BIG TROUBLE AUGUST 26 WHITE SQUIRREL
It is happening again. These Big Trouble shows have been a joy. The fun of exploring some of the same material once a month but adding something on, tacking something on. Throwing in a challenge. And also frankly something just attacking the beautiful, but existent, monotony of Saturdays with the family. Saturdays with the family are beautiful but days with children fall into a weird rhythm that feels kind of like an unbalanced song. It’s a long intro, a short chorus, an absurdly long bridge, a weird short solo. Things start too early, things end when they are just starting to get good. And a gig forces a little bit of adulthood into the mix. I play music from 6-8 and through some EASY conversations I’ve established with my wife that I can’t make it back for any of the bedtime which generally wraps by 8:45. So I get to sometimes see my family at the gig but I then move into a bit of a night with less commitments. That generally ends up with me eating Shamrocks with some members of Big Trouble and coming home full of energy at 10:45pm and finding out that no one on my block wants to hang out. Man, forties are weird. I’ll tell you that right now. We have an obligation to obey social norms that so clearly don’t work for us anymore. It was clear they didn’t work before the pandemic but now it is painfully clear they don’t work. I thought I was making a Big Trouble post and then I’d do my real blog, but it’s just becoming one thing I suppose. Okay, please do come see Big Trouble on Saturday at 6pm.
A BIG NEW TITLE CAUSE THIS IS NO LONGER JUST A FLYER: DIVORCE SOCIAL FROM MEDIA AGAIN
I love social things. I love media. I pretend to hate social media but I love it, I just know it’s bad for me.
I’ve spent the last six weeks trying to make myself unflinchingly available for any opportunity to draw more people to the Heiruspecs Summer Classic. Even though it was 100 degrees out it actually still turned out really good for attendance. But my gosh, interviews, go to a new coffee shop to put up posters, share what Maria Isa said, share what Unknown Prophets said, write an article, text people to invite them to the show, got a podcast? I’ll appear on it. I used to have an un-fillable capacity to talk about myself, my projects and all of that. And my capacity was so deep that I thought it couldn’t stop. But actually, I’ve told a lot of my stories to the media folks who want to talk to about Heiruspecs. There are always new angles, I appreciate what Chris from the Star Tribune did, I appreciate what Ali from the Current did. It serves a purpose for the world. Media is wonderful. I like reading about bands, I support organizations that write about the arts. I have spent some of the best hours of my life deep in websites or magazines consuming content about artists. But it serves a delicious poison for me. I love the feeling, I know the feeling is valuable and it’s one of the first ways I could bring value to a project. I’ve had a gift at presenting the music I make in a way where it might get written about. I had good mentors for such things, and on top of that, my brother was a music writer, I’ve felt a connection to writer culture probably as strong as my connection to music culture. But for coverage of me it’s empty calories. It’s begging the town crier to talk about you, and then announcing to the same town that the town crier is talking about you. So I am doing a break from it. I’m not making the post about taking a break cause that curses the break. And I bet you I’m gonna put up that Big Trouble flyer. But I’m not scrolling. I can’t take it. I can’t take the ways people are shining, I can’t take the ways people aren’t shining. I’m full up on cool ideas for my job, for my band, for my fall, for my recipes book, for my erections, for my weightlifting routine, for my t-shirts that don’t fit right, for my friends recording perfect drum takes with musicians all over the globe who all film themselves playing small keyboards in well lit rooms with a smiley face while they play a perfect sound. It’s a parade of too much. I’m not getting it in the doses I want. It’s wrong-sized. I took all the shit off my phone. But now I just hop on instagram on chrome. And when I was going hard on Heiruspecs I was getting on twitter on my phone as well. Wasn’t there for my kids the way I’d like to be. So I got back to the grind I was on about a year ago of really letting the scroll go. That means not scrolling when I’m doing work for Jazz88 on social media either. Just get in and post and get out. Check the comments but keep it moving. Don’t scroll. Don’t live your life through the screen. Live your life.
And that’s good energy. That’s what I’m even following today and it feels good. 20+ alerts for Heiruspecs. Surely mostly people saying positive supportive things about our recent show. But it’s filling the wrong hole in my soul to look at those right now. My heart isn’t open for those things right now. It’ll reopen, but I have to find a different thing for awhile. I have to see what that silence gives me back.
I listened to a nice podcast today. The Gray Area with Sean Illing on Utopia. Isn’t it great to think about the world becoming better in the future? I spent so much of my life thinking the world was getting better, it was refreshing to imagine it was possible. And this isn’t one of those: the future is in the children’s hands, they know what to do tirades. This is more of a respond/react. It is abundantly clear that pointing my ire at national and international politics is absolutely justified and totally fucking pointless. But there are better ways that I can live in 55105. There are better ways that I can relate to my world. And they aren’t all about municipal impact. They aren’t even all virtuous. I’d like to eat more meals with larger groups of people. I’d like to have a more relaxed attitude towards parenting other people’s kids. I’d like other adults to do some more serious parenting of my kid. You ever got a volleyball game size party? When I was a kid Dad would often bring us to parties I don’t even fully understand. I think it was faculty at Williams College with a bunch of college students at the party. And it wasn’t at someone’s house, it was at a dorm like thing. If you’re at a party big enough to have a volleyball going on, that’s a nice big ass party. And kids would just be off fucking off doing whatever and getting into the small little trouble, the joyous trouble of childhoods spun free at an event designed for adults. I want that. I got that Trevor McSpadden dude in my life. Also a Jewish family, three kids, ping pong table, house that feels kind of like you could spread out over there. Trevor, I know you read this blog. I’m thinking about bringing my entire family to your house close to once a week and just inconveniencing you in every imaginable way except it’s not actually an inconvenience. THERE’S A BULK DISCOUNT WITH SOME KID ORIENTED SHIT IT’S JUST TRUE. These years of trying to make it happen with me and my wife mainly raising the kids. . .it’s hard on my schedule, my body, my spirit, my mind. It’s rewarding, but I’m not exercising the autonomy I want to over sleep, over what I eat, over my social time, over my career. No, I’ve got my head down cause the modern language is that with young children. . .just hold the fuck on to your hat. Does it definitionally have to be like that? Do we have to white knuckle the hardest years of our life with the smallest circle possible? I don’t think so. There’s a better path to find and this podcast made me think I can find it. And turning off social media made me think I can find it. Last night when I wanted to give my daughter some tub time I didn’t just pull out my phone and see if anyone still liked Heiruspecs. I read a weird book review in New York Times. I can’t remember a thing about it now, but it felt better at the time than scrolling. When I watched the Twins game last night and drank Busch Light I read the New York Times magazine during commercials. I coulda fast forwarded it, I was watching it late, but it was nice to watch the ads, and read, and absorb and reflect. I slept like a baby. And now my wife is back in town and I’m excited to read with her. And when I finish this blog I won’t spend fifteen minutes fucking around on FB, IG, Twitter. I’ll walk the dog and start reading the third chapter of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”? It’s all a journey and finishing that particular Heiruspecs show is turning a little page for Sean towards something that feels a bit healthier for the coming months.