Question
While doing my daily scan of Pitchfork, the one-stop hub of cool kids not wanting anyone to sit at their section of the music opinion lunch room, I noticed that the site is looking for freelance music reviewers. I hate to say it, but I’m intrigued.
I guess what I’m wondering after looking through their criteria for applicants, do you the readers of The Bugg Blog think that I am Pitchfork material? I’ve long strayed from the sort of uber indie personality that Pitchfork covets, but I’m tempted to give it a whirl. The worst thing that can happen is that the website never emails me back, I guess.
So help me out, people. Tell me your favorite of my published material (you know, the stuff that is so adeptly labeled under the title “Pimpage”).
Thanks for your support.
Liz the G.O.A.T.*
Dear readers of The Bugg Blog, what you are about to witness in the coming weeks is a torrent of sophomoric humor, witty insights, daily bullshit, odes to obscure music and even a few paragraphs about my wife every now and then all because of the pretty girl in the picture (the one on the right). Her name is Liz, and she’s started something very big. What has she started? I hear you asking through the tubes that make up the internet, and the answer can be found in this entry, just after the mucky muck about the last few days of my life. So read on!
My One Millionth Post about this blog and my writing career (or lack thereof)
Sometimes I worry that I’m a bit too wishy-washy when it comes to what I want to do with myself, my creativity and my vocation. I can remember the first time that I came to the conclusion that writing might be my path in life. I had this sense of relief come over me that seemed to say this is what I know how to do! and I embraced it wholeheartedly. I remember pitching and writing articles with verve and enthusiasm. Now, it’s a few years later and I’m not so sure that the rough and tumble world of a freelance writer is for me. I realize that I articulated this thought just a little while ago, but today I was thinking about all of this and I realized something kind of strange:
I’m not sure if I have any interest at all in writing for money at this point in my life.
When I started getting serious about writing, my blog was this neat little refuse, and I really looked forward to writing about the things that I cared about. I really dug writing down silly little stories and funny little drunken asides. I liked getting a little drunk and writing about bands and songs that I liked. Money wasn’t an issue in how or why I typed the words that a few of you read. Half of the time it was ranting and raving about some criminally underappreciated artist or song, and the rest of the time it was a twisted ode to my friends or my burgeoning relationship with Jessie. Life was good.
Then I moved into full-time freelancing.
As a full-time freelancer my blog took a backseat to trying to turn these words into checks. For a little while, it was working and I had fun, I got to write about a lot of awesome stuff, but lately (and I mean over the last two years or so) I’ve been writing for a paycheck. I’ve been doing something that I used to do for free and thinking entirely about the money versus what I was writing about. Where I once viewed myself as some sort of bugle call for all the good music out there, I instead just turned into an old, washed up (and perpetually late on her deadlines) whore.
It took realizing that I was a whore to make me want to stop doing it. I’m not saying that I’m going to stop freelancing forever, but I am going to stop putting out feelers for new work. I am going to stop answering the emails of publicists. Just for a while. I’m just going to write here on this blog and at home for fun. I’m tired of doing something I love and trying to turn it into money. Money ruins shit, and I don’t want it to ruin any more of my shit.
I’ve been playing music with two (now three!) very wonderful friends. The music we play is awesome, different and completely devoid of pretense. We have talked about recording what we do or playing a show, but we’re still not sure if that is what we are doing it for. My thought- and one that I’ve heard at least two other guys articulate in the practice room- is that what we do is less about “being a band” as it is just being creative and hanging out with each other. We don’t want to “make it” or get recognition for what we do. Instead we are just having fun, and we don’t particularly care if anyone ever hears us. We know that we play together well, why should it matter to anyone else?
It took playing music to make me realize the same thing about my writing. The very fact that the guys I play with are all good enough musicians to decide to just phone it in and try to learn a few covers and play dive bars for fifty bucks a night and yet they still choose not to is such a refreshing feeling.
