#imposter syndrom or whatever but i feel like im putting up a front and people dont really get that i can be really selfish

[time-teller]

Vent in tags! Im sorry mutuals!!

[mistergoddess]

something something last pride i was in a disastrous gender tailspin doing so very bad on the gender front deeply closeted staying briefly with my parents between apartments working at a normie bar where there was a lot of pressure to be cute and feminine and appealing but the most dysphoric ive ever been because ive been quite masc ever since i realized i was trans when i was fucking 13 and somehow at 25 decided to put my own ass back in the closet and went to pride in a bikini top and booty shorts and fishnets and was miserable with myself and so repressed and had nobody but myself to blame for it and spent the whole time thinking haha wouldn't it be funny to go to the gender clinic booths and get info about testosterone while dressed like this haha how i look with he/him in my bio and all that haha right but i wouldn't because im in denial about being a guy rn haha im just a funky they them lesbian or whatever idk haha. and now just 1 year later i'll be going to pride 6 months on t and having made the first grueling steps of coming out to family and people close to me and i'll definitely be boyly boying it up and its all very surreal and gooooood?

idk it's weird because i feel 100% positive and happy and right about transition so far like... internally. independently. but the social aspect is still very funky and scary and i'm sure that's completely normal because society sucks! it's a sucky cultural situation we're in rn! and it's scary and bad and easy to invalidate yourself and get imposter syndrome and be bitter and jealous and feel weird and scared about being socially out and trying to socially transition and make it known that yeah i know i don't seem like one but actually i'm a guy! and i'm literally still not even saying that i'm still just letting ppl assume im a woman and misgender me bc i'm fucking avoidant and don't have the guts to like correct restaurants when they get my order wrong let alone correct everyone when they get my gender wrong! arrgghhh! but i'm very excited for ~my first pride~ and i hope being in a space where people are expecting it and won't be shocked or confused will give me some confidence and i can be open and at ease there and i can take some of that with me back to everyday life. idk. something along those lines.

also i'm definitely in my fresh out the box overcompensating era lmfao like i'm still nonbinary as hell and i still wanna be fruity and i'm definitely not Just A Guy and i'm definitely not Just Masc and i haveeeeeeeee a really really bad history with that and some big ugly Gender Trauma that makes this stage of like. just trying to be more masc and a dudething. kind of a very bad vibe but i'm doing it on my own terms this time and am aware of how that plays on my mental state and i feel confident that i'll grow out of it and that it's ok for now and as i progress i'll settle back into the things i like because i DO like fruity shit and i DO like the booty shorts and the fishnets and jewelry and painted nails and i'm not fully a dude and there's a sick ass nonbinary trans culture that i'll figure out how to occupy!!!!!!!! but yea i'm accepting that for now i'm just like hrrgnnnghhhh yes im a Man :) a fucking Guy a Dude Bro hahaaaaa

[darthkruge]

heyy Megan, I'm trying to do a character study on Anakin but im finding very limited information online. what do you think are some of his worst and best traits? his personality, humor and like his values? thank you so much,, hope you have a good day/night

omg hi!! thank you for asking me!!

*cracks knuckles* let’s get into it 

anakin skywalker character analysis

best traits:

intelligence, overall skill, curiosity 

anakin was building droids from scraps when he was a child. he spoke huttese and basic from a young age, as well. he’s an insane battle strategist, wonderfully skilled in battle/with a lightsaber, and incredible pilot! he can pick up new skills quickly, as well. i’m just gonna link this post by @chokemeanakin bc it just sums it up real nice.. but yes smart boy love him

compassion, capacity for emotions, empathy, understanding

anakin feels things deeply. i’ve talked about this a lot before lol. but yeah he is frequently in conflict over the sheer weight of the emotions he carries. further, as a jedi, this is not something his peers could relate to. but he always tries to be there for his friends and would do anything to ease their pain. and i think that anakin seeks to understand others. he’s spent so much of his life feeling alone and like no one related to him; he wants to know how other people work, feel, and think.

loyalty, friendship, caring

anakin is so fucking loyal to those he loves. and, tying into my previous point, he loves deeply. he cares, he always has. he treats droids as humans and forms attachments, even though they may be forbidden. he held onto that need for love, for connection even after he joined the order. and he would defend those he loves til the very end... 

