"5!, 4!, 3!, 2!," — [*enormous blood splatter*] — "HAPPY NEW YEAR!"
I began 2022 cleaning up blood, and a lot of it.
12:01 A.M.
There’d been no reason to pay attention to the time — I’d been on my own in the drafty ramshackle garage, tackily lit with color-shifting LEDs, a low-rent strip club of my own making, singing variations on “Hello Walls” by Faron Young.
I commanded the undernourished crowdless rave from the lip of a little elevated plywood platform at the space’s back — the sort of modest perch I associate with performances featuring more band members than audience members. In the grand tradition of such a stage I was overdelivering, pushing a level of commitment and passion that leads to the hospital or to glory or both, having warmed-up on Stooges cuts, all agog dissociative on a potion of sativa, psyilocybin, sparkling wine, mezcal.
A stone-cold classic of degraded isolation, “Hello Walls” is of a song-species that Mike Z. and I could tropical deathglam
up
and squeeze some synch money
out of — but more on that later —
it’s rude to spill blood and withhold tales.
EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY!
I’d heard my name called out at extraordinary volume, rising above the bouncy, at-odds-with-itself MIDI
arrangement of the song I’d been desecrating, rising above the hours-long hummed fart drone of low-hovering helicopters —
there’d been A Gunman, there is ALWAYS
A Gunman.
— and was startled into action.
Stripping the studio monitor headphones off with a careless toss to the concrete floor, I made my way into the house. Blood everywhere.
Looked for all the world like someone’d been slashed on the run
and followed it up with a tumbling routine
. No one pool to speak of — the spurts and splatters were distributed in painterly dots, splotches and spirals. JUST ALL OVER.
Deep bass synths and brass stabs rumbled heavy maxx-volume funk out of the house speakers, 2021’s exit drummed out unbeknownst to me, counted down on popping background claves, movement and rhythm, the ghost of a party awhirl in the stillness.
What the hell’s happened here?
LEX was gathered in a pile of a dozen or so paper towels, looking like a dye house.
Looking like Lubyanka
drainage
.
Shit, man.
I was possessed of the unreactiveness I associate with the use of psychedelics, a certain sense of immediate acceptance of That Which Is, and dispassionately began to clean, making a mental note to photograph the particularly amusingly arranged blood-splatter on the big-block white Macbook charger1, a picture-perfect parody of scene kid art production —
“What happened?” “Dog headbutt.”
Figures
.
Puppies2 do thrash.
The young wolf’d delivered an accidental blow.
Apparently there’d been A Loud Noise.
“I need you to look up what to do about a broken nose.”
A look up, a Dwyerly faucet.
Kelly’3s gone krovvy
.
MORE TOWELS! More! More! MORE!
Shit, shit, shit —
SHIT.
I can’t drive right now.
PLEASE DON’T BE COMPLICATED.
After a stoned while I remembered how to use a digital device to access the Internet, and sought the advice of the Mayo Clinic, whose SEO must be impressive.
Being useless, I found comfort & solace in the Clinic letting me know that I could not be useful — pending loss-of-consciousness issues there’d be no need for a car or an ER. Not tonight.
“I was seeing stars.”
That’s Hollywood, baby.
Conked and thoroughly exsanguinated but With It,
Lex settled into the sofa and piled reddening rags until the river ran dry, left with the sort of soreness you don’t do much about beyond observing and inhabiting its bloom and bust.
I was directed to a still-cooling quesadilla for which all appetite had been lost, and I ate it in the pan, like a creature, dabbing at streaked blood that had collected in the ridges of the stovetop as I ritualistically absorbed heat and nourishment that hadn’t been intended for me.
HAPPY NEW YEAR
The songs “When It’s Time To Go
” and “world_puzzle
”
(click links for streaming pre-save)
both of which I recorded with Mike Z. Morrell aka MZM
aka El Aleph aka Surfgrind Radio
aka Em-ze-eM aka Orbit Angel
AKA B.A.D.D. MOTHERFUCKER
will be imminently released to Spotify, Apple Music, and all the other streaming channels you’re currently thinking about. That’s right — all that sick shit in your head is coming true.
Here’s how it’s gonna go:
I’ve been hoarding material a couple years now. You’ll find out more about this.
Much of it is deranged and “unconventional,” as — yes, it is true — I have no musical training and, oh Lord, I am and I have been FUCKING GONE
, yes, yes.
You get to decide if I’m avant-garde or grifter garbage. Qualify me, honey.
IN THE MEANTIME!
These two tracks were recorded with someone who’s Got The Touch
and some knowledge, and should serve as a dastardly warm swim-in, enabling me to entice people into my wavepool
, fooling those with conventional musical sensibilities so that I can trapdoor ‘em with the jester’s sequestered bugfuck backlog of self-produced meddlers’ agenre auto-didact dumbass dada tinker-tantrums — recorded in the collapsed world
, alone and increasingly feral.
There is much to come. For now, though, I offer you vaguely professional bonhomie.
Tracks recorded in Pacific Palisades, California, immediately pre-COVID.
Crank ‘em with headphones and there are seabirds.
Get the Oceanic Feeling.
I was nervous as hell and hadn’t sang in front of another person in a sustained, serious manner in years, much less into a microphone in front of open windows and occasional strangers coming in and out. Mistakes abound. I could do better.
I can always do better. At some point you have to relax
. You have to unclench. Leavings
. Let go. Let go. Let go. Let go. Let GO.
Will you shit only in death my child?
So when you love it, what you should do is give me money and attention4, hook me up to loudspeakers, let me in your head to wander around, wonder about it, wander about it, walk through it, tell me about it, tell everyone about it
— do I sound like I have PR, come on — hell, you’re the one that’s my manager. Money and attention.
I didn’t get enough of either. Come on. Can’t you see how sad I am? Come on.
I’ll be your best friend.
Legitimize me. Wash me in the blood of Mammon.
Anyway it all works out one way I pass the $LOVE$
on to MZM — The One that put this pair together, the one that yanked me aside at a party and told me I should Do This Shit Again — and we can make you a more proper recording of All This Shit
, all of it, Any of This Shit, or shit, shit — hit that Faron Young song, or finish the song we’d started writing about reptilian MDMA dealers murdering each other in the desert with all the Western guitar flourishes and sparkling Wurzliter, the really pretty one —
I’ll go as hard as you want me to.
This could be the last year.
🩸let’s make it. 💙J.Q.D.
Ultimately this went undocumented.
At some point the splatter went smear when I wasn’t looking.
Pretty sure the dogs have tasted human blood now. Got dogs addicted to human blood now.
Problems on problems on—
She’s fine.
Kelly is Lex.
Lex is other people too.
Lex is real.
I’m real.
Are you real?
More ways of giving me money and attention will emerge.
Currently, subscribing to this substack or passing me cash like a mafioso is the best option.
If your idea of fun is sitting around thinking of ways to monetize me, please be in touch.
If you do not already dress like an evil svengali I will help you.
Look forward to it.