I can’t stand voices and breathing…

…The moorings are snapping one by one. High tension, ping, ping, ping…
Miss C 93.

I could make it all work for you baby. You could tell me anything and I would take care care of you.

The 1st time I saw her, she was siting at a table with too many grown ups pretending she knew what was going on. Hanging with the suits painfully obvious knew that they were all laughing at her and it made my chivalry hitch and cringe.
Se looked so goddamed lonely. Uncomfortable and overdressed. Tiny heels beating a tattoo against the legs of her chair. She sensed me before she saw me, little fox. Tiny even terrier teeth. She turns to me arms pressing in on each side of her torso, she makes her cleavage pout at me.

Until she’s sees my eyes and realizes that I don’t need that.
I loved her then and I love her now. Couldn’t save her. I didn’t stand a chance. But she knows that I didn’t want anything.

All my words are dying. I have these perverse fantasies of vows of silence except for being on stage. I feel like I am doing nothing, saying nothing but the same things over and over again and that I am learning nothing nor am I getting any better at it.

I have to learn new ways to learn.

I have resumed a correspondence with a treasured friend. He and I can hardly be bothered to converse when we meet which is very infrequently as we live different lives in different cities. But via email we are on fuckin fire. His missives kept me sane during the great LA disaster of 05′.And I figure that they will do much of the same service this time out for me.

He asked me, all casual like “How are you doing’?” after I had sent him a gushing missive from the front lines. Took my breath away that he looked through what it was that I was doing to enquire about “Me”

Kindness makes me duck my head stutter and blush like a fool. I don’t know what the hell to do with it.

He made me pause and think. I answered honestly. I said that I tend not to think about it all too much but I think that i’m ok.

I propped up the bar last night. The watcher. The scribe honey. All this beauty fuckin with my wires. Lotta’s friend, the gypsy called me “cute” last night cause all I do is say nothing and refuse to make eye contact.
“Cute”.
Fuckin great…

There was a stem of lilies in a tiki vase on the bar before me. The scent reminding me what had been extracted.

What price had been paid.

Then:
Lillies at 60 dollars a bunch. Wrapped in miles of white tissue paper, swaddled like new borns. Once upon a time when he loved me and I tolerated myself to a slight degree, my beautiful fairytale house by the water would be filled with important, indulgent bunches of white vanity.
The scent trailed me like a ghost.

And now?
Still…

To this day, able to king hit me in a bar in Germany.

Go figure.

SF4L
Michele.

“To many teardrops for one heart to be cryin'”

-? Mark and the mysterions.

Nothing is more expensive than a start
-Nietzsche.

Bordom; the desire for desires.
-Leo Tolstoy

So we are gonna jam a song today that I never thought would se the light of day. I wrote it with a severely broken heart.
Its called “my Issue” but from the amount of ribbing I am getting it may as well be called “Get a tissue”

The boys insist on calling it my great ‘emo” effort.

I cringe.

We all hold our hands over one eye,as a fringe and pretend to cry.

Ross did one of those nice “This doesn’t mean that im SORRY or anything like that” gestures. I came home from hours of msn madness to find a paper bag full of pulp novels outside my bedroom door.

Being that I usually read a book a day back home and have been starved for the last month this is a godsend.

Ash got all his pedals fixed today for the sum of 22 euros. The dude gave him a saint Pauli beanie and a beer while he worked on them. Gotta love the way that business is done in Hamburg.

Me and [sm] ash share the dininggroom as a workstation since Ross lost it at him for humming continuously while playing guitar. It doesn’t bother me none. I just put on my Discman and drift away.

Turns out that the asbestos drama was urban legend so I aint moving not that I was gonna anyway.

I talked briefly to saint Tina today she sounds good, I attempted to get all the feelings that ding around in my empty head like an sorrow driven pinball.She dosnt need that from me but never the less.

I have my headphones on cause everyone is driving me spastic again.Don’t want to listen to ash rewrite history.[“That’s not how it happened man!I was there too….”]

Pointless really.

I have started this a few times tonite. Can’t pin down what I am feeling the hardest, memories and what not are fighting for supremacy with in me and all I am is a scar covered flesh battlefield.

People are falling away again and I am not doing a goddamn thing

It all seems to go on a 5-year drop off.

Nothing is too personal. And like Perry said nothings shocking.

Once again I can’t be bothered with myself. Just fall asleep cause then you are not here and here is where you are.

Skoota wrote me tonite from Nz.Full of kindness that I hardly knew what to do with. How has it been so long? So many years bleeding together. The last time I saw him at manly fishos he glowed. The ranch a million years ago. I was disposed of neatly.

I wish that there were a net connection in the compound. When we were in Calgary I would go 13 hours at a time in that craptacular net cafe. Here I just count the cracks in the ceiling and try and redeem myself.

Fuck it, my brain is skittish like a goddamn colt. Going to take it into the back paddock and shoot it.

SF4L
Michele

Bah.

Fuck my dream state. Wake up more exhausted and befuddled than before I went to sleep. Last night involved tequila, Ross as the star of the show and me being a fucking anti social retard at Lottas mothers bar.

All I do is sit there and write. Ross told me that I am odd which is pretty fucking fresh coming from him.

Enough about fucking Ross, as you can tell he is pretty much the only person that I hang with and when he is narky it does me no favours let me tell you.

Dreams so vivid. One of those mornings when every time I tried to drift off all the things that haunt me became so real in my minds eye that they literally shook me awake.

