4 posts tagged “bitching”

So I'm going to whine and be pathetic here, because as Aaron Barrett of Reel Big Fish once said, "I found out that you can make a helluva lot of money off of pain and suffering." Not that I'm making money here, but I just think that it's due time...I mean, it's been like an entire week since I've done this whole 'therapeutic venting' shit, might as well resume somewhere.

So I noticed today that I have virtually no social skills anymore outside of my group of friends. I've made like....I'd say 20 friends max here that I can call and talk to, and that's only if I include all 13 other people from my dorm as my friends. It's great, because I am pretty much friends with everybody in my dorm. This is a good thing, living with 13 friends, but it's apparently put quite a large damper on my ability to meet new people. For example:

There's this one girl that I've known for a while who I've maintained a...well, I guess you could call it a friendship. I think the main problem with my friendships here has been stated by yet another influential person, my friend Zaxk. I was chatting about friendship to Zaxk, and he said something that really stuck with me. It went as follows: "[One of our friends at his college] is the only one who I can relate to up here. Even though I'm friends with other people, and we just go through the motions. I think they just view it as a normal friendship, but I view it as a fake friendship... nothing special at all." That quote describes almost all of the friendships I have up here. I feel that very few--maybe 3, if I'm pushing it--friends here I can actually relate to and really converse with. The rest of them are just these robotic friendships. We say hi, chat for 5 minutes, maybe write on our Facebook walls, and then move on. Simple, fleeting, like a housefly that never stops to land before it dies. And I hate it. Some contact would be nice, in any sense of the word.

But anyway, this girl that I knew was originally in my L&T, which was a workshop all us freshman Bardians attended in August. We had fun, chatted, never really paid much attention to each other, as I had my eyes directed towards another girl. That fell through, I was/am young and stupid, and, well, I'm moving on. I come into my French class, and she's in that as well. Quelle suprise, as the French would dire. Suddenly, we start being like...actual friends. She Facebook friends me, invites me to a few social gatherings at her dorm, etc. I feel accepted, warm, and fuzzy, but nothing really happens. I kind of decide that I like this girl and wouldn't mind pursuing a relationship with her; but until recently, relationships have really been the last thing on my mind. Yet for the last week, for some reason, they've been all I can think about. I keep looking at girls I know and thinking to myself "Could I bother myself to go out with them?" Well, that's not exactly the question I ask, as I'm a fucking pussy (This will be elaborated on shortly). But you get the point.

So today, we take a midterm dans la classe de francias, and after it, we end up walking down to the campus center to grab a cup of coffee. And by that, I mean literally just that. There was no sitting down and talking, hell, there was barely any talking. We just bought coffee, checked our mail, chatted with a few mutual friends, had some discussion about lifeguarding or cars with each other, and went our separate ways. Why? Why am I not intelligent enough to actually start something that's fun and/or positive? I don't know, and I wish I could find out. If I just got back into the social niche I'm comfortable with, the old James could come back, and I could start being suave...-er. Maybe I just need more practice, more experience talking to new people to get back to the place I was at before I arrived here.

I've become too damn introverted for my tastes. I mean, I'm fucking complaining to a BLOG. This needs to stop; I'd actually rather be complaining to a psychologist, as sad as that is.

-blake.

"The attack, I'm feeling the attack, I'm feeling the attack
Of basic social skills I know I know I know I know I lack.
I'm hyper-cognizant of facts
I'm well-aware that we are barely scraping by
But my good intentions aren't enough to salvage that."
-"No Rest for the Whiny", by Bomb the Music Industry!

Okay, so here goes one of my first anecdotes. I'll try to make it a relative quickie, because I'd like to get a bit of sleep tonight after the horrible episodes I underwent today.