So if I’m willing to do this for my music, why wouldn’t I treat my writing the same way? I guess in a way I feel like I’ve sacrificed a bit of my integrity (I think that’s the right word) in the name of a few extra dollars is pretty damning to me. I’ve thought about it for a long time, and I thought that my definition of integrity was never doing anything that you are ashamed of for money. During the last two years I’ve done plenty.
I just don’t want to do that anymore.
Instead, I want to have fun. I’ve found a job where I like and feel like I’m doing some good within the community and it affords me enough of a financial cushion to where I don’t have to whore out my art so that Jessie and I can eat spaghetti one night instead of leftovers. Hopefully when I’m done at the end of a workday I can sit down at my computer and write a few paragraphs. Maybe something about a super hero or maybe just a long rant about my neighbors, the possibilities are endless.
I’m sure that in three weeks I’ll probably change my mind, but for right now, if you are reading this blog, it’s the only place where I’ll be writing for right now. Readers of The Bugg Blog will get one hundred percent of what I decide to put out on the internet, complete with ill-thought-out missives, typo-laden odes to profanity, sweet drunken posts about my wife, oddly obsessive screeds about my pets, and even a few character assassination attempts directed at Chad Nesbitt (who is a cunt).
I just hope that people are into the ride.
Where I Be.
Sorry for the lack of updates, I’ve been working a ton this week. I don’t know if I put this on here, but I got the job I’d applied for. No, not the Xpress job, but the other one. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but it’s at a non-profit just down the road and I work helping people finding jobs. So far, I really like it (although with me being a night-owl the 7:00 AM start time is a bit challenging).
The job is nice, but it’s just a small bit of change that seems to be happening. I don’t know, maybe it’s because of spring erupting all around me but I have spent the past week or two examining and reexamining what I’m doing, why I’m doing it and what I want to do. After much consideration I’ve decided that I really don’t like the whole peddling my writing for dollars thing.
Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy writing. I enjoy it so much that even now as you read this I am probably writing. I just, over the past year to year and a half have really hated the “freelance writer as street urchin” lifestyle: looking for entertainment and art in cities that vaguely interests me, contacting a newspaper editor in that city or town, agreeing to write about it for a price, contacting the artist in question and talking to them about it, writing about the art and sending it to an editor. The whole process seems rather trite and dumb to me right now. I think right now I want to worry about the art and artists in my own neighborhood and work with them. I don’t want to try to make money off of someone else’s creativity for the moment. I want to make money off of my own brain and mind, off of my own ideas.
Right now that means writing things for me: this blog, a comic book (hopefully something online that I’m scheming right now with a really talented artist that a sibling of an ex girlfriend introduced me to), some small bits of fiction and even some music. That’s right, music.
I’ve been playing about once or twice with my friends John Biggs and John Starling. It’s been rewarding and challenging just getting down into the music room and making a noise. The best part is that the noises aren’t like the noises I’ve made in past bands. Instead of writing three minute punk rock songs, these are rhythmic and complicated pieces of music full of dissonant guitars, funky bass, and rock solid drumming. The songs we write aren’t songs per se, but just blasts of creativity that only exist when we are playing them. I don’t know if we’ll ever play a show or record a proper song, but the music we do create is some of the most satisfying stuff that I’ve ever been a part of.
So, I know that I do one of these State of the Bugg entries every few months here, but just keep an eye on this blog. It is growing and changing along with me. I hope the few of you that read this will stay along for the ride.
A Short Story about Short Stories
Tonight Jessie and I ventured into downtown Sylva to hear local author (who seems to be becoming a big deal outside of Western North Carolina) Ron Rash read from his new collection of short stories entitled Burning Bright at City Lights Bookstore. I must admit that I’m a bit of a neophyte when it comes to Rash’s works, but Jessie’s enthusiasm and desire to go won me over, and man I’m glad I went to the reading.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with his work, Rash writes fiction in harsh, brutal passages that somehow evoke both the charm and the rural brutalism of the mountains west of Asheville. The result is text that is often uncomfortable and captivating to read.
