#355

Things have definitely changed for the better since I broke my toe. It happened at the end of one of the worst, most exhausting weeks of my life, when I happened to be in the frontline of a present-apocalyptic, nuclear,  no-mercy-for-all war with my family, my work and my love life. Guess I just came to a point where even a broken toe could be the best thing. My mother had to call me twice a day just to make sure I was alright. I chain-smoked packs of cigarettes just to have myself lost in a glamorous cloud of stating “I know it kills me that’s why I try to get addicted.” Put it down—too much work to do with no result. And I just broke down too many times when I had to realize some people do care about me and just want me to be happy or only feel better. Tears of joy in the state of desolation.
 First I went to an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet then said fuck the bad parts and let the good things come. Basically this is how shallow my emotions are and yes this is how quick I decide to end my melancholy. Even though it’s still with me as it always was, because something’s gotta fuel the rage that made me who I am.


We played a horrible alley show at an industrial site next to dumpsters after 10 hours of painstaking work. My band, which is collapsing since forever, got invited to play at a skate contest’s after-party. We fucked up our set big time. So much for only playing the bass for months now—I still can’t play in the dark cause I have to look for the dots and sometimes mushrooms are not really helping one of our guitar players either with being in tune and time. I had no grimace, no motives and turned my denim covered back on the crowd. Realized we are too far gone from saving this show, and thus forcing some fun into our 15 minutes to live our life-that-really-matters-span.

The sex of punk is playing a show. And to look sometimes on the crowd and see friends just being there for us as we punks are always there for each other when it comes to just banging our heads and enjoying each other’s desperate noise was touching. Like a mother who cheers for her kid even when there’s no hope the poor kiddo will make it. Agreed, this was bad, and we realized it was a good thing that we always stuck to the description of our music as “psychedelic oi” but it was also a predestined falling in a good way, being a good excuse for the bad way failures.

So with lost faith I just shrugged my shoulders thinking whatever is cool with me and just let the night be what it should be.  Sipped some of my leftover beers and went inside to the skate pool where the ashes of the competition were. There I just transformed myself into a skate rat. I skated and broke my toe but I was happy, but by then it was more like the circumstances allowed me to. Everything just seemed to turn better.

I mean skating is fun, when you’re drunk nothing really hurts and finally even with the heavy pretence of almost-pros we just were there to be happy. Those cute punks trying to do as much old school tricks as possible shitting their pants when it comes to dropping into a mini ramp. But we already fucked up everything with our collapsing shitty music, so we of course had nothing to lose. And who cares about others, about anything, when it’s just fun what we do and no one gets hurt?

The truth is, I whine so much here in these columns but I guess just as everybody else I love life and I would love to live it fully. But this relation sometimes seems one-sided. But that night, whatever was in me and maybe could be caught some days in brief moments fully came to the surface and the halo of “I do care about having fun,” and it was my guiding light for the rest of the night. I later fell down from a bus seat when the bus took a minor turn, at that point we would have laughed even if a tram cut my legs off. I slept deeply and had amazing dreams.   


The next day friends came from Greece to visit and stayed for a couple days. An old-time friend and her friend who were our company for few days in a one room flat., sleeping four of us in two beds, cooking so much together and occupying bars.

Then White Lung came to play two shows. With a friend of mine we started booking bands we love and I guess we booked White Lung at a good time. They made it to a sold out show with 160+ people and a crazy sound guy who gave their singer Mish a backrub cause, as he stated it, she was transmitting bad vibes. The show was good. Sadly or not, the other show in a smaller town where my brother from another mother set up the show was better. But even ours was one of the bests of this year’s local shows. Everybody danced, I cracked my ribs, people were happy and enthusiastic. Skinheads were stagediving, girls were dancing. We listened to local gangster rap jams in our flat and passed out on the floor around 3 in the morning.

The same day as the show our new zine got published and it was just awesome to hold something we have done in our hands, to look on it, to browse through it and transform it to money to buy some beers.

I also went to see White Lung at that other town. It was good to meet them as people we already know. They also played a packed show there. I hung with many amazing people and woke up puking into a toilet. No idea what will happen to this band but they are amazing, awkward people who can party or just be nice and dedicated enough to sleep on floors next to drunk Europeans and smile while eating punk stews. That rage that they are carrying and the crazy guitar parts and entirely destroying phlegmatism is something that is hard to resist. It definitely got me to have tons of fun. My hope for next time they come is that I can sing a duet with them for their song “Tales.”

