On Perfume and the home movies of a 17-year marriage

Thanksgiving Adulthood

So the day after our little Thanksgiving in Monmouth I wake the girl up. 

"I think we're going to go soon, babe."
I'm a little anxious.
"Leslie you wanna go to?"
"Sure"
We get in the car and roll down through Monmouth on our way to Alexis. She plugs our destination into the navigator. I realize half way down that I wanted to get flowers. Leslie and I run into County Market and we try to find something relatively cheap. She picks out the poinsettia and we check out. I get some quarters out of the change and drop them in the machines. I get two rings out and we walk back to the car. 

It's been about two years since I've seen this town. Work and School stopped me from being able to come and I often think about my priorities. The navigator is moving us onto gravel roads and she's ", Where are we going."
This isn't right.
I didn't grow up here, this isn't where I was born, but it is for everyone else I know.  i back up and we get back on the road. The Navigator adjusts. We keep driving. The blown out speaker in my car sizzles.
"Ahem...Let's pretend Marshall Mathers never picked up a pen, let's pretend things turned out no different"

We move into town, past the fire station. This is what keeps Alexis alive, and nothing else. The population is 850. She says that we're in the town out of "The Crazies."
I say to Leslie "That green patch of grass there is 'Sparies' where Dad used to get comic books. One time I got Grandma to come out here at sundown so I could film a night scene for The Pinklydoodle in that telephone booth."
"I'm surprised you got Grandma to drive at night."

"This is so sad."
I'm looking at the shut down "My Store."
"Tell us about 'My Store' Barry."
"Well my store was owned by Don Mckelvie."
"What did he sell?"
"Uhm he sold everything, he was a painter to. I saw him perform in the Galesburg Choir Concert once." 

We mull around some more looking at locations. I tell the stories my Grandmother has told me and her mother told her(so one day when I'm a mother...).
"That's the Library that Mary-Alice owns, she also runs the Alexis Museum. That used to be the phone company. That's where Iola used to go to see silent movies..."
We continue down the road and I remember a day ago Grandma telling me her high school is being torn down. She and her mother graduated this high school which was built about ninety years ago. We park at a stop sign and she gets out to take a picture. The only remaining part of the school is the entrance. It's eerie with the entrance still open holding a staircase that one would consider leads to some meaningful purgatory. 

Alas though, it is dead and gone. Speaking of death, we're going to visit MyDeadGrandFatherwhoInevermet's grave.


I make a left turn which should yield the cemetery, but there is nothing in site. We turn left and right and I don't know where I'm going (and I should). We pull over to the water tower and I try to call Grandma on this dead Illinois signal.

We go straight down main street. 
"And that's where Grandma grew up and Iola lived for a good fifty years."
"That's it?"
"Yup."
I almost turn the corner as she and Leslie point out the truck bearing down on us and I stop. 
It's good to have loved ones. 
We pull in see the graves.
LAUGHEAD
McBride
Sims
They're all related to us somehow. We stroll through as I point them out.
"He died young."
"Oh that was Grandma's brother. He was injured in Vietnam and when he came back Grandma said he just wasn't the same little brother. He was driving a truck when he shouldn't have been and was hit by another car and died."






Barry Dwayne Rowen



He died 13 days after his 47 birthday. This doesn't say anything about the man, but it's all we've got. 
We look around and there are some really weird graves. One woman has an enormous portrait of herself, another has a giant picture of a semi-truck on the back. Barry has a short poem he wrote. 



"Creativity is the essence of civilization
This no one can deny
for it allows each individual
to make his mark or try"

I hope they remember me

By Barry




I didn't know you, but I feel like I have a privilege only for my name's sake.

