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)