JOURNAL

The cicadas are out singing tonight. I love it. I hear lots of people complain about their so-called "noise" and I look at those people funny every time. Noise? It is an amazing song to experience. I am grateful every time I hear them singing and have more than five minutes in passing to experience it. Over the last three or four years, I have tried to make the time to sit outside and just take it all in when they are singing. An hour on one's stoop while the ciacads sing is unlike anything else one can experience. The swell in volume, the way it ebbs and flows, the far off cicada passing its voice on to a closer one, ad infinitum, turning into this simply electric buzz in the air that is felt as much as it is heard. It's amazing.

Bob Heathcote, ex-member of Suicidal Tendencies passed away as a result of a motorcycle accident a few days ago, my homie just alerted me to today. Suicidal Tendencies are one of my favorite bands - they might be my all time favorite band in a big picture scenario but I've never made that claim in earnest. Bob Heathcote played on my two favorite releases from the band, "Controlled By Hatred / Feel Like Shit... Deja Vu" and "How Will I Laugh Tomorrow" - releases that put the band on the metal scene map and essentially created and simultaneously perfected the perfect crossover thrash sound. At any rate, that was some kinda bad news to receive. He was only 58. My heroes are dying.

I'm listening to the most recent Podkiller Paintcast episode I recorded, as I often do after I've recorded them and set them off into the universe. Not for ego-stroking or narcissistic reasons or anything, just because I typically record them and work out the art and uploading and posting while fairly or more high and/or drunk, so maybe my judgement might not be what it should have been. I kinda feel that about the first two episodes, but not enough to scrub them. They're still enjoyable. But the most recent one, 0003, maaan, that thing is actually suuuper good and enjoyable. Great selections and - aside from one straight up shit mix that I managed to turn around - nice mixing. Really enjoyable sesh, on repeated and different frames of mine listening.

I want to disappear from this family. As mentioned countless times in previous entries in the ole journal, my mother is a piece of fucking work. Ain't shit changed. My brother is typically pretty awesome, he's done me solids and is currently doing me some solids, but I think our mother has gotten to him a little. Remarks and actions, never apologies, never genuine concern, everything is so surface level. With both of them. Real conversations about actions or words or emotions or important shit like boundaries and presenting and identifying just don't - and, more importantly, cannot - happen in this family, almost entirely as a result of our mother. But here I am. The oldest. Crumbling under the weight of it all. And no one sees or knows or even imagines.