Mid Rare

Byecycle

The idea of time being linear has baffled me for quite a while. Everything we as humans know in this universe run in cycles, yet time continues forward, unbending, like some kind of metaphysical unbreakable comb?

From the beginning of existence, our lives have been based on cycles. The rotation of the earth around the sun, harvest seasons and lunar cycles dictating the currents of the sea — these all shape how we live our lives.

Our society has issues with change. Even when we know it’s coming, change throws us for a loop, casting uncertainty over our ever-so-certain lives. We fear death as if it is not inevitable. We act as if we are immortal — physically, emotionally, spiritually. Nothing in our life is supposed to end unless we want it to. Change will only happen by our accord, no one else’s. Man controls his destiny. Everything is as we want it be, until it isn’t.

Time waits for no man. The universe continues on with its cycles, looping constantly like an infinite hamster wheel. We all get tossed by the wayside at one point or another, hay flung from the wheel as the animal pushes on, gently fluttering through the air before crashing back to where we started.

                       

Dutch sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst understands the cycles of life. Well, at least one, specifically. In 2009, the Utrecht University professor released a study about the change in people’s social lives. Mollenhorst found that while the size of our social circle stays roughly the same, the people in it change drastically. Just under half of your friends will no longer be around. The study doesn’t list any specific reasons for this change other than simple growth as a person.

As I reach my 28^th birthday, my fourth trip through the friend cycle, I’ve been reflecting on my relationships, past and present. Most relationships end organically, just two people drifting apart over time. Others end more abruptly over serious matters. This is where questions arise as to why we are no longer compatible. The simplistic answer is that two people just grow weary of one another and need to part ways. Other relationships begin to take precedent, leaving behind “what is” for “what was.” Flaw and faults can no longer be overlooked, gradually outweighing the benefits of friendship.

It happens to all of us multiple times over the years. I’ve been on both sides of friendships ending. I’ve ended contact with people who I felt were no longer a positive influence in my life and I’ve been left wondering why my phone calls were not being returned. Some departures hurt more than others, but they all have a lasting effect. The lessons learned in these relationships are should make us better people, better friends. They sharpen our judgment of character — of others and of ourselves. Not every friendship has a set expiration date of seven years, however. There are people who can remain close for an entire lifetime. Their bond stays strong through various life stages and changes, both subtle and drastic.

I currently stand at a crossroads in two of my longest and tightest relationships. Both are nearing the nine-year mark and both are at a turning point. I’m not sure how things will play out. It could just be a bump in the road, or my world could come crashing down. Either way it plays out, our relationships will never be the same. And if either, or both, comes to an end, there’s not much I can do, as heartbreaking as it is. I’ll just have to let go and move on, slowly falling back to the haystack, hoping to catch on and start the cycle over again.

Anonymous asked: So touched by your piece about the new record and your personal experience of it... There is nothing better for me than people connecting - really getting it - in whatever way they do. I was empty today, but am filled to the point of overflowing all because of witnessing the beautiful, honest description of you. Thanks for giving back, and I hope to see you in Portland (or the Bay) soon. Love, Jim from domeshots/february 5th.

Thank you for the kind words, brother and thank you for making such beautiful art for me to enjoy.

What it means to be reborn

For the first time since I moved to Portland, I felt homesick.

It had only been about six weeks since I had moved, so I guess the newness of being here had started to wear off. I was at home with Keefe and his friend Joey, who was staying with us while travelling through town. We were all fans of the same local bands growing up, but Joey takes it to another level. His website, sweetbreadproductions.com, chronicles and archives Bay Area music as well as films and other arts. With a feeling of nostalgia in the air, Keefe popped in a DVD my dad had made of Maxwell Adams’ final show. Seeing faces I hadn’t seen is a long time put a smile on mine. Rocking through the set, sharing old memories and spotting faces in the crowd, the three of us were having a great time.

During the conversation, Keefe mentioned that Domeshots was playing Oakland that night.

“Sucks we can’t be there,” he said.

“Yeah, for sure,” I replied, my words drifting off as the thought truly hit me.

We can’t be there. There is 300 miles away.

I didn’t really say much the rest of the night. We watched the rest of the video, talked about some new bands and discussed the music scene in Portland. As the guys put in a different movie, I went to bed.

Sleep wasn’t really an option at that point in the night. All I could think about was the show. What songs will they play? Who went? It’s Tuesday, but I bet there’s at least 60 people there. No, probably more. But I know who wasn’t there — I wasn’t. I put on Pandora and just laid there for a couple hours or so until I fell asleep.

The next morning, I woke up at stared out my window. It was a beautiful morning. I looked at the sunshine illuminate the yard. The vibrant green of the grass, the sharp blue sky and no clouds in sight signaled it should be a great day.

Every day I’d been in Portland had started off with a smile. Every single day, I’d wake up and think, “I’m where I’m supposed to be.” Not that morning. That morning, I wondered how long I would stay in Oregon. Would I even last until summer? The pull of the Bay Area was strong as nostalgia turned into loneliness and loneliness turned into regret.

Brian had left for work by the time I left my room, so I made breakfast for the other guys. After we ate, Keefe shared an email with us. Danner had sent him the new album. With Domeshots no longer together, the three remaining members retooled as February 5^th and will put out the final work of Domeshots. So there the three of us were, local music fiends, with pure audio gold just handed over to us by the band itself.

Let’s just say the album has been played a lot around the house. It’s tested the limits of our audio system and shakes the entire house when the bass hits the subwoofer. At its core, February 5^th is classic Domeshots — heavy, rhythm-driven Rock ‘N’ Roll with an intense range of vocals and thought provoking lyrics. But it isn’t just another Domeshots album. It has a much deeper feel, musically and emotionally.

Nothing encompasses that more than the opening track. It’s a 12-minute epic showcasing the progression of the band’s talent and sound. For those familiar with the band, it’s almost a condensed version of their evolution. It sets the tone perfectly for the rest of the album. The ebb and flow of sound — heavy, erratic riffs giving way to ambient acoustics and soothing-yet-eerie vocals — as well the lyrical theme of self-reflection, change and rebirth.

The track that resonates with me the most is “Song of the Dead Life Poetic.” The smooth bass line and simple drumbeat back trippy, intergalactic, Morello-esqe guitars. Then vocals kick in typical Danner fashion.

Song of the Dead Life Poetic by february 5th

Riiiiiight nooooww, is definitely right now/I keep inviting the fuutuurrre and holding on to the paaast/And I waaant, desperately to chaaaannge/My roots have grown so strong in the Eaaaarrrrrth.

I fade in and out of the album as it provides constant background but the song grabs my attention every time. It’s crept into my subconscious and entangled it self with my own thoughts. Right now definitely is right now. The future is uncertain and the past is no more. Right now is all that truly exists. My roots in the Bay Area have grown strong over 27 years, yet I sought change.

The chorus always reaches out for me, snapping me from what I am doing, pulling me into a vortex of audible emotion.

I put my hand behind my baaack, and a blindfold on my eyyyeees/This is how I live, but I am not aliiiiive/Through the lowest of my looowwss, and the highest of my hiiighs/If this is really us, we can’t be right.

The Bay didn’t leave me. I left the Bay. The urge to grow as a person, to become a better me, led me north. Change hurts. Good or bad, breaking routine causes confusion and elicits a range of emotion. Yet that’s how we grow, by running the gambit of emotion and learning from each experience. It’s what helps us cope with the transition. Eventually, those lessons will set the foundation for the future. As Domeshots led to February 5^th, the Bay Area has given way to Portland.

The final track, “What It Means to be Reborn,” closes on a strong note:

Let me show you what it means to be reborn/A front row seat to watch my phoenix rise/You dug me up late last night/I didn’t know I was still alive.

My yearning for “home” has passed. I realized that in order to become who I am supposed to become — who I want to become — I am where I need to be.

I am home.

Just a good ol’ boy

I totally just fucking Bo Duke’d my way out of a parking ticket.

Growing up watching “The Dukes of Hazzard,” I’ve always wished I could be a Robin Hood-style outlaw, constantly getting over on the sheriff and running wild all over town. But mostly I’ve just wanted to hood slide across my car with legitimate reason.

While I have had a few run-ins with the law, it is rare that I get the better end of the deal. Today ended up being my day and I got to fulfill a childhood dream in process.

I saw the meter maid pull up next to the car as I was going to move it. She left about a foot gap between my car and her vehicle, so I was hitting unlock while sprinting toward the car.

I jumped up and slid across the rear wheel well seamlessly (thanks to a light rain), splitting the cars. I hopped in the driver’s seat and skirted off. She tried to follow, but a car pulled out in front and I hit the corner.

It felt amazing to pull that off, especially since I’ve all ready been hit with four tickets in the past 10 days. My adrenaline was through the roof and the sweet slide made it that much better.

That, and with my long standing issues with authority, it’s always nice to get over on the man Duke-style.

Longing for third-and-long

It has only been a week, but I miss my best friend.

We’ve been friends my entire life, and we are still friends, but we’re just not as close as we used to be. It’s not like we’ve had a falling out or anything. It’s mostly just life that has come between us.

