3/31/11



This is a video of me reading my story "TEAM" at the New Museum last October. It was part of THEM & Now, an event called "Dennis & the Boys", a night of readings curated by Dennis Cooper and Spank Magazine.

I was so nervous that night, and I think it shows. I was also reading fast because my piece was sort of long and I wanted to make sure I got through it all. This story is in the Spank Three Year Anniversary Issue (#17) and is also in the 2nd/3rd issue of Scorcher (Je M'Aime). And it is also entirely 100% true. It's about hanging out with my friend Cotton in San Francisco. I've been thinking about him a lot lately, and then I came across this video! I don't even know who took it. But thanks to whoever did.

Okay it is raining and it looks awful outside, but I know I've gotta go get out there.

3/30/11

What Leos Talk About When We're Alone Together

Hung out on Sunday with the brilliant and adorable Jiddy aka Julia Norton. It is so weird to think that I have known her since 2003. She has always been a very beautiful young woman, and it’s been a pleasure to know her these many years. She ALWAYS wears eyeliner. It’s totally her signature look. I know that sounds potentially problematic, but look! She totally pulls it off!


Cute, huh? Actually you can only sort of barely tell that she is wearing eye makeup in this picture.

Jiddy did an illustration for the story “JUNGLE” from the last issue of Scorcher. And she is going to do some illustrations for the new issue too. We talked about some ideas on Sunday, and had a nice long walk and mind-to-mind session. Been into this thing about astrology lately.

Oh, FYI, just so you know: Mercury is Retrograde. Deal with it.

Anyway this astrology thing I’ve been into lately is LEO TALK. What do Leos talk about when we are alone together? We talk about the things we have in common. One thing Leos have in common is the pleasure we take having the conversation ABOUT how much pleasure we take in having things in common. It’s not actually just people talking about themselves, it’s most often two people (okay me and another Leo—I know a lot of Leos, Hi Jiddy!) talking about how important it is to understand one another. Like, the thing Leos have in common is the desire for simpatico.

I wish everyone in the whole wide world were a Leo.
But it’s not up to me.

Maybe it’s Mercury or something, but have been battling an occasional case of the bummers, lately, so it’s helpful to play everyone’s favorite game Y’KNOW WHAT I LOVE?

Here are some things I am loving lately:
- This fantastic interview between BILLY CHEER & ALEXANDER over on the Pussy Faggot site.


- The Next Magazine cover feature on Justin Vivian Bond. I think it’s really cool and thoughtful that they are using the correct pronouns for V. It sounds like maybe a small thing, but this is important to me, the communities I would like to exist in, and faith in people (even the buff boys over at Next) that change can happen, is good, etc. Rock on!

- The new YELLE album! Here is a fantastic music video for two tracks off her new record Safari Disco Club.


I once went to a Yelle show. I think it was in, like 2007? Or 2008? She hadn’t really broken in the US yet, and my friend Pash(ly) opened for her at the Knitting Factory and put me on the list. I thought it was so fucking cool and glamorous and exciting to be backstage at the Knitting Factory, helping Pash(ly) do her hair and hang out with her. I had never heard of Yelle, and was worn out from Pash(ly)’s AMAZING performance that night, so I didn’t stay to see Yelle. And I have been kicking myself about it ever since! I want to go see Yelle when she performs in NYC next month but it’s $40. That is hard. Y’KNOW WHAT ELSE I LOVE? is that Pash(ly) is coming to NYC this weekend! I hope she and I can go to the club together.

Hey speaking of this weekend and Y’KNOW WHAT I LOVE? There are two amazing things this weekend to go to:

BIRDSONG BENEFIT



Brooklyn's premier DIY lit/art/interview zine from a multi-disciplinary arts collective, is celebrating it's 3RD YEAR RUNNING with a PRINT SHOW and SWEET SWEET live MUSIC.Featuring limited edition $20 prints by a glittering group of artists who have contributed to, or who have been interviewed by, BIRDSONG over the past three years:BLANCO - CARA FULMOR - CAT GLENNON - ELIZABETH HIRSCH - J. MORRISON - JULIA NORTON - JOEY PARLETT - DANIELLE ROSA - WILL VARNER - MICHELLE YU.

