1999

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August 2nd, 1999 | 10:30 am Too much is going on. I'll make a list, I'm good with lists.
- I'm sick today. Phlegm, head cold, wow I feel awful. But I'm still at work.
- I'm moving. Got a new place by myself, and quite frankly, it's very very cool.
- The old house got robbed. It was done by amateurs, and they got very little compared to what they COULD have gotten. Still, I hope Andrew's guitar turns up.
- J-Me is moving to indy. A month from now I'll be flying out there to raod trip back with her.
- I've been playing too many shows. And they're all to too few people.
- I'm losing my job. Monster is relocating my position to Maynard, Mass, and I'm not going.
- I've been very busy, and I'm beginning to not like it.
That's all for now. Now back to being sick at work.
June 14th, 1999 | 9:05 am So the big weekend with the out of town friend (j-me) came and went with only a slight schudle delay on the inbound flight. Of course, indiana decided to rear its crazy weather head and give us 90 degree heat with humidity. I stopped when I arrived at work this morning and tried to remember what we did this weekend. I had problems arranging everything in my head. So let me try to with the computer. Airport, elbow room, monster, bazbeaux's, chatterbox, indian food, pride fest, holliday park, target, melody inn, doghnust, crown hill, value village, union jack's, marissa's, abbey, airport.
I don't really feel like documenting every detail. I like spontaneously remembering them. However, after all was completed and j-me was at the airport and I was driving to work, I realized everything looked different. I drove slowly from the airport to my office, and I just looked at everything and I wondered how much the world had changed. Perhaps my weekend in the small world of j-me and me made me miss some changes going on. But more likely it's just how a drastic change or event perhaps make you reset all your assumptions, and you have to take in everything ou take for granted.
Whatever it is, it's actually quite nice.
June 1st, 1999 | 10:04 pm I'm full of hope, and the slight teeter can throw me off. I think I'm just sick of writing love songs about past experiences. I want the current songs to be about current good experiences.
May 26th, 1999 | 10:55 am Shows, oh my god shows. I understand now why so many people, once they get real jobs, stop playing out or just record at home or whatnot. In april and may I've had 8 shows and about twice as many recording sessions. I love it, I do, but balancing it with the job is really no fun at all. These professional jobs get you. They offer you a lot of money, more than you've ever seen before in your life. You get cozy, and you don't want to lose this nice job. Mine's not so bad at all; show up more or less on time, work, go home at 5 or maybe a little later. Mix that with weeknight shows, out of town shows, practices recording time, and I'm occupied 70-80 hours a week. That gets old really quick, and the first thing to go would, theoretically, be the job. At "amateur" jobs you could just schedule a few less hours, but in these salaried jobs, well, you're tied down.
Plus something esle has been taking up my time. Someone else, really. Someone far off. Something I laughed at before. The internet can be a dangerous place; bad or good, but dangerous. I know someone I've never met, I know them better than some of my good friends. It's all weird and scary and exciting and odd. Wish me luck friends that, whatever the outcome may be, all my hair is intact and I still have a smile to wear. I swear, something is different here, somehow. I tell you when I find out.
May 16th, 1999 | 7:15 pm A party, fun, then the usual post party lull follows, where the night of incincere reaction and intoxicated fun leave you empty with no depth and subtlety. However, all seems better with just a brief sincere interaction. Today, I'm feeling content, and it's quite nice.
A relaxing sunday with nothing to do, and I like it that way.
MAY 14th, 1999 | 12:20 am If you realize that you've rediscovered innocence, is it still innocence? Or perhaps you are simply playing a role, reading from a script that you're writing as you go along, wanting to believe, but knowing the whole time that it is just an act, and once the formality of the stage production is over, the curtain will close, and you and your co-star will be back on those normal, non-innocent, grown up terms.
I want to hold your hand at night
and look up and see stars
but the only stars I see
are from closing my eyes to tightly
I hope sincerity is truly sincerity and not just a resignation. I think it is, but one is never completely sure. However, a fake smile is not something that exists when you're alone.
May 10th, 1999 | 12:57 am I'm the usual ben. We always want in life the things we don't have. For instance, when I have a weekend with nothing to do, I wish I was playing shows and accomplishing something. When I have a busy weekend where I'm playing and recording and getting things done, I wish I had more empty time to relax, read and think. Tomorrow, I return to work wishing I'd had some rest this weekend.
But this weekend was very good. Rewards came in the forms of ego stroking, wonderful sound quality, and monitary settlement. For this goodness I only had to carry heavy black boxes to three shows and back, and sit in from of a mixing board for 12 hours.
And I loved it. Now, where's my massuse?
May 3rd, 1999 | 2:55 pm So this weekend past, and it was a lesson. Work becomes non-work when you enjoy the activities being done. Rephrased, even though I spent 8-9 hours of my weekend doing recording studio work for various people, I didn't grow tired of it. Of course, as usual, it leves me wishing for that monday afternoon nap.
