Post Yr Writing or Die!
 

Cred Jon Boy for the idea. If the prose/ poetry/ story is too big, keep in mind you can always zip it and attach to your post, or simply use Megaupload

I don't really like presenting song lyrics without music because it isn't really showing the full picture, and I think lyrics and poetry are two different things, but here are some that I am proud of:

I'm pretty proud of the second verse here, although I am using pretty childish rhyming. This is about a dream I had that made me lovesick the next morning. In the dream I made love to this girl and then felt unable to talk to other women.
Frequency

I've got a feeling and it feels like love
but I've got noone I've been thinking of
wondering if it could be you
washed in memories
alien, blonde, and blue

(Chorus)
Come across the cosmos baby
dream to dream osmosis maybe
yr soul shares something with me
bandwidth, amplitude, or frequency

I took to you like flies to glue
paper that lay on a warm summers day
just like us here aroused yet in fear
that this bond will be forced too long

We watch our words because we feel tied
though I'd be glad to make you my bride
"I can't be with child for one more day"
as I leave, you pray and pray


this 2nd song is sort of a futuristic version of pygmalion with a bad ending. I always thought Greek myths should end in tragedy, not happily ever after. He builds a robot to love him and she crushes him when she embraces him.
Science Fiction
I've traveled from dune to dune
and I've never met a girl quite like you
but that doesn't matter anymore
I've found a new girl to live for me

I'll build her from the parts I salvage
give new life to the death touched wreckage
i'll wire her to hold me in her
arms of steel and copper

(bridge)
she won't see the pain in my eyes
she won't smell the stink of my thighs
she won't see straight through my lies

She'll never leave me like you did
I'll guarantee you that
she'll think of me as God
not as a scurvy rat

(2nd bridge)
When you see me
dead in her iron clutch
you'll pray to God
that you'd taken my ring

I don't enjoy sharing such things either, but here's my lazy attempt at something:

You heard the man
There's nothing to see here
Get back to your TV
Get back to your beer

I know. :/

Little man
What is wrong with you?
Little man
There is no truth
In time we will be afraid of you
Meanwhile
You are the little man
Does that mean
There should be no hope
Feel inside
Is it empty? Does it,
Need to be?
Filled up with hate?
Hey little man
Unclench your hand

No other day
Is better
than today

Reach out/touch sky/fall down
I am the little man

Hatred grows
Black and all consuming
All it knows
In its darkened hate skin
Machine knows
It is all forever
Though it slows
It never stops to grow

Never the same
Never
We must stay sane

Reach out/touch sky/fall down
I am the little man.

I put up a short story (of a sort) over at the old board in the post yr art or die threads. I wish I would have saved it.

I used to have a 3-ring binder full of prose & poems that an ex copped off of me.

Here's the lyrics to my silly metal song Dirty Mud, a Burning Candle song. It's about an evil parent who is upset because his child isn't so evil.
you can hear it at
http://www.myspace.com/burningcandle

DIRTY MUD
I LOOK AT YOUR FACE
I SEE THROUGH YOU EYES
I LEARNED THAT LIFE IS
JUST DEATH IN DISGUISE

I REARED YOU FROM BIRTH
TO BE MY WICKED CHILD
MY PARENTING FAILED
CUZ YOU'RE NOT VERY WILD

A DARK FORTNIGHT AGO
I SENT YOU TO KILL
I THOUGHT YOU CAUSED FRIGHT
TILL YOU STEPPED IN THE LIGHT
WHAT I THOUGHT WAS CRIMSON BLOOD
TURNED OUT TO BE DIRTY MUD

I TAUGHT YOU TO KILL
SATANIC SACRIFICE
BUT YOU PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS
YOU'RE JUST TOO DAMN NICE

YOU WON'T EAT HUMAN FLESH
YOU WON'T DRINK VIRGIN BLOOD
YOU JUST PLAY WITH DOOMED BOVINES
IN THAT DIRTY MUD

MY TORTURE DEVICES
YOU PAWNED FOR CASH
YOU THREW MY SKULL COLLECTION
INTO THE TRASH

YOU'RE GROUNDED FROM PLAY
GO PRACTICE YOUR SPELLS
I COMMAND YOU TO SUMMON
THE DEMONS OF HELL

A DARK FORTNIGHT AGO
I SENT YOU TO KILL
I THOUGHT YOU CAUSED FRIGHT
TIL YOU STEPPED IN THE LIGHT
WHAT I THOUGHT WAS
CRIMSON BLOOD
TURNED OUT TO BE
JUST DIRTY MUD

Cool stuff guys.