Plus heart-wrenching, soul-rousing, toe-tapping sets by some serious local shit stirrers:
PAPS - BABY ALPACA - HUNTER - LITTLE VICTORY
FRIDAY APRIL 1ST-- Doors at 8pm, bands at 9pm
Brooklyn Fire Proof, 119 Ingraham St @ Porter (Morgan L)
$5 suggested cover, which will go toward the production costs of BIRDSONG 15

Then on Saturday:

QXBXRX

QxBxRx (Queers, Beers & Rears) presents:

FORGETTERS (ex-Jawbreaker/Against Me!/Bitchin')
LITTLE VICTORY
RUFFIAN ARMS

Resident QBR DJs SIR LOINS, GO-KARFF & A.MARTINI
QBR Go-Go Boys!!! Free Booze 10-11pm!!!
Public Assembly, Front Room
70 North 6th St (btwn Wythe & Kent) Williamsburg, Bedford L train
10PM doors, 10-11PM open bar, 21+
$6 before midnight / $8 after

(I will be go-go dancing at this party).
Not gonna let anything get me down.
Or, I’ll let shit get me down but not keep me there.

3/24/11

Texture of the Form

I've been reading this Karen Finley book, The Reality Shows, and it's totally blowing my mind, you guys.


press play

It makes me really wish that I could have seen these shows when they were performed. I'm totally kicking myself. But the texts are so amazing too. Just like the way she talks, in the text. The way she addresses the audience/reader is really interesting and inspiring to me. It implies a certain amount of trust, or something, between the performer and the audience. And that kind of faith, just from a “performance tactics/ways of being in the world” standpoint is really inspiring. I’m just talking about the texture of the forms she works with. I’m not even addressing the actual content here. Is that possible? Anyway I definitely recommend picking it up. It will make you want to feel more and feel more deeply. Consciously? I don’t know. It’s really amazing to me, and I read it every day and I hope it doesn’t end, but I know (someday) it will.

I kind of always read a couple books at once, and I’ve been very slowly working my way through Mary Daly’s brilliant Beyond God the Father.



Which is fulfilling in a totally different kind of way. It’s like she’s speaking through a megaphone, from way back in time. I don’t mean ‘back in time’ because of the historical context her work is from, but I mean it as in she addresses huge swaths of human history and it’s pretty mind-blowing. So when I’m not reading the New Yorker I am reading these two books. That is what is up.


Rock on, Mary.

I've been sort of MIA this week because my parents have been in town. They are leaving today and we said goodbye last night. I miss them so much sometimes. We had a really fantastic week together, hanging out every day after work. I sort of halfway become a sullen teenager when I am around them. Like 50%. But the other 50% is becoming the uber-parent; shepherding them around NYC. It was so nice. We went to my favorite restaurant, Kate’s Joint, and went to go see Arcadia which was my first Broadway experience. The play was really good but definitely not something I would have chosen on my own, so I am deeply grateful for the novel experience. I also got my parents to impulse buy me this, which I had never had before:


Marmite!

Anyone who knows me will know that I like to eat gross foods. So I obviously love Marmite. I am kind of into making sandwiches with peanut butter and Marmite. Is that gross? I think that this sandwich (I am going to name it a GARFIELD) is maybe my current favorite food.

If you come over to my house, I will serve you a Garfield sandwich and a can of TaB cola. That oughta kill my social life, I guess.

So my folks have been in town, and not a moment too soon. I’ve been really bummed out lately. Definitely very depressed and awful feeling. But I think I am better now. I think it coincided with running into the amazing Jack Ferver last Thursday night on the train. Daniel and I were waiting for a downtown train from Columbus Circle, and Jack waltzed onto the platform with a really beautiful bright blue hoodie. And he was so nice and funny, and I had just seen his production of SWAN!!! the week before and it really broke through my fog of nastiness.

I guess what I want to say is thanks, to those of you who deserve thanks, for being nice to me and being my friends lately. It has helped a lot. I don’t know what’s up these days, guys. I think it’s really scary sometimes. To be scared, or sad, and then be scared or sad about how sad or scared you feel. When you write it out like that it seems ridiculous, but it’s true—that’s how it feels. Feelings are not facts. Find a new way to say it or to feel it and then it changes. So I guess always a new way. There are always new ways.

The things that were bumming me out are still bumming me out. I thought because I was the one to end my fantastic relationship that, because it was my decision, that I would not be sad about it. I was really wrong about this. I still think it’s for the best, but I guess it took me a couple weeks to admit how sad I was about it. But it’s okay. And it will only be more okay with time.