During these fun days we also had band practices, which are still pretty intense. Can’t wait to get these energies and punk love out on stage and crush everything that is shit with our existence. For example epic neo crust. No beef and total trust in full will, but that genre seems to become something here as in the beginning of the ‘00s when every band had at lest one ska song. I don’t mean we will be the best band ever, but everybody has to have an agenda right?

Then like last weekend after work I was reading about the pointlessness of life, which filled me with joy. ‘Cause it really is just mostly what you make out of it. And the least you like it the more sense you wanna force into it. It’s like creating something beautiful,  even when you’re making it alone in locked rooms. And what is the big problem except for the fact that things somehow turn badly cause norms are hateful and anti social? I have friends, I have punk, I’m doing what I love with whom I love. The rest shouldn’t matter. A crazy old man told me it’s not always easy to be an outsider. And he was right. Who is anti-social: the one who is silent and never bothers anyone or the one who always talks but doesn’t say anything and at the first moment when someone is different from them they just become hostile?

This stupid outside world. But again when i was kinda down or in an unstable frightening state of mind, life had found me. I got asked to do a monthly radio show in collaboration with people who are down to the core. It happened a week after I have found three sealed tapes in my window sil. Probably the construction workers left them there who are camping in front of our window fixing the roof for weeks. I stole ‘em, will fill them with mixes and send them away so I didn’t steal for keeps.

Nowadays I just have think about music I should mix together. I hope it will get me closer to paying closer attention to songs themselves, not just the grooves and the whole punk vibe. I’m such a terrible listener although I constantly have to hear something. The only thing I knew for sure when I did the radio show for MRR was that I wanted to play “I Need You” from Victim. This amazing Irish band just wrote all the perfect songs. Not a huge fan of American pop punk although sometimes I can be hypnotized by some beer soaked bearded losers. But the Irish Bloodstains across… era bubble gum rage is the shit for sure.

My favorite band is Victim even if Stiff Little Fingers was the band to convince me to be punk. Victim are just loud and perfect. If Kevin Shields was a teen in Ireland at that time I’m kinda sure they should have made a huge impact on him and the sound he has created. Wall-of-sound, perfect harmonies that are just hitting me. Everything is loud. Even the acoustic parts you can hear the picks shredded into the strings. So lively. I just wish I could find a vinyl version of their discography record that I only own in digital format. This band has harmonies that are beyond punk, and still you can vision the torn apart jeans. Too bad “I Need You” is too connected to me that I only listen to it on specific periods of my life. And when I’m not able I just miss the loudest song ever written.

I was wondering a couple weeks back about listening to music without being emotionally engaged. Not without liking it but without searching for yourself in it. Without letting it influence your mood too much, or at all. ‘Cause as you can suggest I like to over think everything and juxtapose my visions with emotions that I get from music,  so sometimes I’m unable to listen to bands and just enjoy them. I started to envy some of my friends who are listening to just some unbearable music. I was hanging with them and they were just nerding out on noise-but-not-music, grind/speed core with so much joy. That genre for me was always about suffering and lifeless thoughts born in filthy basements. And not the ones I hang in but the ones that are more fitting to keep runaway child slaves. But they seemed to enjoy it more than ravers wave to whatever is their party music. For them, it was just pure joy and through them I could see that loving music doesn’t always have to connect to relating to the music’s mood as fully as you can.  Because while that could sometimes be the best thing ever I guess having a different look on things isn’t that bad either.

So I’m jamming D-Clone right now and thinking this is just fun and it works.

One of the best new records I’ve heard over the last few weeks is the RAT COLUMNS LP. I was a RAT COLUMNS fan before I had even heard a second of sound of theirs. But someone who is the mastermind behind all those hopelessly vibrating riffs in RANK/XEROX, and being a part of the perfect fan-boy hardcore revival of Lou Barlow’s childhood-recreating band BURNING SENSATION can do no wrong. I saw them a few months before in San Francisco and they ruled my little world. Although the EP was weirdly tame and cute, this LP just holds a parade for every emotion what weirdos have to deal with. This record is just pure music. It’s loving melodies, guitars, noise, and sounds. It’s just being aware of things. It’s great because a person put himself in it. It’s great because it’s music to look up on empty-but still-lit office buildings while your night bus is taking you home from a failed date and everybody around you is drunk and irritatingly loud. But you can lose yourself in the moment and be mesmerized from this treasure. Those dreamy guitars are helping you. Those strange blippings that could come from equipment used in German new-wave sci-fi movies. Sometime it sounds like Loveless covered by a shy garage band through your neighbors’ walls. Other times it’s just beach music for those who only wonder on the shores on foggy days. There is a fog all around the record that carries its magic. Such a wonderful record. From kids to kids. It’s larger than life but still fits into a room.