selflessness, protectiveness, bravery

anakin would literally dive headfirst into danger to save someone he loves. he doesn’t care about hurting himself or honestly whatever happens to him, as long as those he cares for are safe. 

worst traits:

impulsivity, recklessness

i think we’ve all seen anakin be a bit impulsive at times... sometimes, he just doesn’t think everything through. this is especially clear when someone he loves is in danger. anakin’s lost so many people that when he’s faced with the threat of losing another, his judgment can become clouded. 

insecurity, jealousy, fear

anakin is frequently jealous, which stems from his insecurities. he was probably conflicted a lot; brought into the order as a young child and told he was the chosen one. the weight of the galaxy was placed on his shoulders and, yet, he was held back in classes as a padawan, he didn’t make rank (canonically). i think these things are what allowed palpatine to manipulate him; palpatine knew anakin was afraid, insecure, and, yet, arrogant (my next point dw). he tapped into this and because anakin and the council did not have much mutual trust (aside from like obi-wan), it was easier to get to him. especially because palpatine used anakin’s fear of losing padme and his unborn children to do so. fuck palpatine bro- 

arrogance

yes, anakin was insecure. yes, he was also arrogant. let me explain myself. he occassionally rushes into things without thinking, thinking he can handle them. i think a lot of this stems from being told he was the chosen one from such a young age. that title combined with his skill?! it makes sense he’d internalize it. i am now going to stop myself before i rant about how the gifted education system is a fuckfest. this is coming from someone who spent years in that program. anyway-

personality/overall rant about his life/motivations:

i think i summed up a lot of his personality within the best and worst traits because i got ahead of myself but im going to say some more!! i think a lot of anakin’s personality is dependent on his deep capacity for emotions. you can see that throughout ROTS, he was conflicted almost all the time. he grew up as a slave and all he wanted was to protect his mother. he built droids to help her and competed in podraces to tryand get them anything that could help. 

then, he was taken to the order. suddenly, all these amazing traits he has make sense!! but then the person who’s supposed to train him (qui-gon) dies after anakin’s only known him for a short period of time. anakin’s attachment issues are abundant (i don’t think i need to explain that one) so of course he grows close to obi-wan! but obi-wan was trying to be strong for anakin. even though obi-wan struggled himself with attachment, he tried to be strong and put up a front as a “good” jedi for anakin to look up to. while this was helpful, anakin probably just felt more conflicted, as no one in his life could relate to the bredth of emotions he felt. this caused him to be more introverted and withdrawn (i talk about that in this post)

then, he loses his mother, she dies in his arms. the only person he’d wanted to protect from a young age, who he left to join the jedi, dies in his arms. he blames himself for this, thinking he should have gotten there faster, should have done something more. he probably also blamed the jedi, to at least some extent. why do these powers matter if they can’t save the people he loves? i believe he acted out of anger, killing the tuskens, because (at least to some degree) of the jedi. instead of teaching him how to express his emotions (pain, fear, loss, grief, etc.), they train him. to some degree, he might think all he’s good for is these skills. so he acts out of anger, slaughtering them. 

and then finally he finds someone who loves him in the way he wants to be loved. padme stays by his side, even after he killed the tuskens. she sees the good in him and treats him as a man, not a prophecy. but once again, this motif of fear remains! he has to hide this love, one of the only pure and good things in his life! he has to live in fear every second of every day because, if the council finds out that he found happiness and love, everything is ruined. 

but then he starts getting the vision’s that padme will die. and not just padme, now his unborn children could die, too. the one thing he has that is good and purely his could now be ripped away. he knew he was helpless, knew there was nothing he could do to stop it by himself. the council isn’t that helpful, telling him to learn to let it go with the force. while that might help any other jedi, it just pushed anakin away. he would never be able to just surrender and let go to the force, not when the life of his entire family is at risk! 

and he finds palpatine, someonoe who has spent years trying to manipulate him. but palpatine is smart, he’s cunning. anakin didn’t know what the real intentions were and, truly, he probably didn’t want to know. he was blinded by his fear and if anything could save padme, he would do it. then the council try to get him to spy on palpatine. again, conflict. anakin’s loyalty is repeatedly questioned and pushed and prodded, he was probably so confused! he didn’t know who to trust. but, when you combine the current situation with his backstory with who he is and what he cares about, it makes sense why it all happened. 