In other news: I went back to NYU dental school. For the final, one-year-later checkup of my implant. It’s healing! Even though it was put in at a weird angle, the bone has grown around the implant and it is good! I am so relieved to hear this. This has been such a nightmare. And hopefully it will all be okay. The only downside is that my lovely dental student (the nice one, not the one who fucked me up in the first place) helpfully identified two fillings I have which need to be replaced. One, she said, needs to be fixed because it might mean I need a root canal (yay!) and the other filling, which I guess I got some time during my adolescence, has partially fallen out. I had no idea. This is nuts. But the big news is: I am ok. I made an appointment with my “real” dentist, who is not a student, and who is amazing. So these will be fixed. Everything is going to be okay, eventually.

Kind of ready to put this chapter behind me. I talked about it some, but have been mostly in denial about it because it was so humiliating and painful that I have been trying to edit it out of the story of my life: the time an NYU dental school student destroyed my mouth. This chapter is coming to a close, but there was definitely a time, the summer before last, when I was at NYU every single day, sometimes two or three times a day, having screaming matches with dentists, students, professors, social workers, lawyers, whoever. No on could give me a straight answer as to what I needed to do to fix my mouth, and I was constantly going to outside dentists to fix the various things that the initial visit set off. And I was all by myself with this, and nobody was there to help me. And I was really scared. And I was also (not to be a baby) missing a motherfucking tooth, and in pretty serious pain every day for a couple of months.

And I am glad to emerge on the other side of that. And to see you there.

3/23/11

INTERVIEW WITH ELIZABETH TAYLOR



Billy Cheer: Hi Elizabeth. How's it going?

Elizabeth Taylor: Who the fuck are you? I just died. I'm on my way to Heaven right now.

Billy Cheer: So you got in? You got into Heaven?

Elizabeth Taylor: I'm sorry-- who is this? Yes. I got into Heaven. I reserved my place there years ago. I'm going to see Michael and then I'm going to see God.

Billy Cheer: Did it hurt?

Elizabeth Taylor: Did what hurt?

Billy Cheer: Dying.

Elizabeth Taylor: No. Being sick hurts. Being old hurts. But I've been dying for a very long time. When I actually died I was on painkillers, so I didn't feel anything.

Billy Cheer: Are you excited?

Elizabeth Taylor: For what? Being dead?

Billy Cheer: Are you excited to go to Heaven? Are you excited to be reunited with Michael Jackson?

Elizabeth Taylor: I wouldn't say I'm excited, but I am glad to get to see Michael again. I love him.

Billy Cheer: I wasn't even sure that he would get into Heaven. Forgive me, Ms. Taylor, but I'm frankly a little surprised that you got into Heaven, too.

Elizabeth Taylor: Well, they let anybody in. I mean, "Heaven" is just really the name of one of the lobbies of the afterlife. It's just a station on the way to eternity. One of the other lobbies to the afterlife is called Purgatory and another one of the lobbies is called Hell.

Billy Cheer: So it all kind of winds up the same.

Elizabeth Taylor: Exactly. It's all the same.

Billy Cheer: Are you sad that your life is over?

Elizabeth Taylor: I don't think so. It's not really over, just the part of it that happened on Earth. So, no. I'm not sad.

3/17/11

TRIO A



Saw Karen Finley speak last night at Barnes and Noble to celebrate the release of her new book The Reality Shows which is available from the Feminist Press. I haven’t read it yet, but she said it compiles performance texts, writing and art work which she made in the last ten years. She talked about losing her historic lawsuit about the NEA and the ensuing fallout and culture wars around her and her work. She said that there was this big issue of the ‘persona’ of Karen Finley, which got in the way of her doing her actual work. People had these huge reactions to what they perceived to be her “voice”, and she said she felt like it was a caricature or cartoon version of her. And that it stopped her from being able to produce work. So she went on what I think I remember her calling a spiritual quest to rediscover the joy in making the work. And she emerged with a new way of approaching the work and the personas involved. I’m really paraphrasing a lot here, but it spoke to me. I would also like to rediscover the joy in using my own voice. I also feel like people’s reactions to some cartoon version of something get in the way of communication. I feel also like I am the butt of a joke. (I know I talk about this a lot). Not to trivialize or compare my own intellectual/emotional ‘problems’ to the massive international mindfuck that swirled around the inimitable Ms. Finely. But it was really inspiring. Should I be doing pop-culture drag? Would that even work?



