I'd rather be dead than cool

Don't you think it's kind of ironic that Kurt Cobain got cooler than he had ever been before after he killed himself?

Whatever, that's not the point of what I want to write. The point of this is to get my ego in check and remind myself that I'm a loser so I can get myself grounded, do some writing, finish up this last song, and put this whole thing to bed. I don't even know what I want to say but I feel like I need to write in a bad way. Maybe something decent will come out.

This line has been stuck in my head since last night. My family is all in town for Christmas and I went and met my cousin and her husband out for a beer. When I got there they were hanging out with some of their friends and as soon as I showed up faces lit up, "Hey guys this is my cousin Ted I was telling you about!" I was the life of the party before I even opened my mouth. I guess they were talking about how I'm in a band and how my band has toured around North America and been to Europe so that must mean we're a pretty big deal. Then someone called me cool. And I felt dirty. I assured them that I am not cool. That being in a hardcore band isn't glamorous and going to Europe really sounds like a much bigger deal than it is. That was taken as me being modest and playing off our musical success as no big deal. I let it go and continued to be a decently cool guy for the rest of the night until a couple of my more attractive female friends showed up. My cousin's husband was stoked and exclaimed, "Are you groupies?!" They got pissed because that's obviously pretty insulting but I'll be honest, I thought it was pretty funny. The fact of the matter is that if I wasn't in this band those girls wouldn't even know who I am or give two shits about who I am or what I'm about. I let it go, talked to them for a few and eventually I left with them to go to a party, probably leaving my family to believe that I was taking off to have some sort of wild rock and roll sex with these two women.

That little incident has been sticking with me. The whole being called cool thing is weird. I'm not going to sit here and bullshit myself. Of course I want to be cool. Of course I want people to light up when I walk into a room. Of course I want to be the life of the party. I'm a narcissist. I want people giving me positive attention at all times. And if I can't have positive attention then negative attention works until I can get some. But it just .... It feels like cheating. I know deep down that I am not cool. I am actually really weird. I've been a dork for as long as I can remember. That doesn't change just because I got a few tattoos and started traveling around with my buddies and screaming at people in basements. I'm still the same person I always was. See, I'm never going to be cool without some costume on.

Every once in a while that bums me out. For a long time it was all I could think about. I was always trying to figure out how I could be cool so I could get those girls that I wanted. I was very concerned about sending out the right image to the general public so I could be interesting and intriguing. And you know that kind of thinking still pops into my head more than I want it to. What I really want though is the courage to be the dork who has never and will never fit in out on the street. Being a dork keeps me honest. If I'm doing something that other people think is uncool then at least I know that I'm doing what I'm doing for me. If I have something that I'm willing to do even though other people tell me it's stupid at least I know that what I'm doing is worth struggling for. If I'm doing something that people find cool it takes away that purity. I'm forced to ask myself, "Am I doing this because I know it's what I need to do or because I'm falling into doing what gets the smiles and the claps from the people around me?"

The other problem is doing things that are uncool just for the sake of being uncool. It's like this paradoxical thing where you get cool by being uncool. Kurt Cobain was the coolest guy on the planet for a minute because he would wear ugly flannel shirts and get stupid haircuts and play shitty grunge music. To this day I feel the torment he must have gone through. That guy was legitimately trying to get away from this social status bullshit and just find freedom and purity. I really believe that. But then there's yokels that see this and say, "Hey, if I'm anti-society then people will think I'm a badass." And they put on their black clothes and they do their little dance and masquerade around trying to engineer the reactions and responses they are looking for.

Everybody does it. You do it. I do it. I guess it's a part of being a human being. We're a social animal and on a larger scale we really are one organism. All of the people on the planet are one thing. I guess it's hard to escape the push and pull of the greater consciousness and some days I wonder if I'm not just wasting my time trying to step away from that whole nonsense and find out what I am on my own. But the thing is, even if I am a dork and even if I don't fit in I really feel like I've got something good inside of me. I want to embrace whatever that good thing is instead of trying to push it aside so I can be what I'm expected to be. I want to do what I'm doing because it's what I do. Not because I like being cool. Not because I'm trying to be anti-mainstream. Not because I have some image to fulfill or some reaction I'm trying to get. I want to be shitty old Edwin B. Winkworth III and proud of it instead of playing into this fictional character called Ted AB that was hatched up on some message board and built out of rumors and stereotypes.

