Week Perseverance

I have been gone a long time indeed. 

Blog post number three is the blog post in which I am debuting a pun/mocking the title of my blog. Six days between posts is a relative century in comparison to the prolific standard I had set for my blogging last week (joke explanation).

Self aware blogging? Don't mind if I do. 

The title of my blog comes from a song title by one of my all-time favorite bands, Every Time I Die. Hailing from the tropical paradise of Buffalo, New York, they combine pensive, English-major lyrics with heavy guitar riffing and punk energy that can only be described (in their words) as dirty. I endorse their words. Their passion is undeniable and cannot be understated. ETID's core sound might come across as vaguely generic initially. However, as I can attest, the band permeates your brain upon repeated listens. They are having more fun than you, and you want in on it. They have hilarious personalities to boot, per their DVD-accompaniment output: (start with Shit Happens! for sure. Shit Happens...)

My source:

 

FULL DISCLOSURE: I edited the song title slightly to avoid inevitable audience grammatical judgment.

I have seen Every Time I Die in concert more than I have seen most things in concert. Perhaps more than I have seen anything in concert. I will certainly compile a more comprehensive concert-tally list in blog posts from the future. Another important hobby of mine is concert-going. Nothing captures the art of music more than seeing it performed in front of you by the musicians who wrote it. The crowd energy and the emotional commitment of the band is not something that can be experienced on the internet or inside headphones. Concerts are art museums for music. I intend to keep a side-note log of concerts I attend in conjunction with my blogging career. Which happened to begin March 19th, 2013. Bonus concert log: the last concert I attended, as of these words, happened to be an Every Time I Die concert. It went down at Toad's Place in New Haven, Connecticut, on March 10th, 2013. A mere nine days before blog post number one (double check my math). 

Concert attendance has been a large part of my life since high school (cliche?). In order to familiarize myself with the music I will be experiencing at concerts, I need to be digesting it on my own time. What is your preferred format of musical digestion, Travis? Glad you asked, audience. I am a staunch supporter of the Compact Disc. Obsolete and archaic, you might jeer. It is all about the musical experience, I argue. Cover art and liner notes, in addition to CD art, credits and thank yous, are all included in the CD's packaging the way the musicians intended. The musician quite literally becomes the artist. How can any self-respecting art consumer fully appreciate art in the artist's full vision when the piece of art being consumed is incomplete? An mp3 file, to me, is an incomplete piece of art. A comparison: an mp3 file is equivalent to looking at a photo of a piece of original artwork. You can enjoy it, recognize it, and appreciate it, but you are not experiencing the total art package. Do not be mistaken, audience, I have bought plenty of mp3s online and burned plenty of albums to CD-R. I understand and agree with widespread, free music distribution. It affords bands a showcase and advertisement for their art. For said bands to be able to continue to make the art you, the listener, consume and are affected by, however, it is imperative that you, consumer, support these bands. This includes going to concerts, buying band merch(andise), and purchasing their music using money. Not exclusively mediafire. In sum, I hold underground and alternative music very dear to my blogging heart. And since you are a blog reader, chances are you might too. Please consider musicians as people, and support their craft.   

Every Time I Die + Knight

   

Bullet points: 

• SundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFridaySaturday. SundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFridaySaturday. SundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFridaySaturday. Three Weeks just went by. 
• Taken as a run-on word, a week seems like a long period of time. Taken as the phrase "one week," a week does not seem like a long period of time. Yet, working Americans' lives are dictated by this measurement of time. 1/52 of one year. One full orbit of Earth around the Sun. Four seasons. Made up of weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks. 
• Safe to assume (never assume) that most humans' favorite portion of the week is the end of it. Admittedly, I thoroughly enjoy the "weekend," as it gives me ample time to indulge in my hobbies (blogging). I also subscribe to the school of thought that claims every day has a distinct feel to it. I am the chairman of this school of thought. Two interesting week questions: Do you believe every day has a distinct feel and what is your favorite non-"weekend" day of the seven day structure everyone lives within? My attempt at explaining each day (based on countless research articles and empirical evidence): 
• Sunday: Seems to be a day of relaxation for most. Seemingly the day with the least amount of reliance on and regard for time. "Lazy Sunday." However, I have heard many accounts of humans hating Sunday. This must only be related to the sense of IMPENDING DOOM of the "work week" beginning in mere hours. However, I say why waste a day on dread? This should be a day of gratification and a day you look forward to. 
• Monday: Hatred reigns on this day. The first day of the "work week." The most daunting day. The day in which the restart button of life is pressed. Monday is also tied with Friday for, by my estimation, the day that is name-dropped most frequently: "I HATE Mondays." "It's a Monday." I wonder if humans are so caught up in "hating" Monday that they don't actually hate it. That it's just blind, conformity-hate. 
• Tuesday: The most obscure day of the week. Possibly the only day with no real identity. When humans refer to "the week," are they usually referring to Tuesday? Possibly, because every other day would probably have its own reference. Personally, I feel neck-deep into the week on Tuesday and it is my most loathed day. But I don't let myself think about this during Tuesday. I don't want to resent the day I am enduring. 
• Wednesday: Famed "Humpday." The day in which the most lazy and unfunny sexual innuendos are made. The most inconsistent day of the week, as far as tendencies go. Depending on the type of week I perceive myself to be having, Wednesday can either seem like a glimmer of hope or purgatory. As in: "It's almost Thursday! Meaning, it's almost Friday!" or "This week blows." After Wednesday has passed, I feel like the "week" is over. 
• Thursday: The most underrated day of the week. Might it be rated, though? I'm not really sure how "adults" (i.e. humans older than me) feel about Thursday, but I'm going to assume (never assume) that "adults" enjoy Thursday less than I do. Depending on your life perspective, audience, Thursday can symbolize many things. It can be a symbol of week perseverance, it can be a symbol of partying, or it can be a symbol of another shitty day that isn't Friday (right?). Two years post-UConn graduation, I can offer my perspective as being somewhere between partying and perseverance. I enjoy Thursday for these purposes. 
• Friday: The day with the shortest name. The day with the most likes on Facebook (Facebook reference number two). I am typing this on a Friday. It is Good Friday, actually (Best Friday?). There is a chain restaurant named after Friday. I suppose there is one named after Tuesday also. Fry-day. "Happy Friday!" "Thank God it's Friday!" "Its Friday!" [said with a big smile and a shrug]. The day tied with Monday for most frequent name-drops. The day radiating with the most fleeting positivity. The reward of week perseverance. Like every other human, my unapologetic favorite day. Friday. 
• Saturday: The day of reckoning. Everyone seems to look forward to the "weekend," and Sunday seems to be resented, so this is the day everyone looks forward to, right? Everyone seems to have an agenda for their Saturday going into Saturday. I suspected that these agendas often become unfulfilled. Chores are done, errands are done, plans are made for Saturday evening. Does Saturday (i.e. the "weekend") live up to the substantial hype we give it every week? I always feel like I could've made better use of my Saturday. High expectations lead to disappointment. Let Saturday breathe. 

Hope that whatever day it is for you right now, it is a good day. And a great week. Great week, great month, great year, great life. My idea of great life:

Ghost town country, Nevada

 
    

Wanderlust

Turns out I enjoy blogging so much that I am back on this website typing again. I have doubled my career blog entry count in two days. The next two days will speak to whether or not I am a truly prolific exponentially growing blogger I am implying that I am with this opening paragraph. 

Selective Tuesday/Wednesday thoughts:

• When Chicago Cubs fans chant "CUBBIES! CUBBIES!" during this rapidly approaching baseball season in an effort to rally their beloved and historically losing team, are they really just giving a shout-out to their favorite kindergarten storage space?
• Lately I have been really getting into the band Single Mothers from London, Ontario. (That's Ontario, Canada. One half of my blog posts include a reference to the Great White North). I stumbled upon them in the April 2013 issue of music publication Alternative Press. Each April, AP will write 100 blurbs on "Bands You Need to Know" (i.e. musicians that have not received significant media attention). Needless to say, most of these bands typically don't seem worthy of my typing their band name into the "Search" bar on Facebook (Facebook reference number 1) upon reading their blurb. However, there are usually about 10 or so (10% of 100) that intrigue me. Single Mothers are my hands-down winner this year. Combining the roughneck hard party storytelling of the Hold Steady with jagged lo-fi garage guitar riffs and howling whiskeycigarette vocals, these Canucks are my current musical wet dream. Enough prose though; here comes their sound (if you're curious), from their 2011 self-titled EP:

