Necessary Voodoo

About this journal: An epic story about crappy bands. These are my memoirs from my time spent on the road as a professional rock and roll groupie. This is not fan fic. No, you don't know the people I am writing about. If you think you do, you're wrong. I am possessed by the ghosts of the people I have loved and this journal is an exorcism. I also believe in the seperation of art and the artist, so take that for what it's worth. Entries are long and are not lj-cut. My apologies!

I. Via Negativa 01. Note To Self 02. Symbiosis 03. The Safety Of Inanimacy 04. Three Rivers 05. Sparrow 06. Appalachia 07. Lacuna 08. Par Avion 09. The End Of The World 10. Happy Death Day 11. Crimes 12. Grand Theft 13. The Descent 14. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi 15. The Magic Kingdom 16. Wonderland 17. My Name Is Trouble 18. The Pharmacy Key

II. Ascension 19. Panthalassa 20. Phantom Limb 21. The Abattoir 22. Memento 23. Amor Fati 24. The Healing Machine 25. You Taste Foreign 26. Harpies 27. The War Of The Gryllidae 28. Vermillion 29. Homecoming Redux 30. The Variable 31. Threnody 32. The Sacred... 33. ...And The Profane 34. Oh, You Great Star 35. Momentum 36. Sunshine Days

look, i'm going to be sort of sucking at posting and commenting for a few days here because diablo iii came out and i need to burn myself out on that, on the real.  i love you guys and your journals and writing but the call of the keyboard smash is strong, so.  don't be a jackass and remove me, i'll burn out pretty fast as i do with everything!

100 Things
005. The Safety Of Inanimacy
Or, Those Sour Times

*This is the last piece of copypasta I'll post--everything after this is new stuff, promise.  Wanted to get these out of the way because hi, 100 things, I need all thew pieces I can get.

To him, writing songs is a cataclysmic event. When he writes, he needs absolute silence. He needs all movement to stop, all conversation to end and all persons off the tour bus. He says inspiration is a rare thing and that he has no control over when it will come to him and what it will bring. He needs me to be understanding about the burdens that come with his talent.

He bleeds ink. When his literary wounds are open, his switch is on and you don't fuck with that.

When he writes, it is an act of beauty and creation, pulling intangible thoughts from the air and positioning them, organizing them, creating a tapestry of love, fear, joy, and anger. This simple act of writing is more beautiful than any of the songs themselves that will come from his scribblings, because those songs will be filtered art. They will be the product of his words run through the minds of his band mates and processed. They will be homogenized, strained and compressed until they fit into a simple idea, a single serving package meant for mainstream musical consumption. They will be the byproduct of his original writing; his little children, written into life, bound through growth, having the spirit choked out of them for the sake of selling albums.

But each prose and unedited song, the unfiltered poems, each entry is beautiful. They remind me of the tiny caterpillars I've seen inching across the Indiana highways; fuzzy, colorful and new, tiny living creations full of vibrance and ready for a metamorphosis. Little pieces of life, something from nothing, real and untarnished. New entities set forth into the world. Harmless, inconsequential, and beautiful.

In writing, he is a god and he creates the universe. He builds his world in words, like a great watchmaker, and he winds them and sets them down so that they may tick on despite his absence. These songs of his, they are written in his image with the weight of his experiences behind them and for that, they are beautiful because they are pure and real.

When he is hunched over one of his composition notebooks, I can't help but love him. His messy black hair falls into his furrowed brow. His brown eyes grow distant but bright like twin supernovas across the expanse of his own private universe. He bites his lips and he chews the ends of his pens until they are only little pointed wads of plastic, ink and spit. His jawline is hard and stoic and I want to hold his head in my hands before my face. I want to snap him into reality until he is focused on me, only me, so I can know what it's like to be swallowed into another world. I want to be assimilated into him. I want him to care.

But he doesn't. He is unable to. All his caring is poured out into writing. He seals it and packages it into a notebook. He surgically extracts it from himself and places it there, in words, to view and dissect at a later date.

I think has no other option than to be a writer. I think some lives are so big, they have to spill out and over onto paper. I think he is destined to be a life lived in a notebook, a written proof of existence.