Today was supposed to be the best day of the weekend. I had all of my immediate homework done, a work schedule where I didn't have to wake up until noon, and a loving mother who was going to come up to Bard, visit me, and give me money/real food. What I wouldn't give to have any one of those things happen at any given time, let alone all within 24 hours of each other. Of course, as it's been said, the best laid plans of James Blake always go awry, and today's was no exception. I woke up from a semi-drunken stupor at about 10:30, and didn't feel the need to go back to sleep. That's right, in the first five seconds of my consciousness, I somehow destroyed one of the many beautiful events of my day: I didn't want to sleep in. I wasn't complaining at the time, but now that it's 12:30 AM, I'm starting to grumble inwardly, which might also be caused by a lack of food...

Anyways, I'm up at 10:30, so I decide to go get myself some breakfast at Kline. They have to have good food for parents' weekend, right? The whole desire-to-impress deal has to come into effect in the food, which is probably one of the most miserable items on campus. Yet again, wrong. After trudging 10 minutes in the grisly downpour that generally symbolized today, I got to Kline to discover they hadn't done shit about their food. It was still the same old shit, but they decided to put away some of their less delectable items, such as their "Tangy Tofu". It was the cream of the crap, so to speak. Being the genius I am, I decided not to waste my entire trip up by not eating, and I grabbed an entire bowl of Fruit Loops! After downing the part of this completely unhealthy breakfast with water-milk, I made the 10-minute trudge back soaked to the bone, and checked my e-mail.

At 12:15 PM, I realized that my mom had sent me an e-mail, in which she expressed her excitement at some of the parent/student activities going on that weekend. And then there was a but. There's always a but in these sort of things. In this case, the but was that she didn't want to drive five hours in the rain 'just' to see me, and that she'd come up some other time. At 12:16 PM, I realized that, of course, my dad had told her not to go, and, of course, my mom had complied like the feeble puppet she is. Let me clarify something here; I detest my family as a whole, and wish nothing less than their complete and total destruction. My father is a manipulative, lazy, greedy bastard who doesn't give a shit about anything or anyone but himself. My brother is a lazy idiot who spends more time playing video games then caring about the classes he's failing in his sophomore year of high school. And my mom, well, my mom's great. She cares, she listens, and she understands the things I choose to do...when she's not around my dad. When my dad has even one word to say about a topic, my mom doesn't care, turns a deaf ear, and castrates even my right to be heard in the family. Naturally, I was incredibly excited about seeing just my mother for the weekend; my dad (alas) had gotten caught up in yet another one of my brother's failed attempts to fill my shoes.

Then it started raining, and my dad just used it as an excuse not to see me. Of course, my brother can go be driven an hour each way to do a Scout thing that he'd just slack off during; dad's in charge of that. But let poor old mom get behind the wheel for 5 hours total to see little old me for 10 hours for the last time before Thanksgiving? 'Feh, let the bastard rot there' is my dad's general philosophy. I'm not joking, either. The night before I left for college, he literally told me that that night was the last chance I had to pack my bags and leave forever. That's almost word-for-word what he said. But enough about dad. I was more pissed that my mom had bowed to his will yet again, and in doing so, ruined my day. Everybody else at the dorm was doing stuff with family today, so I was going to be alone for the rest of the day if I chose to stay there. Alone in my room with nothing to do, because, like the genius I am, I got homework out of the way to see my mom. So at about 12:20, I quietly started plotting my revenge.

This revenge would manifest itself a lot sooner than I would ever have thought. At 12:23, my friend Dan started talking to me about a concert at his college. He commutes from home to Montclair State University, and is majoring in music education. The concert in question was called "Oc-TUBA-fest", and was a celebration of our favorite instrument, (you guessed it) the tuba. I responded to him with jealousy, saying that I'd give an arm and a leg to see that show. "Well, why don't you take the train down here, see it, crash at my place, and go back to Bard Sunday?" he queried. And so,  at12:25 the dice were cast.

