davezini-blog

[davezini-blog]

Pt.10pt.3- “Purple Balls”

Mendocino, CA

It was day 2 at the hippie fest in Mendo. With the sun riding hot and high, I piled around under the brim of the saint Jimmy's father's leather-brimmed hat, Canon akimbo, looking fly, looking for a fix, a shot, a story; SOMETHING to propitiate my heart's burning, lofty desire. I had shaken off the wounds of the night previous, ascribed to my fear and failure to get the shots necessary to fit the vision for my film.

Tough stuff, Gonzo journalism.

But at this point I was feeling pretty good. Cruising around on a hit of speed (or in the parlance of our time, “adderall”) and a few “Kent Special” daiquiris, my disposition amiable and camera hand slight.

I had just been down at the river getting shots of the nude colony; rubbing clay over naked body, stacking rocks, desensitizing their children. Everybody feeling high in the sunshine.

My squad walked up to a stage blaring some fast paced, heady mumbo jumbo. I didn't hesitate to begin my heehaw stomp, in my mind buttering up the clientele before rolling the camera.

Snapping my vision from object to person to fashion to beauty to physical attributes to facial features, I decided to interrupt a zealous young photographer shooting on a full frame Canon. Sara was her name, and I implored her to try out my Pentax lens on her camera. We swapped, and evidently many photographers these days don't know how to manually program the exposure or even focus without the automatic technology that makes life so easy, that it makes me sick.

After some explanation, some fucking around with her lens, and some description of the project that I was working on, I apparently purported myself as a learned videographer with much prowess.

She suggested that I take a trip over to the media tent and cop a press badge, that they're cool and super lax with that sort of thing. I dealt yet another “nice to meet you, see you around” along with the lascivious grin that I've learned to tack on for any and all future opportunities, and headed towards the media tent.

They welcomed me in, said, “Come on around, we'll get you onboarded”. Chill enough. I had to go and start running my jaw. My vision. This, that, I live in LA. Machine gun funk. Savant mastery.

Mid sentence I locked eyes with a little blonde gal wielding a Mark 5D with shotgun mic up top. I lost interest in Sapphir, whom I was talking to (the head of the media collaboration, and who seemed quite interested in me and what I was doing), and asked the pretty little videographer if she has any more shotgun mics lying around and, if the cosmos please, that I could potentially buy or borrow one.

In retrospect, it's jarring to me that I hadn't the faintest damn for the girl when she stopped me once more walking out of the tent with my fresh media badge. We shot a little more shit, and maybe possibly I made an impression.

But for all god-fucking intensive purposes, when I ran into her the last night, coming up on my ecstasy cocktail, and started seeing more what she was all about, I was in high heaven.

We popped squats, that is, took seats on the lawn together 'neath the gallant oak trees bouncing unworldly patterns from the lights of the stage. There was rapport, and neither was feeling resistant to the rapturous wandering stigmatisms of faith and belonging.

There was good intent and purpose; we were gleaming. I taking photos of her, and her, me- bouncing around, laughing, touching, talking about fuck-whatever inspiring shit and pressing issues, not an ounce of flimflam, quackery, or fraud.

Hand in hand, we found our way back to her home on wheels- a stylin' ole van outfitted with a bed, stove, wardrobe, gas pedal and wheel. The works. Things going well. Splendid.

My what-seemed-to-be magic score of the weekend, perhaps of a lifetime (because I live in the moment), told me she didn't fancy the cigarette breath. She tended to an organic salad while I jogged back to homebase to grip a toothbrush and brush my breath clean, my stiffy near rupturing the crotch of my (Jimmy's, rather) bitchin' paisley pants.

Upon my quixotic return, we reached the consensus to go and lay 'neath the open air tent known as the Nectar Temple. I'd have liked to have cashed in in the van.

So we went. We laid. We kissed and I rubbed her clit a little bit. I groped her entire body, my endorphins blowing gaskets. There were others engaged in coitus in the vicinity.

After not-too-long, my little flower ran out of steam, drifting away to her locus amoenus sleep world. Took my restless, horny brain a bit longer to tap out. I'd like to imagine that we fucked in our dreams.

When we awoke the sun was hot and rising. We got moving. She sold me her shotgun mic for a pretty good price. We exchanged info and one last tender gander at each other, and she was branded in my brain indefinitely.

I'd like to express, however, that the branding of her in my brain was not simply me wanting to take her to pound town and elope to Mexico. The things we babbled about, our ambitions, etc, seemed to be so paralleled (though perhaps through MDMA delusions), that there wasn't a doubt in my brain we'd be seeing each other very soon, and contributing to the revolution together.

Lofty visions, see. Makes the world go 'round.

For the time being, however, packing up the yurt and the camp and hearing Truman and Jimmy bickering at each other for no damn fucking reason were the issues at hand.

I was doing my best, hobbling around, hurting.

Why was I hurting?

Well let's just say, that since that day I have done away with the phrase “blue balls”, replacing instead with “purple balls”.

It was that bad.

Yes.

Ironic.

See?

Tahoe, CA

Kent and I made it to South Lake Tahoe, an alpine city on the shore of the second deepest alpine lake in the world. World class skiing, douches with vacation homes, and that strange breed of young adults that work the slopes by winter, mountain bike by summer, and fill the in-between time drinking and getting in fist fights over the frustratingly low quantity of single females.

Time to get to work.

Distractions. Drugs. Bike rides. Canoeing. Grocery shopping. Drugs. Alcohol.

