The thought popped into my head when I was mulling over the latest parts of the book and how he mentioned that his obsession scarred those around him, now ex-gfs would be forced to think about him, for better or worse, every time that Arsenal was announced in the news. I wonder if I have that same effect any time Sage Francis or Aesop Rock are come on a speaker, any time Anticon or Dose One play a show, any time El-P appears on the cover of some indie mag. Don't get me wrong, I still like a lot of that music, in some cases love, but my obsession has waned in recent years, in many ways it's nostalgic when I hear certain songs, though they don't hit me with the same impact. One such case, Watching Water by Alias, probably one of the most depressing tracks out of the Anticon stable, this little ditty got many a play on my discman-cum-iPod. I used to love how it would make me ruminate and it didn't hurt that most times I heard it, I was already lifted, now when I hear it it just reminds me of Celina, of skiing benders ending in Bushwick, of raucous coitus and drug-induced debauches, of misplaced adoration and naive notions of romance. Watching Water .... more like watching a tempest. It's funny the associations the mind makes without any conscious prompt.
I don't obsess over the latest Anticon album or their latest show (the last time I saw Dose perform, it was at Union Pool, easily about 3 years ago), but an obsessive always has something to fawn over. Lately I've been all about spending inordinate amounts of time on my comp and Conan. Yes, Conan. Forget about the sub-par Arnold flicks (even if I can still enjoy them), forget about the sub-par movie that just came out (I feel bad for the star in that, I really liked him in Game of Thrones, too bad he picked such a shite movie role), the Conan of the comics was one that was equal parts brute strength and cunning. That's what I love about him as a character, he's complex, he has a code despite being a reaver, a thief, a pirate, a merc, a general and, ultimately, a self-made king. The first time I was made aware of the comics was when Vic, my role model growing up, gave me a beat-up copy of the Savage Sword of Conan. The artwork was a bit backwards for the times, the cover art was always on point, but what I liked most was the stories. Even then I always had a knack for rooting out a good yarn.
I've been fortunate that it's gotten me back into reading, strange as it may sound. A writer that isn't reading?! and isn't writing, either?! Well, just like sometimes a football player (and, by that, I mean Soccer, I can't tell you now many silly convos I've had with people about this little detail) needs to take a season off to heal and look back on the previous seasons, I needed time to clear my head. Agatha Christie novels were my last obsession, that woman can write a dope mystery novel, lemme tell ya, Ten Little Indians or And Then There Was One, that story is just so complete, it's amazing. Not that I'd ever want to write like that ... but reading Nick Hornby, identifying with his twenties slacker and knowing that I need to exercise my writing as much as possible instead of finding any other thing to do but that in order to avoid ... I dunno, failure, disappointment, rejection, disapproval ... it can be hard. Really fucking hard.
So Here I Am .... title to Bloc Party's track that currently has 30 plays on my iTunes as of the time of this writing .... trying to get back on the horse. Like Conan of the paperback, always looking to the frontier, to new adventures ... geez, I've gotta get out of here, my upstairs neighbor's playing bad techno and all I hear is the 100 bpm thumping of my reverberating ceiling and walls. FML. PS1, perhaps?