The main reason for our rift has been my work schedule. It creates a great divide between us, hampering the amount of time we spend together. I have other interests in life as well — interests that the two of us can’t share, interests that limit our time together. It’s hard to spread what little free time I have around, so some relationships have to suffer.

We see each other in passing from time to time. Not much is said. It’s usually just a quick glance and an occasional exclamation of joy. I still keep tabs via the Internet, but it’s not the same as the face-to-face interactions we used to share. Our level of intimacy has dwindled and we are now more acquaintances than friends.

I miss waking up, first thing Sunday morning, turning on the TV and spending over 12 hours with my best friend.

It has only been one week, but I miss football.

Football has been a part of my life since birth. As a toddler, I successfully predicted three straight world champions by pointing at a helmet pin in my dad’s collection and saying, “Super Bowl.” My first birthday cake featured the 49ers gold-mining mascot. I used to run grown men for a dollar a game in Madden ’94 on SNES. I started playing fantasy football at the age of 10.

When I quit my first job, I told them it was because I couldn’t handle starting school at 7 a.m. all week, then doing the same with work on the weekends. The truth was I couldn’t stand the thought of missing football Sunday mornings.

Now I’m faced with the same dilemma in much different circumstances. I’m not 16 anymore. I have to go to work. Apparently, I have to work Sundays. I have worked Sundays previously, but I was actually paid to watch football at that job, so that was a different story.

I first realized I would miss the majority of the season (Thank the football gods for Thursday night games!) in early August. I tried to rework my schedule to no avail. Sundays were a must.

Opening night fell on a Thursday, and thanks to the wonders of holiday scheduling, I found myself taking orders instead of analyzing third-and-long calls. It was a long night. Not because I was busy, but because I knew Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees were slinging the ball all over the field and there was nothing I could do but catch the highlights.

Sunday rolled around and I dreaded my alarm going off. I was up before the pregame shows even started and I was at work an hour before kickoff. I was mid-lunch rush when the Niners kicked off. My boss Cody was nice enough to relay key plays to me via the radio, but it just made me long even more for a couch and a big screen.

The following night provided more of the same. Midway through the Raiders-Broncos game, Cody came to the front of the restaurant and said “I just realized I won’t get to see a single football game this season.”

“REALLY?!?!” I wanted to yell. “You just realized that?! I knew that two months ago dick!”

“I know dude,” I said, my voice cracking with sorrow. “It sucks.”

“At least we’re in the same boat,” he told me, even though we both knew it hurt me more than he.

“I don’t want to be in your boat,” I said.

“I want to be in a boat with football.”

Fore Fathers, the First Amendment and Two-year Plans

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This is the First Amendment of the Constitution and nowhere in there does it guarantee cell service.

Over the past two weeks, the online activist group Anonymous has forced a shut down to a small number of BART stations in San Francisco in protest, with a third protest being planned for Monday, August 29. The initial protest carried much merit as it focused on power exerted by BART police in the shooting of Charles Blair Hill on July 3. Since then, the battle between Anonymous and BART officials has deteriorated into a spat between spoiled six-year olds.

BART landed the initial blow when officials disrupted cell phone service at the Civic Center station during the planned August 15 rally. Officials said the move was a security measure to ensure the safety of riders. Anonymous saw it as a violation of free speech.

Both sides are wrong.

BART officials cutting cell service and WiFi in order to limit communication between protesters was a dirty deed, but it in no way violated the First Amendment. Since this occurred, Anonymous has relentlessly laid into BART officials. The “Hacktivists” posted personal information lifted from both the bart.gov website as well as the BART Police union website. The two organizations have an ongoing game of cat-and-mouse going by trying to figure out which stations to temporarily close in order to limit rider-activist interaction (and the ensuing chaos).

Anonymous has singled out BART spokesman Linton Johnson (who, at one point, took credit for the “interrupt cell service” idea) as its whipping boy. Numerous tweets and blog posts have called for Johnson’s resignation via veiled threats of increased protests and blackmail. Semi-nude photos of Johnson were even leaked online as part of the groups ploy. (Members of Anonymous have spoken out against the release of the picture, further revealing the unclear dynamic in which the group operates.)

Yet all Anonymous has done is annoy commuters, ruffle a few feathers and lose track of the original focus. Hill’s death has become irrelevant in the dispute between the two feuding factions. The focus has fallen on free speech, which was never an issue to begin with.

No one has taken away the group’s right to assemble peaceably or restricted speech in any way. All BART officials did was limit the way in which people could communicate. Activists have been able to spread word of uprising long before cell phones or the Internet.

