Jor Fon -BoodGye

END

Brian, I am sorry that I didn't know you as well as I'd have liked to. I remember what I knew of you very well. You were unremittingly kind and always had a very earnest, bright smile to spare for me, even when your words were quiet and few. I remember seeing your art and thinking that someday I'd probably see it hung on a wall in a gallery, or, more likely, see a photo in the newspaper depicting it hanging on a wall in a gallery. Your art tended to reflect you and gave me the impression that I knew you better than I did.

When my father died, the first friend I called was Seth, who was for his own reasons unable to respond as I needed him to. The second friend I called was Nate, and not because he was secondary to me, but because I didn't wish to give him the weight of another loss to deal with, even if it was not his loss. He had known my father. Everyone had, since my parents welcomed my friends to our house at all hours. My father liked to come and tell everyone the worst and most controversial jokes that his students had told him, to make them laugh, and if they didn't laugh loud enough, my mother would compensate by laughing louder. Sometimes my father would even subject you and my other friends to his music in the hopes of educating you, although you all and I certainly gave him plenty of our own to hear, and he took be amused or simply bemused by. Anyway, you were all welcome, and you liked my family, and we liked you.

Nate knew what to do. He came right away to the hospital and held my hand as I wept. The next day, he brought you to my house, and you asked what the two of you could do. I said, "Come with me to the funeral and sit with me and my mom. I need you all there." Brian, you came dressed like a dandy in your magenta suit and hat, with the black carnation pinned to the lapel. You were somber without wearing black. You were striking and creative even then. You hugged me, my mother, my uncle, my father's best friend, everyone. Everyone got time and words of condolence. You put your heart out there. I didn't know you well, but it meant a lot that you were the one Nate turned to to help him deal with what that must have stirred up for him. Nate is a very good judge of character, so I feel that I know you more because of his high opinion of you.

You were also the one who came to lie beside me on Nate's floor when we are were drunk on wine together, saying, "Is this being drunk, then? I've never been drunk before..." You giggled, and I smiled. You turned an innocent face to the world and always showed interest in what you didn't already know, even something so mundane as getting punchy on wine.

You had just moved to Kansas City not too long before with your girlfriend Heather when I was planning my birthday party. It had been a while since I or any of us had seen you. Brian, I am so sorry I forgot to invite you. And I wish that I had. That was the night you were killed, shot to death by a mugger when you were taking out your wallet to give it to him and he thought you were pulling a gun. I thought for so long about how me inviting you might have saved your life. I am so sorry I forgot about you when I could have changed that. But maybe I couldn't have changed that. We'll never know. I will always wonder, and I will always remember your face as you turned it to me to smile and say, "That's interesting! I hadn't known that."

Metallica

Timeless Ninny poo

Aohn Janderson

I used to work in a pizza place. In the mornings I opened the store for the lunch rush with a retired Southwestern Bell employee named Ron. He used to sing this song in the mornings - I never liked it, but he sang it exactly the way John Anderson sings it and somehow managed to sound exactly like him as well. After I quit working at the pizza place I ran into him a few times and we became friends on Facebook, but we really lost touch.

Then one day, out of the blue, he just showed up at my house. We had been grocery shopping and had just returned home and Ron pulled up in his big grey truck, smoking a cigar (he would go on long drives to hide his smoking habit from his wife). It was a random happenstance - he'd just happened to be driving by, didn't know that we lived there. But it seemed like it wasn't random, for some reason. Ron already knew the older kids, they'd met while we were working together, but he had never seen the baby. She was still a baby at the time, and Ron smiled in his exaggerated, toothy way. Then he say goodbye and drove off. A month later I heard he died. Didn't get to make it to the funeral.

Ron loved dogs. And he loved children. And he loved country music. And he loved talking to people. And he loved it when things at the lunch counter ran smoothly. He didn't really mind when they didn't (which, due to my, um, unprepared ((read: hungover)) state, was often), and I was lucky to know him.

Thank you Ron.

Love,
Jack.

