delicious

take all that heartbreak, put it in a food processor, add some salt and pepper to taste, maybe some serrano peppers and cumin, a little sugar, all the fixins, make it something you'd want to dip these chips into:

1. the way he says "flower" in the bridge of the second verse




2. the "conversation" in the beginning, and conversions of like-minded souls at bars on dearborn



3. when the beat kicks in



4. the candid non-seriousness that adds to the tiredness of this song



5. at 1:24, where you're left suspended in mid-air, gasping over the horizon, waiting and questioning the inevitable sweet release of everything beautiful about this whole world


sometimes you have to puke out your guts to stay hungry.

My Favorite Bass Lines of 2013

I meant to post this before it became 2014. Oh well.
I listened to a lot of Arcade Fire last year.
I saw Atoms for Peace twice.
Nope, three times.
I saw Sigur Ros twice.
I solidified my flirtatious little lover's tryst with dance music. Not necessarily dance music. I'd say house music.
Matt Berninger wore my Blackhawks hat in Milwaukee.
And honestly didn't really write any music in 2013.
It reminds me of a conversation I once had with female extraordinare, Aviva Jaye. Words and music are two completely different things, and to marry them is a delicate art; for the precise musician, I mean, you just can't settle for okay.
I started performing my poetry in 2013, and subconsciously, it was the solution to this quicksand sorta problem.
Bass lines have nothing and everything to do with this. So, here are my favorite, or most accessible at this time of me being drunk, bass lines of 2013.


5. Cage the Elephant - Take it or Leave it

I don't know nothin about this band.



4. Cut Copy - In Memory Capsule

I gave Cut Copy a chance and it left me dancing. I just love the feel Daniel brings to a simple, beautiful track. So sad you can't see him in any of this video.



3. Arcade Fire - You Already Know

Reflector is my way of pretending James Murphy came out with an album last year. Some really, really great stuff. I love it all. The costumes, the walking bass line, the precision, the weirdness that isn't so weird, the living fantasy of an artist's nourished intentions, all of it.



2. Strawberry Girls - Agua Verde

This is mainly, like 72% because of my favorite narcissist of 2013, Zac Garren. Who knew Dance Gavin Dance's merch boy could whip up a gem like this?



1. Atoms for Peace - Before Your Very Eyes (live)

When Gina and I saw them at the Daily Show, Thom said he wanted to tour with Flea because he plays the bass like a melodic instrument.

THIS version. Shit gets real around 4:50. Flea pretty much stole the year. I had the most fun watching him beat the fuck out of the bass.




Next: New York City.

in retrospect...

yeah. i suck.

i will say, though, the muses filed out of my skin like little G.I. Joe characters digging through the mud into the always forgiving arms of spoken word. 2013 was all about the severe (and i mean severed) disfigurement of the notion that denotation destroys art's purity, in the sense of, well, my favorite one. hearing. 

it's that little corner where you have to climb onto (never end a sentence with a preposition but)

you know, it's kinda hard. at some point you just have to get used to your own version of sociopathy.

you hold your desires in your hand because fear outweighs all the bullshit ideals you'll ever think you never had in the first place.

riot fest day 1

this was probably the highlight of my night. tipsy, dancing in the crowd with missy and two random underage lesbians we joined forces with, snaking our way up to a relatively close spot. i kept repeating how bad ass joan jett was. it was true. she was fucking bad. ass. "hey, stop taking selfies and fucking dance." danzig blew my mind right after, in a different way. different energy. i felt so excited. it was like there wasn't a 10 year gap between me and the kids getting bloody in the pit. by the way, there was a 10 year gap between me and the kids getting bloody in the pit. when did that happen?

Composer Quotes

This is pretty wonderful. It makes me feel not alone.

Quotes by famous composers/musicians

The one that got me the most was good ol' Franz Liszt. Note: he's from Hungaria, not France.

"Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of an artist."

Imagine being in your late 20's hanging out with Chopin and Bizet and all the French writers, probably smoking and getting drunk and just absolutely slaying at everything you play, creating what would be the absolute idealist way of life, having these European women fighting over everything you touched and creamed themselves every time you got on stage. You will be considered one of the best pianists of all time, and you die alone. Yup. I mean he had kids and had lovers and his writing just got better and better with every breakup, but the motherfucker knew he was going to die in a fashion opposite of his legacy. He wrote the most introspective and amazing pieces knowing he was on his way out, but he was still alone.

"I carry a deep sadness of the heart which must now and then break out in sound."

I mean, is it worth it?

the 18th variation

I think it's time to share my favorite piece of music ever written.

I was introduced to Rhapsody my junior year. Everyone in my class had to analyze a different variation, or part, of the piece. My professor Philip chose the 18th variation for me to analyze. I fell in love with it immediately.
Weird thing is, so did my Mom. It was used in one of her favorite movies, Somewhere in Time, scored by the great John Barry. She knew the piece before I even heard of Rachmaninov. I don't really think it was coincidence that this variation was chosen for me. I mean, maybe Philip saw my interest in Romanticism and thought I would do justice to its analyzation. I think I did. Perhaps it was art's way of connecting my mother in me, giving us something to share without even knowing it. Are people really connected like that?
Nonetheless, Somewhere in Time became one of my favorite movies too, you know, those love stories where there is no real happy ending; either he dies, or she dies, or they both die, or in this case, you have to save France, and you'll co-exist in the world but not together, knowing your greater purpose in life has outweighed the physical pleasures of actually being with the love of your life.

