Going Solo...

And we'll follow genius wherever it decides to go.

So I've Got This Rocking Chair...

I think it was my grandfather's. I've got a desk, also my grandfather's. There are some boxes with my clothes in them, some electrical cords that will connect to things and make things work when I eventually come back home. There's a bottle of Jack on the bookshelf, where my books used to be, about 2 swigs are left. I don't think I'll finish it. There are backpacks, so many backpacks...clothes on the floor. A bike. A bed. European condoms. Tide...

On Friday, I'm gone from Kings Road and I think it's starting to settle in, finally. There's a race in San Francisco this weekend, Escape From Alcatraz that attracts 2000 of the baddest Tri-Aths in the world. I can feel it coming. I can taste it. My guts are starting to roll. After that, I'm here for the week before Vegas to meet the family for a much needed beat before a goodbye to Los Angeles before I get on a plane to Bangkok on May 15th, that Saturday afternoon. Flying fascinates me, absolutely. I have this talent of being able to shut off my body, to find stillness on a plane and sit for hours and hours and then it lands and I come back to life and step out into a new and bizarre and enthralling world. Then something takes over me, fucking invades me and I just breathe it in and let it in my brains and blood. I'm going to meet John Durban. We have some important work to do, such important work to do. The thought of it makes my life feel beautiful. The thought of it makes me hungry for the world, makes me want to spit my pretty poison out onto the world. Due time. Due time.

When I get there, that world is going to be fast and out of control, and I'll have to find a way to slow it, to find control of it, to take control of it, to set fucking fire to it. Me and John. Watch us, wait for us. Every day, I try to make certain that I am not the same man I was the day before. And when I go away, I don't just pull wires, I rip them, fucking tear them so that they never again fit the way they did, so that I'm lost until I'm not. Then lost again.

This is right, no matter what comes.

This is right, no matter what comes.

Saturday Night On Sunday Afternoon...

Anything that cracks Bill Hader...

Madison Reese Is Saving My Soul...

It needs to be written.... it just does... I don't know why you sent me ** *** *** **** when you did...you said Monday night I had never asked to read it...not true...but that is neither here nor there...point being it was the perfect set up for me to hate it or misread it and be done...there was a shift Monday night like there always is in due time..I was coming off a ********* romance followed by a dive into ******* shenanigans rounded out by a day on *** ******* rooftop and finally a dinner with you...even if I had the capacity to care I didn't...I was on sensory overload...spending far too much time with far too many people...and giving away parts of myself ad nauseum....surely by Monday I would be a shell of a human being..but it was you and it was dinner...so we were off...me harping on the same subject over and over...you taking some of it in...some of it not so much...read into every move....every deflection...hey, old habits die hard...it was fine..it is what it is...gave you a sucker...drove away...felt like I had haphazardly tied a bow on the relationship...got my closure...would be okay...not the perfect end...but I got what I needed....woke up to rain...perfect excuse to spend some time with myself...reflecting...writing...figuring out my next move at leisure...then there it was no subject no text...** *** *** ****...aww fuck me I thought...remembering back to snippets in your blog...boo hoo some fucking **** ****** and his trust fund...screwing "world talent" to make himself feel whole...I had dated and known many **** ******* in my life and didn't feel like I needed to read his words to know otherwise...or so I thought...I have faith in your writing...stating the obvious??...and I am sure it would be thrilling ride through travels of the world and I could see it selling and I could laugh a little bit because there would be pieces of you, mr. smith, littered throughout...so what the hell...curled up in my bed...propping my pillows so I could lay sideways and plow through a couple of chapters....I will not bore you with a play by play of the next few hours...I will not rehash every emotion (lie)...but you should know some of it..I fell in literary love..harder than I have ever fallen before...tearing open my insides than had been so carefully concealed...inspired, inspired piece...I turned off my phone (you don't know this about me...but that does NOT happen...you should even feel flattered I didn't sit with the damn thing in my lap at dinner-okay I did that part of the time but not the whole)...anyway...I got lost in the story of *** and ****...every character so clear...understood a broken ****...fell in love with a sweet ***...laughed at ******* candor and wit...**** tenderness still resonates in the depths of my soul..******** so stoic..***** so crazed (****** letter to ******---stab me in the face!)...not to mention **, ****** (s), *****, ****, and ******...oh ******...I'm reading into this and I don't care if you tell me I am wrong...part of Reese is her...I saw it...poor thing....I had to make myself slow down and read every word...and then reread until it seeped in...branding my eyelids...searing my heart...the book grabbed ahold and would not let go...so much so that I cried for an hour after....whaling and writhing...mourning the **** ** ***...it's all so vivid...I was transported into a world I never wanted to leave...throughout the morning I have gone back over your words..making sure I didn't miss a beat...memorizing the rollercoaster...every turn every drop...like I said forever changed...seeing your real life characters make appearances...still can't get through a chapter-a sentence without weeping...pulling my hoody tight around my head willing myself to stop..jamming a ******* ***** ****** in my mouth in a feeble attempt to pacify my childlike emotions...that ugly contorted crying that sets ones soul on fire and somehow releases one onto the world....the brilliant part about last night is I had my hour of guts and heart on the floor and then I had to pick myself up for an important dinner where ********* had to be fully present...entertaining a table full of drunk wasps and old "friends"...because while I am a hurricane (inside and out) there was the composure, the wall up, keeping the secret...life carries on....and I feel sorry for the world for having not been privied to the world of **** ****** and *** *******...it is a fucking life changer...a wild ride...and I shit you not when I say I finished that last word...the wind fully knocked out of me..my mind whirling around 7,000 questions and feelings...it took a full minute to realize **** *** **** ********...*** **** *** *******...it is certain now...wasn't it always??.your talents should not be wasted on me...they have to be shared with the world ...again you don't need me to tell you this....but anyone who does not get this book...does not understand the world and what it needs...and for that they are fucking cunts...that forming chip on your shoulder...that pull to Thailand...is fully understood..I said it before I had even read it...but go my boy and write that brilliant fucking follow up to ** *** *** ****...because the world needs a lot more *** ********....but there is only one **** ******...and at this moment I don't think I can live without him...there you go my final assessment- you, ****** ******* *****, fucking surpassed the literary titans, don't you ever fucking forget it.