Week 52 Rules

Friends: Today marks the almost one year anniversary of the birth of this blog. It also, coincidentally, marks the one year anniversary of the last full day the man that inspired this blog, Jon Ashline, drummer and vocalist for The Screamin' Mee-Mee's, was alive. I don't know if I told any of you this, but this blog was started as a tribute to his memory, and it feels like an appropriate time to end it. We have provided Mr Ashline, and his spirit if it is still out there, with almost a year worth of great music to enjoy. A new song every day of the week. I didn't know Jon well, I considered him a friend but doubt he thought of me in the same way, but I did know him well enough to know that a present like this would be something he would appreciate.

Your last assignment is to post something for a friend that has passed on. Let's define "friend" loosely - family members, acquaintances, people you hardly knew, Kurt Cobain, whatever. I don't want this to be a painful thing, instead I'd like it to be joyful, celebratory, something to help us all just kind of move on, I guess. You don't have to name the friend you're dedicating the song to, but I would like to read something about the person if you feel so inclined to write something. I think Jon would too. 

I can't thank all of you enough in helping me with this project. Even Krista, who flaked and passed out on the whole thing, thanks for at least having an interest. I love you all, even when you're late for work (Kyanimal).

Thank you.

Jack.  

Arlo's Theme

lipopolysaccharide.

levels

If you heard this song every day for a month at Thai beach bars, you'd dug it too.

Gaëtan Roussel -- "Dis-moi encore que tu m'aimes"

"Dis-moi encore que tu m'aimes" = tell me again that you love me. I'll spare you my blablabla this week because children don't read.

Saul Pimon

Week 51 Rules

Contributors:

On October 25 of this year, our friend Kyanimal, who is a good person, welcomed a new addition to his family. Kyanimal hasn't posted in a few weeks because he's been a bit, well, distracted, I suppose is the best way to describe it. 

We've all become really good at this game over the last year. Let's welcome his new baby into the world with style. 

Post something that makes you feel good. 

Only one rule: 

This is for a child - no obscenities.

PS: Our work here is almost done.  

Goo Goo Muck

You better duck when I show up.

A Response to Ms Honey Bear

@Thea: yr-l#st-post====+ ma+++de me of ths per
                                                                               for
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                       ThnkUU and ariga
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Ped Rouse Hainters

Cill Ballahan (jcakp covers for Kyanimal)

The part about the doll. The part about the doll.

The Misfits!

Hands 2 Hold U Down

This song has given me the chills every time I've listened to it. For your perusal, here are the lyrics, which appear to be written by a clinically depressed, lovestruck 20-something who thinks most things are "amazing" when she is not crying and listening to the soundtrack to "Purple Rain:"

"2 HANDS 2 HOLD U DOWN )) yrs + mine )) life is amazin )) yr amazin

2 HANDS )) ive got U now )) dont u ever die )) life is amazin )) yr amazin

werent we sad from tha start?

black earth runs inside my heart

runs deep inside U

run in2 tha flame"

This song is scary because it evokes what I feel when I am starting to fall in love with someone; that feeling of hope that you will be happy, of desire for someone whose flaws you can't see, that fear of fucking everything up and losing someone whom you'd never want to lose, and of losing your hopes and joy and desire along with them. I know that the song is sexy and provocative, but I can't help but feel its coldness, too. I think that the songwriters very deliberately juxtaposed rather romantic, sexy lyrics, with alienating, alienated music -- fuzzed-out synths, distorted bass and vocals, and a vocal track that sounds so distant from the rest of the song -- to create tension and discomfort. However, I wonder if it isn't true that a lot of other love songs deal in fear, anxiety, and desperation anyway, even ones that aren't trying to create an uncomfortable ambiance. I am thinking of Motown songs in particular, for some reason. "Baby, I need your loving. Got to have all your loving." "Stop, in the name of love, before you break my heart." "Why do you build me up, buttercup, just to let me down?" Love is a place where we make ourselves fragile, where the vulnerability of even the most brutish individual is revealed. Love is a mental and emotional mode of joy and reassurance, but it is also often one that invites rampant insecurity. Love is scary.

