working backwards through the detritus (a week in the life of Eric lab Rat)
In my dream I had the same fever that I fell asleep with, and it was starting to cause hallucinations. If I was smarter, I would have told myself that it was a dream, just as I was telling myself that they were hallucinations as I watched myself succumb to them. It was the day after I'd gone to sleep and I was coming from a meeting I have yet to go to today. When I got home, there was a band, Environmental Encroachment, playing in my bedroom in wigs and glitter. A handful of people were watching them, standing on piles of clothes and debris.
"Not today" I tried to tell them. "You're supposed to be at (Logan Square) Sarah and Jessica's thing on Saturday." Slowly after, the band and people left on their own. My head was pounding. Nate and Tania were pissed. But...but...I mopped the floor, I told them.
"Yeah, kinda."
I was sorry. I went to bed and thought about turning off the air conditioner to sweat out the fever. I took off my pajama bottoms. Soon hallucinations started visiting. I don't remember the first. The second was Sarah, my Sarah, naked and taunting me with sex and a fiendish, impish laugh, hunched on my ankles at the foot of the bed. I reached down and grabbed a bottle of water and poured it on my head. It felt cool and hissed as if turning to steam at the touch of my skin. I threw a handful of water at her and it dispersed with a plop. She must be real. I asked her to hold me and she jumped at me, through me, right through my chest, through my bed. If she was real she was a ghost. More hallucinations visited me. More ghosts, and I find myself, against my own command, naked below the waist, screaming high pitched back and forth through the darkened hallway. My cock has never felt this small. I need a towel, but I can't will myself to stop.
Kyle steps out of his room. "Dude are you alright?!" He's not pissed, I can see in his face that he's worried. My eyes flare and I wail. All I can think is that I need to get a towel. I feel a blow to my head. I think it's a wall, I think I've jumped into it. I pass out and wake up in my room. The wall at my feet feels less like it's six feet away and more like forty. As my eyes adjust, I notice a stairwell. A grand stairwell. It's a test. If I can climb it, then it must be real, or else I've completely lost control, any semblance of logical control over myself. I ascend it and find myself in a blank room. It's lit fluorescent and kinda like the art room at Decatur Classical. There was a buzzsaw on a table and a slab of brown marble like a blank headstone, warped and cut in two. I hear the buzzing of wings and a voice. It is my voice, not the one I hear in my head but the one that comes out when I speak into tape recorders. It tells me what I have to do to break the hold. The lies in my head are the lies in my head and I have to kill them with the truth, and all of the things I see will be true.
I told myself that I was jealous of the leader of the band, of the leaders of most bands. I told myself that I was worried about my relationship. I told myself, which I imagined to be the air two feet in front of me, how much I truly hated him. Me. A wasp buzzed around me and landed on my arm. I couldn't tell if it was real. It moved and I couldn't tell whether ornot I'd been stung. I ran out, knowing I needed to talk to my parents. It was the second floor of the townhouse, where we lived til I was four. My Dad slept on his stomach in the center of my parent's old bed, under the Magritte. His arms and legs were spread like a snow angel in tighty-whiteys and an orange t-shirt.
"Dad, you gotta help me," I yelled like I did when I was five.
"You don't know how uninterested I am in whatever this is right now" He snorted.
"It's medicinal!" I pleaded, "I need Mom's syringe. The Epipen."
My mother was out of town. Shw was allergic to bees and wasps, as was my grandfather. As they suspected I was. I heard music. It came from my room, and my grownup sisters'. From my room was some sort of glammed metal like the Plazmatics; from her's some sort of frat hearthrob music, Jack Johnson or something. It converged where my father was trying to sleep and sounded awful. He'd given up. I felt my hand begin to swell, and I gave up too.
.
take that freud.
.
I can feel the veins behind my eyes,the cavernous passages that connect my eyes to my throat. The veins feel like they're overwhelmed with blood. The passageways feel like they've been scraped with a fork. I feel more hopeless than I really am. I can take care of myself, I tell myself this as I cut up a potato.
my priorities are all fucking off.
Matthew McGrory is dead and I truly feel bad about it. Matt Drudge is the first thing I see on Kyle's computer, and I truly feel bad about this. They're exploiting another one, another woman who's lost her child. There's bile in the back of my throat.
I've never felt so successful and so much a failure as I have this week. it's been manic and, then again, it hasn't.