Both bogus and stressful.

Another day of not a hell of a lot. Miss Raquel wrote to me. Tales of love and club 77 and I miss her so. Getting emails on the road tends to always be a highlight for me. Keeps my mind off my mind to quote my beloved Mr Rollins. Hell, I will take all the outside stimulus I can get.5th day no sugar; now officially fruitier than a mardi gras float.

Maybe my biggest problem is that nothing seems real to me until hindsight mooches up to me at the bar and buys me a drink.

Ah! This dream. I was shagging the wrong person at the wrong time and all matter of shit befell me. I was living off Cherokee in Hollywood and it was an utter bunfight.

We leave to go play again at 2 in the morning. That is something to look forward to. There was a Hello Kitty wardrobe in my dream as well.
Enough.
Jesus fuckin’ Christ.
I am going out before I throw this laptop followed by myself out the fucking window.

Catch you after “From the ground up” Festival.

SF4L
Michele.

C’mon man! Where’s your will to be weird?

-Jim Morrison.

It isn’t important to come out on top, what matters is to be the one who comes out alive.
-Bertold Brecht. ,p> Pathos is the sense of distance.
-Saint-Exupery.

What other dungeon is so dark as ones own heart!
What jailer so inexorable as one’s self!
-Nathaniel Hawthorne

If it keeps on raining the levees going to break.
-Memphis Minnie.

And I just wanna say that I miss you and I’ve been pitiful since you’ve been gone.
-Powderfinger.

Slept all day and am going to be up all fucking night.

I got told tonite that I am not learning anything new about myself, so join me if you will [not that I really fucking care] on a daytrip into god knows what. There will be cake and a quiz.

Well, no cake cause my life is a diet and no quiz cause as we all know there are no wrong questions and so on and so forth…. The nerve in the lower right side of my jaw is twitching again.

There is a part of me [8 years old, fat, friendless] that is wailing tonight “I wanna go HOME”.
Pointless really as I don’t have a home to go to and if I did I would have a whole other mess of issues to deal with. Although it warms my fucked up heart that Diamond Lilli invited me to go back and live with her and the Pornstar. They both write and tell me that they miss me and I am touched.

The grace of this homeless state, it can veer from liberation to desperation so fucking fast.

I’ll tell you what’s just side splitting hysterical to me at the moment. My voice gets better as the rest of me falls apart. Thanks a fuckin million!

And now for something random…. I think that reason that people get away with so much is because no one wants the call them on it, cant be assed steeling themselves for the confrontation.

Tonite I would give anything to be on my bike flying around Sydney in the warm air. Slayer blaring in my headphones, Salt on my skin, arms waiting to love me, honest sweat and money in my pocket.

I hate all of this waiting; this filling of time like a jail and playing live is the parole. I hate not working I always have and I am coming to terms with the fact that I am useless at structuring my own time. I veer towards depression too easily.

I know that if I left that no one would chase me and or miss me so I stay and eat shit off fine china with a gilded spoon.

When you’re up, your up….

I have hardly been able to sustain a relationship my whole life and yet here I am 6 years deep with not one person but three and I really don’t know what the hell am doing. I wish that I had of constructed a bigger life away from it, but it is all that I wanted and I couldn’t see anything else.

Fool? I guess if the shoe fits? Tap-dance.

I don’t know what else I would do and that can be most confronting. I like to think on a good day that I may have something else in me but I doubt it. I don’t even know what to look for. A book? I’d dig that. One down unpublished still.

I still like it here, this corner that I inhabit. Its just there there is a lack.

And the lack is me.

I was safer when I didn’t try to trust. Ross thinks that I lump all of my abandonment issues onto him. How would he feel if I held it over him? I doubt that he would care.

Knowing him he wouldn’t even notice.

I don’t think that anyone would. I can’t win with him so I guess that the next challenge is to stop trying.

Stop trying and just work.

I vacillate so wildly knowing that it’s no good but still longing for friendship within my own ranks.

It is the pathetic kicked dog in me that I hate the most. I have been trying to run it over with the internal truck of bone deep knowing and logic for years.

It deserves to die; you really have no idea how much.

I am damned if I do and dammed if I don’t.

This is why love is no good for me.

If I was home?….

I would be longing to be in the back of a van again. I always think that I am going to get it right “Next time”.
That when I am deep in the heart of one [The Mc Job, being home] that I will be preparing for the other [On the road, playing] but I’m not and I never do .I just future pace and stress out.

And yet to get my end result I know that I must be here guns blazing and go as hard as I can.

I ask myself all the time what could be so difficult about such a thing? That I am doing what it am that I said that I would do and that millions would kill to be in my place.

I return to the age-old adage of “Wherever you go, there you are”

King Cockhead of Asshole Mountain at your service.

To not be ruled by a dream, by ambition. It’s killing me faster than it’s saving me. How nice it would be to be ignorant, to just plod through life not chasing the storms, the highs that haunt me. To be happy with my lot in life whatever it might be.

I wrote to Miss Terror that I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grow up that I wonder what job I am going to do. She fired back quick smart “Um Honey? You are doing it right now”

“Ah! So I am,” I think.

What is a simple life and where can I sign up?

Storm chaser. I like that.

I harken back to the people that I admire. The ones that explode in my past like fluorescent glitter bombs.

