093020
every time I've mentioned HAIM on this trip chris says 'l'chaim' and only just now I finally was like 'what are you saying, chris?' and he said 'l'chaim' like from I gotta feeling.... and then we had to listen to it to verify that that's said in I gotta feeling, and it IS, and now we know what it means...on Saturday we had a big day where we decided to go to the ruins of Llano Del Rio, a failed socialist colony from 1918 that I read about in city of quartz ('s wikipedia page, before I even started reading the book). we trudged along the high Mojave and thought about what it must have been like for the Bohemians and socialists of the early 1900s to live in such a place... the colony failed because it failed to secure water rights from the city, probably a political move on the part of local govt to quell socialism in all its thriving forms...then we went to Palmdale where Robert fuller was lynched just a few months ago and ate at the in n out, amidst an air of paranoia in some small part caused by the fact that we were driving my car with a bernie bumper sticker and a faded 'black lives matter' in blue paint...but zach at least got to try animal fries for the first time!
the inland empire (assuming that part of antelope valley is part of that?) has such a desolate and strange vibe to it... captured so well by mike Davis and Joan Didion and nathanael west. we discussed what brings people to live out past the city in the empty desert, in bizarre tract homes that sell a lesser replica of the fabled suburban American dream. everything is dry and arid and stagnant and feels like a movie set -- but maybe that's just my privilege talking...reform la jails is launching a campaign to cancel the LASD contract with antelope valley soon 🏜👮🏻♂️ fuck the LASD!
in any case, it was (of course) all extremely interesting to me, and after our brief sojourn to the ruins we went to Vasquez rocks near Santa Clarita, where Ori is from, and saw a beautiful sunset -- I love the desert landscape for its beauty and its strangeness. like Georgia o'keefe or Judy chicago!
Georgia O'Keeffe, Ram's Head, White Hollyhock-Hills (Ram's Head and White Hollyhock, New Mexico), 1935.
when I was 12 I went as Georgia o'keefe for halloween. last year my mom and I visited the Georgia O’Keeffe museum in Santa Fe, which was dope – i've always loved the Southwest and its always nice to feel kinship with other creatives in that...
apparently Georgia o'keefe used to paint from her model t -- that'd be so fun to paint from the back of my car! I should do that!
Ori sent us this video by one direction at Vasquez rocks. its pretty good ngl
092520
Hey eworm, i just popped in to say i just had the best churro of my entire life. We are at the paramount drive in in los angeles, watching a movie called tenet. It is pretty bad but Im high and im pretending i am in the 50s. Everyone here seems high. I ate the best CHURRO of my life....SERIOUSLY!!!! At the paramount theatre. Tell them i sent you...50s people were doing this too- getting high watching bad movies in car with friends. How crazy is that....
092320
lattice by tipper is good boba musicwe ordered pizza and smoked weed and drank beer and watched the wormhole stream and chris said it was like we were in wavves in 2003 haha
Nina Katchadourian, Monument to the Unelected
I think this piece is pretty good actually
I tried to shop today but felt uninspired
today I learned Johnny Marr was in modest mouse -- a fact, like many others, that chris already knew
I miss Taiwan, the hunnybee music video is on and it reminds me of Taiwan
in Taiwan, we took the bullet train from Tainan to Taipei and Jeffrey and I sat together and chris sat far away and we saw a cockroach at the beginning of the ride right next to our feet
in Taiwan, chris got so drunk on beer at ktv that Jeffrey had to go into the boys bathroom and grab him and we had to hold him from both sides and walk him home, and at the red light he ran across the street and he said when we got in the elevator he couldn't make it all the way up to our room, then in the morning we woke up and he was just lying fetal in the bathtub and so we went to the train station to buy him some gatorade and bread, and we were planning on going to a seafood market called Addiction Aquatic Development and chris just couldn't come because he was so nauseous, and then later we tried to meet him at a huge mall after getting shaved ice and we couldn't find him because we didn't have working phones, and finally we ran into him after aimlessly walking around for a couple hours
in Taiwan I had extremely ugly blond highlights and we bought a selfie stick and I got my Birkenstocks for 50$
