#EAT THIS
[E]xtraordinarily [A]rbitrary [T]houghts [T]o [H]ighlight [I]nsolent [S]ardonicism
Epigrams & Prosing Blabs From 2015, In Nashville Mostly, Drinking Heavily & Particularly Sardonic
Yeah, can I get 3 deep fried lard sandwiches with extra creamy “cheese product,” deep fried starches covered in salt with corn syrup and buttered bleached flour, and a Diet Coke? I’m on a diet.
Are the 90's retro enough to be cool again? I’ve waited patiently.
We should start a new thing. It'll be a perpetually evolving living, breathing oxymoron... Idiosyncratic normalcy... Scheduled spontaneity... Classic uniqueness...
Yes, I'll have another drink. And perhaps I'll have four more later. We'll all wake up with hangovers because you're all lightweights, but I'll wake up with a new song written and recorded, timestamped for a later use with a star next to it and a note in quotes saying, “So-and-so told me not to have another drink.”
I'm much more than I'm not and haven't been but am still going to be way more than that. I'm as good as the worst that I've been and better than that sometimes, I think. I'm everywhere I shouldn't be and nowhere I should be, but I'm still trying to be somewhere that's as big and beautiful as the somewhere I always thought it should be.
I wouldn't wish sobriety upon my worst enemy. What's wrong with my intoxicated reality? What to contrast with Starbucks reality. Summer movies and video games. Fast food and footballs. Your death and destruction vs. mine. Liver failure vs. diabetes. You're scared of my reality because it’s uncontainable.
Everybody who hears these records says, "Why are you not signed?" I say, "I have no f--ing idea." And then they say, "Oh, probably 'cuz you're an a--hole." And I say, "Yeah. That's probably why."
"I'm a night owl.”
“Gasp. You better fix your schedule with a quickness! Before you get a mental illness!"
Might I be the only person with this many 'disturbing the peace' charges? It's just music. I find it very peaceful & precisely the opposite of disturbing. Yet here I am again in a duplex with paper thin walls & another bitchy neighbor. I would write music on a boat. I would write music in a goat. I would write it here & there. I would write it anywhere. A cabin in rural Alabam. Trailer in East Bank Louisiane. I'd write in hell if God deem me damned. I'm going to write music! SAM I AM!
Who are these girls who say "I'm awesome," and they actually mean it? What world do they live in?
My next record will be called "YET" and it'll be my response to all the things that haven't happened.
My heart is shaking my body
My body's shaking the floor
The house is tumbling over
And it's nevery more
The house is shaking the city
The city's shaking the world
The world is turning me over
To the nevery more
The world is shaking the goddess
And God she's shaking my heart
My heart is shaking my body
And we're nevery more
I don't want to have a blessed day. You can have a blessed day, but I'm ok. Thanks for your pseudo-empathetic greeting! Have a pseudo-empathetic day!
Somebody should probably shoot me in the foot.
The devil gets the best of me, and I got the worst of him. What gives?
That thing they say: "Once you hit rock bottom, there's nowhere to go but up." It isn't really true. It is possible to hit rock bottom and just stay there.
Sometimes the sweet sounds of silence sound sweeter than any stupid song.
Thinly sliced smoked turkey was the last meat I actually ate. I finally quit eating all meat when I quit cold turkey.
“Are you coming?”
"Yes I'll be there soon. My feet hurt. I need new shoes. Shoes and ships and ceiling wax. Lewis Carrol. Opium. Edgar Allen Poe. Ravens. I wish I could fly. There’s so many songs about flying. Lest we be reminded it rhymes with ‘high’ again? Lenny Kravitz and Sugar Ray are both shit. The Fly was good, though, right? I can't remember. Goldblum. Slit the side of the gold poppy just before it blooms. I wish I could fly on opium. I need a plane, a pipe and a poppy garden. Alliteration. Bells bells bells. Plane, pipe, poppy and Poe. But yeah, I'll be there soon."
“K”
I’m writing a song about a homeless dude who wants to turn his box into a duplex so he can get a girl to stay with him.
As if by providence, I'm still a vagabond in my home. Just a visitor in Nashville.
To all the "fans" that didn't buy my new album, It's "free" now so you can "download" it for "free" now. "Yum." "Bismarck." "Edible fruits." "Your mother's fat ass." LaSalle will be the last word you utter from your stiff, stank ungracious upper lips. Amen.