Sir I didn't know you. You were a military man all your life. You kept interest in the mechanics rather than art, film, and music. Maybe that's not so true. Barry, I've been writing letters to your brother Bill this semester. They're short recaps on how the others life is. He even sends me a check for "pizza." He tells me stories about you, encounters you had with other people and how you reacted. I suppose most everyone does that. Anyways... I'll never know you, never will feel your presence or take your words of the moment to heart, but we do share something. I've love the people you loved. I've shook the hand of the brother you shook hands with. I've worn the clothes you've warn. This hasn't been forced, this hasn't been planned out, it's simply the affect of being your grandson. I'll tell you the truth, just like a lot of things that probably would not have happened if had lived, I probably never would have been born. You can't dwell on this though (because you're dead), you can't tailor life like that either. Back to the Future wasn't real and I can't change the past or jump to the future. All I can do is think and think slow and that's how I'll change the future. You're dead and I can't have it any other way.
From one Barry to another.

I drive home, just the two of us in the abyss of the Midwestern fields. I've shown her my other background, the one which is mine by relation. As the sun sets and we switch drivers, she plays stick wars on my phone and my eyes move left above the trees to the navy blue sky. Three of us go to visit Barry Rowen, none of us knowing him. I put a measly $5.00 towards a plant and look at the grave. We stand for a second or two. No memories, no prayers, we stand. It's respect in Adulthood.

Post-Thanksgiving Meal Nap

I had a river once

she was born a stream

but men came along and filled her up

and now shes the ohio

and that means a lot to me,

because I didn't get the job with that piece of info

I worked for that illusion

and it carried me as long as it could

one final day it decided on its own

its time to set me free

Cincinnati i'm not mad at you, I just wish you would have told me

these are things we can talk about

build more buildings

make your towers higher than any

don't worry about money, the money will come

but its going to come through truth

in your current state the honest dollar is running out

but I think I know you well enough and you

I've been around

but you, you'll make your decision

we'll either go our separate ways or we won't

so think, think about the future,

think about the past.

Illinois

My resonators echos, sometimes too much; more than I can handle.

Cincinnati’s got me down.

“I’ll be in Nashville by the morning, cause Cincinnati’s got me down.”

I drive to Kroger right across the street. This is not a drive. I start to think to myself how much better this place looked last year. It’s not disappointing, it just is. This is the full extent of Highland Heights. Every now and then while I’m riding the TANK that I look over at the houses surrounding campus. They have old brick and are littered by trees and this is almost an old college town.
Louisville is the same way, at least what I’ve seen. Any street along Bardstown in fall, now that will convince you, but you keep driving and you’ll wind up near 75 in no time. I don’t relish the place I grew up, but I’ve grown out. That’s hard when you have no money, nor any credit with anything to your name.

I ride a riverboat everyday. We can be packed or completely empty at any given time. Yesterday it was eight. I took a picture of two and they weren’t interested. The captain forgot he had to work and we left fifteen minutes late. And as we pulled out of the dock he scrambled to button his shirt, he drank from a plastic cup and cleared his throat.
Out it comes.
“Well folks, let me first welcome you to Cincinnati.”
He speaks of how the river was once a fourth this size, how pioneers rode flatbeds down, but weren’t able to go back up, and how in the summer you could cross between Newport and Cincinnati.
I picture Ford’s “How The West Was Won” but these me were real, and how did they feel about the city.
And I worry that these are side thoughts, that this is the echo of every dream within me as they dwindle down into an abyss.
Are these cities living a lie? Are the Carolinas everything I dreamed they are.
Utah, Maine, or wherever the travels take me, life moves farther with a girl and a car.

Basic Drawing has changed my life-NO JOKE. I can draw a wine bottle in 2D forced perspective, thus I can draw Henry in 2D forced perspective.

And:


http://www.vimeo.com/14558733

Florence Y'all

It's reassuring moving into the dorm, meeting the roommate, and showing the friends. I suppose its kind of shocking once you put up all your posters and feel the comfort. I am removed from my seven-year residence where I made all my movies. Here though, I think great things may happen, maybe even Henry 2?
Anyway life s smooth and expensive, but all right when you're not picking up the tab (or working on a riverboat).
And maybe its just a blog to blog this month, maybe I'm phasing out of the blog. I hate that this is the lifespan of a blog, but finding purpose for these is hard and maybe even rhetorical.