in Taiwan, we went to the place where boba was invented, Chun shui tang, and Jeffrey's mom bought us so much food that we thought we were going to vomit
my boba from Its Boba Time in LA tastes like ice water and now we aren't allowed in Taiwan anymore
we were talking about some bass concert happening in the south for halloween where everyone books a room and listens from their balcony (the Revibe Wellness Retreat)... do you think rolling stone would pay us to go and write about it? it seems like a crazy 2020-only experience... the Woodstock of our times
another similar cool thing to have been able to experience is the pop up Taco Bell hotel from last year
we saw the other day that some artists will just run their whole music video as YouTube ads and so if you just have music on your TV you don't even realize it's an ad... isn't that genius? I feel like that's sort of successful detournement
I used to really not like seafood, ranch, or mayonnaise, and now I like all of those things
I still don't like sparkling water, bugs, or wood fired pizza, though
I just got this in my email — I hate San Francisco
wow its really sad that Shpongle isn't playing any more live shows
shpongletron looks sick
Im reading about the 'hippie trail'
https://www.richardgregory.org.uk/history/hippie-trail.htm
TLDR: white hippies came from Europe and went to diff 'oriental' destinations in Middle East / Asia until the 1970s when it was too politically volatile..."Overland from Europe to Asia in search of Hashish"
LMAO apparently you can buy a gram of weed in india for 10 cents....bro......
092220
I am scared to die092120
today is my brother's birthday! happy birthday varun 🎉 he is 25!I just drove to a girl Natalie's house in some neighborhood that looks like it's called cypress park, to pick up the pocket operator modular we rented from fem synth lab - such a cool thing they're doing, I want to run a synth lending library 'when I grow up'...
I drove back listening to women in music 3 for the 100th time and realized man from the magazine has such Joni vibes. maybe I would be friends with haim IRL
I thought on my drive that there's not really anyone else I would rather be than myself, and that is so nice and exciting. I also thought about dying (as always) but felt some comfort in liking my life and who I am and maybe that's enough to fend off the fear of impending death. yesterday we went to the ocean and stood in the waves knee deep at sunset and I talked to zach about how the ocean was probably the first thing I ever thought was incredibly beautiful, cool, and fun but also terrifying, violent, and dangerous...and now I feel like everything is like that. people... breathing... dark forests... life is just crazy! some part of me wishes I studied science - I never understood why it was so cool until now where im just continually geeked on literally everything around me. like how the fuck did everything work out to make us exist like this? how am I just sitting here FEELING and THINKING right now? how do we just EAT plants? how does energy just cycle through the universe? I know these are silly and rudimentary questions, but Im just starting to understand that everything is crazy and cool and scary, at the tender age of 22...
sometimes I feel like believing in religion - we talked about why people adhere to a religion some days back, I said for comfort, zach said to make some sort of cosmic sense of our lives and their purpose... sometimes I feel deeply that I do believe in god because why else are we alive/do we exist? how can you explain that?
I have 7000 bug bites and I keep scratching them with my extremely almost embarrassingly long nails. zach doesn't like the sound of me scratching my bug bites, but they are just so itchy
on my way back from picking up the modular rack I went to a trendy looking drive in coffee shop we walked by the other day. I got a quadruple shot latte and laughed about it to myself. I love being extremely caffeinated for no reason - it feels like a low-level drug experience. I think chris would agree. i love how in LA there are just random trendy things in the most random neighborhoods... you just keep be finding stuff!
writing is funny because I keep feeling like I want to modulate between being earnest and self-aware. maybe those two are not diametrically opposed in the way I always think of them to be...
I never conceive of myself as a writer, and then I think about myself even as recently as 6 years ago, when that was absolutely what I considered myself. back then I wasn't an artist - I was a 'serious' 'aspiring' 'journalist' and also a musician... now I would never refer to myself with those labels. now I am an 'artist', a 'creative professional,' a hack or something...
Saturday morning we woke up and did some ketamine and listened to some music: a truth livestream, a micachu and tirzah boiler room set, a fkj set... we laid around for some hours wasting away and for once I didn't really feel any pressure to do anything else. something about being idle with friends makes it ok. we played some minecraft and chris got messed up by a polar bear, I finished this infinity pool I had been building on the side of a mountain, and zach did 8 million things like tend to his human farm and make me armor and stuff. zach gets sad that we didn't play minecraft as much as he did. but I just don't know how to do much in the game other than build several rooftop pools, eat dried kelp, and die at the hands of creepers. and I guess I can't be bothered to learn...maybe some day I will become a redstone genius. but not today!
after we wiled our day away we went on a directionless walk, and zach got some prickly stuff from a cactus stuck in his finger - it was funny that that's exactly what was supposed to happen, from the plant's perspective. we made some extremely yummy salmon then went to the black cat with Ori. the lady said there was an 1hr long wait but then we just saw an empty table and sat down and no one ever told us to leave.
we went back to Lukas' apartment and played a funny board game called wavelength after taking some edibles and having another drink on the roof. we argue about everything so the game was perfect for us.
sunday we got brunch with pule after waiting in the sun for a full hour, then we went to the beach and chris and I skated down that pathway in Santa Monica... we watched the sunset then got some seafood, then came back home and did some more ketamine and watched a couple episodes of Xavier renegade angel.
another thing I've been geeked on is time... how crazy is it that a thing was happening before, and now a different thing is happening, and we plan for the future, and then a different thing will be happening? I remember sitting in my bed in Fremont, so excited for this trip to LA, so excited to meet Catherine and be 'doing something'... and then, after some time passed, I was just doing it, and now Im just in it, and that is just a distant memory... how insane is that? who created time?
I didn't even know mitski's dad was CIA until chris just told me... how did I miss that? also we found out that Ezra Koenig is cancelled because he was dating Tavi Gevinson (18) when he was 30. how gross is that?
091820
on a conference call kinda hungover on a friday morning in LA browsing erowid...honestly a vibeyesterday we went to ep/lp and I had no real expectations for my night which made it so much easier to have a good time. we ordered a pitcher of a spicy drink and some tater tots. I made chris and zach take 70000 photos of me and I hated all of them because I dont know what to do with my face in pictures! :/ we played the game where you have to call chris 'chef chris' and Zach was 'Zachary goon' and if you fuck up you have to drink...
people in LA dont dress that well ive decided
yesterday i saw that GRiZ's new album cover is by @dangwayneolsen who is literally one of my most favorite artists. how crazy is that? the world is so small and full of synchronicity
think we might go to Llano Del Rio ruins this weekend
Ephemeral Art in the Perpetually Transforming City of Los Angeles
Llano Del Rio collective
want to see this exhibit soon
Kenny scharf exhibit at Jeffrey Deitch
091720
the last few days have been crayzy! (not really in the way that I've been doing anything particularly exciting, but there has been a lot of motion)on sunday zach flew in and we got breakfast in mar vista while waiting for chris to get in. then we got some Korean beers from hmart and cleaned out Eric's apartment while watching music videos. we rented a modular rack from fem synth lab which I've been following on ig for some time and think is so cool! gonna pick it up on saturday
fem synth lab
we went to our random Airbnb in silver lake which seemed to be in a really nice neighborhood. we crashed in a tiny one room guesthouse but worked from home in the big garden. at night we smoked a lot of weed and ate Thai food, listened to bass, hotboxed the car. one night we went on a walk then ended up at the red lion tavern where we had potato pancakes and bratwurst and hefeweizen. chris and I are trying to live through #NoSimpSeptember...it's hard out here!
091520
yesterday we talked about:- time is fake?
- nature/culture divide?
- chris' haircut
- bad la parks
091420
wifi passwords are future people trying to communicate with us in codethe other day I did shrooms with some new girls that I met and we painted... they said my painting reminded them of takashi murakami (haha)
091120
OF COURSE haim is obsessed with LA rock history...everything comes full circle once again... that makes so much sense. as I continue my haim binge / haim proselytizing spree and recommend women in music to anyone dealing with any problem whatsoever, im enjoying reading up on them...Catherine said they're so relatable because they're not particularly hot or beautiful -- in some pics they're cute, in others they're not... just like us! they would be so much more unlikable if they were really hot... but they have an underdog quality to them that resonates through their music too which makes them just so easy and comforting to listen to. Catherine says, you feel ugly, and you listen to them, and you still feel ugly, but its a little more manageable. exactly! I'm not convinced we'd be friends IRL, but if their music was people, we'd be friends, I think.article on HAIM in the Guardian I was reading
Antonio is in San Francisco 'optimizing for love' – I love that. what am I optimizing for?
091020
started watching laurel canyon today, and realized that when Ori and Catherine and I drove up to see Dakota Johnson's house the other day that was in laurel canyon. we watched her house tour on architectural digest when we were in san Francisco, so we went on an adventure to go see it in person. now im watching the docuseries! so it goes.California/ny in the 60s must have been such a vibe...Laurel canyon seems so dope if very patriarchal and white. I always have this strange feeling that I wish I was there (there being in the 60s in sf, la, nyc), but also maybe I would have been excluded if I was there, on the basis of my ethnicity/gender/etc. it's a strange thing to want this history that maybe isn't even mine to want. but what I would give to be dropping 2 tabs of acid with Joni Mitchell or at a backyard party with Crosby stills and Nash! I always feel like we missed the mark -- the 60s felt like such a time of liberation, joy, and awakening, and now just feels like malaise, despair, and chaos. there's something sort of poetic about the world burning in front of us, I guess - but it's not inspiring, or beautiful, or free. more coke than acid, more k than weed... now just feels emo and nihilistic in a way that seems totally counter to a laurel canyon where everyone keeps their doors open and plays music into the night. now we just try really hard to be laptop kids and hate as many people as possible. where is the free love? definitely not in the Haight, or laurel canyon, or Manhattan...
helplessly hoping reminds me of driving through west Marin when I was 16 and so deeply in love with someone in a completely new and unfamiliar way. parts of my life felt like poetry and it was the first time I saw so much beauty in life that made me think 'here's something worth sticking around for.' it couldn't have hurt that that's when and where I started doing psychedelics... what a colorful time!
I remember just some months ago I absolutely hated Los Angeles... I did so for actually maybe all of my life until earlier this year. I always compared it to San Francisco, or New York, and found it so lacking and unpleasant -- downtown felt sparse and empty, neighborhoods were completely unwalkable, there was so much traffic, and the architecture was kind of ugly and weird. but I began to understand and enjoy los angeles when I realized I had to stop comparing it to super urbanized, dense cities like sf or nyc, and instead see it as a city-version of a suburb like Fremont (where im from) where you just have 8 million strip malls and the bit is that you drive around and smoke weed with your friends. it's as if it were a fremont but bigger, with cooler/more interesting people, and more beautiful things to see/more things to do. somewhat similar to chicago, except in chicago I feel we did fine without a car. but yeah, now that my perspective on it has changed, I feel better about LA -- in fact, I love it!
listening to a lot of FUBT by HAIM on repeat today. Taylor swift has a song for literally every possible type of feeling you could have toward a guy and I think I never gave her credit for that (but ofc I think she's fantastic.) but I particularly felt respect towards her while driving down to LA with Catherine (who is deciding on a new nickname - Cath or Cat?) and I just felt so much like tswift is like our collective big sister who has been through it all and can tell us what it's like. that kind of wisdom is so nice when you are young and stupid and still trying to figure out how to behave/feel in complex situations. thank you Taylor! also fearless is literally such a good album -- every song is a banger. compare to folklore which I have already expressed I dont like...
090920
lonely todayz and I worked on some writing ln which was nice though
embracing la ketamine volcel energy
listening to old g jones and its totally a vibe – so beautiful and melodic and crazy to see that kind of poeticism span so many years of his career...like it totally tracks the whole way through transmissions to ineffable truth. how cool is it that ppl can express themselves in such a unique way and even as they get older/become different that essence stays the same?
lol im accidentally so high listening to the wormhole stream and set by floret loret was fucking absolute fire... and VJ was digital windowpane... my jaw literally dropped like 5 times... kings
090820 pt. 2
feel like there is this really precise category of things that are definitively good and important culturally, but it would be cringe to use them to virtue signal hipness bc of just how well-recognized they are for being good. like: basquiat, vampire weekend, the velvet underground... like liking those things shouldn't be a point of commonality between people, or something to be surprised by, while simultaneously liking those things is totally common and justified. I knew someone who was just so psyched that I had tvu & Nico on vinyl and I was like, I literally bought this when I was 16... and yes its totally unequivocally a fantastic record, but also it would be so cringe to have like a banana tote or something. this is maybe rude and culturally elitist, but whatever... if your project is to be cool and underground, do the work....also thinking about the tweet that says normalize being hot and sexy and never having sex <3
090820
people need to get their shit together on Spotify public... 🙄my best friend is literally listening to hozier...
vibing to eprom's 2019 ep/single artworks...which I think he made? sick
and just discovered he made a Bay Area ep ヽ( ´ ∇ ｀ )ノ
The Bay Area EP by Eprom
hmmm...
EPROM, or erasable programmable read-only memory
:-( watched metropolitan yesterday and couldn't believe tom felt he could legitimately have an opinion on Jane Austen without reading any of her books....feel like uchicago be like...
yesterday night I ate some cornbread from huckleberry cafe while I was high and decided cornbread is the best high snack for its combination of sweet and salty – otherwise I want one sweet snack and one salty so I can alternate
I had a dream last night where my dad drank himself to death but my mom didn't tell my grandma yet and I had to comfort my mom by explaining that he was already dead, and so even if he died again, it was okay...
listening to a lot of truth and shades on this cloudy day in LA... just found out Alix Perez is hot, also... who was gunna tell me.. 🥴
reading this article on dubstep from 2012
Beyond lies the wub: a history of dubstep
how sick would it have been to be a 20yo on the internet in like 2003? everything is lame now. remembering when Bangarang came out when I was like 13 and I bought the CD from hot topic and it was the first electronic music I ever listened to. then I got a poster of Skrillex from my monthly subscription to AP mag and put it on my wall in my bedroom (it's still there lol). now im laughing that I didn't even realize Sirah was on Bangarang and thought the first I heard of her was when I heard Daddy on HOWSLA in college. who knew!
I was explaining to a friend the other day about how there are Steve aoki raves and there are harem pants raves. reading this article now im like that's not even fair... not a one dimensional line, its more like a huge 4d space... or was and no longer is? and what do I know anyway? I was barely alive in the 90s..
anyways, im gonna become one of those people who starts being like 'yeah but that isn't REAL dubstep'
〜(￣▽￣〜) this disclosure set is just hella nice. thanks to Jeffrey I know every song. imagine this being your life?! (〜￣▽￣)〜
can we talk about how fb looks like this now and literally no one is gonna use it ever again? (I got the update late)
also I did not ask for this
090720
listening toaphex twin warehouse project from last year
and laughing ab the part on his wiki where it says he just lies all the time
also listening to so much
haim
who I never really took seriously but have gotten really into lately as driving around la in your early twenties music... uniquely vibing to 3am and up from a dream (new faves) but of course also summer girl and the steps.. 'you don't underSTAND me..' also thinking about this tweet..
friend.. and I gotta read:
grace's arch professors are.na
*Kai whiston new stuff is killer
*liking basquiat is not a personality trait
*bike shorts are 100% out
(next)