Disposable Cameras? The Iowa Palette Is There

       Often I wonder if anyone finds my disposable camera and takes it in to get developed on a gamble or a whim.  What might they win?  To start, pictures of streetlamps or else pictures of my thumbs.  Landscape with Thumbs and Sunlight.  Streetlamp Thumbed.  Finger Smear Portrait.

       I buy one a year.  I take some pictures then it falls out of my pocket in a parking lot.  Nearly gets run over by a truck.  It's a disposable camera, that's what it does.
       I buy one at the pharmacy and rip off the plastic and point it at things and click a lot.  The lighting is not an issue since $7.99 includes 27 exposures and a flash that hums when you click it at Confederate Cemeteries, Philadelphia railway lines, water treatment facilities, lawn cannons, fourteen lawn cannonballs, and ants invading a steak dinner.  Weeks pass in this way, maybe even an entire season.  Sleeping on a stranger's floor while wearing blue jeans, the camera is snug in my pocket and produces a bruise on my hip.
       I tell my friend, "Look, a photogenic bruise."
       "We don't live here," she says, "put your pants back on."
       Following this passage the camera is delivered to the pharmacy courtesy of the same pocket.  Occasionally slamming into doors, street poles, busses, floors, the camera rattles with cheap broken plastic and it needs to be developed before being lost or beyond damaged.  I write my name on a receipt slip and hope nothing incriminating made it onto that roll.
       Time for a coffee.  An hour drifts by in this way.  I wipe a napkin across the cream station.  It's grimy with sugar granules, sugar in the raw.  The good stuff.  Now I am thankful that I no longer work in the coffee business with its grinds and oils collecting under my fingernails and unctuous in my clothes.  Now I appreciate the clatter of other people's dishes.  I try not to smile excessively at the barista with the boyish haircut.  She probably hates all that smiling.  And the repetitive "hellos" of financially secure men.
       But what if she loves all of those smiles and "hellos"?  Suppose you can maintain a relationship and collect coupons together?  Share a shopping cart?  Coffee shops are jammed with much smothered crush.  Leave a modest tip and never return.
       Then I remember about the pictures.  Right, it's time to get them.  Magical one-hour photo development and I'm wondering if I should look at the pictures now in the summer aisle at Walgreens or save them until I'm sitting in bed looking at the ceiling.  I wait.
       Flopped in bed, I appraise the year in 27 parts with grins and cringes.
       What if all of this never happens and the camera is gone?
       If the camera is gone then it's gone.  Shit!—did I think somebody would mail it to me?  What can be done?  Very little.
       In the future I can follow my grandpa's advice.
       "Forget cameras, you'll never cover everything, you'll never remember anything.  Buy some postcards," he says, pointing to me, "at the gas station.  And throw a few words on the back.  You see," he pauses, "about where you were and who with.  Put the date on it, slide it into a shoebox under your bed called 'Places I've Been,' then you'll always know where you were."

(this piece will be famous for a day (2/24) in an Iowa college paper)

Everyday Barf

"Everyday Barf" is an essay by Eileen Myles. Better than that essay, though, is her poem "Snakes". 

Her book, Inferno, is pretty cool, too. It's a little scrambled, but there are some vivid NYC poet moments and fun takeaways. Takeaways like James Schuyler saying to Myles that she has to put objects in her poems -- real things, like cans of Pepsi. 

Anyhow, I've had barf on the mind. Yesterday, in the afternoon before a show (that's how the day seemed, leading up to the show), Brianna, with kindness, stopped the car because after Munchie's birthday event, I had to throw up. I'm a thirteen year old boy. I forgot to have a good dinner and did not take enough water. So I splashed all over the road with my whole core clenching up. It is so weird when I puke. Every part of my body gets involved. One of my eyes started watering, just one, and my crotch, if I even have crotch muscles, they also winced and lurched into the effort.  

So the sun was out shining on gray snow and I emptied myself out onto this angular slice of Kedzie with people passing and our friend Paul in the car getting a good view. That's OK. I like to watch my friends sing, and I don't mind seeing them throw up. As long as they're better afterward and don't do it too often. Just part of the getting-to-know-you experience. 

