You Can Swallow a Pint of Blood Before You Get Sick

2010 IS MY YEAR

2009-12-28T19:24:53Z

Getting this today could not have made me anymore happy

and go here prhc

and just like my daddy done, i ain't afraid to die

2009-12-20T19:06:07Z

my life is starting to rule again.

in the end, the only thing that could ever really make me happy was my first love. music/touring..

a few months ago i decided i wanted to write a book about touring, honestly it's just to pass time. i write a lot on tour and i wanted to have something to focus the hobby on. i have no real intention of doing anything with it. just for me...maybe something silly to show my kids....i don't know. who knows maybe one day i will give it to someone to publish.

i was reading some of it today and the introduction felt real good to read. even when i was depressed on tour missing alex i still admitted touring was first. i decided i wanted to share it in my journal that a few of my friends read.

i don't think i have ever asked for input...but this time i would love to hear what you guys think.

"Introduction"

So when I decided to write this book, I did with great hesitation. The fact of the matter is I am not famous; it would even be hard to call me successful when you sit down and evaluate what it is I actually do. After great thought on why I am writing a book like this I can only give the answer “for myself”. It makes a lot of sense when you compare that response to everything else I have decided to do in the last 6 years.

This book is written to the skeptic, someone who would never lead with his or her heart. For someone who sits behind a desk focused on the pursuit of wealth. Hating their life a little more everyday, starring out the window at work wondering what the world is really like, what being free must feel like. I know not everyone behind a desk working a job I would hate actually hates what he or she does. Maybe a person like that could read this book and just imagine what it would be like. This book is also a guide for those wanting to take a step towards the life of a touring musician. I don’t want to come off as someone who thinks he is a master of his trade. I am just offering my experience to you as point of reference. Maybe I can help you decided if this is a good idea or not. Maybe I can keep you from doing something stupid that I did. More so then the skeptic, this book is helpful for you. In 2008 I was filling in on guitar for a band called GraveMaker, an amazing band you should check out if you get the chance. On that tour we played a few shows with a band that gave a very odd speech from stage. They said “get out and tour this country, everyone should do this.” I remember not liking that much. Very few people actually belong in this lifestyle. It’s a crazy unkind ride that takes everything away from you. You have to be ready and willing for the sacrifice ahead of you. If you’re not, you will be eaten alive by a very cruel industry. I would say about 85% of kids who decided they want to tour for a living quit their first year on the road. I am always reminded of a quote of Kurt Vonnegut’s “if you want to upset your parents and don’t have the nerve to be gay, go into the arts. Because the arts are not a way to make a living, just a way to make life more bearable.” That’s how it is, this life is not glamorous, it’s not your mtv/vh1 catered backstage party. 95% of the bands you listen to, especially if you listen to any under ground genre, are just a few dudes in a cramped van waiting to get to the next show to do the only thing that makes since to them. Making life more bearable for themselves and for people who love the music said band makes.

I am a hopeless romantic. I love the feeling of being on the road, riding off into the sunset every night. I feel immortal on tour, I think of an American Nightmare lyric “I believe that when I am gone my love will live in song.” As bad as it gets I would never stop this. I love the life, pain of payment, and reward of finally getting somewhere on my own. Few things in my life have been this risky, but that’s what makes it exciting for me. Sometimes it will sound like I am complaining about this awesome trip I have ventured on. I assure you I don’t mean too. I love what I do, I just have to be honest with the kid on the fence. This shit sucks sometimes, people won’t hardly ever care about you, you’ll learn how cold the world can actually be, you’ll miss meals, lose sleep, you might have to even deal with losing relationships you thought could last any test of time. I don’t think as people we are made to be alone. I don’t think we are built to move from city to city without a hand to hold, without a warm body to sleep next to. I know what I do should never come second nature to me, but it does. That is why I feel I can write a book like this and give an honest account of the life I lead.

