2018: January 31st 5:02 AM

I woke up with an 'old' MIA song in my head so I thought I'd lead with it here:



Since the week began I have felt unusually sleep deprived and thus, I have not gotten much writing done. Interestingly enough though, the sleep-starved brain may not work very well at hammering out the actual interconenctive tissue of Prose itself, yet it seems remarkably capable in figuring out the foundation work underneath the Prose. Yesterday, I once again overcame a 'big picture' problem just by thinking about it. I know that sounds a bit obvious, but it's not; previously I've always written my way into structure. It feels like an ENORMOUS accomplishment to be hashing major plot points beforehand. I've never been too much on outlining but this is a bit different and doesn't make the actual writing process feel stodgy once I dig into it.

Playlist yesterday looks something like this:

Zen Guerilla - Positronic Raygun
The Casket Lottery - Real Fear
The Soft Moon - Zeroes
Curtis Harding - Face Your Fear
Tuneyards - I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life
Real Estate - Days
Glass Animals - How To Be a Human Being
Zen Guerilla - Trance States in Tongues

And yeah, I'm really digging The Casket Lottery. They're playing in Irvine at Chain Reaction on a Friday sometime in the spring and I'm almost definitely going to go. Oh! Also, I scored tickets to see Preoccupations at The Echo in May. Very excited about that.

Card of the day:

Again? Okay, that could be a good thing.

I had not realized Tuneyards third record had been released - I thought I read March originally - and as soon as I caught wind of it I added it in Apple Music and dug in. Once again they blow my mind. Merrill and company's sophomore release Nikki Nack claimed my number one album of the year in 2014 and after one listen I can already tell that is not outside the realm of possibility for I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life. Great title, too.

Track 6, Colonizer is my favorite track on the new album (thus far) but I can't find a good version to embed here so I'll go with the video they've released for album opener Heart Attack:

2018: January 30th 6:26 AM

I once again began the day in silent contemplation of my current writing project and I am happy to say, after a vexing and truncated writing session last night I smashed my problems this morning. Used the Olympus - let's call her Diane from now on, for obvious reasons - to record it all and now I'll transcribe it, let it stew for a few hours and try and map it on lunch. To reward myself I spent the later half of my commute listening to my two favorite tracks off Zen Guerilla's Positronic Raygun album from 1997, the second because I always lust for this track when Spring kicks in, and in truly baffling Southern California fashion, it's spring ladies and gentlemen. The first because I wanted something to zone out to in order to pull my thoughts out of the 'writing soup' they'd been in:





To get the full effect of Frequency Out you really need to do Healing in the Water, 2000 Watts over the South Side and then Frequency Out, but I figured two tracks as an intro here was already a bit cumbersome. The entire album is online and I can't recommend it or Zen Guerrilla in general enough;  these guys were one of the best live bands I've ever seen - and I've seen a lot of bands live. Miss these guys. Miss the people Healing in the Water reminds me of, too. That's a different post though, one that I may have already put on here somewhere in the murky aeythers of the past.


Card of the day:

I've got nothing on this card in my Thoth Grimoire and I'm thinking now maybe that's why I have money but no gain - I don't know it, I haven't spent the time getting to know what it is to truly Gain. Or maybe that's a little new age. Not sure. More coffee please.

Yesterday's playlist looks like this:

The Knife - Shaking the Habitual
Teenage Wrist - Chrome Neon Jesus (just the three pre-release tracks currently available)
Teenage Wrist - Dazed EP
The Casket Lottery - Real Fear
Viet Cong - Eponymous
Sleigh Bells - Kid Kruschev
Ministry - Animositisomina
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Wrong Creatures
Deafheaven - Sunbather

A little Roxy Music off their debut in there somewhere too.

Teenage Wrist is a band my good friend Jacob told me about. They are Incredible:



The Casket Lottery are an Los Angeles band the sound guy at The Love Song bar told me about last week - I added their album Real Fear that night so I wouldn't forget it but didn't have a chance to listen to it until yesterday. They are also fantastic and not at all what I expected based on the context of the conversation they were originally brought up in and what the name/cover image might suggest. Let's all say thank you for artists still willing to defy expectations.