Well, looks like my (band)/(ex) has dumped me for the last time. Like, final. As in, "Look, you can't just call me whenever any more, OK? Also, it'd be good if you could get your stuff from my house sometime this week when I'm out, and also drop the key through the mail slot when you go. Maybe see you around, eh. Oh, someone's calling on the other line, gotta go 'kay? Bye." That's it, seven years ripped out of the continuity continuum, gone, reduced to throwing a bunch of mic cables and PKD novels into a sports bag. A lot of Xmas cards and stuff we picked up on (tours/vacations [Italy was nice]), pictures of us doing silly shit, but those go into the trash. Why keep them? They're just dead shit anyway, only pollute my house with entropic nostalgia, making it even more like an Alhzeimer's sanitarium than it already is, who needs that?
Couldn't really say it was a big shock though. Only a question of 'when'. Too late, of course, but I think I know how it came to this pretty pass. See, the new (singer)/(bf) - I'm way smarter than him. Also cooler. Better-looking even (tho neither of us are conventional pin-ups, true). Everybody knows that. Shit, I used to insult him to his face all the time, more contemptuously than rancorously (as you do with 'insubstantial' ppl). And he'd take it, because he knew and also knew that everybody else knew. Not even a matter of debate, you know? I'm a fuckin' hyperactive fountain of 24/7 wit and hilarity and rage and exuberance and THIS guy - just an ordinary pud. From 'round the way. Nice guy, y'know? Hard worker. Polite.
That sounds like more contempt, but believe me, it's not. I'd be like that if I could, but I'm not. I'm not from 'round the way, for one thing. I'm not really from anywhere, anymore. Except Dave-land. You know what those kind of ppl are like, they can't fit into a pre-existing community 'round the way or anywhere, so they mock and ridicule them instead, and insist that they've invented one that's better. Entertains ppl, you know? "Oh look, everything you're supposed to do, this guy does it inside out and backwards, then does a little dance on it and pisses on it. How amusing." And as fuckin' smart as I am I missed the bit that says "It's entertaining because I'M not going to be the one who's left middle-aged and single and balding and trying to bring long-buried shit back to life like it's (1983)/(1997) again and stuck alone in an alien culture that's more than capable of returning all the shit you've flung at it for years. What, you don't find that funny, Mr Slapstick? I thought everything was a big fuckin' joke, no? Well don't worry [pats head], you were once the coolest person on Earth, nobody can take that away. But remember the 'were'."
Remember what I said at (US Festival/daily over breakfast), "I'm sailing down my merry path, and you're all invited but I'm driving?" That was my problem the whole time, wasn't it. Assuming that (band)/(gf) would just hand over the keys, forever. We went some pretty fuckin' cool places, you gotta admit - but maybe not, because I never thought to ask you, did I? Did you want your life to be as 'interesting' as I kept insisting (and probably achieved, for the wrong reasons) I'd make it?
Were I younger and dumber and full of cummer I would probably say "Your choice of replacement for me is a cold & calculated act of revenge, picking the most opposite person imagineable", but that's not how it is. It's kind of what you (rightly) wanted/needed all along, or at least a compromise, or at least an acknowledgement that being trapped in 24/7 Dave TV maybe didn't constitute an actual life. You just wanted (to expand the craft to the fullest IT deserved)/(maybe have somebody to SHARE life's travails and pleasures with), not somebody who would swing their dick thru the jungle saying things like ("Eddie is not a very complex person")/(got all day?) in public. (Well, if somebody 'takes it' once, they'll take it forever, right? That's what happens when you're so fuckin' cool that you IMMEDIATELY can take the measure of anybody alive. They're just animatronic characters in your amusement park of life, not ppl with real feelings or nothin', right?)
I suppose you expect me to say something entirely in character like "Well if it wasn't for all that oppression you wouldn't have (created a sound that could no longer contain the depths of your pain and frustration so it just exploded everywhere, the guitar as strawman, punchbag, M-16, plane ticket anywhere, you lived in the heart of the most affluent and solipsistic part of the most a & s country on Earth but being a 1st-gen immigrant you spurned the popular local therapeutic industry and instead developed a trade that would put food on the table but like any trade or craft, if you find the right one it can solve alot of problems [even the psych ones] at a stroke [maybe then it becomes 'art' but we leave others to speak at that, we are speaking now of playing basements then colleges then parties then clubs then arenas then stadiums then Olympus all BECAUSE PPL WANT TO HEAR IT,(ie not because you're attempting to scam a career by shitting all same ppl), and elements of those sounds must've resounded amongst other angry ppl like Chuck Schuldiner and Kerry King and Trey Azagthoth, whose sonic renderings of their visual/packaging conceits became a valid and fertile exploration of your chosen tool, perhaps the last one left but they - through YOU - managed to keep it alive for that little bit longer - you took care to take care of your craft, and that's why it took care of you)/(realized that you deserved a real boyfriend, a real life and a real future). But I won't, and there's no reason for you to listen to me anymore anyway. God knows, you've done enough of that.
(but THAT guy...!)
― dave q, Thursday, 13 March 2003 13:24 (twenty-three years ago)