On days when he can't write, we fuck in the venue shower stalls like we want to scratch out our existences. He holds me down to the floor, my breasts smashing tight against the mildewy tiles and my lips gasping for the air above a rising water level. He drives his fingertips into my hips and then drags his nails down my back. He bites my shoulder so hard that I'll sport a storm colored bruise like a trophy for a week after. And when he finally comes, he pulls my hair back so violently that my neck is arched tightly. For ten or fifteen seconds I can't breathe, my windpipe compressed and pulled and the hot water slamming against my mouth and collarbone.

On these days, he is not creating. He is destroying. Our sex is a suicide pact.

One evening, after he's came and I'm rubbing my sore scalp and aching hips, he says to me, "Look at you. You're so intent on being fake; a figment of some man's imagination with your hair extensions, your glue-on nails, your six inch heels and your bubblegum flavored glossed lips. You never had any other option than to end up sleeping with me. You were destined for me."

It's his prophecy for my life and he's probably right. He breaks my heart saying all this, but the truth is that here we are, two useless people, safe in our inanimacy, our empty bodies laying in rest. We are worthless souls inside the images of what humans should ideally look like, trying desperately to remember how to go through the motions, to remember how to live.

In writing, he is divine. In songs, he is sacred. On stage, he is invincible. But here in the shower, he is miserable and alone and so I say, "I love you."

And he answers, "No, you don't. But thank you for saying it anyway."

today's awesome thrift store finds HNNNRRGG yes!!


a very hellaine-esque striped dress.





how ugly are these shoes??  i love it, i'm wearing them to home depot rn.

100 Things
002.  Saliva
Or, When Promiscuity Finally Old

In the back of a big shiny tour bus packed full of people like sardines in a tin, he says he doesn't want to fuck me now because he just got done playing and he's sweaty and he's nasty and he's smelly and when we finally do it for the first time he wants it to be good, he wants to show me just what he's capable of; he's got something to prove.  Like if we were to have awful sex I'd just forget even knowing him, I'd suddenly stop accepting his phone calls and backstage passes and hundred dollar lobster dinners and three digit bar bills and frequent flyer miles and multiple plane trips to rock-metal concerts scattered across the Bible Belt.  He doesn't comprehend that at this point, for me, he could fuck like a dead goose on ambien and I'd still tell him it was a life altering experience because of, you know, The Perks.

We're at this sort of carnival thing because his band is doing this State Fair tour and I can't decide if that's really, really cheesy or sort of kitsch-cool.  They get paid an awful lot for it, though.  They have a business contract saying they won't snort cocaine on the bus.  Fresh out of group rehab.  They have Visa Black cards passed out in lieu of per diem.  It's a nice ride and I have no issues with leeching off of this animal until it's bled dry.

This drummer, he won't fuck me.  He's worn out, he has no energy, he's perspiring too much, there's too many people on the bus, there's no privacy, but there's a a hundred and one reasons why he can be a womanizer every at every other concert on this tour and yet tonight we must refrain.  And I don't know...  I'm bummed, not because I think anything is wrong with me--because that can happen sometimes, you know, that stupid feeling I can sometimes get when I'm not being fucked that it's somehow my fault, that I said something 'like a girl would say', that what I'm wearing is unflattering, that I hadn't acted as cool and collected watching their show from the side-stage as I had imagined in my head. 

Nah, it's not that.  It's that whole 'Let's Get It Over With' factor.  The first time fucking a new man is never the most pleasant experience, it's full of fumbling and missed chemistry, awkward pauses and garbeled phrases, clumsy fingers and messy mouths.  You get to this point where it's time to do it and you just say 'okay, let's do it, let's get it over with, just fuck me quickly now and we can take our time later.  Yeah, later, when it's worth taking the time'.

It's like getting a shot--you just sort of turn your head, clench your jaw, close your eyes and exhale until it's time to slap a band aid over the whole thing.

