KVLT WORDS

my girlfriend is a vegan

and has a name that’s unique

and i go over to her house

and we have sex.

after the sex we lay there and

maybe talk about dying.

or maybe we’re happy

and we listen to records or watch mad men

or have sex again.

currently she doesn’t exist but

maybe she will soon.

we won’t be afraid

to look each other in the eyes.

cicada year

Closer.
Aren’t we?
I think so.
But there’s something wrong.
There’s an insect inside us.
I’m not making sense,
I guess.
It’s hard to articulate but just listen.
We know everything about each other,
Yet nothing.
What I present to you is a product
For sale.
You do the same
And I guess you know it.
We never look
At each other,
As in like really look.
We can’t kill the insect,
But we don’t have to feed it.

Blue Gold (excerpt) draft #2

David laying down on one of the beds in the hotel room. Jonathan standing up in the hotel room. David laying on his back with his head on the pillow. Jonathan standing very still, looking at the painting on the wall. David thinking about a lot of different things. Jonathan looking at the cow in the painting. David unaware that his feet were pointed East. Jonathan mentioning how it was always considered so honorable to be reincarnated as a cow. David saying that he thought that reincarnation was probably real in some vague sense. Jonathan saying how if you were a bad person you would be reincarnated as an insect. David saying that there was something undeniably valid about the idea of a soul, on a core spiritual level. Jonathan saying how it wouldn’t be so bad to be reincarnated as a bug. David saying that it would only make sense that souls could change bodies and maybe go through time he guesses also. Jonathan saying how he would specifically choose to be reincarnated as a bug. David pausing for a moment and thinking that maybe everything he had just said was stoned bullshit. Jonathan thinking to himself that maybe he should start acting like a bad person in order to increase his chances of being reincarnated as a bug. David saying that maybe souls could travel through time too. Jonathan announcing aloud that he was going to start acting like a bad person in order to increase his chances of being reincarnated as a bug. David saying that obviously there was no such thing as objective reality. Jonathan saying how a bug was beautiful because it looked at shit and saw it as food and nourishment, as an excuse to keep living. David saying he sometimes felt like a bug. Jonathan saying something about Kafka and something else about David being unoriginal. David agreeing that he was mostly unoriginal. Jonathan looking at the painting but gradually over time beginning to unfocus his eyes and see a blend of green, blue, black, and white. David feeling alone, but not as alone as he had once felt. Jonathan believing that he was seeing through the painting but also knowing that this wasn’t literally true. David feeling he was, in quantitative terms, the most alone that he had ever been but also feeling that he had become acclimated to this loneliness after years of training. Jonathan walking briskly over to the hotel room’s armchair as if he wasn’t rushing towards but secretly rushing towards it. David feeling like he was underwater but that he had always been underwater and was now only realizing it. Jonathan stressing that he wasn’t scared of the painting. David realizing that neither of them had spoken for approximately two minutes. Jonathan stressing with equal conviction that he had not been so amazed by the painting’s beauty that his legs had become paralyzed, wrenching him away from the breast of an unknown cosmic mother in fear of being permanently turned to stone. David entirely confused. Jonathan stressing that his feelings on the painting were neutral and that it was after all just some shitty hotel art. David admiring Jonathan’s capacity to separate the deceptively banal from the truly banal. Jonathan stressing that he was done discussing the painting and that the topic was no longer open for discussion.David feeling that he had written his twin brother off at a very young age for little reason and never really given him another chance. Jonathan moving from the chair to his bed and laying face down. David being pleased with himself for not hating everything. David feeling that this was enough.

nice to meet you

hi it’s nice to meet you,
you’re my girlfriend now
i just decided.

you like to listen to npr
and drive through mountains
pretending our carbon footprints don’t exist
and neither do our responsibilities.

you like to have sex
maybe even a lot
but not more than me

when you’re sad you cry
and soak my shirt
and i tear it off
to reveal perfect abs.
just because i have perfect abs
doesn’t mean i don’t cry too.

i show you songs
that you’ve never heard
and you say wow
i love this song
and i love you
even though you’re weird and dumb
and i say thanks babe

i kill everybody
that ever hurt you
and blow up the world
for not bringing us together sooner.
the doomed millions smile
as i vaporize them
because they know our love
was more beautiful than everything they ever did.

we float through space
talking about if dogs could talk
even though there are no more dogs.
when we sail into a black hole
we agree that it’s pretty nice
how our particles
have become as compacted together as our souls already were.

and anyway
thanks for the coffee
sorry that i’ll never talk to you
or ever come in here again

the importance of cardio

running with somebody
is kind of like having sex with them
minus a lot of the parts

when it’s over
you’ll both sweat and ask
if it was as good for you
as it was for me.

you’ll lay there
softly crying and pretending
not to feel alone
and they’ll tell you to get off the floor
because it’s dirty
and you’re making a scene

school of conduct

As if in the dark
We don’t all look the same
You will sit
And think that nothing good can happen,
Expecting to regret everything you’ll do
And telling yourself that love is just a chemical.

You will think of the face that every girl made
When she first met you
Made into a montage
With your favorite band’s most popular song

And sitting there
The whole world without its heart,
Your expectations manifested
In the jokes you think you laughed too hard at.
You’ll resign to try harder,
And maybe you will forget
The feeling that a room is full of spies.

bone fragments

i am carrying around the bone fragments of my ancestors in my backpack
people can hear them rattling
i get embarrassed
and hide in the bathroom
i flush them down the toilet
and remember to take my pills

music

(i will attempt to write each of these within the span of time it takes to listen to each song.)

My Bloody Valentine // Sometimes

My most immediate thoughts about this song take place in a very ‘Ted Mosbey’ sense of reality. I imagine that there is a perfect girl for me, who I won’t meet for a very long time. I imagine that there are specific things that I would have in common with this girl, things that would prove that she was the perfect girl for me. The most important thing we would have in common, perhaps even the only th, is that she would love this song. This song makes me feel like there’s something very far away from me, that I can barely even sense, pulling me along. I don’t know what it will feel like when I get there, but I know that I’ll be found. This is the sound of being lost and found.

Burial // Stolen Dog

This track is the entire universe stripped down into narrow little strokes. Every perspective is incredibly broad and only covers the bare essentials. Everything is a star that burns and then dies. This is a song for walking someplace and thinking about what everything is worth. The star eventually explodes and destroys the planets around it, but for a decent little stretch of time in between the stars burned brightly.

Los Campesinos! // Hate for the Island

I’ve become insecure that I’m not writing enough in these long periods of time awarded to me by five and six minute songs, which means I decided to write a lot during a two minute song. I’ve already wasted a lot of time. This song makes me feel like the sense of loss after a failed relationship. It’s mainly a feeling of embarrassment, for thinking that something might actually work out. But there’s also a sense that you always secretly thought it wouldn’t work out, so maybe you’re just doing it wrong.

The Knife // Heartbeats

I haven’t listened to this song in a while but used to truly love it. I guess I’ll subtly be wondering if it’s really great or if it just had a great hook. These drums are making me lean to the former. I guess this song, once again, provokes some very murky emotions. The key theme of these songs seem to be uncertainty. This song sounds like the moment in time where you finding yourself questioning if something is a good idea. You’re very confused, but ultimately you decide to go for it. There’s no sadness to this decision, you feel optimistic. This feeling doesn’t necessarily apply only to romantic relationships, it can be friendships too.

Life Without Buildings // New Town

This song makes me feel so driven. I imagine marching forward in my life and taking charge. Some of me is taking charge against the people who have tried to suppress me, but some of me is taking charge against the things that need to be suppressed. It’s a sense of individuality and solidarity. There is, at the same time, a feeling of regret. Clearly I’ve done a few things wrong too. Clearly this is proof that anything that happens is the fault of both involved? I don’t know if I need to find something perfect, but I know I need to find something better than this. It’s a sense of desire and ambition measured with a dose of realism and practicality. It involves a careful consideration for one’s place in life. This place really isn’t so low, but it’s a little bit higher than here. ‘Rhythm and knowledge, regenerate. Every color of you.”

decision points

I frequently find myself doing things on the basis that not doing them would be “what a depressed person would do.” These things are usually small and insignificant and revolve around socializing with other human beings or eating dinner or venturing outside or smoking weed or masturbating or not masturbating. Unless I consciously expel them, these thoughts consume me almost any time I’m faced with the need to do something I desperately would prefer not to do. These things, and the decisions to do them or not do them, would not seem like sufficient diagnostic evidence of depression to anyone besides one of these aforementioned “depressed people”.

These decisions begin to develop complex layers and qualifications such to the extent that it becomes impossible to avoid making the sort of decision that isn’t not “what a depressed person would do.” When deciding if a “depressed person” would force themselves to attend a social gathering that they would prefer not to attend in order to demonstrate to the world that they are not depressed and are in fact the perfect picture of mental health, everything rapidly decays and crumbles down into the dark, wet, cold, little pit in which depression sits and waits for something vaguely edible to fall.