Before Karen spoke, there was a brief introduction from Kathleen Hanna, who wrote the forward to the book. Obviously I think she’s fantastic and her work is also very important to me. She spoke a bit about the influence Karen Finley’s work had on her life, and when Karen took the stage after her she thanked Kathleen for being part of a chain of people who encourage one another. I thought that was really gracious. I want to be part of a chain, too! I want to exist in a culture where we acknowledge when each other’s work is important to us. Beyond just the good-feelings of good-vibes. I think it’s Important to make a conscious effort to affirm, find joy, etc. Karen signed my copy of her book “With Joy”. Which I think is really nice. I can’t wait to read it.



Got a kind of snarky one-line review about a story I wrote, “fIRECRACKER”. It said the story “dithers into its own loose imagery”. And it really bummed me out for a number of reasons. First, the reviewer seems not to have really gotten the point of the story. It’s called “fIRECRACKER”, it’s about anticipation. I feel like I shouldn’t have to defend of explain anything, but the reviewer didn’t give me any credit for doing what I did ON PURPOSE. Like, maybe if there are unresolved images, maybe if the pacing slows down at the end, these might have been conscious choices I made.

I dunno. It’s also not like I ever asked to be reviewed. By this guy or anyone else, basically ever. I’m just saying. I never send anything I do out to be reviewed. I never give away tickets in exchange for press or reviews. If you like something and want to tell your friends about it: great. If you think something sucks: great. If you feel like it is necessary for you to insert yourself into a conversation by telling the world how much something I do sucks, that is on you. It just bums me out. Why spend the energy? I see a lot of shitty artwork, I meet a lot of shitty people, but it seems like a waste of everybody’s time.

Yeah, I am being sensitive. But to be fair: I never said I was a good writer. I am thinking a lot about the Kathy Acker quote which is on the back of Hannibal Lecter, My Father. It has a really cute picture of Kathy looking menacing next to the words: “This writing is all fake (copied from other writing) so you should go away and not read any of it.” If we wanna talk about what we’re thinking about, fine. But if we wanna call each other names, I’m out.



Finally, this Saturday night is not only a Full Moon, but it’s also going to be one of the rare times in which the Moon is also marginally closer to the Earth than normal. This phenomena happens once ever twenty years or so and is called a SUPERMOON. Cool, huh? My good buddy Cole mentioned this, and reminded me of the performance I did last year about how the Moon is moving further away from the Earth, and how that scientific fact relates to Gay Pride, the show was called MOON + ENCOURAGEMENT. I am really proud of that performance even though probably 15 people saw it, most likely none of whom will ever see this blog. But I was really proud of it, and I felt really good making it. And as I remember it, it makes me hopeful that I’ll make other things which will also be fun. I dunno. Sort of also interesting that it’s happening this weekend and my mom is coming. So is my dad. I’m excited to hang out with them. Just so much going on right now, but it feels really far away for some reason. Maybe by this Saturday things will seem more possible for a little while.

PS: TRIO A by Yvonne Rainer

A perennial source of everyday inspiration.
Right?

PPS:

PLD sent me this video isn't it great?

3/14/11

STYLE ICON: TaB COLA

On Sunday, I took a walk. I went from my apartment in Bushwick over the bridge into Manhattan and bummed around the Lower East Side, then Soho, then Chelsea, then through Gramercy before taking the train back home. I wanted to be along with my thoughts and try to cheer myself up. And I eventually did, because at some run-down grocery store in the east 20s (I'm not telling you where) and found a six pack of:



I love TaB so much. I mean: I love it enough to have it every once in a while. Thank Goddess it's so hard to find. Saccharin is probably poisonous. We're probably definitely all going to die. I really just like that the slogan is (or was) "A Beautiful Drink For Beautiful People".









I'm just trying to notice when I enjoy something. So sue me.
Feeling shitty but also feel like that could change.

3/12/11

Gilbert and his Grapes Of Many Colors

Gawd, this Queen Latifah video!



I really identify with this. I dunno. I think I saw this video on VH1 in like 1998 and it's been stuck in my preconscious mind ever since. Like, when I saw it as a kid I knew I would some day want to draw upon that memory. And I guess that time is now.

