#also i still dont understand how to checkmate people but i am learning!!

[frostbitesjc]

learning chess so that i too will be able to experience homoerotic tension with my best friend while trying to checkmate them 

[lehhoh7822]

this song is the melanie martinez orange juice of songs about gender roles, really. this song is the & juliet of talking about gender roles. this song is the-

long writing under the cut, watch out. @pathofelation sorry if you genuinely still like this song i am a bit mean about it but thank you for giving me the push to actually write this

this song has a lot of flash but seems to lack depth, fundementally. theres a lot of language which indicates theres some deeper message here, and some lines that could be bangers, but overall like. what is happening here. what can we learn about gender from this?

i think there are definitely things which are trying to be said here, but they feel very disingenuous, especially to me in the land of 2024. theres the hint of underlying, systemic violence. the inherent sexualisation/aggression based gender politics surrounding "manhood" vs "womanhood" respectively. theres hints of eating disorder criticism, links of suicide and depression to gender roles. but overall, all of this is very much surface level to me.

the framing of society as a little game implies that the system itself is made up (true, fair evaluation), but overall, something thats trivial, low stakes or applies mostly to children. it also frames the gendered issues which are being presented in the song as something which isn't really reality. so yeah, sure, gender roles are bullshit that repeatedly fuck people over and for what, really, but its a game. its not that important. the impacts are made up.

its the understanding of "gender is a social construct" without the next 2 understandings of -> "so is money but thats still. real and relevant. just because something is a construct doesnt mean its not important. checkmate woke libs" -> "social constructs are at the will of people to bend in order to function in peoples favour; as people are what create a society, while providing a physical and cultural context for interactions. this means they are subject to criticism and change, while still often being part of how people understand the world aroiund them."

mentions of things like suicide or references to eating disorders also end up becoming shallow and disingenuos, because they dont MEAN anything in this framing. sometimes this song is really serving we live in a society, because often the observations it makes about gender are the most surface level, and just that, observations. theres no emotional or even cultural links. like. okay. what is this

Bounded all thoughts and corrected common sense You're raising suicidals with your predetermined titles Like "a mess", "distressed", "I am unimpressed", "you're excess", "a dress is all you'll ever be". Gender roles impose control and deceive progressive times Welcome to the land of the broken minds

even the first line once you try to analyse it starts feeling a little bit too random for comprehension. maybe i am just stupid but "bounded all thoughts" is incomprehensible to me. what does that mean. like you. linked everyones thoughts?? corrected common sense can be analysed by loses all its punch by being right next to a series of words that mean. nothing.

we hear a mention of suicide and i think its supposed to be this big point and then words often used to describe teenage girls - maybe teenage boys, i never got that particular experience, teenage boys and ex teenage boys come and weigh in. the reason why these points matter sometimes is because of gendered expectations - failing to live into and relate to your peers and family. but some of these are personal instead. why does it matter if someoene says theyre unimpressed? thats not a title. thats not something linked to gender even. the idea of "a dress is all you'll ever be" once again looks super promising, but what does that mean?

its like yknow, your value is measured by your womanhood, and thats represented by this dress, so your body in this dress? thats it. but thats fucking INSANE like what are you talking about. especially when the idea is that ideas being forcibly imposed are leading to suicide. if your whole songs thesis is gender roles are made up (theyre just a game) and also bad then flipping to this vague line takes away impact from ur overall point.

finally. im sorry what the fuck is this??

