I've been feeling introspective and private lately. Not very into "blog." The purpose of it has flipped and twisted over time since my first entry in two thousand something. The first entry being inspired when I read a long lost magazine article about Cory Kennedy someone scanned onto the web and zoomed in 200% to make the words large enough to read. I remember that night because my friend, Simon, called to ask if I wanted to watch tv at his house while he did his math homework. I drove over and the whole way there felt new constellations developing in my mind for projects and articles I could write about on a blog. More diary oriented than my first website hosted at unm which featured restaurant reviews and long complaints about shitty movies we'd watch (I was only 19!) Over time those constellations became too fuzzy to recognize. I'd cast back and forth between anonymity and stating my full name, address and email. I couldn't fully make up my mind about letting random viewers find me or commenting on other blogs I respected to make contacts, like a sales person. I wanted everything every which way in a meaningless combination. Obscurity and popularity. Personal and broad-subject. With purpose and without. Everyone feels this way about something in their own lives, I've figured out. Mine was obnoxious enough to want validation of some sort from internet wanderers. So! This is my last entry. Happily. I will sit and think about all this before I start another creative project as it pertains to public contribution, purpose of writing/art, and my own spotchy wants for emulating what inspires me. I feel so old. And this paragraph reads way way way more heavy than I mean it to. It's meant to be Sharpie'd into a stained bathroom stall.
ANYWAY.
Here's my diary from SXSW music week in 2011.
(I could not find any images of Vetiver from St. David's Sanctuary on March 16th even though I saw many camera snobs taking snaps so I had to mash this up myself. By the way, if it's not obvious by the quality, most of these pictures were not taken by me but they were all taken at the shows we were at. (My camera looks like a prop from Total Recall compared to the very nice cammies I saw during sxsw).)
We spent an hour looking for a parking space, mouths watering from wanting to drink that whiskey and iced tea in the trunk, before finding a spot in front of the capitol building. Some nerds walked past us, as we got out of the car, talking about Gold Panda and one-upping each other about knowing of free day shows.
We drank a 4 Loko in St. David's Historical Sanctuary in between Low and Memoryhouse's sets. And after Vetiver finished, I went up to their singer, shook his hand, said thanks and gave him a note with sweet, half-sleep-written statements I scribbled on scrap paper with Howard Johnson's logo on the top. He put it in his back pocket and I walked away before my cheeks popped from blushing too heavily.
It sort of made my night. Week. Month.
The mess that two years ago felt very appealing. I felt removed when we approached it this year.
The next day we had bloody marys at a shi shi cafe, last night's cigarette smoke and drunk sweats radiating off our skin and hoodies. Our waiter's black shirt was so stretched over his Mr. Muscles USA pecs I could see each individual thread slowly ripping apart while he read us the brunch specials. Sipped my mary very slowly and remembered to take ibuprofen before we left.
Who the fuck wears helmets and knee pads?
Having my best friend there this year meant I didn't give a shit about where we went. Who we saw. Stopped at a coffee shop where someone on a motorcycle drove into the store, ordered and drove back out. The Thrasher party was next door so Marc left us there to see who and what was going on.
While Marc powerchugged a six pack and watched Flight, Claire and I sat on the world's comfiest patio chairs next to Puddles the cat and talked about babies and getting jobs and not knowing what the eff we're doing but at least we're doing it together. It was slightly sunny and the breeze was cooling the humid heat.
We finally wound up at Thrasher looking for Marc who was hidden in the mob of other 30-somethings with skateboard scars and gnarly facial hair. I liked the band that played while we waited. Maybe called Zoroaster, but I'm probably wrong. (Just checked and yes, I'm wrong.)
The rest of the day we spent waiting to get into Village Voice's party. We mistakenly thought it started at 2, but realized we were waiting in a very early line with die-hard Wu-Tang fans who Claire and I started calling "little brothers." They were slightly hitting on us (girls, not Marc) in the ways only 18 year olds know how to which is to boast about how they plan to tag a new apartment building and telling us stories about a party they went to where someone threw a chair through the window. Kenny, one of our little brothers, called Claire a "honey bun" with swagger that made both of us crack up for 20 minutes afterward. Marc got much needed guy time with the little brothers and a couple poor, young skateboarders while we waited.
We kept supplying our family with large beer bottles. Hiding them in our purses when security walked by. One of the little brothers told Marc, "I've gotchur back," after an old guy but not security caught Marc with an open beer and told him he wouldn't let him in.
We didn't get to say bye to our little brothers. Or see Wu-Tang or most of the other bands because we left early. None of us felt bad about it the next day though we probably should have. Marc literally wiggled into the hotel room like a tequila worm and Claire and I fell asleep on top of open suitcases and piles of pillows.
We picked the Rhapsody Rocks day party where Claire and I read a local zine called Misprint and drank free Red Stripes in the morning at Club DeVille. We sat on this torn up leather chair with broken legs while a kind of wonderful band played outside. It could have been Ty Segall? We pretty much just tried not to slip off of the chairs from our leg sweat and the humidity. A person trying to impress a girl near us talked about his phone call from the New York Times. I wish I took snaps of our outfits that day bc they were really cute. We looked like precious runaways, French mistresses gone broke. I had big, fat blisters on my feet.
Deerhunter.
We found a free (!) night show with Guards (!!) and Tennis (!!!) that would have been quite fantastic to attend if we were not either jet lagged, full of foot blisters, recovering from a traumatic medical procedure, or constantly feeling old. Ancient. Prehistoric. Hoping the whole week would get canceled so I could go home and sit on my bed with a sudoku puzzle old. Admiring the responsible parents supervising their underage children at music shows old. Refusing whiskey shots old. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO MEEEEEEE?
We stayed in, ordered pizza from Home Slice and sat around in our underwear and socks watching the Soup and a terrible Lifetime movie.
Our plan on Saturday:
We just wanted to sit in a park, under some shade and drink wine from a sunscreen bottle.
Surfer Blood
Here are a couple of our little brothers. We ran into them at MWTX. They were born in 1992 just to make you feel old.
!!!
Less of a park and more of a mouth full of dirt affair.
This was our hotel room patio.
Conclusion: I still can't decide if I'm too old to enjoy something like SXSW music week (likely) or I'm still recovering from my medical thing (probs some of that, too). Some parts were fun, ie talking with Claire on patio furniture, eating pizza in a hotel bed, finding a distance far enough from the speakers that didn't cause my ears to ring afterward but most of the time I kept trying to catch my reflection in windows to see if I actually looked as old as I felt. Burp. This is a very sad ending to this entry slash blog. Oh wellsies. Hopefully the guy from Vetiver fell in love with me through my poetic note and is on a never ending journey to find me. The end.
