Cheer Up (All of You)

Last night I was privy to something heretofore unseen; a three man pity party. (not innuendo)

Now most celebrations of patheticness are solo experiences, occasionally two people try to break open the fail-pinata and (at least in my experience) it's two people of opposing genders. (I don't know what trannies do when they feel a little blue)(Rhymes!)

But this was a new experience that i fear is growing more and more common.

It seems like everywhere i turn i see someone with a facebook status like, "Jane is lonely... :(," or

"Dietr is going to jump off a roof." (I have news for Dietr and Jane, they have nothing on me, and i don't post annoying statuses for attention)(that's what the Magic Blog is for). 

Now the obvious cure for this plague of sad would be for women to stop being such GD idiots, unfortunately, the fairer sex has been doing their very best to create misery since day 1, so to hope otherwise is the definition of vanity.

It's ridiculous how many times i've heard, "I just feel sick to my stomach whenever i wake up," "I wish i could take a break from life," "It's just stupid bullshit, I don't know why it gets to me, but it does."

I tend to disregard any sad people below the age of 17, when you're that young everything makes you sad.

But the proportion of unhappy college students is staggering, and it seems like the ones who are happy, are only happy because they live in a fantasy world, full of fake friends and table related games of sport, or they stumble about in an alcohol induced stupor.

Now, some older readers (agewise, not the colloquial use of older meaning "those that have been reading for an extended period of time") of KMB may think to yourselves (in your rapidle idling brains), "Kyle, you are foolish, all young people are angsty, it's part of the process of growing up."

I would reply to those people, "Fair enough."

But if that were all i had to say then you people would be denied a Magic Blog, that i like to pretend you all crave, and that would be criminal. 

I think the issue here is that at some point in recent history, it became cool to miserable.

People stopped admiring dashing and arrogant Han Solo and became drawn in by Anakin Skywalker's whiny and pathetic yammering.

Angst is sexy.

I defy you to watch Jake Gyllenhall in Donnie Darko and not want to possess his quirky/lonely charm, or date him if you are of the feminine persuasion. (Also maggie G. is super hot in that movie as well)

So what happens, is you get these kids, and i think it really attracts kids who were ostracized, or felt ostracized, when they were younger, for being smarter than average. (that could very well just be arrogance). And so with this intelligence they tend to a) spend a lot of time alone and b) chase "higher pursuits." 

(I will stop using this 3rd person narrative now as I don't know if this actually pertains to anyone but myself)

But young kyle was, if possible, more narcissistic than my current incarnation. 

Back in the day, when I was a Crestview Tiger, we had this neat little program called Accelerated Reader, where whenever you read a book, you could get on the computer and take a short quiz on it, and if you passed you got points that you could use to buy little trinkets that kids would enjoy. 

Essentially the only three memories I have of First Grade at school are...

1) You needed 100 AR points to get a phone, and I desperately wanted one (why a 6 yr old would need a phone is beyond me) but sadly, my reading wasn't up to par back then and i did not accumulate the necessary points. However, my best friend at the time, Chris Woldstad (he goes to UT now and is a Tech hater) did get the points. And I remember telling my parents one time that I was jealous of the fact that he had both a phone and an N64 in his room.

Those were simpler times.

2) I was taking my first spelling test ever, the word we had to spell was "Newspaper," I remember wrestling with this word for what seemed like 10 minutes, before settling on, Neuspaper. It was the only one that i got wrong.

I am now a Journalism major, foreshadowing perhaps?

3) I had to take an IQ test to get into some advanced program the school had, I didn't know what it was back then, but I remember the last question was not actually a question, but some test to see if you could think creatively.

The question was just a big black oval in the center of a blank piece of paper, and I was supposed to integrate it into a scene, the example the proctor used was, "it could be something like the nose on a teddy bear," and even 6 year old me thought that was incredibly lame. 

I decided that it would be a boulder resting on a pinnacle in a canyon with several other boulder pinnacles around it (nevermind this being physically impossible, at least the way my nascent motor skills depicted it) and atop the main black oval was my family's camper and my family and I.

I find this strange because to this day I hate camping, but maybe i enjoyed it back then.

Anyway, my drawing got me into the advanced program thing so good work young me!

Anyway, as a child, my lack of physical ability and social graces (still keeping strong there!) led me to spend a lot of recess reading books.

How lame is that? Just sitting on the curb reading.

Now, not all of recess was spent this way. 

Sometimes I would bomb around the jungle gym, and before they took it out, the thing that you spin really fast and sit or stand on was awesome (i don't remember the name, how sad is that)(I have been told it is "Merry-go-round") but some kid busted his head, so that went away.

Also wall ball was pretty popular for a while, and at one point my friend Carter and I appointed ourselves "protectors of the ants" and deterred other kids from squishing them.

Anyway, back to the point.

I read a lot of books as a child, and i think this may have contributed to my social awkwardness. (It was that or my propensity for wearing matching sweatpants and sweatshirt several times a week).

I didn't really find other kids interesting, and regarded most of them as pretty stupid and inferior to me. I don't think i took someone the same age as me seriously until like 7th grade.

But, to continue my elementary school tales, I began to covet the AR points, and i think i had the most points in my grade throughout the rest of elementary school. (i have the medals to prove it)

So, I mean come on, who were these children that tried to compete with me, the master of AR, they were weak and stupid. 

At this point, I was too young to really be a "loner" because at that age kids pretty well hang out with everyone, the only thing that set me apart, other than my awesome brain, was that I didn't play football, so perhaps I have my mother to blame for my social insecurities. But i still felt semi-alienated from the other kids at school.

I deviated pretty severely from my main point, which was, that I read books that a young kid may not comprehend fully, but could still get through from cover to cover and feel accomplished and inflated.

It wasn't as bad in elementary school, I pretty much just read Hank the Cowdog and Animorphs, but by 4th grade I had knocked down The Hobbit, and the Entire LotR trilogy. 

Middle school was more of the same, mostly Star Wars books, but I read all of Dumas' Musketeers series + Count of Monte Cristo, Dr. Doolittle series, the Secret Garden, all of Kipling's books.

If it had a Penguin on the spine I wanted to read it because it made me feel sophisticated.

Then Jr. High, when I could actually comprehend those books more, I kind of backed off, I think mostly because of lack of material, I tried though. I read Thomas Paine's "Common Sense," because for a while I was obsessed with the American Revolution. 

Then 8th grade came along and I became obsessed with guitar and classic rock. 

I remember having my mom buy me Led Zeppelin's "Early Days/Latter Days" best of collection, and it developed from there.

I stopped wearing my khakis and polos and traded them for jeans and black t-shirts.

My friends and I would patrol the hallways, each of us wearing a shirt proclaiming our devotion to Led Zeppelin, or ac/dc, or van halen, with Guitar Pro and Guitar One magazines nestled in our backpacks. 

So this led to more unfounded superiority over my peers, because there is no bigger snob than a music snob, especially when said snob is a mediocre guitarist.

Anyway that summer I moved back to the LBK, which was awesome, because Colorado is pretty lame, peoplewise, they all love hockey and basketball players that like to drive drunk.

So I returned to Texas and wanted to go to Frenship, but i ended up mooring at the old TCHS.

There, I encountered a Mr. David Hutchens, at the time renown for wearing no less than a half-dozen t-shirts at once and pretending to be friends with the seniors. 

I had known David since I was 5 years old, as we both grew up in the shadow of the Neugebauer Park gazebo, and were good friends at the time.

But the years had caused the bonds of friendship to weaken, and David ignoring me, plus the prickish and hostile nature the Trinity student body took toward outsiders left me pretty lonely.

Luckily, this is where i developed my current standby method of dealing with a lack of social interaction; attach myself to a woman that has no particular interest in me. 

While (as always) this attempt at a relationship went nowhere; it did get me out of my black t-shirt and jeans phase and led to me getting a haircut, which was very, very necessary.

This allowed me to fit in better and make friends, but I was worried that my new teachers wouldn't recognize how brilliant I am without them seeing that I could hold my own amongst literary giants.

I started by reading, "The Sun Also Rises," and then knocked out every Hemingway novel after that, and then it took off from there, if it was written by a member of the "Lost Generation," I probably read it. 

And that has stuck with me, more from enjoyment and trying to refine my literary taste, rather than some sort of intellectual genital swinging contest. (i realize that previous sentence sounds pretentious and false, but so be it)

But the point of that was, I was desperately trying to be perceived as "cool" and "intellectual," and historically, people that are perceived that way, lead pretty unhappy lives.

Also fortunate for me was that, now that my preferred music was no longer socially acceptable, I had to now branch out and discover other forms of aural entertainment.

This was largely unsuccessful in the initial stages, because everyone was either a "poser" or terrible, generally skewing toward the latter.

(David is beside me and says hello, also he is dealing with girl problems) (he likes to pretend that his 6 month tryst is as devastating as 3+ years of insecurity, but it really isn't)

Anyway, in this journey of musical self-discovery, I went back to listening to bands I liked in my jr. high days, Something Corporate and Death Cab for Cutie.

Essentially it just built from there, Hot Fuss came out that fall and I devoured that record. I sat alone in my granpa's study for a week during Christmas with the album on repeat while surfing Amazon's "Other Artists You May Also Like," and writing all of them down.

It just all snowballed from there, David and I would trade artists and CDs that we liked until we had built formidable iTunes libraries. (david's computer ineptitude has led to his being deleted time and again, but mine remains).

Anyway, to shorten things considerably.

Bands I Discovered My Freshman Year (or earlier) but Still Love 

- the killers

- cursive

- neutral milk hotel

- death cab

- soco

- the decemberists

- the thrills

- coldplay

- built to spill

- iron and wine

As you can see, for the most part this is all pretty poppy music, and the albums that aren't (in the aeroplane over the sea, ugly organ) I didn't fully appreciate until a lot later in my musical development.  

But even from this you can see the trending toward music that speaks to that disappointed little part of your heart. 

Alright, this blog has veered way off course (i've been writing over the course of a couple days and several different times, and in between the start of this and right now, i've had a bit of an attitude change) 

Initially I was going to expound upon the overwhelming sadness that I see in the vast majority of my friends, and try to explain what i thought caused it. I was then going to segue with, "It all started with one disgruntled Jewish man." Then I was going to talk about Bob Dylan and how he set the stage for all the depressed singer songwriters to come after, and the i was going to list my favorite artists and how the represent one aspect of teenage misery, so I will probably just do that without the arduous exposition.

Bob Dylan started it all. Bob moved from middle class, middle America and tried to pass himself off as a heartbroken loner, and you know what Bob? You created a monster, because now every kid that ever bought a pair wayfarers thinks that they can be you. And you were just a political malcontent, until some woman that you tricked into believing that you were some visionary broke your heart. And where did that get you Bob? It made you a lot of money, but otherwise, it probably hurt your feelings.

You are the worst Bob, you made it cool to ditch your normal, semi-affluent life and side with "progressive" politics and date girls that think your "outside thinking" is soooooo sexy. You are the reason for my tears, you made every other lonely guy with a guitar and a modicum of talent go out and express themselves.

Jim Morrison is famous for three things; substance abuse, dying in Paris, and writing terrible poetry. Jim Morrison essentially created the "scene girl," because in his day, unattractive who loved terrible music would flock to his shows. Jim is who you can blame for the terrible bands fronted by men with a thesaurus and an associates degree in philosophy.

Then there was Robert Smith, the frontman for a band held dear by ever middle school girl with a crush, "The Cure." Rob made it ok to be honest with girls that you are into, but not in a romantic and alluring way, in a creepy and obsessive way. Whenever Rob loses a girl, rather than win her back with romantic gestures, he writes songs that would probably help the plaintiff in a restraining order trial. The reason he was staring so long at pictures of girls is because he was too creepy to actually interact with them

Smith's associate in making creepy and sad music in the 80's was one Michael Stipe. He fronted REM, and while he turned out a couple of decent tracks (nightswimming, bad day) after 20 years in music i haven't seen any evidence that he has a pair of testicles.

Morrissey was the king of sad for a long time, but i've never really listened to the Smiths, so i can offer no real critiques.

All of these men set the stage for the worst and most overrated musician of all time. Kurt Cobain. Stop idolizing this man, he wrote terrible lyrics, dressed like a hobo, and married an idiot. I get it, he brought music out of the hair metal days and infused some honesty into it, but people act like he was the John Lennon of the 90s. I will contend that, had he not shot himself and became a legend, Cobain would be as highly regarded today as Axl Rose. Just remember this, the next time you hear a song by Nickelback and want to weep, Cobain was responsible.

Luckily, in the mid-90s, music began to recover, and by my estimation this started with Doug Martsch and one of my favorite records, There's Nothing Wrong With Love, by built to spill. It's an album about finding and losing love growing up in Idaho. Doug wasn't a great singer and his band wasn't great (ala cobain) but he actually made an effort to make interesting and emotional music, and kind of set the stage for powerpop bands that would come after him (Beulah) or in the same time frame (Modest Mouse). While these bands aren't anywhere near as emotionally desperate as most i listen to, i don't like them as much either.