The last person I would like to read this is my mother. I spent the last two years of my high school career thinking of ways to make her proud of me. My father passed when I was 14, my mother who had never really worked stood in his place and raised my two brothers and me. Never did I miss a meal, never did hear my mother complain for the cruel hand she was dealt, never did I go to bed cold, or feeling alone. She is the best person I have ever known. She deserved to have the first born son go off to collage and become a doctor, or a lawyer, just something fancy she could brag to her friends about. After all her hard work she deserved to have something she could point at when asked where her life went. She poured everything into my brothers and me, working a million shitty jobs and going back to school to get a degree. Now I am 24 and she is a professor at the local collage, I still tour the country in a punk band no one has ever heard of. I skipped on collage and rushed into the life my mother worked so hard to make sure I missed. Every night that I go to sleep cold and hungry, I feel as if I am slapping her in the face. I went from a warm loving home, to a cold life I will spend alone as long as I pursue it. My father was a truck driver, I swore when I grew up I’d be nothing like him, but when I drive through the mountains of Tennessee or North Carolina I remember the story’s he told me about driving through them himself. It is moments like that I realize I have let my mother down. I’m just like my father, running away, alone in my drivers seat perusing something that may not even be there. Alas this is my own life, and my mother would say she was proud of me for going after something I love. That’s another reason I would consider her the perfect mother. Somehow she understands me before I do.

I told you about my mother so you get the point, this life will almost certainly lead you to let everyone you know down, because it always comes first. Even before the loving woman who raised me, even before myself, I am a hopeless romantic for this life. I descried it to a friend this way; “I have been dating a girl for 6 years. She doesn’t mind when I see other girls, cause she knows she will always out last them. She only gives me enough to keep me around, nothing more. She is a cold, heartless woman, but I love the way she makes me feel. This little lady’s name is music/touring, and she is not the kind of girl you take home to meet mom.”

(1073) no more like (5)

2009-12-13T15:09:38Z

so sometimes i forget people read this.

sometimes i write thinking to myself i hope, no. i write to myself thinking i wish she could see this. i WISH she would take the time to check in on me.

other times i write and i'm thinking about nothing at all just that i need to blow off steam and be a little dramatic. try and let some of the bad out so i can keep the good forward for others to see. actually that's something that has been becoming a task, something i hope i start re-learning how to overcome.

this morning i think i write knowing, that she reads.

Staring out the window all the boy could see was what he interpreted as death. He thought about how so many religions were based on sun worship, and how this place must have been what inspired stories about the gods’ wrath and places like hell. The boy smirked as he thought, “this is what a person who is too close to god must end up looking like”. Everything in the desert is built to hurt, and to survive at all cost. Watching the sun beat down and steal life from everything it touched he started to parallel the atmosphere to his own life.

See the boy is a traveler, going from town to town living out one adventure after another. What he actually does is not important; the details to the boy’s life are not what we are admiring. It’s the way he lets a beautiful thing that would normally warm the shoulders on a cool summer day. Or light up a bedroom first thing in the morning reviling two lovers clasped together in sleep before the day must begin. Some how this boy has taken a beautiful thing like sunlight, and turned into the most destructive force the young man has ever known.

First the sunlight became uncomfortable. Making the young mans skin a little tighter, rougher to the touch, but spaced out shade is enough to get him by. Then the sun starts working on the water, evaporating it slowly, eventually leaving the landscape with old riverbeds almost identically to the place in the young mans bed his lover use to keep. Dry imprint where something beautiful use to lay.

Once the water is gone the young mans shade starts to die, and where there were once great trees rich with luscious foliage that provided shelter were replaced with vegetation that was empty, dead, and horrible to the touch. A constant reminder of what all the water had taken with it.

Without the great shade to save the boy, and no water to cool his skin or replenish him the young man has no choice but to keep walking till his skin starts to blister. The sand under the boy reminds him of the parking lot by the beach that use to burn up his feet as a child, making him walk a little faster so he could stand by the tide and let the forgiving ocean run and kiss his feet. The boy longed for the ocean again with his eyes at a constant squint. This was making it hard to move forward and the thirst he felt couldn't be compared to the kind of thirst that makes you get out of bed in the middle of the night to find a glass of water. No, this thirst was much more real. There is no escaping though, he knows the lake in the distance is a mirage. He knows that there is no hope in a place like this. As his body starts to fail him and he realizes he will almost certainly die in this place he has created for himself. He regrets what his life could have been, and he wondered if what he was looking for was worth the search or even real.