Paul and I just finished a song a few days before and called it "Everyday Barf". The song crept along to get ready for it's 9pm showcase. Since we had to write five songs in three weeks, I hustled the lyrics and the title together. If it were to be submitted to an institution I would count it as plagiarism.

The words come from the maxims of Herakleitos and one William Carlos William poem, "Pastoral", and the title is Myles. I like the circular quality of Herakleitos' phrasing, and WCW is just so cool in his knowing the neighborhood type of thinking. 

Some lines I took and rearranged and mashed to meet syllable requirements ("ingenuously", whoa), and messed with for setting purposes.  

• The river we stepped into is not the river in which we stand.
• The bow is alive only when it kills
• The little sparrows / hop ingenuously / about the pavement / quarreling / with sharp voices / over those things / that interest them. / But we who are wiser / shut ourselves in / on either hand / and no one knows / whether we think good / or evil. 

When I think of what I'm doing when I'm not sitting with my friends talking it is usually writing a zine. When I was 15 I remember wearing thick corduroy pants and my blue St. Rita polo. I was leaving school on some stupid February day with definite gray snow crusting the landscape and I kept telling myself, you are a bass player, you are a musician. After maybe 13 years I know bass playing is something I do but the comfort or patient carelessness I feel for zine writing I do not feel with songwriting. 

How good is a good song? A comic artist told me I should not think of ideals when I work on a piece. There are no ideal songs or books or paintings. Still, you play a set, another band goes on, you think, whoa, now that's a song. I get a little fussy about and start babbling in the 20mins leading into and out of a set, but I'm excited by the prospect of trying to not take it seriously. Most of the time, I think, the songs I shake out are accurate representations of where I am. 

When we were finishing the set list for last night's show, I kept thinking of the Bob Dylan interview in a 2012 issue of Rolling Stone. I'm not a true or devotional Dylan fan, I only know his hits, but I love to hear longtime artists talk about songs and music. If Diana Ross or Joe Strummer would go on record about these topics, I'd read that, too. 

RS - Before we end the conversation, I want to ask about the controversy over your quotations in your songs from the works of other writers, such as Japanese author Junichi Saga's "Confessions of a Yakuza," and the Civil War poetry of Henry Timrod. Some critics say that you didn 't cite your sources clearly. Yet in folk and jazz, quotation is a rich and enriching tradition. What's your response to those kinds of charges?BD - Oh, yeah, in folk and jazz, quotation is a rich and enriching tradition. That certainly is true. It's true for everybody, but me. I mean, everyone else can do it but not me. There are different rules for me. And as far as Henry Timrod is concerned, have you even heard of him? Who's been reading him lately? And who's pushed him to the forefront? Who's been making you read him? And ask his descendants what they think of the hoopla. And if you think it's so easy to quote him and it can help your work, do it yourself and see how far you can get – It's an old thing – it's part of the tradition. It goes way back. These are the same people that tried to pin the name Judas on me. Judas, the most hated name in human history! If you think you've been called a bad name, try to work your way out from under that. Yeah, and for what? For playing an electric guitar? As if that is in some kind of way equitable to betraying our Lord and delivering him up to be crucified. All those evil motherfuckers can rot in hell.

RS - Seriously?BD - I'm working within my art form. It's that simple. I work within the rules and limitations of it. There are authoritarian figures that can explain that kind of art form better to you than I can. It's called songwriting. It has to do with melody and rhythm, and then after that, anything goes. You make everything yours. We all do it.

I Remembered All of These at Once After Leaving the Music Zone Building

Here is some figurative language I've read and  heard the last 24 hours.

• In her book, On Photography, Sontag says that "the modern camera is trying to be a ray gun."

• One of my friend's friends said that watching the rats run past a basement window at last night's NYE party is "like staring into a Chicago-thremed aquarium."

• One groundskeeper for a rehearsal space off of 16th and Western says "this place is like the fuckin Deathstar. People are running around like you wouldn't believe, 24 hours a day." 