And that damn dame still on my mind.

Cabin fever…

[davezini-blog]

Pt.10pt.2-what remains shall then be considered an asset

This is where things start to get personal… a glimpse into the dark hole that davezini digs himself into under the guise of glory, courage and virtue. Nobody who I had been close to in my previous 24 years of existence had a very clear idea of where I was going and under what circumstances. Not even me.

So it goes…

The episode we're transitioning into now caused me to conceive a new framework of fatalism and stoicism I'll carry around with me for the rest of my days. Keep reading; I implore thee.

________________________________

Walnut Creek, CA. July 22, 2016

Jimmy, Truman, Kent, and I suit up for a hippie fest somewhere in Mendocino.

We laid out all our shit in the driveway, in lieu of trying to fit our extraneous mass of supplies and rations between Kent's VW Touareg and Truman's pickup truck.

The ole 12 sheets of insulation for the hexayurt, a generator, gas cans, popups, tables, misters, totes and totes of Jimmy's wardrobe and spirit animals, and what else.

Still had to make a Costco run for food and the exorbitant amounts of liquor necessary to get us through the weekend (though the rules of the hippie fest purported a no-alcohol policy). Also a Home Depot run to replace a few sheets of insulation injured at Woogie. Of course this series of errands kept us running around the bay for a few hours. Kent likes to be prepared.

When we were finally an hour or 2 out, Kent had the fantastic idea of munching some shrooms to spice up the ride.

Me behind the wheel, I popped a stem. Within 10 or 15 minutes things were quite a bit more colorful, vibrant. We trudged on through this winding canyon road, reality becoming all but a figment of my imagination. I was jabbin' away at Jimmy in the other car via walkie, laughing and having him guide me through the rainbow road we were on.

Kent and I were lit. He decided that we needed to make one more stop for rations before reaching the festie. He was trying to find a grocery store in the next town on his smart (-er-than-him) phone. This is never an easy task for a shroomed out co-captain.

He was doing his best though, bless his heart. Until he told me to exit, upon which I started veering towards the upcoming exit. He suddenly grabs the wheel and yanks it to the left, nearly trading paint with an innocent citizen's vehicle. I scream, “What the fuck!” and he claimed to have thought that I was losing consciousness, about to drive off the road.

We locate the grocery store and I'm still high as a kite. We both wander in and split up. I walk around exchanging strange looks with people and promptly go back to the parking lot, where Jimmy and Truman have arrived, and they're macking on some honey, trying to convince her to sneak into the fest with us. Fat chance.

She took off. And Kent emerged from the store with another cart full of enough food to feed a small Mexican village. After another 30 min trying to stuff it all into our already full load, we hit the road, the   sun soon to disappear behind those celestial Mendo mountains.

[Bear in mind that this is one small episode I've chosen to exemplify the buffoonery involved in being on the road with Kent. Plenty more of these to come. And mind you, getting there is just as eventful (depends on your standards) as being there, setting up, breaking down, and getting home.]

Enchanted Forest

So the weekend goes. I'm still new to the festival thing at this point, though it seems everyone around me is quite privy with it.

Besides Kent. He doesn't try to be anything but the boisterous, obnoxious self he is. This doesn't always vibe well with hippies of course, the jaded ass motherfuckers.

So there's the workshops; yoga, tantra, Indian chants, power foods, basket weaving, you name it. And there's a river snaking through the festival grounds. And there is music (but who gives a shit, really).

We happened to be camped next to a renegade stage run by Carnie's, in the parlance of NorCal hippies. These are folks that typically rep the “family” (referring to Grateful Dead family), look like gutter trash from Hippie Hill, and evidently run the drug trade at most festivals in the region and are immune to rules such as “no drugs”, “no renegade stages”, and “everyone must have a ticket”.

It's their land. Even hippies have a price tag.

They were bumping grimy, monotonous robot music the entire time. Nice people.

Day 2 I copped some speed (Adderall, people) and was jajajajabbin' around the festival grounds, getting acquainted, shooting video. Of course slamming the sauce as well.

I hit the media tent, told them about my project and they forked out a press pass, making me an official media guy.

The power of words.

From then on I was being my own damn silly self. Cruising around emphatically with my camera, my cocktail, my paisley pants (nicknamed the “Paisley Cowboy”), hitting on girls, shaking my ass, diffusing altercations between my traveling buds.

[I spend a decent chunk of my life helping people get along.]

The harmony at these sorts of gatherings is polished to the point of being questionable.

You don't see a lot of black people. Nor Mexicans. Some Asians (proximity to the bay, mind you).

You do see many sun baked, dreaded, smiling faces, clad in some variation of Aladdin or Bodhisahtva.

I don't know. I'm not hating. The culture that I was immersing myself in was just very peculiar to me- mostly white people pursuing a hedonist shortcut to feigned fulfillment.  

It all seemed pretty much natural to me though. I don't dress like it, or act like it, but the 3rd eye health food transcendent haughty lifestyle is how I'm wired naturally. No need to show it.

But many of these people don't take me seriously. Because of how I dress act and project my outward image.

And many are bandwagoners that don't even take the world seriously. The world is a serious place. And sacred. And it's seriously fucked up as well. Escaping to the fucking LaLaLand of the music gathering world doesn't make you any better than a punk, a gym enthusiast, or self-absorbed businessman. No qualms- most days consist of rejoicing without inhibition in the lofty way they've chosen to live their life. I have my things. Indian snake charmers have theirs. And so do festival chasing hippies.

