From the Vault--PIL and Eric Bogosion

I'm finally getting back into my CD dump, which is a process I never saw myself engaging in--that is, taking all my CDs and digitizing them.  So much for "Kill Your iPOD."  The only thing that would make my iPOD more lovable was if I could get Walton Goggins' face on my iPOD case.

The process is actually helping me rediscover music I'd either ignored or completely forgotten about, which has been an absolute joy.  Right now I'm listening to PIL's "Disappointed," which was part of the musical tapestry that made up the last half of grad school and my now ex-stepdad leaving, an event so catastrophically devastating that I have yet to be able to write about it other than to tell people what a lying cockwad he is and leave it at that.  Because he pretty much ruined my life and it has only been in the last year or so that I've managed to hustle things back into some semblance of order.  But it wasn't fun

Oh you handsome devil

Eric Bogosian's Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead was the other big album at that time.  I was obsessed with Eric Bogosian, both on Law and Order: CI and as a writer; I'd seen him read from The Perforated Heart at AWP and fell in love.  His writing was so visceral that it made me physically uncomfortable, which I sort of liked because it was a nice distraction from crying all the time.  Matthew got me a signed copy of Nails and I read it while working costumes for Beauty and the Beast.  It also helped me get through that clusterfuck.  Eric Bogosian pretty much saved my soul.

I was especially fond of "Blow Me."  I loved the explosive, raw frustration of the piece because it was exactly how I was feeling.  The whole world, as far as I was concerned, could just fuck off.  At one point, my mother, with whom I was having a pretty rough time with post-ex-stepdad-leaving, suggested that I get a tattoo.  I whirled on her and snarled I'm going to get a tattoo, I'm going to tattoo my EYELIDS and they're going to say BLOW. ME. so that when I close my eyes the whole world knows how I feel about 'em.

She never brought up getting tattooed again.

There was a time where I could recite "Blow Me" from memory.  I was going to perform it at the Stonecoast Talent Show but Matthew talked me out of it because he is occasionally a buzzkill.

I still love Bogosian, but I'm at a point in my life where I need a little more smooth.  Where people yelling doesn't make me feel better, it makes me feel worse.  The man is a comic genius, an amazing performer and very handsome (also, a sweetheart, he replied to my email).  Things have gotten surprisingly better, for the most part.  I've mended.  I don't think I've listened to Nails or 9 since that time, but oddly enough, it brings with it a weird sort of nostalgia, not putting me back in that awful, dark time, but rather, reminding me that somehow, I got through all of it. 

Writings Is Hard

I had what could more or less be considered the perfect weekend.  Not because I especially enjoyed it, but in theory, I got out of a weekend everything I've always thought I've wanted to do.  Namely, I wrote, slept and watched MST3K.

And man, am I bushed.

People who aren't writers don't understand how much it takes out of you.  It's mentally taxing.  It's headache inducing, eye-frying torture.  Yesterday I spent approximately six hours in my office, with short breaks for getting the mail and making lunch (which I ate at my desk) and at the end, I had finished a microfiction piece that took a lot longer than I'm use to spending on something less than 500 words (from inception to finished story took three weeks; by contrast, I wrote the first draft of "The PI's Wife" in 45 minutes, then typed it, and "Hero Cop" was written to a final draft in a total of 30 minutes, counting the walk back from the Brooklyn library where I wrote most of it on a piece of scrap paper in tiny golf pencil).  I then started on another piece, which is an absolute mess.  When I'd done all I could on that (it's still a mess), I sent out half a dozen submissions because my self-esteem is getting a little too high.  I finally shut it all down and watched Riding With Death, which I did not fall asleep during.

Today I got up and spent 4 hours tweaking and arranging a full-length manuscript for submission.  Then it was onto The Projected Man, which I made it through about 3/4 of.

*yawn*