"Kill all my demons, and my angels might die too" - Tennessee Williams
It's been long enough I think. I've had ample time to recollect, reevaluate, and reorder some things in my life to get to a point where I need to stop, rest, and start refilling my empty tank. I've been running on "E" for the past few months on purpose. I needed normalcy. Some sense of standing still and not spinning out of control on the X, Y, and Z axes [pronounced ack-sees] of my life. For a while I was getting dizzy. I don't like being dizzy. I don't like the act of throwing up. So here I am again. Writing in the style of middle class for the middle class.
Today while driving it finally hit me. I was coming back from a mild hour of browsing at the bookstore looking through books on graphic design to help rekindle my former addiction to it. I thought, "I miss my loves. I miss creating. I miss inspiration." Music was obviously playing as these words were speed-walking through my head. It inevitably recalled the moment when I first came up with 5 Songs In A Row. I was in my car and listening to music as per usual. I was just about to obsessively start mashing the "next" button on my iPod to a song I wanted to hear. Just then it hit me like a bomb exploding right next to my ear with a voice underneath it all saying, "You love this."
I've missed you. And I'm sorry for neglecting you for so long. I needed a break. But I'm done now. Rest assured that the entire time I did not stop living. My heart did not stop pumping the blood through my veins. My lungs did not stop converting Oxygen to Carbon Dioxide. I did not stop converting RGB to CMYK and then back again. My eyes still see and my hands still touch the keyboard the same way it always has...slightly skewed and off center. I am here again for you. And I plan to stay. I am at "F".
That was written almost a month ago or something. Much has changed since then. Strap yourselves in.
"Drag the lake, you'll find it's full of love."
For this 5SIAR I'm choosing my own songs again. I need to be in control. I need stability. I want the wheel to stay straight. Or at least the illusion that it's straight. It feels like I've been driving blindfolded with a blind person in the passenger seat for the past few weeks. We hit a few people. Maybe a dog or two. And had the police on our tail the entire way down the steep hill. Needless to say, I've been leading a dangerous life lately. And so physics eventually has its way. The car must eventually come to a stop. We crashed. But it's not the end. I keep going back and forth with that notion. Life doesn't stop. I mean, people's lives stop. People die, but other people go on living or at least trying to live. The living is the easy part (breath in, breath out). The trying is always the hardest. That's where failure comes in (I wonder what drowning feels like?).
With all the commotion going on around me I've been dragged, nay, pushed back into metal. Some people like the drown their sorrows in the saddest of songs, and I admit I have those moments. But as for moments like these. The moments that have unfolded thus far this year, well, I can only turn to one band. A band that has symbolized the ideal way to move forward and keep banging your head and squeezing the tube for more and more and more out of life. To have no sour grapes. To shotgun a beer every now and then. To not only swing life around by the balls, but to also kick them when life is being a bitch. The boys of Every Time I Die help me cope.
As I write this I'm listening to a song off another album of theirs. The singer Keith Buckley tells me that "all the highs are running low, and every new is getting old." He couldn't be more right. This year started off pretty damn good and then a few days later it went to shit. Got better again. Then dipped back down further than the current level of poverty and unemployment in this country. Then a stimulus package came and all was good for a bit. It was better than good, actually. Then shit collectively hit the fan. It was bad. Imagine if North Korea took over the world. That bad. Still kinda is and I grow tired of it. I'm tired of having a hand in making it that way. This is where ETID come in. They are the big brother I don't have smacking me in the face saying "stop doing stupid shit!" Then again, they are also party animals (Listen to "We'rewolf") and shouldn't be trusted in giving life advice.
Okay, no more quotes. Wait, I've got one more to pinch off.
"I've got a bad reputation to think about. I've been dirty. I've been wrong."
Now I'm done.