Gender roles impose control and deceive progressive times Welcome to the land of the broken minds

so like. okay so gender roles control the world even though us woke libs think we broke them. welcome to the LAND OF THE BROKEN MINDS. THE

THE LAND OF. THEBROKEN MINDS.

once again, maybe im just super fucking stupiud, but looking at this, its really odd to see this. theres no link to the song in a meaningful way. theres no persinal or emotional link. theres no story link. what does it mean to be in the LAND OF THE BROKEN MINDS. is the idea that gender roles break peoples minds?

i guess the other thing this reminds me of is like. uhhhh young kid especially little girl im not like the other girls rejection of any traditional femininity. idk if this actually happens on a broad scale, but im prettyy syre it happens to a lot of young woman shaped people. and i think sometimes yeah you Go bestie escpae the pink, but the "not like the other girls" phenomenon is like. a really good showcase of performatively hating and rejecting traditional feminity and leaning into the negative stereotypes about women their age.

because these lyrics arent really all about the gender roles themselves right? like some are about personal expectation, some are about presentation, some imply like. society is brainwashing you. but not all of them really point to a man vs a womans place in society. if that makes sense. the idea that gender roles inherenrly break people when the portrayal is mostly minorly lacking but traditional femininity and............ a very lacking picture of masculinity ddoesnt really pointto like. oh we should be free to express ourselves as we want

it just says. gender is bad and not real. ur mind is broken. uve been brainwashed to not think. rip :(((

there is nothing HERE. this feels like a sound ai would write if you asked it to come up with a song about gender roles bad. therea lot of words and fury and noise but fuck man its NOTHING

secondarily, a fair amount of the lines are...... buzzwords maybe? for example, the line: "We feign opulence just to get by" is- at least to me- fucking absurd. what does this actually mean. how does this link back to gender. what does it mean in this context and framing to feign opulence?? it feels very "fake deep" because there isn't any true linking, in my reading, to any discussion of... how does this link to western patriarchal systems and gender roles. you DEFINITELY could explain the links, for example; the requirement for a woman to be a housewife to satisfy the structure of the "Family" but the requirement for 2 working parents to satisfy late stage capitalism leads to pressure for people to constantly strive to create a life which is flashy and well manicured to demonstrate compliance with both systems. but does the song engage with this topic - class or what money and family structures signify in any meaningful way?? nah it just has one line about how people are pretending to be living in luxury.

another thing i prominiently feel when listening to this in retrospect is that this smells like... well it smells like that early-late 2010s..... how do i describe it. when it was more or less popular to engage with depression on a very shallow level by being like. "... on the surface?? im smiling..... but inside.... im crying" and i totally GET how this was relatable to teenagers who were depressed and had other mental illness at the time, but that engagement with depression was.... i think at best, misguided? this series of lyrics:

We feign opulence just to get by Put on false confidence just to feel alive They can't hurt me anymore There's nothing left to break of me There's nothing left to take from me

'Cause, baby, it's easy to fake a smile When you've been doing it for a while Baby, it's easy to fake a smile When you've been doing it for a while

felt super IGEIRGIERJFERBGBRG to me as an abused, queer and mentally ill kid without language to describe their experience but looking at it now, what does it mean to be able to take a smile in this sense? this presentation of being rejected by society and allowing it to liberate you is another representation of how this song looks at these big issues of gender and society and queerness and rejection and takes the most, standoffish, meaningless stance on it.

theres nothing here to take away from literally any part of this song. sometimes it will hint at things, but overall, there doesn't seem to be a lot of... substance? like, okay, its easy to fake a smile after youve been doing it fot a while, but what does that actually mean? thats an assertion, but there isnt much emotion behind it, it kind of just reads like a fact. alternatively, i guess the idea is that you should stop faking your smile. okay. so what.

what i mean is, compared to a lot of other music, i think the catharsis a younger me found in it was largely because it explicitly put stright into words somethings i was feeling and presented thme in such a simple way. it has its place in my history. however. i mean. jesus christ did you watch the music video???? its a monster. its so ugly (filmography wise (im biased but. augh the cuts dude))

if i can make another link to that stupid faking opulence line, it would be about how, in the music video, which is part of what anyone who ever heard this song is remembering, the boys are depicted as. sporty. and. into army soliders. and one is dressed nicely but theres no pressure there or depiction to provide or protect or to dominate. the crime the boy commits to get EJECTED from the GENDER ROOM is touching a pink doll. the girls are depicted as all having very heavy make up, being made up and doing ballet.the crime the girl commits to get EJECTED from the GENDER ROOM is opening a book instead of using it to correct her posture. (theres a joke about transphobes thinknig this is how trans people want schools to be somewhere but im not cool enough to make it without sounding transphobic myself. sorry gang)