What the fuck kind of sacrifice is that?

Anyway, I wrote this paper in 2006. I wish you could see a score so you knew what the hell I was talking about. Still, reading it again has given me a slight motivation to finally. Finally. Finally get back into classical music.

Or in my case, music in general. Get back into life... and save France.

back to square one.

I had to convince myself that love wasn't real.

I convinced myself that love wasn't real.

Love isn't real.

But The September Project is.

Happy September 1st.

we couldda made it cruisin'

Once I had a love and it was a gas
Soon turned out had a heart of glass
Seemed like the real thing, only to find
Much mistrust, love's gone behind

Once I had a love and it was divine
Soon found out I was losing my mind
It seemed like the real thing but I was so blind
Much mistrust, love's gone behind

In between
What I find is pleasing and I'm feeling fine
Love is so confusing there's no peace of mind
If I fear I'm losing you it's just no good
You teasing like you do

Once I had a love and it was a gas
Soon turned out had a heart of glass
Seemed like the real thing, only to find
Much mistrust, love's gone behind

Lost inside
Adorable illusion and I cannot hide
I'm the one you're using, please don't push me aside
We coulda made it cruising, yeah

Yeah, riding high on love's true bluish light

Brake Up the Breakup!

click playlist to stream mixtape

That's the thing about breakup mixtapes. Emotions change so fast. I swim through the various levels of heartbreak: feeling devastated, still feeling in love with her, not understanding anything, getting wasted to deal with not understanding anything, feeling the rage come over my body like a fever, the anger, the SPITEFULNESS, the realization that nothing will come from the situation but terrible and sad memories, the almost vengeful return to what you think might be sanity, only to come to terms with the fact that you won't have a happy ending.

I started this about three months ago. I probably switched these songs around so much that only three or four or a handful of them are part of the original draft. I don't think I feel like this anymore. Nonetheless, it's a great fuckin' mix, and part of me feels embarrassed to share this spinning ferris wheel of feelings with phantom friends and foes. They're not my words, obviously, but I wrote them.

Notes: I first ended with "Give Up The Ghost," but thought the chorus for "Cars Can't Escape" better fits what lingering emptiness manifests in the small, private moments of my every day ado. I don't know if Ben Gibbard does it better than Phil Collins (he doesn't). "Against All Odds" appears on the Give Up 10th Anniversary release, which I purchased on vinyl on Record Store Day. It still amazes me how Ben was pretty much making dubstep before dubstep was dumbstep. If there's any song that I live the most, it's probably "I Walked." While bullshit critics talked mad shit about Age of Adz, it is one of the best breakup albums of 2009. However, "Sluttering" is still my favorite breakup song of all time. It's what a real heartbreak is: stingingly ugly and permanent. Ashanti is terrible, but the bridge was written for me and all the women who don't know how to take themselves out of a detrimental situation. The acoustic version of "You Oughtta Know" isn't as annoyingly girl-anthemy as the original. Alanis is more hurt than she is angry, and you feel compassion for her instead of spite for Uncle Joey. "Beer" is the song I pretended to write and execute throughout my every day life. It's also the reason I'm being sober for six months. And I chose "Anyone's Ghost" instead of "Sorrow" solely for the third verse. I'm starting to wonder if Matt Berninger and I are both meant to be miserably, brilliantly, mediocrely muddling through society's expectations of human growth. I'll say yes just to make myself feel better.

Notes part 2: "Cars Can't Escape" doesn't appear on the Spotify stream because it's a local file. AKA it's on the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot demos (NOT the Engineered Demos) and I should have made and uploaded a sound file for this. But. I didn't. The only way to make up for things I didn't do is to never make the mistake of not doing them again. But. I probably won't do that either.

Notes part 3: I am the saddest I have ever been in my entire life.

Just as Bad

 Ah. I think I figured it out. It happens when the human spirit is repressed. Over a month since the last update.. everything is changing, shifting, forming. Movement growing, expanding, but we need more people here. We need more people on the ground. My relationships with my friends are good right now. I am having some trouble with following plans I made for myself in terms of grad school, but everything is changing, shifting, forming. I honestly don't know what is going to happen and I feel like so much already has that I don't even know where we can go from here. I can hope, I can guess, I can love.. in the end I guess life is how you deal with those tomatoes, you know. At the same time, there is an enormous chance I will completely fuck up my life, consciously. I'm back to "I don't know" again. I don't know. I don't know how this happens, I can't understand how or why shit happens, and I can't decide which method is really working, not for the movement, not for the struggle or the progress, but for me. Why is there a voice inside my head that tells me that life is not going to work out for me? Is it karma for how I dealt with my shit before? I don't know. Complicated situations are just part of me I guess. I just need to find something to live for, and the places I've found for now are the wrong places. They are so tempting and they are so wrong and I've come to that point in my emotional maturity to just not give a fuck sometimes. I pour my heart into too much of everything, I talk too much, and I feel everything. And sometimes, I don't know. I just want to stop.