this is what i mean when i say conflict. he was pulled in a million directions constantly. and we all know how his story ends and i don’t want to cry so i’m not gonna detail it...

also: i’m not saying any of this excuses all of his choices, but it does explain them.  

humor:

lowkey a dork

he is. and i love that about him. you can see this in the way he flirts with padme sometimes... like floating the pear to her and the whole “i don’t like sand” thing. he’s a fucking dork. can’t exactly blame him nor do i hold it against him! he didn’t have many close friends growing up and he was like pining for padme for years so it’s not like he spent that time creating a playbook

he’s also witty!

i think this comes with his intelligence; he’s witty and he’s quick. example: “general grievous, you’re shorter than i expected.” i mean he’s no sass-king obi-wan kenobi but anakin definitely can hold his own in a verbal sparring match! 

also i headcanon him as having horrible puns but loving them!

values:

love, friendship, connections

at his core, anakin just wants to find someone who understands him and his emotions. who can relate to him. he wants those connections; in fact, he actively seeks them out. love is a key part of his identity. i talk about this in this post about his love languages so imma just link it there!

success, validation

tying into his determination, anakin wants to do well! he pushes himself and i think he’s a perfectionist, too. you can see this in the way he holds himself as a general; he doesn’t slack off, doesn’t not care. he understands the responsibility he has in that role and he takes it seriously! and just in his overall skill level, even though he was a bit of a child-prodigy, he clearly spent a long time training. he probably also had some imposter syndrome going on and was constantly trying to prove his worth. 

----

uhh yeah i think i got everything?? yes?? he’s so complex and i legit love him immensely. doing character analysis for anakin is my favorite thing in the entire universe! if anyone has anything they want to add, please feel free!!

[july-19th-club]

how did you first get into tarot? do you have any advice for someone who wants to learn?

i got into it in college when i was doing a bit of exploring around in terms of what i guess you’d call ‘witchy stuff’ - i’m not super involved in it much at all because like all hobbies there’s lots to dive into and i’ve always been just enough of a skeptic that im never sure if what im doing is working or not (also because as a community at least online, the modern witch zone has some problems with racism and TERF-adjacent ‘woman power’ shit and i am not about a) appropriating cultures i’m not a part of’s magical or spiritual traditions or b) associating with gender essentialists not least bc i dont ahve an essential gender). ALL THAT just to say when i was in college i thought tarot reading might be fun and i bought a cool pack with some artwork i liked, and then was gifted some other decks by friends etc. there are lots of beautiful (very expensive) decks out there - some of the fancy ones can run you like $50-60 easy - but you can get a basic rider-waite deck online for like 20 bucks.

the main thing to keep in mind about tarot is that whether or not you have much of a belief in that certain whatever-you-want-to-call-it (magic? the paranormal? words like that always feel WAY too dramatic to me an ex-catholic wary of anything that smacks of hardcore spirituality way) - your tarot deck is just cards, and it’s essentially an intuition tool. whatever you wind up reading is gonna mostly come from you - your interpretation of the cards, your interpretation of the questions you ask. and sometimes you’ll surprise yourself with the insight you glean off of that and you’ll get that cool uncanny ‘i’m onto something here’ feeling and sometimes you’ll just read a spread distractedly and get nothing out of it and just feel like you’ve wasted your time. either way, it can be a great way to sort out your own thoughts, which is mostly what i use mine for. i guess you could call it mindfulness in a way. when i draw a card and know that it either clarifies my thoughts or doesn’t make any sense for what i’m feeling, both of those answers can be helpful ways to narrow down complicated thought processes. if i’m feeling confident about a decision and i draw “The Chariot” for example, that doesn’t necessarily mean that some outside force is agreeing with me that i should do whatever im about to do. probably nobody else is giving me advice from beyond or influencing the cards i draw. but it does maybe mean that i’m not just tricking myself into feeling confident; it might mean that subconsciously (or consciously) i know i’m on top of whatever i was asking about. for someone with a degree of imposter syndrome, that can really help.