The young man falls, and he might have cried if the sun hadn’t already stolen his tears. He thought about the water that once made life so enjoyable. The great trees that gave him shelter. The times he spent there and the great joy, he had. “Why did I leave? Why did I let this sunlight take everything?” were the last things the young man said. The sunlight will bleach his bones and turn the boy to dust, the last step in his consumption.

Sitting by the window he knows the only thing important is the next step, with everything he has lost he knows he has to keep moving forward. It's his only way to pay tribute to the life he has already lived and died, because if he quits all the time in the desert will be in vain. One last look out the window to reflect then it was time to focus again...forward.

one of my more honest post

all of my days

2009-12-09T19:13:54Z

so after a day to reflect i think i am close to being happy again....on my own.

i don't know where this puts me anywhere else...i don't even know why or how. i just know that today i woke up to feeling ok about where i was waking up.

i had breakfast by myself and was ok with that too.

i looked at my phone and had no one to call, text, or email... that was also ok.

i don't think i have ever really been afraid to die, but now i may not be afraid of living again.

my life is pretty good. i do what i want, when i want, and how i want. the only draw back to such a fly by lifestyle is sometimes you have to do it alone. is that the cost of freedom? solitary?

i gladly pay, because you story with the white picket fence...kid...wife...just isn't for me. i rather be free....actually free

safe harbor

2009-12-09T00:52:42Z

so right when i think i know what i want..i see her and feel nothing. i seriously couldn't be more confused.

it's seriously time for me to move on...wow like actually move on

it kind of makes me feel new again

tumor

2009-12-04T22:43:32Z

just when i thought it could get no worst...

ford

2009-12-04T09:09:51Z

i don't think i can ever be happy

i expect to much

this is what it feels like to be a ghost

2009-11-30T08:58:22Z

on my own is an understatement...

but i did this to myself, so i can't try and point blame

it's hard to have people believe in you after you give up on yourself. in my i eyes...i died almost 2 years ago....it just took a while for the news to get to my friends and family. i have my moments but all and all...i'm a shell of who i was. now the shell is starting to crack and i'm going to reveal something i wanted to keep secret. that i'm empty inside.

i don't want help though..i can't even find anything worth salvaging

northwest

2009-11-20T22:00:46Z

my life suck when i am "home"

i can't help but fuck things up when i am here

i think after thanksgiving i am going to spend December in the Ocala/Orlando area. i just need to catch up on two bills while i am there. i figure finding an odd job shouldn't be too hard. i would actually think it to be easier then milton.

so that's that, time to get out of here

torche

2009-11-15T05:57:12Z

can't have spring with the winter....today was a very cold day

i just woke up really down today. missed her like i did the day after she asked me to leave. today i felt like i started over. i had this dream again i use to have all the time. once before i woke up today...again when i took a nap.

not fair, i bet she sleeps fine

we all turn to dust

2009-11-14T17:25:05Z

i feel like i have square blocks and round holes. just trying to make things fit and work that just aren't going to go.

my whole personal life feels so forced. i'm not happy, and i don't know what i am missing. i don't even know how to fix it at this point.

god called in sick today

2009-11-10T09:03:45Z

how dose a person even just get anxiety? like develop it? it LITERALLY makes no fucking since to me....

when i really think about it, bars and shit always freaked me out. that makes since though, there is nothing there for me.

but now, shows, bbq's, party, too many people in one room in anyway.

that's not me, why dose my skin crawl and i feel like someone is standing on my chest making it harder to breath?

i'm going crazy, pure and simple, out of my fucking mind

the casting out of me

2009-11-09T11:05:43Z

the whole night was kind of weird for me. i really have not thought of alex much lately, i was starting to think i was over it. to night hanging out by where i use to have a good job, go to the bar with a few guys, then get in my car and drive home to my life. really made me miss...everything

i think i might die alone...like really might not have a chance at this anymore. i can't even sit in a room full of people without panicking. i push everyone away, then wonder why i'm alone.

how do you meet someone if you panic every time you are near people?

the line "taking breaths to stay" comes to mind...

