The Musical Instruments I Want to Waste My Money On

Because even though I don’t really play music much any more, I still think of myself as a musician

I stopped playing music over a decade ago. Honestly, I stopped playing gigs another decade earier than that. The reasons for it were multitudinous, but came down to a few overarching concerns, some having to do with transitioning my gender (voice dysphoria) but others going to the simple fact that playing out was getting to be nothing but a grind, something I had little passion for… essentially, it was burnout. I went through a number of years when I didn’t even listen to music, preferring to just enjoy the ambient noise of life.

I’ve definitely returned to music appreciation now. I used to do all of my retail therapy at the record store. I’ve redeveloped that habit. A couple of years ago, I decided I wanted to have a working turntable again. I now have that, and I’ve just about tripled my vinyl collection since doing so. I’m considering a moratorium on buying new stuff, just so I can spend some time with the things I’ve picked up and decide on some favorites. I mean. I do have favorite things, and I’ve written about a few of them on this blog, but there are things I’ve filed away, having listened through them once or twice, that I want to make time to pull out again and listen on repeat, because that’s how you get things into your bloodstream and make them part of your internal soundtrack.

So I’ve been thinking about whether I should get back to playing music. I have no real interest in reconstructing my solo act. I was so tired of the lack of interaction with other players, of endlessly repeating the same songs in rehearsal and at gigs. One of the things I prefer about writing is that you compose, you perfect, then you move on. That’s not what playing music is like.

But it would be fun to have a group of humans to get together with on a regular basis and treat music as the social interaction it’s meant to be. I’m sure I would enjoy it, as long as it was somewhat low-key, done for fun, and kept away from the crazymaking that is also so much a part of being in a band. One thing I’d need to do to get back to playing is to update my equipment. Some of that is only worth doing once you know what sort of music you’ll be playing (some kind of rock music for me, but even that carries lots of variables) but I do find myself looking at various basses and guitars – mostly basses – that it would be nice to have and play.

My top three basses to get would be a Stingray, a Thunderbird, or (and?) a Mustang.

My top guitars to get would be a Les Paul, a Martin 00, and a Mustang.

All except the Martin would be red with a black pickguard, ideally.

But the fact is, I don’t have any reason to buy any guitar. I have guitars. I have worked hard to retrain my creative impulses towards writing, for reasons listed above as well as a few others I’m not going to bother listing here.

There’s nobody around who is interested in making music with me. I’m not really pursuing it. It’s OK. I’ll enjoy music as a consumer/spectator, and keep putting my energy into writing, which suits my life and my interests better.

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Zeitgeist 8/25/26

The last week of August is always weird…

It’s that quiet time when nothing is really happening, but the whole world seems to be full of a kind of denied anticipation/dread of what comes next. We’re just under two weeks out from a delayed American Labor Day — this year it lands on the last day it can mathematically be, September 7th. It feels like we’re getting an extra week of “summer.”

Kids are waiting for school to start. The produce section at the local grocery store is still full of stone fruit and tons of obviously-local leafy greens, but the greens are a little bit leggy and the peaches are taking on that late-season sweetness that I wait for the whole year, even though it means they’re about to disappear from the farm stands.

I still haven’t seen any Hallowe’en candy® or heard anyone mention Pumpkin Spiced Everything®. That will all magically appear on September 8th, and at that point, we’ll all start wearing our fall colors and anticipatorally bringing along a sweater, just in case.

Some years, I’ve even noticed that the weather will change, as if on cue. These long-but-shortening Summer days will be and feel of the season almost past, and then that one week the feeling in the air will be different. The air will be noticeably cooler, you’ll take note of a few harbinger trees which are starting to take on their fall colors. City streets will be busier, the highways less so.

And then at the end of the month there’ll come an entire week of rain every day, and on the other side of that, those just-in-case sweaters will come out of our bags and get pulled over our shoulders. It’s all downhill from then on.

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Speaking of downhill,

AI slop, obvi.

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Speaking of downhill, the American Empire looks to be toast. Stinky Don and his Stupid Minions are making every destructive wrong decision they can come up with, and it’s costing us in every corner of the world. The economy is still appearing to hold up, though not well, but all of the underpinnings are being eaten away at a precipitous clip. (How are those “strategic reserves” hanging in, Donny boy?)

The cracks are beginning to appear domestically, but on the international stage, things are much worse, as evinced by the fact that we’ve just learned that 15 US military bases around the Persian Gulf have been completely obliterated. We are not welcome there. Even the Saudis aren’t defending us, having restricted access to their airspace to US armed forces in response to ongoing attacks from Iran (on US bases on Saudi soil, and due to Irans rising power.)

We continue to burn through our allyships and Pumpkinhead is trying hard to align the US with rogue pariah nations who have the authoritarian leadership style he obviously wants to instill here at home. He is more unpopular with the electorate here than he was after the January 6th, 2021 riot in DC. None of this is sustainable. If he somehow manages to eke out a win* in the midterms, I can’t imagine how this country will ever recover. Our only hope is to check his power now. A shortfall, no matter how compromised the election might be, will only encourage these morons to push all of their terrible policies into overdrive.

As it is, some revision of the world order is in progress, and this country is going to have to face up to its new reality. I hope we can find some way to minimize the damage being done, but I’m not hopeful.

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It’s a beautiful, bright morning, I’m working on the blog I enjoy writing, I have my second cup of coffee here on the desk sitting on one of my old COVID masks which I now use as a coaster. I love my home and I’m not willing to be chased out of it.

Hope you are the same.

I’ll Be Publishing a Book in September

What? You’re expecting me to do things properly? Of course not.

Since I finished my MFA a hundred or so years ago, I’ve had this idea for a collection of stories and poems that sit close to, and on either side of the line between fantasy and nonfiction. It’s about as postmodern a concept as I can generate and bring to fruition, and I’m very excited to announce that I am about to be able to make the thing available for you, my readers.

The subject matter revolves around family history, the borders between worlds, tall stories and true ones, death, and magic.

The title of the project is Carcass and Phantoms. I originally conceived it as a chapbook, but chapbooks are usually 32-40 pages, so Google tells me, and this will be closer to 80 pages. I thought I would call it a “double chapbook” for a minute, but then I decided that that sounded ‘way too chapped. I think I’m just going to call it a “thin volume” or maybe a short book.

I’m working with an artist and friend named Heather Balchunas whose work I adore and who is excited to be providing cover art. I’m proud to have her help with this little labor of love.

I’ll give you more news about this when I have it!

An earlier draft of the dealybob I’m working on. Photo by me.

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I Voted for Ed Clark in my first Presidential Election

I was a bit naive, but I was aware that American politics was a scam.

This was 1980. Jimmy Carter (Democrat) v. Ronald Reagan (Republican) v. John B. Anderson (Independent) v. Ed Clark (Libertarian)

I lifted this pic from his wikipedia page. Oh — btw? Support Wikipedia.

That moment in time feels crucially foundational to this moment. I won’t say that I chose correctly. I don’t believe I did, to be honest with you, but given the situation the country was in and the choices available, I’m not terribly mad at myself for this vote. That said, based on my understanding of myself and of the world of that time with my 20/40 hindsight, I might have done better to vote for John B. Anderson.

Jimmy Carter, much as he is now admired by modern Liberals, was an ineffective and arrogant failPOTUS. For those who don’t know the history, he faced a difficult geopolitical era. The US-installed Shah of Iran was deposed and that country was taken over by fundamentalist Muslims under the leadership of the Ayatollah Khomeni. As Iran had been the US’s main supplier of petroleum to that point, the US suddenly found itself in yet another round of long lines at the gas pumps and rising prices for things like heating oil and jet fuel and all of the down-market items that depend on oil for either production or transport, which is pretty much everything. At the same time that prices were rising, so was unemployment — a situation known as stagflation.

Complicating this was that Iran then kidnapped and held hostage 52 Americans employed at the US Embassy to Iran. They were held in Tehran for 444 days, and only released (suspiciously) within hours of Ronald Reagan’s swearing-in on 1/20/81. Carter had launched a rescue attempt in April 1980, which failed and led to the deaths of 8 American servicemen.

Let’s just say that it’s no surprise that Carter lost in 1980 in a landslide, even without understanding his own arrogance and high-handedness within the confines of the leadership of his own party. He even got on television and gave a speech in which he chastized the American people for a “lack of confidence.”

I certainly had no loyalty to him as a Democratic presidential candidate. In my opinion, he typefies the breed: Ineffectual and smug. I continue to view the leadership of the Democratic Party in this way to this day. Carter got 44% of the vote, winning 6 states in the Electoral College.

Ronald Reagan was not a good option, either. Darling of the Christian right, least articulate and intellectually rigorous of all four candidates on my ballot that year, and championing some of the craziest economic policy of the era, which his own vice presidential candidate, GHW Bush, had characterized as “voodoo economics” right up until the moment that Reagan chose him as his running mate. Me voting for that fascist was never gonna happen. Still, he got 47% of the vote and 44 states in the Electoral College.

Ed Clark angered his party once by describing Libertarianism as “low-tax Liberalism.” He’d run in the previous California gubernatorial race in favor of the anti property-tax referendum Proposition 13 and against Proposition 6, which sought to bar gay men and lesbians from working in public schools. It was his pro-gay stance and record of fighting for us that won me over. My burgeoning understanding of myself as a queer person made him an attractive candidate in a field of terrifying prospects. I’ve only recently been reminded that his running mate in that election was David Koch of Koch Industries. eep. He got just over 1% of the vote.

John B. Anderson, the candidate today-me would have absolutely supported in that election was also pro-civil rights, including gay rights, ran in the Republican primary that year warning that Reagan’s economic policies would be a disaster for the country (he was right) proposed a 50% hike in gasoline taxes, using that to offset a 50% reduction in Social Security payroll contributions, which I recall liking, and which I now think is a little bit questionable as policy, based on how it would have tied the Social Security fund to unrelated outside factors. He was also against the draft registration that Carter had initiated in 1978, and which Reagan supporters were very excited about. Anderson wound up with 6.6% of the vote, not winning even a single precinct across the country.

I can’t claim to be an authority on this, but it seems to me that Anderson was the last gasp of Liberal Republicanism in this country’s politics. I would not ever describe myself as any such thing as a Liberal or a Republican, much less some hybrid combination of the two, but from this standpoint almost five decades later (damn, I’m old!) He looks to me like the best path forward the country could have chosen at the time. He wasn’t perfect on policy, but at least he was generally pointed in the right direction.

Jackie O and Paul Newman supported this guy for POTUS in 1980. I also swiped this photo off of Wikipedia.

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Villainelle, First Attempt

Playing with the form, riffing on the Brain Radio

I didn’t know why I was wrong.
I thought I was bad company.
That’s what it said in that old song.

Just got along to get along
That’s what I thought my life should be
I didn’t know why I was wrong.

To get it on! To bang a gong!
Diamond star halo waits for me!
That’s what it said in that old song.

Felt wrong inside my whole life long
At least that’s how it seemed to be
I didn’t know why I was wrong.

I wondered as I walked along
Someone in my head that wasn’t me
Just like it said in that old song.

The radio played another song
About the man I’ll never be
I didn’t know why I was wrong
That’s what it said in that old song

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