Two Poems

Been Afraid / Requiem Eternal, Father Strong to Save (May 2020)

In May of 2020, I had ridded myself of computers. I wasn’t…doing very well, but didn’t seem like anyone was, but of course when I am not doing well it’s like the end of the fucking world. I mean, I get it, but c’mon. Doesn’t help. Doesn’t help to work your problems out through a disabled person, though I completely understand that it is out of fear. But let’s be real: the fear is self-stigma, the stigma is what makes this stuff happen at all, it is 90% environmental, and in this healthcare system? Okay.

But I was getting into braille, I was learning sign language, I was becoming very interested in every single other thing other than music, because I can feel and hear the musicality in virtually anything when my brain is working (and that’s when everyone thinks I’m nuts—these days, couldn’t give a fuck what anyone outside of the clinical realm thinks, and I say that with immense pride).

I bought the Nakajima AE740 typewriter after trying a few different typewriters. My initial thinking: this is fantastic as it is compromising with the computer, or meeting somewhere in the middle between my chicken scratch and Mcluhan’s extension of man, etc. I still use it to this day. Sure, in some way I do love being seated at the booth of a digital diner called My Computer and pretending to know how to flip through the oversized menu, having too many options to choose from (note: I havebeen using Ulysses since I think 2017— it’s the shit).

Okay, listen. I just can’t stand computers. I can do lots of stuff with them but it just kills me. I just can’t. I’m getting a rotary phone, a pager, and a fax machine, maybe a “dumb phone” if I am lucky, because I can’t focus on this shit. These portals into the universe are exactly that, they suck you in and give you what you want or what you need and all of that and then shortly after suck in every single way. Ya, they’re great— like any actual dumb drug-drug. Great, greater, and the greatest on the way to completely being the worst. God forbid I don’t check my email. No one calls anyone anyway these days—miss that, and am guilty of not doing it enough as well.

Anyway, late 2019 into 2020 I was on a tear. My mentor Roddy Potter had been working with me since late summer of 2019 on moving outwards in terms of lyricism. But really everything. Like, everything-everything, or how to remember who I am or what a sense of self means to a person who has a life that is painted by everyone’s perception of me via media, via gossip, via jerks, bullies, and the classist, ableist aristocracy that is the indie world. And you thought I was self-serious (if you thought anything at all?)

Well, I was. I wanted to be taken seriously like anyone else. But I was so tired of just talking about how things made me *feel* and I could not get out of my head for the life of me. I am sure some of you can relate to this, and it brings about quite a bit of shame sometimes especially when you intend to profit from these said innermost conflicts.

I am just a massive fan of W. H. Auden. My friend Brent Katz, during the writing of Merry Christmas, Mr Fields, brought me his poetry and said, “if you read one thing, you read this.” As usual, he was spot the fuck on.

But I am a Shelley fan, I love Kipling, I don’t care what anyone says as I absolutely adore Ezra Pound. Cherry-picked Nabokov, Muldoon, O’Hara, I mean the list goes on and on and on and on and on but I am highly selective. I think Grace Paley is a close second to Madeleine Dubus. Orwell’s collected essays and letters I have first editions of as well as all of Auden’s Prose and Lectures—I have many first editions of his work, including his bibliography.

But music doesn’t really influence me when writing, save for film scores (Henry Mancini, Max Steiner, Max and Randy Newman, Georges Delerue, Jean Constantin, Masuro Sato, Johnny, Mandel, Susumu Hirasawa, and countless others). I’ve long since stored the music I’ve worshipped in this head of mine, so when I finish making music for a bit. I do hope this changes over time, as I’d like my output to be a far more regular thing. But after the making of a record, I then get to enjoy music again when I am done.

I block everything out, not just ads, pop-ups and anything else. It’s extremely bad to let that in when tapping into yourself. But I only allow poetry, writings, lectures, songs, films and other things into my mind while working when I feel called to them or my gut says I need them. This is a very odd thing for people around me to understand in how strict I am about it—it is something very precious to me as an artist.

And painful—it’s a thing that seeps into every facet of my being, so can be problematic during creative periods.

In my opinion, these are pretty weak, and unedited. Roddy had started editing a few pieces, and I will post them later, but I basically got what his points were and took it from there. We used to talk and talk and he would just let me have it. I grew up in so many ways, and still do to this day, each and every time he so generously kicks my ass. Love him so much.

The amount of written material I have, I am sure, will surprise even the people who know me. It’s…absurd. Almost as absurd as almost anything that comes out of my mind that I, for better or worse, share with anyone. And, oh, do I share.

Attached are the pdfs, along with the images just to make it easier.