My Jandek Plague Journal: 7/4/20 "Out Loud"

"It's not bad or good/It's just this way/Put on a face/Be happy with the crowd." Happy 4th of July. America is now posting more than 50,000 new cases of coronavirus a day, getting very close to hitting 60. So what is there to say? There's nothing left to say. This is the last Jandek album I have access to. There have been 4 new releases since I started this, so take comfort that even in the darkest times some things persist, but I can't get a hold of them at the moment. Plus there's a nice symmetry in having a chronicle of the death of America as we know it end on the celebration of the nation's birth. The 4th of July is fundamentally about a grand irony--it celebrates the overthrowing of a king by a people desperate to be ruled. Even today, we see people running to slavishly kiss the boot while their fellow citizens continue to take to the streets in a rebellion demanding the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. -7/4/20. "Out Loud" from Austin Sunday 2007 (lyrics) (one week earlier)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 7/3/20 "The Ray"

"I'm so happy to be here/I can't say that enough/I'm not talking to you/It's the ghost that I knew." One of my happiest moments in Philadelphia was falling into a group that watched bad movies regularly. I'd been wanting to be part of a group like that for over 10 years. Since coming to Busan, I've started playing Dungeons & Dragons again, I've been writing consistently, and I submitted something for publication for the first time in a decade. Because of the pandemic, nothing feels real anymore, like life has been put on hold and every day exists in its own liminal state divorced from every other. All that means is that the constant opportunity for renewal, for recreation is now obvious. We always have the chance to make our world anew; the pandemic has removed the delusion that we will return to our old world or that we even want to. Even before the pandemic, my family was asking me when I'd come back, but I'm not coming back. My situation is the same as yours: where we are is where we build our better world. -7/3/20. "The Ray" from The Ray (lyrics) (one week earlier)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 7/2/20 "Here Now Today"

"Yesterday I had to run away/Couldn't stand the depression/It didn't matter what I did/As long as I got away from myself/And the blue thoughts I was having." I found a journal entry from 2017 talking about my sense of exhaustion. I'd just come back from a union rally that I'd spent ages recruiting for only to have no one show up, the sense that everyone I was talking to was abdicating responsibility because I had it covered. I wrote, "I don't have it covered and I'm looking for ways to leave." After the rally I had to remove white nationalist fliers from the building my classes were in. Seeing the work happening in the US now--the solidarity, the anti-racism--makes me feel both heartened and ashamed. I was part of this fight. I burned myself out fighting this fight. And I left before the fight was over. I quit not just my job, not just the struggle, but the nation, going as far as I could be leave it all behind me. Only I never let go because the work was not yet done. -7/2/20. "Here Now Today" from Gainesville Monday (lyrics) (one week earlier)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 7/1/20 "Lights Going Out"

"How many hours are left in this day/How many days are left in this life/Time never approaches the end/Until we see it coming." I know the end of this journal is coming even though the ends of the pandemic and the uprising are not. Nor will the effects of the two be coming to a close soon either. As the uprising began, I told my students not to go to the States, not to even apply to college there. They wouldn't be leaving until August of next year if they applied, but I told them this will not be over by then and the root causes--no health care, endemic racism, and individualism elevated to the level of a death cult--certainly won't be resolved. Today, a student that's not in my classes, said they'd like to go to the US to ride the roller coasters, and then offhandedly said that won't be possible for years. The US's inexplicable commitment to death is apparent to everyone now, not just radicals, and it's coming at a time when people can just turn to other countries for commerce and culture. -7/1/20. "Lights Going Out" from London Thursday (lyrics) (one week earlier)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/30/20 "Things That Never Change"

"It doesn't matter that the turmoil or the barrage or the hate/Just keep a cool temper/And we'll talk about it/After a while/The things that never change/Got a hold on you/The chains of the predicament/Won't let you be." The police assault against Rodney King happened in 1991. Nearly 30 years of police violence caught on tape and it's only gotten worse. And the hand-wringing, apologetics, and victim-blaming never stops. Protests erupt in response to the murders and the grand national wail of, "but what about the property?" rises as well, vandalism pitched as more horrific than violence--so much so that it is mistaken for violence. 30 years and it still takes effort to see the people being attacked and killed as victims. Even in the second Rodney King case, when the officers faced civil rights charges and two were found guilty, the judge excoriated King for putting the officers in that situation. -6/30/20. "Things That Never Change" from Los Angeles Friday (lyrics) (one week earlier)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/29/20 "In All the Days"

"You missed that shoe box/That five-times-a-week affair/Go back to it now/Even if only in your mind/In all the days/You're safer there/It's a breath-taking experience/As you are being lied to" It's back to work across the nation and it's hard to not have an image of coal miners going back in after a collapse: it's not safe but you can't afford to say no. Of course massive unemployment is a crisis, but now we can truly say we must not let the cure be worse than the crisis. During lockdown, those deemed "essential" had to continue to go to work and, apart from medical staff, that generally meant the grotesquely underpaid. The only people left out of that were the even lower-paid restaurant and wait staff--the people working at the new corona hot spots. Sure, people could organize and strike against these conditions, but the police are doing a good job of demonstrating what their own job actually is. -6/29/20. "In All the Days" from Houston Tuesday (lyrics) (one week earlier)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/28/20 "From There"

"We all rise up and live our lives/Even though they want to beat us down/I got education till I'm full of it/And I blow it up, blow it away/I got time i spent in factories/I got dad and grandpa too." When I was a union organizer in Philly, one of the campaigns I worked on was forming a grad student union at U. Penn. When I would tell people that summer what I was doing, they'd be incredulous. "Why do Penn kids need a union?" (Philadelphians hate Penn kids because they're rich pricks who treat the community like crap) They'd turn on a dime and support the idea when I said that grad students didn't qualify for workers' comp. Curiously that argument didn't work for the Penn kids who worked with dangerous chemicals and saw their colleagues get hurt and have to pay out of pocket. And I still don't know how to address that challenge of trying to get a person to protect themselves from the very thing they've seen hurt others. -6/28/20. "From There" from Hamman Hall (one week earlier)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/27/20 "Desecrate Me"

"You show me what I am/Because I didn't know/Until you showed me/Please desecrate me." I teach special classes on Saturday mornings and today was the first day since the start of the pandemic that we met in person. I ran myself so ragged with excitement that I was starving by the end of the sessions. I don't want to go back to online teaching even though I imagine myself a computer hobbyist. The pandemic has introduced me to new and novel was for technology to fail me, an innovative disappointment every time. But crisis always involves drawing back the curtain, the real horror is realizing who is working the controls and what their priorities are. Or maybe that's just what we tell ourselves. We watched as people died after their GoFundMe's failed to raise enough to cover their insulin. We watched Nazis rally in the streets. We watched police murder children on camera. Maybe the grand cultural myth is that there's a curtain at all and that we're not just watching all the time. -6/27/20. "Desecrate Me" from San Francisco Friday (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/26/20 "It Burned Down Nice"

"I need to know the rest/The rest starts a movement/I think I'll stay here/It doesn't mean I won't do things/I still will/Everything will be moving/While I'm standing still." It's funny to me that "attack and dethrone God" is supposedly one of the goals of the protesters. With the strangely cyclical nature of the pandemic--returning to record-level infections, returning to the President saying he wanted to prevent testing, returning to ignoring the threat and going out in public--seems like abolishing God may not be the worst idea. One of the prominent repetitions is the role religion has played in spreading the virus--Shincheonji, mega churches, and Christians claiming they're protected from the disease because they're "washed in the blood of the Lamb." At a city council meeting in surging Palm Springs, FL, maskless residents gathered to denounce a vote on mandating mask use saying that it was an affront to God. What scripture is this? -6/26/20. "It Burned Down Nice" from Houston Friday (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/25/20 "Sorrow"

