and I’m at least one of those things, and I have my rights and delusions.

Listen to Peter Laughner. He was 24 when he died. I’m getting old.

Peter Laughner – Baudelaire {download}

Peter Laughner – Baby’s On Fire {download}

(Thanks Ib. I may be a thief, but at least I’m honest.)

On that note, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Bob Dylan…

Bob Dylan – Absolutely Sweet Marie {download}

upon viewing ‘Kuroshio Sea – 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7deClndzQw

I just watched some of this video of the “2nd largest aquarium in the world,” but not the whole thing because it was fucking boring. The first thing I thought to myself as I pressed > was, ‘Where is the video of the 1st largest aquarium in the world?’ The second thing I thought to myself was ‘What’s the point?’ followed ten seconds later by, ‘Seriously, what is the fucking point?’ Then I wondered if there’s actually a segment of the population who finds meaning in 4:34 of fish listening to piano ballads while floating around in a barren concrete tank. I wondered if the video would have taken on some significance for me if it had been set to Metallica or Ghostface Killah because then I could watch it with friends and laugh at the incongruities when certain things happened with the fish at certain points in the song. But nothing at all happens. It’s completely devoid of meaning and nothing happens and only the biggest fish in the whole tank gets to swim counterclockwise at one point but every other smaller fish is forced to swim clockwise, all day, every day, until it dies and gets eaten by the other fish. And when the big fish dies even it will get eaten by the other fish for at least a little bit, until the aquarium staff pull it from the water and chop it into pieces to be incinerated/made into food for other fish. Is there beauty in that, then?

a dichotomy, of sorts, in two photos, accompanied by parallel lines, intended to be mentally shouted, a la late ’80s rap jam sing-alongs

Hey! Check it out! Here looks like Somewhere when yr 30 floors up!

Hey! Check it out! Here feels like Nowhere when yr 5000 feet down!

(unplanned) verse, straightforward enough, an exaggeration of true feelings, as, often, is ‘art’, raising the question, ‘an aid towards acceptance or a slate cleaning?’

Every fall it will be the same just like every spring it will be the same and in between I will live straightforwardly. Every winter I’ll be fine just like every summer I’ll be happy and on the shoulders I’ll flail desperately. On the fall I’ll wonder autumn and on my shoulders it weighs heavily. On the way I’ll balance options and choose direction carelessly. In my indifference I’ll feign noisily but look to book itinerary. I’ll retire words about ‘the summer drowns’ and accept these grim fates joylessly. My leaves and fingers yellow now as I sit gazing stupidly. In three months I’ll be 26 and I’ll forsake dreaming whimsically. In two weeks it will have been a year since I set myself up to fail expectedly. When people ask ‘You back for good?’ the answer is ‘Indefinitely.’

From time to time I’ll imagine towns where time and folk move casually, but inch for inch and pound for pound the city still pulls back at me.

black bear, yellow dog

The dog is on the bed and he’s twitching. Outside a bear knocked over some garbage cans. When I came home tonight it was in front of the house. Slow moving, it looked over its shoulder then paused in the middle of the road and sniffed. It was dark and there wasn’t a streetlight near and I could almost not see it. The dog is on the bed and he twitches and shakes. In his dream he’s running now. On the bed his paws move over dreamscapes. In his dream I imagine he is flying over the ground. Outside the bear has knocked over another can and I can hear him sniff and paw through the garbage from across the street. Inside the dog on the bed is getting old and going deaf and is asleep, but he is running and I think that maybe he is out there running after that bear, chasing it back into the woods. Or, maybe – and this is better – he is just running; endlessly, mindlessly, joyously, maybe through a field, in the sun of autumn, tongue out, head down, ears back, wind whipped, ceaseless. I watch his paws twitch and I hope he’s happy.

The dog on the bed stops twitching and wakes with a mild start. Raising his head he looks at me, sleepily. It’s late, I think he says, Why don’t you go to sleep?

bros

shout out to adam humphreys.

the dream, self-catalyzed, purposefully obscure, over-vague, maybe for the last time (here’s hoping)

I hear it was an earlier autumn out there this year. In fact, I hear the summer never came. I spent mine rolling in the ocean. I spent mine on the coast that I grew up on. I spend mine hanging from the branches, spitting out the sand, kicking at the rocks, blowing smoke into the fire.

It’s not the distance but the time spent apart, me out here and you with your art. I didn’t trace your lines, I cut them. You out of the cloth that was a ‘maybe.’ “For the last time, don’t call me ‘baby’.” You punctuate the line with a pout.

I don’t remember everything, or even much of anything; but that morning you were perfect, or pretty close.

I moved from Brockton to Brixton to Brooklyn and back again…

Tired ghosts and fossils on the beach. I know you won’t be by there again, but if you were I doubt you’d feel it, even if you looked for it (you wouldn’t/you might). We’ve got to be too busy moving ahead to do much looking behind, except to remember that it was better, and that we were younger, and that things were allowed and that even if they weren’t allowed we could get away with them anyhow. And by “too busy moving ahead” I mean that we’re just trying to look busy, keeping our plates full, throwing scraps under the table to the dogs, extending metaphors and getting bored.

Pearl Harbour – “Luv Goon” {download}

Kurt Vile – “Blackberry Song” {download}