So what's the fucking point?

As you can tell if you've been reading along, I'm a very go with the flow kind of guy. I can't help it. It's just who I am.

It has its pros and cons. Paying rent is a pain sometimes. Working with what your menial capital permits requires seasoned problem solving abilities.

Much more, in your nararator's humble opinion, than the burb dwelling townie driving a leased 2014 Hyundai Sonata smoking vape pen thinking about the next sports game or McDonald's visit.

I like to make things complicated for myself. Which ultimately makes everything quite simple; I simply live to do whatever comes next, and handle whatever issue at hand with finesse and pizazz.

I'm a hippie at heart. By ethos. The OG hippie ethos.

Rise above the savage nature of us & them, and the world will exponentially become a better place.

Finished rambling for now. TBC

[davezini-blog]

Pt10-The Dark Sided Bright Side, pt.1

All this talk about “what I do” lately, of course has left me in a bit of a piqued state. Me, I know what I'm doing, but I haven't quite come up with a satisfying set of words to describe it to my daily inquirers.

I wake up everyday with a lust for life, sometimes feigned, and I lay it all out in front of me. Then I do my things, which sometimes involves staring at a wall, and it all starts to unfold.

I'm not a drug addict. I use drugs when admissible, though my net worth doesn't allow me to use all the time.

I don't suffer from alcoholism. But I drink most every night. At least a beer or 2.

I smoke tobacco regularly, as it calms my nerves. I roll my own cigs, so that I can buy an occasional pork loin for dinner.

My rent is cheap here in the towel factory.

We steal our neighbor's wi-fi.

My phone bill is comped. As well as my Spotify Premium.

Bicycle is my primary form of transpo. I have a bangin' bod, and no car payments or parking tickets.

I get my thrills from reading, playing piano, writing, fucking, conquering life's obstacles, and impressing successful people with my wit.

Overall it's a pretty cheap, yet far out lifestyle.

_________________________________________

Re-enter Kent (briefly described in the previous section). After our groovy weekend at Woogie, Kent offered to take me along to a couple more festivals. This was his first time hitting festie after festie, and evidently required a young buck such as me to serve as liaison between him and all the millennial  partiers he likes to surround himself with.

Kent has plenty of money (see previous section's descrip of the house in Laguna Beach). Buying an extra ticket for me was like buying a dented can of refried black beans off the clearance rack at Ralphs.

So I said okay.

Plan was to hit an uber hippie fest in Mendo called Enchanted Forest. Go to Tahoe (where Kent has another house), chill out for a bit, hit another little parking lot fest there, and return to LA.

O Lawd, how plans change.

I wouldn't have signed up for such an endeavor without feeling some sort of purpose. I knew it was a bit of a commitment, hitting the road with this old weirdo, but something had to come out of it besides ruined sinuses and a fried brain. So I decided to make a little film about it. Started laying out the outline, and the rest was to be written. Action.

Whatever the case was at the time, I was ready to get the fuck out of town. So instead of having Kent pick me up in Skid Row on the way up north, I took myself, my 70lb backpack, and bicycle onto the train south to San Juan Capistrano. From there I was to peddle up the coast 12 miles to Laguna, and leave the next day with Kent for NorCal.

As it were, my derailleur snapped in half a couple miles in (likely due to the weight of my pack) and I stuck my thumb up. A hot OC blonde in a pickup truck gave me a ride to Kent's, as the sun was setting over the fake ocean west, and I never saw her again.

I arrived to a borderline shit show of coked out young'ins I'd met at Woogie a week or two prior. They'd cruised back with Kent and had been sleeping in the gazebo. These kids were OC kids, my first taste of part time hippie-ish festie bros, as festie culture often intertwines hippie-dom with fist-pumping bros in the most occult of ways (sarcastic).

We blew blow in our noses that night after all the kids were sent home. Set to mobilize the following day.

This is where the omens continue. It took us 3-4 hours to get out of Orange County. This wasn't due to the infamous SoCal traffic. This was due to a crazy ass bastard behind the wheel and a few “errands” to run. This included buying mushrooms off of some kid in a cul-de-sac neighborhood, driving in circles looking for a vape store, going to Costco for cheaper gas. And what else.

It was then I realized Kent spends most of his mid-fifties looking for a problems to create, solve, and call it a day well lived over a bump or 2 of whatever.

So it goes… Like the bubbles of a champagne left out over night.

The sun started going down by the time we reached cruising altitude. By that I mean a 80+ mph, a few keybumps, hit of Aderall, and enough cocktails to take care of the turbulence.

A relatively uneventful trip up to the bay, yours truly behind the wheel.

Our friend Jimmy, o honest handsome Jimmy, hosted us in his pop-up camper in his parents yard, Walnut Creek California. Good home boy Truman, Kent's friend from Tahoe, met us there, and as it were fucked Jimmy's sister. We were all to head to Mendo the next day. Not the sister.

Stay tuned.

[davezini-blog]

Pt.9-Prejourney

It was early July when I received a text from one of my oldest and dearest friends, Bjorn, saying “Important business matters, call me”. Semi-writing it off, thinking that it would be some opportunity to make some money with one of my many mediocre talents, I called him a few hours later.

“This guy that I met at Lightning in a Bottle gave me 2 tickets to this festival down in your neck of the woods and said to bring a buddy”. I laughed it off, saying maybe, maybe not due to my economic situation and seemingly hopeless near future. I told him I'd give him an answer soon.