"Where is my stiff upper lip/To hide the weeping of my soul/When I rise I'm full of lead and sorrow/I destroy myself/In anticipation of tomorrow." The Korean government has said they fear we've hit the second wave of the coronavirus. The number of active cases has been starting to trend upward since the end of May. We're averaging 40-50 new cases a day. Yesterday the US hit a new record with 36,880 new cases in one day, the highest since the previous record at the end of April. So what does tomorrow bring? I've written this before, haven't I? The sameness is part of the sorrow because it was all a choice. I don't know anyone in the States who's died from this yet, but how much longer does that last? When do I learn that one of my friends or colleagues from the union or Indymedia got assaulted by a cop? The door to a better future has been opened a crack, but how do you rally the spirit against all the forces rallying to push the door shut and keep us from dreaming of any other world? -6/25/20. "Sorrow" from Dallas Thursday (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/24/20 "The Doves"

"There were some things/I didn't want to see/Anyway/I'd rather say nothing/And look at the moon/Glow behind dark clouds." I did a purge awhile back of my Twitter feed. Every time I'd see the face of a Black man show up, I'd panic and worry that this was another person murdered by police. They weren't always, but that specter was always there, that threat. Celebratory graduation photos are also the go-to choice for memorials, and I couldn't take the way America had perverted these pictures, made them adjunct to the snuff film pornography of police murder. But we have to see the videos otherwise we wouldn't believe/But we have to see the videos or the full weight of the threat of what can be done won't be felt. Now my feed is filled with atrocity upon atrocity and claims that the media is starting to look away. Have we not seen enough to believe? How were these people's stories ever in doubt? -6/24/20. "The Doves" from Austin Tuesday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/23/20 "The Fantasy"

(instrumental for piano) I spent the afternoon listening to a tribute performance to Scott Hutchison, the lead singer of Frightened Rabbit who killed himself on May 10, 2018. I'd seen him perform at the end of February and told a friend, "This is the last time I'll ever see them live." I was already working in earnest to move to Korea and, to fully commit, had to work under the assumption that I'd never come back to the States. On May 10th, I was en route to the Pacific Northwest to see friends and family there for the last time. I started seeing the news alerts about Hutchison going missing while I had a layover, and I just knew. I hoped, but I knew. His music had been such an important part of my time in Philadelphia. I saw them a few months after I moved there at their first sold-out show in the States, introduced every partner I had to their music, and just as his music was the emotional soundtrack to my life there, his suicide has been the establishing tone of my life here. -6/23/20. "The Fantasy" from New Orleans Monday (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/22/20 "The Day of Dread"

"Assemble yourself, dear/Friend. Then watch it come apart. It/Only takes an hour, the day of the dread/Comes upon you. Falter not. Be strong./You don't know anything yet." Columbus police maced a double amputee then stole his legs, leaving him to drag himself to the medics. Protesters had to jump the cops to steal the legs back, and they did. Through a wall of mace, the protesters overpowered the cops and got the legs back. But what a monstrous moment. Stealing someone's legs. You have to decide to do that. On top of the decision of macing someone who is missing parts of their body, to make the further decision to hold them down and disconnect their limbs. And all the cops went along with it. They followed the order to remove someone's legs and then attacked people who tried to return them. This is a level of depravity and sadism that can neither be negotiated with nor endured. It's going to get worse, but the very fact that it's going to get worse is why the protests can't stop. -6/22/20. "The Day of Dread" from London Residency (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/21/20 "He Said Nothing: Part Five"

"And he was so distracting/Imbued with his blustery bellow/And his promenade of gestures/Like a floating benevolent cloud/That captures your imagination/When you’ve nothing to do." The president held his first post-opening rally in Tulsa. Tickets sold out and there was a massive overflow area outside where his speech would be broadcast to all the thousands who couldn't get tickets. Masks were not required and attendees had to sign waivers saying they wouldn't sue the campaign if they contracted coronavirus. Insiders said they scheduled the rally to boost the president's spirits: the plague and the protests were making him sad so they sought to pacify him with a shiny rally. And no one showed up. Tickets sold out, but it now appears that was a prank engineered by K-pop fans. Even without that story, the overflow area was empty. It was everyone's first chance to come our and show support for the strongman, and no one was there. -6/21/20. "He Said Nothing: Part Five" from Dublin Friday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/20/20 "Just a Rehearsal"

"We're ready for big things/To happen right now/We don't know what to expect/Except that keep singing the same way." Who knows what the world to come looks like? Part of the outrage from the right over wearing masks is this is not the apocalypse they were promised. The plague arrived, the country shut down, and people... stayed inside. Helped each other out when they could. Put a lot of hours into Animal Crossing. All the time and money spent on assault rifles and bomb shelters and survivalist practice for nothing. Then on top of that you get a nationwide uprising. Finally! An excuse to use those useless guns! You must defend yourself against... scores of unarmed protesters demanding black people stop being murdered. The end has come and all these people are responding the wrong way! And to make matters worse, they're winning. They're taking to the streets with nothing and tearing down your gods. -6/20/20. "Just a Rehearsal" from Houston Thursday (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/19/20 "Friday Morning"

"Bare your body to the death/You find as you traverse/The lonely fields/You find yourselves walking through." The news is reporting a Korean man broke quarantine six times, and these aren't instances of getting caught buying milk at the corner store. He went to Seoul, Busan, and other places in the country demonstrating that selfish and stupid are not held exclusively by the people of any one country. Looking at the US numbers, even with under-reporting, the death toll is higher than projected. This isn't slowing down. Meanwhile, a friend from the States got back in touch after a while. They're in one of the states that's becoming a new epicenter and were complaining about people not wearing masks. Then they said they were traveling to the West Coast next weekend and Mexico next month, just to get away. None of us is immune to poor choices. -6/19/20. "Friday Morning" from Brussels Saturday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/18/20 "Got My Dog"

"Got my dog/Got my gun/I go where I want/Don't try put up no fence/I'm invisible/I pass through this world/Like a ghost." Atlanta police, to protest one of their own being fired for murdering someone, have gone on strike. They're just refusing to come to work in an attempt to show the city how much it needs them. It's a risky move. After all, the cops claim that without them (and carte blanche to commit murder) you'll have chaos, riots, and looting--precisely what we've had because of the cops' use of violence. So their move now is to go, "If you think it's bad with us, see how you like it without us." NYPD tried this in 2015 by having an extended strike during contract negotiations. Crime dropped. During the uprising, every city where the police refused to riot stayed peaceful. Early reports coming out of Atlanta say it was the first quiet night in ages. Sounds like the police just struck for a pay cut. -6/18/20. "Got My Dog" from St. Louis Friday (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/17/20 "My Home"