this doesnt really make any sense in terms of the opulence line, but really, like look at this. women shouldnt have education. men shouldnt like dolls. i think it demonstrates a historical difference in discrimination - where sectors of life were limited for women while feminity itself was off limits for men. (im not saying x or y is better or whatever, its just. different). but its INSANE to have this in a 2014 video about western patriarchal gender standards. i feel like my points are wayyyy too tangential and disorganised to make any sense sorry gang.

i mean. okay. last thing before maybe i consider a follow up about melanie martinezs orange juice which i have beef with.

subtlety is super important in making a message. subtlety and specificity are often what can create impact. im not saying statement music isnt powerful, and i wuld say. yeah sure you can call this a statement piece of music. but with the shallow lyrics and the fucking INSANE music video theres no subtlety or connection here. even if you can relate to the music; the rejection themes, the motifs of being silenced and ignored, the idea that once you are truly alone you can rebuild yourself thats so fair for u but i think this song really. loses out on what it can say by saying it in the most flashy and simple way possible.

theres not much soulto this song. i thinkfor me, it was good when i needed it as a younger teenager. farewell little game. at least ure not ai.

does anyone remember the benny song little game that came out in like. FUCKING 2014?????? OH MY GOD IT CAME OUT IN 2014???????? WHAT THE FUCK OKAY IM OLD

um other than tyhat does anyone else remember this or should i just write my thoughts on subtlety in music and just like. watch everyone be like ....leh why are u writing about this song that came out in fucking 2014???? (FUCKING 2014 JESUS CHRIST)

i also feel like i might be doing myself a disservice because maybe like it was just like. good for 2014 standards and i just wasn't culturally aware enough to know that this would have been a good song for gender roles and shit then (i only got woke in like 2019 mauybe. maybe. idk maybe a little later) (even my early ideas were pretty broken i think a lot of evolution was both required and beneficial).

anyway heres the link if you wanna get. fucking flashbacks if for some reason this was on ur radar back during mid-late 2010s????

[familyvisionis2020]

Day 4 - Athens (2 of 2)

I was able to sleep blissfully, majestically, and woke up around 10 feeling drowsy but refreshed. I sit up in bed and the first thing I see is Kabir’s smiling face, he says ‘Rise and Grind’ like he always does and Royal says ‘let’s get this bread’ and the day has started. In the daylight the giant purple house we’re staying in is even more whimsical and palatial seeming. There are rocking horses on top of the shelves in the house, hanging decorative bulbs and a campy chandalier and ornate decorations in a transom in the hallway and wrought iron fixtures with silver perforated globes mounted like torches outside the front door and a complicated antique triple-bell thing  for a door bell and more chrome globes hanging from the porch ceiling that look like metal lace and whose purpose is unclear to me, stained glass and a 6 foot, ten=-tubed windchime, several hanging swings on the porch, iron patio furniture and a rusty gate and a giant log of pine driftwood suspended from cables and an enormous rusted bell that still dongs and a trellis of ivy and a big boat propeller and something that looks like a 12 foot long abbacus and a half a purple wagon wheel and a huge white vase that looks like white China with blue coi and aquarium scene decorations, a big stone dragon head with highly detailed scales and a cove in the back of its head that allows you to put a middle size candle inside of the head such that when you light it its eyes will appear to flicker from the front, several of those shiny reflective globe spheres, one patterned in swirls like a bowling ball, and tons of plants and small trees andshards of sculpture concrete and folk kitschworks and little benches and birds everywhere and a bicycle wheel weathervane and pinwheel and just generally kooky stuff and its so so homey and lush and expansive and calm here. There are two cats whose name I dont know who live here and a dog whose name is Cocoa but who Royal calls Stanly for no apparant reason which is his humor which I love. 

