Surgery & Song

Another post about this journey I'm on, the time passed while I am indecorously incapacitated, dismally disenabled, iniquitously immobilized, out of fuckin' action BRO. I'm trying to keep a little digital record of this epoch, something I regret not doing with some previous injuries. I would say it's because people don't keep records of the bad times, but I don't know about that, in fact I'm not sure if I have kept alot of notes on the good times, but the really bad times, or perhaps the visually noticible bad times have been heavily transcribed, through writting, art, pictures. It's all there really.

I went for surgery this morning, granted it was interesting, but maybe in ways that were previously concealed to me. I'm not going to detail this atal, I'll remember it and the prospect of that much typing isn't doing much for me right now. I was definitely interested in how venerable some of the characters were. How vulnerable I first felt when I put the gown on, I felt defenseless, exposed, naked. I'm still not sure why, something of this accord wouldn't usually bother me, but the day did turn out to repeat a pattern of idiosyncratic behaviour on my own part.
To skip through passing time, I'll make some quick refelctions to outline the day. I was reading Diary by Chuck Palahniuk. They had some depressing Animal Rescue show on the TV. I had been fasting since midnight, no liquids, not even a drop of water, the cup of tea I was given some time after surgery was cherished unlike any other.I was totally and utterly not myself when I came around afterward. I was emphatically happy when I awoke, but that was not by my own doing and more so the sedative. Twenty minutes later and I was in the dumps like no other. I then hit the 'middle ground' and it was grand. I managed to chat up every single nurse in sight when I woke up, something which I can only blame on the medication, which if you actually know me, will certainly understand. I felt really embarrassed when I came to my senses but it gave me something to shake my head and laugh about for most of the day, so honeslty, I'm not complaining too much.




Anyway, I'll just take the easy hit here and say that summed up the day, which it didn't, but y'know, piss off.
On the medical side of things, I'm no longer bound to the drab restrictions of a cast. Apparently, the stiches won't heal the wound proeprly if I have one on, so I might be getting one on Tuesday when I'm back in. But of course, I am a man of sporadic temperament and surely realised once I wasn't getting one, that a cast was the one thing I needed, which I still believe is legitimate and not just some teenage outburst of wanting what I can't have, but sure I know all about that. There's a comfort with the cast, a safety and a confidence, now I'm just in a sling with my fingers splinted and my hand slightly bandaged over the incision. Oh, and something I found really engrossing, the wires protrude from the wound in my hand, but they're held down by the dressing. I was obsessing over this for an age. Hopefully visuals of this will follow when I lose these stitches, but for now, let your imagination run rampant. It's really not as bad as it sounds, infact, it's quite neat.



So being free from the constricting mod rock mold swallowing my hand and with it my creativity, I decided something must be done.
Playing anything that involves strumming is just unpleasant, the pain here is far wrose than breaking it. When I first went to get the break treated, they asked me to rate the pain between one and ten, ten being the highest, I gave a humble three. This has jumped, without my fucking consent, to an overwhealming seven and that's with the painkillers. Having wires in your hand hurts more than I thought, I have a shit outlook on reality sometimes. Back to the issue at hand, THE FREEDOM. Or maybe the lack there of, but still, something, anything had to happen, I had to create! I had the oppurtunity and bounced. So with my little guidlines set out:

-Lo Fi
-Minimal Strumming
-No Palm Muting
-Lo Fi
-Lo Fi
-Half an hour to write and record

I got to work.



A half our passed and I had this, one guitar track, one harmonic track, two vocal tracks and a track with audio samples. Oooh, I think I had one feedback track too. I used the cheapest and currently the only dynamic mic I own. I'm happy with this as my testament for creation with a broken hand. Maybe more will follow, perhaps something more people would be into.

Without Hope
OR
Without Hope
(mediafire)

It's not Lo-Fi enough.