The fortune cookie for today is another quote from Kurt and it's one that's really been ringing loudly in my head today: "I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not."

Today I understand what that means.


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About a girl

I'm going to take a commercial break for a second. I've caught myself staring at this computer a lot lately. And I've got this familiar feeling of complete and utter emptiness. So I'm going to stop talking about Another Breath. I'm not going to mention the record. I'm in a place that feels really similar to the one I was in about a year ago when I had the bright idea to start writing in this dumb fucking thing. I want to write to somebody. I want to talk to somebody. I want to connect to something. But what I want either doesn't exist or I'm just too blind to see it. So I'm going to do what I did on that first night and I'm going to write a letter to nobody.

Dear God,

I can't believe how much harder it is to write to you in that completely unadulterated way I felt like I could before. I sit down and I write in this because I need something. I want something. I want to show some part of myself off to the world. It was just so much easier when I was typing my letters and sending them off into the universe. I suspected anyone could read them and that idea of anyone was so random that it didn't really make a difference. But I have an idea of who reads this now. My letter isn't being written for everyone and everything called by one name (God) anymore. I know in the back of my head that I'm writing a letter to those 20 or so people who have chosen to loan their faces to that little top right corner. I know I'm writing to that cute girl that I barely know who is nothing but bad news but who makes me feel something warm and familiar. I know I'm writing to that smart, beautiful girl that I stopped talking to months ago but who still comes here for reasons she probably doesn't even understand herself. I know I'm writing to that guy who should think I'm a complete asshole because I never take the time to sit down and call him like he does for me. And I know for certain I'm being lurked by a couple of people who I've seen for all of 5 minutes in the last month who could just as easily be laying on my bed and staring at the ceiling talking about evolution, and our stupid tattoos, and our fucked up families. So I guess that changes what I decide to write. I guess I start gearing what I have to say to this audience.

I have all of this stuff to say. I have all of this stuff inside of me. Why am I typing it into this box? Why am I not picking up the phone? I know they're going to be reading this anyway. Why don't I just tell them directly. Why do I sit here late at night coding my dissatisfaction with life into this computer keystroke by keystroke? Why do I walk around with a smile on my face when the people that care about me are around? It's not fake. I legitimately feel good when they're around. But at night I get lonely. This familiar something comes back and it eats me alive. And I start trying to find something to latch onto. Its like I'm floating in the ocean in the middle of the night, alone in a life raft, blowing that dumb fucking whistle that's attached to my life jacket when I should just give up the ghost and try to get some sleep. You all hear me doing it. And when you finally ask if I need help I tell you I'm fine and ask you what your problem is. Why do I do that?

I think it's because I just don't want to talk. What I really want is something that I can't have right now - somebody I trust to lay next to me and not say a word. I don't want a pep talk. I don't need anybody to know what's wrong. I don't even need someone who's completely sane or put together. I just need to know I'm not alone sometimes. Or at least if I'm alone I need to know that someone's alone right next to me. So I guess since I don't have that I go for the next best thing. I think into an inanimate box, give myself the illusion of being connected to something or someone, and nobody says a word. We just sit here together and we listen to the music. And just like last time, we'll make it through the night. Just like next time, we'll make it through the night. How sad.


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"This is for anyone who has made sacrafices to do what they love"

Scotty was on the mic at a Mayflower show a few weeks back and introduced a song as for the people who understand what it means to make sacrifices to do what they love. That's been sticking with me and after last night it's hitting me in a different way than I felt it originally. See, what Scotty was talking about was giving up on things like girlfriends that aren't constantly pissed at us, jobs, lives, adulthood, whatever. I'm thinking on different lines today.

Last night we had one of our band blowouts. This one wasn't as bad as some of the other ones but it came right on schedule. Especially when we're writing and recording the shit just hits the fan. We're 5 different people with 5 different brains and 5 different dreams for what we want all of this hard work to end up as. We all have to eat some shit. In a way we have to sacrifice what we want to get some warped lesser version of what we want.