#354

Whatever you will think after reading all this I actually do not believe that AGNOSTIC FRONT has written the most important song ever. Although I am thinking a lot about pooowwwwer these days. Because like it or not even punk is concerned with a lot of power issues. Of course, because punk is about life.

Power is nothing by itself—it’s only happening when people are legitimating it. But we are slaves most of the time to our own codes of establishment—the hierarchies all around that we let enslave us. I heard about a guy who got stabbed in prison because, when he was playing the guessing game with his cellmate, he was thinking of a platypus and his cellmate thought he must be cheating ‘cause for him there’s no such thing as that cute animal. I think this perfectly sums up how power and legitimation works. We are only as smart in the big picture as other people think we are. Just take yourself as an example, when you were in math class you didn’t just think it was hard but you actually thought this is a bunch of bullshit, total nonsense, when really it was just because you felt you didn’t need it. And while ignorance could be bliss, people should stand up and not take power in their own hands but just try to vanish it fully. ‘Cause as long as there’s power it’s gonna be in wrong hands.

            How can people enjoy constantly submitting to someone standing above them? The hot topic of punk today is PUSSY RIOT, and while their heroic self-sacrifice to lay bare how Russia is still a dictatorship was an amazing example of higher ethics, sadly they have sacrificed themselves for almost nothing. Just a spotlight on a problem. For centuries now we only reflect on problems not on solutions and we gave power to people in hope that they are the new ones so they will make a change. Which leads to essentially doing nothing except hoping that everything will be better with someone else in charge.

            We need something different! It has to be us who will change, not someone who says it will and makes us believe it. Maybe that’s why that Greek graffiti is true, “Punk rock won’t change the world, punks with rocks will!”

But I would rather say not all of those rocks should be thrown. Most of them should be spared to build something different. Not just better, but different and new. Things could be “better,” but remember if you play a game and its rules allow the players to be cruel than the game itself is cruel. As I see the world, it’s a place where we live by constantly negotiated exchanges. We use money ‘cause trade and barter would just be too confusing. We get money for our services and we pay money to others. We believe the value of money is changing like the weather. There is time, nations, languages, governments and the economy that we need to rule us. We made all of them and we accept them really ‘cause we fear a world without them. Doctors won’t be doctors and bakers won’t make bread if they are not paid, and we will just die. So basically people are doing their jobs out of fear: we won’t get money, and others won’t do their jobs if I stop to do mine. Laziness, apathy, fear, power.

I don’t want chaos, I want order to have no sense. I always believed making things pointless is more effective in destroying them than taking them over and trying to change them.

For me the key is the most utopian idea ever. It’s also the key to how this zine works. You take people who just want to give without receiving anything—people who wanna create something together without doing harm to others, without really asking for anything in return. I mean, I know you bought this issue for a couple bucks, but that’s because this zine exists in a certian environment. Some money has to be paid but at the end of the day, but it’s still–and will hopefully always be—totally non-profit. I believe in people’s own power to be a part of things like that. The power that helps them do what they do the best or to help others in the best way possible.

Let me be clear: this is not some new age hippy bullshit. Nothing will change anytime soon. And I hate when I’m the only one doing the dishes for a whole fucking week. But until we rely on each other in this way so we can rule with each other we are fucked. And maybe if we were more focused on giving rather than just receiving, we would receive a bit more. Today I cooked and I got a coffee not in return—not for some kind of trade, but just out of being nice.

As you can tell, nowadays I’m interested in these kinds of larger-than-life issues, especially when they are happening to a single person or within a person. Basically yeah, I guess I’m into existentialism, or whatever. But I’m the most under-read person ever, although I do have this fetish to fill my shelves with novels about the pointlessness of life, which to me always enlarges the point of living a life. To create it in whatever way you feel like it should be. This is what these books never say on the page, but what they really actually mean. That’s why I’m sometimes afraid to read them. I’m afraid to watch those movies as well. Cause I always imagine them to be much more heavy, much more fucked up, much more real than they really are. Because it’s always scary to start to dig yourself into something that you suppose is the realest thing in the world. I’m somehow afraid of the truth one person has found in a room, but at the same time I’m constantly searching the whole world for truth in noise that kids create in cramped, sweaty rooms. But that’s because music is different for me—not something that just reports the sorrow but something that makes it beautiful.

