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)