I take a bird bath and we head across the street to the coffee shop, Donderos’ which is architectuarlly quite similar to the house we are staying in actually, its a big old victorian house, pale-rufous salmon-coral siding with dull cream accents, a high gable and new black roofing, and rather than eing surrounded by an enormous wraparoudn porch like our place, it’s surrounded by an asphalt parking lot that itself is surrounded by a stone block retaining wall and hearty wild rosemary. We set up camp inside the cafe for the first part of the day, we all order food, people get grits and a thing called a gritboat and fried potatoes that are like homefries except perfect little rectangular prisms rather than cubes and different sorts of eggs, lots of coffee, I drink yerba mate again instead. I plug in my phone and laptop, check my law school statuses using an automated aggregator and find out that my application to University of Florida Law has gone under its second review which is neither a good nor a bad sign necessarily, just means it’s being actively reviewed, I add this data point to a website to collect law school admissions data points and then eat breakfast. I put so much butter and raspberry jam in my grits that I almost feel like I overdid it. 

Kabir and Jeremy are thinking through the status of the tour out loud; in light of the extreme emergency situation that Covid is turning out to be, in light of the pressure Kabir feels from the women in his family to not tour, in light of the handful of venues and bands that have cancelled or dropped from bills on our tour, and in light of the cost-benefit analysis of traveling another 1600 miles through the midwest and back again, in light of the possibility of being cancelled if we continue to heedlessly transmit ourselves like vectors (I have been jokingly calling the band ‘Family Vector’ rather than Family Vision) perhaps healthy or at least symptomless but mobile pathogens, in light of all this there’s just a preponderance of reasons not to keep the full tour on, and between Jeremy and Kabir with some input from John, the decision to severely truncate/abridge the tour solidifies like jello in a sad fridge. I’m actually careful not to give much input in the decision making process here, I have mixed feelings about the ethics of continuing to tour but am honestly not bothered as much from a principled public health standpoint as I am from like selfishly wanting to just have free time in my apartment in Chapel Hill to lay around and maybe read and write and walk around and do yoga and be alone and enjoy quality quarantine quarantime at home and maybe even spend time in person with someone I like who I mostly only ever email whose hand I want to hold who I want to watch scary movies with and talk about feelings with, talk about feelings in a way that for all the lovely blissful amazing things my friends in the band are to me, we don’t hardly talk about feeings much at all. Or actually more likely just don’t talk about feelings in this one particular intense vulnerable type of way that I honesty avoid lost of the time but also like crave to do around someone I feel tender and safe when they’re nearby. Anyways. So I am intentionally passive in the decision making and I think all the reasons they factor in are germane and their reasoning sound and accede to the decision to cut the tour short, the plan now is to play again tonight in Athens at the same place, Buvez, then head out to Huntsville Alabama tomorrow, take a break in Nashville for a day, then play our final show in Louisville Kentucky before driving the van back to Chapel Hill. I offer to give Jeremy a ride back to Ridgewood Queens from NY in an effort to be kind and of service and of use and to share a resource in a situation where, mercifully but somewhat troublingly I have very little asked of me and very little to offer: Kabir and Jeremy have done the lion’s share of the planning, have volunteered to do the driving (and are very good at doing the driving), and so the sort of soft imperative in my life to find a way to be helpful, to be of service, as a mechanism of maintaining sanity and spiritual fitness feels a bit atrophied. So it makes me happy when Jeremy says he will take me up on that offer, and I am glad I am the type of person nowadays to offer a thing like that. 

