a new chapter begins.

My kid started school this week, which is a weird thing to deal with. I, like probably every adult in the history of the world, consider myself to be much more ‘young at heart’ or whatever the dipshitty phrase is, than I actually am. In my mind I’m still a messy kid who won’t ever grow up and the ravages of time only serve to somewhat camouflage/highlight my whimsy/arrested development in the face of my aging exterior. The reality is that I just dress like an asshole and I’m not very good at some things that I thought that all adult men are good at. Like, I can’t fix a car or paint stuff well or really understand things like stocks and money and mortgages. This doesn’t mean I’ve retained any of my childlike youthful exuberance, it just means I’m kind of a moron in a lot of aspects of life and now it’s become kind of obvious that I’m not gonna just ‘grow into’ any sort of knowledge. If I want to (for example) fix the leaky radiator in my car, or examine my investment portfolio (whatever the fuck that means) well, I’m gonna have to really steer my life in the direction of learning that shit in order to do so. The notion that some day everything will all just come together is out the window at this point. I’m just kind of dumb, and being ‘forever young’ has nothing to do with it.

That’s obvious when I do things like go out to a bar and want to leave at eleven thirty because I’m exhausted or when I end up talking to a hot 22 year old girl and all I can think is “god, you’re stupid” or when I look at my skateboard and know for a fact that I’m not riding it anytime in the foreseeable future. I’ve maintained none of the trappings of youth (save creative output I guess, but that’s really not the domain of the young. It starts when you’re young, but people that are dull adults usually weren’t creative kids and lots of people who ARE creative adults weren’t creative as kids) and despite what I believe, deep down I know the truth, which is that this is it. Life is a big game of bullshit fakery and nobody has any fucking idea what’s going on or how they’re supposed to behave except for people between the ages of 20-32, who for a brief, fleeting moment in life may just have it all figured out.

Now, that’s not to say that I really mind being a grown up. I think it’s cool. I just find it crazy that I’m now the person picking up another person from their school, where they meet people and make friends and have a social life and I’m just one of the dull pods back at home that sits around doing work and reading the paper like THAT shit could possibly be even remotely interesting when there are overgrown vacant lots to run through and cases of beer to steal and bugs to squash and pretty girls to try to talk out of their bras and so on and so forth. It’s a little odd to realize that I’m firmly, two feet planted on the ‘adult parent’ side of things. But that’s what my kid going to school has really exemplified.

Although, it must be said that I’m a bit like the black-punk-rock kid in that the other parents don’t REALLY fully just accept me as one of their own, but I don’t have the time or energy to really run with the non-parents either. Not that I want to hang out with the dork parents of the shitty kids my kid is in class with, mind you. I could really give a fuck about that, but see, that’s disingenuous too because at some point if my kid wants to play with another kid, it’ll be nice if I can get along with the parents because (and this is the dick punch to eternally flatten all dicks) his friends’ parents are now my fucking acquaintances, and my last chance at new friends unless I somehow end up in some field with a high turnover and an open-floor office plan (not bloody likely).

Whatever. My kid seems to be handling school well. He’s apparently not really listening much and when I asked him what he did on his first day he sighed and said “dad, I didn’t do ANYTHING in school.” He says he doesn’t like his teacher’s face, which is mean, but a respectable position to have and he says that despite all that, he likes it there a lot. I mean, fuck. He goes three hours a day, three days a week. How fucking brutal could it be? I asked the teacher how he was on the first day and she sighed and said, ‘eh, he was pretty good.’ Pretty hilarious.

Anyway, tonight and tomorrow night I go back into the studio to sing and do some final percussion and guitar stuff and then this shit is getting shipped off to Colorado to be mixed. I’m fucking STOKED on how this shit is turning out. Lots of keyboards, actually. More than I had initially thought, but it’s really ending up cool. The rough mixes of Suffer the Children Come Unto Me and East St. Louis are really great so far. I can’t wait to hear how Covered In Flies turns out.

xoxoxoxoxox