Transmission from a Secret Location (Live Journal Reissue)

Friday night I attended the last show ever and documentary kickoff party for an historic Indianapolis "punk house" called the Secret Location. I lived there for a short period in 2005. The area in which the house stands has changed a lot since packs of feral dogs prevented me from getting in my car; the winds of gentrification have rendered the neighborhood desirable, and pushed out the possibility of the house pulling double duty as crud venue, seemingly forever.
For the documentary, I created transcripts of set lists found in the beery aftermath of rock show mornings after.

I post these historical artifacts here today alongside the Live Journal post from 2005 (r.i.p. furniture_party!) from which they were originally transcribed:

I live in a house of rock dorks,
where dudes nod their ball capped heads.
Bowls are smoked and bowels are moved,
beers are spilled
and everything's an ashtray.
It has not worked out as well as
I hoped it would but it is not
without its charms.
When I leave this world of beard
buzz and drum hands I will miss
the morning after set lists most of all.

Unearthed were the following texts:

Liquid Compass (WIP)

My joke at work is to stonily insist that I not be addressed with metaphors.

Only staggering literality for me, thank you! I've already asked you once nicely.

But in actuality I can't ignore certain symbols.

The last time he and I hang out is near the causey way at Lake Monroe, while exploring an abandoned waterslide; in a liquid, transitional space, now choked with foliage. That day, we trip through the woods, examining the remains of the Zoom Flume. I slip down the fiberglass incline and land with my boots planted in a leaf-clogged depository.

We wander around a now-rotted geodesic dome home overlooking the lake, festooned with shitty spraypaint. It's another unabashed bummer symbol, this broken utopian structure, bleakly scrawled with Juggalo bon mots. In a somewhat accusatory tone, he asks me How's my eyesight? How bout my internal compass? And has this been an average week for me?

He's referring to heavy drinking in Halloween costumes. This after I'd escorted him through his first drunken hook-up. Am I tugging this kid down a mucky ravine?

It is a relief, in a way, that he is leaving, before he finds out that I am not always nice. He's already learned today that I can not climb a tree. This hasn't been an average week; I haven't picked up a pen. I want to draw with people, to strike a balance between art making and social, to channel a solid engagement with something bigger and longer than myself. But part of me is required to court oblivion, occasionally in costume. Part of me invites in the unwelcome guest, the liquid variable, the destabilizing factor to flood where boredom might root.


(Work in progress, possibly to appear as a longer piece in the print edition of Glob, my anti-blog, forthcoming in early 2013.)

Where's Worldo?

Bloomington, IN is at its most Bloomington when the middle aged people who own the place don their Peruvian alpaca hats and twirl into the streets for the world music fest known as LOTUS. Consequently, my co-workers at a popular local coffee shop/juice bar and I set to task identifying some of the trappings. Behold: Lotus bingo. Saturday, as I tipsily left the Bishop and filtered into the cool night air, I was accosted by a shirtless young man with a digeridoo perched on a fire escape above me. "What's your name??" He cried to me. "It's Erin," I muttered. "Erin! You're radiant!" he crowed and tooted his digeridoo into the night sky. It's his world, we're just living in it.

COMPOSER

John Collins McCormick is a multi-talented knucklehead and friend who makes tightly controlled compostions with simple materials in various visual mediums.

His drawing zine is available from Friends and Relatives Records.

He's interviewing me about being a "Woman in Noise Music" for Matthew Himes forthcoming magazine "Chortler." I am just relieved to be included. Results will be posted in the near future.

#FSDC

This is where I go to cry/my online gang tattoo

Art Thoughtz

Hennessy Youngman, new patron saint of Extreme Appearances.
Dudes who get it.