After the logistics are tamped down and tidied we breakdown our various electronics and head to the park which is maybe 300 feet down the street, which is outfitted with polished granite chessboards, baggies of pieces stowed in ziplocks in a small compartment nearby, and also outfitted with a massive polished granite slab made to be a ping pong table, with a metal divider rather than a net. Kabir wants to play me in chess and I almost say no, worrying that the ugly part of my competitive spirit may take over, but I decide to say yes and we play, and the game goes quick, standard queen’s pawn opening but then an early blunder by Kabir puts me on the offensive and rather than try to maneuver back into control of the center and winning chances, which I’m absolutely sure he could’ve done, he just concedes after about 5 minutes and that’s that. I have language for chess even though I haven’t played more than 10 games in the last 10 years because for awhile in 2016-2018 I would put on lectures by chess grandmasters on youtube to calm me down and to fall asleep. I think I picked up some general strategic understanding too. Kabir tells me one time he scholar’s mated his dad and his dad got so furious he almost flipped the table. Kabir will remark later that his dad, a published author and consummate professional writer who logs a minimum of 1,000 words a day, that he is learning the only thing that can shake his dad is a global pandemic, that he’s never seen his dad this worried. Me and John play chess next, it’s a very close game and John stays ahead in material the entire game although I put him on the backfoot early and kept momentum with a string of nuisance checks that I think demoralizes him a little and although he won’t resign and fights tooth and nail until checkmate he keeps saying he should have resigned. I don’t actually know how to checkmate him properly so I use a passed pawn and only with two queens can manage to finish the game. We play a second time, for a long time, and it’s very close again, and I manage to eke out a win, and John is done. And Kabir comes over with his book of The Best of Wednesday New York Times Crosswords edited by Will Shortz and explains that these are medium-difficult and that Saturday, not Sunday is the most difficult, Sunday is Thursday difficulty, just longer. He lays the puzzle down on the chessboard, I notice the crossword puzzle and chessboard are the same shapes and pattern more or less, and I make a joke in a loud Brooklyn-style accent that all I need is black and white squares on a grid and I’m happy. I get a laugh and that makes me feel good and I feel like a smart winner also and I feel smarter looking for clues together with John and Kabir and the weather is breezy and warm and I’m extremely happy just playing and relaxing, glad Kabir wants to play things with me, delighted to see not every game turns me into a monster.

We meet up with Noah, the person whose house we are staying at, and we all pile in the big maroon van and head to the State Botanical Gardens of Georgia. Noah without prompting assumes the role of tour guide, takes the reins and play acts that we are tourists following him, chides us for straggling, tells us to stay with the group, curates our experience. I love this, Kabir can be like this too, a man making decisions in a way that does not feel constricting or cruel or vindictive or violent, just a gentle assertion to let some expert knowledge shine through, which Noah has a lot of; I will learn later today that he is in the process of composing a thesis or dissertation about 19th century literature which focuses on the description of plants as a lens through which to assess and survey that literature, so his knowledge of plants is vaster than I knew. He takes us through the indoor greenhouse garden at first which is dense with lush tropical plants and hundreds of orchids. He explains how orchids used to be rare and expensive commodities, I mention how orchi- is the prefix for testicles and that orchids are named their name because the unflowered bulbs resemble testes. Kabir points at Noah and says ‘FACTS.’ We see a cacao plant, a coffee plant, a vanilla plant, dozens of fragrant flowers which each of the boys stops and politely smells, one by one, so adorable, a very tender stroll. We get a band picture together which Kabir explains will be captioned with a notification that our tour will be canceled. Noah continues to usher us through the verdant corridors, we see a banana plant with leaves taller than me up on a balcony, I think it’s the biggest leaves on a plant I’ve ever seen. There’s muscodine grapes on the ground, i split one open for the boys to smell, they put their faces close to my hand and trust me not to fuck with them, which I don’t. We are in super high spirits, everyone is enjoying themselves. Noah collects us and guides us outside where we enter the massive sylvan grounds of the Botanical Garden proper. Everyone is doing bits about the different plants. I see Spathiphyllums and mention to Noah Swingin’ Spathiphyllums from Mort Garson’s Plantasia, and in response he just hums the tune of the song, which I love. Royal goes and lays on a gigantic rock. We read the placards, tease out etymologies, reference colonial plant histories, see the real life versions of plants like Gingko Biloba and Agave and probably 40 varieties of thyme in the Physic plant section and honey garlic and rosemary and tarragon and lavender and ginger and turmeric and acer palmatum and quercus alba and nephroleptis exaltata, all scientific names I remember from high school horticulture, and so so many other kinds of plants it’s hard to remember them all. 

I looked up a list and I’m putting of the ones I remember of them here because to me their name is so beautfiul Anise Hyssop, Arkansas Blue Star, Summer Snapdragon, Buttefly Weed, Rain Lily, Wild Indigo, Crossvine, Million Bells, Athens Sweetshrub, Begonias, American Hornbeam, Japanese Plum Yew, Forest Pansy, Lavender Redbud, Fringetree, Old Man’s Beard, Summersweet Clethra, Coleus, Dogwood, Bath’s Pink Dianthus, Spurge, Mt. Airy Fothergilla, Hardy Geranium, Lenten Rose, Coral Bells, Swamp Hibiscus, Hydrangeas, Inkberry, Ornamental Sweet Potato, Crape Myrtles, Pink Loropetalum, Little Gem Magnolia, Dawn Redwood, Blackgum, Firespike, Fragrant Tea Olive, Phlox, Plectranthus Variegated Japanese Solomons’ Seal, Overcup Oak. Admiral Semmes Azalea, Sacred Lily, Drift Roses, Creeping Raspberry, Three Lobed Coneflower, Double Daffodils, Lady in Red Salvia, Blue Anise Sage, Bald Cypress, Confederate Jasmine, Georgia Blue Veronica, Snowball Viburnum, Chastetree, Amethyst Falls Wisteria.

We find a massive terraced zone with close-cropped fescue like a carpet and a long stone staircase, rectangular hedges capping bluffs of each 8 foot drop, a single concrete obelisk, some statuary, polished stainless steel gate structures, millions of flowers and plants arranged in tidy geometric grids. More than one person, and not just from the boys in the band, mentions that this place reminds them of the film Midsommar, and I agree, the light is bright but not saturated yet the way it gets in summer, so it has a similar sickly kalediscopic sheen to the movie’s colorscape. Noah traipses down the many staircases to a stone stage at the central of the terraced court and starts doing a bizarre interpretative dance that is a little balletic and a little frenetic, eventually he kind of stage dives into a shrub and falls before loping back to us, which we and other tourists respond to with polite applause. He then bounces up and down with me such that our heads are just popping up into the line of sigh tof the boys at the higher level, and we do that for a few minutes and it’s silly and fun. I suggest to Noah that we do yoga on the lawn and he immediately takes his socks off and starts corraling the wililng among the bands to do yoga, it ends up being me Kabir and John, Noah has the right lilt and cadence in his voice to make for a very plausible yoga teacher and he knows a few flows and postures and leads us in a pretty decent 25-ish minute session. Mostly I’m quiet and avoid making jokes and do my best to enjoy the physical benefits of the yoga, but at one point I say “my kundalini energy is through the roof right now’ in a thick mock southern accent which I think is hilarious and Kabir too. Kabir does a bit later where he says ‘come to find out, you simulated your love for me!’ in his thick syrupy southern joke drawl which is a quote from a 1982 song by french coldwave duo Deux which is exceedingly funny to me when I hear it. The sun is hot and someone, I think Paul from Tired Frontier, says ‘first sweat of 2020.’ It does feel like spring switched on the minute I left town, which is such a warm and lovely feeling.

We finish up yoga, gather the boys and Noah suggests we go to the grocery store to get a giant can of beans, some tomatoes, a red onion, a ripe avocado, two jalapenos, and a bunch of cilantro, and two bags of tortilla chips, and make a raw, unpureed bean dip and feast together, which is exactly what we do. I dust bits of dried grass off Kabir’s back that he picked up doing yoga. I do something very close to brunois on both the red onions and jalapenos, not quite the 1/8th inch industry standard but not far off, Noah praises my knife skills. We all devour the huge bowl of dip super quick and between me Jeremy Kabir John and Noah eat all those chips and all the dip in about 10 minutes, and we work further on the crossword puzzle. Jeremy eats a $1 tin of sardines and then goes to take a nap. We just sit out on the porch in the sun and vibe for a couple hours, idle conversation, i nearly fall asleep, but then rally and manage to type a ton on my computer and feel happy to be consistent blogging. 