• Here is a link to support them if they just cleansed your musical palette:Single Mothers Bandcamp  

 I left my substantial readership with a bit of a cliffhanger last time we convened on the internet. I explicitly mentioned a road trip occurring in my past and that it was the most significant three weeks in my life. Audience, this is where the chronicles of Travis and Kate's Road Trip 2011 will officially begin. I cannot promise it will be completely chronicled by the end of this post. In fact, I will guarantee that it will not be. The chronicles will not be consecutively posted in blog posts from the future, either. Road Trip 2011 posts will be spontaneous, and they will be a pleasant surprise. So, as I fire up Man Man's album Life Fantastic, the record that most strongly conjures up the panoramic views of the American West for me, the chronicles begin. 

I first articulated the true wanderlust that often consumes me during phone calls with Kate during both of our sophomore years at our respective Connecticut universities. We talked of being in the Southwest, of American deserts, of cacti, of cracked pavement, of dust storms and of uncharted experiences. Of being far away from everything we knew and of untempered expectations. We fixated on the state of New Mexico, the "Land of Enchantment." It seemed, to our strictly speculative selves, to be the most nondescript and mysteriously intriguing place we could think of. She mused on the significant art historical influence and I mused on its relative obscurity as a geographical location, millions of miles from my home state. We knew we had to be there. 

Senior year, these musings became more structured discussions. Structured discussions became concrete plans, and the day after Memorial Day following our undergraduate college graduations, concrete plans became Road Trip 2011. 

The itinerary dictated Day 1 to be the most rigorous travel day- the day in which we traverse the most interstate miles- affording us maximum traveling pleasures throughout the rest of the journey. Our destination was Kate's childhood friend in suburban Detroit, Michigan. Our starting point was central Connecticut. A lesson learned on Day 1 was that the state of Pennsylvania along I-80 is an Adirondack experience of green trees and rolling hills that is twice as long as I expected. Probably due to my US road atlas breaking Pennsylvania down into eastern and western sections. This fooled my not-to-scale prior assessment of Pennsylvania's East/West girth. Editor's Note: I reject all forms of GPS on elitist handheld-map-reading principle. Did I mention I love maps? 

5+ hrs of I-80 in PA

After our Keystone marathon, our journey ventured briefly into northern Ohio. Its landscape rated, on my professional landscape-rating scale, as the least impressive of any one state throughout our travels. I will not elaborate on northern Ohio any further. 

We arrived in Michigan to lodge with Kate's childhood friend Callie at a house Callie shared with her boyfriend, their large dog Bubba and their shifty cat Louis. Throughout four days of Michigan, they were fantastic hosts/hostesses, collectively and individually. Our stay included multifaceted tours of the spectacularly crumbling city of Detroit. Despite a population that has withered by 500,000 within the past 30 years, Detroit's sense of blue-collar pride and soul cannot be denied. It seems to embody a collective rebuilding sentiment yet still retains its original sense of identity with the American auto industry. We also got to experience the Heidelberg Project, an "open-air art environment" spanning two abandoned city blocks on Detroit's East Side. It was truly an amazing sight to behold of creativity and optimism. The Heidelberg Project. In summary, audience, you may learn that I have a soft spot for underdog stories, and Detroit certainly stole my heart.

The conversion of abandoned office buildings into chic loft apartments.

General Motors headquarters, looking 1980's RoboCop futuristic.

Scenes from the Heidelberg Project.

 Michigan was certainly among my personal top 3 favorite states along the journey. And we hit 18 states in total. That is a rank to write home about (pun?). The only real premeditated detour of our journey took place in Michigan. After departing Callie's residence, I determined that we would travel north along I-75 so that we could travel through the northern peninsula of Michigan. The one that looks like the long beak of Wisconsin on a US map. This detour was my indulgence into my obscure geographical location fantasies. And audience, was it worth our while. On that note...stay tuned. For the Road Trip 2011 chronicles part 2. Coming spontaneously to this blog. Thanks again for reading. Visit Detroit if you can. 

Listening...John Coltrane-Cousin Mary

My One Chance to Make a First Impression

My name is Travis. This is my blog. I would like to prematurely thank you for reading this and I hope you enjoy these words.