Saw so many really fantastic shows this week. On Monday I saw Mx. Justin Vivian Bond and Sandra Bernhard's new musical ARTS & CRAFTS. It featured Little Miss Cole Escola as well. Everybody in it was fantastic. I had never actually seen Sandra Bernhard perform before. But I used to work right near Whole Foods and I would often see her walking her beautiful little daughter and just being radiant and nice-looking, and she definitely brought that to the stage, along with her formidable voice.

I went to see MEN at Bowery Ballroom. They were great! Tami Hart joined the band, and looked super cute with her new long long hair. I got kind of tipsy at the show (thanks, Tommy!). I like their politics a lot. Thursday I went to see Jack Ferver's brilliant SWAN!!! at PS122. I thought it was really funny, intelligent, beautiful. And for some reason also really tragic, in a way that the actual film Black Swan was not, at least not for me. I think this could just be my own hormonal state lately. I feel like every story involving an uptight virginal white girl, wholly unsympathetic and mostly deserving of the pain her neurosis causes her, is on some level also about me. Maybe this is the magick of well-orchestrated theater. Maybe this is a sign that I need to be getting more sleep.

But for real, I'm still on such a bummer trip these days. I don't know what it is. Could be a chick or the egg situation. Am I sad because I can't deal with anything, or is the fact that I can't deal with anything what is making me sad? Totally self-fulfilling, and probably not interesting to anybody else. When I am in a bad mood, I make everything into some dark twisted fantasy. I do not like having to deal with cognitive dissonance, the holding together of two conflicting truths.

The prime example is: My cat loves me and when I am sick the cat stays in bed with me and licks me. That is one truth. A simultaneous truth is: My cat is laying in bed with me when I am sick because it is warm, and if my cat were bigger than I was, it would want to eat me and it would kill me. That is another truth. These are facts. So, the challenge here is knowing both things simultaneously and not freaking out every time you pet your cat. Not rocket-science, but when I am in a bad mood, I feel like I can't do the simple mental arithmetic of knowing both things and not freaking out all the time.

I dunno. I am going through a rough time lately because I feel like everybody is making fun of me. And I know that's paranoid and creepy and crazy, and I'm not exactly happy about that, either. Probably the term "everybody" is my emotional mind speaking and not my rational mind. (Emotional minds like words like "everybody", "always", "never", and "nobody"). Probably it's that I am making fun of me. Or causing people to make fun of me? Maybe I care too much what other people think. Sorry. I don't, really. But it's hard to feel like you can't respond to people honestly, or like people are being duplicitous. It makes me feel really stressed out. I do take some solace in the fact that I know, objectively, that we all get down sometimes. I know I do. I think it's okay to talk about it? Just sort of doing that wholly unsympathetic thing of, like, going through my toolkit of things to make myself feel better. Things like:
- talk about it.
- don't talk about it.
- give it a minute.
- don't do anything.

They all work! None of them work. I don't know when I turned into such a big fucking baby. I feel like I can chart various points in my development when I was alternately very scared and very brave and right now I am trying to turn myself into VERY BRAVE again.

What are some things that you do to make yourself feel brave? Admit that you are scared. That's a big one. I think that's the thing about courage. It's not that courageous people are not scared. It's that courageous people are very, very scared. But they just don't let that stop them. So I guess another day another feeling. Or SOMETHING. Let's talk about it.

One thing I am definitely very excited about and encouraged by is this fantastic new music video by my soul sister and idol, ALEXANDER:



So here's to feeling better, Gilbert Grape.

3/9/11

Boom Boom Boom



The good news is that my homegirl Tommy is taking me to see the best new band in the whole world MEN tonight. So that ought to cheer me up. Rad!


And so I lived like a double-agent. I kept a day job to pay my bills, and wrote obscene short stories (incorrect grammar, bad words) to express my inner feelings. I paid ransom to the professional world in many jobs where I had to act calm, professional and capable while snidely condescending inside my head: This isn't the real me. At other times I mingled with the art-kid set, teenagers whose parents could afford to let them frolic through their youth. All the while subtly aware that I did not belong because I was either too poor or else too chicken-shit to give up my double life. So while never throwing one's whole self into either reality, never accepting anything as real (either the day-to-day slew of e-mails or the nightly fantasies, desires and feelings). Giving half to inside and outside, I straddled two worlds, neither of which I deigned to think of as real. Not present at work, my waking life, nor even in my dreams (which I would take various solutions so that I could forget, to achieve sleep without thought, dreams, memories or feelings). I began to live as a ghost in my own life. Haunting the places I used to live, people I knew once or could have decided to be.


