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Letter to an angry young writer

Hi ____,

You know, a lot of the best conversations I've ever had have started with email fights!

When I think about it, I stopped believing in music criticism because of an email fight that turned into this sort of dare with myself and a thought exercise where I wound up touring with a band I thought I hated, and I wound up really believing in them. Every music writer should be forced to tour with a bad band, just to see how much passion there is there. Bad artists care just as much as the good artists do, for the most part. No one wants to say that, because then it hurts too much to criticize them. 

I work at a rock camp for kids for a week every summer, it's free for them and for some of the families it's like free daycare. We get kids who come to camp having never picked up an instrument before. Which is awesome. Every year, at least one kid with no real talent or experience writes a song that moves me really deeply. How should I account for that? It's because I get to see them interact with other kids all day long; I see how hard it is for them. If they can walk up on a stage after that and trust their bodies and their voices to work on cue and off-key, I feel nothing but joy for them. Bad music sounds beautiful in that context, and everything else is sort of a sliding scale.

I think I have felt like you feel now on a number of occasions, and obviously I'm also prone to emotional emails. But now I'm old and it's harder to access all that stuff, which is a blessing and a curse. Cuz sometimes I'll be at a show like "I know this should feel amazing and I just want to go to sleep," and sometimes I see a loaded email and I'm jealous. (But only to the degree that you're able to access all these hard and complicated feelings. I don't want to feel that way all the time, I know how miserable it is. It would come in handy, though, on those days when I feel like nothing in the world is bettered by my writing about it, and like we're all just going to die and what's the fucking point?).

I shouldn't give you a hard time about thinking you're great at what you do, that's stupid. If you're great, be great. Breathe fire, man! If you care enough about it to get that angry, you probably do care about it enough to be great at it. It's just a really collaborative trade, that was my belabored point. I think of it as a trade, and not an art, because it's a lot easier to convince yourself that you're learning a trade when you go through brutal edits or have your ideas shot down than it is to convince yourself that your art is not being compromised. And eventually you start to feel like a worker bee clocking in at the plant. There are transcendent moments, for sure, but the most incredible jobs still become routine after a while. You're not really working at Disneyland until you've got to clean up some puke. Most days I'm glad I went through that stuff. I'm glad I had my work whittled down a bit, tamed, structured so people could read it and I could consider myself competent. And sometimes I wonder what I'd write like if I'd never had an editor. If I just did it because I had to do it? Maybe I'd be great. Maybe I'd be insufferable.

The thing is that if it's art and you're an artist, then the last thing you want is some trained professional tidying it up for you. Which means you're just signing up for purgatory forever; either you're starving for your art or doing work that you're sure is not your calling. Or you just get used to it. Or you do something else, and keep writing special somehow. Which would be my advice to anyone who wants writing to feel special: keep it for yourself. When I want to feel special now I watch some old foreign film, because no one expects me to know anything about it and I get to just BE THERE with it. I don't have to ask myself how I feel. It's a beautiful thing.

A few months ago an old friend I hadn't seen a years got shitfaced drunk with me. I had to carry him down the street to get him home. He kept saying, "I'm a great writer! I'm a great writer! You're an alright writer! I'm a fucking great writer!" And I told him that I'm sure he was. He apologized up and down and said he didn't remember any of it. He felt awful. But I still believe that he is a great writer. He doesn't ever publish anything. And he shouldn't publish anything, because then he'll always get to be a great writer. I'll never read his stuff, because I like the idea that just maybe he's really a great writer, and I'm the only person who knows it. 

I'm sure that you're a great writer. I'll never read your stuff, probably, because I like the idea that you're a great writer! I want you to take over the world, insomuch as a music writer can take over the world, and I want you to get all the way to the top of your profession, where I fear you will realize how empty that feels. That's the satisfaction that the rest of us get, right? We get knowing that there's no gold star, anyway, and fuck it if I didn't try hard enough. That's my bread and butter on a bad day. I did some other shit while you were being great. I had some big karaoke nights, I told a friend I loved them and it was weird. I got high and played Phantasy Star Online for 500 hours. So who really took advantage of this fleeting, accidental consciousness, huh? You or me? Surely it was me! Surely I lived best!

The only thought that ever saves me is that no one is really an artist. We are all having the same totally uncomfortable human experience. "Artist" is a container that has to fit inside of "human," and we all know how fucked things get when it won't fit right. Nobody wants to be Nick Drake, nobody wants to be Kanye. We all battle with confidence and purpose, unless the tightrope is so high that we can't—which is the saddest way to live, I think. 