“Parson went to the window and watched as the sheriff backed out onto the two-lane and drove toward the town’s main drag. Snow stuck to the asphalt now, the jeep blanketed white. He’d watched Danny drive away the day before, the tailgate down and truck bed empty. Parson had known the truck bed would probably be empty when Danny headed out of town, no filled grocery bags of kerosene cans, because the boy lived in a world where food and warmth and clothing were no longer important. The only essentials were the red-and-white packs of Sudafed in the passenger’s seat as the truck disappeared back into the folds of the higher mountains, headed up into Chestnut Cove, what Parson’s father had called the back of beyond, the place where Parson and Ray had grown up.”
From “Back of Beyond”
That paragraph has one hundred and thirty five words in it, and there’s not a single wasted word in it. There’s something so engaging and stark about Rash’s writing that I just fell in love with after hearing him read and then bringing home his collection of shorts. The guy is like Cormac McCarthy only with more punctuation and less of a Pentecostal bend.
The other thing that Rash does that I love is that he writes about this area. Not only in casual mentions of Asheville, Sylva or Boone, but in the people. Rash really captures the rough necked bravado and the tight-lipped secrecy that so many people I encounter in this town seem to have. I’ve never met a stranger and these people are either all ready to kick my ass or are strangers in their own worlds. Rash knows them all, and isn’t afraid to show it.
Needless to say that I love this book- I actually put the book down to write this entry because I knew that if I allowed myself to continue reading I’d be up all night trying to finish the book.
It’s succinctness that I love. That economy of words that arrived in literature that Hemingway wielded like Excalibur through the Gordian Knot of the last vestiges of the overly wordy Dickensonian writers. I love that minimalism, and I just wish I could do it so well. It’s so brutal, so frank and so able to sum up and entire moment in one sentence.
(Keep in mind that I just wrote a sixty six word paragraph with a mixed metaphor to describe brevity and simplicity in words. Yes, I am aware of that and no, I don’t think it makes me an idiot.)
After a brief Q&A Jessie and I took our copy of Burning Bright and stood in line to get Mr. Rash to sign the book. The bookstore was hanging out small slips of paper for us to write down what we’d like the author to sign in the books and Jessie thought about it for a second and scribbled it down. I had a feeling it was going to be poignant or funny, or sweet or random. I had a feeling that it was going to be perfect. After some small talk with Rash, he handed the book back to us, shook our hands and walked out the door. Tonight after getting into bed I studied the inscription one more time.
“For Jessica, who likes to read, and Jason who likes to write!”
Thirteen words, all neat all perfect. Looping J’s that Rash developed himself outside of school, an exclamation point added because of his schooling, and a sentiment, elegance and simplicity in the choosing of the words that I would never have been able to have done. I may be the writer in the family (I hope), but my wife is the poet.
I had a feeling that Rash writing Jessica’s words would be perfect, and I was right.
Until later, be good.
Jobs and Jason Bugg to the Xpress UPDATE!
Yeah, between this image and the WWE NXT entries I know that I’m recycling a lot of images around here, but I figured that it’d be a neat way to keep the images thematically tied together. Sue me if you don’t like it. Actually, don’t. I’d rather not go to court (the seats aren’t comfortable there).
Help Jason Bugg become gainfully employed
The dream began a few years ago: Jason Bugg (or for the purposes of this blog entry “I”, “me”, or “myself”) was working a dead-end job at an Asheville-based coffee shop (which has long since been closed). An old friend from back in high school frequented the place for his semi-hourly regimen of caffeine. I knew that he was working at the Mountain Xpress, and for the heck of it, I assaulted him with article ideas (not for me to write, mind you, but for him or someone at the paper- after all, I wasn’t a writer). He surprised me by telling me to shoot him an email about one. When I did, he then told me that I could write the article and get paid for it. With that, I was a freelance writer.