The plan was so: I would ask to get the last half hour/hour of my shift off so I could grab a 4:00 train into the city at 5:55, changeover at a 6:10 train, and get to South Orange at 6:45, where I would be picked up and go to the 8:00 concert with Dan. I ran like a madman through the rain to the gym to get in contact with the lifeguard who would take my shift, and after being soaked from head to toe and shivering, I had the shift off. I was going home, and I was going to bring pneumonia with me. It was supposed to be fantastic.

Of course, it wasn't. I packed, went to lifeguarding, got off, and eagerly rushed to get my ride to the train station. I got on the train, which was 10 minutes late, and got antsy around 5:40, when we pulled into Yonkers. We were still about 20 minutes off from Penn Station, and as a relative newbie to changeovers in the station, I had no idea where to go. I figured that a 15-20 minute gap would be fine, but with the current schedule, I'd be lucky to get a 5 minute gap. At 6:00, as we rolled through upper Manhattan, I had one hand on my cellphone and the other on my bag. The train got into the station at exactly 6:07, and I practically sprinted out and up the escalator to try and find a quick-ticket window and get my sad, sopping ass to Jersey. By some ill-founded miracle (what God in their right mind would help me?), the ticket machines were literally right in front of the escalator's top, and so was a train schedule. The Dover line, which went through South Orange, just started boarding, so I had to hurry my ass up. I muttered curses to myself to the amusement of the passersby while punching in factors of my journey, when a man walked up to me. He was a short-ish, but incredibly stocky black gentlemen who greeted me as I was putting my credit card in. After I'd fucked up the direction twice, he asked me if I had any money I could give him, to "help a brother out" (not being racist, that's the exact terminology he used).

I calmly explained that I was really late for a train as I got the credit card right, but he persisted. I finally caved. "How much do you need?" I asked impatiently, opening my heart and my wallet to him. "Ten bucks would be fine, man." he said calmly to me as I punched in the final details and waited for my ticket to print. "I only have six I can give, sir," I said, shelling out the only small change in my wallet. Unfortunately, I shelled out too obviously, and revealed a series of 20-dollar bills. Big, big mistake. "C'mon man," he said, taking an ID card out of his pocket. I flinched as his hand went in. "I just got out of prison, man. Did ten years, hard time. How about that twenty, man?"

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I was being mugged through veiled threats in the middle of Penn Station as the soothing voice interrupted classical music on the PA to say "Last call boarding for the Dover line on Track 1..." And as my ticket dropped from the machine, I gave him the 20 and tried to suppress my disgust for the entire human race as he pounded my fist and said "Thanks, bro. You made a good choice." And, taking the twenty-six dollars I had foolishly given him, walked away.

Resignedly, I sprinted to the train, caught it, and went to South Orange. I had twenty dollars left to my name, but goddammit, I had made the train in 4 minutes, and I was going to see some amazing tuba antics. And see some amazing tuba antics I did, but nothing could prepare me for the hell that was the grand finale of my night. Dan neglected to tell me that he actually had a trombone lesson tomorrow morning, but he'd made sure to tell his parents who keep him on an incredibly taut leash. Lesson in the morning plus orchestra practice in the afternoon equals no friends over for the night. James can go sleep at his own house...or can he?

Dan drove me to my house in silence, where the lights appeared to be on and all appeared to be well. Alas, that was not the case. My bastard father was asleep in front of the TV, and nobody else was anywhere to be seen. I got as far as the sun-room as Dan pulled away, and then was confronted with the problem of locked doors. Great, everybody's sleeping, I'm locked out of my house, I've been mugged, and my knight in shining armor just drove out of my life in a '92 Toyota pickup. I'm on the last dregs of my battery as I type this, but let's just say the garage isn't as warm as the house could be.

What in any deity's name made me think that tonight would work, even in the smallest part? My mom's not going to be happy to see me; I'm just going to get bitched out for not telling them, losing my money, and wasting money on the train. Then I'm going to get bitched out for making them drive me back, because I sure as hell am not going to be allowed to take the train.

My message of the day to you: Don't trust your impulses. Ever. I don't think there's ever been a case, at least in my experience, where acting on your impulses has led to a positive outcome.