This thread needs more mutual masturbation!

i haven't done any writing in forever. this is from a few years ago.


The society of intellectual elites was always taught to think outside the box, and yet every member of that society was trapped in the box. There, in that cramped, dank space, they developed a society in which all could cope with the isolation from the rest of humanity. But one generation, claustrophobic and unable to go on not knowing what went on outside their microcosm of mutual support, broke the box and climbed out. Outside the box, they found that every man, woman, and child who had developed outside the box thought of themselves and only themselves. It would have been far safer to have remained in the box, but, seeing that they must somehow defend themselves from the constant bombardment of closed minds they encountered, they decided to carve small shields out of the wooden shards of the box which offered them so much protection against a world in which the elements, far from being merely physical in nature, tore at the soul far more than the body.

But they found that there were two problems.

The outside world is hell, and wood burns.

another one i just found.


The News of Today

– An unrepentant demigod has claimed responsibility for Thursday’s attacks on Reason. In a statement, it pronounced “revenge for Reason’s atrocities against people of Faith.” The Prime Minister of Reason condemned the attacks, calling them “cowardly acts” but quickly noting that “the criminals of Faith will not frighten us, and we will continue to go about our daily lives.” Some, however, have criticized the Prime Minister for not doing enough to secure Reason’s borders and blaming his policies of placing Reason’s forces in the heart of Faith for inciting more violence against Reason.

Those are pretty damn good qprogeny79. The first one is really good.

i met two girls
on the corner
of peachtree
and 17th street
in Atlanta
the sweaty armpit
of Moloch
we were all waiting
for the same thing
they came from
St Augustine and I
came from Starland
to see the band
they were only
sixteen and
living seemed
so easy for them
we became close friends
and I haven't seen
either of them
since...

here is this I wrote

I go in the wind underprepared,
With my wings full of mud,
So heavy with sins I forgot where heaven was,
In your sweet kiss I found a knife hidden beneath your teeth,
And it stabbed you in your molars,
In your sweet kiss I found revenge in my soul,
And it killed your intimate secrets,
In the green field where you gave me your sweet kiss, death dragged me there,
In the form of insects,
Come back from hell dressed in dreams,
Show me some sweet sensation,
Black raindrops don't bring me down,only you babe,
Now I must land, because I am drunk with the colors of your perfume,
And will wait for your heart to replace mine at the edge of the world.

here is another one is called eternity

Eternity

I walked through the city streets, lost in my thoughts.
The girl with pink hooves passed me by, she wasn't odd.
That lady with pink streams of tears, never looked so nice.
My brother stretching his vision to eternity, lost in time.
Oh! angel of desertion why won't you pierce my heart?
And drag it through the city, and do your part.
I lie here with no sentiments in space.
And I'll die alone in the vision of my brother, in eternity.

"Why do you choose to be the way you are, Keith?"

He put down the copy of The Economist, which he always kept under his paper for when he was finished to show off his 'smarts'. He's not really that bright. He just looks at the paper and pretends to read. He hasn't found out we're not fooled. "I can't help that I take pride in having unconventional ways." A collective sigh.

Kyle shook his head. "What's the point in being quirky? I take pride in being average. I prefer being average. If anything, I think humans need to extol how fucking average they are."


///////
i have a bunch of stuff i've written saved in journals in my room, but nothing digitalized except this fiction/"memoir" i'm writing (it's this long running in-joke with some friends, but i really want to turn it into a book).

I throw songs away half-way into writing them. I just keep the music, in bits and pieces.

My proudest writing was a three page paper on American Pie that I wrote last semester (it was a practice-exegesis paper), which I got 100% on. Unfortunately, it's boring as hell.

Not as good as the other one, which isn't as good as it should be

The bhoddisatva of noise
Walked thru the same
Doors as the rest of us
He was bringing a plate of food
Pasta and baked potato
To the guy behind the merch table
Slid it off to the side
While a girl in red silk
Counted from a stack
Of twenties and ones
Smiled shyly at them both
As she held a t-shirt to her chest
He signed ticket stubs
And shook hands
Smiled and appreciated the same
Compliments that he'll get
Every night of this tour
After that he walked away and waved
To the line of kids
Back at the door

Just now improvised haiku shit:

The words, falling
Lyrically like sighed rain
Is golden la la.

Yeah, so, this will never be a 'sticky thread.'

I wrote a psycho-thriller short-story about a kid who's working as a engineer at a local-radio station. I'd love to share it with ya, but I dont have the time or nerves to translate it into english.

I love reading yr stuff boardies. Keep it up.

Here's something I wrote a while ago for a site called everything2.com
Here it goes:

You Know You're Right is Kurt Cobain's suicide note, screamed over and over again to unsuspecting radio listeners worldwide.

In it, he tells a story of a man; here the lyrics are more coherent and structured than in any other of his songs; a man who lives in a world of pain and is surrounded by it in everything he sees. He sees the pain in all human beings and the pain they cause each other. The burden of his insight causes him to realise the futility of his existence and how, it would be a bane to those who love him and care for him, as he could never, at this point, see or feel or understand anything beyond the all-encompassing pain that has enveloped his life. He still recgonizes the dynamics and subtleties of everyday human interaction; but his judgement is clouded by all the hurt that swirls through his life.

He does his best; he knows the people around him might help him if he gave them a chance, if he helped them realise what he realises, without of course alluding to the pain that he knows so well, make them realise without realising the pain. But, he cannot lie and cannot delude himself. He either does not have the neccesary tools of the mind to articulate his thoughts or he doesn't really understand his own thoughts. Or, maybe he just isn't capable of the self delusion; that is so inherent in all of us; which enables us to pretend that everything is fine and nothing really bad has ever happened in this world. Maybe because of this latter, the pain wins over him and he succumbs to it, he relishes it and accepts it. In the course of the song, he comes to terms with it, and comes to terms with how it would forever distance him from all those that he loved, all those he knew and in fact all of the rest of humanity, for those who realise Pain in its totality never seek out company or solace in others like them, they only shun themselves and everyone else, refusing to break the bubble of suffering for fear of propagating that thing which is so dear and near to their hearts, or for fear of their very small worlds being invaded and conquered, or just for fear, pure, cold fear.

This man realises; that whatever he decides is the right thing to do; he cannot escape the harsh reality that has become his world and cannot escape the responsibility that comes with that reality, the responsibilty of making sure that the pain is contained, within him and him only. In the end, when the credits roll, whether he lives his life, or chooses to end it, or escape it; he knows that he is already a martyr and that the weight of all that pain and the responsibility that comes with it, rests solely on his hunched and broken shoulders. The final word screamed in this song is the word pain, its totality and utter finality inescapable to the man whose story is being sung.

In the case of Kurt Cobain, that man decided to end his life and cease the suffering. And in doing so, embraces and contains the pain inside himself, never to be vented outward, forever.

gary at northsix.com
gary at northsix in NY
on July 5th!!!!!

I just had a freudian slip in the mind of previous thoughts pushing important meaning. What did it mean? Why did it mean? 'Does it' to 'was it' care? I care.? No, I don't care(?) I do care? O care-ry on luggage makes the mind sluggish much sooner than outter pollution. Often a matter of confusion can be seen in those who make that mistake. They take it out and around your neck and in the yer ears! They're shouting all the this that bleh blatatat they can. You can't hear though cuz a string of complaints runs right through your brain... massage.
Out.
Out.
Congratulations. You're in.

(A little high stream of concious)

come back sugar, outdo me socially. what makes you so
good? i listen to everyword you say and attach meaning
to it. i wanted you and i fucked up your guitar on
purpose just so that you would take notice. still got
your voice on tape. saw people fucking in alleys. when
the key turned in the lock my heart sank. i spoke your
name when i came. i was there and no one knows. i saw
it all, i did it to and no one knows. it was my ritual
to think about it always, take it away. i still see
the room, the sofa, t-shirt. blood on my eyes. what do
you like? what do you want to see?

from pretend i am someone else magazine.

A Gift to the Viewer

Oh, quivery river, you so smeared
Upon a cold canvas of poorly painted sun
In first blush of summer, then a duller time,
Then the bottoms of peaches, of a pear, of cream—

Or are you merely shadows in bold dissolve—
A monstrous color falls
Alongside her where she was
In expensive glasses so dark and posing

Questions: Have you written impressionistically of a river?
Have you figured a while on the truth?
Have you thought of investing in a pair of glasses?
The sun’s so hard on one’s expressionistic tendencies!

