In my head upon waking. Waking, such absolute misery to crawl from my bed this cold, (relatively) California morning...
Not nearly enough sleep. My after-work nap yesterday set my sleep back and I didn't knock out until almost midnight. Just about 4.5 hours later I've hit all the snoozes I can and crawl from bed, feed the cats and put on an extra strong pot of coffee, put fingertips to these keys to make these words. How oh how am I going to manage to work 8 or 9 hours, drive 45-60 to Hollywood, come home around 10 and NOT be brain dead?
The new comic from Ales Kot, Danijel Zezelj, and Jordie Bellaire is Days of Hate; I picked issue #1 up on a whim and it's fantastic. And really, sadly relevant. Also, they have a super accurate visual depiction of DTLA on page 3 - looks like Bellaire was standing where I was two weeks ago coming out of the Converge concert at the Regent.
New edition of Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying went up yesterday, you can read it HERE.
Yesterday's playlist:
Deftones - Koi No Yokan
Mono and The Ocean - Transcendental EP
Mastodon - Emperor of Sand
The Politics of Punk (Disc 6)
Joy Division - Closer
The Afghan Whigs - In Spades
Sade - iTunes Essentials
Lustmord - The Dark Places of the Earth
Card of the day:
From my Grimoire: "Add one to nine and perfect elemental alignment occurs (perfect in nature - the other end of the balanced path from The Crown). One big word: Culmination."
So what does that mean as a daily draw? You kidding? With my brain like this I can't even begin to wrap my head around it.
Woke up with this one in my head today, probably because I listened to the album it's on - Teenage Wrist's Dazed EP about a half a half dozen times last night. At least.
Such a big, fuzzy neon dream of an album. Thanks to Jacob again for introducing me to this great band that has an album coming out in March. You can pre-order it HERE.
Playlist from yesterday:
The Fixx - Reach the Beach
ZZ Top - Tres Hombres
Nektar - A Tab in the Ocean
Odonis Odonis - Post Plague
The Jesus Lizard - Down
Teenage Wrist - Dazed E.P.
Card of the day:
Emotional deluge, use intellect and Will to prevent being drowned. Interesting... a few words on these daily draws. Events yesterday, Wednesday the 7th lined-up directly with two repetitive pulls that culminated the Wednesday before, on January 31st. What's the grid system at work here, or is there one? Well, we'll see. That's why I've shifted this blog into this 'journaling' paradigm - looking for patterns in the grid of chaos that, even though we do all we can to refute the fact, defines our existences. Hopefully I will find some and learn a way to 'hack' the graphs and grids I make from those patterns.
Yesterday I indeed stopped to buy my comics. TWD did not disappoint, but I haven't read Papergirls yet. Why? Well, I had an abortive attempt at my daily words, and after that I didn't have much time for reading, and this was unexpected but I ended up buying my first current Batman comic since Grant Morrison's run ended in 2013 and I was super excited to dive in. Why? What could make me jump into a Batman comic? Three words:
Sean. Gordon. Murphy. Look at this cover:
It's ultra rare to impossible for art to convince me to read a book, in Murphy's case it's a combination of his art and the fact that he can spin one hell of a yarn. Punk Rock Jesus is still one of my all-time favorites. One issue into White Knight and I don't quite have the lay of the land yet, but A) it's stand alone continuity and B) it's NOT the tired iterations of Batman and Joker we're used to being regurgitated every few years, although it starts there and moves out in what I believe is virgin territory for the characters from there. Either way, I'm in for all eight issues (five are out so far).
Wednesdays are typically Comics-and-Beer days, where I extend my arduous sojourn home on the 405 by stopping at The Comic Bug and then Total Wine. I don't always stop for comics - it depends on what came out and if I can spare the time. That said, I always stop when these hit the stands:
Look at that Paper Girls cover - GORGEOUS!
Forfeited my daily words yesterday in favor of spending hours after work making space on my computer, which with a max storage of 500 gigs only had a little over 5 left. Starts to act wonky under 20, and I can't have that. So I had to delete a lot of music. This wasn't the hardest thing in the world - Apple Music means it's all right at my fingertips anyway. HOWEVER, it's interesting to note how not too long ago I had to purge CDs and now its digital - reminds me of how email has become every bit as cumbersome and annoying as snail mail, more so actually, because most outlets have given up on snail service. But these comparisons/juxtapositions show how we've transitioned our lives so well into the digital realm only to have it essentially take on all the characteristics of the tactile one. Well, maybe not all, but many. Also, I'm a bit of a librarian when it comes to music, so the purge was able to free a lot of space without really lacing into anything I actively listen to or even what I keep on deck at all times. That Anthony Stewart Head album? Well, it's awesome that he made it but I'm never going to listen to it again, and if I want to, I'm sure its a keystroke or two away. That said:
Playlist from the 6th:
Killing Joke - Eponymous debut
Anthrax - Worship Music
Sam Cooke - One Night Stand! Live at the Harlem Square Club
Faith No More - Angel Dust
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - The Good Son
Jucifer - I Name You Destroyer
Brian Eno - Here Come the Warm Jets
David Bowie - Heroes
Sade - Greatest Hits
Lustmord - Dark Places of the Earth
Card of the day:
Ah, so I'm going on a journey, am I? Maybe today's sojourn for imbibes and reading material will take longer than I expected. Or maybe one of my projects is about to ramp up.
