Nausea

Today is day two of tour. I just woke up and I'm watching Jon heat up pennies with a lighter and throw them into Mayo's pants. Mayo will soon be throwing hot penny into Steve's sleeping bag since he's still asleep and easy to fuck with. It's amazing the kinds of things grown ass men will do when they're forced to be in close quarters with one another for 24 hours a day.

Yesterday was Buffalo and the show and we played that new song Nausea I was talking about. It will still need to be tweaked before I'm happy with it but this is what I've got so far. This will probably be pretty close to the final version.










NAUSEA

God's Dead. I'm alive.
Sleeping all day just to pass the time
With the humming of the stereo to keep me company.

Nothing I need that I can't buy
Nothing left for me to do but die.
I've got it. The Filth. The Nausea.

Too much. Too much. Too much is not enough.
Too much. Too much. I'm fucking Nauseous.
I need so much. So much more than this.
I've got everything. I Need to suffer.

I hear a train in the distance
I feel my eyes start to well
I want to give in to this beautiful depression
And ride it straight to hell.


Now I've got the Filth. I've got the Nausea
Now I've got the Filth. I've got the Nausea
I need more than something.
I need to make this go away.
I want to suffer.
I need to suffer.



This song is based on a book by Jean-Paul Sartre called "Nausea". I'm not going to talk too much about it since I'm actually still reading it but the basic theme was taken from here.

Nausea here simply refers to the anguish that comes when you live in a world without God. People who embrace religion seem to know what to do. You follow the ten commandments and you do good things and you go to church and that will keep you out of hell and get you into heaven. You have a pre-made purpose. You just follow the rules and you get a cookie at the end. When you choose not to follow a religion or God you have to make your own rules and find your own way. When there's no Heaven to try to get into and no Hell to avoid, you simply have here and now to do whatever it is that you're going to do. What's more, if you're like me and can sleep all day if you feel like it and still afford food, there's a real lack of meaning and motivation. What do you do when you don't NEED to do anything?

I guess the only thing I can say is that when you hungry you'll be motivated to find food. When people are dying of cancer they start to fight for the lives they usually take for granted. Suffering changes you. It gives you perspective. This song is pretty much about how if you want to have it all you've gotta let it all go.

This record is eventually going to start talking about Buddhism and this song is a good lead in. If you're interested you should check this out. It's just a little history about Buddha. He started out as a wealthy prince and decided that he needed more than the things he had. So he went on a pilgrimage and gave up his money and privilege so that he could block out all the noise that came with his rich life and seek true form and true meaning.

Part of what this song is about (the whole humming of the stereo part) is how we have all of these things to make life more convenient but we sacrifice connections with other people and the outside world at large. We text message people we'd rather be with when we're sitting right in front of our friends. We sit and write in our stupid blogs when we are sitting in a room full of people on tour that we could be throwing hot pennies at. We keep track of popularity by keeping track of a little number above our "friends" on myspace. Yeah, we get modern convenience, but we're losing something.

If you're interested in what I'm saying here I suggest you giving Hardcore Zen a read or check out that Siddhartha wiki. If you're not, here are some lol cats instead.

I'm going to go take a shower and drink some whiskey to see if I can get my voice back. I'll have periodic tour updates here and maybe even a few pictures of me doing filthy things to Scott while he's asleep.

UPDATE - the hot penny game is now called Angry Abe. As it turns out, when you want to wake up a room full of dudes and have them alert and ready to go in a short period of time, yelling Angry Abe is better than a pot of coffee.


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