T-Shirts

I set myself a little project during the time I had off from college last week. I find it really difficult to paint on fabrics as the liquid doesn't flow, it seems lifeless, dead. I decided to try and get better at this as I'm sure it'll come in handy and along with that, make myself some really cheap t-shirts so I don't have to buy some for a while.
I used heavy acrylics I bought a while ago and some textile medium so the image has a gloss and won't wash out.
The shirts are dyed an off white with some other colours going through it but you can't really see it in the photos.
Just for note, they're both XL, the only size worth wearing. The bigger the shirt, the more comfortable.

It was nice to do some work that's usually frowned upon by my lecturers but it was stopped dead after three shirts due to breaking my hand and thus being left unable to paint. Here's two of the shirts that I did do, it's Ezra Pound and Son House as they featured heavily during that week for me.



Needs an iron.



This post is so I can be reminded to come back and continue this once I can use my painting hand again and to seek some kind of advice, any kind of helpful criticisms people want to throw my way, I think I find all criticisms helpful, just maybe not all healthy. I'll post more when I do them.

Beaumont

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."

I've always liked that line. Voltaire's assertion seems to be particularly fitting with me in my current condition. Last night I broke my hand, my metacarpal bone if I recall correctly. I spent the best part of today in the emergency room, exhausted, irritated, bored and alone. It's a pretty grim place, but dwelling on this now just doesn't seem right.

The bone in my hand is totally broken at a nauseating angle. There were remarks made about it being 'displaced', but to us common people, it was just fuckin' vile, the split bone crossing from one side of my hand over to the next branched skeletal scaffold. I'm currently harbouring a cast and sling, but I'm in on Tuesday morning to get checked again. I had a brief meeting with the orthopedic surgeon and after examining the x-rays and jolting my hand around to the point of prepubescent squealing, he informed me that I've got some surgery ahead of me. He detailed it but it went over my head for the most part, but what I gathered was having my broken bone and two fingers wired with a steel plate fitted down the side. Looks like Tuesday will be fun...

I guess back to my initial sentiment... The doubt. I'm not sure where this is going to leave me with my day to day lifestyle. It's my right hand, my good hand, my drawing/painting/cutting/pasting/whateverthefuck hand, and having that out of action won't really sit too well in the slight consideration that I do art in college. And as for guitar, well I can't bring myself to strum a simple pattern with my hand like this. Any form of creation that I engage in is pretty much stopped in its tracks and perhaps I shouldn't sound so desperate, but that's my release and not having that is a pretty sepulchral prospect. There's three other things in this world thus far that grant me the kind of escapism that playing music or creating art does, one being karate, one being shows and the last being long gone. But how can I stagedive/faildive with this? I don't know if it's a chance I'm willing to take. Sure, there's nothing stopping me from going to shows and nothing will, but I don't know if I will be able to 'let go' standing at the back, minding my precious little broken baby, but we'll see what happens tomorrow. And as for karate, well I don't feel I've any explaining to do there.
It's not all bad, or atleast it could be worse, if this was two or three months back when I was working for colleges for next year, well I'd be rightly fucked. I have my place in NCAD, DIT if I want that instead and waiting for word from IADT, so in this sense this is good.

I think my reason for writing this is just to question the uncertainty of what's to come and to ask for simple advice. I can't go without creating and although my interest are drawn as far as Art by the likes of Chris Burden and Rudolf Schwarzkogler, I don't know if it's an aesthetic I'm willing to pursue right now.
So if any good soul could reccomend how I spend the next while, new types of creation I can try, be it art or ropey one handed guitar tapping that wouldn't interest me otherwise, get at me and help me out.
And if somebody could bring bubble wrap to the show tomorrow night, wrap my hand up and launch me from the stage assuring me I'll be fine, that could be great too.

All in all, maybe I like not knowing.

Hi, How Are You?

"Are you entertained by deep despair?"

I think it's safe to say that on a creative level I am, particularly by the scribe of the question himself.
Daniel Johnston, for me has been one of the few musicians, writers, artists that I truely believe on every level, there's no platform of sorrow for show in his work, this 'despair' isn't there to entertain.
This is honesty in its most pure form.

