I will lead you to the nectar

good morning ~

(click the link / skyline to listen)

My Big BreakI will lead you to the nectar

today’s track started with bass run through my guitar pedal loop setup and bloomed and gurgled from there

I’ll be realizing some live guitar clouds in Detroit, MI this weekend at Wasserman Projects as part of the closing of “Soft Serve,” a show of works by the artists Machine Dazzle and Gracelee Lawrence. They’ll be leading artist tours of the show at 3pm and then I’ll play at 4pm - - - the event is FREE with registration and you can do that here. Excited to visit, please let me know if you have any recs -

Banking, digital technologies, claims adjusters, and our particular moment of constantly cresting but somehow never quite arriving in the future make it such that every once a while the powers that be require you to do a complicated shuffle of presenting identification, signing things in front of notaries, voice recognition phone trees that hang up on you automatically when the wait's too long (and it's always too long), bouncing electronic money you've never touched between apps on your phone that all use biometric data to log you in, and demanding to speak to someone's supervisor in the most bitchy way you can muster with the dusty scraps of your tired will. I felt like a good little honeybee drone wagging my ass and zipping geometrically through the atmosphere - I'm doing the dance required of me by the hive and I will lead you to the nectar. The lenders, the policy representatives, the agents just beyond the phone tree you can never reach, the employers, it seems like everyone lately wants me to sign my life away and no one is ever fully prepared to actually and accurately lay out the real consequences in a clear, discernible fashion. Hold your face up to the screen and blink.

It's like we kept telling each other when dealing with this real negligent asshole of an insurance rep - they want you to feel like you are more powerless than you actually are. This dude - put upon insanely by the corporate structures of his own deadening employment I'm sure - is trying to wrap shit up with us as quickly and as cheaply as possible. He wants us to take the first meager offer immediately with no requests for further information and no pushback whatsoever. He wants to button it up and minimize our cost to his company. And what we want is to squeeze out as much blood (money) from the stone (corporate overlords) as we possibly can. Luckily enough for us in addition to being kind of cruel this dude was also pretty hilariously inept and gave us plenty of openings, our sword slipped through the armor easily. Not that we got rich out of the situation - so deeply far from it - but we did get at least most of what I feel like we were owed. And these days, brother? Getting most of what you're owed counts for something.

You are more empowered and capable of wriggling out of the paper finger trap than anybody with hoarded wealth would ever have you believe. Keep the pressure up. Be a thorn in their side. Count the steps of their foxtrot and sweep the leg when the timing's right.

And here's one thing they never counted on - in all the many hours of phone calls, in all the text messages, in all of the paperwork, in all of the reactive planning and scheming, in all the multiple instances of having to go down to the body shop and stare the wreckage in the face, through all of the flaming fucking hoops through which we jumped, we managed to enjoy ourselves. We had fun tooting around in the rental car, we made little jokes to each other in the bizarrely maximum security insurance office while we waited to return the title, we cooperated with kindness as we pooled our resources and figured out how to proceed. We have to fight with ever whitening knuckles to hold on to the currency, sure, but the love and partnership thing we have really dialed in right now and - apologies to the string pullers of our puppet universe - but you simply can't fuck with that shit. We're not downtrodden - we're giggling together, actually, while you're scared of how mad you've made us. You're shaking in your puffer vest, doggy! Bow wow wow!

So that's one problematic situation solved and the next more existential dilemma I'm facing has less of a clear path to victory. What will I DO for MONEY? A touch nut to crack since I often feel like I hate money and often sometimes doing stuff - what if we were idle and needed not of riches? Surely that's something we ought to try at some point. But somebody mentioned that they had a grilled cheese machine (???) in the kitchen at their new job, something about "snack game on point," and now I'm fantasizing about working somewhere with available trail mix and a decent coffee setup. I am honestly shocked by how much I yearn for tidy employment in a nice little office where I can go get myself a cup of coffee at 3pm and make unforced small talk about non inappropriate topics with my little coworkers who never text me outside of office hours. Stable and boring and predictable, a rock solid foundation from which to nurture my freak, plus maybe healthcare for my darling and I to enjoy at a reasonable expense? I could go for some of that.

Perhaps my greatest error was ever thinking that a job could feel cool and pay the bills at the same time. Jobs are kind of inherently uncool, are they not? When you're doing someone else's work for them? And it was easier to believe that I was not being misled or outright lied to at so many points - I should have remained skeptical, always good to do so when you're trading in your time and energy for cash.

But like I said - you are less powerless than the forces of hoarded wealth would have you believe. They all have to live with your ire, knowing the full shape of your disappointment in them. Life is long - both a comfort to you as you pass through the needles eye of change and a needle in their eye as they carry your anger - they must shoulder the weight of it - with them to the grave. All you have to do is scrape by in service of your joy, presenting your identification when required, which is so much more than enough.

But what about you? What hurdles are you having to leap over lately? What are your strategies for surviving customer service phone call interactions? What will you do?