It's kind of weird but it seems like the guys in the band who care the least end up being the happiest. They just go with the flow. Maybe I shouldn't say they care the least. They just either have less vision for what's going to be, they trust the rest of us, or they just don't feel like they have a voice to speak up and try to challenge whatever direction we're going in.

Meanwhile those of us who care the most end up getting pissed off at each other and having full out fights behind the scenes because the vision of one is interfering with the vision of another. In the meantime there's this constant political struggle. You notice it when people start picking fights for no reason. I'm just as guilty of it as the next guy. We do it because this whole thing is a game. If I pick a fight over something stupid and win then it gives me some sort of points in the future and those points will give me the power to make bigger decisions. It sounds so stupid but this is how people work. This whole thing is a system that's constantly fighting itself in order to exist.


I don't know if I've ever said it on here but one of the only things I know to be true about the world is that EVERYTHING is a microcosm of some bigger thing. The entire world is (and must be) fighting itself at all times in order to exist. War is an absolute necessity to peace. This band constantly fights within itself so that it can get up on stage as one thing. My body and my psyche are constantly at war with themselves so that I can get out of bed and function every day. All the while we dance so close to the edge. The whole world has come close to going up in smoke once or twice. This band has almost self-destructed more times than I can count. Even now I'm fighting the urge to just walk away from all of the bullshit that I have to put up with and just say "fuck it. we had a good run." On a regular basis I rub up against the thought of just walking away from my own life so I can stop dealing with all of the bullshit that I have to fight off every moment of my waking life.

The point? You have to sacrifice your dreams about the world to achieve your dreams about the world. You have to sacrifice your dreams about your band to live the dream of being in your band. You have to give up your hopes for a happy life in order to live a happy life. This is all part of the process. You struggle and you suffer so that you may feel the rewards of earning your own life every fucking day.

To Scotty, Jon, Mayo, and Steve : I do things that piss you off. I'm not sorry. You do things that piss me off. Don't be sorry. This thing will never be some fairy tale group of guys that get along and tell each other our secrets at slumber parties while we all get what we want. We're going to continue fighting, hating each others guts at times, doing things that make perfect sense to us but are completely foolish to everyone else, and generally making each other miserable. The reward is that we get some version of what we want that's been mutilated by 4 other people and we're ultimately all going to be proud of ourselves for going through it for as long as we have. I've come closer to killing every single one of you than I ever thought I'd come to closing a human being. I've had dreams about murdering at least 3 of you with my bare hands and that's not a joke. And I love you all more than I've probably ever shown. I wouldn't be here making the effort to do things that will ultimately piss you off if I didn't care about this band and you wouldn't be doing those things if it weren't with the same good intentions. We've done this before and we'll do it again. This time I'm more stoked than ever.


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God's Dead. I'm Alive.

What's up blog groupies? Today I finally got off my lazy ass and posted up the lyrics for this record in order. Maybe in a couple of days I'll explain what it's all about. Maybe I won't. We'll see how I'm feeling. Anyway, Christmas is coming so I left you a couple of presents as a thank you for reading along with me for the last year. Don't try anything weird ok? Thanks.









NO GOD

There's still no God
We are still all alone

No voice to guide
No words can save
No faith can heal

And there's still no God

No salvation for lost souls
Still No God
But we needed more than everything.

We're all alone together
We're all alone alone
We're all alone together
Waiting for some kind of fucking miracle

No salvation for false souls
Still No God
But we needed more than everything

There's still no God.




SIN EATER

We're damned. We never had a chance.
We have failed. Living lives in parallel.

I used to have these dreams. This hope about the future.
The best dream I've had lately was of never waking up.

We're damned. We never had a chance.
We have failed. Living lives in parallel.

We're searching for a God. We're looking for an answer.
We're lost. Betrayed. Looking for a better way.

And we feel abandoned. Betrayed by a God that never knew our fucking names.


