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words: aug 14 2018

the ambient show

So I’m at the ambient show—total ripper—and there’s this drone metal act killing it. Great sense of dynamics and atmosphere but going all way in on the theatrics (QT forest nymph on ethereal vocals, complete with True Detective S1 leaf crown) but something was missing: fog machine. You can’t have drone metal without some smoke emerging from whatever bog you crawled out of. Do us all a favor and head on over to Long and McQuade and properly set the scene.

Then, right as the dronetown headliner starts their singular note of the evening this guy in front of me presents, I shit you not, a full bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos and starts eating them one by one. I’m trying not to just totally lose it laughing my ass off.

I look around and suddenly the magic is gone. The whole room smells like too many masters degrees. Everyone has found a way to stand in an even more awkward way than the person next to them. I start to hear that note again and it’s suddenly a dialtone.

words: aug 8 2018

chemtrails

I think about conspiracy theorists a lot, reading about them when I can. Obviously there’s some degree of grifting going on, but it’s near impossible to tell where the grifting ends and the belief begins. People in sales talk about believing in what you’re selling, but does someone selling tickets to a seminar on chemtrails? I’m sure at some point they saw it as a way to make money, or to gain notoriety, or even just some friends. They begin as impostors but get in too deep. They eventually fully embody their views and they’re swallowed whole; the person indistinguishable from their gospel.

I work in tech, and ‘impostor’ is instead used from the inside looking out. An impostor in this sense is somebody who feels like they lack the skills or knowledge to succeed in their company. This is obviously a threat to anyone’s ability to be successful but this is not about that. There are plenty of better words about that elsewhere.

The bigger problem are the people who are impostors in the other way: they believe it so hard that they cease to be real people.

You see it most clearly during a fire drill. The filing cabinet for small startups spills all its disruption into the street. I’m told that’s a shirt referencing a Bitcoin inside joke. That man is wearing a set of shoulder holsters—like for pistols—but they have an iPhone and a Moleskine in each.

Later, a message in the conversation pit¹ tells us that the alarm was triggered by an adjoining building full of art students. Maybe impostors of yet a different kind, but they are the only people that can disrupt the disruption.

words: jul 30 2018

summer by the balls

Oh yeah every year I say I’m really gonna squeeze all the juice out of the summer but this year I’m really gonna do it. There will be a smoking hole in the earth where this summer once was.

Usually by the end of September I feel some malaise and regret that I was inside a little too much, left a Corona undrank and a lake unswam. Not this year.

People will be filled with reverence and envy as they remember Summer 2018 as that one When He Really Did It. That year when he was pure expression of relaxation and warm weather exuberance in the face of all adversity.