I threw a costume party last friday. The Walkie Talkies played. Hannibelectro did too, and it became an electroacoustic dance party. A jam session even. It was beautiful, and I would like to thank the bands, the drag kings and queens, the savage woman, the moose, the bear, the ewok, the hockey player, the cybernetic man, the porn star, Captain America, Shaggy, zombie Hunter S. Thompson, the Viking, the janitor, the gift, the Coronactopus, the lawyer, the Rabbi, the Bush supporter, the fairy, the princess, the prostitute, the Souljacker, the abusive couple, David Bowie, Milo Oblong, Tank Girl, the Polish handyman, the football and futbol players, the pirates, the dark lord, the punk rocker, the topless librarian, the masqueraders and everyone else who was there. Your zombie pope is appreciative.
nothing was broken that we didn't break, nothing was stolen that we didn't steal, we threw out an old charred american flag before the party and were blessed with a new one. by the by, did you know that it is possible to light a faucet on fire? shampoo is flammable; and floating candles should only be used under romantic supervision
The weekend was full of dance and drink. On saturday the Gentlemen Callers ended our run of "the Vicious Cycle" at the Theatre Building. It was a miserable failure and a rousing success. We'd failed to advertise it beyond our friends and families so we never had a good audience til closing night, despite the fact that it really was our best show to date. It never went right either until Saturday; there was no real comeraderie, we infought. Only half of us came to the afterparty and it all felt weird.
-for the record, i really do not trust anybody who thinks that Club Foot is really better than going to any other bar, or that it itself constitutes 'going somewhere'-
-I wish I knew someone who knew a lot about prog-
Sunday I danced. EE. JBTV. Logan square Sarah, Jessica, and Jessie. a couple new people. feeling like a high schooler around people I had crushes on in high school. feeling like a failure among people that i respect. i would feel the same way around Emerson, and to a lesser extent, Kate, because they do things. it was only when i was dancing (poorly) that I could stop feeling, and it felt wonderful. I still don't dance enough, and never, it seems, on weekdays.
then came my radio show. tuesday mornings. four hours, and a half. it felt good to be back. people called in to make requests but i didn't get any sleep. didn't regiment caffeine like I'd planned to and couldn't stay on top. it was at about 27 hours of being awake that the depression hit. my weight is fluctuating, but mostly going up. i'm ugly and have no initiative. no one who's doing anything worthwhile has any need for me, even if they keep me around. that sort of thing.
i was awake for maybe 42 hours, literally as useless as i felt and slightly unaware that a virus was taking over. i made it through a whole 'nother day of work, listening to the trails behind people's voices before i passed out.
kate told me that if i really want to do with sketch comedy what i told her i wanted to do, i'm in the wrong group. i can't say she's wrong, i just haven't figured out where the right one is. lazy. scared. damn near comfortable. i watched a movie last night. Lemmings. National Lampoon's take on Woodstock. Lauded by my father. I lack context. Geniuses, acting to the best of their ability, incredible energy and physicality and character work and it wasn't funny at all, most likely because I lack context.
At the radio show I found one cd that I was truly impressed with. Gabby La La. Listen to her. It's kinda like Puffy AmiYumi but with better musicality. She plays a sitar, a toy piano and a theremin, Les Claypool assists. It's incredible.
for posterity's sake, here's the playlist:
Saul Williams - "Black Stacey"
the Adicts - "My baby got run over by a steamroller"
Radiant Darling - "Familiar" (perhaps my favorite song this summer)
Tom Waits - "Chocolate Jesus"
Kid606 - "King of Harm" (kid606's new album is a huge disappointment. it is just very boring.)
Los Crudos - "Asesino"
Eyedea & Abilities - "Glass"
Roky Erickson - "Night of the Vampire"
it is about this point that my set strarted to get more interesting as I stopped dipping soi much into familiar tracks from my personal collection
Bauhaus - "God is in the alcove"
Sparks - "This town ain't big enough for the both of us"
the Pharohs - "Black Enuff"
Joy Division - "Disorder" (by request)
Prefuse 73 reads the Books - "Pagina Dos"
Madness - "Israelites" (apparently the second wave ska group Madness is still kicking around England. Their new album is not a reunion. It is, however, a shamefully cheeseball collection of covers of great reggae songs by the likes of Desmond Dekker and Max Romeo)
Curtis Mayfield - "Get Down"
Klaus Nomi - "Lightning Strikes"
Clorox Girls - "Walks the Streets"
Social Distortion - "Mommy's Little Monster"
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graftitti - "Envelopes another Day"
Petra Haden and Bill Frisell - "Satellite"
Frank Zappa - Bobby Brown/ My Guitar Wants to kill Your Momma (by request)
Jello Biafra with Mojo Nixon - "Are you Drinkin with me, Jesus?"