Now as we grow closer to the current era in my timeline of depressing music, we get to one of my favorite songwriters ever, Tim Kasher and Cursive. 

Tim is spiritually conflicted, romantically scarred, and remarkably angry, he also write some of the best lyrics out there. He wrote a couple of excellent albums and EPs early in his career with awesome titles (Such Blinding Stars for Starving Eyes) but his lyrical ability doesn't really shine until you get to his three most recent albums, Domestica, Ugly Organ, and Happy Hollow. All three are concept albums, the first dealing with his divorce, the second his art, and the third God (through the story of a small town and its priest). In "At Conception," he's writing about a pretty difficult subject (teen pregnancy, loss of innocence, fall of leaders) and he puts out, in my mind, some of the most compelling and inventive lyrics out there, "He cried, this simply cannot be! She quipped, quite the opposite you see, i'm no Virgin Mary, and you're no carpenter, so who will build my home? Jeannie you're just a kid, you can't conceive such mortal sin!" The way he weaves religion, humor, and heartache into his lyrics is I think very typifying of the way a lot of kids in Lubbock feel. Trying desperately to be cool, but really hurt and confused and wondering if God is out there. 

Around the same time as Tim was getting his start, another highly praised lyricist was getting noticed. Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, made one album, but it is probably the most influential of the past 20 years. His songs are cryptic, melancholy, and beautiful. The album sort of tells a love story, but honestly, i've listened to the album at least 20 times and still couldn't tell you what he's trying to say, just that I like it. Not that it really means anything, but the lyrics he's written that always pop up in my head during the day are, "The only girl I've ever loved was born with roses in her eyes." (I wasn't going to talk about this but as i was writing the lyrics down, I realized why i was compelled by them) I think I like these lyrics because there is always that uncertainty in life, that idea of "the one," what if you let the only girl you ever love slip through your fingers? Are you desperate to be lonely forever and wander around having nervous breakdowns like Jeff? I hope not. Also roses and eyes are pretty.

Around the same time as these two (a little earlier than both) another of my favorite artists started gaining steam. A Mr. Ben Folds. According to my somewhat glitchy last.fm, i've listened to at least 424 tracks penned by Ben and i love basically every one of them. I realize that i essentially am trying to be the blogosphere's version of ben. He made heartbreak catchy, upbeat, and funny. All of his songs are about loss or disappointment, but the only remotely sad one (and most popular) is Brick. Ben's wry take on life is great, because he both mocks it and expresses this feeling we all have of being underwhelmed, while at the same time coming across as honest and vulnerable, and really cool as well. I feel bad for ben though, the dude sings about love so much but has had like 4 divorces, maybe he is just a dick, but i hope not. Favorite ben lyrics, "I love you more than any man has loved before, i love more than all the stars up in the sky, i think that we should settle down and live happily forever...after; what do you think of that?" and "the cruelest lies are often told, without a word, and the kindest truths are o-ften spoke..but ne-ever heard."

If I were to estimate the impact albums have made on my life I would say that, in terms of making me appreciate music, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea led me to see there was more out there than pop and classic rock, but Transatlanticism is the first record i think I really connected with on an emotional level. I got it the same time as Hot Fuss and Our Endless Numbered Days, but i can remember sitting alone at my aunts house alone in fort worth listening to New Year on repeat and wondering why Chelsea Clark wouldn't return my affections. The entire album is gold and I think that it was the first album that described emotions that i had never personally experienced, but could totally understand. I could always lose myself in books, but with "Title and Registration" "Passenger Seat" "We Looked Like Giants," et al, i could lose myself in a song. I knew how Ben Gibbard felt driving through a freezing Portland, or lamenting a lost love. Every Death Cab album is gold. They seem to follow me as I grow up, Transatlanticism was all about that sort of introduction to romance and heartbreak, Plans came out in the middle of high school, when i was doubting who i was and what i wanted to be, and when Narrow Stairs came out my senior year, "I Will Possess Your Heart," described my greatest wish and "Cath" described my greatest fear (still does) and "Your New Twin Sized Bed," was who i thought i would surely become. I think I owe a lot of my misery, but a lot of the things I like about myself, my vision of myself as this romantic hero, destined to be rejected but still be the better man, from Ben Gibbard and Chris Walla. 

(And as I reflect, I realize that this is where it started. I always thought I wanted to be like the heroes in books, i wanted to be Robert Jordan and get the girl, but really i wanted to be Ben and miss the girl.)