I didn't know this existed until just now. In the midst of a binge on Eno's Here Come the Warm Jets I set out to find a youtube video for Needles in the Camel's Eye and found this in the search results:
And the original:
No matter who is singing it, this song makes me love life.
It's been interesting to keep track of what music I wake up with in my head:
Playlist from the 5th:
Deftones - Koi No Yokan
Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I Am
Black Sabbath - Eponymous
Childish Gambino - Because the Internet
The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicenter
Godflesh - Streetcleaner Live at Roadburn 1989
Twin Peaks Playlist: Ssn 3 and Beyond ST
Bells into Machines - Your Crime Scene E.P.
Opeth - Still Life
Interesting to note that all of these except Arctic Monkeys, Sabbath and Devil's Blood were truncated listens; I had a distracting day yesterday and couldn't find music that quite fit my mindset, so I jumped around a lot.
The Twin Peaks playlist is of my own devising, something I assembled only a couple weeks into the airing of last years third season, before the OSTs came out. There's Chromatics, a Lynch/John Neff track from Blue Bob that wasn't used in the show but fits aesthetically, and - among other things - a fan's slowed down version of Muddy Magnolia's American Woman that I actually prefer to the one on the score:
Card of the day:
Blocked/thwarted Will. Can save time and energy by knowing what not to pursue.
Woke up repeatedly with this little ditty in my head:
So a new Cloverfield hit Netflix last night - awesome! I didn't have time to watch it before bed but I'll remedy that this week. Trailer makes it look as though it may tie into at least one of the others, which I'd love.
There's a video I watched last year I'll have to post on here at some point, explains how the other two are tied together by an online ARG. Really interesting.
Playlist yesterday:
Sam Cooke: One Night Stand! Live at the Harlem Square Club (thanks Sonny!)
A Place to Bury Strangers - Never Coming Back single (pre-release track for upcoming album)
ttt (Crosses) - Eponymous
Soul Coughing - Ruby Vroom
ZZ Top - Tres Hombres (about five times in a row)
U2 - War
Worm is Green - Automagic
Joy Division - Closer
Card of the day:
The fiery aspect of Fire; purest manifestation of Fire in the deck - strength but unchecked can be imbalanced and disastrous. This tells me that either my passion, intuition or creative energy (I'm limiting interpretations based on my current situations/temperament) may be flustered and threaten to boil over today. Coincidence I'm heading back to work after three days off? Maybe, maybe not. My gig is fairly low maintenance, when you adjust to a certain, background-radiation level of stress that is probably common to many jobs, so I also wonder if this is a nod toward later in the day when I write; there are currently two projects fighting for space in my head and that can sometimes lead to an over exuberance that can grind productivity to a confused halt.
The final of our three beautiful mornings sleeping late. It's been much-needed and glorious. Now that I'm up and moving - after spending the last two hours resuming my original issue-by-issue re-read of Preacher I left hanging back in late August - I'm starting our musical day with Sam Cooke's One Night Stand! Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963, which Sonny chose for this past week's edition of The Joup Friday Album.
Playlist from yesterday looks like this:
Lacey Sturm - Life Screams
Shellac - 1000 Hurts
A Place to Bury Strangers - Exploding Head
Faith No More - Angel Dust
Deafheaven - New Bermuda
Glass Animals - How to be a Human Being
Card of the day:
In my mind, one of the most beautiful cards in Lady Freida Harris's deck stacked with nothing but beautiful cards, its mere appearance a good 'omen'.
"Create unto and within yourself a Universe, shaped of your strengths and built on your accomplishments as foundation."
I'll take that as a nod that I have earned my day of total rest. It's movies, a living room fort with my Love and relaxation, because tomorrow it's back to the grind.
Another late morning spent laying in bed. SO nice. K is kicking off our musical day with Lacey Sturm's solo record from 2016:
Playlist yesterday looked like this:
Viet Cong - Eponymous
Etta James - Eponymous
The Doors - LA Woman
Frank Sinatra - In the Wee Small Hours
Steve Morse - The Mind's Eye OST
Swans - The Glowing Man (disc 2)
Viet Cong - Eponymous
The Knife - Shaking the Habitual
Huey Lewis and the News - Sports
I heeded the Prince of Wands and absolutely killed it on my daily words. Almost done.
Card of the day:
The Penetrating Wand; the Spark of Essence.Skill and Wisdom. Can point to the essence or involvement of Magick.