Buzzcocks - "What do I get?"
Sage Francis - "Crumble"
Quintron - "the Beach"
Gabby La La - "Be Careful What you Wish for"
Melt Banana - "Shield for your Eyes, a Beast in the Well of your Hand" (by request after I found out the station had no OpIvy)
Clouddead - "Twenty"
Nob Dylan and his Nobsoletes - "Highway 61 Revisited" (Rev. Norb!)
Plugz - "Hombre Secreto"
The Philadelphia All Stars - "Let's Clean up the Ghetto"
the Walkie Talkies - "Son of Sam"
Dosh - "Naoise"
The Ex - "Mother"
Hole - "Doll Parts" (freeing an earworm)
Subhumans - "Glad to be Alive"
Peanut Butter Wolf - "Umbrellas"
Brian Wilson - "Heroes and Villains"
the Dolls - "And that Reminds Me" (from "60s Girl Groups" comp)
Kevin Ayers, Brian Eno, Nico and John Cale - "Heartbreak Hotel"
Ween - "the Stallion, pt. 3"
Preservation Hall Jazz Band - "St. James Infirmary"
The Smiths - "Handsome Devil"
Afrika Bambaataa - "Metal" (with Gary Numan and MC Chatterbox)
Les Georges Leningrad - "Sponsorships"
(short twangy set)
Reverend Horton Heat - "Wiggle Stick"
R Crumb and his Cheap Suit Serenaders - "Sing Song Girl"
Hasil Adkins - Wild Man
Coaxial - "Forewarning"
Jan Paderewski - "Overture"
Handsome Boy Modeling School - "The World's Gone Mad" (with Del tha Funkee Homosapien and Barrington Levy)
Chin Up, Chin Up - "We should Have Never Lived"
Kraftwerk - "Radioactivity"
Manu Chao - "Clandestino"
and then as I waited for the guy who was supposed to go after me to get there late I played Aphex Twin, Blockhead and the Bad Plus.
now i'm bedridden, but i have meetings to go to. i can't sit still, but i don't want to lay down. my room is too much like a cave., the basement hasn't fully recovered, and kyle and nate's rooms are kyle's and nate's rooms. all i want to do is watch shitty movies with elves or aliens. dark city. return to oz. et al. thank you.
Currently listening:
Big Calm
By Morcheeba
"Not today" I tried to tell them. "You're supposed to be at (Logan Square) Sarah and Jessica's thing on Saturday." Slowly after, the band and people left on their own. My head was pounding. Nate and Tania were pissed. But...but...I mopped the floor, I told them.
"Yeah, kinda."
I was sorry. I went to bed and thought about turning off the air conditioner to sweat out the fever. I took off my pajama bottoms. Soon hallucinations started visiting. I don't remember the first. The second was Sarah, my Sarah, naked and taunting me with sex and a fiendish, impish laugh, hunched on my ankles at the foot of the bed. I reached down and grabbed a bottle of water and poured it on my head. It felt cool and hissed as if turning to steam at the touch of my skin. I threw a handful of water at her and it dispersed with a plop. She must be real. I asked her to hold me and she jumped at me, through me, right through my chest, through my bed. If she was real she was a ghost. More hallucinations visited me. More ghosts, and I find myself, against my own command, naked below the waist, screaming high pitched back and forth through the darkened hallway. My cock has never felt this small. I need a towel, but I can't will myself to stop.
Kyle steps out of his room. "Dude are you alright?!" He's not pissed, I can see in his face that he's worried. My eyes flare and I wail. All I can think is that I need to get a towel. I feel a blow to my head. I think it's a wall, I think I've jumped into it. I pass out and wake up in my room. The wall at my feet feels less like it's six feet away and more like forty. As my eyes adjust, I notice a stairwell. A grand stairwell. It's a test. If I can climb it, then it must be real, or else I've completely lost control, any semblance of logical control over myself. I ascend it and find myself in a blank room. It's lit fluorescent and kinda like the art room at Decatur Classical. There was a buzzsaw on a table and a slab of brown marble like a blank headstone, warped and cut in two. I hear the buzzing of wings and a voice. It is my voice, not the one I hear in my head but the one that comes out when I speak into tape recorders. It tells me what I have to do to break the hold. The lies in my head are the lies in my head and I have to kill them with the truth, and all of the things I see will be true.