Anti-war activists weren’t tweeting for LBJ to bring home the troops from Vietnam. Cesar Chavez didn’t need a Facebook page to unionize field workers. I doubt “Tank Man” was standing in the middle of Tiananmen Square screaming, “Can you hear me now?”

Anonymous responded to BART officials’ actions very irresponsibly. Their reaction was similar to a kid calling Child Protective Services because his mother said “No video games until your room is clean.”

Anonymous has done some very positive things with its brand of activism. The attack on BART is not one of them. All the group is proving is this generation’s reliance on technology.

Take away Internet connection and “Hacktivists” just become hacks.

Me and 2000 of my closest friends

I remember my first concert.

For story purposes, I always tell people it was Family Values ’98. Limp Bizkit, Ice Cube, Rammstein and Korn. I was 13 and went with my brother, my cousins and a couple of their friends. It was the first time I was in a mosh pit. It was the concert that hooked me into metal and live shows. It still holds a place in my Top Five, but it was not my first experience with live music.

When I was about seven or eight, my parents took my brother and me to the Nugget in Reno to see Tower of Power.

The show was in a typical casino-style theatre: stage, dance floor, staggered rows of bar-style seating. We spent most of the set sitting at our stools, Dad bobbing his head, Mom swaying side to side and my brother and me sipping sodas and plotting how we were going to spend our time at the arcade. For the final two songs, my mom insisted we go to the dance floor.

The first was an up-tempo funk jam. My dad jerked awkwardly in the shoulder and neck region doing what he called “dancing.” Mom wasn’t doing much better. White people don’t have much rhythm. The song ended, everyone clapped and the band said goodnight. I was excited at the prospect of leaving, but then the lights cut out, the crowd cheered louder than before. I had been duped by my first encore.

As the horns kicked in, everyone in the building knew what was about to go down. My dad closed his eyes, bowed his head and pumped his fist. He and my mom then danced to one of his all-time favorite songs, “You’re Still a Young Man.”

Nothing else mattered at that moment. It was just the two of them, swaying in one another’s arms, staring into each other’s eyes, singing every word, beaming from ear to ear. I had never seen my parents happier at the time.

Over 20 years later, I’ve lived to replicate the experience. The thrill of live music has shaped my life. It has led me to numerous cities, hundreds of bands and a group of really amazing people.

Going to shows has dominated my weekends for more than 10 years and it’s not slowing any time soon. Free outdoor show on a Wednesday afternoon? I’m calling in sick. Tiny dive bar a hundred miles away? I’ll be there four deep. Ticketmaster fees doubling the price of entry? Ah, fuck it, I’m in.

I’ll do anything for that thrill, anything for the rush, anything to achieve that high.

My obsession is about more than just the music. It’s about the experience — an experience that can be shared with thousands of other people with seemingly no other connection. I can’t even accurately describe the way I feel at a show. I feel linked to everyone around me — the band, the crowd — like one collective consciousness. We are all contributing to this experience equally and will all treat it differently. Yet, we are all together. We are all one.

I’m not sure why I constantly crave this feeling.

I guess it’s just in my blood.

Back on the Bike

“It’s just like riding a bike.”

Apparently, jumping back into something — anything — is easy.

“As easy as riding a bike.”

Well, the first time I got back on a bike in over 15 years, I almost fell off, couldn’t keep my balance and was sore for a week after.

So hopefully my return to writing goes a bit more smoothly.

My bike riding skills have improved remarkably since I first rode Keefe’s bike to Zachary’s. I now have the stamina to ride for miles without hacking up a lung or collapsing in distress. I’ve managed to navigate the streets of Oakland drunkenly and I can bomb down San Pablo Avenue without getting run over or fearing for my life.

But does the same thing apply to other skills, specifically writing?

I sure as shit hope so.

Writing is something I’ve done fairly well since I was 10-years old. I began studying journalism when I was 15 and continued doing so until I was 25. Writing has become second nature to me.

I guess that’s why I’m back, here, writing this blog. I’m here writing for no one, writing for everyone, writing mostly for myself. I need to see if I can still peddle one leg after the other, lean in to the tight turns and apply proper pressure to the rear breaks. I’ll start with simple flatland trails as I work my way up to Stage 6 of the Tour De France.

I just want to put my thoughts down. I want to generate laughter, force people to think a little more deeply than usual and cause a little ruckus and confusion. It’s what I do, that’s how I roll.

I’m not expecting much from this. You can expect whatever you want.

Hopefully I remember how to ride this bike. If not, at least a few people can see me panic, squeeze the front break and watch me go headfirst over the handlebars.