Tuesday Immunization Funday...

I walked into the office in Torrance, fucking Torrance and said Thailand and we were off. There was a brief discussion about rabies but with a 280 dollar price tag, I told the guy I would just run with a knife attached to my hip in case a wild monkey or dog tried to attack me. He didn't get it and there was this long silence before I tried to laugh like I was making a joke but by then it was too late and he thought I was crazy.

Beach House...

I still have the residue of Coachella in my body. I had driven down after teaching a class in Westwood and then got stuck in traffic getting let in and when I finally did, I made it to this tent, to hear this band play, and the day was just getting started and I had one of those moments like I could breathe because I had arrived. Something about this song has struck a terrible chord in me since I started listening through the album. And hearing it live...hearing it live...something in me wept well. And I had to seek it out here, even if it's a cut version. Play it when you're driving sometime, sometime when you don't know where you're going, just wandering, and maybe we'll have an understanding.

Coachella, We're Just Gonna Play This One Through...

I got in around 4 in the afternoon after buying my tickets from an outfit in a gas station parking lot right next to the highway. Two guys would buy from people going, via the street, and two would sell them to people coming, via the parking lot. I needed GA and a VIP and my guy wanted 475 for the pair before I crossed him up enough to get the VIP for 100, GA for 150. It's now half past 7 in the AM and I just generously sold the pair to a guy from Long Beach for 60. Like I said, we're playing this one straight through...because I just got home.

I made it into the gates a little too late to hear Girls close on what had to have been Hellhole Ratrace before walking over to Beach House before Tokyo Police Club before taking a breather from the stairs in VIP while Coheed and Cambria closed with the USC marching band (little trite) by playing Welcome Home (Bone Rattling) before a blast of Hot Chip and MGMT before I stacked up to the 5th row to see Muse.

This was my first time going to Indio for the festival. Music absolutely moves my world, but something about all the people and mess and being stuck for three days in the middle of the desert had never worked for me. There were bands I wanted to see this year, lots, but since I'm an in and out kinda guy, I figured the best way to approach this monster would be to see the boys and let 'em ignite my soul before I take off and then take off. That's what I did. Everyone I saw was good, really damn good. MGMT was way more polished and potentially iconic than I thought they were capable of and Hot Chip surprised me. Beach House was perfect. Muse ripped a hole in the earth, as usual, it's just how they play, and you can tell people over and over that they have to see it and that it will change their lives, but until they do, you're just spitting words...

I feel like this has been the last thing I needed to get out before leaving this city for a good, long stretch. If I didn't go, didn't see this, didn't do this, something in me might have felt unsettled. Muse finished and I didn't want to be waiting in the parking lot until 4 AM so I said good bye to a couple friends, made a move, got in my car and got out of the festival. Then I stopped. I got some gas and some neon worms and was ready to hit the road when a girl sent me a long, long text. A Girl...