I am pretty easily scared, though, to be fair. Those of you who know me know that I've had severe problems with depression and anxiety since I was a child. I was diagnosed with bipolar illness at age 13, but I'm not lucky enough to be someone who gets hypomania or mania. I have had five manic episodes in my life and countless depressions. These days, I am not depressed much anymore, except for when it's dark outside a lot (thanks, Seasonal Affective Disorder. SAD, ha ha!) or I have things in my life making me sad, like losses, because I take medications, exercise, and go to therapy. But I am afraid that I was not always an easy person to know, especially in my teens. While I am not as prone to depression as I was then, or as anxious, I can still get very anxious around certain types of new challenges.  Those of you who don't know me can imagine what it must be like to know someone who has these problems, who is always a bit more nervous and jumpy than other people over something simple like taking an exam, driving to a new place for the first time, or going to a party and meeting new people. Or someone who sometimes looks physically weighed down with concerns, or whose blank face makes them stand out of a room of people with dynamic, laughing smiles and animated, sparkling eyes, a person who cries if a certain song comes on the radio. You can imagine that this complicates love for people like me at least as much as it complicates simpler things.

As song this song shows, falling in love (or just a good day) can let you sort of forget or conceal your disposition toward nervousness; life can be amazing. People like me don't always show the world how nervous we are. We disguise our nervousness in normalcy, just as this song disguises it with the format of a song about love and sex. We smile brightly and tell jokes to compensate, tell everyone what we're happy about, insist that we never should have had that last cup of coffee. However, what you don't get to see is the worst of our anxiety, because when it's at its worst, we are hiding and not showing anything of ourselves to anyone else. Avoidant behavior characterizes anxiety as much as feeling worried does. Isolating yourself, not talking to friends and other people who love you, procrastinating, and leaving places when you're uncomfortable are the most common "negative symptoms" that characterize anxiety disorder. (In the lingo of psychiatry, negative symptoms represent the stuff that people with psychiatric disorders stop doing. These are usually things that most healthy and functional people do to have a relatively normal life, such as eating, sleeping, working, going out, bathing, etc. Positive symptoms are things like feeling worried, feeling depressed, auditory hallucinations, delusions, feeling the urge to do, then doing compulsive behaviors like checking or counting, etc.) 

Perhaps you think it's weird that I think this song is about anxiety and you didn't notice that on first listen. However, for me, the negative symptoms of my anxiety are always the ones that I believe go unnoticed, because they are an absence of action rather than me doing something weird that will be noticed. Believing that no one sees my anguish both comforts me, because it allows me to think I'm passing as a normal person, yet it also alienates me, because I think that my invisible unhappiness can never be acknowledged and understood by another person. I do the same thing with my depression. I will hide it from everyone if I can, because I am ashamed that I can't just shake it and be free of its affliction. For me, the people I love are sometimes the ones from whom I most wish to conceal my anxiety and depression, because I don't wish to burden them or make them worry about me. However, I usually end up telling them, because I trust them and don't want to hide anything from them. I try to allow myself to be vulnerable.

This song's vulnerability is arresting. The gauzy, somewhat hollow-sounding, half-whispered words "you're amazing" are like what you'd say while half-asleep in your lover's arms. "Don't you ever die" is a plea for the ephemeral, formless feeling of perfect love to reify itself and become something substantial that we can keep in our grasp. It is a wistful wish for a moment to crystallize, arrest itself, become an insect trapped in a drop of solidifying amber, a gem to slip into our pocket. The vocals in the background, slowed down to an unearthly timbre and drawl, sound like a woman crying; they repeat the plea like La Llorona, a weeping ghost calling a soul back to life and love rather than to the realm of death. Please, don't make me lose you. Please, don't let me fuck this up. I'm still sad sometimes, but I've got you, and you're amazing. You are helping me forget how sad I am, and I'm so nervous and scared that you will leave me because I did something wrong, and then I'll be sad because you're gone, and because I'm alone again. This song is confrontational, in a way, because it allows fear and anxiety to enter the conversation, but not to suck all the air from the room and extinguish the flame. It is not an avoidant song, even though it deals with anxiety in its bleak, brittle soundscape and by pleading "don't you ever die."