i gave up a family, for what? to be in a band.....i'm such scum

the casting out

2009-11-01T09:21:03Z

i have no real reason to hate everything

but i do

i'm so lonely, its not that people aren't around me that care. girls whatever....

i just can't find the words to say what's wrong with me. i don't know why i feel this way. i honestly am lonely cause i made it this way. i could fix it to i think, but i won't. i'm watching myself slowly set myself up to die alone and i can't stop it.

i just hate everything.....

i'm over dramatic, but i like it that way.

take to the streets

2009-10-31T02:01:10Z

nothing is wrong, but i feel like i am about to have a panic attack.

something is broken i think...

bbq's and river parties

2009-10-24T20:32:08Z

one should not spend the day dreading a social gather with his friends.

seriously getting sick, wtf is wrong with me?

Ghost Say

2009-10-20T04:06:01Z

i haven't posted in my lj in a hot minuet. one reason being is the person i think about all day, and will more then likely write about will read it. its not that i don't want her to know what i am thinking, it would probably make thing easier. i just did that before, being honest with her and my feelings that is. i know things were different then but i don't wanna chance getting pushed away. i'm just trying to stick to the plan, give space and don't rush. neither thing i am good at, my whole life i have rushed in and just gone for it.

"it looks deep enough from here so i am diving in"-Thrice

truth be told i think about an encounter in a dirty bathroom where i said exactly what i was thinking, i meant it...i know i did because i still do.

when you're scared to ruin everything, saying what's really on your mind is hard. it doesn't help when talking to people is getting harder for me anyways.

you never have to say anything about this, i just wanted you to know.

"i don't want you to be distant"-i'll do my best, without being to close... at least till you are ready

one and only

2009-10-01T11:40:20Z

i know what i want

it's just, how do i get it?

personal goals are ahead....now it's time to try and go for it

Blackout

2009-09-28T01:16:30Z

always fixing things and trying to move past riffs in my life

i'm getting really tired of not being able to count on people in my band.

i'm also getting tired of feeling alone all the time. i talk to one person on the phone, sometimes two other then business stuff.

this is why they say the good die young. you live for too long with people letting you down and being sad all the time the good is going to wear off at some point.

god save us

2009-09-25T08:47:39Z

i like hearing her say "us"

i hope this is light at the end of my tunnel, i hope this is the start of me getting to look back on the last 6 months as my "past"

i wanna be happy again, and i will get there at all cost.

now i just gotta get my band through the next few months

fright night

2009-09-22T09:57:45Z

now i know how shauncey must feel when he nails a tattoo.

that "living well is the best revenge" kind of feeling. proving people wrong about yourself. really getting in there and find what you yourself are made of.

in the 6 years i have been making music i have finally found myself. "Fright Night" is hands down the best album i have ever recorded. i can't wait for people to hear it. i have never been so proud of anything i have ever done. my whole life was for this album it feel like and now that i have it, i am kind of ok with that.

top that with this girl being so sweet to me. making me feel like there is someone out there that gets me. makes me feel like i am not alone....

i'm happy tonight. that might change tomorrow, but i am going to bed a very happy camper. i don't do that very often.

this will read as a plea

2009-09-19T09:06:52Z

tired of always look out for others.... this month i am really saying FEA and doing something for myself.

i want a new life so i am getting it

i want to live somewhere else

i want a girlfriend

and i want to be successful

not in that order but you get the point

only thunder gives me rest

2009-09-16T03:17:06Z

yikes, is this really happening to me?

i'll pretend for second it really is, and be happy for the first time in months.

although i will admit i have been pretty happy all week....this is only sending it over the top.

At the bottom

2009-09-10T12:00:54Z

I think my problum is I have given up on myself.

I won't succed in music
I won't meet her
I won't make good money
I won't ever find happiness

I will continue to make a mess of my life
I will go to bed lonley most nights
I will disapoint myself and others
I will die young and it will have nothing with being "the good"

How am I going to be the man I wanna be with that additude?

I'm trapped in the belly of this horrible machine and the machine is bleeding to death. The sun has fallen down.....

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

broke every bone in your wrist

2009-09-10T11:18:14Z

i just want the phase of my life to start. everything is a waiting game......is it even there?

being lonely all the time isn't helping either.