"Why do I feel so tired?"
I literally ate burgers, steak, and drank beer today. And all I did was laundry and reading, I'm steadily getting through Berserk, yknow. I just finished Super Deluxe Volume 4, so I just got to the Eclipse. What a harrowing betrayal, no amount of spoilers can really prepare you. Miura did something magical with The Golden Age, you almost feel like you yourself are a member of the Band of the Hawk. Seeing them experience that feels like watching a family member get the electric chair.
I'm starting to miss smoking. Not the pen, not vaping, no. I mean the rolls, yknow, flower. I kind of miss being able to bum one, I just want to sit down and smoke to be honest. I like drinking well enough, but there's a lot more risks, yknow?
And yet in that, I saw that precious little harmlessness in this moment in Detroit. Downtown you could leave your phone at a bar table and come back the next day and nobody even touched it. Nobody gives a shit. The Lions started winning again, and people are lighter on their feet. Guys who play ball at the rec center are asking about getting jobs with us, yknow? Think about that. Ant was telling me how great this place is, y'know? And it's scary to think what might be waiting for us before this year is done.
I continue to dread it. I can't help but think about it. The Nazis are coming. Hmm...
I can buy some pads from Dunhams, I've got snowpants and layers. Boots and stuff, yeah. I don't have goggles, or a respirator. I'll need that. And I need allies. It'll work out anyway.
There's a martyr complex, and an attraction to disarray and pain. Not very gender affirming of me to acknowledge this shortcoming. Men often struggle with stability, they seek out opportunities to ruin themselves. Maybe she was right about me. Maybe I'll never have a place in womanhood... I guess I'll never know.
Everyday, it's-a getting closer,
Going faster than a roller coaster,
Love like yours will surely come my way...
Everyday, it's-a getting faster,
Everyone says go ahead and ask her,
Love like yours will surely come my way...
I'm really loose right now, the pocket has a hole in it for sure. Watching a tasting history vid about Pancit. I love Filipino food, maybe my favorite cultural cuisine.
I keep listening to Silent Hill songs, I keep falling back into the embrace of my green flannel. Very much back to myself. This is a sort of peace I haven't had in a long time.
I haven't bothered anyone in a few days. I'm doing good, yknow.
Is this what it is? I wouldn't know. I hear back from my loved ones, and they're not all okay. Things are tough for everyone. So I guess I still don't understand it. But I guess now, I don't feel uneasy to be away from the minds of the good people. I'm getting an idea of what I mean to people. That secret you can never know, yknow?
Maybe I do seem kind of... esoteric. In good ways and bad. I realize I'm not always easy to figure, but sometimes I'm a little too transparent. I don't talk normal all the time, sometimes I get a little fantastical in my nature of speech. I have an almost bipolar kind of cycle of high and low. On good days I'm a real talker, a real comedian. I can really do it all, and I know everything, too. And then there's moments where I'm caught in my head. There's like a fog around me, I seem lost. I'm not as easy to parse, and I understand that to a lot of neurotypicals, it reads as hostility. That's when I start bothering people with my words. When I communicate at a low point, I'm always apologizing. I have to, I sort of feel like everybody wants a chance to beat on me if I don’t do what they say. I'm really afraid of being hurt and abused, what can I say?
I'll admit to you. Reading that chapter where Guts freaks out and has a panic attack when trying to be imtimate with Casca, because of his memory of being raped... felt a little too real. Don't know what to say about that. There were places Miura was willing to go that few others would dare visit.
Casca's character is one that has been studied a lot better by more credible feminists, yknow. I just think about her complex relationship with being a woman, the love hate relationship with it. Something that I think I don't have the right to speak on.
Everyday, it's-a getting closer,
Going faster than a roller coaster,
Love like yours will surely come my way...
No promises, right? I'm back on social media anyways!
So let me tell you about what I promised.