This could be me projecting my own tendency to become anxious about fucking up good things when I've got them, of course. We all bring our own subjectivity to every task, including interpreting music and texts. This song is vulnerable, but is it as scared/scary as it sounds to me? I am perfectly aware that I have fucked up good things in the past, and that this song could have been sung to me, and it scares me that I was so inwardly focused and selfish in my depression and anxiety that my friends, lovers, and family members would think to me, "Don't die. Please, don't die." I left my half-conscious body for my parents to find after overdosing on medicines. I tried this two weeks before my best friend and I were going to see Sepultura, but mainly thought better of it because it would suck to die without seeing Sepultura with my best friend, so I claimed I'd made a mistake so I could be sent home. We went to the concert, then a week later, I did it again. I didn't think of how upsetting this would have been for my best friend, or my parents, or for other friends and family, or for the school nurse who had to help me call 911 the first time. I didn't imagine how my father, who found his father's body after his suicide in 1971, might have been anguished by my inability to hang on to my life in the face of depression, anxiety, severe bullying at school, and the other, more usual problems of being an immature teenager (keep in mind that I was skipped two years in school, and so was a 12-year-old child facing the older-kid drama of high school during my freshman year).

I couldn't have told you that life was amazing when I was 15. I never made a real and consistent secret of my suicidal depression and paralyzing anxiety to the people closest to me, blithely unaware of how this probably terrified them because they knew I had not been afraid to try to end my life before. It scares and saddens me that I was so blind as a teenager not to understand how I was not only hurting myself. It scares me to think I simply tried to avoid my life without understanding what losing me would mean to the people I loved, to know how they'd have tried to hang on to my hand and beg me not to die, if I'd not hidden myself and my agony from them, afraid to burden them, until I couldn't handle it by myself anymore.

Yes, I'm not suicidal anymore. Life is pretty amazing. I deal with my sadness in part with music, by letting others sing my terror out for me, and by writing about what's on my mind rather than stuffing it down. I haven't made a suicide attempt or been in a psychiatric hospital since I was 17. But I'm still sad and nervous. I'm also afraid that anyone who knows that, who knows what I did, will automatically not love me. To me, the most terrifying part of love is not only allowing myself to be vulnerable and to trust a new person, but to "run into the flame" -- to put aside my fears, and go ahead and try to love and be loved. I doubt sometimes that I am good enough to love and be loved. After all, my awareness of every mistake I ever made in previous relationships haunts me. The egregious things I did as a suicidally depressed teenager, acting as though not even the purest love from the kindest and most devoted people could retain me from exiting my then-miserable existence... well, those things appall me now if I think about them for a while. 

I worry that even if "I've got (someone) now," I am really just still the person who made those mistakes, even if I don't make the same kind of mistakes, or on the same scale. It scares me to think that no matter how much I love someone, I am going to make some kind of mistake, because people do that. I will be too involved with my work. I will forget something he asks me to do. I will be too nervous and that will be off-putting. People tend to make mistakes from time to time, but I fear that I will make a more serious mistake that will hurt someone or disgust someone. I fear that they will not forgive me, and that they will disappear. I am scared to simply trust that someone who loves me will forgive me, and I'm scared to run into the flame holding their hand. I have been sad from the start and now I have to believe that someone could forgive me for my sadness and tendency to be human. That is easier said than done. This song makes it sound easy if you just look at the words, but the way it sounds sad and cold betrays insecurity and the fear of letting go and trusting.

Well, sorry, everyone. I hope that everyone I hurt before has forgiven me by now. I'm really not that scary these days, anyway. However, this song reminds me that the kernel of terror nestled in the black earth of my heart, that germ of unquiet doubt longing to push out a stem toward the sun, still lives within me. It reminds me that to be happy, I must somehow acknowledge it while not letting it beleaguer me with its incessant whirl of anxiety. I must not allow myself to avoid my chance to be happy. This song calls forth my greatest fears, actually. I'm scared of fucking up good things that make me happy. But generally, I am happy. I just can hear the unhappiness and happiness within this song because I feel both. That duality is also scary. 

I really hope that you aren't as scared by this song as I am. I think that White Ring made a masterful album, but I hope they are happier people than their music would lead you to believe.

Uh... Happy Halloween! Boo! Etc.

Slliot Emith

The image of the sailor and the boy in the first verse has always freaked me out.

Week 50 Rules

Contributors: Same as last week. Scary shit.