Drink the Coffee Then Buy the Wine

This Christmas, it is my job to get wine for my family. 

But I am not responsible and it is cold outside. I'm sitting in a Caribou Coffee a block and a half away from the fancy liquor store, where I can possibly buy a bottle of expensive wine and redeem myself. I can't see if the fancy liquor store is open though, and my phone is dead. 

I could get 7-Eleven vinegar wine (and lament my habit of scrappy planning as this wine moment is just a teensy stand-in for many oops-I-did-it-again events) but I don't want to do that.

My glasses, I lost those about an hour ago in the loop. The cold is so impressive that not only were the sewers panting steam but my glasses fogged up from my nose breath and then the fog froze on the lens. I put my glasses in my pocket and made it a few more blocks. At Madison and State I thought I heard a skittering on the street while I was zipping along, but I did not stop to think, Oh no, my glasses.

When I swooped around to try and find them, I couldn't in all the traffic, and if I can't have them, I kind of hope they are getting dashed to bits and spread around the loop, particle style, prescription glasses in the wind -- I love wondering where stuff goes when I lose it. 

So now, when I'm at my new base of operations, I can see the fancy liquor store but I'm not sure if it's open. 

This blurriness is only a little below the amount of excitement I want in my life. Little tasks, being asked to do one thing, and then pretty much screwing it up. I'll find out in about three minutes about that wine.   

Music Reviews - Razorcake

The fine folks at Razorcake, a magazine that covers punk culture, made me a reviewer a few months back. Every 60 days or so I get a package in the mail full of records and tapes and CDs. Then I review 'em! I'm new to the genre, so they still feel a bit overwritten: an extra word, an excessive sentence. Right now, I think they are testing the relative searchability of their database and material. I was asked to repost the reviews here as part of a Google-ing experiment.

Jim Joyce – Reviews for issue 77

STABLER:

Squadroom: Cassette  

Stabler’s 10 track “Squadroom” is an 8 minute 10 second pal. To me, Stabler’s Squadroom recalls Black Flag’s loose rush of power, akin to Damaged, minus Greg Ginn’s jazzpunk solos but very much with the rush and crash of a band that only pauses for the bass to dig out a jagged groove or to allow silence until the next track. To compare with something more recent? Maybe Chicago’s Weekend Nachos. Stabler songs like “Torture” and “Self-Disgust” offer uplifting lyrics, encouraging the listener to challenge mediocre shit – to be humbled, to be aware, and to take responsibility for life choices. So the content is there for lyric lovers like me. Sonically, the rapid swipe and chug of these tracks is ideal for smashing chairs to, or for powering through rough spots that Minor Threat tracks like “Seeing Red” and “Filler” just can’t clean. You can grab Squadroom off of Stabler’s Bandcamp (check out the vaguely titled “…preview…” song there, too) or procure a Cassette from their label, Reality is a Cult. –Jim Joyce (Reality Is A Cult, realityisacult.blogspot.com) 

BREAKUP SOCIETY, THE

So Much Unhappiness So Little Time: CD

Fans of power pop can get behind the Breakup Society’s new release pretty easily. Lead songwriter Ed Masley writes tracks that could’ve been featured on a Left of the Dial Rhino Records compilation for their similarity to ‘80s and early ‘90s alternative rock (think Hoodoo Gurus) that they recall. Despite the crotchety album title, So Much Unhappiness So Little Time is upbeat. These are songs written by someone who’s likely an old hand at crafting hook heavy pop rock, laden with glittery sustained chords alongside sweet and sour garage rock vocals, only maybe the nicer garage of a guy who remembers to cut his lawn. The result reminds me a bit of Superchunk or Spoon in a good way, though the shimmer and omnipresence of Masley’s voice kept me from falling into the songs completely. Not exactly my thing, but plenty to like for fans of power pop to check out.  –Jim Joyce (Get Hip Recordings, gethip.com) 