Also, the new Streetlight Manifesto album has apparently found its way onto the tubes. The link (links aren't illegal, yay!) is here. Enjoy, if that's your thing. I hear that it's really good, and really intense. Knowing Tomas and Streetlight, it'll probably make my top 10 list at the end of this year.

Until Sunday, when I'll have stories.

-blake.

I am writing something. I am rambling and ranting about anything I can, because this is the only form of writing I can do right now. I've been starting at the screen of my new project for the last fifteen minutes without a word coming out, which is a pity, because I've only written 500 words in it today, and that was before I hit my block. Today started off so good, but everything's turned into shit right now. I can't even say that I feel miserable right now, because I feel so much worse than that. It's one of those times where not existing at all wouldn't make a difference, and you'd be doing exactly the same thing. And you know what's even worse? I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight, because my fucking brilliant body's response to stress is narcolepsy. My day has just been so fucking horrible. I just can't seem to stress that enough. I'm ranting and rambling anyway, so I'll see how much complete and utter crap I can spew before my computer runs out of battery. This could be dangerous. Like, 45 minutes of writing at one time dangerous.

First off, I don't think I want to play piano anymore. Not at all, that'd just be stupid of me. I mean under a teacher, classical piano, whatever. I guess I want to not be challenged by piano, not after all the work I've put into it. No, that wording's wrong. What I mean to say is that for spending 10 years of my life practically fucking married to the instrument, I'd like to see some gratification. Whoop de doo, I can memorize a 2-page Bach Invention after three weeks. I should have been at that point by age THIRTEEN, but no, for a number of reasons. The first thing that incenses me is my jackass piano teacher. I fucking love that guy, I mean, he's practically my idol. He's a blue-collar worker, big carpenter, and he also plays piano in a swing band and for a church. And he's good. Really fucking good. But he was trained classically, and he detested it. So he didn't pay that much attention to classical technique when I decided that I wanted to stay with the genre for the rest of my life. As a result, I'm moving my fingers, not my wrists or my shoulders. This fucks me over in three ways. First off, I'm going to have arthritis at an early age, it's practically set in stone. Second off, I wasn't getting appropriate speed, which was the reason that I was stuck at the level I was at. That level, incidentally, was that of a pre-teen who had been trained classically CORRECTLY. And thirdly, it doesn't put enough power into the fingers, and I get a generally weak sound.

Besides technique, my fingering was pathetic. I pay no attention to the fingering, which of course, is my fault for acquiring that habit at such a young age. So I can't put my fingers in the right place, I can't use them correctly, I'm basically stuck in my hole until my teacher German (Herman) helps me out. And by helps me out, I mean points out everything I've done wrong and tells me "fix it." Now I see why my old teacher detested his classical lessons. And I just don't know how to relax. I mean this in a physical and a mental sense. I can't relax my muscles, they are almost ALWAYS tensed, and I don't know how to not make it like that. Also, I'm always really stressed. If you don't know me, I'm always a complete and total wreck. If you think I'm not, then you don't know me. Gratz.

So after trying to fix these horrible tendencies for two months, I'm nowhere. I still can't relax my muscles, my technique goes sloppy as soon as I'm not paying attention, and I've gotten nowhere musically. And I've gotten 2 pieces that I need to accompany in order to keep taking lessons for free. That's right, if I don't start accompanying music, I pay 50 or 60 bucks a week for lessons, and I just can't afford to do that. But I can't learn the music, either! My first singer left me because I couldn't play the piece, and the second one gave me a nearly-impossible, 15 page excerpt from Carmen. I give her two weeks to jump ship, and I don't blame her.

It's not that I'm not practicing, I've been doing a MINIMUM of an hour a day (it's usually 2 hours) practicing, and I've even forsaken my forays into trombone to focus on pianoforte. And it's not working.