I also got to drive aimlessly around the indianapolis industrial areas with good friends late saturday night. I was paranoid and felt suspicious. We weren't doing anything wrong, but I always get the feeling that that's not what other people think. If I was to get pulled over, and the officer was to ask what was going on, and I was to tell him the truth, that we were bored sitting around our house and we wanted to get out and explore and see the city through a different set of eyes, 2:00 am eyes, would he believe us. Perhaps it all stem from the fact that I feel people are disenchanted with fascination. Is it just me or do people not like to admit that things fascinate them any longer?
We arrived home, safe and exhausted, not questioned, largely ignored observers.
That phrase sticks out; largely ignored.
April 27th, 1999 | 12:10 am Inadvertent faux paus-s are numerous (how does one pluralize paus?). So tonight I decided to remove people from the equation, sort of. I headed off to the Chatterbox with my recently purchased Dostoyevsky book. Dostoyevsky and alcohol mix, alcohol and jazz mix, but the combination of the three doesn't quite cut it. The other people I'd hoped would just be strangers, background noise, reminders that people can be strangers. But I go to the chatterbox too much and all the faces were familiar. So I played a fun game the secret service taught me.
At my job at IUPUI that I left this past February, I had a very odd plethora of tasks. One day my co-worker Vince says, "hey are you busy for a bit." I wasn't busy. I was hardly ever busy. He hands me a 35mm camera, and we head off to the basement of the library. It turns out Dan Quayle is announcing his potential run for president at a press conference at IUPUI. I have a roll of film. I snap off many shots, but to fill the time, to fill my own amusement, I take a picture of Vince and his medium format camera, together looking very "photo ready." A few days later we get the film back, and I notice a secret service agent in the photo. He's looking to the right of me, but his eyes are trained DEAD ON me. It's scary. I photographed a secret service agent, and I hear that they do NOT like to be photographed.
So here I am at the Chatterbox looking at people, while my eyes were trained directly on inconspicuous sources. It's not a new concept, but it's amusing, it's not quite thrilling, but it's nearing thrilling. In a mostly dark bar, it's hard to see someone's eyes, so I could watch people notice me while they thought I was merely watching the band. But you always want to be noticed in some manner or another, even when trying not to be.
And perhaps that is just a smaller scaled version of what is really going on currently.
April 15, 1999 | 1:55 pm Tonight, SLAYER. Yes, Slayer is playing in my fair city of indianapolis and andrew and I decided we needed to go. I'm not really into Slayer. I don't ever plan on being into slayer. I do, however, have one slayer tape, and ever so often, once every few months, I pull it out and listen to it for a day. It's like I need that cleansing that only Slayer can provide. Also, there's just something so entertaining about Slayer, the fact that peple take it seriously and yet to my friends and me it seems like satire. Perhaps one day I will be able to look into my psyche and figure out just why Slayer is something I enjoy.
"The sport is war, total war, and victory's really massacre!"
April 13, 1999 | 11:05 am 8 years ago today, when I was 16 years old, a Sophomore in high school, I played my first show in a rock band. That band was Sunny Sea Heaven. We had thirteen members or so over our three year existence, but this lineup for the first show was me playing guitar, nathan pryitz singing, derrick hurst on bass, and alex roffi on occational guitar. As you can see, we had no drummer, but we had drive and songs and youthful excitement. We sucked. We came in dead last (it was a batlle of the bands). Two years later at the brebuf battle of the bands, with a lineup of me, nathan, matt southworth, and brock roller, we won (but only becasue Split Lip cancelled). Still both of those shows stick out in my memory all too clearly.
"..'cause I'm in a band and we jam... WE JAM!"
April 12, 1999 | 10:20 pm I guess it's true, when you stop picking a scab long enough you do forget it's there, and then you look again, and you're suprised that it's gone. However, some days you wish you had something to do with your fingers, something to pick at, even if it is stunting a healing process.
"One more reason to forget..."
April 6, 1999 | 4:50 pm To qoute one of the most well know pop songsmith's of this decade, "Spring is here again, reproductive glands." But I'm not lodging a complaint about lodging alone. However, I'm not saying all is cool, either, or I wouldn't bother typing this in the first place. But when I'm feeling more physical, why does my mind take off and examine why I've changed temporarily. All very curious, and all very temporary.
April 2, 1999 | 10:30 am I'm getting sick of people reading my online journal-thing and getting a false impression of me. I'm not who I was in '95, and it's weird for me to look at how and what I wrote and take it seriously, or not just feel uncomfortable. Simultaneously, I can't bring myself to remove it. I'm not sure why, I just don't want to edit it or remove it, even though it is hopelessly outdated. So I've decided to add some current thoughts and perhaps show growth through out the years. Now, what was I going to say?
April 1, 1999 | 8:30 am I've checked the access logs, and people are actually reading this. STOP! Well, at least know that all these writings, most everything that was said I feel kinda silly going back and reading. Okay? Thanks.