"I'll never forget you/Even though I'm starting to/I'm only doing it because you want me to/I suppose I'll get over you now and then/And I'll be free and easy." Spent my afternoon listening to a tribute album to Adam Schlesinger, a member of Fountains of Wayne killed by the president's pandemic response. And while it's important to be reminded of the victims of this administration's eugenics-based response, it's important to remember the pandemic itself. The curve, despite the meager lockdown effort, enforced too late and lifted too soon, has not flattened. Can you have a second wave if the first never crested and rolled back? Would it emerge as a bump or a doubling, wave building upon wave, presenting us with a tsunami of death? Meanwhile, the president, bored with plague and protest, begins holding rallies again this weekend, gathering his proudly maskless followers to gather tightly together and sing his praises. -6/17/20. "My Home" from Houston Saturday 2011 (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/16/20 "Fantasy Five"

"If I had said some things different/If I had interpreted it all in another way/And had been another person/It wouldn’t be the same." I saw a thread on Twitter from a young white woman detailing all the crimes she'd committed in front of police and how she still didn't have a criminal record. She did it to highlight privilege and give further examples of cops criminalizing blackness, but I did have to wonder who grew up unafraid of the cops? The first story my parents told me was about off-duty New York cops dragging a man from his car and beating him to death for cutting them off in traffic. No charges because officially he choked to death on his own blood. This was 40 years ago. My parents always taught me that police were murderous thugs just waiting for an excuse. It's also worth nothing my parents didn't tell me the victim's race, because that doesn't matter, but, of course, it absolutely does. -6/16/20. "Fantasy Five" from Ghost Passing (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/15/20 "I Know I'm Alive: Excited"

"I thought I was okay/Some time ago/I thought it was all right/But I was dead/I didn't have my obsession/But now I got it/Nobody can take it away/Because it's in my mind." Gov. Cuomo released a statement Saturday telling protestors, "You don't need to protest, you won." The Banned Book Club Twitter noted that in Korea's "2016 Candlelight Revolution, there was one of these 'you won, stop' moments every few days./But people never stopped. It took 5 months, but they got every single thing they demanded. All the way up to the president in prison." Breonna Taylor's murderers are still free. The mayors who ordered police to attack their own citizens have not resigned. And we have not defunded the police. This does not stop until the State stands down and surrenders, disarms, and disbands. This uprising is not for police reform. Minneapolis had enacted many of these reforms and police still murdered a man on camera while laughing. Abolish the police. -6/15/20. "I Know I'm Alive: Excited" from Houston Saturday (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/14/20 "Waiting to Die"

"Hey, let's go for a beer!/'I don't drink anymore.'/Well, what do you do?/'I sit in a chair.'/What, you meditate?/'No. I don't do anything.'/Well, don't you know how to live?/'No. Not really.'" What is our responsibility to each other? How do we live a moral life? I didn't know before and I don't know now. The cynic in me wants to roll my eyes at the announcements of anti-racist activism by YouTubers and podcasters, but the realist in me knows that the naivety of their language does not demonstrate a naivety of purpose or principle. Cynicism is the easy fallback when we have a system built on teaching despair. Where is the opposition party in all this unrest? Where are their acts of solidarity with the protesters if for no other reason than to make things difficult for the administration? They don't know how to do it--how to act to inspire, how to embolden hope. "Defund the police" is met with "aim for their legs" and they're shocked we won't wait til November. -6/14/20. "Waiting to Die" from Athens Saturday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/13/20 The Song of Morgan

(instrumentals for piano) This is an 8 1/2 hour 9-CD set of hour-long piano improvisations, or at least I thought it was. Each hour-long track has distinct segments broken up by silence. You could think of them as movements, but there's no musical theme running through them, no connection other than being piano music. Listening to the whole thing in one day meant running it in the background as I did other things. So I was always listening and not listening, aware and trying to ignore it at the same time. The music became background static until one of the silences arose. Has this passed, is it over, only for a new chord to emerge. You can find parallels in that with both the pandemic and police brutality--the lulls are what drag us back to be shocked again by the constant sameness of the horror. If we don't relegate it to static, we can't live, but that static is the sound of thousands dying. -6/13/20. The Song of Morgan (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/12/20 "Girl With the Pink Bag"

"Have you seen enough/Girl with the pink bag/You saw all the tables/Along the line/With all the paraphernalia/Items and explanations." Police have been releasing photos of items allegedly seized from protesters, items that are then supposed to justify police murdering people on the street: a garden bucket with some pebbles in the bottom, coffee cups contractors at build sites used to test concrete mixtures. The police post the photos and then say the items are not what we're seeing, and that's supposed to counter video after video of police attacking unarmed people with batons, gas, and guns. The police are shocked that it's not working, that people aren't simply taking their word for why they had to throw a 75-year-old man to the ground and then lie about it. The New York State Police Union boss has gone viral, screeching and whining about police being judged by what they do, just because everyone can see them do it. -6/12/20. "Girl With the Pink Bag" from Richmond Sunday (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/11/20 "Outcast of Civilization: Part Five"

"And they are following you, to kill you if you haven't died/To obliterate your secret knowledge/Because one who really knows is a threat to the establishment/Where all kinds of causes and occupations/Are offered to generate compliance." Systems always try to co-opt their critics, to bring activists into the system to give the appearance of taking action and then diffusing tension. Take the charismatic organizer and put them at the head of the committee to schedule the meeting to plan the agenda to be voted on in the hearing of maintaining the status quo. The US hasn't been doing that for at least 20 years. Seattle '99 was violently put down, Occupy was violently put down, the Dakota Access Pipeline protests were violently put down, and Black Lives Matter has been consistently met with violence. It's evidence of a system that cannot survive the idea of an alternative, let alone resistance, and, as even Machiavelli knew, there's a limit to what violence can do. -6/11/20. "Outcast of Civilization: Part Five" from Atlanta Saturday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/10/20 "Maze of the Phantom"

(instrumental piano with female vocalizations) I was obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons as a kid, specifically Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The covers seemed to shout at me from their displays at the Waldenbooks or B. Dalton in the mall. The books always seemed off-limits though, not because of the satanic panic which, despite growing up in the Midwest, felt like something happening in that other America where people were still backward. The word "Advanced" made me think I wasn't skilled or experienced enough for it and the scope and variety of products spoke to a vastness of imagination that I wasn't ready to approach. AD&D, from the outside, offered structures for imagining worlds that were impossible for preteen me to conceive. But the fact of them being there made it seem achievable. Those worlds which were beyond my imagining would become mine given enough time. -6/10/20. "Maze of the Phantom" from Maze of the Phantom (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/9/20 "Leave Me Alone"

"I'm going to wake up now/I'm going to make my bed/I walk among the living/And talk to the dead/I remember what I learned/From the story that I read/Leave me alone/Leave me alone." Reflecting can be a paralyzing act, the work of looking backwards in hopes of finding meaning blinding you to the work of the moment or the possibilities of the future. In conversation a little ways back, I lamented that I no longer read fantasy, that I'd let my imagination atrophy, that if I'd kept that muscle active I could foresee what was coming. What's to come, the world after, the utopian vision is essential work now, or at least part of it. The fact that we have these visions available is due to the work that people were doing long before this moment seemed possible. I have to teach a book in my school that argues if you think things are bad, you're ignoring facts. But I give my students lessons that say you do not have to accept the miseries of the world. You can imagine something better. -6/9/20. "Leave Me Alone" from Indianapolis Saturday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/8/20 "Queen Anne Avenue"