CHALLENGED, THE

Basically: CD

The soul of Squirtgun and Digger style pop punk persists on these nine tracks. Tight guitar and drum work with bass playing of the cleverly understated Mike Dirnt variety lifts the group above the waterline for sure. The Challenged might get tired of being compared to the pop punk classics of the 90s, but they flourish within that sound, writing songs that I’d like to hear five tracks at a time, while driving across town by night with streetlamps brushing overhead – thinking about integrity, romance, and ambition, all that stuff. But I don’t have a car. And I’m sitting at a sticky wooden table surrounded by quizzes and paperclips. In sum, Basically is a definite success in the pop punk form: tracks like “Go Fuck Yourself” carry the torch. But I’d like to hear the Challenged reach out and bring their distinct view of the world to the genre, too, like they do on “The Director” where the lyrics are a storyboard to a movie about the song. Which is inventive and cool. More of that, please. –Jim Joyce (Self-released, no address listed)

PROLETAR / ANALDICKTION

Split: 7”  

Tonally, Proletar and Analdicktion are a worthy pairing. Jakarta based Proletar has been together since 1999, and they have been featured on more than 20 releases since that time. The band recalls a high-octane reinterpretation of Napalm Death, if the lyrics were addressing imperialism, outsourcing, and politics of the left; pretty cool topic matter to hear from voices outside of the US. Take that intellectual activity with the blizzard of serrated chords and Proletar’s three tracks and make for a fine A-side. On the B-side is Anadicktion, a recently defunct group from Singapore, who are a bit more of an anomaly for me. I’m intrigued by the brutality of the vocals that are so engagingly awry with effects they seem to boil up from the bottom of a swamp (or fly in from outer space on radio waves made of crude oil) but songs like “Fuck Artsy Indie Girl Bullshit” and “Trendy Hipster Castration Bloodbath” seem a bit like caricatures. But the goregrind vocals are so pleasingly spooky that I eagerly sleuthed around for more material. Analdicktion’s 2011 album, Sluts, is well-reviewed, but similarly hard to get down with due to song titles like “Semen Covered Butchered Whores” and “Severed Scene Slut” and from the abundance of rape jokes in a few reviews I checked out in my hunt for more material. I get that the gore misogyny is probably intended to be more goofball than machismo, but the outcome is normalization of creepy misogynistic thinking. Call me Tipper Gore, but it reminds me in part of why even at punk and hardcore shows in 2013, many of my female friends can’t pass a night without being groped or harassed by dudes in the scene, and how DIY, even though it’s implicitly left leaning, can still feel like an angry hetero boy’s club. In sum, this is an EP of rad grindcore sounds but ultimately mixed messages. – Jim Joyce (Suburban White Trash Records, suburbanwhitetrashrecords.com)

Reality Is A Cult Records / Nathalie Haurberg, 1693 N. Broad St. Galesburg, IL 61401

Get Hip Inc. 1800 Columbus Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15233

Suburban White Trash Records, PO Box 270594, Fort Collins CO

The Pirates Are Robbing the Ship

So I jog a little now. For about twenty minutes at a time, maybe three days a week. The endorphins start jumping and I can be satisfied free and easy by most things.  

I feel pretty special about that. Podcasts are really slow to listen to, so I listen to Dear You, which is pretty slow, too, but I know the words real good so I can rock, rock until my feet fuck up the rhythm of my jog and I throw my breathing off.   

The other day, I was signing a check at Handlebar the restaurant. I think it might be my favorite place to eat. Brianna and I go there and eye up the posters. I'd just had my first car bomb. There have been times when twenty dollars for a meal and a drink would be unthinkable for me, but now it's not. What happened there. The way I spend my money makes me think about how I earn it. I had just finished posting six letters of recommendation. They turned out fine, but I would have liked more time to review them. Which is why I ordered the car bomb. I drank it quickly but felt no effect, though I was reminded of living with my old roomie and at the start of winter break with May Linn and her fiancé drinking Bailey's and watching Eat Pray Love, a long movie.

When I left the school building I saw that my front wheel had been taken from my bike. Here we go, I said, for my benefit. I asked the two homeless men across the street if they had seen anything, which I'm sure they had not, and which I'm sure they found a little annoying -- who is this idiot from the big school asking for things -- but I thought in movies and stories people tell asking is helpful. 