this is turning into a bit of a dissertation and you said you wanted tips, so bear with me :) my main tip is to buy a cheap deck (you can always buy a pretty one later) and to spend time with it. lots of people say that, but it’s like learning any new skill or subject - you’ll be more familiar with it and it’ll be more intuitive if you practice. the deck should come with a little book that tells you the commonly agreed-upon meanings of each card and what suit it belongs to (major arcana are for big themes and questions, minor - suits are wands, cups, coins or pentacles, and swords - are for more everyday garden-variety stuff). the book should also have some spread ideas in the back - by which i mean ways in which to lay out the cards and designate questions to each of them.

a simple spread, for example, might look like this: three cards in a row, which you designate past, present, and future. you could consider the spread broadly - the past encompassing a long time, present encompassing every aspect of your current life, future encompassing everything - or you could do it minutely; this morning (past) right now, and tonight (future). another thing everyone always says is not to be afraid to build your own spreads. if you feel like they’re not working or you’re not putting together any clear insight, you can always adjust them or go back to the ones in the book (if you find those work for you) or look some up online.

few other things i’ve noticed help you to achieve “clearer” results from a reading:

yes or no questions or extremely big, broad categories are troublesome. “how,” “what,” and “why” questions, or questions that allow for open-ended answers, are more likely to help you form a conclusion that makes sense

basically, you know how lawyers ask leading questions? this is NOT like that. if you do a spread full of leading questions, you’re just leading yourself in a circle

i’ve noticed that if i read for the same question over and over again all at once, the cards i flip get more and more nonsensical. either the deck’s getting tired of my bullshit, or i’m losing the ability to coherently interpret what’s in front of me - either way, i think past a certain point there’s no reason to beat a dead horse

^ the above leads me to a tangent which i SWEAR is related, tangent being i just said all that stuff about there not being any outside force directing your readings. still think that’s probably true unless you do spirit work about it on purpose, which i know nothing about and probably never will - but one of my few ‘i’m pretty sure i believe this’ beliefs is a bit of mild animism; the idea that objects as well as creatures have something akin to a soul or a personality. im not sure how distinct or clear or ‘real-in-the-way-that-you-and-i-who-are-living-human-beings-are-real’ those *souls* are, but the few hard and fast i-can’t-explain-it experiences i’ve had have been to do with places that felt like they Had Emotions and objects that felt like they Had Intent. and if you do subscribe to the line of reasoning that everything has a beating heart of *being-ness*, then things you spend lots of time with and interact with will probably come to some kind of understanding with you and/or you will influence each other a bit.

SO when the deck seems to be throwing unrelated cards at me after i start reading for the same thing over and over, or when reading for an anxious topic nets me reassuring cards, or when i truly do start a reading baffled and finish it clarified, the part of my mind that is a little less skeptical imagines that the deck and i, having spent some time together, are capable of maybe, just possibly, reading each other. and that magic is potentially, POTENTIALLY, in a barely tangible way, happening.

last thing: also everyone says this, but it bears repeating: don’t be intimidated by Death; it’s a card of transition really. and don’t let scary readings make you feel intimidated or scared or depressed. your readings are a reflection of your own emotional states and thought processes, and like smart seers in stories like to remind characters all the time, what you see is just one possibility and you have the power to change it if you don’t like what it shows.

[mattyslittleworld]

dead mans coffee

July / 2020

Just woke up in my front seat, at a rest stop in Tennessee. First thing I saw was my ALL WILL SUFFER tattoo on my leg. A constant reminder of a different person. Tomorrow I’m getting coffee with Skrillex’s right hand man in Nashville, and I’m nursing a cold coffee in the heat watching this crazy lightning shoot across the skyline. It looks like the end of the world. Or some fucked up Lucero song. I must’ve pulled over for a second and closed my eyes and just dropped dead for hours while parked, I’m on the way to my hotel. 

I am sitting in a diner on broadway in Nashville, TN. Nursing another shitty coffee booking meetings. As the texts come in I ignore them because they are covering the screen and distracting me from reading and studying how to properly sell my soul to the devil at the crossroads In Mississippi. 

Clarksdale, Mississippi

12:30 am

Where Robert Johnson, Bob Dylan, and now, Matty Carlock, sold their souls to the devil. 