Now, for recap, the month of June I was effectively homeless after my lease ended at my warehouse space downtown LA. My ex-girlfriend kirked indefinitely for Lithuania, and the next day another lover jumped into my life that housed me, sexed me and boozed me for the entire month.

The weekend previous to 4th of July was a bender in San Francisco in which I probably only dropped about $24 and the rest was expensed by the universe (drinks, drugs, free access, jumping Munis, etc).

I then proceeded to hit a 2 day Independence Day party at a historic monument mansion called the Beckett Residence. (One of the organizers granted me free access to this as well, on the grounds of me having a video camera and a vial of “San Francisco's finest”.)

Anyways, back to the “business” matters with Bjorn, I woke up the proceeding Tuesday with a Fever of 105 in the middle of a 30 hour catch-up slumber with the festival ultimatum, in which I deliriously fell upon the verdict. “Let's do it”.

This was one of those decisions in which I was literally cut down the middle on, and I can now look back and say that it was one the best, least thought out decisions I've ever made.

Bjorn and his friend Chad rolled into my Skid Row loft around 2am Thursday night. My loft at that point consisted of piles of scrapwood, a couch, a mattress, and my belongings strewn across the open floor.

Through the hooting and hollering from the line of hapless souls at the homeless shelter below, the consensus was to drive down to our gracious benefactor's house in Laguna Beach to crash before the long weekend started. I quickly packed some quirky clothing, my tent, sleeping bag, and camera along with a 12-pack of Pabst and we hit the road.

Of course I had no idea at all what was going on, not even the name of the festival we were going to. I was picturing Kent, our ticket connection, as some Coachella-bro sleeping at his cozy parents' home on the beach, and having some connection with the festival for a few free tickets. I was also picturing a bunch of other bros crashing all over the place ready for a weekend of fist pumping and keg stands.

Instead, we roll into Laguna at 3am to a house indeed on the cliff of an ocean, greeted on the street by a zany 50 year old offering us cocktails saying Chad is going to sleep with him and Bjorn and I are going to sleep in the guest room.

I don't care, I've seen weirder shit than to be creeped out by an old dude making lewd demands. I'm straight as an arrow.

The house had a tractor in the foyer, a '78 Lotus plopped in the livingroom, a pair of heels hanging from the ceiling with fake blood splattered all over, and plenty of other pieces of abstract art to make you feel right at home.

Kent whipped up some stiff rum drinks and after shooting shit for a bit we hit the hay.

Waking up in Laguna semi tripped out, I borrowed Bjorn's car to pick up some rations from the local Trader Joe's, the old Kerouac diet of bread, dry salame, nuts, and liquor. Returning to Kent's I took my first small dose of acid, AND WE WERE OFF.

I was slowly starting to catch up with the fugitive present, and sizing up the situation. I knew from early that day that I'd be high-rolling; Kent was packing exorbitant amounts of liquor, drugs, food, ice, and other commodities. He also had on top of his car 12 sheets of insulation with intention of building a 166 sq ft yurt.

Bravo, festival man.

The following 3 days were everything that you could probably picture at a festival: dancing, seducing, drinking, bump of this, bump of that... all in conjunction with a steady fix of LSD and minimal sleep. I was thoroughly amused by my camera. The power it holds in capturing the moment and snapping people into a demented form of show and freakery… it was infatuation. Plus me just having a camera and looking official allowed me to strike up interaction with interesting creatures and potential mates, along with backstage access through acid wit manipulation.

That weekend drove me to the edge, that edge that only the people that have gone over know about. Going into it on such a whim, and thinking it would have just been another brief episodic bender, I hadn't yet a clue what was to ensue.

After being dropped back off on Skid Row and waving good bye to my good guy Bjorn, I had a nervous breakdown. It's hard to rationalize such a sensation, but in this case it seems the festival culture struck a note with me. It's a fucking La La Land of drugs, booze, lascivious expression, and overall an out of this world honeytrap for the odd. What I experienced there, the connections that were created, the culture… It all left me rather split on whether or not it's healthy for the progression of humanity.

So I decided to find out in the coming months.

Continue tomorrow.

[davezini-blog]

Pt.8

Put that pen to paper, man, start the fire. Muddle it up: the scars, vows, sins, failure; Drink it all down, that's right, let it burn- hit the streets like a drunken sailor. Stagger you fool, till you see the light; darkness is born and bred a constant burden; Saddle up hang tight and wrong the right, set an example for your forlorn children. Don't expect compliance from others, let them do their thing; Do yours in due defiance like no other, laughing at their scrutiny.

So where are we now. June 2016. We're catching up.

To those of you following along with the story instead of watching fucking Black Mirror, you may be asking why in the previous part of the story I skipped through most of a year. I skipped through most of a year because that's essentially a story in itself. THIS story has the motif of “on the road” and my current state of road-weariness over the last 2 years. My time at “Towne House” (the moniker for the warehouse space that I lived in) still had me constantly feeling like a refugee, seeing as how it was only a built-out, comfortable living space for half a year, and I was still taking many spontaneous road trips all over the damn place to appease my ever-twitching wandering foot.

Moving forward, we're now in June 2016. The lease was up for Towne House, leaving me as an official squatter. I lucked out and met a very rad chick with a place in Echo Park. She let me stay at her place here and there, though I didn't want to overdo my welcome. We would get drunk, go to shows, pleasure each other, wake up, she would go to work, I would go about my day.