And we're living in sin. Living in sin.
Living the sins of the father handed down.
Yeah we're living in sin. Living in sin.
Living the sins of our fathers because we did nothing to save ourselves from this sin.
From this sin.
Yeah we're living in sin.
Living in sin.



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.




I WANT TO LIVE

They're selling lies. Fashion. Complacency.
Cash for sins. Guilt for free.
Gift-wrapped salvation for a modest price.
Plant the seed now. Get the fruit when you die.

But I... I want to live.
Tired of dying and I want to live.
I want to live.
Fuck your salvation. I just want to live.

The truth falls mute under ignorant screams.
Pushers of filth that I can't wash clean.
Christ was the product of a desperate mind.
Broken men begging for an afterlife.

But I... I want to live.
Tired of dying and I want to live.
I want to live.
Fuck your salvation. I just want to live.

Take the fruit.
See the light.
Be here now.
I want to live.



THE GOD COMPLEX

I lost my faith in God somewhere back round '89
When my old man came home piss drunk smelling like a bar room whore
Then he made my mother cry.

Yeah that's the day that God died. That's the day I realized I was all alone.
And I escaped in the music

Time passed and mama said, "Boy, that's not how a man should be."
After 20 years, even though we left, that night still comes to me.
When I'm caught in my reflection face to face with God and the Devil.
Myself and my father.
Yeah, we're all one but I don't believe in any of us.

And I say, "It's just you and me now. It's you and me.
It's you and me you old son of a bitch. It's you and me."
Cause my father's gonna die alone with the TV on
And I don't wanna die alone with the TV on.

There's still no God.




BELLY OF A WHALE

There's poison in the water but I'm thirsty just the same.
I've got this way of turning water into wine. Know the truth and I'm telling lies.
I know the truth but I keep it inside. Forked my tongue and I'm telling lies.

There's truth in the lies I tell
There's silence and it's all around
There's sound in the city where it's all drowned out
And if I only had a match I'd burn it to the ground

There's a war and it's always inside me
Overshadowed by docile blue eyes
It never matters 'cause the sheep are all blind
And if the Devil had a face it would look like mine


DOGTOWN

I've gotta do this my way, gotta make my own sense of this life
You don't have the answers and I don't have the time
Yeah I've got a history but I'm not looking to be saved
You couldn't fucking save me anyway

I gotta do what I gotta do
To keep from ending up like you
One more submissive fuck who swallowed all the rules
I've got no respect for any law that takes what's mine from birth
I'm a citizen and I punch a clock but I'm fucking human first

Call the authorities
And I'm calling fraud
There are no untouchables
Not one.

Inside every pig there hides a kid whose feet never filled his fathers shoes
A broken child who missed every chance he had to pay his dues

I'm nothing without reason
And there's something that just isn't right
I created all my own Gods
In the image of my tainted fucking self

I gotta do what I gotta do
To keep from ending up like you
One more submissive fuck who swallowed all the rules
I've got no respect for any law that takes what's mine from birth
I'm a citizen and I punch a clock but I'm fucking human first

You wear the face of some high authority
But underneath it you're rotten. Just like me.




WEIGHT

When the clock strikes twelve and it's all been done
Heavy is the weight on the shoulders of the chosen one.

One more night on the run
Then I'll carry my cross for hours, days, weeks, months.
'til I die like a martyr.
I walk. I walk. I walk. Alone.

I have borne witness. I know the way. But I will be buried under this weight.
When the bottle runs dry and the devil escapes I will be buried under this weight.




MAKYO

I can't just walk away
I know that there's a better answer. A better way than this.
But the Devil's playing games
And the razor blade is begging me to listen to my wrists:

"Just let go. Just let go.
Take the vein and I will take your pain
Just let go. Just let go.
You're not meant for this world. I am meant to take you away."

My will is weak.
And my hands tremble.
I take the razor and I say,
"Not Today. Not Today."

"Open up and bleed or there'll be Hell to pay."
"Not today. Not today. In some future I may falter. Not today."

So here we stand at this familiar impasse
It's you and me, motherfucker. It's just you and me.
Just you and me.

I gather up my strength and touch the ground.
Feet don't fail me now.

