Down here in The Shadowlands...

Today I woke up around 5pm. I woke up from my Mom putting a package I got in the mail in my room. It was the package that Tanya from South Carolina sent me. She works at Hot Topic down there and got me a couple shirts. I asked her how much I owed her and she said "I'm sure we can work out a trade or something". That was very nice of her. I'm wearing one of the shirts she got me in the picture above. Here are some better pictures:

Front:


Back:


and last but not least:



I love getting new clothes.

I also did my nails today:



I think this is the first time in almost 6 months that I've had nail polish on...weird. Also, as you can see, I need to get my eyebrows done BADLY, and I need to trim my hair...I hate all the maintenance that goes along with being a human being.

My mom offered to buy me pants today. I am beyond excited about that, I just hope I can find some good ones online. Any suggestions? (Jason, I'm looking in your direction)

My mom ALSO bought me a veggie pocket today and we watched "The Strangers". I thought it was great, apparently it's based on a true story...yikes.

I'm not as depressed as I was last night, so that's good. I think that typing up that huge entry helped get certain things off my mind. Tonight, Eric and I went to Mike's and I finished bass on "The Shadowlands". We also added a few more layers of ambiance. I am really excited about this song. I can't wait to do vocals. I have the verses done, but I need a melody and lyrics for the chorus. I don't think this is going to be a very "chorus-driven" song, but that could very well change seeing as I don't have it written yet. I really like the verses though. I always get so nervous when I write stuff because I'm so paranoid about it being too influenced by one thing or another. I'm also always worried that the melodies that I write are from another song, and that I won't realize until it's too late and the song is recorded. Every musician I know worries about these things though.

Tomorrow, well today technically, Julia comes back from watching her boss' dogs. I can't wait to see her. Even after just a few days, I really miss seeing her. I hope we do something fun like go to Borderland or something. I also can't wait to record again. Every time I leave Mike's it's because he's too tired to continue recording until the next day. I'm not complaining by any means, I'm just saying that because if it were entirely up to me, I would never leave. I would record and brainstorm until I passed out. I love recording so much. That's easily my favorite part of being in a band. I sit in my room, come up with song ideas, and then watch it all come together in the studio. I like recording with Mike especially because he gets the absolute best takes out of you. He makes it sound real AND perfect. I must have played the same bassline 100 times in a row tonight, but I know that once I nail it, it's definitely a keeper because Mike won't settle for anything but perfection. Listening to the song it sounds like I'm some great guitar player/musician, but I'm not. It took me a million tries to get it that good. I guess that's what recording is all about though, bringing out the absolute best in you. I could never do any of that live though, no way.

I wish I was tired, but I'm not. I should at least try and go to sleep. Goodnight...or day, whatever.

Beam me up 'cus I can't breathe

Maybe I should update this.

I don't do anything besides sit in my room, and I like it that way. The only time I really ever leave my bubble is to eat or make music. However, I did go to the Bridgewater Triangle recently, that was cool, but of course the one time I choose to go out and do something, I get reminded almost immediately as to why I like to remain in this bubble. I can't stand everyone, and you know, it's probably better that I don't associate with anyone anyway, because my negativity and dislike for their character flaws will only cause stress in both of our lives, so fuck it. Every single stressful situation in life is caused by someone else having a problem with something about you. It's hardly ever something that you did that pisses you off. So, the less people I know, the happier I will be.

Also, I can't remember if I wrote about this recently or not but, I don't think I care if people think I'm an asshole anymore. I'm not going to beg and plead for it anymore, just fuck it. It sounds like common sense, but I'm just going to say and do what I want whenever I want. Fuck it. I keep thinking that lately: "Fuck it". Nothing is fun anymore, it seems like I don't get thrills from anything anymore. I just want to have that liberating feeling of going in front of a crowd and saying all the "wrong" things, and not giving a shit about what they're going to go home and say on message boards. I almost want to intentionally say the things that would piss everyone off, whether I actually believe what I'm saying or not, just as a way to say "fuck off".

I haven't updated this in a while, but I wish that I had been. Nothing that eventful has been going on in my life that Twitter can't handle, but it's just nice to sit down and type out what you're thinking in a long winded manner. I'm back to being on a nocturnal sleeping pattern. I just can't help it, it just happens no matter what. Every time I come back from tour, within 2 days I'm staying up until 8am, and waking up at 4pm.