The Album Saga
One of the reasons they liked me at all was because I did music. When we were first spending more time together, we'd work parallel on our individual material. They had limited experience working with DAWs, but they had enough to work around their system well enough. You already know me, so let's skip ahead. I finished a song in one night, and they suggested we collab on a project. I remember thinking it was a nice idea, but I went over some examples of how I got burned in the past trying to collaborate with people who aren't committed. They insisted they were committed, that we should try it, and I thought, sure, let's not give up. Now there was one song that did eventually come together really nice. A collaboration track we BOTH directed and worked on at the same time, humorous track called Gooning. It sampled Norman Finklestein talking about Gooning being a pathway to fascism.
Now this song was great, and we both contributed a lot. Guess what happened to that one?
Nothing. Never released it. I tried so hard to get that on the album, but they insisted it wasn't "serious" enough. Whatever, I guess.
The short end problem is we didn't use the same DAW, but there was a bigger issue. Parallel drive. Not just having interest in working at the same time, they had trouble being able to develop or work on their ideas on their own time. They didn't like the idea that I would work on stuff by myself and bring that stuff to our get togethers, asking to build on stuff they didn't come up with. They felt disrespected by this, and I understand where I erred. It was a big deal for a minute, they kind had a fatalistic feeling about it where because they felt they couldn't catch up to the pace I was creating, that I should just release everything for myself and that I didn't have to credit them. Now, you know damn well I was not gonna do that. But whatever, I capitulated to giving a rest to the whole album idea. Couple weeks go by and eventually some good things are happening. They let their ambition motivate them towards a valiant goal, and they enroll in classes at Wayne! Something admirable, really. Now, I'm working on some ideas every now and again, but since that talk I was put off of working on a lot of stuff for a minute.
There was a period where they suggested a certain direction for the project that was in fact more of a concept album, fully directed and designed by them. There was an idea where I would act as an executive producer to help them make it reality. Now, in a different context, I wouldn't think poorly of an opportunity to bring another artist's vision to life.
But you gotta understand, this is totally different from our original agreement. No longer a collaboration in this conversation, this is the first time they'd make it apparent that they really wanted to treat this as *their* debut project, and that I was just a co-producer making it happen.
I did feel a bit used, but I decided that maybe it was good to help them evolve and get their name out there.
When they started at Wayne, their technical ability and skill was moving along very quickly, it was impressive! They had a great admiration for the history of Detroit Techno, and there was an effort on their part to develop their skill to continue a certain tradition they had recognized. By this time I was doing some mixes and jockeying on my phone for fun, to sort of feel like I was still doing what I wanted. Some of these mixes were the interludes on HKGHT.
What they'd soon start doing is, they'd start a track as an assignment for class. When working on it, they'd ask for my assistance, my advice. Eventually it becomes apparent that theyre working on stuff on their own, and then brining it to me with the intent on developing it together.
Which is interesting.
So before you know it, they're talking about the album as if it was decided that it was back on track. Which is whatever, I guess. I would start working on something, thinking I could introduce my concepts in the same way they were doing, right? No, actually. If they liked something I was working on, they insisted that I stop developing my concept until they could eventually get around to doing their own thing on it. Which was interesting. When we had dedicated music development time, I would always ask them what they wanted to do with these concepts... they never were able to figure anything out with them. The only songs they ever wanted to work on together were their own concepts.
Hmm. So, the only other track where we both were able to actually develop together was Heaven, Sky.
They had some sample packs they used to get that initial motive, that sounds. They had their oscillation at the start, very dystopian, soundtrack work. Good stuff from them. They wanted me to do the second part of the song.
Now, my idea was to make the song danceable. I wanted to do a minimalistic sort of thing, a house beat to accent the ambience. I thought that breaking into a dance rhythm would be a nice dramatic change to the buildup of part one. A good house motive can drone for a long time, right?
They didn't like that. They said they would implement it and do some changes. The version of the track you can hear on the release is not very much like what I envisioned at all, unfortunately.
There was another issue. The visual concept of the project was entirely my doing. They really didn’t have much in the way of contribution to the visual language of the album until the midway point. They did have some concepts they showed me, and I liked what they were doing. I did make the mistake of making one incredibly small criticism.