So two weeks later and we've got three days off at a pretty fancy-shmancy high rise downtown hotel.  He wants everything to be just right and so we have drinks in the lobby while he plays some lilting sloppy tune on the bar's baby grand piano.  The bartender loves us because he's over tipping, so that's alright.  Another seafood dinner at another hip city resteraunt.  Lobster and sushi rolls on the side.  Some crab legs too, because why not?  He buys a new guitar at a music store where the staff fall all over themselves pretending to love his band as much as they love their commissions.  Another bar then and now we're basically a two person Charity Bus because we're buying a round for everyone around us, which is...  It's nice to make friends but it's better by far to just spend it on me, you know? 

Whatever.  All this financial pretense to try and make that first time as un-awkward as possible.  Enough money to turn strangers in acquaintances.

Until finally it's Go Time.  We've been smoking these massive sausage roll joints he picked up from some local band-fan dealer--he's smoking because he loves weed.  I'm smoking because the quicker this shit is done, the quicker we can get down to business, the quicker I can add his bands' name to my Bands Collected roster like some rare foil-embossed Pokemon card that no one actually gives a damn about five years later.  I'm wearing this tiny pink lace thong, something completely un-Hellaine like just for him to enjoy shoving aside.  And he's got a nice cock, it's a good size with these large multi-colored stars tattooed down the top of the shaft which will end up being the highlight of the whole damned thing because after about two minutes of amateur foreplay, he pushes inside me three times and that's that, he's shaking on top of me and perspiring and I'm thinking:  Are you fucking serious?

I kind of lay there, legs still spread, trying to feign a goofy after-sex smile, not saying much of anything because I'm waiting for the inevitable apology, an 'Oh, sorry, it's been so long!' or a, 'Sorry, it's been awhile, we'll work on it, sorry!'  But.  Nothing,  He just sits up, pulls his pants on, smokes another massive joint, watches the Weather Channel, dickers about with his new guitar.  Smiles and gives me the thumbs up like we just successfully put together our first Ikea coffee table.

And for the entire weekend, every time we had sex was like just like that.  Multiple little five minute shifts of penetration and then bam, off to smoke or off to sleep or off to spend more money until our three days are up and the work is done and I've collected that band name card.  And when I'm leaving, I hug him and get into my taxi and say 'don't call me, I'll call you.  Maybe next summer.'

Because nine times out of ten, fucking someone you don't know is just the biggest letdown, really.

100 Things
001.  Rats
or, A General Play By Play Of My Mid Twenties

There's this band staying here at the hotel; I can see their giant bus parked under the awning of the building across the street. I can feel it kind of pulling at me like a magnet, the adventure and conquests it contains calling to me like a siren. And like any true addiction, my skin begins to itch, my heart begins to thud-thud against my ribs and now I am checking everyone's pockets for laminated passes.

So I'm sitting at this bar, watching the business men around me loosen their ties and settle in for the evening. I have a strong vodka drink in one hand and this book about inner-city New York rodents in the other. I try to look invested in the reading, but above the pages my eyes are scanning the room for a victim. Sometimes I feel like a black widow spider, predatory and poisonous, lying in wait for my prey to pass by and tug on the strands of my delicately placed web. And sometimes I feel like a succubus, as if there are a certain number of wandering musicians I need to lull into sex with me in order to feed some sleepy demon just beneath my skin. I feel evil and wrong and dirty, but I feel compelled and bored too.

One of these band guys eventually sidles up to the bar next to me in that nonchalant way men do when they think they are coming off as random and unassuming. His clothing tells me he's what I'm looking for--his tight pants, colored jacket, gray vest and small scarf. His hair is messy, his smile is charming and the laminate that dangles from his neck is firing off conquest alarms in my head. He's pretty to look at and his voice is smooth and calm when he calls for the bartender. I smile politely but I'm looking mostly at my book when he says:

"Hi."

I don't look up at him but I say, "Did you know If you are in New York, you are within close proximity to one or more rats having sex...?"

He tells me that no, he did not know that, and he tells me his name and it's a nice enough name and so I ask him, "Are are you here to save me from the boredom of another hotel bar?"  Because I am nothing if not forever dramatic.