I've waited years to see Daniel live, he's played here three times before but I was always too young to get in. I think this inability to see him fueled my interest, the rejected unknown. I had romanticised visions of a broken Daniel, warbling his way through a back catalouge of crushing misery, but when the time came to see this idol of mine, I was presented with something on an entirely different level, a level I never wish to land on again.

I could sit here for an hour, even two and chronicle my whole night. Delineate the picturesque performance of the support act and even write a paragraph on how flattering the vocalist's dress was, but I've got one hand to type with and I'm moving at a slow enough pace so all of that worthless jargon can fuck right off. For now, I'll just get right to the point, Daniel Johnston fucking sucked. There's no other way to say it, his quivering cantillate just didn't quite titillate my dulcet pallet, that just doesn't cut it, it doesn't have the raw edge the statement needs, it's as simple as this... It was shit.
Maybe other people won't understand this, but after that show I think I was in a pretty dark headspace and I can't seem to put into words just why. It's an odd feeling, having my early teenage view of Daniel, a man who could do no wrong, sorely crushed. This, the man who I cite as the catalyst that pushed me head first into songwriting.

Perhaps I'm being too hard on the performance, on the man himself, afterall the first three songs he played were outstanding, in truth, that night he had me at hello but after the initial introductory, the three solo performances, it fell quickly into a sea of sonic shit. He left the stage after this trinity of verse and there he remained for quite a time, as I sat in horror watching the Beam Orchestra (his new backing band) play an instrumental version of Speeding Motorcycle. I'm sorry, but that song to me is the epitome of perfect pop melody and that doesn't come across so well with an eleven piece 'experimental jazz' orchestra. He returned to the stage after this and began a collection of numbers, each one sending me spiraling deeper into this hole of calamity, the endless bummer.
There was one point when I came close to leaving, he disclosed that Walking the Cow would be next, I was filled with dread and excitement, who knew they went together? And then it started, and once it did, I knew this was saving nothing, not a lousy thing. No song of his needs a fucking thirty second drum solo at the start, cut the shit and give the man a guitar, a piano or even an organ and let him play some magic, but when you start trying to make these simple songs 'out there', you're drowning in a river of fluxing piss. Obviously, despite the temptation I waited it out, I stayed to see if Daniel could muster up some comely masterpiece seperate from the group of unflattering dissonance, and you know he almost did. The encore, the one song that everybody wanted to hear, True Love Will Find You In The End. I have no shame, no shame atal in saying that this song, the version featured on 1990 has never failed to totally level me to a lamentable point, an oddly pathetic point, but a point without any humiliation. This particular recital however, didn't quite dig a hole in my gut, it didn't quite shovel what came from that hole to form a huge lump in my throat. Sure, it sounded nice, it did. It was simply pretty and it held my interest but I didn't believe it, for the first time listening to that song, I just did not believe that I'd be found. The failings here didn't lie with Daniel, his heart and soul and every other emotional entity did seem to pour out but that was painfully overshadowed by the backing band, who although descreased in size still were far too much for this one song. There was no suffering in the wind section, there was no hope in that guitar player, they were simply playing, and simply playing, for me just doesn't work for Daniel's songs.
Where was the woe, where was the belief, where was the fucking catharsis? Perhaps I do ask for too much, but hey, that's just the way I am.
He did return for a second encore, another two songs that had me struggling to stay in my seat, not because I was jumping up for the standing ovation like every other idol lover and idle lover in the building, but because that door, that exit was looking more and more appealing each second.

I don't feel like trying to make a strong conclusion, tying everything together, this has taken long enough as it is (my one handed typing is improving though), I think it's all fairly simple, Daniel Johnston was not enjoyable live. Thankfully, the albums won't change, they're always going to be there, they will probably continue to effect me the way they always have done, and one thing is for sure, Daniel Johnston was the spark to send me into writing, and that can never change.

Nostalgia

A brief visual history of my life, up to a point.












































Simpler times.