Right now I'm looking at wedding pictures from a couple I've never met before in my life. That's the beauty of Facebook. You get to peek inside another person's life for a minute or two. The wedding took place out in a grassy field that looks like it could be upstate New York. The men are dressed in suspenders and collars and the ladies in light summer dresses. Whiskey is poured into glasses next to wild flowers and whistles shaped like birds are offered up as the favors. There's a rusty teal tractor that carries the wedding party up a dirt road to an apple tree where the ceremony will be performed. Rolling hills cover the background where three men have in their hands a violin, guitar, and banjo respectively, playing bluegrass standards and maybe the occasional John Denver request or two. The guests march single file to the apple tree and instead of sitting everyone circles around the couple that is about to become one. They are surrounded by love. Love from each other, their families, their friends, and from the earth. Now, I've never been one to imagine my wedding in my head. Probably because I'm not a woman. Moreover, I've never been one to look to the future to imagine how any part of my life will turn out. But these pictures. These pictures of strangers make me think about how I would want that moment to look and feel like. Everyone looked happy. I can picture that in the future, but what I want it in is the present.
This is another 5SIAR first. I wrote the paragraph above without even picking the song. I went searching for an old bluegrass song that sounds like it would've been played at the wedding reception. Something the people could clap their hands to. Something I had never heard before. What I found was the song "How Mountain Girls Can Love" by The Stanley Brothers from their self-titled album. A sort of homage to the bluegrass bride in the photographs and to my future bride (whoever she may be). It's a bit unclear when the song was actually recorded and released. Allmusic.com says 1959 while the wiki page says 1961. John Denver also recorded a cover of the song on his 1980 album Autograph. And now as I type this I can already acknowledge the fact that this song will become one of those songs I will tie to a memory. Not a memory of the past, but one of the future.
This is unknown territory to me. Not only researching bluegrass artists from the late 40's and early 50's, but imagining futures that I would like to take place. I'm a man of the present. I think about what's in front of my face rather than trying to figure out what is down the road. But for this one song and the time it's taking me to write about it I'm thinking about my future from where I stand right now. A difficult thing to do considering how much I feel like I'm in limbo with a lot of aspects in my life at this very moment. And then I look at those wedding photos again. I replace the faces with faces from my life. My friends. My family. My bride. My fucking whiskey!
So yeah, new memories. New memories that I don't even know will happen. They are nice to think about and have the ability to put a smile on my face. But so much changes from this moment to that moment. It's impossible to know what is going to happen a few weeks, a few months, or a few years down the road. All I can do, and all you can do is take it one day at time. We have one day to be stronger and grow until the next day comes. We must use our time wisely till we get to those grassy hills. Till we get to hear "How Mountain Girls Can Love" while we dance at our future weddings.
I love my Spanish heritage. I'm closer to it than my Italian. My mother was born in Puerto Rico and raised in The Bronx. My father, Italian, born and raised in Brooklyn. I keep in contact with almost all of my maternal side of the family. Especially the group still in Puerto Rico. My maternal grandmother is still alive, living in Lakeland, and I visit her every Tuesday. In return she feeds me some of my favorite dishes. Arroz con gandules. Tostones. Rellenos de papa. And for Christmas our family gets pernil y pasteles. As a bonus she keeps the fridge stocked with Miller High Life. I'm one lucky son of a Puerto Rican. I eat well every time I visit Puerto Rico, too. There are countless of roadside vendors cooking some of the best in Puerto Rican and Cuban fast foods. The crown jewel of them being Platano Loco in Aguada. Everything they make contains fried plantains. It's because of the Puerto Rican diet why I ultimately cannot lose weight.
I find comfort in not only music, but food. There, I said it. I eat when I get depressed. Which is why I'm always happy to learn the recipes passed down from my grandmother to my mother and now to me. I like eating, but I also discovered that I like cooking even more. It's instant gratification to cook for people and see the smiles on their faces when they take that first bite of what I created. Especially if it's the type of food you can't exactly get around here. There are a few Cuban places that are decent. But I'm sorry, they can't put a finger on my mom's arroz con chirizo or abuela's alcapurria. I'm happy to learn and make them and I've been doing just that. So of course I need the music to cook to. The caldero is steaming and Ibrahim Ferrer is singing por la victoria.
Have you noticed I haven't translated anything for you? Stop being lazy and go learn something.