"Resting here so peacefully now/Feeling my best days are coming/And all my troubles left behind." Pessimism is an easy pose to strike and one I can be accused of relaxing into more than once over the course of this journal. It's a "plague journal" though, discussing the pandemic, fascism, and the music of an artist who can seem terrifying to the casual listener (and my self-imposed brevity prevents me from offering the anecdote to counter that claim). I am leery of premature claims of victory, but that does not mean I don't believe in or celebrate the very real victories that have come out of this moment. The communal response to the pandemic--not the political--has been an embracing of shared sacrifice to protect those at risk. The same spirit is on display in the protests: people who'd previously been silent coming forward to say "these are our neighbors and we won't abide their suffering." -6/8/20. "Queen Anne Avenue" from Seattle Friday (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/7/20 "Where Do You Go From Here: Part Nine"

"Where do you go from here?/Make up your mind./Decide/Where do you go from here?" Woke up to videos of massive rallies across the US. In Philly, the sheer amount of people flooding the Ben Franklin Parkway was stunning. They don't get that kind of crowd on the Fourth of July. Mayors are announcing that their police departments will stop using tear gas for 30 days. It feels like victory. Until you learn that the department has used up all its tear gas and it'll take 30 days to resupply. Small changes are happening, victories are being won--Frank Rizzo no longer curses the streets of Philadelphia and the Marines have banned the Confederate flag--but, as I said before, I'm worried this will lead to complacency. People might start imagining the work is done. In that context, it's somehow good that the police remain actively monstrous--it keeps people in the street demanding change now. -6/7/20. "Where Do You Go From Here: Part Nine" from Where Do You Go From Here (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/6/20 "Let Me Go"

"I’m tired of the mirror/I’m tired of the window/I’m tired of words/And numbers too/I get blues in the city/And down on the farm." Where is the place for me? I tried to step away from the news today, but got contacted by a friend instead about everything going on. Talking to them made me realize I hadn't bought any music on Bandcamp on the special day where they donate the full purchase to the artists. And that's a pathetic thing to highlight. They were contacting me about their city preparing for another wave of protests and I was thinking, I haven't been listening to new music for a while. Literally hours before the first protests broke out last week, another friend introduced me to the term "hedonic adaptation"--our tendency to get used to anything. One of the reasons I'm keeping this journal, listening to all this Jandek, is to avoid complacency, to take time every day to reflect that this isn't normal, but even Jandek is just becoming background noise. -6/6/20. "Let Me Go" from Chicago Wednesday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/5/20 "The Duality of Self: Part One"

"Strange the mind is seeing one thing/And the body another /Move the body sight to the mind image/The timeless work." Being witness to state terror is exhausting, but imagine living through it. I am living through it, though. Despite being in Korea, I'm still bound to the US, still looking behind me to see how it tries to pull me back. I'm in a liminal state of exclusion: not quite an exile, not quite a refugee, and neither would allow me to divorce myself from what's happening there. However, I'm not there, and the relative clam and normalcy of daily life here feels schizophrenic. Things are not okay, the world is on fire, and everywhere I go feels calm and normal. Daily life is gaslighting me. The pandemic's shadow still touches everything. The produce section at the supermarket keeps getting rearranged to mask the removal of bins and declining selection. -6/5/20. "The Duality of Self: Part One" from Toronto Sunday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/4/20 "Don't Go Out"

"Don't go out don't go out/It's only flowers and trees/people and machines/buildings and despair." In talking to my students about the police riots in the US, I started telling them not to go. That they can't go to the US right now is obvious--the pandemic is still on, the country has no plan to handle it, and no healthcare system even if it did. I'm telling them not to apply to college there, that things will not be better by fall 2021. And it sound alarmist. It feels alarmist. I think I'm being understood as saying the police will still be rioting in a year-and-a-half, and I don't mean that. Instead, the systems that have made this moment happen--police impunity, their co-ordination with white supremacist groups, and the racialized violence that is the bedrock of our nation, like the compete absence of anything resembling a healthcare system, will still be present next year, and it's not worth risking. -6/4/20. "Don't Go Out" from Canticle of Castaway (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/3/20 "The Lesson"

"I married control/How else to keep from sleeping in the fields and streets/When the shock and despair returns as it does/I watch it and use it and learn from it." I'm seeing articles in the Korean press about the police riots in the US and they're doing the propaganda work of shifting the narrative: are protesters just ignoring COVID (cities are shutting down testing centers to punish protesters), why are Korean-owned businesses being attacked (because cops won't provide protection in minority neighborhoods), how does looting protest racism (when these businesses called cops who kill black people to arrest black people)? It's not complicity nor are people lamenting the destruction of their livelihoods wrong to lament that, it's indicative of how ingrained white supremacy is even in non-whites. Black people are being murdered, and the reaction is, "how dare they make that my problem." -6/3/20. "The Lesson" from Bristol Wednesday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/2/20 "The Crushed Image"

"I know how to leave everything/I just wanted to say be prepared/for a smashing close/to all the years we knew only sleep/in the shadows that dream these shadows." Vigilante gangs from the white neighborhoods of Philadelphia marched to Center City today with baseball bats and golf clubs. People with clear violence in mind were met with open arms by the police, putting the lie to any claim that the police are trying to maintain peace. When I lived in South Philly and would go on my regular run through deeper South Philly, I'd always see the "Blue Lives Matter" Neo-Nazi signs come out after each and every murder committed by a cop. When a member of the Philly PD was outed as a Nazi--shirtsleeve tattoos and all--the signs became more prominent. Now those people have what they've always wanted, their own Kristallnacht, and they want to make sure everyone sees. -6/2/20. "The Crushed Image" from Camber Sands Sunday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/1/20 "Painstakingly Critical"

"I’m painstakingly critical/Not just of the world outside/I criticize myself/And do damage unto me." Since leaving the US I've worried that I turned my back on my family and friends, abandoned them to their fate. I'd been an activist, a journalist, a teacher, and a union organizer, but when fascism dropped the mask and Nazis openly marched in the streets, I left. I've been worrying about how the eugenic ideology of the administration would play out with COVID and then I woke up Sunday to pictures of Philadelphia on fire. Every time I open social media I see new videos of police driving into crowds in ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks. I had to explain to my colleagues what was happening, and I don't have the words. How do you translate "police state"? How do I tell them the administration grew up envying Soviet-style oppression? I don't have the words in my own language. -6/1/20. "Painstakingly Critical" from What Was Out There Disappeared (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/31/20 "Can I Be With You"

"Can we walk around in the wonderland of the new place that we found/All flowers are in bloom/The placid river scintillates/Can I be with you/This time we have/All the people are around/Buildings and streetcars/We can be amongst it all/In the world that we share." America is on fire. Cops are rioting all over the country because one of their own has been arrested for murder. Cops are arriving at peaceful protests in riot gear and proceeding to cause fires, vandalism, and looting. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are both under curfew as are no doubt many other cities. But if police openly rioting after murdering someone on camera isn't enough of a threat to keep people from coming out to protest, how can they possibly enforce a curfew? The threats no longer work. And this is partly due to COVID. 25% unemployment means people have plenty of time to take to the streets and protests don't cost a penny. -5/31/20. "Can I Be With You" from Portland Thursday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/30/20 "Silent Wander"

"The sought after was not to be found/The contemplation was scattered/Ravaged and torn at the seams/The country lanes were far away." I remember the county roads in Indiana, the place I think of myself as being from even though I tell people I'm from Philly, Pittsburgh, Iowa, Houston, Detroit. The seams of asphalt running forever to an unmarked horizon taking my friends and I to the no-place of Midwest living, every destination an excuse for the sense of movement, the feeling that we were destined for other places. We weren't trying to find a new world to inhabit, we were looking for a world that had room for us, a space we could occupy and live. Instead, a new world with the worst echoes of the old world engulfed us, all spaces of possibility sealed off. We've been squeezed out of the old world and now find ourselves stuck still, aching for that sense of movement toward nothing. -5/30/20. "Silent Wander" from Not Hunting for Meaning (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/29/20 "Sleeping in the Dream"