I heard Myley Cyrus on the radio last night for the first time while Brianna was driving. She  wanted to change the station but I had not heard it yet. Myley Cyrus' got these stadium songs. You came at me like a wrecking ball. I see her faces in the grocery line and I believe she is a child out of time. Myley Cyrus  you make a nice Egyptian creature goddess. But pop musician, I don't know. 

Still, I'm thinking about it. Some cunning child slipped my front wheel away from the rest of my bike near 5:15pm. The cameras caught his blurriness on fuzz film, he was hipping himself over the rail, wrench out, taking the wheel, bolts and all, another wheel for the collection. 

Back at the base on 2024 S. Allport, I am reviewing my options. I am listening to the Everly Brothers and drinking Mole Stout, which tastes like spicy dirt. The chain on my one bike. I can get that fixed by Thursday for about forty bucks. A new wheel and tire and tire and inner tube will empty out the nickel jar for sure, that'll take longer. The week will proceed like this:

1. The frustration instigated by dudes in bike shops. 
2. The light anxiety of asking them something. 

                   - I say do you have one of these things? 

                   - They say did you mean one of these things? 

                   - I say yes. 

                   - They say, Yes, hundred dollars. 

                   - OK. 

I would like to know the journey of the objects I have lost. Not have them back, just have some thoughts on them. Was grading on the bus with a red marker. Two women across from me were arguing about their no-good guys, and when I got off one of them handed me two pens and said they were for me. Figured if I lost a wheel I should come out on top with two pens, thanked her graciously and hunted out the Cermak bus.

I Turned the Heater On

Today I found a grey hair on my head. Or maybe it was white? My Grandma and aunts and uncles have white hair. That’s what I’d like, though my dad is grey, though he can grow a mustache and I cannot, so maybe I’ll get the hair I want.  

I’ve been listening to New Order here and there, which is skinny music. Then I drink a stout, which is fat beer.

But both New Order and stout are important for a meaningful winter walking in the sun or being by the window feeling satisfied with your choice of having a beer that is actually almost a solid and listening to a band that is more melodic than Joy Division but not less deep. The song “Ceremony” is important to me in title and feel, and it reminds me of the end of The Third Man, which every dopey melodramaticist enjoys.

Yesterday Brianna and I were bumping around and saw Brendan. He and I have the same black jean jacket and we all talked about rock music and cats and screenprinting. I don’t think he has washed his jean jacket once and it is an excellent color. It has a patina.

I should never wash my jean jackets or hoodies; just let them collect color and leave them in the freezer for a week like the man in Pittsburgh said in a song:

            Put your jeans in the freezer / they’ll feel good

            Put your jeans in the freezer/ smell like they should

Matt Whispers, I saw him last week and he recommended I read Borges’ short book, A History of Iniquities, which he has out from the library. I use my money to get stout and books. One day I’ll give up stout, but books, nope. I don’t think so.   

Sometimes I ride my bike and my bone fingers hurt from the rattle. But that’s all right because I need something to complain about.

Here and there I worry about things – the plumbing in my apartment, when I will teach sentence variation lessons, and how to assess it. That’s in my DNA, I know it’s normal. Deeper, I get concern that unfair things happen to people I love, or that I do not speak to my friends often enough because I’m too busy pacing or grading or almost grading and zineing or blogging instead, but I think that is probably adulthood.

Generally I am in favor of staying at some place until 3am with my friends and to have it be in the winter when it’s snowing and we all have to be driven home.   

My Dad called and asked if I wanted one of my Grandpa’s flat Irish caps. He says he found a box in his dad’s closet. They are either Scottish or Italian or English nobleman by origin, but if I were a revisionist, I’d say they were formed in Ireland.

I do want one my Grandpa’s hats, but I will never wear it outside of the house. Seems like the kind of hat you wear if you lift things for a living. And I sure don’t. But I will wear it around my apartment when nobody is near, and take on my Grandpa’s powers of being organized and driven, and being nervous, and saying houryoudoin and merciless handshakes.