There was a party happening at some airport hangar 10 minutes away, Neon Party. I was going to get on the highway before I had no choice but to turn around. I think it's a fair statement to say that I have an incredible amount of love for this Girl. We were out last friday and she pulled me aside to tell me something almost exactly like, I have been around the world and know the world's incredible people and in the time I've known you...if I had to count them all on one hand...one of them would be you. Fuck you, her words. Her words. I took them and smiled, pretended I had never even considered something so far fetching and berserk on my own, which of course I pretty much do every day. She talked about meeting me around the world when I leave and seeing each other before I go and I think it's a fair statement to say that she has an incredible amount of love for me. Do I need to mention that love can mean a lot of things? So...

When I showed up at this party, I was told to go find a woman up front, tell her my name, and that I was friends with Girl. The woman looked down at her clipboard to the top sheet and the only name there was mine. I was my own list. Inside, the place was a carnival. No, really, a mini carnival. There was a ferris wheel and bumper cars and a super slide and dollar games and one of those rides that makes people puke (awesome with an open bar!), and these, breakdancing...

...at a tucked away airport in the middle of the desert. It was brilliant, fucking brilliant. I got there sometime after midnight and found Girl shortly after and ravishing, so damn ravishing that thinking back on it means this is as good a time as any to explain the depth of my personal evolution...

I'm not sure at what point it happened, but I bet I can guess who it was a result of, probably the one you can find on here around the day of my 27th birthday. I had a lot of love for someone in the world and absolutely lost them from my life. They didn't die, they just became dead to me...or I became dead to them - whichever of the two means I was the one who got spit out. That. I think I've spent a lot of time in this world feeling misunderstood, and because of that, I've spent a lot of time over the past year and change wondering how I can let someone who has had a profound impact on my life, someone who I thought could understand my life, escape my life...post being lovers. What I'm going through now is something new, and a lot of it is coming through my head because of this new Girl, because I now have to face this and the reality that I haven't been moved enough to confront this in myself since...well, since the last time a Girl cut me up.

I used to be attracted to someone and have a need to take them to bed, right then, like it was the only satisfying force in the world. Now, when I find someone I have a real connection to, I don't want to jeopardize it with anything that even approaches a sexual relationship. Sounds a little fucked up and a little cowardly and probably also has something to do with the fact that I don't want to get mixed up in anything before I leave. The idea behind all of it sounds noble or like the kind of thing that someone could lend support to if they were trying to be supportive of me. Anyway, because of all these factors, I now in this moment have an incredible girl who floats around in my life every now and again and we started out on fire and good and now it's morphed into this hilariously tragic thing where we're both highly suspicious of each other. It's terrible or I'm just being dramatic. She's the kind of girl that has guys pressing up against her all the time, everywhere she goes. The first night we were out, I saw this clearly and told myself that I would never, ever be that, because I understood it, because all I wanted was to preserve a connection. I didn't want to lose another one because one of us tried to take that extra step. Now, here comes important growth and this is tremendous for me to say, but sex is hardly important. Hardly. Hardly. Don't get stuck on that...

Bridges started to form between us at some point, and because of that I started to worry she would think I was trying to be the one thing I didn't want to be...and I think she started to worry that her kindness might be leading me on. At some point, one of us closed up...closing the other one. I bitch a lot on here about damage sustained over the years and I have to guess that this Girl could tell some of the same stories and tout the very same wealth of pained emotion. I have a feeling. So now when I see her I'm kind but curt and evasive because I'm trying to be courteous and not drive us any further apart, which is naturally driving us further apart. And still, we're both going absolutely out of our way to put ourselves in the same places at the same times, I think because we share a common faith for the ideal that we can and should know each other well for the rest of our lives. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm after. It doesn't take me long to realize that about someone when someone turns me. Last night, I stayed at this party until sometime after or around 4 and at some point, maybe on the drive home, I realized my situation's fatal flaw. I fuck women. Clearly I can't be trusted to mean these noble things I'm saying. Clearly all I can be is cunning and eventually damaging and potentially regrettable. Even though I never made a single play, even though I never had any intention of making a play, this thing between her and I that I was going to so carefully preserve is about to be gone. I'm not here to force and I'm not going to fight and I'm not going to repair. Maybe that's passive and maybe that's cowardly too but I just don't have the time or especially the desire to be convincing to anyone but myself. You're either on or you're off and I give a fuck but honestly...I can't. So I don't.

Look at me now. Absolutely one of the nights of my life. Absolutely.

I Feel Like I Need To Stop Blogging...