I’m pretty much getting obsessed nowadays with LIFE’S BLOOD, Revolution Summer bands and mostly also acts who were existing in some kind of oppression or as an opposite, being a new answer. Bands or performers who, while doing what I like them to do, somehow could also transform the whole thing into larger-than-life forces, or at least just larger than some dudes or ladies with guitars.

I experienced this last weekend when I happened to once again be at the rehearsal room to see some friends’ new band practice. It’s always funny when you know someone before he or she started to play music. Because with that in mind even their mistakes can be such an amazing force of angry, desperate kids reliving their anger and confusion through smart, unpredictable and kinda melodic songs. And it’s not just because my friend was playing guitar and singing some words, it’s simply because they’re a great band performing great songs shaken by their anger.

People seem to never understand how people could be totally different when they’re doing these kinds of things, different from their “regular” self “off the stage”—or in person from how they are on record. And not talking about people being “crazy” or “letting loose” on stage, rather I like finding that special kind of heaviness in bands and people playing music that makes them uniquely alive on stage. The kind that doesn’t come with wall of sound volume ‘cause even the cutest hum from the collective mouths of BEAT HAPPENING is bearing weight that shields all of us and crushes any asshole’s existence. But yeah, the obvious heaviness of LIFE’S BLOOD is good for me too in trying to anchor myself in total nihilism or too much stress—to leave it to others to rage instead of me.

I like that many people associate hardcore with the city that is New York and “New York Hardcore” with such bands as either those dinosaurs of SICK OF IT ALL, MADBALL, AGNOSTIC FRONT, or straight edge, or youth crew in general. I like the filth and anger of New York, the city that was once so crazy and dangerous that people mostly survived it rather than lived it. Or fuck knows, I mean the pictures of it from Woody Allen are quite different than what John Joseph or Michael Gira tell us through their music. I prefer the later when it comes to experiencing a town through art. I think music is power. But music itself has no power; people who are making music do. So while these horribly true songs about New York are the realest of things, nothing will be changed because of them. Just like how Pussy Riot as a band doesn’t have, somehow those three women conquered the whole world. LIFE’S BLOOD is not only playing Oi influenced bouncing and slashing hardcore which is catchy and dangerous enough as a psychopath who would grab your throat and shake the life out of you. But their songs are also soundtracks. Sounds of life, of a town, of people, of feelings. Of outsiders rising up and taking control over their lives. Anything that’s real or should be real or should not be real.

It’s cool that there are music scenes, but also that there are people being outsiders from them. I always loved the idea of scenes in a particular place ‘cause punk music for me is not simply the songs but the whole background world behind them as well. Seriously I could hate or at least be totally uninterested in bands if they are not somehow part of any scene and at the same time not also outsiders by fate. Scenes are great too ‘cause I also like those kind of connections in music. And what is better than people inspiring each other, being friends, partners, supporters of one another. So anyone who thinks scenes sucks is retarded. Only terrible scenes are terrible—that’s how life works.

I have spent a night trying to finish this column while inspiring myself with the big three of Revolution Summer DC—RITES OF SPRING, ONE LAST WISH and EMBRACE. Three bands with only one LP each, but all showing some deeper depths of punk, and using what was so good in early UK punk in terms of theatrical guitars and post-punkish pure strength, and then mixing it with their own open desperation. Showing power while telling how human we all are. Creating a whole new world widening our bedroom angst, proving there is no such thing as too much anger. And they did this with whatever was contemporary to them. 

Nowadays Oi-core is again back in the game, but who will ever be as viciously melodic as BLACK MARKET BABY? Senseless Offerings is an LP that you can’t beat. So powerful, anthemic and at the same time sounds like such a total lone wolf band that its unique strengths makes it something that is unable to be reproduced.