We all dream about the same shit: being unencumbered by all of this, swimming out too far, running without losing our breath, a freedom we can't even feel even when we're alone with no deadlines, because we're not becoming great. I've been alone with no deadlines. It's like you don't exist. Not existing might just be the ultimate freedom, but we're not wired to think like that. We're wired for faith, not for letting go. Seems like a real cruel trick to me, one I keep trying to get my head around. It's a skip on a record. So easy to push the needle too far, I think. Better to just find the loop and settle down into it.

It's okay if none of this is helpful to you, I won't take it personally. It's been helpful for me.

-Casey

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A very, very overdue illustration for a rad Believer reader. 

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I got to page 105 in this book, which was printed the year I was born, and I found that a previous owner had underlined this one small passage. It is the only notation in the whole book. It strikes me as a very painful thing to underline (in a book full of painful ideas!), and it was quite a distracting discovery. I keep thinking about this reader and wondering what prompted them to grab a pen at this moment, especially when there had been so many great lines earlier on. Were they hurt, or did they regret hurting someone? Was it something they were actively going through while they read the book, or did it dredge up old feelings? Or maybe they just found it to be a profound statement, maybe a word of warning for themselves as they thought about meeting someone new? I don't know, and I'll never know, and I hate it.

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Caltrain Guy 1, San Mateo

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Caltrain Woman 1, Bayshore

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Music video: YOUR RIVAL, "HADLEY"

Hey I made this. And there are press quotes. And you should buy this album (or just get it for free).

Buy the album here: https://genero.us/partydamage/your-rival

WHAT THE CRITICS (AND REGULAR PEOPLE) ARE SAYING: 

"It's actually grown on me since I stopped watching it." —Daniel Handler, (real famous) author

"Casey Jarman must have some strange dreams." —David Greenwald, The Oregonian

"I still have a few of Casey's drawings he did during that great camping trip we all took together in '92? that started with the car being towed. He was real good at drawing way back when." —Doug Edge, contemporary artist

"NICE ONE" —Judah Switzer, director (Yacht, Wild Ones, uhm KANYE WEST)

"This is without a doubt the best music video made on a phone that I ever watched on a phone." —Brian T. Edwards, author

"Hope you like bleeding eyes!" —Ned Lannamann, Portland Mercury

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Caltrain Guy 1, San Mateo

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Caltrain Woman 1, Bayshore

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Baseball film 2

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TALKIN BASEBALL

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Here's a thing.

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Bus Rides, Sandwiches, Inescapable Beauty

I was on the bus this morning and this woman walks in with five kids. And they are the snottiest, worst-behaved kids I've ever seen. I mean, on-par anyway. She asks them to sit up front and they go to the back. She asks if one of them if he has her cell phone. He says "yeah, but you gotta come back here if you want it" and laughs and she doesn't even bother to retort. She looks exhausted, of course. They curse and kick at the seats. None of them are older than 12. One of the girls stays sweet and silent, like she gets just how crazy her family is, but her brothers are little monsters.

But then as I was getting off the bus, I watched them line up to get off and I looked at their dirty, grumpy faces and I saw my friends. We were a little older when we were that bad, maybe, but we were the same shitty kids. I saw Gary, who tried to run away from home and hid in the bushes when his parents found him. I saw Devon, whose dad died an left him angry and confused. I saw the kids I used to skate with, who made their own family, and were told by bored cops to leave the skate spot every day, but kept coming back, if only for the rush of getting kicked out again. And I saw myself. I had great parents, but as my mom reminded me recently, I was angry. I wouldn't listen to anyone. I was obnoxious and loud and frequently in the principal's office. Mom says it's because of her divorce. I don't know if that was it. I think I was angry with empathy. I was angry that bad things happened to good people and I was angry that there was no god or plan.

Then I got off the bus at 16th and Mission and all the faces had changed. Everyone was someone again. Not someone to feel sorry for or someone to avoid, but just someone. I was overcome with this sudden wave of empathy. Some of it was sadness for the beggars and the broken people on crutches. But a lot of it was joy. It was knowing how much cooperation and goodwill it takes to keep a city running. It was seeing people find kindred spirits. It was dudes play-fighting with each other and women from a restaurant smiling and laughing with a delivery driver. It was a young guy taking great care in picking out a bunch of bananas from a fruit stand. It was a crazy person laughing to himself.