"See me. Hear me."

I don't need you to take my pain
"See me. Hear me."

I open up and bleed in a different way
"See me. Hear me."

I won't give voice to delusion
I AM.




I AM THE MESSIAH

I am alive for the very first time
Conscious and pondering all of the ways that I've died -
Thousands of times
Hung for the truth while I choke on my lies

I am nothing
I am everything
I am fallen from grace
I was hopeless until the day that I learned
I am God and I work in mysterious ways

Yeah. I work in mysterious ways. We all work in mysterious ways.

I've been calling this place Hell for so long but it's strangely divine
Maybe this was Heaven all along but I just never noticed the signs

I AM.
I am the Messiah
I am the Devil in disguise

When I stopped searching I heard a voice and it said to me:
"God is Everything. You are Everything."




FAMOUS LAST WORDS...

[still writing it]


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Sin Eater

Its a little after two and I still can't sleep. I feel miserable so I'm going to use this opportunity to spread some of the hate in my head to the general public through this handy little text box. I'm going to take a proverbial shit in my hand and then extend it to you and politely ask you to eat it? Sound good? Cool.

I've been really thinking a lot today about metaphors that involve ingesting or expelling any sort of energy. You know, like the one about you eating my shit. Or the one in this nifty bible picture where Eve is giving Adam the apple to eat. It just seems like there's some relevance to the fact that he had to eat the sin. I'm pretty undecided about what this means and I don't have a point to make so I'm just going to fucking ramble. I'm going to expel some nonsense into this blog because I'm hoping to get some relief from it.

This entry is going to be about how people ingest and expel nonsense. Try to stay with me if I get all lofty and call that nonsense sin. Not specifically the, "I took the lord's name in vain" or "I fucked my cousin" kind of sin. I just mean bad stuff in general- Pain. Anguish. Regret. Guilt. Yadda yadda yadda. We've all got bad stuff floating around in us. And yeah if you fucked your cousin that's gonna do something weird to you too... where am I going with this? oh yeah. Everybody has to expel that stuff in some way.

I guess I never really realized how much I need to do it until last night when I was at yoga and our teacher was telling me to lock my energy in my closing my throat and flexing my butthole. (Yeah, this is what I do with my free time). He basically explained that people are always releasing energy and that one of the points of certain types of yoga is to retain energy. He said that building up heat and energy and whatever else through the practice of yoga and holding it in by plugging your nose and flexing your sphincter and closing your throat is a way to work on keeping it in. I gave it a shot because I'll try anything and it was the most uncomfortable feeling thing ever for me. Take out of the equation that a grown man was asking me to shut my butthole. The feeling I had when I did that stuff was an overwhelming "I have to get this out of me now." It was sooo strange to me and it hit me through doing it and through him explaining how people release energy by doing things like having sex, shitting, exercising, yelling I realized that just about everything I do is an effort to expel.

I, for whatever reason, need to expel my stuff and give it to everybody. I wonder if I would get the same relief from writing the things that bother me on a piece of paper and then ripping it up and throwing it away. I wonder if I could just say my shit out loud in a room by myself and let it go. I don't think I would. Maybe it's just because I'm personally an exhibitionist. Maybe I just need the attention. I wonder how other people deal with problems. I deal with mine by setting them on fire in the middle of town. I scream my sin. I write it here.

Other people though have different and interesting ways of expelling. Vomiting is one that's suddenly seeming a little more interesting to me than it has before. I used to think it was just about weight and body image but maybe it represents something more. That's a pretty violent way to expel. There's some real relief that comes from the physical act. Same goes for cutting. How many people have I talked to that like the initial rush of the razor breaking sin but have described their real fascination in watching themselves bleed and playing with the blood? A lot.



So this expulsion stuff is interesting. What's also interesting is the ingesting. Adam and Eve ate that apple. That fucking means something. I know it does. I'm getting all riled up about this and I really feel like it's important but I want to set you straight as to why. I don't think the bible happened. I don't think it's the word of some almighty God. I think some dude wrote it. And I don't think this dude was any smarter than anybody else. Now, that being said, I think people know way more than we think we do. I think that on some level we understand a lot more about the human condition than we can express in words. I think we understand a lot more about God and Spirituality that can be explicitly stated. I think these things that we don't know we know are transmitted unconsciously through metaphors. So in a way those bible stories that we all know probably didn't happen are really important in that they have coded messages from the collective unconscious embedded in them.

OK that was a little tangent but back to the main point. The ingesting.


I think the idea of this is that there is sin everywhere but it doesn't affect us until we make an actual effort to take it in. That's really interesting to me. Why wouldn't we just leave it alone? Like for instance. I told you at the beginning of this post that I was going to take a shit in my hand and ask you to eat it. You made the choice to keep reading. I'll give you that this one isn't as dark as you might have expected in the beginning but I write some depressing shit in here. And still you keep reading. Why are you reading this? What are you gaining by eating this apple? Why have I made a living out of sitting with people who have had terrible things happen to them and attempting to feel it as though I had lived their experiences? Why have I swallowed so much sin in my short life and gone back to ask for more? Why do I seek things out that I know will make me feel terrible just so I can turn around and purge it?

In some cultures when a person is on his/her death bed a close relative will come participate in a sin eating ceremony. The living person sits by the dying or deceased and eats some bread and drinks some water or wine that represent the sin of the passing soul so that that soul may rest peacefully. The sin eater literally eats that representation. Takes it right from the person. Weird. Jesus had a last supper where the apostles ate his body and drank his blood so he could go die. What is that about? This stuff spans across cultures. It is weird shit that we do both in daily life and in ritual. It's stuff that's embedded in the way we speak "He just ate total shit on that one". "I just had to stand there and swallow it."

This ingesting and expelling stuff is interesting to me. I can't explain exactly why its relevant but I know it is. I can't explain why I need to eat this sin but I do it. I can't explain why I need to turn around and shout it in someones face but I do.

So what do we do with this? Should we do the yoga thing and try to just ingest and not expel? Should we balance the ingestion with the expulsion? Should we just stay away from that proverbial apple all together and not have to deal with it? I don't know. What I do know is that as I think about this simple concept of ingest-process-expel all I can think of is how this accounts for so many different ways that people are fucked up in life.

Anyway, I know this might not make any sense and it might not be relevant but it's just really important to me right now. And of course it lines up with yet another song that's conveniently called sin eater. This one is second on the record. It's a little foreshadowing for what will come later. The song was named sin eater after it was written. The song isn't about anything I just talked about but the title makes reference to the fact that I've swallowed a lot of this sin my whole life and now I'm becoming it.



SIN EATER

We're damned. We never had a chance.
We have failed. Living lives in parallel.

I used to have these dreams. This hope about the future.
The best dream I've had lately was of never waking up.

We're damned. We never had a chance.
We have failed. Living lives in parallel.

We're searching for a God. We're looking for an answer.
We're lost. Betrayed. Looking for a better way.

And we feel abandoned. Betrayed by a God that never knew our fucking names.


And we're living in sin. Living in sin.
Living the sins of the father handed down.
Yeah we're living in sin. Living in sin.
Living the sins of our fathers because we did nothing to save ourselves from this sin.
From this sin.
Yeah we're living in sin.
Living in sin.


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Deus est intus

Dear God,

We just finished the demo that we're going to be shopping out for label support. I'm sitting here listening to it and trying to figure out if I love it or if it's the biggest piece of garbage on the planet. I honestly can't decide if I want to show it to absolutely everyone or if I want to break it in half and throw it into the sun... start from scratch. Or maybe just forget I was ever in this little band to begin with.

It's weird to spend a year of your life pouring yourself onto paper, condensing it down into little songs and turning it into something. It's weird that this music I'm listening to was conjured up out of thin air by my friends. It's weird that these words were hatched in my brain (the one's I didn't blatantly steal at least). It's going to be so strange to finally have this record in my hand. It's surreal to have something like this. To know that by some process we just invented these songs and the ideas behind them and engineered them into something tangible. It's strange to sit in my car playing a song like "God Complex" to my friends and sit in that awkward bubble where my dirty laundry is just kind of floating around in the silence.