Lately I've been recording at Mike's house. I've been slowly working away at completing a recording of MY first complete piece of music. Besides "Invasions", which doesn't count because it's just an instrumental song based around 1 single riff, this will be the first time I've written a song all by myself. I would LOVE to continue to do this from now on. I want to be one of those people that just has albums and albums worth of material that they're just sitting on, waiting for the right moment to release each song, like Prince. This song I'm working on right now is called "The Shadowlands". I'd like to go into detail as to what it's about, but, for the most part, I don't like to make my song topics public. I feel that the lyrics should speak for them self, whether that be my interpretation, or the listeners. I came up with an idea for a song the other day that I'm pretty excited about. The song called "Valhalla Radio". It seems like every time I hang out with Matt, our conversation leads to me coming up with artistic ideas that I really like. That's where the title "Invasions Of The Mind" came from. So far on "The Shadowlands", I have drums, guitars, and keyboards done. I started on bass the other day, but only completed one part. I am trying to record as much of this song by myself as I can. I can play guitar and bass well enough to get good takes after 600 attempts, and I can sing well enough to get one good take out of 6,000 attempts. So hopefully it's sooner than later that I complete this song. I really only want to record it so that I can listen to it, and know that I did it all by myself. I want it to become an Energy song, which it probably will. I don't see why not. I wish that the recording industry wasn't so stupid, where I couldn't just include this exact recording somewhere on our next album. That we will have to re record it to fit the sound of the album. I'm for the idea of an album having a uniform sound, but I'm also for the idea of going into different studios (which is what this is) and getting different sounds. If there are a few songs on an album that sound completely different, so what. Who gives a shit. I could see if it wasn't as loud as other songs or something basic like that, but I think that this specific song, has a specific feel, and Mike's basement captures it perfectly. But hey that's just me...

I have been REALLY into this song lately:




Apparently they didn't want that stupid chipmunk intro in the song, which I don't blame them, but the evil advertising bastards said that it was the only way they would ever become popular, so they left it in the song. I believe it was a DJ who accidentally played part of the song at the wrong speed one time, who suggested it. Great melodies, great lyrics, just a great song all around.

Julia and her sister are at Julia's other boss' house watching her dogs while she's away, so I won't be seeing her all weekend. So this is pretty much going to be a shitty weekend for me, especially seeing as I don't even have a car to drive to Mike's and work on my song.

An overall quick summary: I'm really, really depressed lately, and I'm pretty sure I know exactly why, but as usual, it's many, many different things.

P.S.

A lot of the time I feel like when I talk about these things, people can tell that there's actually substance behind what I'm saying/writing because I'm clearly not trying to impress a girl, or vaguely hint at wanting a girlfriend. What I'm saying is exactly what it is.
Because let's face it, that's all most people's "writings" are, are really generalized, cryptic ways of letting a girl know that they are lonely and that they want said girl to approach them and initiate a romantic relationship. I'm not saying that that isn't a real issue that people deal with, but it seems to be the ONLY issue that EVERYONE ever talks about. Myspace should somehow put a filter on every bulletin containing an open "hangout" invitation, and change it to something like "Not only do I not have the confidence to approach you in real life, and let you know that I am interested in you, but I can't even do it online without making it coded beyond recognition."

I'm sorry, but I just can't take anything anyone says seriously, because every single action, that every single person takes, is just them trying to get laid. I know that I'm not pathetic like that, so I guess that's at least ONE thing to not be depressed about. The internet can make so many people embarrass themselves so badly.

PPS.

BRIEF Tour Summary

Ok. I just toured the country again. I'd say this time was my favorite. Finally our new songs are overall more popular than our older songs. This is only somewhat important to me for these 2 specific albums because of the fact that PTC was written by someone who is no longer in the band. IOTM was written by someone who is, and hopefully always will be in the band. I don't really care too much whether people like our next album more or less than IOTM because it's the same songwriters and we just tried something new. I HOPE they like it better, but it won't suck nearly as bad as if we could never live up to our debut release. I guess what I mean is, even if we go nowhere but down in popularity, at least I know that the people CURRENTLY in the band wrote our most popular material. Of course on certain nights the crowd reacted better to PTC songs, but we're never going to win over EVERYONE. We close with 400 now and it gets the best reaction by far.

I wish I updated this thing more often when I was on tour. I don't know why, but this time I wasn't very motivated at all to keep any form of a journal while on tour besides constant Twitter updates. I like Twitter a lot, as anyone who knows me can tell. It's the most convienent, up to date way to keep a journal online. I send a text, and it's posted online. It must suck for anyone who doesn't have a full keyboard on their phone though.

I'm not even going to talk about tour really until I can get a list of the dates with brief descriptions from Joe or someone to refresh my memory about each specific show. What I am going to talk about is how much fun I've been having the past few days that I've been home. Julia picked me up at Metalfest and it was awesome to see her. I don't get happy to the point where I'm just smiling out of happiness unless I'm around her. I truly feel like a part of me is missing every minute we spend apart. We went back to my Mom's house and watched movies. The next day, we went to Grasshopper and stayed at a hotel. It was a really, really nice hotel with a jacuzzi and everything. Not much has really happened since I've been home, but it's very nice seeing Julia every day. Also, I've been listening to The Misfits a lot lately.

I drove Eric to Cape Cod today to hang out with some girl. Amazingly, I didn't get lost on the way back. When I got back I made pizza and waited for Julia to get home. We watched Jeepers Creepers 2 together and then she went home.

I might go to Mike's after I finish this entry because I have a song that I want to record with him. It's just instruments for now, but I will add vocals as I write them. I wish I was one of those songwriters who can just pump out large volumes of music. Whether it's 75 percent good and 25 percent bad, I wouldn't care, I just want a lot of music coming out of me either way. I need to stop typing now or I will get too distracted and I won't end up going to Mike's.

P.S.

Pardon me for looking terrible in my picture, but that's me right now, very unkempt.

Currently listening to: