kovulwa

[kovulwa]

on hedonism by anne carson

[kovulwa]

took the day off today and my stomach has been churning nonstop, ceaseless knots of anxiety.

I keep thinking about posting some sort of reel on my band's IG page, announcing I'm officially retiring from making music in the local scene. Fire and brimstone stuff, indicting the community for the way it barricades lower and working class people out. Indicting the queer community for ignoring me entirely despite all my efforts to build working relationships. I can't build anything with people who ghost me, or feel that they're above me or that I don't belong there in the first place.

The more I think about it, the more fucking angry it makes me. But I don't want to do something like that, because I don't want to take this negative thing that I feel and put it out into the world. The people I'm upset with aren't going to see it anyway.

The catalyst for this is that Live Nation is trying to build a venue out here and everyone is (rightfully) up in arms about it and trying to get them to pull the plug. I agree with this, and fuck Live Nation, but I can't get over the framing I keep seeing.

"This will kill the local music scene, it will drive away local musicians"

And I just think. What fucking scene lmao. No one playing in town is getting paid fairly as it is, venues are closing left and right. We don't do anything to build or maintain community, we treat it as a capitalist venture while pretending it isn't, and then get all fiery about BIG MUSIC coming to ruin our shithouse scene. Who fucking cares.

[kovulwa]

9/17/2024

this is gonna be one of those posts where I identify why I am broken specifically in the way that I am, but it's ultimately tragic because even recognizing the why cannot fix me.

i feel entirely alone. unworthy of love, attention, or affection, while desperately craving it. I am this way because despite being "the baby of the family" and all the lovebombing tropes such a placement would lead one to assume, my family never gave much of a shit about me. I was bullied in school, I was bullied in church, I was bullied by other family members. There are large stretches of utter blackness in my memory, such that I sometimes believe that something harrowing may have happened to me that I cannot recall. And if it did, there would be no one to confirm it because my family members wouldn't have noticed.

And because of this, everywhere that I go, I am carrying this black hole with me that cannot be satisfied. No one can ever give me enough because I am a cracked pot; it all pours out of me the moment I am alone again. What do you do about a thing like that? How is it possible to shake something so horrible, is it even possible at all?

My most persistent daydreams aren't about changing careers, or even killing myself. In my most persistent daydreams, I quit everything. My job, my music projects, my girlfriend, my domestic life. I leave it all, I don't even attempt to fake a death or bother with closure. I just. Walk in a direction until I'm someone else. I become unrecognizable, but also something more free.

I know this is a romantic view, in reality such a decision would mean a life of scorn, destitution, and suffering. But that itch, to tell the entirety of society to fuck off and leave me alone, it is alluring. It's the dream of a child, in the quiet post-tantrum minutes, wishing it would all just go away and dissolve into something simpler.

instead I keep waking up in the morning and I keep driving to work

[kovulwa]

I don't think I'll ever read these posts.

[kovulwa]

9/16/2024

Another tough day, mentally, but I had a good weekend and I feel confident at this point saying my suicidal ideations are tied to my job

I'd like to think that, anyway, but it's not entirely true. I have been letting my mind wander at work, for years at this point, but I'm always fantasizing about where my life could go and what it could be. I try to keep it somewhat realistic, not like "What would happen if the President gave me a million dollars?" but more like "what if I quit tomorrow, what would that look like?" and the outcomes almost always lead to me killing myself, somehow. That, folks, is a very powerful ideation.

So I move on, trying not to give any power to it, and telling myself it's a manifestation of my unhappiness as a product of my immediate environment. They may pop up in any scenario, but they are at their strongest and most frequent when I'm at work.

Troubling, perhaps, but not insurmountable.

I thought about joining the USPS today. I used to drive delivery for Amazon, which was obviously a hellish nightmare, but the meat of the job was fine. Suitable, even, for someone like me.

But I hold so many threads at once, I'm not sure where to begin. Do I go to school and apply for a job with USPS? Can I do both? Do I start school while I work this job and then try to find something later?

I also have been thinking about quitting music altogether, but I don't think I have the heart. I have a meeting with some musicians this week, one in my band and one in a different band, both with their own set of expectations about what I can do for them.

And I don't think I'm brave enough to say "I don't want to play guitar anymore. Every time I play a song in public, I feel like an imposter, a joke, and everyone is humoring me."

I have a nice singing voice, tho. I am choosing to be confident in this.

I will tell them that I'd like to take a break from the instrument. This will probably disappoint everyone involved, but I have to start doing things differently if I want to crawl out of this mental black hole I've been living in.

[kovulwa]

Pt 2

another thing that I have been thinking about a lot and neglected to put into my last post, is that I feel like I'm missing community and that's probably a big driver for my mental health being so abysmal.

I love my girlfriend, but I need people beyond her (for her sake as much as mine) that I can talk to and bond with. I thought I'd find people naturally while playing shows with the band, but that didn't really happen because of social anxiety

but I think I might go back to school at some point, maybe next Spring, and hopefully take some writing classes and meet some people that way.

[kovulwa]

9/13/2024

I've been struggling a lot recently w/ imposter syndrome and also just a general feeling of spiralling.

I need to put my thoughts down, but I find it difficult to do so. I don't feel motivated in any way, I know the act and action will be healthy (ultimately) but the urge to dissociate any time I'm by myself is too strong.

So I'm out in the world, being a thousand different someone elses for a thousand different someones. And all of them feel inadequate, like I'm putting on a performance for a role I never asked for and couldn't play even if I did ask for it.

I'm 32, I have no skills to speak of. I dropped out of high school, moved away from my hometown, and bummed it in the service industry before moving into manufacturing where I still make a living. The things I used to love to do, I am hopelessly mediocre at, time has made me foolish and insecure.

I would like to change all that, and I don't really have a good idea of where to start.

I need to practice guitar if I want to improve.

I need to write more if I want to improve.

I need to draw more if I want to improve.

And then I think. Ok, so you spend the time getting good at the things you love. Then what? Shouldn't the act be fulfilling in and of itself? That's what I think, plainly. But my thoughts convince me out of this, that actually, as long as I am forced to work a menial job, what good is my art except a pacifier for myself?

and I started making art because I am terminally unable to connect with other people. I want to, but I don't know how to talk. Or act. And when it does work, I find myself immediately regretful. Exposed.

Maybe more than ever it's just this cascade of hopelessness and despair. I've seen it my whole life, or been aware of it, rather. But it's stronger now than ever before, that feeling like spiritual acid rain. We are all trapped in a meat grinder, we are standing arm and arm inside a giant compactor and the walls get tighter and tighter.

So I have to sort my thoughts and separate the strands and keep it from becoming this great big fucking knotted thing that weighs me down entirely and keeps me unable to move or act or think, a brain fit only for bare routine.

But I don't want to be that way, I don't want this to be who I am forever until I die. And I don't want to choose to die rather than stay in the routine, a grim thought I have hourly if not daily.

So here are all the things I'd like to do creatively, somehow, in no particular order, before I succumb to bad thoughts or get in a car wreck or whatever.

"I Am the Chasm" - Coven Brothers is my band, and I would really like to write and record the second album. The first was ok, I think I made a lot of mistakes and bad calls and I think you can hear every single one, but I need to try again. I have a better formed idea of what I want the record to sound like and how to tie things in thematically, so I can't give up on this.

"A Serious Kid" - This was my idea for a solo album, something more introspective and gentle than the previous entry. I have quite a few songs written for this, but I need to flesh out arrangements and actually finish writing out the ideas I had for this record.

Practice drawing. Self explanatory, but for context. I'm not an artist, visually anyway (or in any other regard, depending on what day you ask). But I've always loved visual art and was envious of people who could bring life to images. I should look into foundational drawing texts or classes or something to help me get started, but in the meantime I have two hands and a sketchbook, so I can work at it.

Write more prose. When I first moved to Portland, back in 2014, I had a pretty rough go of it. I was in a relationship that was bad for both of us, I missed the people that I left behind even though they very often hurt my feelings and made me feel excluded. Under this backdrop, I began writing a novel. I don't know why I thought I could do that, and upon sharing and editing and getting feedback for a period, it's been pretty much left to rot in a binder somewhere in my desk. But I've often wanted to revisit it, blow up whatever I had written down and try to string it back together into something good and worthwhile.

Write more poetry. I'm actually doing ok on this one, though like any creative pursuit in a vacuum, I have no idea if what I'm doing is any good or not. But I have been bringing my moleskin to new places, any time I'm out of the house, and writing a few short lines at the very least. Sometimes it feels effortless, and I find myself writing a few lines or stanzas and other times the moleskin goes unopened entirely.

I also need to get therapy.

I think that is a funny last line for this post.

[kovulwa]

“If you promise to stay alive just a little bit longer I promise that we are going to make this world a place worth living in by any means necessary. I ain’t giving up. I swear.” 

Spotted in Clackamas, Oregon

[kovulwa]

I've fucked all different kinds of up in my day

[kovulwa]

What Palestinian resistance will always show you is that when people in the west talk about supporting resistance and freedom fighters they mean in Star Wars shows and not in real life because in real life violence occurs and that’s a big no no. Don’t tell them about what the occupiers were doing though because apparently that’s okay.

[kovulwa]

Just galling that after your fascist govt bombs a hospital, you get online to make sure everyone is finger-wagging Hamas. See through brains, completely swiss cheese

sick of colonizer tears. Watching bombs fall on Gaza with buckets of popcorn, then condemning the loss of life when the bombs start falling on your side

You shouldn't be there, it was never yours, fuck face.

[kovulwa]

sick of colonizer tears. Watching bombs fall on Gaza with buckets of popcorn, then condemning the loss of life when the bombs start falling on your side

You shouldn't be there, it was never yours, fuck face.

[kovulwa]

I've been exercising a monstrous amount of self control on this website so far, blocking posters who have caused me mental anguish with their dogshit takes instead of filling their inbox with bannable offenses

[kovulwa]

[teen sister in a 90’s movie voice] my pronouns are what/ever/major/loser now get out of my room

[kovulwa]

Some fanart of a good boy

[kovulwa]

every single low life bitch who regurgitated the "hamas is mass raping women and beheading babies" lies and guzzling comically obvious hasbara propaganda like the "hamas top secret plan sheet" is racist. you only fall for that type of garbage if you think palestinians, and by extension arabs and muslims are inherently violent, barbaric savages. you only fall for the "top secret plan sheet" if you already have a deeply internalized fear of the "scary and violent" arabic language

like come the fuck on, a pristine, hardly crinkled, completely clean piece of paper that allegedly was found in the pocket of a dead hamas soldier who was engaged vigorously in battle, with highlighted sections like it's a fucking homework booklet and clear google translate mistranslations like translating dining room to غرفة الطعام (the food room) 💀💀💀 you are both brain dead and very, very racist if you fall for dumb israeli propaganda like this

and you have blood on your hands, every single one of you, for dehumanizing palestinians this way. not just the martyrs in gaza, but the victims of this hysterical propaganda all over the world, like the 6 year old palestinian american boy who was stabbed to death and his mother who was severely injured by their landlord. the landlord previously had never treated them with hostility, but in light of the absolute shit storm that was the western media's coverage of recent events he killed a 6 year old boy. you have blood on your hands, god knows how many more victims there will be of this senseless islamophobic and racist rhetoric.