How are we to see these characters? Are they the world Barry projects himself onto? Are other people merely imperfect copies of himself? Or do they serve to represent the overwhelming self-image, the way Barry truly sees himself, and in effect set off the main character as an idealized form of Barry, one which he sees as separate and disconnected from the crowding masses bearing his likeness?

Never gonna sleep this one off.

How I would prefer college

It's like the ending of Big Fish where Albert Finney is being carried into the river and sees everyone he has ever known, except in my version no one has ever been to Ryle and no one knows my name.

EIT

It felt like I was stuck in YouTube for two hours, just with more V-necks and pants tucked into socks.

Walton Bike Rides Be Still Ft. Janelle Monae (Produced By Royal Flush)

There is a bare lamp pole standing in the middle of this room. The fake gold skin reflects the sun's fluorescent sunlight after a summer rain. I keep looking out that window, the fences one next to the other, all manufactured the same. Everyone has a fire pit and some lawn chairs, they all love a good fire. Each fire is different though and that's dearly important. Where you get your wood, where you purchased the pit, why you're lighting the fire, the size, these are all very intricate options allowing for some originality in the mock wilderness of Brookstone. We don't have a home owners association and that's our edge.
It's this rainy day that makes me sad and reminiscent. I sit on my twin mattress next to all the posters and pictures of things I love.  I'll take them to college to have a piece of myself with me at all times.
I met my roommate and he seems like a decent guy. By met I mean we "facebooked." We're guys there isn't any reason to get overtly chatty.
I scribble some notes down for Henry Two, the act is a bit pretentious, but when I sketch out Henry's love interest on paint, she seems to be what I had envisioned and there is surely some satisfaction there. It's paint, but it is surely art. I thrust my life into this one, unlike any other story. So what, it will be viewed probably fifty times at max and probably seventy-five accidentally. Number of views will depend upon the number of people I tell in person or see on facebook. There is so much more to appreciate though, the kind of helping hands that have always been there. There's the delight my Father brings with his deep bellied chuckling laughter, which slips into discussion aloud and within his own head.  He throws analysis into the subconscious meaning I must have implanted regardless of truth or not. There is the separate showing to my mother where I thrust her into my own world and she is deeply impressed whether she entirely gets it or not. There are friends some near and some far who have grown with my you tube hits and have been subjected to the grandeur I apply to the release of a "Barry Rowen Film." Regardless of whether it is deserved or not.

Switch from Big Boi's new album to The Avett Brother's The Gleam.

I'm going to yard sale less than a month. Maybe we'll have a Winnebago, or an old 1973 Beetle, but if nothing else we'll take a Jetta and a Kia Rio. This year's Yard Sale will probably be smaller, but it's charmingly intimate. You're with the people you generally do want to share time with and not abuse on Facebook or Formspring, remnants of high school etc. You spend the day only an hour away from your subdivision in places like Owenton or Ghent, but Northern Kentucky has this bizarre transient watch of it's own, thus it is worthy of being deemed a road trip.

Union: 25 minutes one way you can see a Broadway Show, 25 minutes in the opposing direction you can be sitting in a lawn chair on the porch of the Glencoe General Store.
That's road trip enough for me this summer, 2010.

When I'm capable of love, when I'm full to the brim of my heart.

