flotation device – Page 36 – flotation device

March 2, 2009

video games

this is an outtake from the 2216 section of flotation device 12. i felt i had already included enough pieces that established jeff and, sadly, this one had to go. in the end not much was really mentioned about our video game playing. a serious oversight.

Hey. Jeff said sneakily looking around.

Yeah?

Hey is it getting dark in here? He asked. It was still light out.

Awesome. It’s totally getting dark in here. I shut the blinds to cut the glare. He turned on the tv and the n64 and put in perfect dark.

This is the game we played most. Most on the n64.

Video games became one of our main things to do while hanging out. He was into video games and wanted to do sound for video games. Design it. Create the soundscape and sound effects. Compose the score. He loved it. I liked to play socially. So if I had someone to play with I was happy. He was always renting games. Some I would watch him play, some I wouldn’t. He’d play for a couple hours and then go out or do homework or play guitar or skate.

Is it getting dark in here? Initially it just meant perfect dark, but of course eventually it came to mean, do you wanna play video games? Of course we could always be direct about it and say, Hey do you wanna jam some vids. That always worked too.

February 25, 2009

adventures in biking

on my way to work the other day. cold. sun. me wrapped with scarf and ear coverings. layers under my windbreaker. breath frozen. left eye tearing as it does in the wind. at the corner of petersen and jersey. i was stopped at the light.

jersey has a left turn lane, a lane for going straight and a right lane for turning right or for assholes who also want to keep going straight. if said asshole wants to do this they have to cut off the car in the lane to their left fast. otherwise the asshole will crash into the cars parked on the street just north of the intersection. jersey is only a two lane street on the other side of petersen. the turn lane is unmarked but it’s pretty obvious that you can only go straight by cutting off the car to yr left.

when i get stopped at this intersection i stop in between the middle lane (that goes straight) and the turn lane. this way cars making a right can still do so while the light is red.

an suv sort of car pulled up in the right turn lane. the window rolled down. this dude with coffee in his left hand. close beard. heavy flannel shirt.

“hey. are you driving a car or riding a bike?” he said with the setup.
“i’m riding a bike.”
“yeah. yr supposed to be all the way on the right side,” he said smug with his punchline.
“yeah. i am. that’s the turn lane. i’m going straight.”

he hesitated for a second. it seemed he hadn’t thought of that. “well, yr brave buddy. that’s all i can say.”

the light turned green and I headed on my way. i noticed his car when it eventually passed me on the other side of petersen.

this sort of thing pisses me off. drivers who pull into the right turn lane or shoulder of the road at a light and then floor it to cut off the people to their left. not only are they assholes. they fucking scare the shit outta me cuz I never know if they are turning right or are going to run me over in their attempt to pass everyone else.

February 16, 2009

the necks

2/4/09

last night the necks at the cultural center. 2 sets. the first sounded like water. the way all the instruments worked together. the piano. the bass. the drums. this pulsing mass of music flow. it was nice. 40 minutes. growing music.

the second set. quieter. more sinister. the drums stole the show. or the lack of drums. the drummer played the drums without playing the actual drums. played around the kit. sounded like a wheezing antiquated machine lurching back to life. rolling in spurts and fits. rolling a metal disc around the rim or the floor tom. metal on metal. a brush flickering on the snare. no beat. just flow. slow burn build up until the kick drum is constant. thump. thump. thump. and a counter tap sizzle of drum stick on cymbal. the way these two sound played off each other sounded unnatural tense and evil. all the while metal on metal, discs on rims, taps and skitters of other little instruments on the drums instead of a stick.

the bass started the song. 4 notes. slow quiet solitary.

the drummer rolling something with his foot that made this percussive loud clicking rattle.

the kick drums sounds like stomping on the pedals of a piano really hard. soft disembodied attack hit followed by deep distant lingering reverb.

February 9, 2009

improvised music is the new newness

lately. i’ve been into the band. new ideas. new modes. it’s nice. i thought i woulda been more bummed that the rories stopped. but by the end, it was feeling like too much. too much responsibility. too much being in charge. not enough being part of a group. don’t get me wrong. i loved it. it was fun. but i think it had run its course and now we’re on to the next thing. the rories had been moving in that direction anyways. freeform. open-ended. improvised. and that seems to be what this new group is. open ended. we’re working on it. figuring it out. figuring out how to play with each other. what to play with each other. what musics. what instruments.

which is fun for me. playing new things like drums. trying to figure out how they work. sleigh bells – a christmas present from h’s sister. the sleigh bells rule. a keyboard that’s been sitting in my closet for years. now i’m playing all these things. and anything i can get my hands on. like a melodica. i wish i still had my harmonica. i wonder where that got off to. and yes i’m still playing my guitar also. it’s a nice feeling to be trying new things, making new sounds (new for me) and learning to interact musically with new people.

it can be frustrating. some nights. when we’re off. not coherent. but that’s the nature of it. and it seems like we’re getting more comfortable with each other and the music and it’ll continue to improve.

we still don’t have a name yet. some terrible ideas have been thrown around. maybe i’ll write them down later. we’ll see.