I guess the anticipation of the completion of this record is especially anxiety provoking because it's me. Every word on this record is me. This is the closest I've ever come to legitimate self-expression. It's going to be really heartbreaking in a way if it goes over like a lead balloon. My self-doubt is really telling me not to get my hopes up about anybody giving a shit about this while the rest of me is screaming that this thing is legitimately brilliant even if nobody gets it. We really went out on a limb musically and did some stuff that we were too scared to do before. I really feel like I went out on a limb lyrically in doing a record that has a central theme, by telling stories, by establishing characters. There are things on this record that make people look at me puzzled and go "what the fuck?!" I mean, shit, we wrote a song where Jon plays the part of the devil and tries to convince me to kill myself. We're selling what might as well be a rock opera to a bunch of hardcore kids who for the most part just want us to rewrite Black Flag songs. Something would be wrong if I WASN'T worried about this.

I think this is what I wanted to say a few months ago about how true art is borne from the courage to fail. I wanted to say that this beautiful thing we're doing could very well be kicked to the curb like oh so many other beautiful things that get kicked to the curb.

This whole world is a giant fucking dumpster for things loved intensely just to be thrown away and for beauty untouched. I guess that's the heartbreaking part.


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The World of Demons

Here's what's up today in AB land: Drums are done. We recorded them with Jocko at more sound studios right here in Syracuse. They sound huge. We are all fucking ecstatic. I started on vocals there yesterday and will be finishing them up in the next few weeks. Then Scotty, Jon, and Mayo will be heading out to Salem, MA to do guitar and bass tracks with Kurt at God City where we recorded Not Now. Not Ever. and Mill City. Yeah, the record is being weirdly recorded. We're working with two studios and recording vocals before guitars. Why are we doing it this way? Cause fuck you, that's why. We do what we want.

Seriously though, what we have so far is sounding great and I couldn't be happier with how we've chosen to do this. Jocko at more sound is one of the most talented people that Syracuse, New York has to offer so to have him doing our drums and vocals is an honor. On top of that, his live room has this x-factor that adds all sorts of body and personality to the drums. He's doing a fantastic job and I'm really excited to think that once this record drops we might be able to bring a little more attention to one of Syracuse's best kept secrets. We couldn't just let go of Kurt, though. The man is a guitar wizard and he'll be performing his magic as well as a bit of analingus on this record so make sure to listen for his many contributions.


Like I said before, I'm still finishing up lyrics but they're almost done. I can't remember if I posted up Sin Eater or not. When I finish up the last song I'm going to post all of the lyrics in order with a kind of cliff notes explanation of what I'm trying to do. If that song wasn't posted yet I'll put it up in that post. For now I'm too stoked on this new song that I just finished today to focus on anything else. It's still a rough draft and may be tweaked but I really really like it so I think it will stay how it is. It's got a real similar feel to Diesel & Gunpowder but it's written in a style that I've never really tried before. I made a reference to D&G to tie this back to Mill City and I made a reference to The God Complex (song) to keep up with the continuity of the theme of the record. I'm really happy about the way it came out. Check it and let me know what you think in the comments.


MAKYO

I can't just walk away
I know that there's a better answer. A better way than this.
But the Devil's playing games
And the razor blade is begging me to listen to my wrists:

"Just let go. Just let go.
Take the vein and I will take your pain
Just let go. Just let go.
You're not meant for this world. I am meant to take you away."

My will is weak.
And my hands tremble.
I take the razor and I say,
"Not Today. Not Today."

"Open up and bleed or there'll be Hell to pay."
"Not today. Not today. In some future I may falter. Not today."

So here we stand at this familiar impasse
It's you and me, motherfucker. It's just you and me.
Just you and me.

I gather up my strength and touch the ground.
Feet don't fail me now.

"See me. Hear me."

I don't need you to take my pain
"See me. Hear me."

I open up and bleed in a different way
"See me. Hear me."

"See me. Hear me."

I won't give voice to delusion
I AM.





So there you go. I bet you're shocked that I wrote a song about battling with suicide because it's not something that I talk about all the time. Yes. That was sarcasm. This is pretty well-treaded territory for me so I'll save explaining all of that junk and let you delve further into the blog if you want to know how I feel about the subject.