How the afternoon light descends upon the stampede of strokes
And through the transparency of the plastic bag
How the jar of mineral spirits contains a faint intimation of the sun—
To make like philosophical delay or a deeper understanding, a turn

Of promise dependent, vermilion nudes
In a primitive paradise. Doubt, the numbing
And unresponsive formlessness, redoubtable realism
Run amok becoming the form and the dark

Pigment of summer, pink-boned femme fatale
Peering into her face asleep: like
A frog’s brain in a jar, some thing
Marvelous yet potentially explosive, e.g., “What have you

Been dreaming (of), my love?” I don’t know
When or where or how this might happen, but this was
My independent film, my love, my love,
I, I, I, who have not caught your essence all afternoon.

who's that by?

moi

i like it especially because you use the word vermillion.

Thanks. A favorite word of mine, too!

This is like a lot of my later poems where I mostly like the sound of phrases and words strung together. It's sort of about a young woman, a painter, I knew and had an unrequited crush a few summers ago, but it's mostly about the sounds of that summer.

im not posting any copyrighted material here you bitches unless you pay me :D

as for other 'writing', isn't that all we do around here?

except for porkmarras who specializes in pictures

Har...

Yeah, I actually had that one get published, in a Louisiana university lit review, of all places. I'm kinda proud of that one, but I don't think they have any copyright issues with me posting it.

I am so in love,
I fly like a dove.
But they complain cause he's a dog,
So what's my problem?

Repeat Echo
My weakness:
/mark /weight
affliction /specificity /place
affected action /identify /name
affection shunned /produce /help
after action /undertake /resilient
though I’m not sure which one I’m asking for /distortion /line
another friction /snake
anti-fiction
Our different skins become seamless.
not right //
not right for one another
confront
somehow I got lost this is where
we were last time
this mess
happened
and how could you let this happen again whose idea was this anyway?
I forget too many things
like, I’m not supposed
to be here, stay here,
love x, break x,
make x stay, leave
without x again
find your way here now look where we are
where are we?
Seems like a silly idea anyway.
“Our different skins become seamless.”
I wish I could forget this whole thing
A. but it took too long
to get here,
When: B. and I’d like to be able to remember, how
will I remember it, I’d like to know
how will I find it?

X told me I had a fear of
Failure
being left
willing to leave

On paper, there are parts of this scattered on the page. I also thought of putting this in a painting, but I never developed that idea.

Once upon a time,
There was a guy,
who got raped by a hairy old man,
and he is going to die.

here is a song I wrote. If anyone wants to use it to set it to music go ahead. let me hear it. I wrote this years ago during a particularly leak and angry period.


I MET A GIRL NAMED MALNUTRITION
her knee-caps were wider than her calves
almost as wide as her thighs
her waist I could wrap my hands around
break her in half without trying
she can barely take my meat
as her shoulder blades protrude
with her ribs expanding
there's just enough room for my cock
all the organs malnourished
get pressed together like tuna
causing more damage
if she would just eat something
if she would just eat something
there's little calories in my sperm
feed her pork and pasta
see if she's bigger next month
if she would just eat something
i might learn the joys
of a soft butt and breast
instead of beef jerky on her ass and chest
but I still want her
she's sex on a stick literally
she's sex on a stick literally
everything is better on a stick

No, thanks!

there's a lot of potential there. I'm hearing... 2, maybe 3 chords, fast tempo, hardcore guitar squall... hmm... Let me see what I can put together.

My Life With Music - Part I
by Roberto Instigator

In all the years that I have been buying music I have progressed in a steady direction. I have no idea where I am headed with it, or whether I will one day stop and find myself with no urge to purchase anything new. I hope that never happens. What I am sure of is that there is an almost unbroken chain of bands that can be traced easily, with minor deviations into what were, at the time, curious new sounds or groups.
Let me start at the beginning. Besides the many kiddie records that were bought for me by my folks, I grew up listening to the music of my parents. My mother had what could best be called a love of bland, innocuous music. Not that it wasn’t good, but it was inoffensive and middle-of-the-road She grew up with eight older brothers and sisters in Puerto Rico who handed down their records and singles as they got married or “outgrew” collecting music. Her favorites were acts like Paul Anka or The Platters. Of course she also listened to the local Puerto Rican Salsa and Merengue music.
The earliest memories I have are of Saturday mornings in Puerto Rico listening to my mom’s vacuum drowning out whatever BeeGee’s, or Tony Croato (Puerto Rican folk singer famous for his nationalistic cries for Puerto Rican independence, and soft folk ballads) record was on the turntable. My parents had a lot of music. My dad loved music too but he was more into the Puerto Rican stuff than the pop stuff my mom liked. My mom thinks the Beatle’s best work was done before Revolver. Dig?
Those early days of music blaring from my parent’s stereo ingrained music into me. I can sincerely say that I owe my love of music (as well as books, and arguing) to my parents. When we moved to Houston, Texas in 1981 my folks had to leave behind many of their records. In essence they started from scratch. Me too.