And then I met Juan, who has run a hole-in-the-wall called the Sandwich Place for the last 34 years. He started when he was 14 and his parents bought the joint. There were derelicts stopping in his shop and asking for water or napkins and Juan was polite to all of them. Hey called them, in English or in Spanish, his friends. And he promised me he'd make me a sandwich I would never forget, and that I would be back often. He said it was the same with everyone; you walk by a few times and then you finally come in and you never stop coming in. He took pride in his work. The Sandwich Place, which is as nondescript as it sounds save for a couple of paintings of sandwiches and signs for hot pastrami (this is what drew me in), is on one of San Francisco's most notoriously gross intersections. He called it Mecca. He said that 16th street had anything a person could ever want, and that 24th street was a distant second place. He talked about baking the bread and about the changes the Mission had undergone in his life; about the new condos coming in and bringing 2,000 new residents with them. He said that 2,000 people can't help but change a place. He said he'd seen changes before. He shrugged. He told me he'd always wanted to visit Portland, and said that I must miss the trees and the open spaces. I told him I did.

This was a ten-minute interaction and it was communicated at a pace as frantic as the city itself. But I'm glad to have met Juan. I don't know what we'll talk about next time I stop in. I don't know that we have a ton in common (maybe this is why pro sports are so important to a city's morale level?).

I came to work. I work on a magazine. But I could do any sort of work. It doesn't matter. Anything is worth taking pride in and doing right. I want to find more value in it and invest it with some small parts of myself. Not to leave my mark, which is a completely absurd notion to me and always has been, but to feel connected. Because I am, and you are, and we are, together. That's not new agey bullshit, it's inescapable truth. When our paths cross, which they will, I rely on you and you rely on me. And if we can't find some meaning in that, and find essential beauty in it, I think we're fucked. So here's to you, Juan, and your sandwich, which was delicious, and which reminded me once again to appreciate this very brief life (which will grow just a little briefer with each new bacon and egg sando I plan to ingest) and every snotty-nosed brat I come across.

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In Praise of Dragging an Ox through Water

Sometimes you're exposed to genius, and you say, "Well, yes, this is obviously going to be recognized as genius." And then you wait a while, and lo, it is indeed noticed and all of a sudden it's not yours anymore. But you still love it and remember the time when you saw that spark, before it turned into a big raging fire, as sparks are wont to do. I've been lucky enough to watch this happen (and in some cases, help it happen in little ways) a handful of times.

But then there's the genius that takes a while to be recognized, because it is goddamn true and a little hard to face. Dragging an Ox through Water's new record is one of the most stirring, thought-provoking, and life-changing collections of music I've ever heard. It is a punk album, it is a Delta blues album, it is an unlistenable noise record, it is a folk disc, it is a poetry collection. It is America right now, but much smarter and not afraid to look silly. I've been told before that this is not EASY music, but Brian's songs have always felt immediately and truly beautiful to me, even the ugly ones.

I've been watching Brian play for well over a decade now. I've seen him succeed wildly and I've seen him sabotage his own success. I've seen him play intimate, haunting sets that would make old Nick Drake shed a tear and I've seen him play squealing electric sets that hurt my head a lot. He tends to save the latter-style performances for the biggest stages. But of all the amazing musicians I have met and worked with and written about and befriended over the years, I think Brian is the smartest and most talented. I consider him the voice, or at least the troubled conscience, of our little corner of our generation. Which is good enough for me. But when this record comes out, a lot of new people are going to see Brian's genius for the first time. I'm grateful to him for sharing the album with me early and letting me swim around in it a while before that happens. I'm really honored to be among the first to hear it. I'll be sharing it with everyone I know once it is ready to be shared, but I felt like I needed to say all this first.

... This track isn't on the new album, and it's more an experiment in writing a straightforward protest song than a regular DAOTW tune. But I love it so much. Brian is more radical than me in a lot of ways, but despite its dark opening lines, this is as sweet a call to revolution as I've ever heard. The guy knows how to pen a tune that changes my politics.

<a href="http://musicalimpressions.bandcamp.com/track/optimistic-desperate-reverie" data-mce-href="http://musicalimpressions.bandcamp.com/track/optimistic-desperate-reverie">Optimistic/Desperate Reverie by Dragging an Ox through Water</a>

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Time Sticks

Always restless Never resting

Always starting Never ending . And the end is The beginning

No justice Just spinning

It's all mistakes There's no mistaking it

All restraints will Come unrestrained again

The flood gates Will start opening

No brakes until It's all broken in

Your face There's just no facing it

You'll say What are we doing then

Those stakes Are we raising them

No I'll wait I'll just sit out a hand

Time takes a A lot of time to pass

Then it sticks like A broken second hand

And you never Get it back again

And you never Get it back again

And you never Get it back again

And you never Get it back again

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(Tom Morello's head, for the Believer Logger)