So, for the most part, I practiced social distancing this weekend, spending most of Saturday and Sunday alone in my car with audiobooks traveling I-95.

Of course, at the mid-point of my 600 mile highway odyssey, I spent a few hours making music with a small group of friends in St. Matthews, South Carolina at PossumCon, the name folks gave to the latest house filk at a dear friend’s house; the first since his spouse passed away last year; this weekend would have been her birthday, and it was a fitting tribute to her, as she loved this sort of thing.

We did spend most of our time the requisite six feet apart (all the better to leave room for guitars, fiddles, mandolins, and a theremin) taking turns playing silly, topical, and occasionally touching tunes spread around the living room. It was a wonderful, if temporary, escape from reality, since it looks like it’s the last time I’m going to get to play music out in the world for a while, as gigs are getting cancelled or postponed left and right, as governments all over the country start preventing gatherings of more than 50 people. FantaSci, where I was playing with the Humdingers this weekend, has been canceled, as has this month’s Open Mic at Castleburg. It sucks, but it’s probably for the best, even if it isn’t ideal.

In fact, lots of my fellow musicians, as well as convention organizers, small businesses, crafters, and the like are probably going to take a big hit over the next couple of months (at least) as prevention shuts down or limits their ability to ply their wares and events to the public; some of us have day jobs and will do alright, but a lot of these folks (including many friends of mine) depend on their art and creativity for income, and that’s going to be severely limited for at least the next little while. So, if you’re able, why not grab takeout at a local restaurant, buy a CD from a local musician, or browse folks’ Etsy stores for cool stuff (but don’t click the ads you see out there on social media; the current policies are really hurting vendors’ livelihoods).

In the interest of giving, I’ve made my record, World’s Okayest…, free (or name your price) on bandcamp for the forseeable future. I have a day job that isn’t going anywhere (at worst, I’ll be teleworking if they shut the facility down). If you were thinking about buying my record in the next little while, take mine, enjoy, and go buy someone else’s who does this for a living and would miss the income. Otherwise, just enjoy.

Lots of musicians I know are turning to online streaming to get their music out there since our ability to perform in the usual venues is limited right now. We streamed about two hours’ worth of our “concert” on Saturday, and I’m likely to work on setting up some sort of streaming arrangement this week as life settles down, and probably do some sort of show by the end of the week. In the meantime, check out your favorite performers’ social media (my bandmates in the Blibbering Humdingers are doing one Monday night at 8pm, for example – wish I could join them, but, y’know, latency…), since that’s where they’ll promote their efforts – also, my virtual friend (we’ll meet IRL one of these days), Eric Distad of The Faithful Sidekicks and FAWM fame has set up Filk Streams, which is attempting to catalog various performers’ streaming events so they’re all centrally located for easy discovery.

Otherwise, as much as I’m talking about the news of the day, this weekend was actually quite a refreshing change; as I said, I spent most of my road trip listening to audiobooks (via Libro.fm, which is like audible, but works through local bookstores and passes proceeds back to them), and not the news. Just, me, the road, and some stories, and it took me out of the current events bubble for a bit, and it was nice. I’m not saying that keeping up with current events is bad; it’s not, and it’s the responsible thing to do, but in this age of the 24 hour news cycle, it’s okay to step away; the headlines will still be there when you come back. Get outside, or curl up with a book, or whatever; it’s good for you.

So, beyond the pandemic we’re dealing with in the other post, my world’s largely been occupied with long days spinning well over a hundred pages of well-written (if I do say so myself) bullshit to accomplish the Herculean effort of pulling together the acquisition package for a multi-million dollar omnibus IT services contract that should have been started months ago, but was introduced to me by my boss in the middle of last week to be complete by mid-day Thursday. It’s been mostly a blur of ten hour days writing various documents and justifications and plans to get this business sorted out. Nothing like trying to make the best case you can when you don’t have nearly all the information.

I did take off Tuesday to get my annual physical and such sorted out – turns out I’m terribly healthy, though I’m still holding on to some of my winter weight (about 20 pounds too much that I’ll drop when the weather is reliably bike-friendly), and apparently my posture is awful (which my lovely spouse confirmed). That didn’t take *all* day, so I spent the afternoon running around the city with the eldest child who’s home on spring break this week. We had fun browsing bookstores and eating fried appetizers that aren’t good for us.

A lot of the crazy March Irish dance stuff is getting cancelled due to the viral apocalypse, so the girls are getting less busy, which is frustrating for them, but not as frustrating as “opposite day” at the feis, where folks who nailed their performances regularly got ranked lower than people who forgot steps. It was…odd.

At this point, I’m still looking at traveling down to SC for the weekend for a house concert with a bunch of other filk buddies, though I’m keeping an eye on what the host has to say as we get closer. Likewise, Fanta-Sci still appears to be on for next weekend in Durham, though honestly, who knows what’ll happen between now and then. Any gathering at all on the schedule is, at this point, purely theoretical until it actually happens.

Anyway, tunes. Kinda the usual, though number 1 was definitely influenced by my listening to a bunch of Riot Grrl the other day:

1. “My Sister” – The Julianna Hatfield Three
2. “Cemetry Gates” – The Smiths
3. “Dracula From Houston” – Butthole Surfers
4. “What Is Life” – George Harrison
5. “Good Fucking Bye” – Matt Skiba
6. “F.N.T.” – Semisonic
7. “Baby Britain” – Elliott Smith
8. “Ladykillers” – Lush
9. “Domino Effect” – Ozma
10. “Kate Is Great” – Bouncing Souls
11. “I Look Around”- The Rain Parade
12. “I Think I’m In Love” – Beck

Wasn’t it fun when we were all arguing about old white guys running for President?

the obsessions of the public consciousness seem to move faster than the speed of thought these days, given that we’ve all got access to all the world’s information in our pockets, and there are multiple 24 hour “news” organizations scrambling to fill time with talking heads blabbering about the news of the day.

While there’s some definite advantages to this, it often creates many more problems than it solves, as it’s difficult to sift through the deluge to find the good information amongst all the bad (shared with both genuine concern and malice). Sturgeon’s Law, of course, is alive and well, so there’s a hell of a lot more bad information than good.

Enter COVID-19.

I am *not* an epidemiologist, or any other sort of scientist, really, so I am speaking from the position of a mostly-informed civilian (all mistakes in terminology are solely mine). This virus is serious, mostly because it’s new (well not a totally new virus, but a new strain of a very common one), and humanity as a whole hasn’t encountered it before, and thus lacks herd immunity, since few people have developed antibodies to it naturally, and there is, thus far, no vaccine. The average healthy person who gets infected is likely going to experience a week or two of illness and discomfort, not unlike the flu or other bug. That said, all the precautions being advised (although you should be washing your hands anyway) are more about protecting those of us who are especially vulerable to infection, or might have other conditions that prevent them from fighting the infection or might have something else aggrivated by it. The people who have died (and in the scheme of things, there aren’t many) largely fall into these categories.

Even if the US Government is doing terrible job of handling this business, the media, both professional and social, are likewise distributing plenty of terrible information. If you hear something that sound foolish, it probably is. It’s not a liberal hoax or false flag, it’s not a Chinese chemical attack, your dog can’t give it to you, and you won’t be cured drinking some televangelist’s silver solution.

Just wash your damned hands.

The precautions being taken, especially the shutting down of lots of big public gatherings, is probably a good thing overall, should slow the spread, but at this point, it’s here, we’re not going to stop it. Cases are popping up all over the place – the news announced the first one in my metropolitan area yesterday. I expect I’ll be doing some working-from-home before all is said and done. Most of us are going to be exposed sooner or later in the next few months. Part of me just wants to get it over with, build the herd immunity, and keep the vulnerable as safe as we can.

That said, the public response isn’t really tamping down panic; hand sanitizer and toilet paper are flying off shelves, kids at school are getting bad info from their cable news watching parents and it’s causing undue anxiety (I have first-hand knowledge of this).

We shall, however, see what happens. I fully expect it, as I indicate in this post title, that it’s gonna get weirder before it gets better.

Rampant exchange of bodily fluids was a major cause of society’s downfall. After AIDS, the was NRS, then there was UBT. One of the first things Cocteau did was outlaw and engineer all fluid transfer out of socially accepted behavior…

Hasn’t been the best week, honestly.

I’m mostly past the latest cold/flu/definitely not Covid-19 bug, but this one feels like it’s going to…linger. Taking off work Monday to play dead kinda helped, though playing catch-up always sucks, especially with a sore throat and gnomes hammering in the sinuses behind my eyes.

Work has been a flurry of bad news/confirmation of worst-case scenarios all week. This, too, sucks, but at least the questions are answered. Not looking forward to the efforts to fix it all, however, but that’s what they pay me the middling bucks for. I’m also, understandably, less than thrilled with the results of Super Tuesday, as my chosen candidate didn’t do as well as I would have liked, and I’m working on coming to terms with that. While, as I write this on Thursday, she hasn’t yet made a decision on the way forward, I think the writing is on the wall, and I expect it’ll be coming to an end soon (update: It has). She’ll likely have some leverage to get some of her plans incorporated into the party platform depending on who she eventually decides who to throw her lot in with in the end; I won’t make any predictions at this point; I can see benefits to backing either Biden of Sanders, or neither. Anyway, I’m not sorry I cast my vote for her, and I’m very appreciative of what she brought to the campaign, in terms of ideas, intelligence, energy, and attitude (killing Bloomberg’s vanity campaign is all on her, and it was beautiful); she elevated the discourse, and in the end, that’ll make the eventual nominee better prepared.

Most campaigns I get emotionally and personally invested in (2004 with Dean comes specifically to mind), I end up hitting this point of mourning. It’s frustrating, as I really do think she’s the most prepared to do the job, and she really is the smartest damned person in the room with a strategy to get the job done. If you looked at solely at my social media feed last week, Senator Warren should have been winning this thing in a walk. Of course, my social circle isn’t representative of the Democratic coalition as a whole, and, given my status as a (relatively) highly educated white person, and my social circle being, on the whole, demographically similar to myself, we’re all right in the Warren campaign’s sweet spot. Problem is, our particular demographic niche is a relatively small part of the coalition as a whole. As this excellent and insightful piece describes, “People like me love Elizabeth Warren”, but…

The reality is that there aren’t that many people like us — and there’s a valuable lesson in that, not just about the Warren campaign specifically but about some of the larger dynamics in American politics.

I highly recommend reading the whole piece; it puts a lot of things, least of all, the privilege that my particular demographic enjoys, into perspective. But, even if I understand it, it’s still a disappointment personally, and combined with the perfect storm of other crap in my life in the last week, it all adds up to a very emotionally and physically tumultuous couple of days.

It hasn’t been all bad, however. Even if I was kinda wrung out, my eldest absolutely KILLED it as the lead in the spring musical at school last weekend, Fountain of You, and it seems like it was a good experience for her, especially getting to work with the writer and composer of the show, which had it’s world premiere on the stage at SBC.

This weekend, being the beginning of March, is the beginning of serious Irish dance season; Friday afternoon I have to go set up sound for the weekend’s Feis, and since dance dad owns the P.A., dance dad runs sound. It’s sure to be exhausting, but it’s always fun.

That’s kind of the story. Emotional roller coaster. But, let’s talk tunes. This week’s spotify dump is absolutely chock full of indie spanning the 90s to today, with a nice riot grrl flavor (which gets even spicier after I stopped logging them), which feels vaguely appropriate. Persist:

1. “The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton” – Laura Jane Grace
2. “Zombie” – Langhorne Slim
3. “Here Comes My Baby” – Yo La Tengo
4. “Ladder to the Sun” – Saintseneca
5. “Air Mattress” – Connor Oberst
6. “Just Like A Ringing Bell” – Titus Andronicus
7. “Seether” – Veruca Salt
8. “Going to Marrakesh” – The Extra Glenns
9. “Be My Lover” – Alice Cooper
10. “Hey Jealousy” – The Ergs
11. “A Little More Time” – The Drew Thomson Foundation
12. “Section 12 (Hold Me Now)” – The Polyphonic Spree
13. “The High Road” – The Feelies

This morning at 6:15am, I cast my vote for Elizabeth Warren.

If you’re asking why, I’ll tell you: I think she’s the best candidate for the job, and I’m with her until such time as she’s not a candidate. You can read my post from last week if you want to see my not-as-articulate-as-some endorsement. It’s the primary; the idea here is to vote for the candidate you think is best; the time for compromise and “blue no matter who” is in November. If your preferred candidate isn’t one of the top two the media is pushing right now, go ahead and vote for her! Even if you candidate doesn’t win the day, your show of support will put weight behind the message, and force the eventual nominee to consider adopting it.

I don’t dislike Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden; I actually like them both, but I honestly think Liz Warren, with all her nerdy policy enthusiasm and plans and drive and energy and charisma, is the best person for the job. You can tell she’s really thought about the issues we’re facing in America today, and has developed strategies, with the help of very smart people in politics, industry, academia, and all the other applicable areas, to address those issues. In the end, yes, she’ll have to work with the rest of the government to get those plans enacted, and she’ll have to make compromises along the way, but she knows that, but dammit, she’s done her homework in ways the other guys haven’t, and she’s likely got her second, third, fourth, and fifth order compromises planned as well – I trust her to make the case on stuff like health care, finance, foreign policy, education, and all those other issues, and get something done to improve our situation.