I hope my new neighbor wears a cardigan sweater and sings about how awesome our neighborhood is. I also hope he has a cool train set and the mailman is Mr. McFeely. Although, I would tolerate just having a neighbor that didn't call the cops on me every day. That would be cool too]
Homosexual is a sexist word when referring to lesbians. It’s Latin for “man sex.”
Vagina is a sexist word. It’s Latin for “sword sheath” or quite literally, a place for a man to store his weaponry.]
Most white men probably shouldn't dance. Let me know if y'all need any more life lessons. Don’t dance in public. That’s my advice. Thanks. You’re welcome. Good night.
Piss on an obelisk. Geographic center. Don't go back to the Boro.
Social media is making people depressed because we all think everybody else is in much better shape than we actually are. What kind of world is it where we see happy people and get sad? That's not the real world.
And what is art if not honesty?
Bobby: "You're like the worst at promoting yourself on Facebook."
Me: "Yeah I know."
Bobby: "You should just make music."
Me: "Yeah I know. I need a publicist or something."
Bobby: "You're seriously really bad with the social media thing."
Me: "Yeah I know!"
Me: "Yeah Mark always says, 'The cream rises to the top.'"
Dad: "Well it doesn't."
Me: "Damn. I know where I get my cynicism from."
Dad: "It's not cynicism. It's realism."
Me: "Yeah that's what I call it too."
I don't like when robot voices apologize. They don’t sound sincere. And I don't like the expression, "Wide eyed and bushy tailed" because I only have one eye and my tail fell off 800,000 years ago.
As a child I was told I was incapable of running a joke into the ground. When confronted, I boisterously proclaimed, "Go fuck your selfie."
I used to walk 7 miles in the snow to see a man about a dog. We meditated on a cloud named Henry. The only four words he ever said to me were, "Go fuck your selfie."
As DaVinci lay on his deathbed, he cried out to the angel Gabriel. The last words to leave his frail, crispy lips were, "Go fuck thy selfie."
When I was a child my mother worked at the Space and Rocket Center. I used to eat dinner with astronauts. I heed the advice of the great Alan Shepherd: "Go fuck your selfie."
One time, Murphy’s Law tried to eat my face, but I remembered the things I learned in cub scouts: stay calm, don't look him in the eye, and whisper softly, "Go fuck your selfie."
I don't know what I am, but I seem to be what everyone else isn't.
John Belushi and Bob Dylan have been added to my list of pseudo-doppelgängers.
Sashay through the dingleberries croqueting in the mire.
What's the cure for cat scratch fever?
Hair of the dog and an eye in the aether.
A BRIEF LESSON IN SILVER LININGS or the post-modern Prometheus of irreducible optimism:
Dave came up with that F diminished at the end of “Things” post-chorus-turnaround in 2005. He refused to accept 1% writer's royalties, so we agreed to donate those royalties to tsunami victims. But there were never any royalty checks, because they never let me release it, so I never had to deal with donating 1% of “Things” to tsunami victims, so that’s good.
I sealed the deal by destroying all the self doubt in between here and Sodom. Now all I need is an angel and an ostrich.
We're on the same side. There is no ideological divide. There is no left or right when it comes to taming this bull. There is only miscommunication. And a wild bull.
Close to genius level insane? If you say so. I’m rather weary of my left ear and am considering removing it.
Honesty is not only a virtue. It's marketable. It sells. It's the truth! You may not know it yet, but you love the truth, and you always have.
"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" is NOT a story about good vs. evil. It's a story about a girl who enters a world where no one understands her, nothing makes sense, there are no answers, and there's only one way out: “WAKE UP! ALICE, WAKE UP!” [P.S. Fuck you, Tim Burton]
There's much fun to be had, but we need not degrade each other to have it, and to have is not to own.
The best singers sing the wrong way. The best writers write the wrong way. The best painters paint the wrong way. Teachers do everything the right way, and great artists do everything the wrong way. You decide your way.
Every topic of conversation has become cliche. Everyone's opinions sound the same. You’re all boring. I’m leaving.
EULOGY: BURNED IN EFFIGY (cremated?) [YES & Eulogized on a rock.] (epitaph?) [YES: Eulogized epitaph burned in effigy. What is this, a fucking poem or something?] (yes.)