Time moved fast. I sold article after article to his paper and to out of town papers, all because of this guy taking a risk with the overeager barista and the paper he worked for agreeing to publish it. Soon the staffer assumed the editor’s position at the Xpress and I received even more work. So much work that coupled with the out of town stuff that I was doing I was able to live the dream: I was a full time writer.
But things change. The editor left his position and (as it often goes in the tumultuous world of Alt-weekly freelance writing) I fell out of favor with the incoming editor. Our styles did anything but meld. Eventually (due to personal differences- namely my mouth and my inability to ever back down from saying the wrong thing when it feels so right) we agreed to work together.
No big deal, right?
Well, it was a big deal. The money dried up. That’s sort of okay, because to a degree the money was nice but it wasn’t what I wanted out of writing. Writing gave me purpose, and when I couldn’t show my special purpose to the people in the town that I lived in, I was lost, hurt and sad. I said a few choice things about the paper that I truly felt, and once again didn’t back down.
Now I’m here to admit that my mouth can get me into trouble sometimes. Now I’m here to say that the one thing that always brought me joy as a writer was being able to write for my hometown paper.
So imagine my surprise today when I stumbled upon a twitter tweet (or whatever you call it) from an Xpress staffer announcing that if anyone is interested in writing for the Xpress to contact them. (more…)
Tethered
Last night I stayed up way too late thinking about all of the things that I was going to do today. I sat in my bed with a my notebook that I usually write comic book scripts and story ideas in and made a list of things that I was planning on doing today, and began to think that today (Wednesday) was the last day this week that I could work on my writing for any sustained period of time. The weekend would be here, and with that came me trying as hard as I could to spend as much time with Jessie as I could while making the hour-long drive to work. I’m tired just thinking about it.
It was in those late hours trying to organize my day into shifts of writing that I wanted to do for money and writing that I wanted to do for myself that I realized something.
I realized that I hate my job. That’s a frightening feeling.
New Review!
Over at Blurt Magazine’s website, there’s a review of Friday Night’s Alejandro Escovedo show. You can read it (as well as check out an awesome photo that I took) here.
The Five Letter Four Letter Word
Over the years and throughout the various incarnations of The (bugg) Blog I’ve used this space as a way to make new resolutions, pronouncements, announcements, commencements, speeches, declarations and benedictions about my writing. I’ve used this space as a warm up for writing and a space holder for more writing to come. But something I read the other day changed the way I think about this place.
I don’t know where I was on the vast and uncharted interwebs, but I read a professional writer’s advice sheet to wannabe writers and her edict at the top of the page rang out like a bell in my brain:
Writers write. They don’t blog, they just write. They can’t not write. Writers write.
Something about that sentence grabbed me and made me think. Not writing is the one sort of writing I’ve been doing well for a while. It’s almost like I’m out of practice. I’m winded just writing this much, but I’m making myself write more. I have to get back on that horse again (for lack of a better cliché).
I don’t know what it is about me, but sometimes I get discouraged by this strange and abstract world that happens in my brain and encouraged by the rather banal side of me that enjoys the thoughtlessness and easy money of my shitty retail job. Maybe it’s the certainty of working a set schedule and knowing how much money I’m getting paid versus the chaos and financial desperation of freelance writing. Maybe it’s the florescent lighting or the mall traffic. Maybe it’s not being in Sylva. Maybe it’s seeing hot high school girls. Maybe it’s not seeing everyone dressed head to toe in Real Tree like they do here in Sylva.
Whatever it is, it is distracting me from what I do. I write. I am a writer. At least, I hope I am. I don’t know what the future holds for me. I don’t know if I can make it doing what I want to do in this world. But goddamnit if I am not going to die trying.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to write. That’s what I do. I don’t blog.
