Everything this person has written for TUNETHEPROLETARIAT
alright
It had been weeks since the apartment was this eerily silent. Often times everybody would sleep long into the afternoon, stumbling out occasionally in the shadows to slip into the bathroom, their piss trickling against the inside of the grubby toilet bowl that had sat bolted and unwashed for weeks. In passing they would stub their toes on the tiled steps that framed the shower, cursing and hacked-coughs scoring a sick symphony that would permeate across the rooms and give noise to the thoughtless space. It was a dysfunctional household that looked like a dysfunctional household, rather than a mimicry of the orderly workings of a functional one. The wooden shutters that offered a portal into the kitchen from the side walls were scratched, indented from frustrated outbursts, slammed and slammed and slammed off their hinges more than twice, thrice, four times. The walls bore bruises from the kicks of oppressed men, rabid with the strains of fever that come not from infection of a bacterial kind, but the infection that possesses all young men with no ambition, no comforts, no lights leading the streets they walk on. The glasses were cracked and whiskey-stained. Underwear and wet towels made impromptu carpets as the cotton desert dragged on out to the balcony. If only one rule remained, it was that there was no smoking inside. Crumpled cigarette butts overflowed from the greasy ashtrays on to the stained table, smeared across the playing cards and binders of paper filled with nonsense scribbles and words. The bathroom door opened, closed, the toilet unflushed, the bedroom door opened and scuffling feet were heard as it closed, again. [Buy.]
I’m a fucking walking paradox
If you’re sitting there, thumbing through the dated magazines on your desk and refreshing bookmarks waiting for something new to finagle your attention away from the slow burning nothingness, then you’re falling apart. You’re a fucking maggot, split in two, writhing on the floor leaving trails of residue on the carpet, watching your entrails seep between the fibers of the threads of fabric desert that go on around you.
Your last thoughts are of what? All the shitty scenes you’ve seen, all the garbage you’ve consumed, all the pelting pellets of rain and the blinding sun, all the bass-cum-concrete pound of sneakers on the pavement?
You’re a goddam maggot, born in shit and writhing in carpet.
“They don’t know me; they don’t get it,” Tyler said of critics. “Weren’t they eighteen years old at some point, just having fun?”
Is that all Tyler is doing? [Goblin.]
Twinkle twinkle, little star
I like this song, but I can’t escape the urge to punch Darwin in the nose. I guess I’ll stick to headphones and stray away from screens, lest I break a couple of knuckles. [Fuckin’ hell.]
Look beneath the floorboards
Sufjan Stevens – John Wayne Gacy, Jr.
In a passing conversation about Sufjan, my friend compared his music to a clumsy dinner: the salad is dripping with vinegar, it runs into the mashed potatoes and the chunks of beef, their marinade so appetising on their lonesome, are soaked dry and rough, hardened. It is a good dinner, a fulfilling one, but there is too much going on. It’s hard to know what you like and what you don’t.
In “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” Sufjan gets it right. It is simple. Is the twinkling piano even manned, is there somebody there, their fingers deftly moved by wrists? Are they thinking? “His father was a drinker,” Sufjan begins, “and his mother cried in bed.” Is this happening in a vacuum? John, far removed from the perils of adulthood, of aging, slips on the swing and it hangs, like a judge’s gavel in the air, still-framed, ready to come down.
When Sufjan’s falsetto, scratching at the floor with the soft wraiths of piano heard rattling against the window, cries, oh my God, are you crying?
[Buy Illinoise.]
E o que eu sinto não mudará
I’m not sure that people know this song exists, like Robin Campbell paces around his living room, stops, sighs, “It’s our best song, you guys don’t even get it.” Sure, Kingston Town is lovely, pensive, the kind of song that makes you miss a place you’ve never been to, but this convinces you, guilts you, into missing a love that never existed, a warmth that never held you. Do not: play this on a bitter winter’s evening, thinking it will distract you from the brittle winds. It won’t. Do: play this at home, alone, don’t let anybody hear you listening to it, don’t let them imagine, assume, pretend that they know. They don’t.
Vanessa da Mata (feat. Ben Harper) – Boa Sorte
Harper plays translator for da Mata here, and vice versa. He crosses his legs, crunches his toes, runs his thumb along the edge of his notebook’s cover, listens, misses a word, listens again, repeats. He doesn’t know if he agrees, his tone is uncertain, wavering. She’s foreign, unfamiliar. She sounds sweet, crouched in the fields of Alto Garças, running her fingers through the grass and dirt and diamonds, but her words are sad. Is he visiting? Is he coming to Uberlândia to see her? Is she waiting for him? The verses won’t tell you, no matter the hours you spend knocking on their door, begging. The chorus laughs from the other end of the bar when it hears you muttering, wondering, silently and under it’s breath. Nobody gives. Not even the two of them. Until they’re falling, then they’re sure. He knows, she knows, they’re falling, and for seconds they speak the same tongue, they make sense of each other.
I’m not happy and I’m not sad
The Smiths – This Night Has Opened My Eyes
Just one night: a taste of honey, flickers of light, spreading of legs, tired sleep, ringing alarm, unshared bed sheets, tangled legs, squandered youth, ennui on a mattress. It was fun, but the fun is done with. It’s awakening, sunken eyes, sullen cheeks, scrambling for crumpled clothes, hoarse excuses, lingering touches, strange bruises.
Just one month: unplanned rendezvous, heaving chests, explanations lies, guilty alcohol, sexless mornings, carnal evenings, bitten flesh, vicious intercourse, projected feelings.
Just one night: rinse soul, replace girl, repeat.