still breathing

@25

now 6 years detached from teenage-dom

and adding text once again to this time capsule

hello out there

for the past several years i've contemplated deleting parts of my past internet self c. 9, 10, 11 years ago -- namely my old youtube channel, this blog

they're embarrassing in ways -- filled with half-baked philosophical musings, way-too-personal tales of anxiety that eerily foreshadow the more intense encounters with anxiety that i've been dealing with for the past couple of years, negative attitudes towards my mother, hilariously dated i-can-haz internet speak, a remarkably inflated ego 2/2 my faint one-time youtube stardom

but then i find detailed glimmers of my past self that are more beautiful and vivid than i could possibly remember

10/20/2008 - a note following my last piano lesson with my piano teacher of 9 years. the last note i played for her was an A
6/18/2010 - the day i got my digital piano (which is currently sitting to my immediate right in near perfect condition [but the Bb3 is busted from a particularly intense performance in college])
8/7/2011 - the day i broke up with my first serious girlfriend and learned that my best friend's dad had lung cancer

-

8/9/2018
things are good if not great
+ bachelor's degree in english (2015)
+ master's degree in communication sciences and disorders (2018)
+ impending engagement to the love of my life
+ cat (maine coon named sal; 2017)
+ first gainful employment starting in september

& i'm preparing to enter the studio on saturday to record a new short album

for old time's sake:

1) Wild Nights (me trying to sound like Bruce Springsteen)
2) Fire to Fire (me trying to sound like Bruce Springsteen and John Maus at the same time)
3) Everything I Own (me trying to sound like Women)
4) I Had A Nightmare (me trying to sound like a band I was in c. 2013)
5) Blender (me trying to sound like free-jazz)
6) Type of Degree (me trying to sound like Sediment Club and Sun City Girls at the same time)
7) Counterstrain (me trying to sound like Merchandise and Bruce Hornsby at the same time)

i still love you

 ~-~

eerie

a bit eerie seeing myself write here two years ago, starting off my job. still at old navy. still in college. still with gianna. nothing has really changed at all in the past two years, except now i'm on antidepressants and my grandmother is dying. my dog is dying, too. both of cancer. but otherwise, it's like time has frozen. hoping to land an internship this summer. npr. slp. penguin. none of the above... god forbid. i don't know what awaits me after college. maybe nothing - more of the same. maybe time will freeze once again and two years from now i will, again, find myself in the same spot.

i wrote a poem but i won't share it here.

- jay

1)

[dear ---,

the stiff actors. the stiff self. the crumbling body. no joy anywhere. the words form an expansive farm where nothing grows. all the crops are blank pieces of paper. curling upwards and rotting.

i saw a girl today. she was floating on a lake. her hair formed ribboned streaks of blue and white. her black dress flowed in the wind and only lightly dampened in the water. she hummed a quiet tune.

i still

feel

nothing.]

sweet pastoral nothings

to think that we were just here, sitting together on the rocks of a river - a clear day. before us was the stream, the mountains, and infinity, all wrapped into a narrow passage carved out by thousands of years of currents. but now i'm still here and you're back home - three hundred hours away. and before we know it, this river will freeze over but both of us won't be here to see it in the winter. sure, we will be together again, but far away from this place. we won't have any means of getting here. and the nightmare begins, the thought that we might see this infinite backdrop in the summer again, but never in the winter.

and the water of the river folds and refolds itself - over and over again.

what june was like

"trevor's doing the right thing... he's got his hand over his heart."

my mom's watching the local high school's class of 2012 graduate for the fourth or fifth time on public access. melissa sings the national anthem, tyler makes a speech, and so on...

i've started a new job. part-time sales associate at old navy. it's not that bad -- the people are friendly and helpful, the work is simple but enjoyable, and i'm not isolated from the rest of the world as i earn money, unlike my last job as a custodian at a storage place.

she's changed the program to i love lucy. my mother's calling her mother. 

i wish i had a blank CD. but i used them all up. to make + sell compilation discs for the shows i've been playing. the shows were great, by the way. finally capturing a lot of energy in my live performance, primarily thanks to nick, my drummer friend. but due to a lack of transportation, i don't know if i'll be doing anymore this summer, which is sad.

just about an hour ago, i released a new split EP with my friend Eliot (Bloodsport). we made ambient/noise/experimental songs for this release. it's harsh and difficult at points, but it's balanced out with quiet and peaceful bits. give it a shot by clicking the album art below:

the cool part is that we're selling this on cassette. if you're interested, let me know somehow and i'll let you know when the tapes are ready.

and that's been June for me.

i'm going.

goodnight.

goodnight.

