Hemingway, Plath, Brautigan, David Foster Wallace, Lou Reed

I spent a week in an inpatient facility, but the connection I want to draw is electroconvulsive therapy. I'm some twenty treatments in, I started last September, 3 times a week at first, and have now spread the treatments out to once per month. I dread everything about it, from getting up ridiculously early to having to expose my feet for electrodes. The worst though, without a doubt is the loss of memory. I can't find places I've visited dozens of times, conversations both recent and in the past are lost to me, but perhaps most troubling is how little I remember of books I've read and loved. An excuse to read them again no doubt, but still unsettling.

With my signature your marriage is terminated.

Outside of people looking for citizenship, tax benefits, or perhaps health insurance, I don’t think anyone is more excited by the prospect of marriage for the involvement of the state than the vows.

I have to admit, we talked about insurance early on, but not as a reason for marriage, but as a reason that it made sense to get married so soon. We were convinced we knew each other more intimately than people married entire lifetimes, we’d been through the worst together, seen one another stretched, and still believed we’d never spend a night apart.

Marriage was attractive for the vows, the commitment that problems would be fleeting, not the relationship. In our end, the vows would be unspoken of until the courtroom. Only the legality was of consideration, discussed.

I know it isn’t healthy to pin my happiness to another person, but sometimes in the afternoon doldrums I just want to know there is someone who won’t have plans without me, and won’t say no to going out.

Involuntary Goodfellas

The intake interview on 3C mostly consisted of questions I had already answered four or five times that day, first at my psychologist’s asking, and then with a series of emergency room medical doctors, psychiatry residents, and finally the EMTs who were transporting me to the inpatient facility. Bob, the night R.N. who I had been assigned to at the Behavioral Health Services Center checked boxes and slid papers across the table for initials and signatures. There were no surprises for me, although my suicide plan somehow seemed new to him. Like the father Jeff Mangum sang about, I had thought about all the ways to die, and up until now, they had all been more than I had dared to try. The night before I had settled on starving myself of oxygen by breathing in the pure helium commonly sold at party stores where it would otherwise end up in balloons that at their darkest would read ‘Over the Hill’. Bob made sure to stress that the program was short term, just for stabilization.

I was wearing only a pair of boxer shorts that may have been contraband for the elastic waist (shoe strings were banned on the floor, even for visitors), and the gown I was given ten hours earlier in the ER that my psychologist had walked me down to. My personal affects were in a plastic bag with the international symbol for biohazard printed on it - I pictured the scene in every prison movie where the newly released ex-con signs off on receiving the items that had followed them into incarceration as I acknowledged with ink an LG cellphone and the more important contents of my wallet (Bob had no interest in my being 6 smoothies away from a free one, or presumably being a regular shopper at Borders Books).

The unit’s community room doubled as the dining room. By the amount of crumbs on the tables, and the amount of patients I had to assume were also suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (someone must have had a cleaning compulsion), I had just missed snack time, when the sound of the metal window being rolled up draws the patients into a mob that slowly dissipates as they each receive their two food items and one beverage. For the Cleveland Clinic, it seemed odd that the offerings included potato chips, cookies and pop, but maybe the residents of my floor weren’t to be trifled with over high fructose corn syrup or trans fat. But if an apple or a banana could set someone off, I had to question the logic of allowing us to watch Goodfellas on a television which was behind a plexiglass window smeared with body oil in a pattern that suggested someone at been shoved against it before sliding down to the floor. It had been a few years since I seen Goodfellas, but all of a sudden it was slightly comforting that pens were also off limits - I hadn’t forgotten the scene were Joe Pesci put one through someone’s neck over a trivial insult.

More picture(s) of building(s) (but not food).

Cleveland may not have a reputation as a first class city, but the controversial Marcel Breuer (Bauhaus) building always seemed more fitting for a Soviet concrete wasteland than the post-industrial demise of what once was the United State's 6th largest city, and home to Rockefeller and Carnegie.

Maybe beauty isn't only in the eye of the beholder, but the angle of the beholding.

The album is on iTunes

Years in the making, PFOC on iTunes.

My progress on the next album has been slow, but for a few more days I'm not going to worry about that.

Who knew the Grammys were so cheap?

PFOC bassist Tim Luntzel won a Grammy for his work with Loudon Wainwright III, but he didn't get a statuette, in fact, if he wants a certificate he has to send them $25.