The short of it for Buena Vista Social Club is that Ry Cooder went down to Cuba, assembled all these old cats that used to jam back in the day, and produced an album for them. It's samba. It's merengue. It's jazz. Es pijamas del gato! It's the kind of music you'd hear riding your bike down the street of a small Puerto Rican town. Everyone is sitting on their porches sipping key lime-ade or beer and talking about whatever it is that might be interesting at the time. No one really talks about the bad shit happening in their lives. It's always a time for the uplifting of spirits. For support. To do some mild partying. I like that. It makes me want to call it home. Too bad the poverty level there is worse than ours. If you think you're broke then go down to the Caribbean. It's not Africa poor, but it's pretty damn close. But I don't want to curb you from visiting. Puerto Rico is a great place with even greater people. Sure there's lots of crime and the police are corrupt, but that only means you can drink and smoke weed on the beach if you pay them off. You didn't hear that from me.
Yeah, that's right, I just put a Bananarama song on 5SIAR. WHAT?!
It's hot here. Obviously because it's summer. But this is no ordinary summer. This is the summer we start melting from global warming or at least the thought of this unbearable heat being caused by global warming. I don't remember Florida ever being this hot, or dry for that matter. It used to rain everyday and now we don't even get that. Seriously, what the fuck? I can't imagine how the people closer to the equator feel. Are they even still alive? Someone should check in on them.
80's new wave - I'm reading about it right now in Rob Sheffield's new book Talking To Girls About Duran Duran. It's an adequate read so far containing a few quotable passages. His last novel, Love Is A Mix Tape, was better. Maybe because it had to do with death? In any case, Sheffield mentions Bananarama during a tirade about new wave. I haven't heard anyone talk about them (or play them) in years. The last I remember hearing them was when I was 8 or 9 years old in the car with my parents going to the beach. My aunt was with us and she had Bananarama's album True Confessions on tape and would force my dad to play the song "Venus" over and over and over. You know, the song that is now famous because of lady razors. I was sick of hearing it (still am). We were all sick of hearing it. Except of course my aunt. She loved them. I just wanted to jam out to some "Head Over Heals", but I was denied. I was being robbed of my earliest childhood music memories because of a terrible girl-pop group from the UK. That was then, but where are they now, you ask? Still stuck on the radio. But at least this song has some relevance.
It is a rather cruel summer wouldn't you agree? I think the heat is making people do stupid shit. Making us go crazy. Turning us into beasts. It's like we're all werewolves but instead of changing when a full moon rises we become the monster when the sun comes out. Our temperatures escalate to a level we can't come back down from. He's pissed. She's pissed. We're all pissed. It's a cruel summer indeed, and the wolves are howling. And I'm not talking about stupid Eclipse wolves either. I can't believe I got suckered into watching that movie. What a pile of shit. Sigh.
Alice kinda looks like Gary Numan in that picture, don't you think? Maybe that's what Gary Numan is. A clone of Alice Cooper. I think I just blew my mind.
We're at another end of a road, yet another one is just beginning. The year is a little more than halfway over so it's time for me to reflect on what has happened thus far. On second thought, no. I'm tired of looking behind me all the time. It's like looking at the scene of an apocalyptic explosion. It's dusty and there's nothing really pretty or interesting back there. Just a lot of damage. Dead bodies. And maybe a roach or two. I caused it. You caused it. We all caused it. Are you seeing the pattern here yet? If not, then let's get one thing straight. No one is different. No one is better or worse than the next person. We're all cut from the same cloth. We're human. We make mistakes. But what sets us apart from the criminals is that we learn from our mistakes. We take a picture of that destruction and put it in our back pocket for reference material.
We are selfish beings capable of being the monster more often than the hero. You are guilty of it as much as I am. If you disagree with me, get up from your seat, go to the bathroom, dunk your head in the toilet and proceed to pull the handle down to flush. If you’re not human enough to accept and realize that we all bite off more than we can chew at times then you’re what’s wrong with the world. Period. We’re all heathens here and just because we have technology does not make us civilized. In fact, it does the opposite because it gives us the opportunity to be in constant contact with each other about everything that’s going on when we don’t need to be. Talk is already cheap. Why make its value plummet even further down the shitter? Okay, I get it, the dollar and Mel Gibson are lonely down there. Fair enough.
I've learned through life that the distinction between God and the Devil is blurred. But more importantly, they don't even really exist except in us. Again, we are all of it and we are none of it. What counts in the end is making life the best it can be without causing destruction along the way. Our family and friends are there to help, but they can sometimes make it worse. They are clones, too. We're all clones. The ugly ones. The stupid boys. The wrong ones.
"This is the year of the party crashers."
Last one. Promise.
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