Some things you might be interested to know about this song:

1) It's kind of a modernized version of the story of Buddha's Enlightenment. In the original story, Siddharta Guatama sat underneath the Bodhi tree in a state of intense meditation and was visited by a host of demons, the final being Mara. As Mara attempted to tempt and scare him from his goal of acheiving true consciousness he persisted and finally responded by touching the ground to signify that he was grounded in reality. Thus, he achieved his enlightenment.

2) Aside from the Buddhist history lesson, and for anyone that really doesn't give two shits about who Buddha was or what he did, this song is about how the constant mental battle I have with myself about suicide. There are references to this fact peppered throughout this record and throughout everything that I write (these references are both intentional and unintentional) and this song tackles the issue head on. This one kind of creeps me out in a way because while I've written on the topic of (my own) suicide before this one conjurs up an image for me of staring at my own reflection with a razor in my hand. That really hits me in a weird way that nothing I've ever written before has. And the whole arguing back and forth with the Devil inside my own head concept gives it something extra for me that just makes it more alive and real than pretty much anything else I've written.

3) This is the third to last song on the record and is written to be the climax, or the turning point, or the kairos or whatever you want to call it. Today I was talking to a friend and she was talking about some shit that happened to her when a kid that she thinks has been fucking her up for a while and she's talking about finally facing it. I said something to the effect of, "It's your dragon. You're finally strong enough to fight it." I was thinking about that a lot when I was writing this song and I guess that idea has unconsciously been driving this whole record. Everybody has a dragon. Everybody has that one big thing that underlies everything else. That thing that haunts you. It chases you wherever you go. It will manifest itself in every move you make until it is challenged and defeated in some way.
This whole record is about starting with this broad problem of "Fuck God and Fuck Religion" and then moving on to realizing that the problem is deeper than the symptom and exploring the root causes which are "I witnessed some really shitty things and was victim to some pretty shitty things" and then at this point of the record, facing it and resolving it. This is the song where the dragon is fought. I called it the Devil. You can call it whatever you want on your God Complex record. Hopefully at this point it's been sufficiently defined by the songs before it. If not I can spell it out for you: The Devil in this context refers to my father. Chuck Pahlaniuk said something in Rant about how the foundation of many different religions is the idea that in order to gain any real power, a man must kill his father. In this song the idea is that I've been trying to kill my father by killing myself (because I am my father) but resolve it by finding a way to separate myself from this Devil and just fend it off instead.

Are you confused yet? If you are it's fine. It's also acceptable to just not give a shit. Like I said before, the lyrical end of this record is meant to be experienced at different levels based on how much effort you want to put into tearing it apart and how much or how little you care about how I feel about my dad.

4) This song and this whole record are really heavily fueled by the fact that I've been in one form of therapy or another for the last 2 years as I've been working on my Master's in counseling. Along the way I've done a lot of stealing from various artists and authors to get the point across. If you read any of the books I've listed in the must read section you'll probably find something that I've ripped off verbatim. Hell, I even stole a line from myself in this one.

5) The phrase "listen to my wrists" came from a dream I had about a year ago. In the dream Scotty was hanging out at my house and doing that thing we all do where we sing whatever we have stuck in our heads under our breaths while we're doing whatever it is we're doing. In the dream the line he was kind of singing intermittently was, "One day you're gonna listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen to your wrist." In the dream it was so catchy that, without ever hearing the song he was singing, that line got stuck in my head and I was singing it. I finally asked him what it was and he told me it was a new pre-release for a Modern Life is War song (yeah I'm a fanboy. Deal with it.). I said something about how it was really a catchy line and I wished I had written it. When I woke up and realized that it wasn't a MLIW song I was psyched. I wrote it down on a piece of paper next to my bed and vowed to use it at some point. So here it is.


OK I think that's enough info about that song, don't you? Thanks for stopping in. Let me know what you think and keep checking for updates on recording and an eventual listing of all the lyrics in the record, in order, with a little explanation of what the hell is going on.


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