My days consisted of looking for a new place and sniffing for cash to pay for a new place. And to eat. I also had to find people who wanted to live in another grungy fixer-upper warehouse. Not an easy task.

Let's take a quick break.

The greatest triumphs come through the greatest struggle.

The similarity between extreme destitute and extreme wealth is striking.

TV & social media addiction are more toxic than habitual heroin use.

I mention these because I strive to make things happen, and feel at constant battle with those I care about being lost to some socially accepted form of apathy, in one form or another. This isn't because I'm a manipulative asshole, this is because I possess a trait that allows me to organize people together that are already working towards the same goal. Many folks don't wish to go through this sort of arduous leg work, so I play the part.

Moving forward, I went from squatting and having no money to moving into my new place. The place, 3 blocks from my last place, deeper into the famed Skid Row, was under the same Persian slum lords and took a few weeks of negotiations to bring the price down before finally making a handshake deal. The place again was not built out. It was a big square with high ceilings, large windows, without even a bathroom, in a now-defunct towel factory overlooking a homeless shelter.

A great triumph.

This is where I am writing this piece right now, and home improvements have since been made.

I moved all my shit over from the last squat, including all the building materials necessary to erect another room in my new home (and a kitchen, but these things subsequently disappeared after being stored downstairs). I was ready to start building again, try to feel like I have a home.

Now this is where things switch gears from warehouse squats, negotiations with Persians, and the LA pursuit of happiness. The next part of this saga involves hitting the road again, this time at the side of an old maniacal bastard. The coming months after 'moving' into my Skid Row loft involved little to no Skid Row lofts.

Instead it involved a plethora of drugs, alcohol, hippies, festivals, writing, filming, and of course plenty of time behind the wheel- at times all of these simultaneously.

Stay tuned.

[davezini-blog]

Pt.7?

This is good, or great.

Two treacherous years, and here we just keep pushing on.

As your humble narrator sits here recalling everything that has happened in that time vs. the emotions that I've felt within that time, everything is certainly more poetic in retrospect.

I don't think “suicidal” is the right word to describe how I've felt at times, but the road has certainly come with its topes.

I'm really not a big whiner. In fact, I spend more time than I'd like to being the voice of reason for people that I care about. [Key word there, “care”, doesn't always mean “enjoy spending time around”.]

The holes that I dig myself into, as senseless as they may seem in the moment, more often than not catalyze some freak turn of events that leads to something beautiful.

Just do what you do, without panic. If you're a good person you only deserve the best. It's just the way she goes.

So we found a warehouse to live in, downtown LA. Our space was part of a large turn-of-the-century building, in which most of the other spaces were homes to some of the U.S. of A's most premiere sweatshops.

Much of the first few months living there was spent with a fresh coating of sawdust over my bedsheets every night, as we had the task of building our individual rooms. It was fun and all, but as usual money was tight and I couldn't afford to buy all the proper materials right off the bat.

So I chipped away at it.

Ultimately the room turned out great, very cabin-like, due to the fact that it was mostly fabricated out of reclaimed wood.

In the meantime, we found a couple other blokes that were crazy enough to live there. Unbeknownst to us at the time, it takes a very special type of individual that wants to move into a place in which they need to build their own room, doesn't have a kitchen yet, is infested with mice and cockroaches, and vibrates all day everyday with the hum of sewing machines manned (/womanned/childed) by FOB immigrants getting paid below minimum wage, all combined with the proximity to Skid Row and the crackheads that wander around trying to steal your shit and overdosing in the hallways when they are able to sneak in.

Weird shit. If you've ever lived in a place like this, please, I'd love to hear your stories.

One funny early memory of the place, one of the roommates we found agreed to take on a job for an independent short film, building an 8-ft egg. The job was very technical, and took about a month. When it finally came to the night before shooting, all hands were on deck helping finish up the project. The DP left and came back with a quarter of nose-beer and it all worked out just fine. The film was shot in one day and it was a thing of the past.

There was no AC or heat in this place, of course. During the summer we all cooked. When there were a few dozen people in there shooting the short film, 1000 watt Keno lights and all, we were broiled. Cocaine, lots of water/crafty, and the anticipation of having this fiasco out of our house got everyone through it.

More people started moving into the building after us and the few others that'd been there for a bit. The movement was becoming hip. The factory workers were slowly starting to get kicked out. We were jamming a lot, making a lot of noise, partying.

It dawned on me that I could use the space to throw shows with bands and all, you know, a place for the community and beyond that didn't care too much about bars, clubbing and shit. Wanted to be part of the diaspora of elegant apathy reminiscent of the ole beatniks and further back the angels and ministers of the '20s expatriates like Heming and Eliot and the rest of the lost Generates.

Smoking inside, condemning the squares, tapping away at misc. projects, scrounging rent each month for the few bucks that it costed to live there.

I can't speak for Ieva, Hank, Marko, and Ben Seng (my other roommates). I didn't know what the fuck I was doing.

I had many good runs. Runs that sequentially got me closer to finding out who I am now. Which is still vague.

Before I knew it, the lease was almost up and everyone wanted to move out. Too dark and depressing. It had been less than a year that we had been in there, and I already had to start looking for a new place. It had been less than half a year that I had had an actual living space after completing my room and kitchen.

We tore all the rooms down. Everyone left. The lease ended. Ieva went back to Lithuania. Hank moved down the street. I didn't have anywhere to go so I squatted in the empty space, all my shit packed up ready to rock, with nothing to roll to, 'cept play the baby grand that was sitting there, listen to the hollow sounds of tomorrow's unwrote burgeoning of next gen.