One of the darkest bands ever connected to the dance of days forever scene was UNITED MUTATION. Where is the promised UNITED MUTATION discography LP? Anyways they are being one the flagships of my everyday jams. Those throat cancer vocals and the brutally crazy music that gathers all the filth that failed people like to hump in. Mutant hardcore. UNITED MUTATION’s mutant hardcore was what now would be called “mysterious guy hardcore.” And also, I’m biased towards YOUTH ATTACK I think it’s cool they have founded a scene and a sound. But you kids shouldn’t buy their bin bag shirts cause it’s the blindest way of legitimizing and making something some kind of fucking establishment, as if whatever is cool mostly because it’s labeled a certain way. Fuck that. I’m here for more.

I think I’m running out of space so my final thought is go and listen to BLAST AND THE DETERGENTS.

NORMS

yo,

this is our new band called NORMS. the footage was taken at our debut show in our rehearsal room where we played with the awesome local band called WRYNESS and had a rave party afterwards. you won't see anything or hear recognizable music but after all this is kinda what we do. i sing and dance. demo soon.



this is wryness

things with me

so because i love all my unknown readers i wanna give you something even during this heavy months of the delay. When i had a myspace page i was frequently bloging shit there so here comes the sooo ’00s part of this blog. have you heard of the wipers? kurt cobain liked them!

-  i was asked to participate in a radio show where i could do anything i want until it’s connected to punk. this was a big dream of mine even though i have speech impediment and willing to do nothing against it. conclusion is if i could succeed you could as well. just stay in your room and instead of having a social life listen to music and have weird thoughts.
-  new total control ep is a killer. hope i can put this into my year’s end list even if they are at sub pop now. wish i could write a year’s end list for mrr if not i will upload it to here. i also wish i couldn’t put them on my list that would mean mrr is still fanatically dedicated to it’s principals. loved when layla wrote about how she only loves cool bands that are independent and not here to make it at all. also we shared a common bummer when i have realized that the compound is not holding any comet gain records cause „people here don’t think they are punk”. definitions.
- new sf band index is a blast too. one of my favorite “wow this is fucking amazing” moments of this year for me was when with two of my good friends we were hanging at Martin’s place which is kinda the limp wrist/neddles hq and while he was amazingly nice and fun and the best host ever jess from brilliant colors/make a mess rec/index was eating a hamburger in one of the flat’s armchairs and she was waiting for us to end the discussion of the upcoming rákosi 7”s cover so she could start hers on putting out martin’s photo book which i’m almost sure is a must have.
- also wtf moment of this year. sitting in a bar with all the mrr guys eating pizza, drinking beer and whisky, showing off tattoos then cause we were at the corner of mrr and they were holding a meeting it was amazing to see the people ran out for the newcomers to invite them in for a drink or for a slice of pizza before discussing the future of punx. like a press gang of a school paper that's saving lives. amazingcore!

-  i wrote a wish list for the ’10s and it’s kinda cool to see how much of it already happened.

- one of them was to get as many free shit as i can. this week i got a box of chocolate flavored soy milk (i’m not vegan and never fucking will be, cause butter and cheese over everything) and an original Black Flag – Damaged tape. Before that I got a tote with a hand drawn meat puppets – in a car cover design. people are rad.

- nowadays i’m fascinated by finnish and japan crust d beat worship bands and neu and the clean. international punk is important especially if it’s from or for the space.

- wish i could up all daying. i hate it that the slightest thing to do which would take like 5 minutes feels like to live up my whole day. sometimes i hate my brain.

- i receive weird messages. but if you like my stuffs poke me on facebook.

- last week i was at a chinese restaurant where i ate some amazing tofu. only thing that was weird it smelled like cat poo. kinda reminded me to a girl in a good way.

- wish i had more confidence at markets also more strength to carry home everything i would buy.

- i’m thinking on starting a tumblr. so i guess i won’t ever.

- I hate my job but afraid to look for another. I’m lonely but so unmotivated to speak with boring girls.

- today i listened to an inspirational speech about how to be a writer. if it would have affected me i guess i would never think i will be a writer. but i also think i never will be a writer. so I wasted my time listening to some dude.

- my new band has a name. we are Norms. if you know a band with the same name don’t tell me it would break our heart. also it’s the band i wanted to do for more than a year now. i loved to play bass in another band but i also love just to sing and dance. write lyrics and perform them. i feel like in a way this band is my comeback. also our name is a tribute to norm macdonald.

- my curse is I can’t watch awesome movies while listening to punk music while reading a book while writing, eating and making out with a girl at a punk/show/abandoned park/pub in a bed all day.