I told myself that I was jealous of the leader of the band, of the leaders of most bands. I told myself that I was worried about my relationship. I told myself, which I imagined to be the air two feet in front of me, how much I truly hated him. Me. A wasp buzzed around me and landed on my arm. I couldn't tell if it was real. It moved and I couldn't tell whether ornot I'd been stung. I ran out, knowing I needed to talk to my parents. It was the second floor of the townhouse, where we lived til I was four. My Dad slept on his stomach in the center of my parent's old bed, under the Magritte. His arms and legs were spread like a snow angel in tighty-whiteys and an orange t-shirt.
"Dad, you gotta help me," I yelled like I did when I was five.
"You don't know how uninterested I am in whatever this is right now" He snorted.
"It's medicinal!" I pleaded, "I need Mom's syringe. The Epipen."
My mother was out of town. Shw was allergic to bees and wasps, as was my grandfather. As they suspected I was. I heard music. It came from my room, and my grownup sisters'. From my room was some sort of glammed metal like the Plazmatics; from her's some sort of frat hearthrob music, Jack Johnson or something. It converged where my father was trying to sleep and sounded awful. He'd given up. I felt my hand begin to swell, and I gave up too.
.
take that freud.
.
I can feel the veins behind my eyes,the cavernous passages that connect my eyes to my throat. The veins feel like they're overwhelmed with blood. The passageways feel like they've been scraped with a fork. I feel more hopeless than I really am. I can take care of myself, I tell myself this as I cut up a potato.
my priorities are all fucking off.
Matthew McGrory is dead and I truly feel bad about it. Matt Drudge is the first thing I see on Kyle's computer, and I truly feel bad about this. They're exploiting another one, another woman who's lost her child. There's bile in the back of my throat.
I've never felt so successful and so much a failure as I have this week. it's been manic and, then again, it hasn't.
I threw a costume party last friday. The Walkie Talkies played. Hannibelectro did too, and it became an electroacoustic dance party. A jam session even. It was beautiful, and I would like to thank the bands, the drag kings and queens, the savage woman, the moose, the bear, the ewok, the hockey player, the cybernetic man, the porn star, Captain America, Shaggy, zombie Hunter S. Thompson, the Viking, the janitor, the gift, the Coronactopus, the lawyer, the Rabbi, the Bush supporter, the fairy, the princess, the prostitute, the Souljacker, the abusive couple, David Bowie, Milo Oblong, Tank Girl, the Polish handyman, the football and futbol players, the pirates, the dark lord, the punk rocker, the topless librarian, the masqueraders and everyone else who was there. Your zombie pope is appreciative.
nothing was broken that we didn't break, nothing was stolen that we didn't steal, we threw out an old charred american flag before the party and were blessed with a new one. by the by, did you know that it is possible to light a faucet on fire? shampoo is flammable; and floating candles should only be used under romantic supervision
The weekend was full of dance and drink. On saturday the Gentlemen Callers ended our run of "the Vicious Cycle" at the Theatre Building. It was a miserable failure and a rousing success. We'd failed to advertise it beyond our friends and families so we never had a good audience til closing night, despite the fact that it really was our best show to date. It never went right either until Saturday; there was no real comeraderie, we infought. Only half of us came to the afterparty and it all felt weird.
-for the record, i really do not trust anybody who thinks that Club Foot is really better than going to any other bar, or that it itself constitutes 'going somewhere'-
-I wish I knew someone who knew a lot about prog-
Sunday I danced. EE. JBTV. Logan square Sarah, Jessica, and Jessie. a couple new people. feeling like a high schooler around people I had crushes on in high school. feeling like a failure among people that i respect. i would feel the same way around Emerson, and to a lesser extent, Kate, because they do things. it was only when i was dancing (poorly) that I could stop feeling, and it felt wonderful. I still don't dance enough, and never, it seems, on weekdays.
then came my radio show. tuesday mornings. four hours, and a half. it felt good to be back. people called in to make requests but i didn't get any sleep. didn't regiment caffeine like I'd planned to and couldn't stay on top. it was at about 27 hours of being awake that the depression hit. my weight is fluctuating, but mostly going up. i'm ugly and have no initiative. no one who's doing anything worthwhile has any need for me, even if they keep me around. that sort of thing.
i was awake for maybe 42 hours, literally as useless as i felt and slightly unaware that a virus was taking over. i made it through a whole 'nother day of work, listening to the trails behind people's voices before i passed out.
kate told me that if i really want to do with sketch comedy what i told her i wanted to do, i'm in the wrong group. i can't say she's wrong, i just haven't figured out where the right one is. lazy. scared. damn near comfortable. i watched a movie last night. Lemmings. National Lampoon's take on Woodstock. Lauded by my father. I lack context. Geniuses, acting to the best of their ability, incredible energy and physicality and character work and it wasn't funny at all, most likely because I lack context.