And her screaming decay...

In an effort to get me outside of my head more, my psychologist gave me the assignment of trying to sense more. I've always meant to take more pictures than I do, and being that I'm never in much of a hurry, I've started carrying my camera much more often.

Think twice before going to the ATM in your VW Jetta

As a kid, my family owned most of the cars that the term 'lemon' was coined for. AMC Pacer? Check. Ford Pinto? We drove one from California to Ohio, and for years after. But a problem I've experienced three times with two Jettas was completely new to me, and everyone I've ever spoken about it with outside of other VW owners.

From what I have learned about the inner-workings of Volkswagen door windows, they are held up by 5 clips, that at least as recently as 2001 (the year of my Jetta wagon) were made out of plastic. I don't know much about plastic, though I did have a junior year chemistry lab where we were assigned the task of trying to identify a variety of plastics by the way they burned, which was both cool (some dripped flames) and I suspect highly carcinogenic, but I do know that plastic often doesn't stand up to significant changes in temperature well. Twice on days that were well below freezing, and once on a suffocatingly hot day, these clips have failed and a window has fallen into the door.

The first two times this happened, it was covered by warranty, or extended warranty. Yesterday, when it happened a third time as I pulled away from the ATM in Lakewood, Ohio, I thought I knew just what to do. I dropped by home to let the dog out, pick up the lap top, and place calls to find out if any of the Cleveland area VW dealers could get to the repair that afternoon.

A windowless twenty mile drive across town in twenty degree weather later I found out that Volkswagen decided their willingness to stand behind their product had run out for my 2001. The bill came to $228, the replacement clips cost a total of $7.50 for five.

If by chance you're a designer of cars, or you count beans at a car company and are always looking for ways to save a few pennies, listen to me, the consumer. I would much rather have paid an additional $30 at purchase than to crossed Cleveland windowless in winter, sat in a dealership waiting room for hours, paid hundreds of dollars, and now live with the fear that another window may go at any time.

If you're thinking about buying a Volkswagen, think twice. Besides the window, in the past year I've had the windshield wipers fail while driving on a highway during a torrential nighttime storm. In VW's infinite wisdom, they decided that access to the wiper motors should be through the steering column (a move that allows them to install massive amounts of cosmetic plastic around the engine that inevitably adds time to any repair), that repair also involved a relatively inexpensive part, and more than $300 in labor.

It's not all labor with Volkwagen repairs either. A catalytic converter ran $700 for the part, many times the cost for most vehicles.

Customer Service at VW seems to exist only to read you a script and tell you that they'll send a report on to someone they won't let you talk to. I've submitted forms to the Attorney General's Office and the Better Business Bureau, and I hope to one day be notified that I'm eligible for a share of a class action lawsuit, but I suspect the only power I have in this fight is to sling a little mud VW's way.

Dear Elected Officials:

I believe the economy, foreign affairs, health care, the environment, education and on an on are all more significant issues than campaign finance reform, but it is becoming all too obvious that campaign finance, for candidates as well as ballot issues, is the flood gate standing in the way of the will of the people.

I urge you to draft a reform bill that is simple and clear, one that is accessible to the average citizen, and one that can be passed without months or years of debate and gridlock.

This is America

This is America, and it is both our birthright to spend money we don't have on whatever we deem fit, and to make money off other people spending the money they don't have...it's our birthright to look at Bill Gates and see that the most remarkable thing about the man was that he dropped out of college, and look at ourselves and see that we too can drop out college, even if we're dropping out as a result of drinking too much and waking up every day wondering if the sun is coming up or going down.

A strange twist of fate.

What seems like my first memory of Mike Skutt is him being called upon to do a dramatic reading of a call and response prayer from Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle in my high school Modern Novel class.

Sometime ago he filmed a magic DVD. Actually, I think he's filmed a few.



A few months back I asked Mike about the person behind the videography and editing, hoping to maybe talk them into shooting a music video for me. When Mike said they owned a production company, I backed off, I didn't really have a budget, and I'm not comfortable asking a person to perform their profession for free, I was hoping that they were a film student.

A few weeks ago I came across an advertisement by someone looking to shoot a music video for free. Ryan owns a production company and teaches in the film department of a local college, and was looking for a project that he would enjoy, versus the usual work of filming weddings and corporate training videos.