Squatters' rights. Punk. Regurgitations of futile squalor.

Some day I'll learn from those mistakes I made in that era; some day I'll learn from all the mistakes I've ever made.

Some day I'll never question my actions at all; I'll be so full of precedent done wrong and right that the road will be perpetually paved slicked and slathered with all the solemn demons of past strife.

Or something like that.

My hope is that You are excited as I am for the next entry. Hook in cheek.

[davezini-blog]

pt.6

This blog was birthed out of a jarring sensation of road-weariness. I'll return to this notion. I got a little carried away with the small details that are most likely reaching a certain level of humdrum amongst anyone who's following along.

I wanted to elaborate on my disposition, in order to gain a little bit of empathy from you, o humble reader. I've never published my writings in this fashion, and I will continue to do so, as this medium effectively assuages my current state of uneasiness for the hour or 2 it takes to write each entry.

Fuck off if you don't like it.

Read on if you'd like to see my development.

Where were we. I'd cashed in in San Francisco, on the life that had taken 22 years to build. Bags packed hit the road of no tomorrow on my motobike en route to New Orleans. Ended up in Denver where I got stuck for a few months running a video production company. Ran out of money, met a girl, and hit the road for LA.

[That's pretty much the gist of it; I discourage you from reading previous posts, as they are much too verbose.]

The itinerary was loose on the way to LA, but Ieva and I wanted to space it out and hit a few destinations on the way there. What was the rush?

Durango, Grand Canyon (where we dropped acid), the shore of the Colorado River between Arizona and Nevada, Sequoia National Forest, Ojai… Finally landing in Highland Park, East LA.

We spent a few weeks living out of the car… staying at HankDog's pad surreptitiously laying low out of sight from a loathsome roommate.

We scored a temporary apartment in Glendale, rooming with a scrappy, sleepwalking stuntman from Wisconsin (I was quickly catching onto just how integral the film industry is to LA's economy). There were lots of Armenians in the neighborhood- see the author's last name for significance of this detail.

Times were testy; we were supposed to find a warehouse to live in with HankDog, which entailed not only finding an industrially zoned building with “hip” landlords, but also getting all the deposit money ready for move-in… Grouped together with the burden of being new to town and having rent to pay in Glendale as well.

At one point when I thought all was fucked, I dreamily waltzed to the corner store and bought a $5 scratcher, yielding +$100 into my pocket account. The stupefied look on the clerk's Armenian face was absolutely priceless.

Things always work out one way or another.

I got a job with Zirx, a visionary valet company that was still in start-up phases. I had worked it a little bit in San Francisco, where it was first conceived, as a side job briefly before hitting the dusty trail. In my time thus far of being on the road, they had launched in Los Angeles.

It worked out for me. I would catch the bus to Beverly Hills, where I would park cars via the mobile app for about an hour, hang out for the middle of the day on the clock, then return cars to the privileged employees of Live Nation.

In the mean time, HankDog and I spent a little time looking for suitable grungy warehouses to live in. Prior to me showing up, HankDog had responded to an ad via Craig and his List, leading him to a middleman that showed him a few terrible places. The middleman happened to live in the same building as the acclaimed band, The Growlers, and was always rolling around with Warren of another band “The Abigails”.

The synchronicity of Los Angeles.

One day HankDog and I took a ride with Warren and the middleman scoping places hoping to grip a spot. Warren enlightened me about his take on the music industry and DIY venues. That's just a side note.

A more pertinent note, the middleman pointed out a huge industrial building, mentioning that Ariel Pink lives there or used to live there. There happened to be a banner on the side of the building with a phone number for available spaces.

After a fruitless search for a living space with the middleman and his friend Warren, we called the number from Ariel Pink's building. A Persian answers and tells us to come in.

Downtown LA, warehouse life, and the pursuit of happiness. Or something like that.

Continue reading next time, for your benefit and path to enlightenment.

[davezini-blog]

Pt.5

Driving towards the land of Lost Assholes, making blind bets on the fictional fruits of Eden.

A few weeks prior, I'd met a girl by the name of Ieva. She had a humble abode down on Santa Fe Drive.

I had an ailing motorcycle, a bag of clothing, a leaking air mattress, and a head full of incoherent fantasies.

Ieva had grown up in Lithuania on a farm with her grandparents. When she was 9 she moved to the states with her mother and step-dad. After a stint in Chicago (where most Eastern European families land first), the family moved to Littleton CO, where Ieva lived lackadaisically until moving out on her own to the Arts District of Denver.

That's where I came in.

I, feeling like my life was already over, would zip on down from Cap Hill on my bike, through the snow, or what have you, to hang out and have a sense of serenity with Ieva in her humble abode on Santa Fe. We would lay there, talking about our near future, what we like to do, what we think is cool. Then we would put on a French new wave film, speak of the nuance, screw, and smoke cigarettes on the porch at sunset.

Neither of us worked much.

I knew my days in Denver were numbered. Ieva was on a similar notion. She was thinking about kirking to New York, while I was haphazardly on the fence between LA and the Dirty South.

Four months of fun-employment had landed me finally on my last couple bucks. I had to sell my beloved motorcycle to a scumbag Englishman for a meager one thousand dollars, who, after shaking hands, unveiled a triumphant grimace informing me I could have gotten much more for it.

Money talks, in tongues usually.