At the radio show I found one cd that I was truly impressed with. Gabby La La. Listen to her. It's kinda like Puffy AmiYumi but with better musicality. She plays a sitar, a toy piano and a theremin, Les Claypool assists. It's incredible.
for posterity's sake, here's the playlist:
Saul Williams - "Black Stacey"
the Adicts - "My baby got run over by a steamroller"
Radiant Darling - "Familiar" (perhaps my favorite song this summer)
Tom Waits - "Chocolate Jesus"
Kid606 - "King of Harm" (kid606's new album is a huge disappointment. it is just very boring.)
Los Crudos - "Asesino"
Eyedea & Abilities - "Glass"
Roky Erickson - "Night of the Vampire"
it is about this point that my set strarted to get more interesting as I stopped dipping soi much into familiar tracks from my personal collection
Bauhaus - "God is in the alcove"
Sparks - "This town ain't big enough for the both of us"
the Pharohs - "Black Enuff"
Joy Division - "Disorder" (by request)
Prefuse 73 reads the Books - "Pagina Dos"
Madness - "Israelites" (apparently the second wave ska group Madness is still kicking around England. Their new album is not a reunion. It is, however, a shamefully cheeseball collection of covers of great reggae songs by the likes of Desmond Dekker and Max Romeo)
Curtis Mayfield - "Get Down"
Klaus Nomi - "Lightning Strikes"
Clorox Girls - "Walks the Streets"
Social Distortion - "Mommy's Little Monster"
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graftitti - "Envelopes another Day"
Petra Haden and Bill Frisell - "Satellite"
Frank Zappa - Bobby Brown/ My Guitar Wants to kill Your Momma (by request)
Jello Biafra with Mojo Nixon - "Are you Drinkin with me, Jesus?"
Buzzcocks - "What do I get?"
Sage Francis - "Crumble"
Quintron - "the Beach"
Gabby La La - "Be Careful What you Wish for"
Melt Banana - "Shield for your Eyes, a Beast in the Well of your Hand" (by request after I found out the station had no OpIvy)
Clouddead - "Twenty"
Nob Dylan and his Nobsoletes - "Highway 61 Revisited" (Rev. Norb!)
Plugz - "Hombre Secreto"
The Philadelphia All Stars - "Let's Clean up the Ghetto"
the Walkie Talkies - "Son of Sam"
Dosh - "Naoise"
The Ex - "Mother"
Hole - "Doll Parts" (freeing an earworm)
Subhumans - "Glad to be Alive"
Peanut Butter Wolf - "Umbrellas"
Brian Wilson - "Heroes and Villains"
the Dolls - "And that Reminds Me" (from "60s Girl Groups" comp)
Kevin Ayers, Brian Eno, Nico and John Cale - "Heartbreak Hotel"
Ween - "the Stallion, pt. 3"
Preservation Hall Jazz Band - "St. James Infirmary"
The Smiths - "Handsome Devil"
Afrika Bambaataa - "Metal" (with Gary Numan and MC Chatterbox)
Les Georges Leningrad - "Sponsorships"
(short twangy set)
Reverend Horton Heat - "Wiggle Stick"
R Crumb and his Cheap Suit Serenaders - "Sing Song Girl"
Hasil Adkins - Wild Man
Coaxial - "Forewarning"
Jan Paderewski - "Overture"
Handsome Boy Modeling School - "The World's Gone Mad" (with Del tha Funkee Homosapien and Barrington Levy)
Chin Up, Chin Up - "We should Have Never Lived"
Kraftwerk - "Radioactivity"
Manu Chao - "Clandestino"
and then as I waited for the guy who was supposed to go after me to get there late I played Aphex Twin, Blockhead and the Bad Plus.
now i'm bedridden, but i have meetings to go to. i can't sit still, but i don't want to lay down. my room is too much like a cave., the basement hasn't fully recovered, and kyle and nate's rooms are kyle's and nate's rooms. all i want to do is watch shitty movies with elves or aliens. dark city. return to oz. et al. thank you.
Currently listening:
Big Calm
By Morcheeba
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