- we made a zine with my room and band mate. he drew I wrote. so he is the artist I’m the sad one. I was afraid that they will fire my from mrr for it but I think they already have them and I got lovely messages today from them. also they have interviewed pettibone and we mostly just ripped him off.

- I love food.

- last week two girls told me they like the things I write. this week I wrote to a band that even though I love them they sucked live when I saw them. Other people are nicer than me.

- Saturday I was walking home through a bridge that was fully covered in autumn mist. the seagulls were circling like crazy and in the middle of the bridge there was a girl in a red boot. standing there still, wondering and looking into the blinding nothing that the mist provided for us. I thought she could be my soul mate but it was 1 am and I had to get up in the morning and work 10 hours the next day so I just walked by. capitalism stole my whatever.

- alright I’m not funny I give up. 

shameless self-promotion

while the delay is still on here's a zine i have collaborated in with a friend of mine who drew pictures for my words. to not be the person who tells you how great it is here are some words about the booklet (from a friend of ours):

http://heart-a-tact.blogspot.hu/2012/10/fanzine-1-neon-skinheads-in-electric.html

also a brief review:

dude, some disturbing stuff in this zine

and profound stuff

and some disturbingly profound stuff

and some disturbing AND profound stuff


check out this band too. glue addicted space punk - http://pisscrystals.bandcamp.com/album/harn-chemikalien-wunderbare-gedichten-1

delay

so because you people are not buying enough copies of MRR i was asked to put a delay on posting my columns. Thus they still will be here but not as freshly as they were. Start buying the zine or wait one month.

# 353 Summertime Gloom

"at first you will fail then you will recognise
the mistake was in giving what you never could own
you might be young now and you might be alone
you might have one thing that you do well
and people will tell you the world it looks this way
but they're all the same they're just useless waiting here"

Hopefully this will be my last column ever… written from my old room. I lived in this flat for 20 years. I changed to another room when my brother moved out right on my 18^th birthday after a minutes-long date with a girl I had the biggest crush on. She kissed me in the middle of town. We met, made out, she handed me a letter saying Happy Birthday, kissed my forehead as a farewell, then left. I went home and felt like even if I hate this room now life is kind of alright. It is. Or was. And maybe it still will be.

I hated this flat at first, then not only accepted it but also began to love it. This was the room where I was. Where I was myself. Where I did everything. Came up with bands, lyrics, songs, zines, tours, shows, columns, mails. Made out, loved, cried after break ups, made hour-long calls. Here slept a few dozen friends and many bands, and that was the place where I had a breakfast with Al Burian and a cute techno band while we were listening to CRISCO THUNDER, eating bruschetta.

This is where I learned about the whole world, but also where I brought the whole world and this is where it opened up for me — where I could always return and it would make me feel better even if I never left. We all are born into a wrong place if we care too much about our whereabouts. But after all we just live in rooms and that’s all we ever change. If you feel stuck it’s you and not that place where you are. You can’t escape planet earth.

Now my records are boxed up and so are my books. All of my clothes are washed and ready to be put into several plastic bags. I feel like I will miss my mother though cause she was a great person to me. And I would be so glad if I could tell her—and she could understand—what kind of things I did and in which things was she my silent partner, always trusting and supporting me and setting me free to do whatever was my thing—except when I came home with a bloody face or puked next to my bed. To tell her also how I achieved almost everything I ever wanted and now I’m just striving to maintain these without selling my soul. But one of the reasons because I had to leave was just that I could no longer hide some my feelings from my parents I just didn’t want them to see me like this, because I wanted to hide myself and also find myself in better shape. 

The thing is I’m so far from feeling alright. There’s nothing glorious, spiritual or meaningful in depression. It just makes you sad, tired, and weighed down, so if you can, you’d better avoid it. I don’t even know if I’m depressed cause I still take baths before going out and I still eat food to be alive, although both activities seem more pointless day by day. But for some reason I like to smell my own skin cause it calms me down. Even at a show two friends of mine started sniffing me once and I laughed… so baths might save me, and I want to be saved so I have to carry on.

Yesterday on my way home from a show I blast my headphones to the In A Car EP from the MEAT PUPPETS. And it felt good. Fuck it, I gave in: I need a tote bag but will only wear one if there’s one with the design of this EP’s cover. Music might save me. Listening to music already did—finding myself all swept up in it and just the pure liking of punk music.