A long time ago I lived a solitary summer with a goddess in Los Angles.
Motivated beautiful talented in all number of areas. A total package and knock out. In short everything that I would have wanted to be. She looked like she owned it and got it at the best price in town.

Away from admiring eyes it was a whole other story.

She was a total addict, self-mutilator and hater. The coke, the cutting, the abuse but she was always the coolest.

Which then got me to wondering if there are any happy driven people at all or is it more about what you show instead of what you know.

[“Don’t hate the player baby” he grinned at me “Hate the game”]

Rank rank rank………..

I think that I woke up because I couldn’t stop dreaming of the dance scene in Napoleon Dynamite over and over. No one, no matter how lazy and evil needs that much Jamioquoi in his or her lives.
It’s about 7 now and the boys are jamming.

I don’t think that they want me around so I am going to stay in my room.

Ash and his woman were walking back to her place right now when Ash pointed out where we were living

“Oh No!” she gasped, [no doubt with a charming accent] “That is the ghost building full of asbestos! That’s why no one lives there”

Asbestos.
Fucking magic.
All I could think of was Blackie throwing an absolute fit. He will never hug me again if he finds out about this. Ross tells me that we are now all dying and I mutter, “I wish to fuck that I would hurry up if that is the case.”

Mikey just stuck his head round my door to tell me that I am welcome to come in at anytime. Bless.

I also dreamt that I pushed Fat Sally over in a port-a-loo, which had me smiling.

Tried to get in touch with Toddski but no joy. I can’t believe that 2 of my only friends are so far away from me in time and distance. I haven’t seen Toddski since 01′ and my beloved Gooch out in the desert since 96′.

I am having a definite problem with time at the moment as I think that I should be no further along than say late 98′.The boys just rolled into “Diatribe” again and I really cant be bothered to get out of bed.

Moo.

Four people and 2 sets of keys is also a definite pain in the ass. Ross wont buy anymore phone credit and Ash wont buy a phone. Stayed up all last night reading one of Rosscoes Bernard Cornwall epics. I’ll be wearing a fucking cloak and playing dungeons and dragons next.

Now they are playing “DNA”
I remember sitting out the front of The Ranch waiting for Ross to come pick me up and writing it there, on the footpath, really hot.
That’s when Ash was at GMD and I would go over there, eat sushi and try and record something worthwhile. We did do a version of it that didn’t make Detesimony but when he was playing me this track a few months ago the words came back and we rocked it out.

The words are pretty relevant. Guess now more so than ever.

I flipped out rather vehemently year ago when my family [I cant even think of them like that] were spinning around me trying to know me. I am useless when cornered, I come out swinging. An emotional haymaker who gives little thought to personal injury. What a dickhead.

Saint Tina tells me that maybe they didn’t want anything. She went and met up with my real mother, which is fine by me. You can’t care about something if it doesn’t really matter to you. Or should I say exists.

I guess, just as coming from a big family can define you, so can being given away.
I try to look at my motives from a distance whenever possible, to not get emotionally involved with myself.

Believe me there is no blame and I don’t revolve around it but it was up in my face so I had to deal with it.

There has been a real ebb and flow on it. Rarely but on occasion, it can make me miserable but that seems to happen when I am tearing myself apart but mostly it makes me feel good. An involantery orphan?

I can dig that. It appeals to my inner pirate, the internal lost boy.

I like that I have no history to live up to .No genetic s glaring out of the faces of others to define and anchor me. As far as I am concerned I am still adrift in the world and anything I do is mine. It can only lead me back to myself because I am all that I have got.

Is that the reason that I didn’t want to meet them? Sure, One of them. It’s creepy though because now they all know who I am what I look like and I don’t know them. My father [????] wrote me to tell me that one of his sons saw me at the last BDO but didn’t come and talk to me. Which I gave thanks for. I am sure that he is a nice kid and all but can you put yourself in my shoes?

There I am doing my job and someone, a total stranger comes up to you and claims kinship?

“Hi Michele, great show!”
“Hey man, thanks I’m glad you liked it!
“Yeah! I am your Cousin-half brother-aunt….ect”

I mean, talk about an uncomfortable situation.

I cracked it in the end and told Saint Tina to tell them all to keep the hell away from me. And she was wrong, everybody wants something. And I don’t nave anything to give that I haven’t already. I have structured my life very carefully around that. Sue me.

I am never going to put myself in the position to get left again. And I have known that for fuckin ever.

The lads are now beating “Relationshit” to a pulp. It’s raining and getting colder by the day and I still don’t have a winter jacket. What I do have is a very fucked up right foot that I split open at the last show. I am going to make a tea, back in a sec…

Ahhh….

I am finding very difficult not to think about going home. I never really give a shit but I have something to go back to this time and I keep tripping over the fact.

And even if I do its not going to be the bliss that I am dreaming of now, 3 months by the water and no phone line, no, it will be straight back into the hustle, out of the gate running to get the money to get back here in the shortest time possible. I think that I was born exhausted.

Fucking European time restrictions, sent to try me. I don’t have the funds to run to the states for three months and even if I did?

Oh Man.

I am having one of those “Everything is driving me metal ” jags and it was all feeling a little to close to Canada when I woke up this evening. We tend to rotate with in 3 so that means that someone is always on the out and today it is my turn.

The boys have just taken a break and are practicing German on each other.

By fuck I hate September. Misery cental.

“MICHELE!!!!!”
“What?”
“Come and sing!”
“Why?”
“Cause we want to sing these songs in the Netherlands”

I will always think that they sound better without me. I need some more tattoos. Free ones if possible. Or a new knife. I saw a Bowie on the Reeperbahn with a hot chick on the handle for 5 euros but travelling with such toys is a major pain in the butt these days

[“Ha! Back in my day you could walk on board with a M-16 lashed across your shoulders and the stewdesses would smile and swoon!”]

I guess that I should go and sing. That’s what I am here for right?

Later:
We just went and got a feed, which was nice, and we were talking about living arrangements and what not. We are all pretty skint and out on a limb here besides Ross who has an English passport and therefore a net. Whenever something is not to his liking he threatens immediate bailage, which instantly makes me wonder why I bother to invest at all.

“Well” he sniffed in the dodgy lift on the way up “This is the last night that I will be spending here!” [I swear that he is going to start talking in 3rd person any day now and I will be compelled, nay, forced to kill him]

“I thought that we would all stick together, ” says I knowing that I am about to be shot down by One Sir Sniffy Mc Born correct. “Not” he says cutting his eyes back at me “If I can help it”
I feel so close to him until he says something like that and then I question everything and
[“You’re obviously not learning anything about yourself”]

God he can be a prick.

The ones you love are the ones that will destroy you in the end. They have all the right weapons and you gave them to them.
Sucker.

SF4L
Michele.

There aint nothing like a festival crowd..

There’s too many people so we play too loud.
-Spinal Tap.

That was the cutest fucking festive I think I have ever been to in my life. I have got more laminates over the last month that I think in my whole life thus far. Only a few thousand people but it was bliss.

We rolled at at some stupid hour of the morning with our driver Nick who is about 6’7 of Ali gs lost twin brother top guy. Queen snot got the back seat and passed out. I don’t know why they let me do that but I wont complain

For all of its ass cramping glory its where I am the happiest. Got my feet out the window and my Discman on 10.Miss Raquel game me the best headphones before I left so I am in her debt. I just drift in and out of the best daydreams. Mostly involving Persian carpets, extensive free dental work and the ocaean.oh and fruit.

I have a screaming backache due to van travel and a craps day’s sleep. Got up way too early and mooched around st Pauli muttering to myself. I didn’t buy one-piece of candy at any truck stop yesterday either so I feel like I have at least jumped one hurdle.

A Bavarian guy brought a cd off me and asked me why I spit so much. A good question to which I had no answer. Trying to read metal hammer in German does my head in.

My guess is that the boys are down at the kogge online and in Ashley’s case hungover. Remind me to kiss the ceo of Sony if I ever meet him cause my Discman saves my life. If I cant hear ash crapping on I don’t get into a fight with him and the there s no blood spilt. Sweet.

Was reading the “Up from the ground” festival history and Hobbs angel of death played on it a few years ago which is so cool. Nixon tells me that this next MFTB is the last one ever??? Huh???That’s the one that I tell all the people that I meet out here about and heaps have heard of it to but from what I can aasitain it’s a year round job organizing one of these things. I went onto the site but it didn’t say much.

Then I decided to go and fuck around on blooddusters site. I need that new album soooo bad. It’s been too long. That and Pod people and I will be a happy camper.

This is all over the place huh?

Ok, so another festival where no one knows who we are and its raining and we are the 1st band in.i love it.

By the end of the day I am hiding in the catering tent and ash is drinking mead out of a bulls horn inappropriately touching Bavarians and telling every one that he loves them between trying to pick on me.

The last time I saw mike he was hanging out with the German Andrew Stockdale. A mighty Afro. I dread the think where Ross is. There is some fierce pixie meat on parade and Ross has a tent fetish due to his hey day as one of Baden Powell’s foot soldiers.

We won some new tribe and that is the reason to get and stay on the road. It works for me.

SF4L
Michele.

I walk through miles of jungle; I walk through yellow miles of pain.

-Rollins Band.

Bonjour
Whoops wrong country.
Gutten tag.
I slept all day, and I mean all of it. Was woken up by the grandeur that is my 3 brothers jamming across the azure carpeted hall at 5 every afternoon. Dreamt of Tommy Lee complaining about the backline. Whatever the hell that is ment to mean.

We leave for a festival in Frankfurt tomorrow. Joy of all joys we are not camping the night. Our driver sniffed and said “No way” so we concurred without much arm-twisting. No showers and shit and I smell like a long distance trucker after a 45-minute show so…um …you get the picture.

That and the fact that I refuse to wear shoes and roll all over everything I come up looking like a Dickens character, cept my fat ass would have got stuck in a chimney.

I am feeling all saint like, as I have not imbibed any sugar in 3 whole days. Watch the stocks in gummy bears fuckin plummet now! Roscoe got me onto this militant bodybuilding book and it’s made me nuts. I now eat 5 times a day, count calories and do sit ups till I need to shit.

Ross was all like “Oh no…”

He knew that I would take to it. He is back too. We all get our periods at different times and when he told me “You look like you were dropped on your face as a child” I knew that things were back to normal. Cool.

He can give it but he sure as hell can’t take it.

I haven’t sung with them today. They have got a filthy groove on and I decided that it’s wiser to leave them to it.

Thanks to number one sons pavement pounding gigs are now starting to filter back in.

I hear that it is hotting up back home and my envy bends and stretches back towards the coast. Hamburg is pretty much grey all the time but is good broody weather, like I need any bloody help on that front.

Ash has a date tonite [“I think she’s crazy! I like her!”], Ross and Mikey are doing their thing so I guess that I will check my emails wander round listing the Bowie [At Last!] come home and keep fuckin around.

I finally wrote all the lyrics out for the last 3-albums.headfuck central. I had to listen to the 1st album to do it and I sound so little on it! So fuckin cute. Which makes me even more eager to drop the 4th one now.

As I hunt and peck my way through this at the dining room table the lads just launched into my new fave.”Relationshit” Long story, I’ll get around to it one day.

Tea without sugar makes me think that I am doing penance for something that I cant quite remember but may or may not have involved a wood chipper and a dead hooker. I’ll take the 5th.

My mind has defiantly stripped another gear. I got 3rd and reverse on the highway to hell baby and I aint commin back. Hell, 3 Vikings chased me around at summer breeze yelling ‘”Captain Jack Sparrow!”
Good God.

Later
SF4L
Michele.

Weight of my heart, not the size.

-AIC.

It’s just a test
A game for us to play
Win or loose it’s hard to smile
-Steve Harley and The Cockney Rebel.

How to survive. There are practical measures that avoid me I tend to veer towards loud things that bruise me. Sonic things that fuck like a professional, that get you higher than any available deity and or drug of choice.
As I did sit ups on the blue hall carpet my spine screaming under all the weight that I had let accumulate on my abused corpse I could hear his fingers scratching and depressing the strings.

All of this and glory too.

There is a trick that I must master. To store conversation and allow it to ripen rather than throw it down like a bad hand at every available opportunity.

Do we all hate each other? At times, yes. There is no indication of the path. I desire illumination. I get none but like Gatsby I still beat on…. and on…. and on…

The green light that promises that it will all turn and that history will change. That I can amend all my seemingly fatal mistakes. That Daisy will leave Tom and fold into my battered arms and I can fix it. I am worthy, watch me.

Tricking my body, short bursts of fevered and painful activity. It hurts and I like it. I think that I like it a little too much to tell the truth.

My mind wanders all over what I have left behind me once again. Raquel’s eyes flashing private laughter and dark humour into mine across an asshole filled room, Wondering if Miss Kitten has refrained from returning to the one that I believe left unchecked will finally kill her, Miss terror on the train to tattoo town every day.

Vanity makes me question weather I occur to them as richly and vividly as they occur to me. I doubt it; somehow have always had far too much time on my hands.

No forgiveness, just numb acceptance.
The owner of the bar has the most chilling blue eyes and lilting voice that turns every sentence into an enquiry .I find it hard to look at him, his vowels clipped, hands soft through air, liquid silver, age, time.
If we could only hook into peoples history like a fish to be caught. I am a fiend for fables, to see, to look, a voyeur and I see it constructed of soft paper leather bound, things pressed between pages stolen private and sacred. All we are is some kind of story. Lost to death.
There is zero recovery.
Everything falls.

The friendly barmaid with the blunt fringe has a red radio birdmen tattoo on the inside of her wrist. I close my eyes and drift on tides that have no name but don’t give up.

If you stay quiet you have no origin. Silence is its own language and is as noisy as any other.
Bottles wink slyly at you from their mirrored enclaves behind the bar. On a clear day the whole world wants to get a finger under the elastic leg of your knickers and buy you a beer.
Call you baby, honey forever.
(I just can’t stand it, I cant, and I cant…)
On a strong day the thieves creep in. They know that you are on top of your game, that you are otherwise occupied with self-congratulary focus, the beating of your drum, the fighting of your war.
By the time you crash [and you will crash my little solider] and your medals are nothing but glorified tin you will look around and know that you have been robbed again. Remind yourself constantly that you are to blame.

Hate is my co-pilot and I admit to it. Not going to be a fake Mr feel good type, not going to lie.

I used to always think that something would come up but I know in my heart of hearts that there is no 11th hour reprieve for trash like me.

SF4L
Michele.

[Listening to “The Best of Buddy Guy” late with a messed up head.]

I wasted time and now time doth waste me.
-Shakespeare, Richard the second.

People only see what they are prepared to see.
-Emerson 1863

The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.
-Walt Whitman.

Sacrifice not thy heart upon every altar.
-Thomas Fuller

You don’t learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking and getting well hammered yourself.
-George Bernard Shaw.1911.

I am a fool for it you know.
An utter martyr on it.
[Burn witch burn….]
Life, love and the eternal list that consumes me.

I break myself for my heroes, [My very few friends and even smaller amounts of family.] the ones that I want to view me if only for a second the way that I view them and I am getting to think that it is a kind of sickness, that there is something wrong with me and I know that that is why I have avoided love almost my entire life.

Because in love? In love I will do anything

Nothing tears me a fresh one as hard as wasted potential and I can fuckin pick em.

And in return it has cost me everything.
I will cut my tainted heart out before you and lay it at your feet for approval.
I am so damaged that I think that if you could love me back…? Could you? Would you???

HA!
Says the true voice inside me. “Asshole” echoes round and round in my skull, a sick refrain.

[The sin is/that you are everything that you hate/you hate/you hate/Ad lib to fade cunt.]

And its there where I have no quarter and am too quick to tears.
… Tired.

With a Renaissance man friend, he woozy with beer in a Greek cantina, me on a contact high due to the swashbuckling glory of his company and fumes alone. I tell him that I am going to have to get back to what I know.
He has seen me there and knows what it involves. What it does to me.
And he tells me that it doesn’t have to be that dialectic, that it doesn’t have to come from what I know or have known and I snap like a dog, like a child as I don’t know where the hell else it is ment to come from

You see my life was small and correct; Corrupt and red hued, utterly criminal and scum riddled and I loved it. It didn’t bother to love me back but and it was mine. It was all that I knew. It knew me and there within lies the comfort and the cancer.

To put the record straight I hate who I have become. The person that has been dwelling in me since mid 04′ it feels like. I want to cut her face off and feed it to the black dog on my trail.” There is a reason,” I tell myself “A reason that I have come to this point” I need all the ju-ju that I can muster to divine what it is. I see flashes mama, I got a storm brewing.

This friend. Ah! They save you by small measure and bitter truth via poison don’t they? There was no sugar to make it go down. I have fed myself so much sachirinne bullshit of late that I fear that I have become emotionally diabetic.

Saint to none
Unsaveable sister.

[A cautionary tale of Love getting the upper hand also known as “Love!” staring Shiva the destroyer as “Love”, watch it at your own peril! the thrills! The blah blah blah…]

I think about her still you know, my sister. I remember how everyone told me that she was nothing but a drug-addled vampire and that there was no good intent within her. But I refused. I refused to believe it. In a way I think that she was my last great love. I told people “You don’t know her like I do, you’ll see…”

Problem was that they saw all along and I wanted to be there, to let her know that I wouldn’t give up on her like so many had given up on me

I was a fool

Beauty owns a cruelty that desires much of the same. She didn’t want that from me, the goodness, the eternal cheerleader. She wanted me to be a cunt and I loved her so much that I couldn’t do it. She saw me do it to the world at large and then she branded me a fake. No, Just in love with you.

I tried to give you my best when all you wanted was me to shit on you just like all the men that you attracted then deflected.

I used to laugh when monkey would say that I was the perfect boyfriend in a girl’s body. But she was right and that’s how my own sister treated me in the end.

[Ah monkey, back to Brazil, How the hell have the last 3 years gone so fast? As I tap away in Hamburg tonite Josh Homme and crew are singing to me and we will always have the Queens and the Saga honey, no matter how far apart…. be safe….]

I know now that it is true that nice guys finish last.

I am so tired and confused and I am not sure what I am trying to say.

Just came in with guns blazing all these emotions and ideas bouncing around in my head almost determined to hurt me. It’s a pretty unnatural situation for four adults to find themselves in. I am sorted as of tomorrow and after that I am just going to take it one day at a time, just like getting clean again.
I held one of Lottas cigarettes while we were sitting outside “The old sailor” drinking this afternoon. [Them? Beer. Me? Sprite.]
Clean Me.
Never thought that I would look wrong with a smoke in my hand. As the grey sky opened I knew…. It doesn’t look right anymore and I want to shed the last of my life like a snake. Then, I figure, all these learned behaviours that do me such regular and abundant harm would look as alien to me as holding a beer does. A cigarette, a syringe…that was then…and this is? I know that it is not “then” and that is enough tonite.

One can only try.

Feel like I am beating myself to a slow graceless end against a dirty glass cealing that I made myself, constructed of little more than fear, spit and grief.

Gotta do what I gotta do.

It’s the leaving that kills me. I just up and lose people all the time. Having them die is easier in a way as sick as that sounds.

Ah! That’s where we were at.” Why I am a retard who can’t figure out how to love correctly”

Better not to I think. This friend, he knows me when I cant be bothered to know myself if you know what I mean. He said that it all goes pear shaped for me when someone turns out not to be as great as I believed them to be and then I want to kill them. It stings and makes me wince because he is correct.

110% proof. Bitter to the last sticky drop.

He says that I invest too much. I am a crappy banker of the heart. And I hate that he is right but who wants to find out who UN great any object of their affection truly is?

I want them all to be as great as I think they are. I count on it.

This friend. He takes a long cool draught of his beer and maintains eye contact with me. My eyes mist and drain like the stein in his hand. Feeling as dark as the sky that covers us.

Am I ever going to get this shit right?

Who gives a fuck? The only one I love is on the other side of the planet so I am going to think and wish for the best and get my shit together here before I go completely mad. I am not far off it. I don’t think that any of us ever really are.

Can’t decide if that bites it or not. Ask me tomorrow.

SF4L
Michele.

I will be small in small things, great among great.

-Pindar.5th c BC.

Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure / Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.
-Byron. Don Juan.

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.
-F.Scott Fitzgerald.

I saw the crescent; you saw the whole of the moon.
-The Waterboys

It matters not what you are thought to be, but what you are.
-Publilius syrus 1st c BC.

I used to believe / in secret signs / hateful things / Stomach hitching lies / that attract all the wrong flies / visual honey /gone rancid / nothing left to believe in / if your not angry by now / you fuckin should be…

I spend so long by myself
That you are here
When you are not
And I put all the words into your mouth
Your candy lips
Gracious
I imagine
Pulling a gun on a busy street
A murderers carte blanche
I pump shot after shot
Into surprised faces
And I think
They [you] are so hateful
That their [your]
Parents wouldn’t even be surprised that it ended like this.

I feel like we have been gone forever. I guess its because so much has happened in such a short amount of time and the fact that we have done this kind of caper before. You tend to fall in pretty quick.
[” I don’t want to hang out with the same 3 fucking people for the rest of my life, no offence…” Rossco] nor do I my little 5 stringed killing machine and I am sure that we all feel the same.

I don’t even think that it’s been a month yet. Feels like it though. Got long limbs missing me. I don’t think that I have ever been missed like this before. I have never missed anyone like this. Just my old crushes that never even knew that I was alive so it’s all new.

He tells me that his fat stupid ex has been sniffing around since I left the country [“Fat and stupid” are my opinion as he is far too much of a gentleman to say such things, although he did mention “Saggy assed” on a Jager binge one night and as we all know kids the devil is in the details and that with wine comes truth…]

Anyway, You can imagine where that sent my addled brain for at least 5 very ugly minutes am over it now. Face like a dropped pie and from what I can work out the personality of a busted thong. Whoops!
Did I say that out loud??
Look; I am pretty cool with a heap of my ex’s ex’s so to speak but this one? I don’t like her style and that’s that. At least she knows what she has lost.

“Ballroom Blitz” just came on! Scuse me while I jump round like a headcase, back in a sec!

I fuckin’ needed that!

We have got the “From the ground up” festival next week. Obituary and Morbid Angel. I know! Life is so bloody tough!

Now I sound like a little boy whose voice is breaking.Great.That will be me back to it then.

The guys are down the end of the hall watching James Bond in German. I was down there doing really rank sexist translations but it got old pretty quick.

I sang so hard that I popped a bubble in my eye! Argh! “Diatribe” Grooves so fuckin hard! I can’t wait for y’all to hear this stuff! The room that we jam in is so small so after 2 songs it’s all smelling pretty meaty in there. I guess it’s about 12 foot by 12.tight. I can’t remember where my voice is ment to be on “Se7en” though. I will find it.

I think that I am gonna call my auto biography “Shitty PA” Gotta enough years under my belt now to know that if the speakers are up on those supermarket sweep style poles that I am gonna sound like Joe Cocker by the end of the ordeal.

Worth it though.

I have gotta send all these postcards and shit today.

Got a cool email from Dion Driver.Dion is the drummer from Fort. Really cool to hear from him. Made me remember that I do have some mates back home who are worth flying the flag for.

One of who is my most beloved big brother who is finally touring America again in about 2 weeks. Monkey emailed me to tell me that she is off to Brazil while he kills it on the road.Cool.She also wanted to say sorry for not returning my Black Flag shirt.
Ah family.
Ya gotta love it.

I gotta tell you more about “Checkpoint Charlie” That’s what I am calling our compound. So it used to be this huge office block. We are up on the 8th floor and are the only people in here. I shouldn’t tell you this but Ross won’t go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
It really is that freaky. Imagine living in a deserted mall. I keep expecting the elevator doors to open with a deluge of blood and twin girls’ ala “The shining”. Ross made axe murder noises at me when I was in the crapper last nite.

So I switched off the light when he was in the shower.

I wish that I had a CD player in the bathroom. The echo is fuckin dreamy. They knocked a toilet out of one of the stalls to put a shower. There are 2 urinals with little soccer nets with red balls suspended in then to give the lads something to aim at.

If you want hot water you have to turn the faucet all the way into the cold and pray. Our landlord and his uber babe girl friend just walked in. They are both so stunning I think that I will go and hide in my room so that they don’t ask me out. There is a lightweight bar hop to take place tonite but I think that I will mess around in the shower [oh er Missus!] and sing Toto and Foreigner songs. Not as if the fuckin neighbours are gonna complain now is it?

Being that significant other lent me his digital camera and Ross is learned of the ways of photographic upload I will endeavour to get some pix of this place cause you are never gonna believe me without seeing it.

Sunday tomorrow. I just washed all my filthy shit. Having a place to lay your head should never be taken for granted. And I don’t. I should call it a night but I can’t seem to switch off. I could walk up to the Reperbahn and watch the scum and hooker parade but that would involve more effort than sitting here trying to get my shit together to have a shower.

Masterdon are playing here tomorrow night. I am broke worst luck. I might try and see if I can blag a ticket.heh.You never know your luck right?

Nite’
SF4L
Michele.

All I ever wanted

All I ever needed
Is here in my arms.
-Depeshe Mode.

Competitions are for horses, not artists.
-Bela bartok.1962

It is easy to be brave from a distance.
-Aseop.6th C BC.

Hey pig, yeah you.
-NIN.

If your out to beat a dog your sure to find a stick.
-Yiddish proverb.

I am a dog
I am THE dog.
I may or may not be the dog that Iggy sings about.
No matter
I am untrained and unwanted.
The gift that didn’t stay cute.
I am behind the bars at the pound, you overlook me and I am heading for puppy Auschwitz….
Unless that is, unless…
I am roaming
I see where your bodies are buried and I watch you as addictively as crack sprinkled porn
I know all your ugly little secrets
I am getting to know you better than you know yourself and with your ego intact and your head high you discredit me because I don’t fit your visual standard.
And that is exactly what I want.
I am the mutt of all ages and I have nothing to lose.
You don’t even see me.

But you will, you will…
mmmm…..

This is about cowards and stick wielders.
This commences upon the ashes of those who don’t have the courage to face me.
Make sure you have a strong grip on that stick honey, watch that I am not rabid; I will snatch it from you the first chance I choose to take. I wont beat you back, that’s what you want. I will snap it in front of you and walk away.

I love that it grates on you.
I love that I grate on you.
It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
It’s like Xmas every day.
Its like a lottery and I won a lifetime’s supply of knob jockeys to mess with to my hearts content.

Happy birthday to me,me,me…..

Kinda hacked off that you haven’t armed your feeble selves with a bigger and better stick to tell you the truth. I can’t believe that our haters are not reaching new heights. I mean bored much? All the threads are so tired. Its not as if I haven’t given em enough to work with.

We are one of the most hated bands in Australia who have signed to one of the biggest metal labels in the world. Played Wacken which got us onto a heap of other festivals all over Europe. Including Bloodstock in the UK.

C’mon you faggots? Gimme more. Because you give me the fuel that I need to keep going. I fucking love it.

I have been hated by my own blood for Christ’s sake! You are going to really have to throw your back into it to make me stop giggling and shake your little yellow hand.

So we don’t sound like anyone else and we don’t care.
Oh Boohoo!. Go and brasso your fuckin bullet belt ya little girl.
Stay in your little bubble while I put my money where my mouth is.

Back to now.
Back to Germany.

I am listening to Blooduster at Maximum volume [“And this ones for all you straightedge wankers….”] right now, which is not helping my headache much. There is a fierce lightning storm playing fucky with the sky over Hamburg tonite. Why so loud? Ash is watching soccer with some mates down the end of the hall and he is one of those people who when faced with someone who doesn’t speak English believes that all he has to do is speak louder and that will break the language barrier.

Oh brother.

Deluxe is in a rotten mood and has locked himself away.
Mikey is practicing.tap,tap,boom,boom…….
Ash is yelling at bewildered Germans
And I am here writing to you.

We went and played another great festival on Thursday. “Summer Breeze” And yes they played the song in its original form and then the Type O negative Version. More than a few times…it was kinda sweet. A late inclusion, I am thinking that the band we covered for are in rehab. I am always thinking along those lines. So yeah we drove 6 hours played, I handed out a zillion stickers, signed stuff and did photos. Cool.

Got to watch The Haunted and Kreator from the side of the stage, which was fucking amazing. Bands that I never would have got a chance to see in a million years. The Haunted brought back good memories. Last time I saw them was at The Metro in Sydney with Bloodduster doing the support. That’s when Nixon was still in “em and was in the finest shaved headed form that night.

Enno was a fuckin saint. He is one of the big guns at Armageddon. Drove us to Dinkelsbuhl [I shit you not] and back again. 6 hours each way. The autobahn is a headfuck too.
He was weirding me out before I went on though. Asking If I was gonna wear my beanie and sunnies and stuff. I think that they want me to look a bit more girly or something.
Teehhehehe fuckin hee.
Bit bloody late in the game for that!

I came out to Europe with one pair of cammo shorts and 2 wife beaters and I don’t think that much is gonna change on the wardrobe front till we get paid or I start shoplifting again.

I love that a small festival in this country is 20 thousand. Just threw on The Stooges. I think that we are ment to jam today. Its all the new shit. Can’t wait to bring that on. I really need it. We keep trying to leave “RFS” out of set lists and get busted cause it’s our single here and we are ment to play it. I knew that this would happen. Its 2 years old now and it was funny at the time…. I mean I still like it and all but I want to get Brutal with it again.

Just glad that people are digging us out here. Get the usual shit about people thinking that I am a dude and yawn…. who cares. Just as it has always been when people dig it they are in for life. We are getting a huge push through France, which is really cool. I had no idea who would be into it Zeal says that they have not seen so many of the shops this into anything in this vein since Ministry. Flattery will get you everywhere. Well it’s getting me to Paris in a couple of weeks.

Speaking of Ministry introduced Al to Ross backstage at Wacken and Ross was all like “Hey Al” and turned away. Didn’t recognize him! Ross is the coolest motherfucker on gods green earth! He was the one who really got me into them as well.
[“It was just some drunk dude mish!”]
Bless.

There is a 12 string Washburn here that has made me master a mess of Zeppelin songs. You would too. It sounds so good. As always all and sundry roll their eyes when I play and sing. Ash is a bold face liar. Says that he hates acoustic guitar and what not. Oh yeah? Then how did he end up producing Diana Anaid? Hmmmmm?

Mikey just came out of the rehearsal room. Tells me that they are starting up. We are doing “Diatribe” and “Se7en” tonite. I love listening to them. I just moved to the floor right outside the room and as they have all been practicing independent of each other it sounds great. Ross just told Ash to turn down. Just another day at the office.

I will be sitting a lot of this time out, as they all need to fall back in together and I reckon that there would be nothing worse that turning around and seeing a singer perched there waiting. They usually do this part of it without me anyway.

[“I can’t hear anything in here”-Ross]

There is a dude who looks like Mark Arm from Mudhoney sitting on the sofa next to me and his feet stink. He just offered me a cookie.

I have been writing some new stuff. I left all my other stuff at home so I would be forced to come good on the ideas that I have been messing with.

“Couch Potato!”
“Hey! I am working as well”
“Yeah right!”
“Fuck off Ash”

Hope that we don’t all kill each other. I really gotta join that fuckin gym. Been listening to A LOT of The Rollins band which always seems to signal the start of another heavy cycle of self-abuse involving Stairmasters and a zillion sit ups.

[“There is no WAY that I am as fat as YOU!” Sniffs the bass god.]

Oh yes there is smart arse. Have another fucking Bratwurst.

Later.
SF4L
Michele.