February 2, 2009

self aware blog writingness

i’m still trying to get a handle on what this blog thing is about. what should i put in here. i feel hesitant to put too much in here cuz i don’t want to overlap too much with the zine. i’m okay with putting up outtakes, deleted sections, fragments, alternate versions, etc, of published things. but i’m worried about putting stuff up here that i might want to put in a future issue of flotation device. although maybe i shouldn’t worry about that so much. cuz regardless i’d rewrite/rework whatever i put up on the blog. but still i feel a little weird about double dipping like that.

right now i guess i’m feeling like this will be good for my little more like journaly things that i write but never publish anymore. shit that i used to throw into zines when i made little shorty zines. shit about pirates and stuff. shit that for whatever reason i don’t feel like putting in published flotation device. published. unpublished.

also. i just need to be writing again. just a little bit. i’ve taken the past few months off cuz i was starting to feel massive anxiety. like apprehension nervous tension in my stomach and part of it seemed to be coming from pressure i was putting on myself about writing and the zine and all. so i stopped. stopped writing in the morning before work. stopped writing on the weekends. stopped trying to squeeze an hour in after work.

i haven’t quit. but i’ve taken a break. and i need to just kind of write to write for a bit. a little at a time. then i can attack the next zine. the next issue.

i haven’t been feeling so intensely anxious these days. i don’t know if it’s the not writing. the backing off from band responsibilities. learning to relax or what. it still arises occasionally but not so frequently. less sick lately.

i’ll work on the next issue of the zine when it feels right. when i’m up for it. when it doesn’t seem so massive. so daunting. in the meantime there’s these little shits to write. little by little.

January 28, 2009

yesterday

for yr enjoyment…

untitled haiku #1

water under the vending machine
the bathroom smells of shit and aftershave
my eyes a fog of computer and boredom

January 19, 2009

january 2009

holy shit was it cold last week! like 30 below 0. i call that cold. i know if you live up in minneapolis or winnipeg it gets colder. but 30 below is pretty cold. winter came on fierce right before we left for new jersey for christmas. and then when we got back it was 60 degrees for a day. no shit. but then winter came back even more! it’s a bit more normal this week – teens, 20’s etc. i can ride my bike again. that’s something. here are some winter pics taken from inside our apartment. where it was warm. i sure wasn’t going outside to take pictures.

November 30, 2008

thirty. wisconsin.

i turned 30 back in october. for the occasion h and i went up to the middle of nowhere wisconsin for a few days. we stayed in a little cottage thing on a pond. it was righteous. it was nice and fallish. sunny on the first day. rainy on the second. and on the third. snow. hooray! these are a few pics of the great outdoors of mid wisconsin. i’ve been 30 for a month now. it’s not bad. kinda nice.

this is in the yard of the cabin. h took this one.

the cabin.

the pond.

the pond (photo by h)

the woods. flying saucer attack stylee photo by h.

from the car.

around the cabin.

from the car.

on the way home.

also from the car on the way home.

and so’s this one.

November 10, 2008

skatepark nihilism

this was a little coda that originally followed the treefort (slight return) section of flotation device 12. when i first wrote it, it seemed logical to include it. it flowed with the rest of that junior high section, but when i read it once all of the pieces were put in order, it seemed to kinda just sit there.

We had a brilliant idea too. David and I or Luke and I or all of us. On the west side of the subdivision beyond the pond and on the other side of all the fences beyond the last recently sodded lawns of the new houses there was a field. A cornfield old and unused derelict and filled with dead cornstalks and grass. In our explorations seeking out new places to explore and new places to walk we came across a cement platform. It must have been the floor to a storage shed. We said it was an old barn. It was divided into a few different levels and the cement was fairly smooth in some spots.

As we sat out there under the summer sun blue sky and white clouds hoping that the men in the pick up trucks that seemed to occasionally patrol the fields didn’t come, we had a brilliant thought. Let’s turn this into a skate park. We could build a half pipe out here and some mini ramps. We could use the multi levels for a kick ass street area. It’s out of the way and no one would bother us. Genius.

Jeremy could help. His dad had built an amazingly professional quarter pipe that they kept in his garage. It was on wheels and they would wheel it out to skate it in the driveway. It terrified me with its perfect curvature smooth wood and vert at the top and its five foot height. Jeremy could help us. Luke could help us, having built that half pipe in his basement. He also helped me build a launch ramp that we kept in my garage that had a nice curve that Luke got from wetting the wood with a hose and bending the wood back while standing on it. We could get wood and nails and pvc coping from the dumpsters. That’s where we always went for supplies for treeforts or bike ramps skate ramps or whatever we were building. Often the dumpster raids also included clandestine exploration of the skeletal frames of houses after hours when the workers had left for the day. Climbing in through the sunken basement windows. Climbing up the skeletal stairs. Walking through skeletal walls. Climbing on skeletal beams. And carefully walking over skeletal floors.

We could do it. We could build our own private skate park out here in this field. Sun pouring down. Browned yellowed dead corn stalks. Blue blue sky. Possibility in the air. Dreams dreamed. A shared fantasy. The sound of skateboard wheels on cement on wood in our minds. We could do it. But we didn’t.

October 30, 2008

radio loways twofer

yes. that’s right. there are actually two new radio loways shows up right now. my own show, nerdsville, is up. and so is the Radio Loways Halloween Spectacular of Terror! awesome! just thought i’d let you know.

radio loways