Which is why I'm giving up. Ten years for a total reformation, and a total reformation for nothing. It's total bullshit, and I want no part of it anymore. I honestly feel right now that I would rather have never learned piano, so that I wouldn't have had to go through this process. It's not going to end, and I don't want to spend another ten years getting up to a plausible place. I can't even be a music major at this rate. What's the point? The point is that I still love it, you say? I don't. I don't love piano anymore, and I want no part of it anymore. It's upset me so much that I literally broke down crying in front of German today, and then I had to explain all this to him. His response? "You think you're the only one with this problem?"

YES I DO! At least, I'm the only person I know of, and certainly the only person at this school who has learned the COMPLETELY WRONG TACTILE OPERATION for the last ten years. Yes. Please correct me if I'm wrong, so that I may find that other poor soul and go get drunk again. I've been sober for three weeks now, and I'm pretty sure that's going to change very soon. I feel like I need to act retarded and puke a bunch, maybe that'll get all of this nonsense out of my system.

Piano's not the only thing that's been fucking me over, too. As I've said multiple, multiple times, I'm in a complete creative block right now. It's extending into every single aspect of my life. I can't do anything that I love, and I don't know why. I can't play piano, I can't write, and I can't do comedy. But James, you say, you're writing right now! Yeah, the pathetic my-life-sucks bitchfests of a 14 year old girl on her Livejournal. If I knew of any other way to make it stop, I'd do that. But seeing as this is literally the only way I can be productive right now, I figured why the hell not? It's better than staring at the wall, but I've got another 8 hours to do that before I head off to class again tomorrow morning. I seriously don't know what to do anymore; nothing is inspiring me to write, nothing is making me funny, nothing is making me better at piano. In the last three days, I've gotten about as many pages done in this new story, and it's 1.5-spaced. That's pathetic! It's beyond pathetic! I don't know why, but I can't write anything that's effective or works or...or...is good! It all just comes out as shit, and then I revise it. And I revise that revision. And it takes me hours, and then I'm back to square one. And have I mentioned that I hate it?

Don't even get me started on comedy, either. I don't even know what the fuck went wrong, but I wasn't funny. I think I heard a laugh from someone OTHER than a dorm-mate once, maybe twice. And I had a ten-minute set. If that doesn't put things into perspective for you, let me spell it out nice and clear. My routine this week was not even the tiniest bit funny, which is why I'm not going to post it on the internet, or anywhere. I'm going to burn it and run away from it and pretend it never happened. I don't know what I could have done to redeem it, either. I don't know if it was me that wasn't funny, the material that wasn't funny, or both. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, so I can't pretend to take the first step to fix it.

It was mortifying, it was horrible, it made me want to curl up into a little ball and die, which is a feeling that I haven't had (besides when playing piano) since August, as a result of a gross miscommunication. It probably would have been a better act if I had just put down the microphone and walked away halfway through, but no, I was an idiot and went through the whole thing, PRAYING that I'd get a genuine laugh and not an I'm-sorry-for-you laugh. I can't wait until my other friends who were at the cafe see me again. I bet there are at least two individuals who'll never talk to me again as a result of it. I'm not naming any names because heaven forbid if somebody actually reads this for a change. I don't know whether I'm happy or upset over the fact that I can be completely candid on here and not care because in reality, maybe 4 people read this. I guess I'm more upset about it, because if I wanted to be completely candid on a website, I'd be anonymous, or it wouldn't be online.

And in the final bit of news today, I had a really bad experience in the Kline cafeteria today. I was just walking around, getting my food, when I saw this girl out of the corner of my eye. No, it couldn't be, I said to myself as I tried desperately not to look at her any closer. I went about my food-gathering business, but met her again when she was with that really cute/nice-seeming girl from my FYSem that I never have the guts to talk to. This girl, I swear to God, was the spitting image of my ex-girlfriend. Shorter, with light-brown hair tied behind her head, only a little bit too much makeup, brown eyes. And she had the exact same Bard College hoodie that I did; the one that I would have given her before we broke up had I not lost it until yesterday, when it was found in the back of Adam's car.

When I actually saw her, I couldn't wrap my mind around it. I stood there for a good three or four seconds before I realized who she looked like. Then I got the worst feeling I've ever had in my life. Everything went completely numb, and I couldn't think, move, or speak. I couldn't feel any of my individual limbs, my heart fluttered a few times, and there was this horrible chill that went up and down my body in what I can only describe as an inverse orgasm. It lasted only 5 seconds, and no matter how shittily cliched this sounds, it was the longest 5 seconds of my life. Then I kept walking, my mind still numb from the experience.

What does it mean? What does anything mean? I need some help here. I'd talk more about things (I have some missed connections that I'd like to put up here, and I have a rant directed towards good friend Rory), but my computer is on 17% battery and dropping. So I'm going to put this up, knowing that nobody will read it. Then I'm going to "go to bed" until maybe 4:00, at which point I'll finally fall asleep. I hope I cry. I haven't actually cried in a really long time, and no matter how feminine or weak I sound here, I feel that doing this will help me to get to the source of all of my problems. If I can identify what's really making me so miserable, maybe it'll finally go away. What did I do to deserve this?

-blake

Will you come and fetch me girl; from the brink?
I'm starting to kink and I'm too numb to think
If this nightmare can't be stopped
Go out and find me when I'm dropped
-Of Montreal, "Will You Come and Fetch Me?"

So to catch all of you up who haven't been reading me at all, I'm in the middle of an incredibly large creative block right now. It's been lasting for about the last two weeks of my life, and it's absolutely horrible. And I wish that I could say it was just a bad case of writer's block, but it's so much more than that. I can't write, yes, but I also can't even formulate good ideas. Define good ideas? Well, I do comedy, I regularly come up with about 2 story ideas a week that I don't start at all, and I'm witty and quick on my feet (which is only good for 1) Picking up people and 2) Improv, neither of which, coincidentally, I've felt like doing recently). I'm trying so so so so so so hard not to turn this into a fucking livejournal post right now, but it's really hard not to, simply because it's exactly how I feel right now. I don't really know how to explain it in any other simplistic terms save this one:

I feel listless, plain and simple. There's a few big ideas that've gone through my head, but nothing that I've really expanded on save this:

This summer, I am going to hitchhike as far across America as possible from May 30th to July 1st, then turn back and come home. Yeah, yeah, I know what you're going to say; it's just like On The Road... or is it? To make things a little bit more challenging, and a lot more interesting for us, we've decided to only take the following things:
1) A blank journal
2) A few disposable cameras
3) Medical stuff and one or two changes of clothes
4) Identification
5) An emergency credit card and cellphone.
6) A towel

That's right, gentlemen and lady, we're going to hitchhike across the USA without any form of money. It's going to be one hell of an amazing trip, both in the literal sense, and in the mental sense. I think that above all things, it'll give us a sense of just how vital (or otherwise) money is to our existence here in America. I doubt that it'll work without a hitch (we'll probably have to use the credit card somehow or somewhere), but if it does, that'll simply be mind-blowing.

So yeah, that's my summer. I'll probably post more on the stops we plan on making and give people chances to get in touch with me/Zack if you'd be so kind to shack us for the night or drive us places. None of it's finite, but I'm sure that you lovely folks will be loving and accommodating, especially a few of my college pals.

Besides that, there's not a lot to go into today. I'm working with whatever free time I have on a short story/novel that I plan on having at least rough by the end of November. I'll post more of it as more of it comes into play (maybe I'll even get a section up here tonight). Also, I've been talking about doing a rant or two, but the mood hasn't struck me since Saturday night. As I said before, maybe my mood will change and I'll get something up here tonight. Probably not, but keep your fingers crossed!

Ooh, also an errata: For all my Bardians who read this, stand-up comedy has been changed this week. From now on, it's every other Wednesday at 9:30, NOT 10:00! Small change, but I know I'll be going up in the first half hour. Hope to see everyone there!

-blake.