Beginning the first of three days off with some Etta:
It's nice to wake up leisurely, lay in bed with the one you Love and read. I finished Han King's The Vegetarian - ranked it with four out of five stars on Goodreads. The prose itself was outstanding, especially in the third section of the book, which is sort of three short stories with characters that thread them together into a novel. I would be curious to read more by Han King, and perhaps I will do so, however, my to-read pile is currently out of control. For now I'm going to duck back into Thomas Ligotti's Songs of a Dead Dreamer/Grimscribe, which I started at the beginning of the year while I was in Chicago and, truthfully, am finding a little difficult to stick through. My one book from last year that still lingers at 25 % read is, similarly, Ramsey Campbell's Alone with the Horrors. It's not short story anthologies I have an issue sticking with per say, but instead the tone of both Ligotti and Campbell's work. No, they're not "Too Dark", there's just something in each that leaves me a bit flat. Perhaps my expectations for Ligotti were a tad high - this is the first of his works I've read, and knowing he was a major influence on True Detective Ssn 1 excited the hell out of me. I loved that season and - despite hating the ending - its tone is one of my favorites ever, and it's not that I expected or even wanted Ligotti's work to be similar, but I wasn't expecting the slightly truncated manner in which he sometimes works. I'm half way through Songs of a Dead Dreamer and although the first few stories hit me very hard, as I go deeper I feel a certain unfinished or rushed quality to some of them, the best example of which is The Lost Art of Twilight, which felt extremely rushed, as if the author had no idea how to pay-off what he had so carefully set up. Maybe I'm simply missing something, or maybe not, this is merely my perception at this point.
So if I'm going to pick at Ligotti's short stories over the course of the next few months, using one or two as palate cleansers between longer works, I need something as my next main read. Nick Cave's And the Ass Saw the Angel is on deck, however K gifted me a copy of this little gem last night for our two-year anniversary and I'm already chomping at the bit to go through it, even though it will inevitably lead to that to-read pile growing exponentially.
"There are simply too many books to read, whatever shall I do?" This, ladies and germs, is the definition of First World Problems. We live amazing lives folks, don't take them for granted.
Play list from yesterday:
Swans - Glowing Man
ttt (Crosses) - Eponymous
Mastodon - Emperor of Sand
Godflesh - A World Lit Only by Fire
The Kills - Midnight Boom
Drove up to Hollywood last night and attended a limited screening of Robert Mockler's Like Me. I posted the trailer a few days ago but here it is again; I loved this flick. The characters are hard to like but the journey they take is one big dig on social media culture - or lack thereof - and the method by which the film is assembled is gorgeous, reminding me of Harmony Korine for sure. To me that's a good thing. And of course Larry Fessenden is in it, and I generally like everything he is associated with.
Card of the day:
This one shows up inverted; I've never placed a lot of weight on card inversion, especially in single card draws. There's something to be said for their interpretation when they're juxtaposed with other cards in a spread, but alone, it's kind of just the card to me.
There's nothing in my Grimoire about this one so what do we know? Well, this is the Airy-aspect of Fire; look at the movement in the card - rushing forward, so we're talking motivation, movement, doing. Interesting then that I'm intent on doing nothing but relaxing for the next three days. Well, that's not entirely true, we have some social events planned, and I had wanted to write each day, even if just to do these posts and get in my daily words, which could totally be the aspect of the weekend that I brush off. So I'll interpret drawing this card as sound advice not to do that.
Last night I absolutely killed the penultimate scene in my current writing project. It felt great. Today - if I have a chance - I'll move into the climax. This is all still just first pass, rough draft but it's still major progress. Once I write the climax and finale, I'll go back and add in a few chapters that I've come up with to flesh certain characters or ideas out - stuff I didn't know we were going to need until construction of the ongoing continuity revealed their necessity to me. One is probably a scene with Truby's "Half-man", although we intend to turn that on its ear a bit. After that I'll run everything through Grammarly, then tidy up and send it to Keller, who will read and add concepts/scenes/edits accordingly. Our deadline is in April - Thursday the 12th to be exact. Which is serendipitous indeed...
Started my musical day with Track #3 on Swans' 2016 release The Glowing Man. This is the title track and it's just fantastic. There's a real sense that Michael Gira's sound lodge has been influenced by the doors on this one, and after all the spacey effulgence that comprises the roughly the first half of the track, listen for the sheer awesomeness that Gira and company pull out at around the 15 minute mark. Mmmm-mmm!
Playlist for yesterday looks like this:
Zen Guerilla - Positronic Raygun
Nevermen - Eponymous
Faith No More - Angel Dust
Glass Animals - How to be a Human Being
Tuneyards - I Can Feel You Creep into my Private Life
Zen Guerilla - Positron Raygun
The Horrors - Primary Colours
Deafheaven - Sunbather
ttt (Crosses) Eponymous
Card of the day is The Priestess:
"The Will (Womb) that takes the Magus' spark (seed) and gives it form."
Can denote change/fluctuation; governed by gracious or pure influences.
The active difference between this and the preceding card in the deck's Major Arcana, The Magus, is that the Magus generates their own power, the Priestess taps into the power of the Universe.
Note the grid - I liken the difference outlined in that last sentence as the difference between so-called High Magick and Chaos Magick, the school I have always identified the most with. Chaos Magick is hacking the operating system or grid of reality. And there's that grid...
Looking forward to Sonny's Joup Friday Album tomorrow. In the meantime, I'll be posting the second installment of my "Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying later today. This week's song topic? Fighting.
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:
