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I am totally feeling Roky Erickson lately. That howl. There's this restless hunger. Maybe it's spring. Maybe it's staring down the barrel at the funnest vacation of all time (1 sleep! Or rather one night of staring at the ceiling hoping I don't forget to bring pants!) that I am secretly a little bit afraid I'll never recover from. Restless unsatisfied, in spite of so many nice things right in front of me. Maybe it's that I can see (sort of? I think?) where I should be/want to be and have no idea how to get there. My friend Fish (smarter and better than most) said we're "like cats staring at meat through glass". That seems right. It's a weird thing to be shaking with impatience to get to the next thing and to have no fucking idea what that is or how to start to get there. (Sorry, I know it is brutally obvious to post this video, but I LOOOOOVE this song. I LOOOOOOVE it. I don't care how many shitty cheesy compilations it has been put on. It shreds.)

Things felt a little sparkly for a while there. That's done now. It was all nice hearing about friends taking over Berlin and inventing art and ideas faster than our wine mouths could say them and having Coe in town and feeling like this was a different life, a freer more glamourous one,  and seeing beckoning options, enticing, in all directions. I forgot how things are for a sec. Nothing gets me hotter than a lost cause usually, but eventually you get tired of listening even to really great records. A little break from Dirt Town is coming at the perfect time. I'm going to worry about being at multiple shows at once rather than contemplating the complexities of human emotion/developing protection strategies for the damage people are determined to inflict on themselves. Who the fuck do I think I am, anyway? Excuse me, I am going to be over here minding my own business via this bottle of whiskey.

Who just posted this on Facebook the other day? I can't remember. It is a Roky Erickson cover that is pretty rad. Thanks whoever posted that first. Joe maybe? I don't know. Whatever.

That is all. I am adopting buttoned-down cynicism as my method of surviving SXSW with the rowdiest group of friends one could imagine travelling with. Maybe we'll see you in a week. Maybe never again. Who can say?

Also baffling: this is a thing. Gabber. Fucking weird. If you want to feel like you are being jabbed in the brain with a dick, follow the link to the music. Jesus. I like the testimonials about dudes seeing these wasted people in matching colourful sweatsuits and thinking 'man, I NEED TO DO THAT'. I don't understand anything at all.

xo

A Stern Lecture on Shame

So, let's talk about shame spirals. I have them (lots, loudly), you've had them. Some people I know seem to have them basically constantly. It is a recurring theme with a bunch of people I really like recently and I have been thinking about it a lot. So here it is.

A friend recently linked to a blog post by some guy who wanted to talk about shame and I read it and just wanted to smack the writer upside the head. In his case, his shame was around the fact that he failed at business and had to move out of NYC and found himself lying to people and acting like a shithead because he couldn't admit he was struggling. He was talking about the process of coming to terms with that, which would obviously be incredibly hard, but that fucker whined and WHINED and acted like both his behaviour and his subsequent shame about it was somehow outside of his control, or out of character or something. An affliction that was happening to him that he was learning to carry with him blah blah blah. He vaguely mentioned his marriage ending throughout this process and I see why. No one wants to be married to (or do business with, apparently) someone who treats their life like it is something that just happens to them and then weeps about their shame when they are not winning. Whatta dipstick. I flipped through a few other posts and he's a good writer, likeable when he is not talking about himself, and has some really good things to say, but is ultimately a victim in his life. Sad.

We all know that feeling shame is our choice, right? I mean it's kind of fun to wring your hands and smack your forehead on the table and howl about REMORSE once in a while, but really, if you think about it, shame is totally invented to insulate you from either knowing or admitting what kind of person you are. You get that little twinge that lets you know you are not a psychopath, but beyond that the rest is basically just making yourself feel better (or feel gratified by feeling worse). And also it is a pretty useless waste of your time and emotional energy. You have better things to do, I know you do. Just fucking deal with it. You act like yourself all the time, no matter what you are doing. To have a nervous breakdown about it after the fact just means that you are trying to fight being what you actually are.

People are funny. We do stupid things, even really smart, awesome, driven, kind and lovely people do them. We drink too much or get too stressed out and flip our lids, act like maniacs, do things that do not reflect the person that we think we are. But seriously, if that wasn't the person you are then you wouldn't be doing the things you do. So, instead of spending a week laying on the floor feeling like shit about living your life like a normal healthy person (because we ALL do these things) why not congratulate yourself on not being a fucking corpse, and head on to whatever you have to do next? By all means, freak out if you want to, shame spiral and wring your hands and feel TERRIBLE. But just understand that it is a self-indulgence. You are authoring this, it is not being done to you. You should probably just laugh about it all instead.
xo


(P.S. In all fairness, that blogger sort of arrived at the fact that shame is stupid too by the end of his post, but it was still in a new age-y transcendent way that suggested he was overcoming something difficult, rather than rethinking his choice to torture himself, still not really admitting that he acted like a lying shithead because part of his personality is a lying shithead, which makes me think he's still got some work to do).

On paper

 Say what you want about how he ended up, but Jack White used to shred. It's been a while, but I bet he still can, when he's not busy inventing crappy supergroups. This Captain Beefheart cover has always been a dirty favorite and I bring it out whenever I'm feeling like I need to shake it all off and just fucking howl for a while. It's like that now. I will convince you all and myself that I do not give a microfuck. Watch me.

I stopped sleeping again, so everything seems the weirdest. I don't know why this happens. Cursed fretting. I wish I could be more selective about when I stay up all night in knots about things, mostly about things that are not my problem, my fault or my business. The upside is that the psychedelic state my poor fatigued brain is in has made it lots easier to write songs for this new thing that is starting to come together. It is going to be so awesome. I can't wait to be able to tell everyone about it.

I guess this insomnia is going to be good practice for SXSW next week. There will be no sleeping. There will be tacos, there will be The Best Wurst, there will be an open bar at our hotel every single day (seriously, that's how Texas does happy hour) there will be sweaty dirty savage little rock & roll monsters roaring around in the streets and I am going to roar with them and I am not going to worry about one single thing. Take that, adult life.

Speaking of roaring monsters, I am pretty excited about High on Fire's new banger. Everyone should go listen to it right now. Except Anna Coe. Anna, this is not for you. Everyone else, stream it here.

I don't feel like writing so here are some photos of things that I am looking at:

I think Karl Lagerfeld is a twat, but then look at the jewel encrusted cuff, the gold and amethyst breastplate and that clutch (!!!) that he just showed! God. I'm dying. This is from the Chanel RTW FW 2012 show, in case anyone cares. Accessories! (re: the above link, I don't care about Adele, just to be clear).

 I have to perform at this 1920s Prohibition themed party at some place called Suede Lounge tonight for Yelp and I have been scouring the internet for ways to make my ass-length scruffy mop do this:

So far, no luck. What a disaster! I hate sucking at period costumes.

Obviously I need this bag in order to have a fulfilled life:

(It's by Vlieger & Vandam) 

Whatever. This post is dumb. Sorry! I need a nap!
xo!

Love the Sinner

I'm back to hanging out in the bathtub again, metaphorically speaking. Unexpectedly. Things were looking so good. There has to be some way to put more distance between these involuntary toe gazing sessions.

This weekend was 100% lovely in every way. One million wine dates with my best favorite human, Anna Coe, who has finally come back to us. We went on fancy lady dates and drank all the wine and funny Prohibition era gin cocktails. We wore furs and gloves and I realized how terrible it was having my best friend on the other side of the world. (I got lipstick on one of my pairs of vintage Dior gloves, which TOTALLY SUCKS. Nice one, drunky). It really was the nicest thing to have her here. I'm going to spend a lot of time on the QE2, I think.

Most beautiful lady in all the land:

We went to Jessica and Sarah's adorable Vintage Pop-up event. It was so great! And so busy. I'm so happy for them. It's nice that we make this city a place we want to be in. More of this, please. I bought a pendant from Jessica's line of accessories and haven't taken it off since. I don't think she has a site, but the line is called Chaos and the Dark and her stuff is great.

I got to spend some time with the Coe siblings, who are also the greatest. I love how they are together, they tumble over each other like puppies. They love and smash and are maniacs. I've been inducted as an honorary Coe, and I'm delighted. They are the best crew. Even Helen, who seems determined to take me for dim sum and make me eat chicken feet. This is the one she sent me in a to-go container. Ack!:

Things went a little sideways, as they do, and I feel like kind of a crappy friend now that the wine glow has gone out of my cheeks. It's no big deal really. Just sighing a lot today. I wish hearts were sturdier. I wish it were less easy for humans to jump to the worst conclusions. I'm a good friend. I really am, I swear. (Sorry guys. Too squishy, I know, but that's where I'm at today. Probably just a symptom of consecutive days of too much wine, mostly. So it goes. It's a lesson I've learned enough times.)

I'm on a sad movie kick lately, which isn't helping. I have decided to never watch anything with Charlotte Gainsbourg in it ever again. She is too good at tragedy and her performances always fuck me up for days. This one did me in a couple of days ago:

Most definitely time to get busy and stay busy. Less feeling, more doing.

SXSW adventure countdown is on. 9 days until I get on a plane, watch my troubles shrink until they are a tiny winter patchwork quilt thousands of feet below. Too tiny to see and too far away to fret over. I get approximately 200% more excited every day. At this rate I am just going to be howling the whole time we are there. Lifesaving, I have no doubt. There will be no time for sitting in the bathtub in Texas.

(This is a Maarten Donders drawing. He is awesome. Look at more of his stuff via Boooooom.com)


Ok, that's all.
xo