We make it to the venue, Buvez again, and the rest of the night is basically identical to the night before, except this time Polly’s Gone is their usual selves, Surface to Air Missive, they sound almost exactly like The Shins, they play a short set. Jeremy talks to the lead guy, Taylor, and tells me Taylor said ‘yeah we’re just trying to be The Shins,’ Kabir says ‘that guitarist is incredible’ which is saying a lot because I think he’s incredible and has tons of techinical and theoretical and practical expertise. We play second instead of third this time, play a smaller set too, don’t do any joke songs, play to basically an empty room save the guys in the other bands, it’s fine, super breezy, zero pressure, fun, inconsequential. Tired Frontier plays, does some funny Covid-related banter, their set is basically identical to the set the night before. We all hang out on the picnic tables outside the cafe, all ten guys in all three bands, they share stories about getting caught smoking weed as a teenager and epic house parties and getting grounded and dumb stuff like that, and this time I’m happy to sit and put my feet up right in the middle of the conversation, shoulder to shoulder with Royal who is drinking a beer from a rocks glass and Kabir who’s smoking a Turkish Silver, looking at Taylor who yesterday I kind of thought was maybe too cool for us but who now has a kind of reluctant smile in this cute way that reminds me of how my dad smiles, a man used to being austere and stoic and foreboding belied by a cheerful time. The venue people bring out $60 in cash and Taylor tells us and Tired Frontier to split it between ourselves, a very classy move from the leadman of the hometown band, Kabir says if you ever need a show in the Triangle hit me up I got you. Taylor goes home, the Buvez people are bringing in the outdoor furniture again, we breakdown and load out together, everybody helps with everything (like not just drummer gets drums bassist gets bass and bass amp, rather everybody just gets everything) and that feels kind, I love how easy being decent comes to the boys in this band, I feel like every shred of decency and kindness I can muster feels sourced politically or has had been inserted in me only after being pryed open by the crowbar of desperation or like postulated but not fully embodied during therapy or the result of very direct counter-intuitve habit building and coaching and mentoring and although that’s hard for me, materially right now I am matching them, I’m decent too, I am a decent person among decent people, I can live without constantly lying and shoplifting and fantasizing about the next petty crime or act of vandalism I will execute to vindicate an image of elegant, thoughtfully erratic antipathy for authority I was always trying to curate and cultivate in the eyes of my peers. Anyways, everything’s fine, Royal suggests we go to a bar and Kabir uses his casual power as frontman to say no which is something I know he’s doing for him and for me and I deeply appreciate that. 

We go downtown in Athens and look for a chinese spot that ends up being closed and then wander into a diner where there’s kids in prom outfits settling up their bills with the hostess as we get seated. John marvels at this weird coca cola ad thing that has a big bottle tilted down with a rotating helictical metal piece the color of coke that makes a pretty plausible optical illusion of liquid pouring into a cup below. Kabir tells stories about his old bands, Sister David, Docking, Reynolds, a bit they used to due during live shows where they’d mix in ‘I’ve Got a Feeling’ by Black Eyed Peas to their spartan angular No-Wave set which we all agree is brilliant, wish we could’ve seen that. I scarf the huge plate of fries i order and basically drink the extra cup of ranch i ordered, it’s fantastic, I love how hungry i feel after playing shows, I share my fries with Jeremy. The Tired Frontier guys show up last minute and we rendezvous briefly before heading home. Not much else happens other than me spending like 15 minutes with the dog Cocoa gaining its trust and comforting it for the purpose of getting her to stop barking, which works and is very calming. I eat an apple and peanut butter out the jar by myself in the kitchen and I do not feel the need to be reading or looking at my phone while i do it, which is rare and very special. I take my medicine, plug in my headphones, and go to sleep.