(instrumental for piano and harp) Police continue to riot in Minneapolis--breaking windows, setting fires, attacking anyone documenting it, and then whining about mourners and violence. The murderers who laughed on video while murdering a man are still free and the cops are still outraged that they were held to any kind of account for murder. All this in the midst of the pandemic. Poor timing on the cops' part: it seems face masks block facial recognition. The cops can't identify the activists and mourners saying "stop." No doubt that's doubly infuriating to the paid protesters of the reopen riots: by protecting their neighbors' health through wearing masks, the Minneapolis mourners and activists are able to take action to defend the lives of their community. As with every step of this pandemic, every assertion of a right-to-life must be met with violence. The President is threatening to deploy the military. -5/29/20. "Sleeping in the Dream" from Helsinki Saturday (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/28/20 "The Places You Left Me: Part One"

"When I tried to get out, you pushed me down/Hit me and kicked me/Left me hurt so bad/Well, I tried to tell you how it really was/You didn't care to listen/You just walked away." In Minneapolis, the police riot has expanded to include cops from nearby cities like St. Paul coming to riot and insist on their right to murder people. Police show their hands a bit when they say they can't do their jobs unless they're allowed to murder people. What do they imagine their job is? At the same time, police have escalated the violence against mourners to the point where looting has broken out: if the government won't tell cops to stop murdering, you move to the next level of power to make your demand--the corporations. The cops want to see looting because they imagine it legitimizes their presence and violence. "Only cops can stop this looting sparked by police violence." -5/28/20. "The Places You Left Me: Part One" from Hasselt Saturday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/27/20 "I Know My Name"

"You brought me so low today I'm happy to curse you world/Get the hints from me/and don't put me in no black suit." America passed 100,000 deaths and in the pursuit of returning to normal, police in Minneapolis murdered a black man on camera. The officers choked him to death by kneeling on his neck and laughing at him. The mayor fired the four officers involved in the murder which sparked the expected response: a police riot all night with officers raging through the city, attacking mourners and terrorizing communities as the opportunity arose. The core of the coronavirus response, I've said, rests in white supremacy. 100,000 deaths isn't being treated as a tragedy requiring massive change because of who's dying. Every day, every step of the way through this pandemic, the US response has been we'll kill you if you insist on your right to life. -5/27/20. "I Know My Name" from Skirting the Edge (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/26/20 "No Mind Was a Good Mind: Part Three"

"There's no way to go back/The innocence is lost/The king took a vacation/Left all the subjects to their own." This is the third time I've written about a song from this album and those older posts remind me of what's already been forgotten: the administration withholding aid from insufficiently fawning governors. It's a threat he returned to as some states sent out applications for mail-in ballots. Again, the degree to which you're allowed to live tracks with your degree of fealty: only the righteous shall receive salvation. So all states are open to some degree, those that want continued economic aid will fudge their numbers, and we'll hear how not crossing 100,000 deaths over Memorial Day Weekend is evidence of success. Instead we'll cross 100,000 this week. The President went golfing. It's not like there was something important going on. -5/26/20. "No Mind Was a Good Mind: Part Three" from London Tuesday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/25/20 "The Grassy Knoll"

"But at some time, it seemed to me, the thoughts were filled with falsity/It was a plan to enslave us, to bring us to their world to stay/Damaged by their perverse thinking, losing our minds and souls to them/I quickly knew I couldn’t be there, but also I knew I had to stay." Outrage in the UK as it's revealed a senior Tory ignored isolation orders because he wanted to. He said he had to and people all relate more desperate situations where they didn't. But lockdown, for conservatives, is not about protecting the populace, it's about protecting the powerful. When politicians are at risk of contracting the disease, lockdown goes into effect. When their stock portfolios are at risk, it gets lifted. The politicians will continue to self-isolate, maintain social distancing, but will starve you if you choose your life over your job. They get to. Their only philosophy is power equals permission. -5/25/20. "The Grassy Knoll" from Glasgow Sunday 2005 (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/24/20 "This Wasted Life"

"Why can’t I stop this wasted life/Please take my freedom, I can’t use it right/Make me a moron who doesn’t know/This wasted life I’m stumbling through." Happy Memorial Day Weekend. Florida has fired the person responsible for tracking COVID and has reopened the beaches. The official death toll for the US has not quite hit 100,000, but with Florida and Georgia openly fudging the numbers, it's surely already higher than that. And people are going back out, celebrating the holiday weekend. Sure, some of them are doing it to "own the libs," as if a virus cares about your politics, but a lot of them are going out because they trust authorities saying that it's safe. And I've already said that, already talked about the tragedy of that betrayal. But where is the opposition, the voices from the other side saying, "we won't lie to you"? If the only options are death or despair, I too would want to be a moron and not know. -5/24/20. "This Wasted Life" from Glasgow Friday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/23/20 "The Daze"

"I didn’t think of an end or where it began and there was no pressure/It was like a cloud under that bright light path walking through the trees." What is the endpoint of this journal? What is the endpoint of the pandemic? One of the purposes of keeping this journal and keeping the requirement of listening to a Jandek album every day is to have that constant sense of the additional considerations. Even as things open up, at best we'll have normal life plus the pandemic. I have Jandek. What will I hear, what will it be, how will it manifest? It's glib to compare COVID to a deep dive into an artist's catalog (and rude to Jandek), but it's the act of isolating with the music and contemplation of the pandemic that I'm talking about. That's the connection and parallel. And just as with the pandemic, I have to ask what the endpoint is. I own 77 albums of 96 total. Does this end when I've heard them all, or when corona is over? Is there any end? -5/23/20. "The Daze" from The Myth of Blue Icicles (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/22/20 "Sorry, Sorry"

"I’m sorry, sorry/I can’t think positive/I can’t dream of a future/It’s today my getting through." America is reopening so that means there was a mass shooting. A man opened fire at an Arizona mall, specifically targeting couples. The mayor said that, as places start to reopen, you can expect violence like this again. Do not surrender to fear and please keep shopping. "I can't dream of a future" if this is the world we're being told to expect. You can't shelter-in-place to protect yourself from dying to the disease because that will hurt the economy and you can't stay inside to avoid shooters cause that will hurt the economy. The government can't do anything to prevent you from dying because that would generate expectations that the government works for you. Besides, dying is good for the economy--funeral expenses, hotel rooms for visiting mourners, and your job filled by one of the 40 million unemployed. Die for Mammon, die for Moloch. -5/22/20. "Sorry, Sorry" from Brooklyn Wednesday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/21/20 "Afternoon of Insensitivity: Part Five"

"Another day of not knowing/Not knowing what it’s about or what to do/There’s nothing to do/Is it just go outside and you’ll find something to do/It appears we make the things to do." Do we believe in possibility anymore? The rhetoric of politicians being useless liars predominates, but it's coupled with despair as if they were ever anything else. All this outrage over "failures of leadership," but did you want to be led? Do you want to be ruled? My colleague argued that one reason Korea never went on lockdown is that the people don't trust the government--and not in the performative way Americans don't trust the government; Koreans rallied in the streets and put the last president in jail. In the pandemic, Koreans didn't look to be led, they took actions to protect each other on their own. That the government facilitated their actions is why it has popular support. The people led. -5/21/20. "Afternoon of Insensitivity: Part Five" from Manhattan Tuesday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/20/20 "The Ruins of Adventure"