It is the scariest and also the easiest costume.

3/8/11

GIRL GANG UNDERGROUND



I contributed a piece about riot grrrl to this compilation zine and I am going to be reading at this event in NYC next weekend. I think I'm gonna read the piece I wrote for the zine, maybe an excerpt from it. I wrote it a hella long time ago. One of the things I originally wrote for it was "I think it's gonna be a really great summer" and it totally was! So weird.

Anyways. I think this event is going to be really great.

Requiescence

I dunno you guys. I've been taking this tactic to an extreme. "This tactic" is what I might refer to as "the Ostrich technique". A.k.a. DENIAL. I have this fleeting idea, when I am first waking up or just about to fall asleep, or at various difficult times throughout the day, and the idea is that if I don't talk about something I won't have to think about it. There are many theories linking thought to language. I'm sort of paying lipservice to them. I know it's not really working. So I've been not updating my blog a lot, because I wanted to skip over what I am thinking of as a shadowy, unpleasant patch. But I think we can talk about it now. For the last six months I have been totally in love, for basically the first time ever. And it's been amazing. But the relationship has, sadly, ended. I don't know what else to say on that score, other than I am sad that it's over, but think it's for the best. And that my life has totally changed as a result of it.



I sort of thought of Love as being not unlike Pilates. Some people swear by it. They treat it like a religion, like a cult. They insist that it has improved their CORE STRENGTH and totally altered the trajectory of their lives. I feel like: okay. That's cool if that works for you. But up until very recently, I had never tried Pilates, and never felt any desire to do so. I didn't doubt it's efficacy, but it just did not figure in my life at all. That is how I have felt, historically, about love.

So, although I am definitely sad about the relationship ending, I will say that I am pretty excited and happy to have at least tried Pilates. To continue this awkward, sort of gross metaphor, I would say that I went to classes, and discovered my own CORE STRENGTH, and can vouch for the effectiveness. I'm convinced. You got me. Everything is different now. That's probably all I want to say about this, for right now.



But also, everything is the same! I am totally approaching my Same Old Problems with a new skill-set. And the new skill-set is this: love is real.

I want to change the subject. It's so hard to look away! Like a car wreck. MY LIFE: A Car Wreck.

I keep talking about all the projects I want to do and I feel like I never do anything. I am constantly trying to convince someone (the handful of people who read this blog? myself? my friends? the kids around town who hate me for whatever reason?) that I Am Real. That I Really Do Stuff. On one hand, I feel like this is the message of encouragement. On the other hand, I feel like talking about something is sort of an acceptable substitute for doing something. What if the thing you are talking about is Love? What if it's feeling good about yourself? I mean, what if the project, the goal you're actually trying to achieve, is all in your head? Do you see why I never get anything done?

That's a fib, I get a lot done. I've just been so distracted by meanies out there. But not anymore! Not, I mean, as much, anymore.

Lookout world! PS isn't that Frumpies video so cute? Aren't Carlos and Chrisser from the PeeChees so sexy? Don't you just want to do whatever Tobi Vail tells you to do?

3/3/11

Feel like.



It seems, when it's bad, like escalating examples. Like repeated lessons. Like, over and over again the same message, delivered in various permutations. Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to... what? Not live in fear of repeating it? Feel pretty bummed out, lonely, angry. Same ways as always.

Y'know what? I'm calling a do-over. I am not gonna waste any more of my time on something that is just designed to make me feel bad (let's talk in real life about the details, Friend). Sort of realized last night at the gym that I've been having this macro-experience and the macro-experience is this: when yr running on the treadmill, if you turn your head to see who just walked into the room, you can lose your footing. I feel like in the treadmill of my life, I turned my head. I got so majorly distracted by how much bullshit I suddenly had to deal with, I got majorly distracted by worrying about what other people think of me, I got majorly distracted by my feelings. And I sort of realized, last night, listening to Mary Timony's crunchy buzzy 20 year old guitar sounds, that that happened and now it's over. And so I am ready to get back to work. Whatever.

Somewhere out there / somewhere in here (points to chest, points to head) there's another way of looking at this, the last year, the last decade, etc. I'm not trying to get too woo-woo on any of you, but I think it's important to use whatever psychological you may have at your disposal to wedge yourself away from the stickybad feelings. I think you know what I am talking about.