December / 2020

Sitting in my home, in Hollywood, CA. I have the window open, and I hear the subtle sound of LA breathing, cars passing on the boulevard, sirens off in the distance, and a vinyl record of mine spinning at the lowest volume possible for me to still hear yet ignore it. I feel calm and at peace, although, it seems like a parallel feeling is war, confusion, imposter syndrome, abandonment, and skeptical. How could these two umbrellas of emotion coexist? Its very interesting. Ive been recording so much music that has nothing to do with my artist project. Its been liberating to put that aside for something greater. A new focus. Leaving artistry a vessel solely for extreme self expression and cathartic release. 

July / 2020

Winding the day down, 10:30pm. With an open tab that reads “Tigers Jaw holiday show” - on pause. I open my Mac book on my couch, ready to go through stems and ratchet strip club beats, and it catches my eye. I press play and it leads me down a rabbit hole. I find myself watching “Never Saw It Coming” right into “Chemicals” / live in Boston. Like lightning it struck through my entire body. Maybe it was the 2 hour long conversation with Andy? And the memories we were trading. The bond we have over hard times, innocence, violence, literal blood on the pavement, years of freezing in the winter....nowhere to go. The people that were around - we made forever memories to these two songs. I right away, made a playlist that consists of “The Sun, I Saw Water, Chemicals, Never Saw It Coming, and Planes”. On top of that I found the live acoustic set they recorded and put out. When I was young on DIY tours, sleeping on floors, dirty as shit, poor as shit, a human being at the very best.....the uncertainty of my near future was so bleak. I remember Title Fight came out with their record “Shed” - and the song “where am I?” would lay me down on long drives, or on the floor. I’d watch white lines pass one by one by one into the abyss of nothing. 

The line 

“Another floor

A different ceiling than the night before

Where am I?

While you’re back home”

Missing my girlfriend at that current time, leaving, and just laying on a strangers floor thinking where am I while you’re back home? What am I doing? Maybe there’s nothing only this moment?

On the tigers jaw live EP they covered this acoustic and it’s everything right now. I am fortunate to live a block away from the sunset strip - and I grabbed my skateboard and just bolted into the night. 

This SO SPECIFIC FEELING of these songs. That nobody in this environment will ever understand. It’s so beautiful. It’s so real. It’s so raw. It’s exactly what I need right now - as the past 3 weeks I’ve been living here have moved faster than the past 4 years. A loss of identity easily awaits you. It’s like you fight your whole life for that moment, to get to where you dream of, to get a shot. Scrape and crawl. And then reset. Since I’ve been living in Hollywood my day to day has been a huge mirror for me. The parts of myself I’ve been trying out run have caught me. Maybe all of this could coexist? 

March 2nd / 2021

Spring is here. Its 75 degrees in LA and theres this new thing I noticed while driving around…..the overbearing smell of flowers in the air. It sounds like a movie. Its fucked up cause It felt like a funeral in my car. I was like what the fuck is happening? It smells like a small funeral in here….are my dreams dying? Am I dying? Is punk dead? Okay its just a Ryan gosling movie out here I guess. Whatever lets go. Here’s some hatrebreed. But the windows are down. My mood is different. My spirit is lifted, which ive been desperate to say. I automatically get punched in the guts with the feeling of driving so fucking fast, and blasting title fight. Skateboarding. Looooooooooong drives with fucked up friends to out of state shows no one will be at. Im listening to Stab by Title Fight - off the Shed LP. What a specific time in my life this brings back. That I usually talk about on this little throw up blog often. Spring is such a pivotal time in my life every year. Since covid shows stopped - human decency stopped - community stopped - my natural habitat was taken from me, and all of my friends and family. I remember living in New York in 2011. At the New Yorker. I was studying at the Institute Of Audio Research to be a janitor in my home town. Because that’s what they teach you. Instead of studying compression, and listening to washed up hacks talk to me about music, I would walk out my building onto 8th ave. B Line it Penn Station. Get on the LIRR and ride that shit right into the best LI shows every night I could. Id meet all my friends from Jersey / NYC / Philly and even Baltimore because it was so common to make it a priority to no matter what, drive hours on end to support a hardcore shows and to not lose touch with the hundreds around the country that you call family. Drive to Richmond for a shows on a Monday night, go off, hit a diner after with your new found tribe, then drive home, be back at 6 am, and just stumble into your bullshit job with a black eye or scratches all over you. It was all worth it. Probably quit that job anyway to go on tour with your friends band and live as gypsies for the entire summer too. Spring embodies this spirit for me. Church parking lots in Doylestown, PA - full of kids from all over the country, who left their problems in their hometown, to just get on the road with their best friends and basically start a new life. It is just amazing how formative those years were for a lot of my friends. I have people I met at shows from all over the country messaging me always checking in, and supporting, and sometimes it feels like I know them better than my first cousins, aunts and uncles. We were at war together. We fought against the world together. We found ourselves together. We created shit from nothing. Determination and passion. Oh no….Planes by Tigers Jaw just came on. You know the vibe. This shit just hits so different now as a pop / hip hop producer. This PA scene, mixed with NJHC, just stood me up and gave me confidence to have my own voice, my own thoughts, and to fight back. Something about being in a shitty car and it smells like dirty vans and like…..axe to cover up the smell. BELTING Basement and car moshing and almost driving off a bridge. Listen. I know every single blog is about this. But fuck you fight me. ITS CALLED SELF EXPRESSION GRANDMA. SO STRAP INTO YOUR BOOT THINGS AND ENJOY THE RIDE TO NOWHERE. Its been crazy living in LA. I live directly on Hollywood BLVD, on the Walk Of Fame. Where I was almost killed two weeks ago over someones gang that my ass is not in. My guy looked at me and said YO YOU MATTY? And I was listening to Taylor swift in my headphones walking back from Starbucks and it was so funny how different my energy was. I was like bro can you kill me already dude because these Taylor tones are so good that they gunna just end up killing me anyway. So perfect timing. I think the guy was mad at my friend to say the least lol. But every night its loud 808’s, the sounds of the city, amazing energy, and neon lights shining in from lit up billboards off the BLVD. Its such a culture shock for me. I feel like im too aggressive just from being east coast. But its just what it is. It took me a little to adapt to being in sessions and meetings with seasoned people in this industry who have major cuts and recognition. But I just learned to double down on myself, and be as authentic as I possibly can be. Theres nothing like crushing writing sessions in the pop realm, then turning off my shit, unplugging, and run into the night with my skateboard and old punk records. It’s almost like my own secret that is becoming my blood. I haven’t been communicating with the ones who like my music, have interest in what im doing, come to my shows etc - since I touched down here….I just unplugged….started writing HEAVY and decided to dedicate months to getting better, learning, becoming smarter, discovering a vision that’s much broader than what were sold, finding myself, making sure my wisdom is parallel to my age - if not wise beyond my years. A lot of artists and bands SING, PLAY, PERFORM, PROMOTE. But I have decided to WATCH, ATTEND, and LISTEN. Everynight I sit down with tea, unplug, and spin records on my turntable…in the dark, in my living room, alone….all kinds of records. From The National, to Springsteen, to Title Fight, to Hendrix, to the rare Troublemaker LP and 7” I have…..Sharon Van Etten, Jesse Malin…..ugh. Its just bliss. Pure bliss. Right now im drinking coffee and bouncing from listening to Into It Over It and American Football. I spent all last night rapping my ass off, mixing, and singing ref vocals for other people. It was so fun. Im finding a lot of my new material is this spirit im talking about - but over hip hop production. I want to tell my life story and combat the stereotypes of modern rap and pop music with true intentions and unique tones of untold stories that press, radio, and this market usually doesn’t get fed. Ive also realized a lot of music I was promoting over the past year to come out (prior to the pandemic) hasn’t come out….and I know people are questioning that….what is happening? So before covid I had German solo dates booked - and then I was going to the UK right after. I have a bunch of single drops lined up with music videos. Some you can guess with who. And then the pandemic hit and I canceled everything and decided to pivot my focus into my passion for songwriting and production, instead of sitting around “waiting for shows to come back.” I pretended that shows were never going to come back and doubled down on my career as a producer, that at the time, still is, moving forward at a faster rate than my artist shit. So I packed my shit after offers, and opportunity presented themselves. Touched down on a Tuesday, with meetings that Friday. Off to the races. In sessions that following Monday. Fast forward here we are. Hungry, learning, learnt, turned 30. Looking at the next decade like Mcgregor at the weigh in. Fight ready. Ive learned so much since the fall that all of the music I had planned on releasing, I loaded it back up, tore it apart, and re built it. So its not stale, so its not expired, so its not “then”….so its NOW. Which im so glad I did, and im doing. I don’t think ive been in the booth more. My mind is so stimulated by this wave im on. And its got me in a good place. Now that the spirit of spring is here, my mental health is going to be taking a big leap as well and im going to do everything I can to just flood all of this content. I think Never Meant by American Football is the best song ever made. Me and Mike were talking about doing a song together a few months ago and that would be such a trip for me. 