And he says maybe he is. He buys me a drink, something pink and fruity, and he orders himself one also. These are the kinds of cocktails men in the Midwest will make fun of you for drinking, and it's very exotic to me that we are having them now, as if such things as small town machismo are of little concern at all to us. We talk about rodents and books and music and how our are ancestors are both from the same part of Europe. We're both really struggling to find common ground here, trying to find a way to justify what we want and plan on doing each other. Trying to manufacturing chemistry so that when we look back later on our inevitable fucking we can both say, 'what other way could it have gone..?'

Later on we're in his hotel suite on the couch, having the sort of fumbling, oafish sex that most first time lovers have. I played the game, won the prize and now I'm bored before I've ever opened the package. The sex is awkward and lacking any kind of feeling: angst, anger, passion, misery... all these wild emotions that are supposed to make sex a delicacy.  Fucking is always a form of acquisition to me, as I suppose it is to most of the men I Meat. But even most men, in the heat of the whole thing, will still eventually lose themselves to human connection and the intimacy of sex. They'll start trying to satisfy their partner and that humanity kills it for me every time.

This musician on top of me is trying really hard to please me and I find myself more annoyed by this act than turned on. I am hyper-sensitive to all the bullshit he is trying--the way he thinks nibbling on my nipple in such a way should make me moan, or that he thinks I don't notice that he's actually spelling out the alphabet with his fumbling head job. It's all so tired and I find myself faking a massive orgasm just so he'll hurry up and finally feel obligated to finish his.

When we're finished, I lay on his lap across the couch, staring up at him. He's got this kind of smarmy, self important, gratified look on his face as if he's the cat who got the cream. Like he's tricked me into degrading myself for him, as if this wasn't an act performed by the both of us. He thinks he's used me.

But I don't feel used at all and while I don't feel sated in the flesh, I do feel sated in the mind. I feel like maybe I've actually used him. I'm addicted to these artists, these despicable musicians, with their disregard for women. I hardly care about them at all and more so, I feel turned on that this one thinks he used me. I'm turned on by the idea that he thinks he's defiling the cool perfection I put out. I'm turned on, not because he is here, in this room and on this couch, waiting for my sex, but because I am the who came and offered it.  It is me in this room, just me.

"Are you going to tell people we slept together?" He asks me and I can only roll my eyes in complete boredom.

( 100 Things: Table Of Contents )

The community I co-mod, marchland.  For the time being, we've dropped points requirements and monthly vote offs, so if you've thought about joining but were hesitant because of that commitment, then you should rethink it.  That doesn't mean you can just join and then go absent, you're still expected to be an active part of the community because if you weren't it's like, what was the point of joining?

We also dropped minimum member count for the time being so there's a bit of a surplus of members right now, like looks to be maybe 25 or something, I don't know.  I'm kind of digging it.

In Marchland, you connect with twenty other women, each from different backgrounds, with different lifestyles - debutantes, mothers, starving students, struggling artists, travelers, barefoot hippies, lipstick lesbians, gender fucks, savvy business women, desert renegades, poets, storytellers - but all with the same drive: to grow into more beautiful women (inside and out) and to help others do the same.  We're not a self help group so check that stuff at the doctor's office--you're expected to have or at least have a roadmap to having your shit together, and a strong, confident personality or at least enough acerbic wit to cover up what you don't know, like me.  I'm kind of kidding there.

Nah, you can read our Testimonials Page to see what we're all about if you're curious and looking for a place on Livejournal that is bustling, active and full of people who want to and will take the initiative to get to know you, your life, your thoughts and your beliefs.

Yeah, we're still a women-only group, sorry bros.  Also, we still have an application process--this is a closed community to protect the things we talk about and the application process if our way of weeding out any assholes.  However, duting your application process, you do get 48 hours to peruse the community to see if it's something you might be interested in.  More information can be found here or by asking me.

I have fears of people giving up on my health once I get old. I don't think I'll turn out to be one of those old ladies who can be inspirational and pragmatic in the face of death. I would want to scrounge another year after year if I can. I don't want people to say 'It's just her time', because how would they know? My time could be when I'm 106. I want to be an obstinate centenarian who fights the inevitable well beyond the point where my living relatives all start to consider the posibility that I'm immortal.

Saying a made for television miniseries based on a book is a bad movie is sort of like shooting fish in a barrel, but Stephen King's Bag Of Bones is offensively bad.  Having just re-read the book a few months ago, which I would place as about 'middle-of-the-line' as far as his works go, I was fresh from the pages and into the visuals with this one and it didn't do the show any favors.

Oh, to list the multitude of problems.

1.  Television apparantly feels that the murder of a male child of color would have absolutely no effect on us and so Sara Tidwell's son has inexplicably been turned into a daughter for the sake of this movie. 

2.  Sara Tidwell herself, who is a bit of a powerful, sharp tongued badass in the books*--a sassy, fast-paces jazz singer of the 'fuck all y'all' variety--is turned into a simpering, calm ballag singer who is basically just a vehicle for their to be an excuse for ghost to exist in the movie.  The Sara in the book had character, a generally rich backstory (see my asteriks again), a personality that was enjoyable, justified and a little batshit crazy.  This Sara is like... watered down.  At one point the racists in the movie call her an 'uppity' girl and racist connotations of that word aside, she is the least uppity ANYTHING in the world.  This is Sara Tidwell with a large prescription of valium.

*Somewhat. I think Stephen King has a bit of trouble writing women and probably even more trouble writing women of color although as a white woman, I'm probably not the best judge of the specific nuances.

3.  So Sara is stripped of any personality whatsoever outside of being female and being black, any characterization and backstory is peeled away from her and she is just a thing-that-becomes-a-ghost.  But of course let's keep the rape in the movie which, without being able to care about the character of Sara at all, just becomes the SVU-Hates-Women version of rape, ie., just some woman victimized for the enjoyment of couch potatoes.  It's okay to not feel to bad watching this, Sara is basically reduced to a trope in this film anyway!  Snerk intended.

4.  I sincerely don't know which is worse:  Eric Bana or the pairing of poorly aging Pierce Brosnan and Melissa George who plays the white heroine....  Looking about 35 years old in this.  Mattie in the book is like young twenties--Mattie in the movie is looking thirty something.  You know, because Mike Noonan dating a women over half his age might be an issue as to caring about the characters on TV (it is in the book and the creepy age description is addressed multiple times), yet we can leave in some bla woman of color being raped and murdered. 

5.  I want to stress here that while the race issue insofar as the tv portaytal is an issue, I think it's the flawed female stereotypes of the characters overall that are what make the characters suuucccckkk.

6.  Kyra is basically not in this movie except as a plot device to make you gasp at the ending climax.  I mean, I haven't even watched the last half hour yet but I know this already.

7.  Why does Mike Noonan have an English accent yet his brother (Trashcan Man fuck yeah!) doesn't??  Also cool story bro that they made him gay, you know, so they can just clear up that whole my-wife-didn't-sleep-with-him issue in .5 seconds.  I'll okay it since making this miniseries even a minute longer would be a crime against good tastes.

8.  The age and generation changes in the movie make it really weird.  Geriatric characters who look to be the same age as Brosnan's character--who is apparantly like 95 in this show--keep saying shit like "Hurr hur I was friends with your grandfather!'.  Am I watching Cocoon or what.  Kyra's age is moved up from three to like 9 or 10, so seeing her walking by herself down the road loses the Oh Shit Kid In Trouble fear and instead takes on the Omg Ominous Kid Being Creepy trope which has nothing to do with the movie.

9.  Mick Garris hasn't learned any new camera tricks since Creepshow. 

10.  This dialogue is so, so bad.  Example:
Lady:  And he killed his daughter too, he murdered her.
Pierce:  Ler me guess, he tried to drown her?

No, asshole, he DID drown her.  She's already murdered, nobody TRIED to do anything, the DID it.  Fuck!!!

Look, just read the book.  It's mediocre but enjoyable and sctually sort of scary if read in the dead of dark.  But if you need something to watch with more substance than this, Toddlers & Tiaras is streaming on Netflix.