#muckbound

THE BLUES

My friends and roommates, on the whole, are a creative bunch. They might not be Picassos, or Hemingways or Mahlers, but they’re far more creative and imaginative than most Americans. One thing that’s problematic for me, though, is that a lot of them are sort of secretive about their creativity. Secretive might not be the right word - private, maybe. Gen types all her stories late at night, long after I’ve gone to bed. Brian only plays guitar when no one else is home. Peter makes all his music on his 4-track, in the privacy of his apartment. Kate is apparently really good at singing the blues, but God forbid anybody should hear her - she only sings in her bedroom, with the door locked tight. It’s a pretty crappy way of going about things, and I’d love to get all self-righteous about it, but I’m afraid I’m just as guilty. I don’t sing when my roommates are around either. I type most of my stories late at night, and I work on my magazine in the back room of the third floor of the public library. Cometbus said something in a story about how funny he must look when he’s working on copy art - flying from machine to machine, feeding and folding and reducing and enlarging like a man possessed. “But doesn’t everyone look like a madman doing what they truly love?” he said. I finally saw Peter perform his funny 4-track music live, at the bowling alley the other night. He did look like a madman. He made all these weird faces, and when he was playing guitar he did this fucked up thing with one of his legs where it was kind of shooting around spastically and arhythmically - it was awesome. People do funny things when they’re in the throes of creation. I had an art teacher when I was a kid who said I always stuck out my tongue when I got real involved with a picture. I don’t know, maybe I still do that, stick out my tongue while I’m writing. I think it’s fascinating to watch people work like that.

It’s funny to think about what people make public and what they keep private. I feel uncomfortable singing when my roommates are around, but I have no problem hauling my guitar down to Belmont Avenue and singing on the street corner for hundreds of pedestrians. I’m not sure what that’s about. Sometimes you’ll meet a person and they’ll be really shy and quiet and then you find out that they sing for a punk band, and have, like, this alter-ego that can get up on a stage and let all hell break loose - and sometimes the people who are the most carefree and outgoing when you see them on the street or talk to them at a party are terrified of performing in public. There’s this tension where private and public life meet; when you know you’re being watched, it changes everything. It’s a very exciting feeling; it’s also scary as hell. I still get nervous playing for open-mic crowds of ten or fifteen people. When you’re playing for yourself, you can sort of edit. When you fuck up, you can be like, “Well, nobody was around to see it, so what difference does it make?” And that freedom to fuck up allows for a lot more experimentation. It takes a lot of balls to fuck up in public - you can’t imagine your mistakes away when there’s a roomful of people watching you. I guess people that write have it pretty good. They’re able to make their work public and edit out their mistakes - what’s missing is the tension and thrill of having a flesh-and-blood audience. Because it’s great to sing the blues in your bedroom where no one can hear you hit a wrong note or forget the words - but then nobody hears it when you hit that one part just right, when it all comes together, and then when it’s over you think maybe you didn’t hit it just right after all - just your bedroom walls playing tricks on you.

Things I found while packing (the mags & zines edition):

Issues 1 & 2 of The Fall (of Culture), c. July & August 2000. It was a newsprint punk rag featuring reviews & interviews & the like; one of the editors was a barista at the Kokomo Caffe in Chicago, which was the nexus of my life between July-December 2000. (Which doesn’t sound like a long time, but so much happened in that timeframe, and a lot of it revolved around the Kokomo.)

The 25th anniversary edition of PUNK Magazine, c. 2001. (Is it giving me feelings that if 2001 was the 25th anniversary, that means next year is the 50th? Yes, and that feeling is, my god, we’re all so old.)

Muckbound, a novel by Liam Idiot and Gen Schock, c. 2001. Gotta love a ‘novel’ that’s Xeroxed like a zine and bound together with staples and duct tape. (I stole that idea for my own zine-novel, a year-ish later.) Liam published War Against the Idiots zine, Gen’s zine I can’t remember the name of, but they were both rad people and friends of mine and this one makes me soooo nostalgic.

The Number One Special. This one makes me hella nostalgic, too, though I never actually met the folks behind this zine, afaik. I found it at Quimby’s in 2001, and it’s all about hanging out at Punkin’ Donuts (the Dunkin Donuts on the corner of Clark & Belmont), and other punk stuff, like taking a road trip to Milwaukee to hang out with the punks there.

Proof I Exist issues #1-#3, c. January 2002, June 2002, and February 2003.

And Proof I Exist #17 (March 2014) & #42 (October 2023). Yes, I Know Billy (these aren’t even close to all the issues of PIE I have, not to mention his other zines), and have for a very very long time. In fact, PIE #1 contains a story about the second time he and I hung out.

Safetybin #1. This was by a guy named Shane, from Burlington, IN, whom I met at the Anarchist Bookfair in Chicago in 2002.

Gunmoll #3, by Terra. Another Chicago-based zine friend of mine, in the early ‘00s; another zine that makes me nostalgic.

Crash: The life and death of a GERM. A really excellent comix zine about Darby Crash.

Flirtations for Ladies and Gentlemen. A zine containing excerpts from an antique etiquette book, which I got from a zine vending machine in Montreal in September 2003.

I am not a productive member of society, nor am I detrimental enough to make much of a difference. In the Darwin scheme of things I’d be good food, meaty and slow, that’s about it.

I survive my insignificance by writing about it and praying that the chaos theorists are right. Every time I pick up a pen, somewhere a hurricane is brewing.

Liam and I were discussing the possibility of suing America for all the damage it has caused us. America provides us with too many examples of what we should be doing with our time. It gives us a million choices of how to work, play, what god to believe in, what tv shows to watch. If you’re not satisfied with your options it’s because you’re too idealistic or you’re crazy. I like almost everyone else, have these vague misgivings about the world. Unlike most people though I [don’t have] some organized religion or some well defined sub-section of popular culture to rationalize my feelings of guilt and longing.

I thought for a long time that this debilitating confusion is what made me a punk, actually it was the leather jacket, the bad haircut, and the beer. Punk was supposed to change the world, but as I plunge further into the stereotypical punk life the more I realize it leaves me feeling just as vacant, and usually more injured.

At a show a couple weeks ago, a cook county sheriff beat the crap out of me and put a cigarette out in my face. His reasoning for being so rough on me was my androgynous hair and dress made him think I was a boy.

On my way to get red hair dye (the most effeminate color I can stand) just prior to lopping off my mohawk for safety reasons, the same group of skins/street punks (as their neatly embroidered jackets will tell) who beat me up a year ago began harassing Josh and I about our punk-ness. This time, instead of delivering a monologue on human decency, we apologized for our existence and got away unscathed.

It may seem like the pussy way out, but despite all the shit I talk I AM a pussy. Josh and I realized that most would not consider us very good punks, but we didn’t care and hadn’t for a long time.