Because a while back when the red band poster for this movie came out, I posted it while waving my hopes for Nick Cage and the snap back of Matt Vaughn after the horrible, horrible should have been good Stardust. I mean shit, a new age Princess Bride with Claire Danes as a directorial follow up to the nearly brilliant Layer Cake - how do you fuck that up? Wait, I know, you direct Bob DeNiro to play a gay pirate. Fucking sinister, the shit this guy put onto his screen - put out of his movie. At the time, I'm pretty sure I marked it in my head as unforgivable - and this was immediately after I had been touting him in my mind as someone I would follow for years and years and years. That kind of hope.

This movie. Kick Ass. This fucking movie. I was SO excited to be in that theater, SO fucking excited to love this movie. And then something remarkable happened. It fucking sucked. Brutal. Empty. Biting off Dark Knight, regurgitating fight sequences and compositions that have been getting passed around like Turkish whores through movies and trailers over the last 3 years. I mean really, still using John Murphy? Because that scene in 28 Weeks Later where Robert Carlyle abandons his wife to get ravaged on the English countryside and his running, screaming and crying across green pastures while getting chased by about a thousand fucking zombies was totally forgettable, wasn't it? And no one ever saw 28 Weeks Later, clearly. I was going to walk out about 40 minutes in before I decided I didn't want to make a scene. Then it got worse and I didn't want to walk out at 1:10 because I heard there was some uproar when my boy Roger Ebert apologetically bashed it and gave away some sort of great spoiler about the ending...so I stayed until the end. I stayed. I was not happy.

Matt Vaughn, congratulations though, you made a movie that is going to do really well this weekend. You made a movie that people in my theater cheered for at least 3 times. IMDB loves you. Rotten Tomatoes loves you. You made a movie that this country is going to love because your heroine is 11 and says words like cunt and douche and fuck - and they'll think it's edgy and fresh and awesome. And then they'll go home and jerk off to Kim Kardashian and buy the latest Ke$ha single and I'll be on a flight to Thailand, waving goodbye.

Setting Fire To Indio...

It was sometime after their September 11th release when I saw they were in the middle of their European tour. They were coming to the states but were touring behind...BEHIND U fucking 2. I like U2 as much as the next guy...or maybe not because I lied to get out of free Rose Bowl tickets when they came to town. Anyway, it wasn't working for me that these guys could open for anyone. It shouldn't have worked for them. So what I did was buy a ticket to Berlin to see them play at the O2. The song below was from that night, the song they opened with if I recall correctly.

Absolutely worth flying around the world to see. Of course later, they announced that they would be making their way through the states, officially, so I went and caught them at the Hard Rock in Vegas sometime in December and will be heading out to the desert on Saturday to see them under the stars. Some people might look at my actions and shake their finger and say something like patience. Some people have. I just shake my head, shake my head and say something like you should have seen what I saw. 5 albums in and the states are finally opening their arms to these guys. Half the people in the crowd on Saturday are going to be walking out, unable to understand the force that just hit them. And I think that's genius, and beautiful, and I can't wait.

Can't Stop This One...

Did Music Die??

It couldn't have just been me. First quarter of the year everything artistic blows. But then now, April, that means something big this way comes. I just listened to the first track off the new LCD Soundsystem website, Dance Yrself Clean, for their new album that comes out in about a month unless you steal it, where they're streaming the entire thing. And in the time it took for me to come here, and post this, and break ground because it's been a little too long, I think it, the song, just changed my life. So now fuck me and their distributor, I'm going to have to steal it. I wish they'd just let it out when it's ready to go. I wish. Anyway, motherfucking genius.

Maybe Friday Coachella after all.

Let's Rant Quick For Now, Shall We?

I was riding my bike to the Grove yesterday, to the Rosetta Stone kiosk, because I want to learn Thai, because I don't know how long I'm going to be in Bangkok and beyond and I felt like I couldn't understand the colors and sounds of the world around me. In Los Angeles. Not anymore. I felt like, and I feel like what is coming for me is going to take my circuits and tie them fresh and raw. It's a scary and adrenal thought, leaving behind this form of comfort I've found, that I will always find, that I have to continue to battle off for the rest of my life. Bangkok is going to be hot, sweltering, and its culture is going to smash me at a thousand miles per hour. It fucking better. And if it doesn't, then it better know that I am coming to smash it. I want to get messy, lost, buried. I want to get in over my head, so far over my head and handle it. Then get over my head and handle it, and handle it, and handle it. Forever until it's no longer what I need, until I need to move off to something new, somewhere new, where the colors and sounds of Thailand go beyond understanding. Might take a while.

My heart is full. It's ready. It's time. So much time still...

So little time.