"Endure the pain for the free fish and wine. 'Didn't Jesus say that?' No that's my epitaph."
-Robert LaSalle's Epitaph
Once I tried to quit writing for awhile. After a week of abstinence, I started writing songs in my sleep.
Answer: No. It's a bar on Demonbreun un-ironically named, "SOUTH." I'm running sound for a Vanderbilt sorority party tonight. The colors red, white and black draw stark contrast on a backdrop of confederate flags as the 10-piece African-American band juxtaposes the 100% white clientele arriving by the busload. Literally 4 GrayLine busloads full of these future leaders of yesterday were dumped in this cesspit of southern oligarchy. I can't tell if I'm at a Young Republican's Convention, an Abercrombie & Fitch advertisement or a white supremacist rally. That kid's tux is worth more than my car. Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis' heads are plastered on the wall the size of Amistad, accompanied by real confederate money framed in Redwood to feed their majesty's delusions of grandeur.
Question: How many generations of genetic pure-breeding does it take to make a race of exactly 6' 1" men, 5' 10" women of the same skin tone, eye and hair color, and IQ of precisely 100?
I tried to eat my phone when I read this post and I ended up in a paradoxically spherical eternity with only a harmonium made of tinfoil and 7 billion people walking up an Escher staircase, mostly named Steve. An elephant Nick named "Cee-Bee" taught us to bleed tears phonically, and gradually we understood tears to be in the key of Db minor. Melted glaciers shat out hellish winds that toppled junipers over barrels of distilled grain, and our livers sweated gin. The aether revealed itself to be another continuation of time/space. Our energy dissipated, but it winked at me and smiled like a Warner cartoon with Albert Einstein's face as the moon. Fate's shame tasted like a looney lunar tune. Death spun the sphere of eternity around on my middle finger, forcing me to flick off the rest of the aether, Escher, and the Elephants. Oh, Steve, save the elephants. Luckily there were 3 surviving elephants on eternity's equator, which I named amusing, contradictory and inspiring. I'm learning to play the tinfoil harmonium.
A “REAL” ARTIST IS NOT AS HE APPEARS:
So my job as an artist is to convince a bunch of people that I'm awesome. If it wasn't true, why would it matter what I wore or what I said or how I acted or why I smoked 3 cigars at a time and kept a flask of bourbon in my boot? No, it's not a name-brand boot. Yes, it's a name-brand bourbon. Yes, Evan Williams. Well, it’s affordable and delicious, what’s your point? My point is no one cares about art. They’re entirely absorbed in appearance, and I have no concern for appearance outwardly or inwardly, thus I have failed at art, because all they want is the appearance of success, to be “branded,” and I’m not selling anyone anything, and I refuse to legitimize their vanity by acknowledging it as art, and so I’m running sound for “artists” instead of being one, and though I appear a failure, I know appearances to be false beyond measure.
TO BEND TO A BROKEN PARADIGM
IS NOT THE ARTIST’S FUCKING JOB:
FRIEND: “If you stopped drinking and stopped being so stubborn and argumentative, you’d be a lot more successful.”
SELF: “What you’re saying is, ‘If you stop being you, you’ll be successful.’”
FRIEND: “No, I’m saying you have the talent and everything it takes. Everyone who hears your music loves it, and no one denies how great you are, but…”
SELF: “…But in the 21st Century, an artist is expected to rise to the level of mediocrity, to the paradigm of ‘normalcy,’ and what they call ‘being an artist’ is actually just a popularity contest, and whomever has the most sociopathic tendencies of the used car salesman gets the job -wins ‘The New Prom Queen’? And ‘Congratulations, you’re a real artist now that the popular kids accept you?’ ”
FRIEND: “That’s not what I’m saying-”
SELF: “That’s a perfect reason to never stop anything. What you’re saying is, ‘Your peers will always judge you by their limited perception of you rather than the message, intention and quality of your work.’ And my answer to you is, I will remain authentic at all costs, and to bend to a broken paradigm is not the artist’s fucking job!”
FRIEND: “God, man, you’re just so goddam stubborn.”
SELF: “Yeah, they called Van Gogh an asshole too, by the way. And stubborn, too. So, thank you! Have a starry night! Goodbye.”
FRIEND: “Fine. Bye.”