The first of the milestones in my love of music occurred just a few months after moving to the United States. We were living in a brand new apartment complex called Brookstone. The place was so new that half of the buildings had not yet been finished. Around August of 1982 a friend of ours came running up to us from his apartment. Xavier, my brother, and I were busy trying to pull up a sewer drain so we could see what was inside. This little kid came over and started talking about some guy who had gone into his apartment and put something on the television. It turned out to be a cable box, the kind that no one has anymore. It consisted of a brown and black unit with rows of black buttons. We had no idea what Cable Television was, but it seemed that they were going to install these in all the apartments. This little kid told us there was music on the TV. We ran home hoping to see the new Cable. You gotta realize that at this point my little brother and I knew very little English, and were, respectively, 6 and 8 years old.
Of course the cable-man had not yet gotten to our apartment, but within the week we had our very own cable box. The first thing I discovered was MTV. This was back when MTV used actual disc jockeys they had hired from across the nation to host as VJ’s. In other words, these guys knew how to talk about music and knew of the musicians without having to be fed every single line like the idiot talking dolls they have now. There were five Video Jockeys: J.J. Johnson, the only black on-air personality on MTV for years and the one VJ I found funny most often, who looked like the oldest of the bunch, Nina Blackwood, a bleach blonde who was stuck doing mostly late-night shifts, Mark Goodman, a guy who looked kind of like Juan Epstein’s older brother and seemed to know the most about music and the bands, Alan Hunter, a skinny blonde guy that was the original host for the first heavy metal segment on MTV, “Hard 30”, and Martha Quinn, the VJ who lasted the longest on MTV, and the one I had a crush on.
These five VJ’s were IT. They had to take long shifts on a sparse set, just talking about the bands and music, and introducing the videos. I feel MTV doesn’t give enough credit to these five dudes who put MTV on the map. Many other shows had music videos through the years, Night Flight and Friday Night Videos for example, but those lacked the personalities of these 5 guys. I would sit and watch the videos one after another.
The earliest videos I remember include The Buggles “Video Killed The Radio Star,” which happened to be the very first video aired on MTV. I loved that video. The song kicked ass and seemed to me very strange with its weird sounds and new wave tone. Another one I remember vividly from the first few months of watching was the Art of Noise video for “Fish Heads.” That video actually creeped me out, because those damn fish heads were so dirty and stank-looking.
The videos they showed in that first year on the air were a mix of hard rock, classic rock, disco, and new wave clips. I would watch them whenever I managed to get control of the Cable box. It was the best. There was always a new video and they were all so strange. From Missing Person’s and their whitewashed clip of “Words” to The Talking Heads and their fantastic videos for “Burning Down the House” and “Once in a Lifetime,” it was a time of inventiveness. Bands who wanted to make a video had little choice since the record labels were not going to lay down a lot of cash on an untested medium. It was almost naïve, since videos were, and always have been, intended as commercials for the albums, and there was very little attempt at creating “art.” The best they could hope for was that it showed the band in a favorable light and somehow reflected the theme of the song.


At that time I was just soaking it all in, but I was drawn to the new wave and hard rock videos the most. I sucked up the music for a couple of years straight from the MTV and without buying any actual recordings. So, when my bro and I found ourselves at the Wal-Mart with our dad, and heard him ask if we wanted to buy a cassette, I first felt that giddy rush of possibilities and choices that I love to this day. I looked for one of the bands I had heard on MTV. After browsing for a bit, I grabbed the first Def Leppard album, “On Through The Night,” even though I had never heard any of the songs on it. At that age, 10, I couldn’t tell the difference between that album and “Pyromania,” which was the new one at the time and the one which contained the songs I HAD heard. Xavier had grabbed Twisted Sister’s “Stay Hungry,” mostly because Dee Snider looked so damn crazy (to an eight and ten year old) holding that giant, meat-covered bone and dressed in hot pink and black tatters. This was my second musical epiphany. I realized I could buy music and listen to it for myself whenever I felt like. No more waiting for the videos!
When we got home I was disappointed by my purchase. I didn’t realize why it sounded so different from the “Rock of Ages” and “Photograph” I had heard on MTV. (poor production, derivative riffs, monotonous singing yell) I still listened to it every day though. It was MINE. My brother seemed to have gotten the better deal. His cassette contained “I Wanna Rock” and “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” I had heard these songs and liked them because I understood their simple message and they Rawked. I can say honestly that neither of these albums is an exemplary choice or worthy of pride, but they were the first two albums we had picked ourselves and we listened to them like they were “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and “Daydream Nation” combined. They constituted my tentative first steps into what would become my main music for the next few years, dumb Heavy Metal, and also set in motion my love for music collecting. By that time, my family had moved to a rented house a few blocks away from our first apartment.