"I hate that I got any responsibility/I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to walk/But maybe if I walk I’ll escape talk/If I can be alone I’ll live through this." My students came back to school today and all pretense of social distancing went right out the window. And why wouldn't it? The children have been more locked down than anyone else in Korea. Three months without being near their closest friends, and this is a touchy culture. These children don't just hug, they hang upon each other, lean upon each other, entwine themselves with each other--in a non-erotic way. Students walk with their arms braided together. Three months without touching anyone, without being touched and reminded that you exist because you've been felt. I saw them mobbing each other as I left and I thought, there is no way we escape a 2nd wave, but here, and only here, would I be willing to think the cure is worse than the disease. -5/20/20. "The Ruins of Adventure" from The Ruins of Adventure (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/19/20 "Lithe Body"

"How could I send you all that I made/When I didn’t make it, it made me/And now I have something to contend with/A process enabled/The mission of a moving character." I watched the Cold War thriller Fail Safe today. I'm returning to the Cold War a lot lately, from watching Stranger Things with my students last year, to prepping research for a story about the Satanic Panic, to reflecting on the parallels between our present pandemic moment of deprivation and the threat of Soviet dystopia coupled with letting AIDS brutalize the triple "H" populations: Haitians, homos, and heroin addicts. The film is interesting for being disavowed by the Department of Defense, but it feels like propaganda now. The central message is that the political leadership is composed of competent figures wrestling with the moral consequences of their actions. History, through Stanislav Petrov, shows that we were instead saved by workers who ignored idiot orders. -5/19/20. "Lithe Body" from Austin Sunday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/18/20 "The Cell: Part Three"

"What do I have/An insight from the past/So contrite, knowledge/Some bastion I guard/Some shade." I've been reading Adorno's Minima Moralia (slowly. I sit down to read in the evening and Kindle says I have 5 hours left. An hour later, I have 5 hours left). He says, "He who offers for sale something unique that no-one wants to buy, represents, even against his will, freedom from exchange." Is this not a summation of the pleasure of Jandek: the impenetrability of the project, its perpetual isolation from the mainstream, is what's compelling. There will never be a communal experience of Jandek, just your experience. Likewise the pandemic, despite being global, is a personal experience. How have you survived, how have you coped, who have you lost? There are great acts of community, there always are in crisis, but I'm thinking of the comment, "If we were all in this together, we wouldn't be in this together." -5/18/20. "The Cell: Part Three" from Glasgow Monday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/17/20 "My Own Way"

"I don’t need a window/To see what’s outside/I don’t need to be out there." I had plans to go on a long bike ride today but then I overslept and decided to stay in instead. I tried to make a loaf of bread, but screwed up the recipe so it came out all deflated. Then I streamed a little on Twitch. None of this is in response to the pandemic, it's just my normal life. What's it say of me that the stereotype of what people have been doing under self-isolation is my typical weekend? I was talking with a colleague yesterday about Korea's transition from its "self-isolation" program to "distancing in daily life." We couldn't see how the new policy was different from what we'd been instructed to do from the beginning. I've asked before, what becomes normal, but that applies to good things as well. In the wake of this, how many of us will persist in a calmer, more meditative life? -5/17/20. "My Own Way" from What Else Does the Time Mean (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/16/20 "Mangled and Dead"

"I’ll shoot you in the head/You’ll be mangled and dead/I’ll blow the smoke, walk away/Can’t you be my friend/Tell me you like me." Some of the paid protesters at the reopen America rallies organized by the administration have tested positive for COVID-19. Just one rally was posting numbers comparable to the Itaewon cluster. It's hard to feel anything toward them, sympathy or schadenfreude. They want the sympathy but will accept scorn: at least the latter gives them an enemy. And that's the strange duality of these protests. They're gathering and wailing, "our businesses, our housecleaning, our haircuts, pity us!" But since they arrive armed, there's the additional message "or we'll kill you." Now they're getting sick and the general reaction is a shrug and, "that'll happen." They won't get any sympathy for the very real suffering they and their families will go through, and they won't have anyone to call out for being mean about it. No one cares what happens to them. -5/16/20. "Mangled and Dead" from Newcastle Sunday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/15/20 "Khartoum"

"Make me a slow moving creature without complexities/I don’t want my mind to go/To a thousand places." I slept through my alarm this morning and had to teach my first class from home. It was just like Monday and Tuesday again when I was under voluntary quarantine. The leitmotif of this pandemic is repetition, the recognition of the same horrors and responses again and again. Like Walter Benjamin said, "That things 'just go on' is the catastrophe." I wrote yesterday about the return to blaming China instead of addressing the problem. In the US, daily cases and deaths are rising again. We're moving in circles. Even Jandek is sitting in place, this album just alternate versions of songs from the previous one. And I want to be that "slow moving creature" absolved of the responsibility of recognizing the repetitions. -5/15/20. "Khartoum" from Khartoum Variations (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/14/20 "Fragmentation"

"The form of a corporation is delimited/Why is it so vernacular/When you talk to a man/How do you get through." I saw that the Streets had a new track out when I went to listen to Jandek and turned it off when I got to the line about eating "uncooked bat." A quick read-through of the lyrics shows no criticism of a failed government response. Likewise, two days ago Bryan Adams posted his outrage at his tour being canceled due to "bat eating [...] bastards." These moments are notable because they show fascist language and ideas seeping into pop culture. It's evidence of people, consciously or unconsciously, falling in line. Fault doesn't lie in the still questionable origin of the virus, it lies in the response to it. Every country knew this was coming with the start of the new year. The return to deflecting blame onto China instead of implementing a functional plan shows that 5 months in, they still don't have one. -5/14/20. "Fragmentation" from Khartoum (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/13/20 "It's Forever"

"Arrest yourself, don’t wait any longer/Cause yourself to cease/Stop and think about it." Itaewon is shaping up to be the new cluster site in Korea and it's sparking backlash against the expected populations: foreigners and the LGBTQ community. Just like yesterday, when solidarity was shed in the face of safety, the Itaewon cluster is emerging as an opportunity to justify preexisting bigotries. Coincidentally, I just taught a lesson on fascist speech using a Philosophy Tube video. He says when fascists say Jews run the world, they're not really saying that. They're saying they want to persecute Jews. Likewise, when Koreans start singling out foreigners and LGBTQ people as pandemic threats, they don't really believe that either. They're saying they want to have a designated underclass that can be used and abused when convenient because some people should be chattel. -5/13/20. "It's Forever" from Raining Down Diamonds (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/12/20 "Not Even Water"

"Not even water/Crossed my lips/I’m a gone, goner, goner/Hanging out to dry." And as soon as my quarantine moment starts, it's over. My colleague's test came back negative this morning so it's back to the office tomorrow. I can't even pretend to have suffered any dearth of comfort: I spent two lovely spring days inside reading comics, watching movies, and baking cookies. Along with the test results came the crumbling of the pretense of solidarity. My other colleagues sent the testee messages excoriating them for being insufficiently contrite about the situation. Sure, the testee was worried that they might have caught the plague, but did they even consider what that might do their colleagues' career prospects? As with so much of this pandemic, it's so absurd and grotesque that it has to be fabricated, but I watched the conversation play out live. This is reality now. -5/12/20. "Not Even Water" from Glasgow Sunday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/11/20 "When I See You Again"

"Wondering what your enthusiasm is gonna be like/When I see you again/I got a good feeling about it." First day of teaching from quarantine and it was like starting over again. I floundered as all my teaching material was back at the school and all my tech that I'm so familiar with failed in new ways when paired with the school's software. Most shocking though was the downtime: between classes I did my ironing, prepared food for the rest of the week, and had a better lunch than I could have had at work. It illuminated how much of life is wasted at the job and how life away from work is impoverished by it. I want to meet my students in person again--this online teaching is a half measure at best--but how much better life could be if I only had to be at work when I worked. That's probably another reason for the push to reopen the US and UK: don't let people realize how much better their lives would be with less work. -5/11/20. "When I See You Again" from When I Took That Train (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/10/20 "I Gave My Eternity"

"I’m off for the day/I shut out the lights/I watched the day pass/And in these moments/I intermittently escape/To that space around my epicenter." After all the time watching things happen in the US, I am finally under quarantine. Is this the pandemic equivalent of sympathy weight? It's not due to anything I did fortunately--I'd hate to carry the burden of thinking I'd infected anyone by being irresponsible. Instead a colleague went to Itaewon last weekend and that's become the most recent exposure cluster. So they were taken out for testing today and we're all teaching from home tomorrow and maybe Tuesday. If the test comes back positive, things proceed from there. How quickly it's addressed and resolved, though. We'll have results tomorrow and then will act on that information. My time in quarantine may be over before I can grow sick of it. -5/10/20. "I Gave My Eternity" from A Kingdom He Likes (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/9/20 "The Slow Burn"

"Go away and fall down dead/And when you’re all gone/I’ll live in peace in a house that’s not burned down." Everyone's trying to move backwards to live in the time before. If we reopen the economy, we can return to the time before coronavirus. If we vote for Biden, we can return to the time before this administration. If you believe in MAGA, we can go back to the time before everything wrong. America consistently fails to regard the future as a place arrived at by moving through the past. We never acknowledge where we were or what we've done so we never move forward. "Normal," both pre-COVID and 4 years ago, was people dying because they couldn't go to the doctor. That's still the case. And both candidates are promising to maintain that state of affairs. The tragedy of the pandemic, like every American tragedy, is that it's not remarkable. The crisis lies in who we've always been. -5/9/20. "The Slow Burn" from The Door Behind (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/8/20 "I Met You"

"Now that you’re here, tell me/Is it the best place you ever know/Because I’m at the best place I ever knew/And it’s just after I met you." It was warm on my walk home today, but growing overcast and windy in anticipation of the rain that's supposed to arrive tomorrow and linger all day. I listened to this album on that walk and the dissonance of Jandek and nice weather was heightened by the content of the music. The lyrics, uniquely, are hopeful, addressing a person who drew the singer away from the typical despair and isolation of these songs. That emotion is undercut or possibly ironized by the long instrumental stretches, seemingly more discordant and atonal than usual. Are these sincere expressions of affection by someone unfamiliar with the forms, or are they something sinister, the declarations of an obsessive and a stalker? When do we give up on insisting that there's hope? -5/8/20. "I Met You" from The End of it All (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/7/20 "Shadow of Leaves"

"Hey, look at all the things gone by/It’s a stream of consciousness/Except of course those green plants/Are they really really real." I haven't used the opportunity of the pandemic to write my novel. Or start my video blog. Or read all my books. Granted, I never was under lockdown. My daily life didn't change. It's easy to be too precious about creativity though. The right space, the right moment, the right mood, inspiration! There's something to be said for just cranking things out, just doing the work. Jandek demonstrates the value of doing it and just putting it out there. This song comes from his 36th album, an album where he's playing bass and seems well past the point of leaning into being the oddball outsider musician. You find your audience, your muse, by doing the work of creation. I need to sit and write my stories. -5/7/20. "Shadow of Leaves" from Shadow of Leaves (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/6/20 "I Found the Right Change"

"I’m gonna sit in my front room where nobody stays/I need to describe what’s going to stay here and/What’s going away/Don’t you have a friend who can give you space/It’s what you need right now." Everything's gearing back up at school: Saturday classes, afterschool classes, and the inevitable return of the students. Things are returning to normal. In the US, the death toll is over 72,000 with more than 2,000 people dying every day. As someone on Twitter pointed out, that's a 9/11 every 2 days. That's acceptable now. That's the new normal. 19 years ago the administration told people to go shopping so as to not let the terrorists win. Also, give up on all your freedoms so we don't have an event like that again. Now the administration says go shopping to ensure we keep getting this level of death. It's a situation so absurd that even criticizing it seems facile. -5/6/20. "I Found the Right Change" from The Gone Wait (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

New Writing Available Online

An essay I wrote documenting my experience with the coronavirus outbreak in Korea just got posted on The Enneadecameron. That blog was conceived as a 21st century version of Boccaccio's Decameron, a collection of stories presented with the framing device of them all being told by ten people waiting out the plague. Of course the blog is about the current pandemic and has its own variety of framing devices and authors. It's worth browsing through.

The call-for-submissions for The Enneadecameron is part of what prompted me to start doing the Jandek Plague Journal.

You can read my piece, "The Expat's Tale" here

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/5/20 "The Picture"

"And here I am/How did I get here/How did I make this world/I thought it out and made a plan/And the elements combined/Presto — here’s reality." I live and work in South Korea. How did that happen? I know the steps I took, the choices I made, but it still seems amazing to me that it's my reality, that it's something I could imagine as an option. Meanwhile in the US, the country I left, the place I couldn't imagine a world outside of, a document written for the administration leaked saying that if they "reopen" the economy the pandemic will persist with the daily death rate reaching 3,000 people by June. And this is accepted because nothing else can be imagined. That makes sense though. During the Cold War the only vision offered was Soviet desperation, not some competing utopianism. With the fall of the USSR, we haven't constructed a new imaginary so the world the US is building looks increasingly Soviet. -5/5/20. "The Picture" from The Place (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/4/20 "I Stepped Out of It"

"I stopped the world/And I stepped out of it/I cut a clean path/I stepped out of it/I’ve gone and stepped out of everything." Today felt like one of the first days of summer, where it's not just warming but warm and you bear visible sweat from any time outside. I walked to the bank to take care of some business, luxuriating in the sun while also worrying that my sweat would make me look feverish. The pandemic is not yet over, but Korea continues its path of relaxation. Plans have been announced to let students start attending school in person again, gradually, grade-by-grade. My students will start arriving next Wednesday, and how will they feel about finally emerging? My students are focused on international affairs, global interactions, and see their futures in that context. Internationalism and isolation have both become so different during this pandemic. How do they imagine their future now? -5/4/20. "I Stepped Out of It" from The Humility of Pain (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/3/20 "It Seems Forever"

"I’ll hold out a light/Let it shine for you/If nobody sees it/I still do what I do/I tried to be happy/What a foolish thing." My Canadian friend says they've been having strange, vivid dreams, bordering on nightmares since the lockdown began. I had my own batch last night including the rapist I met in grad school. When I woke up, I looked him up online. He has his PhD now and a full-time teaching job. His published papers use the language of organizing and solidarity. It feels like he's living an echo of the life I once aspired to, like he crept in by hiding in the shadow I cast and seized it from me. Right now I'm in the midst of Adorno claiming the modern world, infected with fascism, perverted "solidarity" from the noble human impulse to a code word indicating loyalty to a team. There's a hollowness to institutions populated by shadows, even if I once aspired to membership. -5/3/20. "It Seems Forever" from I Threw You Away (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/2/20 "In the Cave"

"We paid/We surely did pay/I’m gonna get out of it/By going into it more/I’m gonna get out of it." One week after reopening, Georgia had 1,000 new coronavirus cases in one day. Photos circulated of people gathering in large groups to watch the Blue Angels fly overhead. The easy response to this is sneering contempt, but something else underlies both details: faith in authority. People gathering again and the 1,000 new cases come from believing the message that it's safe to start going outside again. The other details don't matter: doctors saying it's not safe, the governor saying he's reopening even though more people will die, all people hear is "we're reopening" and assume it's safe because surely leaders wouldn't put people's lives at risk that way. What's on display is a betrayal of these people's faith in their fellow citizen and their painfully present need to be a community again. -5/2/20. "In the Cave" from Worthless Recluse (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/1/20 "One Last Chance"

"It crept and I saw it all along the way/It came on bit by bit/And I knew it all along/The only difference is now/It’s gone too far." When did we stop talking about the virus, about ventilators and PPE and flattening the curve? The paid protesters of the "reopen" movement escalated things today by staging an armed takeover of the Michigan statehouse. When Black people did that in California, Reagan banned open carry with the support of the NRA. Today, the white protesters didn't even face pushback from the gathered police (who, with what we know of white supremacy, were presumably coordinating with the protesters). Meanwhile, at the other protests around the country funded and organized by the administration's factotums, people held up signs reading, "Work is Freedom." The phrase has popped up at several locations meaning it was suggested from the top. In the original German, it's "Arbeit Macht Frei," from the gates of Auschwitz. -5/1/20. "One Last Chance" from This Narrow Road (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/30/20 "It's Your House"

"I got this dream of my house/The one you gave me in my mind/I’m ready for the house/Let me build my house." The first of 3 a capella albums from Jandek and the first album of the 21st Century. The lyrics reach back to the beginning of all this, constantly repeating "ready for the house," the title of the first album. There is an Ouroboros quality to this, a sense of Burroughs' cut-ups, that this may all be one text that we're constantly dipping back into, never seeing the whole or a real chronology, just repetitions of details that may be connections or may be what we've already seen. To counter the fact that US coronavirus deaths have surpassed the US death toll in Vietnam, we hear that the people dying would have died anyway. Is this the new talking point or are old talking points resurfacing in my feed? I've heard the claim that some people's deaths count less before. -4/30/20. "It's Your House" from Put My Dream On This Planet (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/29/20 "Falling Down Deep"

"The journey is over, I’m falling down deep/I have no more promises to keep/This the feeling that won’t go away/This is the last time of the day." I'd like to think that this is over, that we can draw a curtain across these plague reflections, but that's precisely the feeling that won't go away, the sense of déjà vu, that what was declared has manifested, that we've already done this. Some states are reopening May 1st, and that hasn't happened yet. That's Friday, but the declaration evokes its own despair so visceral and complete that it feels like we already went off that cliff. There's still two days til we see the precipice. Likewise, the rent is due on the first, once again. No one can pay it because no one's getting paid, but that doesn't seem to factor. So how much organizing has there been for a rent strike? Friday is May Day, International Labor Day. Will people get into the holiday spirit? -4/29/20. "Falling Down Deeep" from The Beginning (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/28/20 "New Town"

"The last time I saw you/Was I don’t know when/That’s when I knew you/In all places I’d been." I don't have an emotional geography of Busan yet; I haven't met people in the city to form those kinds of stories yet. Philly, by the time I left it, was a space woven almost purely from associations, the memories underlying each route, all negatively tainted by the end or I was in a headspace where I could no longer walk the paths of happy memories. Maybe that made it easier to leave. I was lesson planning at work today, an online class because the echoes of the pandemic have yet to quiet down. For the first time since this started, I felt like I hit my stride, found a topic I could be expansive and engaging with while still using English in a way the students would understand. I felt like I was returning to myself, finally fitting the space I was in. -4/28/20. "New Town" from New Town (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/27/20 "Pending Doom"

"Doom/Pending doom/Pending doom/Pending doom/Pending doom/Pending doom/Pending doom." The Attorney General has said the Justice Department may join with protesters paid by the administration in lawsuits to lift states' stay-at-home orders. Is May Day still the target? Are they still trying to make everyone go back to work on International Labor Day? Can't deny the irony of picking the holiday dedicated to showing solidarity as the date you demand actions being taken in solidarity stop. That's the unspoken root of this. You can talk about Korea's test & trace policy, but there was no mandated lockdown because people did it on their own-they weren't willing to infect others. In the States, it's the petulant shrieking of tantrum-throwing children outraged that they can't kill others. That's why they bring guns to the rallies: it's to say there's one thing you may not deny them. -4/27/20. "Pending Doom" from I Woke Up (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/26/20 "Part Yesterday"

"But it’s so hard to tell you/I quit describing things/That’s what I did." Talked to family last night, caught up with how they're doing. Healthy and safe, keeping calm. Where they'd seemed frazzled a few weeks ago, they seemed all right, like they'd settled into a routine, found the new normal. Part of that comes from ignoring what the administration says: politics is the reality of lived experience and what could be further removed from that than what any president says? I said I often felt bad about leaving even though I'm so glad I left. My situation in the US was killing me, but I feel like I've abandoned everyone to their fate. The fight to have is there, and I left when that was most apparent. But what opposition would I have offered had I stayed? I wouldn't have even martyred myself to nothing, I would have remained a cog, simultaneously grinding and being ground down myself. Or am I just excusing my cowardice? -4/26/20. "Part Yesterday" from White Box Requiem (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/25/20 "Flowers On My Shirt"

"Gotta go quick ending absurd/Who says the vision is nearly blurred/Fingers fingers fingers fingers/It’s the end this time I know." I avoided mentioning "bleach" yesterday on purpose. Dwelling on each new absurdity and outrage is both pointless and the goal--constant distraction. I've already said that though. Even the acknowledgement of distraction is a distraction. Instead, we need to focus on white supremacy and genocide. The majority of COVID deaths in the US are minorities and the calls for people to return to work, and the protesters paid to say the same, began after that information started coming out. The US is facing this pandemic because it brushed it off as something happening to Asian people. Now that Americans are seeing it disproportionately affect African-Americans, they say it's not a threat, or at least not a threat to those that matter. -4/25/20. "Flowers On My Shirt" from Glad to Get Away (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/24/20 "A Real Number"

An instrumental song played on the accordion, an instrument that always has an air of a traveling carnival. Doubly so here as the song puts me in mind of the demented dance sequence in Carnival of Souls, another piece that could be considered an outsider work that appeals to those drawn to the obscure. That movie's about a haunting and today's song reminded me that this whole project began with me pitching a story about being an expat in Korea in the midst of the outbreak--the way that I was both ghost and virus, an interloper haunting their streets, making sounds of a life they dare not investigate, and infecting their children with an internationalism to prepare them for distant shores. The essay I submitted ended up taking a different, more comic tone, and the haunting migrated to these pages. Where I once thought I was the ghost, I've come to see that I'm instead the one haunted by a spectre of politics I thought I'd exorcised. -4/24/20. "A Real Number" from Graven Image (one week earlier) (one week later)