After a nanosecond of self-analysis it becomes clear that the primary concern involved in attempting to not do “what a depressed person would” is not the avoidance of being depressed but instead the avoidance of appearing depressed. It is in fact a way for depression to feed upon itself and hide away in its little pit unseen and unheard. It is me putting my mind on the cutting board and chopping it up and preparing it all in a nice little bowl and gently placing this bowl in a dumbwaiter which I then generously lower down into the pit for the depression to feast on. Letting a dear friend like depression go hungry is exactly “what a depressed person would do.”

Yet the faulty mechanism of not doing “what a depressed person would do”, transparent as it is, may just be the one thing holding everything together and keeping all of me from sliding down into the pit. Because when I do make that conscious effort to not do “what a depressed person would do” I usually end up feeling good about it. Because when I do force myself to get up, go outside, and be around something else with a central nervous system, I feel the unbearable weight of myself lift up off my shoulders, however briefly. It may be the one reason I have any friends at all and it may be the one reason I don’t give up on everything.

The province of the “depressed person” is to quietly beg for sympathy from anyone and everyone, and I am guilty of this like none other. Yet my constant, pounding, belief that I appear normal and nobody understands the nature of my suffering persists. At once I feel drowned in sympathy and entirely starved of it. At once I feel like an engorged parasite and a silent martyr. In one direction lies the prospect of unending loneliness, in the other the guilt of feeding off of those who still care about me until they no longer do.

And so I am trapped. Half of me quietly shouting to the world what they must already know, that I am a “depressed person”; and half of me truly believing that I am maintaining the ruse, that I am actually pulling this all off. Either direction I move, a part of me goes into the pit. I can’t be sure if I’m making things worse or making them the same. All I can be sure of is that I can’t throw anything else into the pit. Because the depression is me and I am it, and I won’t get rid of this thing by letting it feed on itself. I won’t get rid of anything but me.

Blue Gold

George laying down on a bed in a hotel room. Charles standing up in a hotel room. George laying on his back with his head propped up on a pillow. Charles standing very still looking at a painting on the wall. George being oriented on the right side of the bed while softly clutching a pillow. Charles looking at the cow depicted in the painting. George being unaware that his feet were pointed West. Charles mentioning how it was always considered so honorable to be reincarnated as a cow. George saying that he thought that reincarnation was probably real in some vague sense. Charles saying how if you were a bad person you would reincarnated as an insect. George saying that there was something entirely valid to the idea of a soul. Charles saying how it wouldn’t be so bad to be reincarnated as a bug. George saying that it would only make sense that souls could change bodies and maybe go through time also. Charles saying how he would specifically choose to be reincarnated as a bug. George pausing for a moment and thinking that maybe everything he had just said was stoned bullshit. Charles thinking to himself that maybe he should start acting like a bad person in order to increase his chances of being reincarnated as a bug. George saying that maybe souls could travel through time too. Charles announcing aloud that he was going to start acting like a bad person in order to increase his chances of being reincarnated as a bug. George saying that obviously there was no such thing as objective reality. Charles saying how a bug was beautiful because it looked at shit and saw it as food. George saying that he sometimes felt like a bug. Charles saying something about Kafka and something else about George being unoriginal. George agreeing that he was mostly unoriginal. Charles looking at the painting but gradually over time beginning to unfocus his eyes and see a blend of green, blue, black, and white. George feeling alone, but not as alone as he had once felt. Charles believing that he was seeing through the painting but also knowing that this was not literally true. George feeling he was, in quantitative terms, the most alone that he had ever been but also feeling that he had become acclimated to this loneliness after years of training. Charles running rapidly over to a chair and sitting down in it while looking away from the painting. George feeling like he was underwater but that he had always been underwater and was now only realizing it. Charles stressing aloud that he was not scared of the painting. George realizing that neither of them had spoken for approximately two minutes. Charles stressing that he had not been so amazed by the painting’s beauty that his legs had been paralyzed, wrenching him away from the breast of an unknown cosmic mother. George being entirely confused. Charles stressing that his feelings on the painting were neutral and that it was after all just some shitty hotel art. George admiring Charles’ capacity to separate the mischievously banal from the truly banal. Charles stressing that he was done discussing the painting and that the topic was no longer open for discussion. George feeling that he had written his twin brother off at a very young age for little reason and never given him another chance. Charles moving from the chair to his bed and laying face down. George being pleased with himself for not hating everything. George feeling that this was enough.