A few days after meeting at an Arabica, Facebook suggested Ryan to me, and our common friends were Mike Skutt and his wife, and it turns out that he had done the video that I had asked about.

We had our shoot yesterday.

Danielle, Bob Willey, Bob's girlfriend Mika, and I had our first show, so to speak.

These are pictures, not stills.

All things go, all things go.

Drove to Chicago.

We finished tracking guitars with Chris Bober at Chicago Sound Lab on Saturday. I have a song that I need to add a little bit of piano to, one to change the lyrics on, and maybe a few vocal overdubs to do, but first I have to sort though the original vocal takes and see if there is enough to work with (cut up) from attempts that didn't make the cut as a whole.

Our friend Matt Schulz, one of my favorite drummers in the world (and my boy-crush), put us on the list (for the second time in three nights, thanks Matt!) for the sold out Holy Fuck show at the Empty Bottle. They really have me thinking about music in completely new ways, releasing tension at times with a heavy groove instead of just a consonant chord. The music I'm making right now might be too straightforward to incorporate it, but I'm taking on a new project soon, and I think there's a place for it. More to come on this soon, I hope.

Here's Sufjan on the Morning Becomes Eclectic:

I was born during a Memorial Day parade.

Danielle was born the next day.

The Cleveland Botanical Gardens were open without charge this past holiday weekend.

Sweep away your worries...

I had really hoped our friends Joe and Carolina could cast our first video for us. They're one of the best looking couples in Cleveland, and they met at the now defunct 80's night. All we needed was a single dancer.

Putting out some sort of casting call made me nervous, I didn't want to have to reject people on a couple photographs, or even worse, after some sort of dancing audition, not that I needed great dancing, the concept was based on a Mommartz short, of a mod-ish girl dancing by herself.

Joe and Carolina couldn't come up with anyone, but everything worked out.

Our friend Lauren (her band Chief Bromide just released a new album) did the videography. Stacy Candow shot still photography. Gina Mirto danced.

Oh it's such a perfect day, I'm glad I spent it with you.

We didn't drink sangria in the park, but we did have peanut butter milkshakes from Swensons afterward.

Most of our trips to the Cuyahoga Valley coincide with fall foliage, or snowfall. Until today, we've overlooked some of the more lasting beauty of the park for the fleeting splendors.

My poetry was lousy, you said.

My parents kept the record player in the dining room of the house I grew up in. Most of the time the room was purely utilitarian, and all but a couple of the memories I have of it involve Christmas dinners, that record player and listening to Donovan in particular, as well as once deciding I was recovered enough from the flu to play ping pong and discovering I wasn't, are about all I can come up with.

My love of Dylan came from my dad, The Beatles too, but by the time I was digging through his record collection, it had spent too much time in an attic in Ohio, and most of it had warped.

My mom on the other hand has at times questionable taste. A fair number of Christmas dinners were eaten with new age versions of carols in the background, but she has moments of clarity too. Tim Buckley, Leonard Cohen. We saw Joan Baez with her on Saturday.

Joan was great. Besides Dylan, she covered John Lennon, The Carter Family, Elvis Costello, and Donovan. I would have left happy having only heard Diamonds and Rust.

My favorite YouTube videos are usually taken from live television performances in Europe. I can't quite embrace home movies made at concerts. I searched and searched, and before finding the right version to post, I also found that Judas Priest covered my favorite Joan song. I've never really listened to JP, and even knowing they took their name from a Dylan song, it surprised me. I wonder if the shred bands that covered JP's version and posted their clips knew where the song originally came from.

This is Rock & Roll

There is no way you won't be disappointed if you stop watching before it's over.

Don't bother concealing your thievery

This isn't the first thing I've stolen from Even Cleveland. Danielle recommends it for Clevelanders and nonClevelanders alike.

Love is a burning thing.

Danielle's worst nightmare involves having her teeth smashed out. Sometimes I dream that I'm mysteriously missing a tooth, but I never know why.

Figuratively, my worst nightmare might involve a never-ending episode of Laurence Welk.

The Cincinnati Pops opened a new performance center in the first months of my first year of college, and in true Welk-fashion the grand finale was the Pops playing 76 Trombones, which they brought in part of my college marching band for (I didn't get a choice about being in the marching band).

Ray Charles played a few of his most recognizable songs too, but he didn't play this: