hair

 Hair

You asked

    Me if I thought

  It looked gay

And so

    I told you i didn’t 

    Think it was gay.,

And i wondered if

    You asked cuz you 

   Hated yourself or

Something,

   But

You said you

    Asked cuz

    Some

    Guy, in a 

     Session

Said you had 

The 

    Most lesbian haircut he had

  Ever seen

       And you did’

       nt like that and i do

       nt think i would either

And you said 

    He t3xted you to

      EXPLAIN that it wasnt bad 

        That It looked

     Gay,

  And you told me about

     How

   You dressed like a boy now,

     And i liked that about

     You but

           I wonder

           ed what you dressed like before,.

And the n i started to 

   Imagine you

   With a mohawk and 

You were real cool like

     And it 

     Reminded me

Of this character

From LEGO ROCK BAND and 

Then i started to feel

    Sad about Sam’s story how

    He got rock band for 

  Christmas, but they couldn’t afford the

        Guitars,

       And they tried 

    So

         HArd to play with

        A controller

             But you couldn’t,.

             You just

             Couldn’t,/

     So they took it back 

To the store and his 

    Christmas present went back

Through the door

 And now that I think of it

   he's got a real good head of hair

         I like his

         I don't

        Like mine much

    But there’s a lot

         I like about

         Him that I don’t 

Like about me and

      There's a lot of stuff I think that falls

Out of my brain through 

    My hair and 

   I wondered if you could just

See

 it

     And maybe

That's  why i seemed so unfriendly 

    But i liked it most 

When 

It looked

       Real bad

       And I felt

   Real 

   Bad,.

Because maybe i could be

           A cool guy in a corner 

     And 

           someone would

           Notice me     .and you did.

And i looked at that hair 

      Of yours ,before you ever asked if I thought

  It was 

  Gay

           And all I thought was 

   That it looked

Real

Cool.

top 10 ways to get off in 2024

• Dressing up like a boy and touching yourself in the mirror
• Dressing up like you did in 2019 and touching yourself in the mirror
• Dressing up like a guy dressing up like Travis Bickle and touching yourself in the mirror
• Touching yourself to pictures of pretty boys in your copy of Scene Inbetween you got for Christmas in 2016 and crying
• Explaining over the phone how one might think that T-Rex officially went electric with the release of “Ride A White Swan,” who’s label had dropped the “-yrannosaurus” and the addition of Mickey Finn but actually if you look back to the year before there was the release of King of the Rumbling Spires / Do You Remember which showed Bolan and Took and Visconti pretty much inventing glam rock in July 1969(!), the T-Rex of Electric Warrior pretty much fully formed, but also this distinction not being as meaningful as people make it out to be, more just a difference of presentation, to Bolan’s cosmic pop wisdom, these are all the same thing, these are all the same song while she imagines you rubbing the tip of her penis with your thumb
• Pretending to be a dog
• Getting off to concepts more than anything
• She lets you talk about cycles of aesthetic reappraisals and how some come on time and some are delayed as you are dressed up like a boy and touching yourself in the mirror
• Explaining maybe too much about your personal life to strangers because you think the context will deepen their enjoyment of your last record while you are dressed up like a boy and touching yourself in the mirror
• Piss

"wow, there’s so many possibilities for people like us! my faith in the indomitable human spirit is restored." - you

23rd annual autozone redirectional

 Maybe I’ll just masturbate again instead of writing tonight. Maybe I’ll just masturbate again so I can fall asleep. I need a sensitive boyfriend with long hair and a smooth body to punch me as hard as possible. 

I wish I was a sensitive boyfriend with long hair and a smooth body so you could punch me as hard as possible. I don’t even really know What I Want, I just work here, lady. What could you know about desire, what could you know about wants and needs other than their forms as sublimated into F-F-Freudian f-f-fixations? Just because you suck cock when society tells you that isn’t right for you to do doesn’t mean you know anything about desire, babe. You don;t know anything, you piss. you fuck.

do you like to fuck? not everyone does these days, you know. you don’t have to like it. ohhh ive been a dirty boy ive been a real dirty boy mommy caught me talking to strangers on my ipod touch again. listen to you. me, i don’t like to fuck but that doesn’t mean i won’t do it. I want my girls to be happy, you know. I just want everyone to be happy.

I wrote my first  song, and itrhymed “crippling sentimentality” with “gay sex mentality,” and i immediately threw the piece of paper in the trash. the song existed in my head for the time when i held the paper and a short time after, and i think that’s okay. thats how things should be sometimes. thats how a song should be sometimes. a song doesn’t have to be for everyone it can be just for you and a song doesnt have to be for ever it ccan be just for you. the song also said “dichotomous fallacies like christ gainst the Pharisees dykes parting the seven seas recontextualizing our phallusees” and i dont really know what that means but maybe someone does. do you knwow aht that means

(we turn and see a STRANGER approaching he clears his throat)

YOU ARE SOME OF THE WEIRDEST LOOKIN LADIES IVE EVER SEEN

(this concept for introducing plot into this piece isnt really working so im jsut gonna leave it there <3) 

thats pretty cool soundslike a cool song i wrote an inspirational rap song int he style of gym class heroes let me do it for you heres the lyrics if you wanna sing the hook with me

you are the greatest thats ever done it 

even though people rarely seem to want it

when you have no friends left and you think youve gone deaf

there's no need to seek death youre on legalized meth

you can write a song that makes someone feel sad

sad at the fact that your life has been so bad

oh it's been a hard year but dont you shed more tears

you got nothin left to lose and nothing left to fear

ohhh please dont kill yourself

you have so much confessional art left to do

at this point no one would feel bad

they would just feel kind of weird

oh girl please dont kill yourself

there's so much beauty in this world

shawty please dont kill yourself

your master plan's still unfurled

your art is more important than all this strife

even if it alienates everyone in your life

no one books you any shows, they're allergic to your flows

you got too many hoes, but thats just how it goes

you're into public humiliation self imposed desecration

you cry at train stations and test everyone's patience

nobody stays around you but they never found the real you

you just want a lover just to up and kill you

ohhh please dont kill yourself

you have so much confessional art left to do

at this point no one would feel bad

they would just feel kind of weird

oh girl please dont kill yourself

there's so much beauty in this world

shawty please dont kill yourself

your master plan's still unfurled

wow that sounds like shit dumbass. that sounds like that gay song they made when paul walker died. i hate you so much and you dont even realize it you dont even want to come to terms with it.

What? sorry i was configuring a Multi Output Device on my Macbook Pro so we can both use headphones to watch this gay porn.

oh sweet. i could not live without you. if you left me, id kill myself. i would straight up killmyself. and it would be your fault for leaving me, because you know i have mental Afflictions and i cant handle rejectiona nd abandondment because i am crazy and have Borderling Personality Disorder.

Yeah I got Borderline Personality Disorder of fries. lol. i would never leave you. that;s a promise. do you turst me? 

yes darling i trust you.

well thats good because im not sure if id trust me so its good something does. anyways ******* told me we exist because of each other and she was talking about her and me and she was really just talking out her ass in the way she always talks to make grand statements she doesnt believe inbut im starting to think its true for all people everyone exists because of everyone else and all people are irreplaceable but also some people die before they should and some people die after they should and this sort of confuses things. will there ever be a thing we can call permanence? why do i cry when you are gone, why do i cry when you are here? do you believe anything i say? you dont know the people in the songs so how could you believe anything i say?

whatever, faggot. i think im gonna close my laptop and jerk off before going to sleep. do you want to join me?

yeah, i do. your the only one i let misgender me you know? its really hot when you do it. your the only one. your the only one who i let do it. your the only one feel right to call me that your one to call me felt something deeper call me by a concept. please dont smoke weed around me please dont make me smoke your weed again itwas okay when you gave me the klonopin but the weed makesme scared please dont do it this time i will be okay for you to fuck me because i know its coming this time but the weed justmakes it worse.

okay

i love you.

i love you too.

socratic dialogue at the joke bar

a trans woman walks into a bar. she sits down at plywood veneered mahogany, waxed reflective and reflexive. she orders a diet pepsi, oh, coke is okay.

the bartender says:

"why the long face?"

she ignores the possibly transphobic play on the popular joke and begins:

"i have spent my adult life debilitatingly repentant to people, yet also too emotionally impotent to truly affect them in any tangible way. people hurt me and i apologize to them and they offer an olive branch and then change their mind and i am hurt again. i am constantly being burnt by the whims of others and intentions inaccessible to me. this is not to absolve guilt, i act as disordered, hurt other people as much as anyone else, but i pass through people and they pass through me. no one will give me anything concrete and i am consistently left hysterical. a case study in a new sociological book called 'inevitability of failure in anxiety disorder and interpersonal relation.'"

the bartender replies:

"have you talked to your therapist about this?"

the trans woman sighs:

"she tells me everything i think is correct and every way i feel is okay, that how i react to others is within my head, that i should just trust that people will come around on their own time, but i cannot rely on these placations of the resoluteness of my self anymore. i tell people that all i want from them is to be their friend, and they tell me, 'that's funny coming from you,' and it confuses and scares me, because i do believe that that is all i want from them, but can one be aware of their own intentions? are my intentions more visible to other people than they are to myself? do bad people know that they are bad people? i believe i have never done anything truly wrong, only what is rash and misguided, but is that really enough?"

the bartender wipes his face and speaks:

"has anyone ever told you that you spit a lot when you talk? regardless, as i am sure you are well aware, the self is not the self but what is projected and reflected back. these are two separate things that are never congruent, and one is never able to fully grasp either. what even is a 'bad person' to you?"

"one who hurts other people on purpose."

"have you ever considered that maybe through your obsession with not being a 'bad person,' you are inadvertently hurting others through your avoidance of that very occurence, and in turn hurting people on purpose?"

"constantly."

"right, well-"

"i am constantly trying to help people that don't want my help, and then when people want my help i cannot give it. everything i do is poison. i am wracked with the loneliness of midas."

the bartender begins to wash a glass, gazing off into the neon of a bud light sign with a subconscious ironic turn in his mouth (an observational gag that dates this story firmly in 2023). he closes his eyes on its blue glow and replies:

"i think your preoccupation with what you call 'helping others,' whatever that may entail, belies the fact that you act with a general need of being liked, and a fear of not being liked. you do the things you do and act how you are so people will like you, and when they don't (for ancillary reasons), you see it as a fault on their part to accept your 'help.' hold on,"

a horse, a rabbi, and a gynecologist walk into the bar. the bartender says:

"i'll be with you in just a moment,"

then turns to the trans woman and says:

"now really isn't the time for something like this, is it?"

"not particularly, no, but it made me smile a little bit, so that's good."

"well, anyway, in response to people's distancing from you, you apologize profusely as a defense mechanism against the burden of your own guilt. this is not to say you do bad things, but you obviously must have some system or pattern of erratic behaviors to have provoked this sort of reaction multiple times."

"but i know i am guilty, all i feel is guilt and shame, constantly!"

"but is it an actual sense of concrete guilt over concrete acts, or is it more of a gut feeling of knowing there is something wrong with the way you interact and relate to people? you don't allow yourself to feel guilt over things you do because you are too busy feeling guilt over your AVOIDANCE of guilt."

it has become audibly evident that this bar has not been the first stop tonight for our group that entered a few lines ago, and the bartender excuses himself for a moment. the trans woman has finished her diet coke and plays with the ice cubes with a kind of violent apathy while taking the time to put her next thoughts together.

the bartender returns and she retorts:

"all that about my avoidance of guilt may be true, but i would have a lot easier time coming to terms with that if people would TELL ME THINGS! no one ever wants to tell me what's going on, i am always being left in the dark, left to assume the worst about how people feel about me. all i really want is open communication between people, i don't understand why other people find it so hard."

"oh yeah? when you do have open communication, when you are called out on things, how do you react?"

"what?"

"like, do you take things with stride, or do you whimper and cry, and attribute what's being said to you to senseless anger in order to disassociate yourself from it?"

"how do you-"

"you just seem like the type. you don't want open communication, you only want to be told you are good and perfect and not in the wrong. people avoid communicating with you because they know if their communication is seem by you as negative, you will just shut down and become a puddle, incomprehensibly begging for forgiveness."

she starts to shake and tear up a bit.

"you're a real fucking asshole, you know that?"

she is then hit with a wave of self awareness not related to self deprecating intellectualism for the first time in a long while so strong that she slumps down on the bar. after a moment, she speaks muffled through the sleeve of her sweater:

"i need to learn how to love in a way that doesn't vacillate between idealizing of others and self destruction, a love that doesn't revolve around maximizing the importance of my intentions and minimizing the effects of my acts and words, a love that is fair to all parties, a love that involves more careful selection and hesitation in order to be more lasting. this will take a while, so in the meantime i need to learn how to be alone, something i haven't been able to be since i was a teenager. i cannot love until i can love myself. i cannot love until i can love myself. i cannot love until i can love myself. this is something true, this is something tangible. this is something that makes sense. how could someone love me, how can i love someone if i don't love myself?"

she pauses.

"how do i love myself, by the way?"

she looks up and the bartender is not there. she whips her head around and sees him on his way back from serving the group. he cocks his head at her as he sets the serving tray down:

"i'm sorry, were you saying something?"

"oh, it's nothing. funny bunch that came in, isn't it? straight out of one of those jokes. i was half expecting you to tell them you don't serve their kind here."

"i ordinarily would, but there's federal laws about that kind of thing now. and don't act like you're any different."

"i suppose you're right, there."

"one of them bought you a drink by the way, will it be another diet coke?"

she glances over her shoulder at the group.

"yeah, thats fine. which one was it?"

"the gynecologist. he thinks you're cute."

the trans woman downs the soda, stands up, and pulls a couple dollars out of her purse, looking somewhat disappointed.

"well, he can't do much for me, anyway."

"THE SOUND ROCKER'S PRAYER," by Lex Walton

1 - SOUND ROCK

Say it to yourself: I am a Sound Rocker. I make Sound Rock.

Sound Rock is as of now a meaningless descriptor. It holds no associations, other than it is a system of organized sound.

SOUND ROCK IS:

an ethos,

a way of looking at art,

an answer to questions you don't feel like answering,

nameless, shapeless,

a kind of freedom,

an oxymoron,

just an idea I had.

THIS IS NOT ABOUT: being "cool," being "uncool," having "no influences."

THIS IS ABOUT: the things we love.

We are not a sum of the things we love, but they do constitute a lot of us.

A sound rocker firmly believes that everything you love belongs to you.

Be as influenced by the way your friends talk about paintings, the way you and your enemies find a way to avoid each other in plain sight at parties, the things you eat, the order you put your clothes on, the way your teeth feel against your cheek, your favorite movies, your least favorite movies, and the way your eyes defocus when you get tired as you are by the music you love.

Music is not the only thing, but a means of conveying everything.

Genre descriptors only exist to limit and divide the modes of creation and to make you sell yourself in specific ways.

Self prescription is the lowering of oneself into the oubliette of past works.

Why be a "shoegaze band" when you could make Sound Rock? Why make "emo" when you could make what is meaningful to you? Why exist at "the intersection between hyperpop and cloud rap" when you can simply let these things flow through you and be filtered through the multitude that you are?

THIS IS ABOUT: The Song, and what it wants from you.

It's more meaningful to be experiential than experimental.

2 - EMPTY SIGNIFIERS = LIBERTY.

Sound Rock is simply my preferred nomenclature. Sound Pop, Sound Music, Sound Rap, Post-Sound, Free Sound, Sound Punk, etc. all signify the same thing (nothing).

Make up genres, call yourself things that don't exist, lie about your influences while letting them shine through in the work. "Sound Rock" is just words.

Your only genre should be your name, and even then this may be too limiting.

We must subdivide until nothing is legible.

Genres are not meaningless, that is the problem. There are no rules we should obey but the rule of “what sounds good is good.”

Genres that signify historical moments should be especially vilified in modern contexts.

“Proto-punk,” “post-punk;” if “punk” is an eternal state of being, why must it be adjoined with time-based constraints (each with their own baggage)?

Long live adjectives. We don't wish to erase ways of talking about music, but genres should only live on in the vestige of adjectives; "noisy," "glammy," "proggy," "twee." Talk about “trap hi hats” and “surf guitars” and “jungle breaks” and “motown bass” in ways that don’t condemn the music that contains them to a narrow frame of relation.

It is better to be described as being like something than to be diagnosed AS something.

Sound Rock is not "hypnagogic pop," because we are not dreaming. We are awake, relaying the dream.

"Authenticity" and "Retrophilia" are reactionary impulses we only bring out on special occasions, like Christmas decorations or novelty New Years glasses. Nothing about the past is better than now, the past is our toolbox.

What does it even mean to be a "noise musician?" 

THIS IS NOT ABOUT: defying genres.

THIS IS ABOUT: ignoring and obfuscating them.

THIS IS NOT ABOUT: music listening.

THIS IS ABOUT: music making.

Let other people categorize you. That's not your problem.

Make life harder for journalists and playlist curators. They deserve it.

3 - SOUND THEOLOGY OR THEOLOGICALLY SOUND?

The mere knowledge of "outsider art" precludes one from making it. We are all speaking the same language.

A sound rocker understands that all music coexists in the same invisible space, it all has no image and no rigidity.

A sound rocker understands that "pop music" exists in the world of forms and is for us to harness.

A sound rocker is never afraid of melody or harmonic simplicity. We all want to transcend this gray earth and sometimes the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

A good tambourine line goes a long way.

A sound rocker understands that preset rhythms, common chord changes and cliche phrases are a marker of lasting divine power and truth. 

A sound rocker observes that sometimes things are popular because of the forces of capital, but also that sometimes things are popular because they vibrate with a certain resonance through popular consciousness (meaning: ALL OF US).

A sound rocker views nostalgia as an amusement and an inspiration, not a purpose. Pastiche is used to get somewhere not closer to the past, but CLOSER TO GOD.

A sound rocker knows that the fact that changing between two arbitrary vibrations can reduce one to tears is proof of something bigger than all of us, however you want to call it.

A sound rocker understands that The Song is alive, it wants to be conveyed in a certain way, and it is their duty to actualize it.

A sound rocker knows that any instrument can play the melody in your head, and any tone is viable in its right context. No two timbres or (genre-associated) textures can clash except in an interesting way when they are combined with good intentions.

The structured should allow room for improvisation and the improvised should allow room for structure.

A sound rocker knows that The Song can contain nothing and everything, and in this way The Song is God.

4 - WORDS, WORDS, WORDS.

(Shakespeare did not write tragedies or comedies, he wrote Sound Plays.)

Words are either the most important thing or another way to weaponize cliche (good!)

A sound rocker is always honest, unless lying would be more truthful.

A sound rocker's work has an ethos, a mission, a conceptual framework, something to say (no matter how banal) that has nothing to do with sonic qualities.

The most valuable statements are those that are unequivocally true in the author's mind at the time of writing. Time cannot change their intensity.

Art is made compelling when one can sense an urgency behind its creation. A sound rocker makes music because they feel they will die if they don't, and believes in their work enough to know it is worth making and being heard.

Lyrics exist between poetry and prose and transcend both when they are “bent to melody.” Make of that what you will.

The personal is the universal. The specific is the shared.

There is a perverse joy in revealing too much, giving the game away. The sound rocker is prepared to be seen naked.

"Never In Excess," sayeth the Oracle at Delphi, but such inscriptions are just suggestions.

Nothing can ever be "too cute" or "too brutal," "too naive" or "tasteless," if it is deeply felt.

THIS IS NOT ABOUT: "autofiction," "life as art" (though it is certainly congruent!)

5- ALWAYS BE RECORDING!!!!! RECORD EVERYTHING!!!!!

The "Sound Sound" denotes nothing (this means everything).

Home recording is preferred if only for immediacy, and immediacy is preferred if only for its truthfulness.

If you are making a record, write and record until the record tells you it is over, and then record even more.

The best thing you can use to make music is what is available to you.

Never limit to one kind of recording. Computers are beautiful and tape is beautiful, listen to the song and it will tell you what it wants to be contained on (and it never really truly has to be contained on anything! Bounce back and forth 4ever). Never ignore the potentials of whatever recording medium is used, push everything to its limit.

Modern music software means that anyone can do incredible things with almost nothing. This is to be celebrated.

Ask for help.

Some things want to be recorded with Neumanns, some things want to be audio ripped from camcorder videos. These things can exist together in the same song.

As many live performances should be filmed and recorded as possible. Documentation is a gift for the future.

The Song is the Thing. You are not writing it, you are exhuming it. Never forget that.

-----------<3------------

early sound rockers: Miles Davis, Kate Bush, Bo Diddley, Rivers Cuomo, Blue Gene Tyranny, Wesley Willis, Adam Green, Yoni Wolf, Tori Kudo, Robert Pollard, Lil B, Joe Meek, Brian Eno, William Onyeabor, Julian Koster, The Space Lady, Kevin Barnes

-----------<3------------

This is not the only way to do things, this is just an option of a way to look at music making. The most important thing is that Sound Rock is about not limiting yourself. Listen to your heart, close your eyes, follow blindly into beautiful new territories, always feel deeply about what you do and believe in your work. We love music because it is us and we are it. None of this is to be taken as gospel, and I would never tell anyone how to do their work. I’m just some person, and I want to express what I feel deeply in words that can be understood.

There are currently three projects on Bandcamp tagged with "sound rock." I can only hope it means to them what it means to me.

Alex Walton

9/11/2023