Sometimes I wonder how much it matters if you know the person whose whining you have to listen to. I try to believe there is a way everything sounds interesting. I mean, I could love songs that are about things that really don’t matter that much to me, but still every time they make me feel that this is the only thing that exists. I even have stupid tattoos from songs which I have no idea what their lines mean.

I’m telling you this because I was wondering about it as I jam my friends’ solo album, which is another one of the things that is also saving me at the moment. It’s great and sometimes when I’m really drunk I start to sneeze to it due to trying to keep a balance between a total breakdown in tears or being happy that I’m not alone, even with my problems and my instant loneliness rushes. But this solo record is just too true. When you realize it’s everything and everyone and so it goes. Sometimes there are just words what would be meaningless out of context but knowing the person and their background they are just even better for me, while maybe for others it’s still nothing. But in reality it’s everything. And I would feel dissed if I had missed this album.

This is how for some people everything I do is just stupid rambling, but for others it’s hopefully something more. When I started writing for MRR and I sent out the columns to my friends here they responded to me saying how cool it was that everything I wrote about is something we had already discussed, or how cool it was that I secretly referred to them. Maybe being an outsider made me endorse insider things, but in the end we are all just humans making and telling our stories. It’s all about desires, requires and communication.

Yesterday when I left my old room with the last round of stuff, while waiting at the bus stop I almost cried. I just didn’t know what I felt or what I should have done with these vague emotions. Heading to our new flat I ran into my new flatmate who asked me what was wrong. I felt beaten. He said I looked sad. And I just got amazed how much this person knows me while I tried to hide all my feelings. I failed in communication, but he succeeded in being a friend. I’m scared and heartbroken not just moving and leaving the old family nest. I’m afraid nothing will change because this is just how I am.

But I also recall something someone told me once: there is nothing I can’t do. And it’s true for all of us. So I recall many things, and I realize this more. It’s funny how most of the times I feel fucked up, people from different parts of my life without knowing anything about my condition just find me to cheer me up. Getting e-mails, and nice words. Or recalling the moment when Mariam ran her hands over my cheek and told me I have an interesting brain. Or Francesca home taping me the second SON SKULL LP in seconds after I blamed the internet for not leaking the album, and mailing it to me from the other part of the world. Or having paranoid dreams and skull fuck thoughts for a whole night, then waking up and receiving an email from Perennial telling me they wanna send me records to review. Or my friends just being my friends. My favorite secret terrorist editing this every month.

For a reason this time I’m noticing everyone around me, and thus feeling guilt for not always being the person they liked. Like not answering those lovely mails and just being flakey. Not finishing overdue things. Losing contact with people who I would really love to talk to, sometimes they’re even just staring right in front of me. And sometimes I fall for these weakened moments thinking there might be some glory in sorrow and pining. But there isn’t. There’s glory in sitting in front of a bar and talking with a person I shared bands with for 8 years about doing yoga now and being punk forever. That Greek smile and Szeged hug. Everybody everywhere. Band members, collaborators, partners in crime. people I swam with once. Always just too many who just as well as me sometimes go home and feel alone, but somehow they know this is not the end of the world, even if it is 2012.

It has to be working on something that will always make me feel better. I always got together with girls and otherwise felt great when I did something. When I was putting sweat on something I liked and was proud of. It gave me self-esteem and I was just a healthy person. Cause who likes someone who is just wondering around in his self-generated tragedy? What scares me is sometimes I know I’m not a terrible loser but still I feel low and I don’t know why. It just hits me and there is weight on my chest and confusion behind my eyes in my skull. I can feel my thoughts and fears in my body and it scares me.           

For such a long time I lived my life in a bubble. I liked to call it punk but I was just a messed up kid in love with punk. I didn’t care about people other than my bandmates and a handful of friends, mostly outsiders of the scene. But this doesn’t mean that now I love everyone, it means that back then I wasn’t even talking to anyone else other than just six people in the whole world. Although I never thought that I’m better than anyone else I just didn’t care about the rest. They say if you like something do it with full heart and then someone will find you. I have found myself. And I got lonely only when I finished these things. I wanted people to find me, but now I blame myself for being too blind to not see how many of them did. Thus while pining in the dark and thinking hard on what went wrong I should just think about what is still right and make efforts to turn everything around for the better. I never was lucky, I just didn’t give a fuck about failing cause you know. Ever try, ever fail, try again, fail again, fail better.   

Thank whatever for Michael Gira and fuck the haters!