Black Rice (Women cover)

Posted a cover. One of my favorite songs right now. Word up.




Black Rice (Women cover)

[pictures from today]

PLUS

another new song.

thx <3

[New Song: Dried Out]

We uploaded a new song with the hopes that some people might listen to it. It's a 3-minute indie-folk-rock-thing about desertion.

It'll be on the album that we hope to release at some point before the fall.

You can listen and download below for free. Because we believe in that kind of thing.

Dried Out by videosforpictures

<3

~-~

A music rant. It's been awhile.

Over this two-week (!) spring break, I've been sleeping between 4 and 5AM each morning and waking up between 1 and 2PM. It's an awful sleep schedule, but I've accepted it as unavoidable. Day in and day out, I'm finding myself either recording, producing, writing, buying, or discovering music. Nothing more, nothing less. Everything's revolving around music, and I'm getting loads done as a result. By the same hand, it's driving me remotely insane. In a good way.

I've been forgoing sleep and constantly musicing because I know that time is of the essence when I'm home. Time is the medium I'm working in when I make music, and I know that I don't have very much of it before I have to go back to school for another 9 weeks. Once I'm back at school, there'll be no time for this stuff. I have to get as much done as musically possible now. I'm not rushing this full-length album at all, and neither is Jeremy. But it's giving the whole project a sense of urgency, spontaneity, and immediacy, which is something I've long desired to capture in a recording anyways.

So fuck sleep, and long live pursuing a passion like it's your last day on Earth, I guess.

---

These are songs and the order that we're thinking of placing them in:

1. Dried Out
2. Unclothed, Uninvited
3. The Drop (pt. 1)
4. Propeller
5. From A Line
6. Interlude
7. T.V. Snow
8. +

Bits have been recorded for all eight of these songs. Over the next couple of days, I'm going to be focusing solely on recording the remaining parts. I'll worry about mixing over the summer. Mixing's going to take a while anyways - we're not just dealing with piano and vocals anymore. Now it's guitar, piano, cello, drums, banjo, vocals, and noises. Thank God Jeremy's here to finally push the project to expand its sound with an array of new instruments; we're looking at a much folkier release this time around. At the same time, there are some tracks that veer on post-rock and even shoegaze. It's still very much a diverse, do-whatever-the-fuck type project. But it's becoming a bit more focused, which I approve of a lot.

While we're back at school, we hope to complete the writing for this album. We're shooting for 10 or 11 tracks in total.

I'm most worried about promotion with this release. Now that I've finally given up the YouTube ghost, I'm wondering how I'm going to generate interest in what I make. I've been pursuing a couple of outlets (namely a couple of subcommunities on SoundCloud), but I need something more. Someone suggested that I try mutual promotion, like: a band pimps videosforpictures, videosforpictures pimps a band in return. This strategy would work to an extent, I'm sure, but I don't know how effective my attempts would be. Another idea came to mind that I'd compile a list of 100 music blogs and labels to send an e-mail out to in advance, saying "Hey - we've got a full-length here. Blah blah blah. Check it out." But I don't want to spam people's inboxes. I'm sure they get enough of that as is.

I guess part of the problem with the music world is that you have to be either ubiquitous or lucky. One path requires a lot of effort to get your name "out there," the other path requires almost no effort. If I could put on a proper live show, I would so try for ubiquity. But instead, videosforpictures is that project that will just have to keep working in the digital shadows until a big name comes through and says "Hey. We like what you do." And from there, the listeners start coming. I know that. But how the fuck do I get there?

It's a question that will either answer itself with time or will leave videosforpictures in a state of permanent obscurity. Either way, music is something that I really like to do, and I'll only give it up when I'm dead.

In other news, I still smell like smoke from the bonfire earlier today.

~-~