Monday, September 9, 1996

the song from yesterday...

i'm just home from school, after taking a detour to the mall to pick up the new REM record. i haven't listened to it yet, but boy am i excited to!

how was the first week of school? well, it's kind of what i expected, but kind of not, too. the classes are full of the kids i expected that they would be full of, but it seems like "enriched courses" are the same as normal courses except that the teachers are less involved in the class. in math class, the teacher doesn't write anything on the board, he just assigns readings and homework at the beginning of the class and then goes into the other room to do his own work. in english, we read by ourselves instead of together. i guess the assumption is that we can all read? i'm not really getting the chance to be irritated by anybody, because everybody is ignoring each other. in fact, i actually kind of like this as it lets me retreat to my natural introversion. i'm no longer feeling like i need to put on a mask to communicate with others because that communication is no longer expected. right now, i'm not really finding myself missing the normal classes, but we'll see how long that lasts for.

it's kind of weird at lunch, because i know i'm never going to actually want to talk to any of these people. a strange truth is that the classes are almost all boys. the one girl i might want to talk to seems to be perpetually hiding behind what appears to be her boyfriend, and completely disinterested in conversing with anybody else. the guys at the front all want to talk about sports, even though none of them are actually good at sports. i don't really understand that, and i'm not at all interested in getting to know them. there's one kid in the back named ryan that i kind of get along with, as he's sort of punk rock. i think his parents were from pakistan, but he's culturally absolutely white - he doesn't even have an accent. i'm going to guess i'll probably be hanging out with him most of the year. if he doesn't get sick of me, i guess...

they put me in "exploratory" at the very end of the day, which is dangerous - i may very well skip it. it's not that i don't like art. clearly, i do. it's that i can't stand these directed outlets of official expression. i do not at all need this; i play an instrument. i read recreationally. so, it's just patronizing to me. pointless. a waste of time....

right now, i'm very sleepy as i did not sleep last night, so i'm going to give you a quick write up of the song i published this morning and then crash until the morning.

this is a brand new song that i wrote in my basement. it was actually intended to be a demo for a band with my friend matt, who wants to learn how to play bass and also wants to start a punk band. the vocals are really rough and based on something that he would say, but were written more as a placeholder than anything else. unfortunately, he thinks the song isn't fast enough. i guess he wants all of the songs to be really fast. that seems kind of silly to me...

i like the song, though - even if the lyrics are not meant for me. it would be a good pop song, played forwards. but, i don't want my solo work to be pop music. so, i took the song and pasted it on top of itself backwards, thereby creating my very first backwards guitar solo!



i don't know if this band with matt is going to work out. i really do think that this was a pretty good pop song before i ruined it. but, he's just all about conforming to a kind of pre-packaged identity and i'm not really sure it's one that i'm really that into. i mean, what's the point of starting a band if you're not interested in anybody hearing it? if you just want to play dress up and pretend? there's just a distance in maturity, i guess. he's not taking it seriously because it isn't real to him. he doesn't actually seek a real audience; it's just another rpg.

maybe i'll put aside some things for him as they come up. but, i think this is the last thing that i write explicitly for him.

new song #2...

this upload is a little bit late, but i had to sneak into the computer room to do it, which meant waiting until everybody fell asleep. then, it just takes so ridiculously long to upload on this 14.4k modem....

but, it's finally done. here it is right here...


i have school in the morning, which means i need to be on the bus in a few hours. so, i'm going to need to sneak back into the other room and get a little bit of rest. i don't really want to sleep on the bus, i take public transit to school, but sometimes my body makes that choice for me. i'll need to talk a little bit more about this tonight.