This is a woman, who, as a private citizen, through sheer force of will and dogged persistence, brought a new federal agency to protect consumers from predatory lending practices, into being. That’s bad ass.

So, that’s the case. I want someone who has big ideas based on meticulously researched evidence, the will to fight to get those ideas enacted, and has the experience working with others (see: Senator) to accomplish her goals through compromise, persusasion, and evidence.

Also, I kind of want to see her tear Donald Trump a new one the way she’s done to Bloomberg, but that’s mostly out of selfish pleasure.

So yes – vote today if it’s your turn, or whenever your primary comes up; it’s the least you can do to participate in democracy (however flawed). And in the primary; vote your favorite; vote the least bad when it comes time in November; here in March (or whenever), do yourself a favor and really feel good about the vote you cast.

I know I do. And it’s a very good feeling.

I can’t breathe.

Seriously, I swear, I have gotten sick more often this year than I have in recent memory. It sucks. It doesn’t help that I’ve seen the sun maybe once in the last three or four days, and I’ve been shanghai’d into mostly pointless training most of the week, which has thrown off my usual schedule, keeping me at the office later than is standard practice (and the “hey, you can sleep in!” idea doesn’t stick). It’s also that kind of sick where you feel not great and blow your nose through three boxes of tissues in a week, but you can’t quite justify staying home sick, especially when there’s work to be done.

So, I’ve been sitting listening to elementary-level contracts training all week, while trying to get my usual crap done in a couple of hours in the morning, then going home and crashing, hard, on Nyquil and chicken soup.

That’s honestly been my week. I knocked out my last FAWM tune, so I “won” with 14, though with how I’m feeling, I don’t think I’m going to get any more done. Oh well. I think I’ve got a theme EP and a couple of “hits” out of this one. We’ll see once I have my head and voice back.

Weekend plans include a drive out west for some theater, keeping an eye on the SC primary, but otherwise trying to beat this crap that’s taken up residence behind my eyes.

Anyway, tunes. Not a bad mix out of this one; some solid stuff, and a wonderful discovery (and a wonderful title) there at #4 that I’ve never heard before, but am kind of in love with; great rollicking rhythm.

Oh, I’ll leave you all with this, which was kind of inevitable: Mayor Pete fan fiction.

1. “Curious” – Sandbox
2. “Howling At The Moon (Sha-La-La)” – The Ramones
3. “Sleeping Angel” – Stevie Nicks
4. “Fuck, I Hate the Cold” – Cowboy Junkies
5. “Waiting for the Great Leap Forward” – Billy Bragg
6. “Ruby Soho” – Rancid
7. “Torn” – Edna Swap
8. “Summer of 89” – Butch Walker and the Black Widows
9. “Little Bribes” – Death Cab for Cutie
10. “Life in One Day” – Howard Jones
11. “Wreckless Abandon” – The Dirty Knobs
12. “16 Miitary Wives” – The Decembrists
13. “I Melt With You” – Modern English

So, three primary contests in. three or four percent of the delagates committed. Over 50 contests left to go.

The media has essentially already called it for Sanders.

Y’know, I like Bernie Sanders. I voted for him in the primary four years ago. He’s got some wonderful ideas, which his advocacy for last time around have really shaped the discourse in the current Democratic nomination contest. That said, he’s also almost 80 years old, had a heart attack six months ago, embraces the “Democratic Socialist” label, which I don’t have a problem with, but piles of Boomers and others with limited understanding of what terms for economic systems mean associate with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and or the National Socialist German Workers Party (not entirely wrongly, in the sense that neither of these groups were particularly socialist in classical terms), rather than the economic systems of a lot of modern countries in Europe (and particularly in Scandinavia) that don’t rely solely on the magic of “markets” to ensure the public good. That Bernie doesn’t do himself any favors by defining his brand of Democratic Socialism in a particularly clear way or relating it to the American experience rather than talking about Denmark on the debate stage is going to pay the oppositive of dividends in a national election against the current incumbent.

But, with three-ish wins in the first three contests, he’s got some momentum. If the pundits’ current narrative comes to pass, I’ll happily vote for and work for the Senator from Vermont. However, for the reasons above, as well as the general toxicity of many of his supporters (the so-called “Bernie Bros”) online, I’ve got some concerns with his candidacy.

While I don’t really dislike any of the leading Democratic* candidates, if you look to the sidebar on the left, you know who I prefer.

At this point, I’m putting my enthusiasm, time, and spare change behind Senator Elizabeth Warren, because I think she makes a lot of sense. Her campaign’s had a couple of missteps (as have all of them to some degree), though I appreciate her experience, her story, and her choices of policy advocacy over the years. For her entire career, she’s been focused on economic justice through her concentration on bankrupcy law, which has given her great perspective on economic inequality, and has led her to her current philosophy of remedying such, going back to her work on the CFPB, her work in the Senate as a strong advocate for economic justice, and her many, many plans for implementing such from the White House should she get there.

The image of herself that she’s projected from the campaign trail has shifted a bit, from “unity” candidate to “fighter for the middle class”, though for anyone paying attention, it’s all been consistently her – her overarching goal (both as private citizen and as an elected official) has always been to root out corruption in government, finance, and industry, work to reduce the disparities between rich and poor, and make sure that everyone pays their fair share toward the public good. She’s looking out for everybody’s interest, whether she’s above the fray or leaving “blood and teeth on the floor” when fighting for consumer finance reform.

I’m honestly kind of frustrated that in the current campaign, she’d managed to get tagged primarily as the M4A person (and has been subject to scrutiny on her proposals to a degree that Sanders hasn’t), and momentarily lost focus, and been counted out by the media. that said, as of today, she’s tied for third in the pledged delegate count (tied with Biden), with only 80 of 3979 total pledged delegates awarded.

It’s still anybody’s game here, folks.

Given Warren’s fiery performance in the Nevada debate last week, she’s seeing a bit more of a bump in support, and I’m hoping this week heading into South Carolina, she’ll continue in that vein, which ideally should increase that momentum, especially if he continues her dominance in Tuesday’s debate. We shall see.

As for what I expect out of this week’s debate in South Carolina? It’s clear that Sanders, finally, has a target painted on him, and that he’ll, ideally, finally be subjected to the scrutiny that everyone else who’s been labeled frontrunner in the past has seen. Warren and Sanders are, in the end, ideological allies in a lot of ways, though she’s more about working within the system than he is (although for all his talk of revolution, he’s mostly played by the old boy legislative rules in his time in government), and her previous attempts to differentiate from him have faltered. That said, if she lands a few hits, and the rest of the pack (particularly Biden and Buttiegieg) land a few more, I feel that she might find herself finally making that “unity” message land – if Bernie loses support (his floor is somewhere around 20%), she’s likely to pick up some of it. Likewise, if the centrists falter (and certainly, at least a few of them will, and soon), she’s an obvious destination for them as well- she’s long been most people’s second choice according to polls.

I think she’s the best choice, honestly. I admire her greatly, and I think she’d do an amazing job. Finally, remember her eviscerating Bloomberg last week? It’s not hard to imagine the current president in the mayor’s position in late summer. That’s something I want to see.

_____________________________________

* – I am not a huge fan of Bloomberg; as Warren said, it’s just substituting one arrogant NYC billionaire** for another, and we really don’t need that. Also, a nyet, spaseeba to Tulsi Gabbard, but she was never in the running anyway.

** – There are serious doubts about whether the current president is actually a billionaire or not, of course.

That title up there kind of says it all about where the hell the mid-Atlantic is right now. As I write this, it hasn’t hit us yet, but I expect we’ll get something; not much, of course (at least to my grew-up-in-the-northeast perspective), but two inches is enough to shut this metropolitan area down.

I’m not hugely concerned on the whole; I don’t really have anywhere to be this weekend anyway. Worst I’ll have to live with is the boy-child (well, not really ‘boy’ or ‘child’ anymore, having reached the age of majority) agitating for further driving lessons, which, if it does get bad, I’ll be hesitant about, as he doesn’t have that much experience yet.

The week’s been…yeah.

Took a nice trip out to Williamsburg on Saturday to crash the CLRG Feis vendor room for hardshoes for the youngest, as it’s easier to buy these things when you have the Irish lady there to size them rather than mail order and guess (also, one of the vendors stocked a bunch of neat UK/Ireland snacks). I also booked a gig while out in the ‘burg, at Retro Daddio in May. So, cool.

Otherwise, the same complaints about work from last time still apply, perhaps moreso. Had a pretty good open mic on Wednesday night, more sparsely attended than I would have liked for our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY, but we had enough performers to more than fill the time, and more importantly for the management, they were drinking. Also significantly, I played a couple of new tunes (“Just Feel Alive” and “Friday Night, 1988”) that I wrote in the last two weeks as part of FAWM, which were well received, particularly “FN’88”, which I’m really pretty proud of as it takes shape.

Speaking of FAWM, I’m at 13 of 14 as I write this (14 if you count my “collaboration” with Mikey, as my title inspired his own instance of an entirely different “FN’88”), and I’ll probably have that last one out by the weekend, and then the rest of it will be extra icing. I’ve got a couple of good ones this time around; I think I’m starting to get the hang of this songwriting business.

Like I said, nothing huge on the agenda this weekend besides the usual laundry/bills/shopping, other than tentative plans to track down a new food truck in the RVA, Thai Won On, because we roll like that, and new vegetarian options are always welcome.

Weather permitting, of course.

Anyway, tunes. interesting mix this week, with a serious earworm at #4, and a back half that’s pretty rockin’ in an alternative sort of way. I’ll take it:

1. “Get Out of Denver (live, Detroit ’75) – Bob Seger
2. “Rooming House On Venice Beach” – Jonathan Richman
3. “Shine” – Sammy Miller and the Congregation
4. “Blackout” Frank Turner
5. “Walls – Circus” – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
6. “Jesus was Way Cool” – King Missle
7. “In A Big Country” – moe.
8. “The Spirit of Radio” – Rush
9. “September Gurls” – Big Star
10. “My Slumbering Heart” – Rilo Kiley
11. “Teenage F.B.I.” – Guided By Voices
12. “Demon Rock” – Letters to Cleo
13. “Grab It” – Dinosaur Jr.
14. “Good Time Charlie” – Priests

This week, I tell ya. It’s bad enough that I haven’t see the sun since Saturday, and then only from the car. Ridiculous number of phone calls with bureaucrats convinced their particular “prestigious” geographic location gives them license to skirt policy and procedures (fuck them, btw). People needing things and being annoyingly persistent about it in spite of receiving a completely satisfactory answer. An 11 hour workday on Wednesday because of those aforementioned phone calls. I didn’t quite see the election results from New Hampshire I wanted to. And, the second of my offspring now holds a learner’s permit; which is just as stressful as it is worth celebrating.

It’s all worked to seriously damage my mental health; I had a bit of a crash mid-week, to the point where I couldn’t even be bothered to eat or drink my feelings, which is my usual crutch when I can’t do something more productive like put 20 strenuous trail miles behind me on the bike because it’s been raining all week and the trails are all mud eight inches deep where the river hasn’t swallowed them up.

I mostly slept. And cursed. A lot.

I am, however, making ridiculous progress with February Album Writing Month with eleven songs to at least the lyrical stage nailed by February 13. Four more to go and I “win”, but I’m going to keep plugging. This year’s content, apart from a pair of comedic ones so far, is dark, since, honestly, the whole thing’s sync’d up with a pretty dark period for me. Lots of songs working through my depression, seasonal affective disorder, and frustration with many aspects of life. Might as well channel those feelings into art.

to wit:

“I wish that I were free
to head out without a plan
drop the gear, pick a direction,
then just drive…”

“A lifetime working to course correct
I lament I’ll never be perfect…”

I want to feel passion
though that inertia of inaction…

…I know depression lies
but it can really be persuasive
sometimes

I’d pray for some relief
if that was a thing I did
but I see the universe is eternally indifferent

Hope you enjoyed that trip through my subconscious. Next record’s gonna be downright stygian and grim.

Not entirely sure what’s gonna go on this weekend; it is, however, a long one, so I get an extra day not chained to the desk. IN the meantime, here are tunes spotify thought I’d enjoy discovering this week. I honestly haven’t heard of any of them (save one), and they’re all appreciatively dark, except for that one, from the quietest and most introverted Monkee:

1. “Mama Nantucket” – Michael Nesmith
2. “I’ll Never Sing Your Name” – Fruition
3. “Georgia” – Calhoun
4. “The Rock and the Hill” – Allison Moorer
5. “Driveway to Driveway” – Superchunk
6. “Afterglow” – Arthur & Yu
7. “Lonely Game” – Steelism
8. “Are You My Love?” – Kelley Stoltz
9. “Lily Pad on Your Doorstep” – Don’t Stop or We’ll Die
10. “No Matter What” – Lou Bartow
11. “Love Is The Law” – The Suburbs
12. “Georgia Dust” – Sunseeker
13. “Common People” – William Shatner
14. “Bittersweet” – Hoodoo Gurus
15. “Never Anyone But You” – The Clientele