Favorite Death Cab lyrics, "The glove compartment is inaccurately named and everybody knows it, because behind its doors there's nothing to keep my fingers warm" "Goddam the black night with all of it's foul temptations, I become what i've always hated"

If Death Cab was who I was during school, then for the past few months (i coined it "My Summer of Hell") were encapsulated by Max Bemis of Say Anything. To understand Say Anything, you have to understand Max. For the majority of his life he was an un-medicated self-destructive bi-polar (in my mind) genius. He fell in love with a girl in HS and did everything he could musically to impress her. During the recording of his first album, Baseball, he had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized. He recovered since then and proceeded to put out two of the greatest, most emotionally charged albums ever, and he is a case study in the sexually frustrated romantic. Is a Real Boy is essentially a thesis paper on anxiety and self esteem issues and the impulses that accompany them. I thought this album was genius, in my mind Max is the most clever and honest songwriter out there today. "Belt" captures the teenage arrogance and vigor that i was feeling as a 17 year old kid. "Woe" was my frustration at being misunderstood. "The Writhing South," was that prurient part of me that i still don't understand. "Alive with the Glory of Love," was the exhilarating, selfless, exciting, and irrational romance that has become what i've always wanted. "I Want to Know Your Plans," was the sappy sweet, but still semi-mean, guy that I wish I could be. "Admit It," the capstone of the record essentially bottled up all the emotions i could have, particularly that pride that only a 17 year old can feel, pride in every small perceived victory and the victories you are sure will come. Also "Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too," was one of those goofy fun songs that you could sing along to with friends. The rest of disc 2 went largely ignored until after I discovered In Defense of the Genre.

At first I was not fond of IDotG, but then during senior trip, it all made sense. All the rage and vitriol that Max was spewing were doing loops in my own head. It may be the greatest expression of pure rage and disappointment and bitterness ever set to music. He even mentions feeling betrayed by a girl on a cruise ship! It just spoke directly to me, and even then, I'm nowhere near Max' level of anger, I can't just straight up abandon someone I care about the way he writes about, and I'm glad for that. 

But Say Anything is easily my most played artist, and it really spiked over the past Summer, long story short, if you've ever felt overwhelmed by rejection, Max has a song for you. I feel bad for the guy, cause I think he really is a romantic and still searching for love.

Favorite SA lyrics: "When I watch you, want to do you, right where you're standing" "If only you'd stop breathing, I'd quit you exclusively" "I am proud of my life and the things that I have done, I'm proud of myself and the loner I've become"

Most recently I've really gotten into Brand New, and I've had Deja Entendu forever but really only listened to "Ok, I Believe you but my Tommy Gun Doesn't," because i absolutely felt that the first couple of lines applied to me. But I think Jesse Lacey is an interesting cat. He's a great lyricist, but where Max has a sort of bravado and sense of hope, Jesse is just pure pessimism and seems almost entirely devoid of sympathy, but he also seems to have this messiah complex. He seems devoid of sympathy on "Sowing Season," from The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me, when he says "I'm not your friend, I'm just a man who knows how to feel, I'm not your friend, I'm not your lover, I'm not your family," and i identify with that sentiment. You want to not care about someone, but you can't because you see this hurt and and you feel for them, but at the same time it's so overwhelming you wish you could just drop it. And he seems to have this need and desire to be there for people, in "Jesus Christ," "Jesus Christ, that's a pretty face, the kind you'd find on someone I could save," and in "Degausser," "Take me, take me back to your bed/I love you so much that it hurts my head/I don't mind you under my skin/I'll let the bad parts in, the bad parts in/you're my favorite bird when you sing/I really do wish you'd wear my ring." I think he just kind of illustrates that feeling that all guys have, where when there's someone you care about, especially a girl, you just want to make their pain go away.

Favorite Brand New lyrics: "I am heaven sent, don't you dare forget, i am all you've ever wanted what all the other boys all promised, sorry i told, i just need you to know."

I apologize for the inconsistencies in this entry, you have to understand that it was essentially written in two states of mind. 

It was just intended to discuss how the people I know that are sad are sad because it's almost fashionable, you take 2 parts Barsuk records, 2 parts Wes Anderson, and 1 part moody Europeans and you essentially can create the emotional state of any of my friends (or myself). 

But that's not true, life just sucks sometimes and you have to have faith that it will get better, or milk your misery for fame and fortune.

Anyway, i hope y'all enjoyed this entry, it took forever and was rather epic. So it may be a while before i have anything else to say.