2003-03-10 - 2:49 p.m.

***

Fortified

So.

What do you do when you're offered two equally viable and enjoyable futures for after school lets out?

You freak the fuck out, that's what you do.

So, it appears that deciding tonight, the new band that spawned from Red Label's ashes, is not only dead serious about me coming to play with them, but they are dead serious in making some fucking good music. And they also are serious about playing too.

Red Label, although officially broken up because it's hard to have band practices with everyone at different schools, really shit the bed becasue we didn't have any real links to anyone. We played shows and then went home (well, me and brian stayed) and although that was fun and it was a chance to get out and show your art for a roomful of people, it was destined to sizzle out because we didn't have any luck or even try. I never had a decent amp and we constantly had to move practice space according to whoever's mother wasn't fed up with people and loud music in their basement.

Well, now shit's all grown up and although I'm pretty sure people are still complaining about their basement volumes, the difference is what that sound is going to do. It's going to take the people involved with it on a trip, maybe a long one and maybe a short one and maybe not that big at all, but it's guaranteed to do one thing: let you have fun doing it. I got their demo in the e-mail and started playing along, trying to figure everything out. Then I started fiddling, playing with guitar parts, tightening chrouses and verse parts, thinking of vocal melodies (even places to put yells). I pushed it around my mind at the speed of Belmo and came back with music I'm pretty impressed with and pretty happy to be asked to be a part of.

And then....

Then I call home to get a head's up on how I'm coming home for spring break this friday, and I mention this opportunity to play on the road to any one willing to hear and I was scoffed at, due to the past. Due to the olden times, where I would come home frazzled and spent, upset with the ways things were going and how they were and where they were going to. I would curse up a storm full of resentment due to us squandering our time because I saw something that I wanted to happen that didn't.

People trying.

And now people are trying. Now there's the push, the effort. Now the music is being made and now things are moving and I'm nowhere close to it and I want to be. I want to be in the thick of it, sweating like a pig as large lights from a bar ceiling roast my eyeballs as I try to distinguish what state I'm even in. I want to have my fingers on fire with pain because I just played an hour and a half without stopping and without thinking and the entire time, I was just enjoying myself. I want my legs to hurt and my arms to be sore and my head to throb and my ears to ring and my mouth to be dry as fuck and to have every part of my body eradicated because I threw myself into a dance with music that people decided to come see. Even if they got in for free.

I don't want a job and I don't want security. I don't care about student loans and health care and steady income. I don't give a fuck about filing things, about getting that assignment in on time, about running down the hallway to catch the elevator so I can get to lunch with enough time to wolf it down and go back to some whitecollared prick looking down on me and making sure I don't fuck up so that he can continue to look down on me for years to come.

I don't even want those years to come.

I've tasted fucking office work before, in all shapes and sizes, varieties and textures. I've met all the office people I want to meet. The annoying lady who hits you with work. The forgetful people, the devoid of all technological inteligence people, the "here's a big assignment I want in an hour" people. The lackeys, the suck ups, the fuck ups, the slackers, the go-getters, the yesmen, the gossips, the stupid, the smart, the top to the bottom. I've hung out in janitor's closets, sat at the CEO of AT&T's desk, sat in small offices, large offices. Offices with windows that show you a world full of world you'll never know and offices with no windows that show you all the world you'll ever know. I'm afraid of these things because no one else is and it scares me that it's considered acceptable to be shoved into a small confined space like a pet in a travel box and view the world changing out your window as you stomp and clod yuor way up the methophorically overused "corporate ladder", a ladder with no top and no bottom. There's no resting grounds for this type of work, its just ascension, descension. Christ, I didn't even play chutes and ladders when I was a kid because I hated it and that game is like innuendo for business. One minute, you roll a 6 and you land on the big ladder. Next minute you hit the chute and are tossed back to the second space. It's dribble. There's no art to it, no meter or rhtythm to it. There's no emotion, it's just a huge battle. You versus all newcomers, anyone willing to step into the inbox. You become mercilously beaten into the ground where you receive post-itstamp pats on the back, the ones where people pat you on the back but leave a note hanging off your shirt that says "kick me". I don't want people kicking me and I don't want an office job.

She told me I was crazy, from behind her desk. She was also probably pulling her hair out 5 minutes before I called.

I'm done. All this deadline shit. I'm done with you. I have one deadline I want to follow and that one is one I don't even know when it will come.

It's called death.

Fortified

At the heart of me, you'll see everthing.
You'll see everything I am at the heart of me,
but you'll never see to the heart of me
due to boundaries, and walls that block.
I've walled myself in tall wall's keep,
away from seeking minds and eyes,
behind the blocks I've placed in front
to hold me back and hold you back.
And glimpses through the cracks reveal
the light and dark fight brutally
and constant, leaving me to fend
alone from friends and helping hands;

I wait for end to times of pieced
togethertruth and hints through holes
placed solely so you see the light
of me but not the dark or source.
And one day one may knock them down
and free the me inside the walls -
they'll all come down and I'll step out
of rubble just to shine out loud -
and stiffle any strife inside
and battle all that makes me ache
and crush the crush of angered pain
that comes when hope and love do not.
These boundaries are bound to me
and block around the heart of me.
I'll wait for days for my release;
someone will bring it, but not you.

No, never work. It will never work.

BMC

Last Few

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