charisma check

charisma check, the band i had in high school. i had high aspirations - although during that time, i was going through a psuedo-philosophical revolution of strictly non-hope. either the difference between the two is a fine line, or it doesn't really exist. i would later learn that "abandoning all hope and fear" is smooth sailing until it comes to relationships, as i learned with jen. there was all sorts of hope there, thus disappointment in the end - but it had to be, because it was love, the truest i've known.

the point is that charisma check manifested a great deal of the direction in which i would take my life, and at the same time the life that i already had. this is high school i'm talking about, which makes me pause and think that i might be slightly ridiculous with all this life-talk, but really i've never taken such things (such things as life and the universe, woe is me, jesus) lightly. i never have. as i've written in my other blog, my first glimpses of memory are from ages, subjectively young years, where my adult models would comment on how serious i seemed, even downright sad, which seems (seemed) inappropriate for such a young age. i do think i lived as careless as i could in my early youth, for i knew nothing different until we moved from hawaii.

the band was what happened when you mixed two indie rockers with a guy who studied jazz bass. we looked for ways to make tunes that rocked hard and also proved we knew a little bit about music (meaning we were all choir kids). jon, the drummer, the oldest one, always full of grotesque humor; in your face always talking about his girlfriend's pussy and full of ways to sardonically shut-you-the-fuck-up. dan, a quiet guy whom i'd always admired from afar, and whom everyone else admire. i always liked him because he didn't ask for the enormous attention and respect he got from everyone, it was just there, almost like a quality of his personality was inextricably linked to the respect of others. i never thought i'd reach a level of friendship with dan, but i thought we were quite close towards the end of high school.

we played gigs; actually a fair amount for a high school band. i got exposure to the indie-youth-punker scene in portland with the meow meow, an industrial hole with a couch, soda bar, and a whole bunch of punkasses sneering and smoking in the makeshift deck upstairs. through the chain-link fence you could see such glamorously low-fi views as....more industrial area, but this was the nesting place for all sorts of kids, and i think i got to see the tail-end of that scene, right before the punk image exploded to completely-fucking-trendy.

either way, i loved it because i did fit in, in a sense - and in another sense i never did. my grades were too good, i was too gentle, too softspoken, rocked too little studs on my hoodie for some of the trendyfucks. at the same time, i've always been able to get along with people from all sorts of crowds, and there were definitely legit people to be found - ironically a lot of them were jon's friends and away from the high-school scene. i think it was about struggle - at home, in the head, or the consequences of teenage apath, who knows. maybe it wasn't the point to know, it was more the point to be pissed off, and i myself was, in my own way, but then i met jen and went blissfully soft and mushy for a while. i look back and think how if i had the struggles i had now back then, i would have been the punkest motherfucker out of all of them.

but you wouldn't tell from this photo. it's so telling, to me at least. in my room, on my futon - we put a blanket i bought in mexico to cover up the lackluster clichés (or cliché lackluster) covering my wall. i like that you can see the "jazz standards real book" by my side. i'm wearing the necklace i got in panama, probably the summer before -

---

i wish i had digital photos to put up from the panama experience, maybe i'll find some

---

and my hair is short, also a consequence of the central-american excursion. i'm also wearing a ring, beaten (although you can't tell) from playing a djembe on a choir trip, given from jen, bought at the downtown saturday market. i've always had an appreciation for jewelry and adornment in that sense - the symbolism is almost mystical for me - a piece of a place that you take with you in the physical sense, as if to affirm all that you take in the non-physical. this is the reason for my piercing history and stretched ears, and will likely lead to a handful of tattoos.

(to me) i look clean, from the inside out. confident, and i donno where i got that smile (i mean i do, from my grandfather), it looks like the one that would mark the face of a successful husband or something similar coming home to greet the kids. i've always thought my eyes look melancholy when i smile, for some reason. and if i had to give that a root, i'd say those are my mother's eyes, through and through.

we wanted to pursue charisma check to the point of getting a label. kids with shitty bands around us were getting offers, and our music (and i don't think this is just fond hindsight - please, i'm obviously not the type) was actually pretty cool. it was probably through these rehearsals in our basement, in the industrial district practice spaces littered with PBR cans, that i started thinking about pursuing music as something more than a hobby. i have crystal clear in my head (for now) playing some interlude for a 6/8 ballad of jon's and truly connecting for one of the first times. that's the same high i look for today.

but i left to go to macalester. why? i was high in another sense: the leave-town-adventure type - and blinded by another, which was my ambivalence towards throwing all my chips on music. i also bought in to the liberal arts propaganda a lot. what can i say? it's the bourgeois of today's society. i don't regret it, yet, but the vibe from where the cheap promo shot above came is not to be found at a school like mac. when i left portland, i left the portland vibe, yes, but more importantly i left the vibe of a city, which is very different from the vibe of 1800 vanilla liberal arts kids in a brick enclosure.