Ieva and I were lying in bed one day, when I finally reached the verdict that I would relocate to LA. I blurted it out with ostensible conviction, and Ieva responded with a meek, “I want to go to LA.” I smiled back daringly and replied, “Yeah? Let's do it.”

That was that. I was ready to roll. I spent another week or 2 kicking rocks while Ieva sold some of her belongings and waited out the last bit of her lease at the humble abode on Santa Fe.

Before rolling out, I had the fortune of attending a day party in Littleton, Lithuanian style. The mom thought I was pretty rock-n-roll, but mostly channeled her husband's conviction- in this case, sullen condemnation of the dude that their sweet daughter was about to elope with to the reprehensible City of Angels.

As the party was coming to a close, step-dad was challenging me with round after round of vodka, with mom urging me not to drink anymore. Lo & behold, I went to bed with no good bye. That was the last I saw of them.

A few days later, we were ripping down the highway with no good reason 'cept for having no good reason.

Continue reading tomorrow, please.

[davezini-blog]

Pt.4

If the plane is always crashing into the mountain, why not just take the train? Because you don't get that feeling of free fall, that celestial environment of panic, that burning sensation…

Time started dragging on like a fruitless sack of dead weight, periodically giving off a sturdy mule kick square to my skull.

I was trying hard. But it seemed I was chasing a mythical creature, an elusive criminal, a figment of my imagination.

Perhaps I was imagining the entire world around me.

I convinced myself that what I was trying to do was best for everyone. I felt and still feel that too many people in the world are developing their livelihood centered around their own personal pursuit of “success”, whatever that word means to them.

I love music. I love making music. I love doing what I can to proliferate the progression of music and its significance in this world today and forever more.

That being said, I was trying to build a brand that would have pertinence in the ideal little Dave world I'd created in my head.

I'll skip the babble.

Post Homestead Press teetered out after about 3 months in existence.

Lost, hanging out at Roostercat, a bright sunny day.

There's a girl reading a book on the side patio going in and out of the cafe, presenting a clean tear of the pant under left-hand butt cheek.

We're all just shooting shit. I was feeling good for no good reason. Chain smoking, sipping away.

Brandon or Colin, one of the two, trying to round people up to go to the Fainting Goat. I'd already made up my mind; on a day like this I'm going to a park. I don't know which park, everyday up till then had been too cold to go to a park. Brandon or Colin, one of the two, asks girl with torn pant if she would like to join, she declines bashfully.

I happened to be watching, with wistful amusement.

Brandon and Colin, both of them, maybe one other, head out to the Fainting Goat.

The rest stick around, deeming the park as a more qualified activity for the day.

By that time, my caffeine intake has reached unsafe levels and I feel completely yacked out on delusions of godliness and invincibility.

Ah, substance abuse. Ain't nothing like it.

We're now ready to mobilize to the park. I ask the girl with ripped clothing if she'd like to join.

She accepts.

At this point, seeing as how it's Christmas, I'm going to continue the story tomorrow. Eat, get drunk, be happy.

[davezini-blog]

Pt.3

An agency in New York said no.

Fuck it.

We still went ahead and had ye ole noble Jon Eaton make us some press badges and a company logo. I bought the domain name posthomesteadpress.com and created the respective email address.

“This way, there's no way we'll get rejected again,” was the thought pattern at the time.

These were our salad days, when we were green in judgment, cold in blood. Ah to be young & limitless.

So we went to the show. Well, we went to where the show was, at the Fillmore Auditorium. Bagginoboy with camera in hand, notebook in mine, both of us with our freshly minted “press badges”. We were lined up along the side of the building, a little nervous and apprehensive of our new found glory. Struck up conversation with a gal from Denver's leading entertainment coverage magazine, Westword. She politely told us that press badges are generally given out for specific events; there isn't just one universal, godly badge that gives all-access any where a couple assholes like us go. We said thanks, and fucked off.

Walked around back and caught Pete & Coop smoking cigs. Approached and asked if we could get an interview. Pete said no, I shook his hand and we were out.

You can see the aftermath of these events, a few drinks later, in this video, where we walked around asking if they'd seen davezini at the show, and what he means to people.

In retrospect, I think that this was a lofty 'fuck you' to our failure- a truly invigorating feeling. Impervious to bullshit, above the law. Ubermench mentale.

That's the kind of stuff that you get from running around with mad friends all the time. We have a difficult time getting stuck in the mundane. We're usually broke and figuring out the next move, and every once in a while stumbling upon buried treasure which we will promptly blow through or some how produce cosmic magic dust out of. That's my take on it, at least. I can't change it. If you're not a freak, get fucked.

Turns out in the next coming months, I committed myself to the company. I woke up thinking about it. Researching it. Brainstorming ideas. Sending emails out. Dialing in the system. Using my resources. Familiarizing myself with the mind of the entertainment agent. I loved it. Very shortly, our company started to produce content. But this came with its obstacles.

As many people have learned while they begin to bridge the gap between “work” and “doing what you love”, the money won't really be there. Here I was, having just broken out of my last life's shell, finding this new lust for life (in which I was committing more time and effort than other paid jobs I'd had), and I was still having to worry about making money.

I could have gotten a job at a supermarket. Or restaurant. Or pedi-cabbing. But I was stubborn, man. I felt beyond working for someone else. So I stuck it out with Post Homestead Press, trying to figure out how I could make that my only job, and quickly running out of cash in the meantime.

But I was broadening my social circle; I was getting guest listed for shows, meeting people that would say “Hey, I've heard about you”, and most importantly feeling a sort of relevance and purpose in the scene. We were the only ones doing what we were doing in Denver, and I figured it'd be no time before people started paying us for our services.

The days started getting warmer, longer. Things plateaued then started descending. Took a lot of heart getting me through those days of pursuing a passion project, trying to survive, trying to get drunk every night, trying to avoid working for the system. Something big was going to happen. Or so I thought…

Continue reading tomorrow, merry fucking christmas.

[davezini-blog]

Pt.2

I killed the engine and dismounted- swearing, confused.

What did I have? What could I work with.

A dilapidated motorcycle, a bag of clothing, notebook, my instinct to survive. etc etc.

I was splitting rent with Baggins on cap hill, him on his bed, me on an air mattress in the kitchen. The beginning Denver days consisted of waking up thinking about nicotine and coffee, both of which I felt obligated to indulge in down at Roostercat coffee house. I got wise to buying groceries pretty quickly, though it felt I wasn't at home, at liberty to do so.

[Groceries are some of those things that connote “feeling settled”, you know, like “taking the robe out of the closet”; I slept in long johns next to a radiator on a sack of air with a hole in it. You need to have an imagination in harrowing times like these.]

The baristas at RC gave me free coffee about half the time, as they started to warm up to me. I spent many a morning, many a night at the coffee house; chain smoking, dialogues with new friends- of course there was sort of a core group at the time- centered around friends of friends of the owner, Colin, who, being a director/producer/set crasher, attracted the small clique of Denver filmmakers to his coffee house.

It was mostly just comedic blathering. Smoking, drinking coffee till your teeth rattled and piss stank, exchanging ideas that may never reach fruition… And everyone seemed to be there for a reason. Graduates, students, very few poets (in comparison to my Boulder days…), musicians, people humbled by the security of drudgery. And strangely enough for being a “metropolis” most of the people were native Coloradans. That was my social circle.

And there was me: a lost fucking outlaw, head in the clouds, hand on the throttle, having to bullshit my aspirations because it seemed like everyone had them except me.

The influence of film makers at RC started to tickle my gooch. Bagzinski had recently took on a project (unpaid) for some friends in a band. A daunting project- that of taking a video of a live performance and cutting it together. He was novice on the camera at the time, had probably had his gooch tickled by the tantal of our peer group.

We were sitting around and I saw that one of my first influential contemporary bands, Devil Makes Three, was playing in a couple of days. Struck by boredom and lack of a solid direction, I wanted to go, but knew it wasn't quite conducive with my Mortimer budget.

Draggin the everlastin cig, I look over and see Harlem Brando chipping away at the music video. Hmmmm. Hit up Devil Makes Three and interview them on video for a free ticket.

Having a flash of inspiration and task driven determination like that is refreshingly sobering, especially for a lost asshole like myself.

I didn't know how to use a camera. First thing that jumped into mind was forging a press pass. 'Post Homestead Press' was the company name. I began peeling away at the layers of managers, PR, press agencies involved to get to Devil Makes Three.

Continue reading tomorrow.

[davezini-blog]

Pt.1

Don’t want to start this blog off on a sour note, but I’m pretty discontent right now. Or at least I think so. Perhaps I’ll edit the tone of this later, so I’ll just say it how it is and you be the judge. Perhaps you can relate to this lifestyle/these issues. I don’t fucking know what people like to read/hear. I approve of my writing maybe 4% of the time; I don’t even know what I like. I don’t know what I do. I don’t know what I’m living for.

But god damn it, THE SHOW MUST GO ON.

Don’t worry. I ain’t gonna kill myself quickly and suddenly.

It’ll probably take about 50 years, 100,000 cigarettes, and WWIII.

Stress has superseded my current reality. Stress is irrational and not reality. Stress doesn’t help solve my problems. Stress occurs out of boredom and nebulous conviction. I’ll get over it soon. Once my dryspell ends... NAH ... Once something, ANYTHING, works out. I feel fucked.

I’m coming up on 2 years of considering myself “on the road”, though the claim is a bit of a stretch. “On the road” refers to me getting fed up with square life in San Francisco. Till then- I was 22 at the time- I had been a committed little worker boy, watching his funds and laying out plans before implementing them.

Well, except for a few instances.

However long my streak of “responsibility” (a wretched word, isn’t it?), January 2015 came about and I decided to hop on my motorcycle, leaving California indefinitely. The trip out to Denver was a fucking story and half on its own, but that’s for a different time.

Plan was to room it with Bagzini in his Cap Hill flat for a bit, then move to NOLA together. Not much of a real addendum for the latter half of the equation, but I was game.

I had rolled through n’Awlins a few months prior while road tripping the wet ole cuntry with Hank-Dawg [Side note right as I reached this mental juncture, New Orleans is mentioned in the song “Number One” by Harlem] The town fascinated me in an orphic sort of way; enough to make me abandon all the bullshit in San Francisco and California all together.

The fuck with the allurement of California. Louisiana was perfect, romanticized in my brain. I’m going with or without anybody.

Lo & behOld, upon arrival in Denver, Baggins decided he didn’t want to move to the South with me. (Later interrogation revealed that it wasn’t hip enough- could have been scattalogical drunken babble though.) I had just ridden through sub-freezing mountains and Mexican desert to get to Denver.

So it goes....

I packed my bags ready for the bayou. Booted up. Cow skin. Bandana. Helmet. Gloves. Kick stand up. Clatter of the beaten motor. The morning of my life.

Continue reading tomorrow.