The day we moved something happened which forever altered my life, and helped to guide it to this very day, both musically and personally. My mother, brother and I were being driven to the new house in a van that belonged to a friend of my father. When we arrived and opened the side door of the van I saw a lady and two kids coming out of the house next door. The kids were our age and they ran up to my brother. I didn’t understand what was happening. It turns out that, since my brother had to be held back a year due to his poor English, he had been in first grade first with one of the kids and then with his younger brother. Their names are Claudio and Jaime, and they are my best friends to this day. Actually, they are my brothers.
For the next few years our collective musical interests coalesced. Together we had a small collection of music that we would listen to endlessly, and play air guitar, air drums, and air bass to (although none of us at the time understood what the difference was between the bass and the guitar). One of our favorite albums to listen to was Quiet Riot’s ”Metal Health.” Quiet Riot had videos that were especially suited to pre-pubescent boy’s minds. They were all in-your-face and the songs were simple and loud. Quiet Riot was my favorite band, until I hit 5th grade. I couldn’t get enough of them. When I was in 5th grade a guy in my class would bring in Van Halen’s “1984” and Motley Crue’s “Shout at the Devil.” I immediately wanted to buy these two albums because the music teacher wouldn’t play them. The Van Halen album had an angel smoking a cigarette and the Motley Crue album was just plain satanic looking, with its giant pentagram and devil imagery. It was all quite cheesy and tongue-in-cheek but to a 10 year old it looked DAMN COOL!
“Shout at the Devil” became my favorite album then. I would play it constantly. My favorite songs on it were the title track, “Looks that Kill,” and “Helter Skelter,” which, at the time, I didn’t know was a Beatle’s cover. It all seemed so damn important to me. Having grown up Episcopalian I had none of the automatic aversion to the whole Satan, hell, devil thing that the Roman Catholics talk about so much. The Episcopalians never talked much of Hell, or Satan. Good for them! Too much attention is given to the bit players in religions. The funny thing was that, with my father being an Episcopal priest, I was never chastised for listening to the music I chose. They were very open to letting me buy what I wanted. I think they knew that no band or music would make me become a bad kid. I would do that on my own.
The Van Halen record, “1984”, would also become very important to me. I would rock out and remember the hilarious videos for “Jump,” “Panama” and “Hot For Teacher.” Especially “Hot for Teacher.” That video had kids that were my age in it, and a hot-assed teacher nonetheless! While I would eventually lose interest in the records I owned then, I would actually grow to love “1984” more and more. It was the first record that I owned where I liked the non-single songs as much as the singles.
I am forgetting what was then my all-time favorite album. Def Leppard’s “Pyromania” was on my parent’s turntable constantly. I played that sucker religiously and loved every second. I got to admit I really liked the whole “set stuff on fire” thing. When you listen to music at a young age, everything seems so meaningful. I would analyze the lyrics, the cover, the liner notes, the pictures of the band, the label on the actual L.P., all to see if I could gain any insight into the bands I liked. I used to know the names of every single member of all the bands whose records I owned. I knew the song lists, and the brands of guitars or drums the musicians used. Whenever I would buy a new album would pore over the sleeve or the cassette cover looking for whatever the band had decided to put there for me. I don’t do that anymore. Maybe it is because I buy more records now or maybe it is because I realized that the stuff written on the album matters very little when it comes to the enjoyment of the music itself. Maybe I am just lazy. I used to love astounding the other kids who were into music with my knowledge of song titles, musician’s names, and the like. I still do that but it gets harder since the number of people who have heard of the bands I listen to now have shrunk to just one. His name is Michael, and even he sometimes goes,
“Bozart? You made that one up. That’s not a band.”

I wrote that a while ago, years ago. I am going to keep on it and see if I can make a lengthy thing out of it.