There was a collage of various things, with faces and cars and places. I thought it was great, but the Corvette at the bottom of the picture stuck out a little.
Huge mistake. I liked the picture, just not the little Corvette at the bottom. I swear on my life, on my soul that I am being 120% genuine and honest about what happened here.
They got so ridiculously upset at the idea that I didn't like the way the single Corvette was implemented that they took that to mean that I didn't like anything they have ever made ever. It’s not easy talking to somebody who does this, you know. You really can't say no to people who act like this whenever they receive criticism.
I need to say one more time. All I said was that the Corvette at the bottom of the collage could have been positioned different, or had a different opacity. And they used that disagreement to insinuate that I didn't actually value them as a human being. It was bad enough that from that point onwards I kind of just let them have whatever they wanted after that chapter, until almost the day of release. I didn't want to go through that again.
The cover we went with is okay, something we could actually sort of agree on. Sort of. I don't even remember anymore.
Here's the last trial of the album. The most egregious part, really:
The masters. We're going there. Twitter mutual, you already know the story.
So the idea at first was that the tracks we directed would have our levels and mastering when putting thr project together, and then we'd work together to even out the pieces. But there was some confusion about what versions were the right versions. I tried doing a cut of ths tracking masters, as they asked me to do, but I wasn't sent the final versions of their directed tracks. They then took it upon their self to do ALL THE MASTERING THEMSELF, in my car? They did this at like 12AM, I was too tired to argue, but I was under the impression that because the issue they expressed was regarding their directed tracks, that they were fixing the mixes on their songs, right?
Wrong! They used normalization to take the bite out my tracks, they heavily changed my section of Sky, and they straight up cut 2 of my songs on the final day of production. Gooning, the only other track we BOTH directed, was gone.
There were some beautiful tracks with their vocals we both worked on together, it wss a beautiful experience to make those tracks... all gone. To this day I don't know why we threw those out. Not even B Sides, they just hated them. I swear to you they would have made the album an all timer. The difference between great and incredible... we lost that.
The tracks on Primetime named Heaven, Go Outside, Tim Heidecker, and Kuru Kuru were all rejected tracks made for HKGHT. All of those are tracks I directed. They insisted for months they wanted me to stop working on them and instead let them do their thing on them... never actually did that.
The worst part of the master situation was the actual credits and release. I tried putting out a cut to Bandcamp that credited both of us as co producers and writers on every track. I got some of the wrong finals on their tracks, so I removed it, but instead of sending me their finals, they insisted they do the upload themselves... they have never used any distributor before this, by the way.
I let them upload their cut for if all, okay? I trusted they credited both of us and everything, right?
NO. THEY LEFT MY NAME OFF OF THE ALBUM. THEY POSTED IT AS A SOLO RELEASE, CLAIMING IT WAS *THEIR DEBUT ALBUM*. THEY LABLED THEMSELF AS WRITER OF THE SONGS I DIRECTED... AND THE WORST PART?
They didn't even upload my actual songs on the album.
Let me say that again for you.
They forgot. To upload. My songs.
Two of my songs were not playable or audible on their Bandcamp upload. On top of their forgetting to credit me.
If just one of these things happened without all the previous drama, I just might understand that it was an honest mistake. But no, no, this was carelessness and contempt, through and through. I had to confront them about it, and they were really cagey and unwilling at first to correct their mistake. They only fixed it when I wouldn't let them change the subject. They had a sort of uncommitted boyfriend attitude about it, they were sort of "Okay, geez, its not that serious man. I'll change it, GOD."
Let me end this entry with a reflection. In my previous relationship, there are a lot of things that were done to me that, if I were a more classless and bitter person, I'd tell you all about. But I won't do that. I don't need to. Because in spite of the other stuff... stuff that is probably way worse than this music thing by a country mile, if we're being honest... that situation was the most enraging thing about it. I have never in my life been swindled like that.
Never. Ever. Let. Someone. Treat. You. Like. That.
You are worth so much more than that.
Love you guys, see you soon.