I wanted to talk about my recent trip to Joshua Tree. I was invited by Christopher Thorn from Blind Melon to live at his studio for a few days to write together. I didn’t really know what to expect. I met him once or twice thru Clinch, and just around the Sea Hear Now circle back east, and I was familiar with No Rain (his hit). We got on the phone, picked a weekend where it’d work for both of us, got some covid tests, and boom. Packed my shit again (right off a flight back from New York, where I shot 3 music videos, and did 1 remote session in 2 fucking days), and drove out to the desert. There is no address so I had a map. It was epic. It was in the desert desert. Like THE DESERT FAM. Coyotes at night, snakes and shit. The air was so dry, your lips would get chapped to let you know death was right around the corner so you better man up baby boy. Beforehand - from all the traveling and flights, and burning myself out on videos and sessions, I found myself listening to a lot of acoustic Nebraska Springsteen type shit. John Moreland, or even like acoustic bayside, Lucero, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits…..just pure music with no samples, not gridded, not sold, no machine, no click, just real live country music inspired by the human condition….of the earth. It was just speaking to my soul…..so when we booked this to get in the room together….man was I ready. I don’t think ive had an experience so fruitful to the soul. And ive played shows in Slovenia, and sipped espresso on a bridge that looked like a painting, staring at subtle mountain tops off in the distance like I was a character in some book. We started working at night and ran it up till like 3 am. As the sun came down the lights off in the distance miles and miles away were so clear because we were just the only life form around….and it would just shine into the studio windows and reflect on the perimeter making it seem like we were surrounded by New York City. It did a lot for my soul to play drums, acoustic, sing, play piano, shred electric, even mix a little. I felt like I made a very fast lifelong friend. Its been a minute since I got on with someone like that. We talked a lot about growing up touring. And wed finish each others sentences regarding topics that ONLY people like us would know. Like Subway being a life line for DIY touring, or the weird strange feelings of comfort from rest stops in the middle of nowhere at 4 am, the rest stop coffee that you get to just make the next 2 hours of the drive into town bearable. But then you see your boy from your band in the other aisle so you throw shit at him. Then you all stumble back into the van/bus and just disappear into the night. This shit was so needed for me. When Id wake up, id make espresso, and just sit out front and listen to Joe Rogan, at this random chair that was behind his studio, facing the mountains. Just endless property waiting to leave you 6 feet in the ground. I sat there and sipped my espresso, and just reflected on the long journey of my career. How many random moments like this ive found myself in since I was 15. In the middle of the desert where Springsteen hangs out with my heroes, off the strength of my songwriting. Or in Romania drinking coffee, fucked off, on a bench far from the venue, by random train lines in the pouring rain by myself. The farthest from humanity I can be. Or the random VFW hall in my head that I don’t even know where it is, with my little punk crew, who all smell like complete shit and cigarettes and soda, fucked off god knows where, just to finger point and sing along to this band we found on myspace that were in OUR hometown the weekend prior singing to our band. Theres just an endless string of memories that can go on forever, with stories that just fulfill a lifetime, of conversations that just make the white lines on I95 move faster. Or just everyone is quiet - reading a book - texting - exhausted from the night prior - and you just ABRUPTLY turn on teenage dream by Katy Perry SOOOO LOUD - take your shirt off and start dropping it like its hot from the passenger front seat, and catch a mid afternoon front flip stage dive into the backseat. From those youthful days of this underground spirit, to existing in a realm of pure monsters of my craft, I truly believe this next decade could co exist and be one for the books. Damn I feel good. Also me and Sasso started a book club called BSU and you can’t be in it because you probably read books and the only rule for our book club besides not speaking about book club is, you can’t read books. Okay im going to go buy a bike right now so I can ride It to Mexico and get abducted by the cartel and sold for bitcoin. FAREWELL EARTHLINGZ.