I have a style now

time to get a different camera, slow mo slow mo to the grave it would seem

The Q

I love the Subway.
It's riding the School Bus, but these are adults, thus given it's tradition I always feel that there is a tremendous amount of comradeship. We rode in this morning, about a twenty-five minute trip iinto Manhattan. Every now and then you'll get somebody crossing cars and walking into yours. You know that they're different just for the sake of moving between cars, not worried about someone stopping them or staring. Occasionally it's some homeless guy shouting in need, occasionally crazy, sometimes just desperate and embarrassed, they smell of hot dogs and body odor and they appeal to your better nature or your upscale "homeless means gross" nature (which is pretty much mine, fakers are in abundance) they reach out there hand and you toss some money into a Tropicana carton. Today it was Dancer that walked on. They warned us ahead of time, there will be dancing, we should be prepared to see some hot shit. Three of them walked on, two black, one white. The first guy started, he ran down doing flips, jumping from the pole hitting the ground with is hands. They performed back flips up and down, tied their hand together, rolled down. "Whoever said white men can't jump," one guy said about his white co-star. The guy did some flips with the other partner and hits his head on the ceiling, leaving a big red mark. White men can't jump I guess. Some people are just ignoring them and their boom box, some are staring, my family doesn't applaud, but I manage a slow and subtle clap. They hold out their flat bills for money and i wish i had broken that twenty in my pocket. It was impressive, it was impressive because they broke the ice on that subway ride, because they through themselves out there. There's a  lot of power if you can manage to entertain a subway car full of strangers, full of preconceived notions, tourists trying to be New Yorkers, New Yorkers trying to tell them apart and vice versa. I think I can dig a Hardy niche for myself here, when the time comes, and it will, even if i have to break dance.

Seedy Seeds Sedy Seds

I had a dream last night, the stereotypical party with everyone you know or knew. They were all there living or dead. My deceased Cousin Bethany was sitting on the end of a sectional telling me how wasted she got the previous night. I chuckled and my eyes wandered around looking at her family whom in real life misses her dearly, but for this moment was just another one of there kids. The couch surrounded an enormous bonfire which everyone surrounded, and by everyone, I mean everyone I have ever known. I arrived at Ryle, the Auditorium, back when Perkins was around, except this time the auditorium was large and grand, balconies like the Arnoff. We were still working on some project, there were enormous ladders so that one could travel from balcony to balcony. Culp was at the bottom practicing a song as I saw Alex in a long overcoat move down the ladder.

I hope to God I'm making a film by this time next year. NKU, a young film program, promising, but not if no one has any idea what you're talking about. I'm not berating  people before I meet them, just looking out for my best interest and wondering where that interest lies.

Driving down 75 away from the city. Cincinnati had it's charms, but I feel like I will have exhausted them in a year or two. Poses is playing in the CD player. Louis and I, to two talented people, will we leave?


It always happens, I'm not even in college yet, and already sure that I will never get out.
Monday I'm flying to New York. Seeing a show everyday, my father's style. It's been a year and a half, many things have changed, including the spouse in attendance. I think this will be an eyeopening trip, but the question is which direction. Will this city seem staggeringly unapproachable, or will i knock em' dead. Hope it remembers me. I don't remember it.





Final thoughts:
The Seedy Seeds would e totez cooler if they played anything live.
There is some mean banjo playing as well as drum work that should be given a chance.
If they do not perform everything live, i am forced to assume they are the Monkeys, and thus do not play there own instruments. END

There Is Nothing Like The Drive Back From The Pink House

The Older I Get The Smarter My Father Becomes

Ah if I was one of those guys.  Just ask a girl out, if only for tat single date. I'm not talking one-night-stands, just a date, go out, walk around share ideas. If I could do that not cling. Here inside the abyss of my mind, there is a fear, perhaps it is too late. Reality laughs staring into the truth.
"It's not true, it's not true, boy, you're in youth."
Yeah, I am.
Saw a sign on the side of the road today:
"The Older I Get The Smarter My Father Becomes"
It was a church sign, given they meant God by Father, but stripped of the religious connotation or not, I couldn't agree less.
Say Yes by Elliott Smith

Plenty of times when I'm out on a drive and the water stares me dead in the eye

There’s a Steak ‘N Shake Sticker on my wallet in a swarm of Chiquitas. My brother gave me the Steak ‘N Shake one about two weeks ago. He wore a band-aid on his chin after he a tooth pulled and had probably convinced himself of it’s shield. I love this boy. It will be one of the true joys of my life to watch this child grow up. My Sister said the other day that she would have here first child at twenty-two, just the way our Mom did it.
“And i did it just perfectly.” Mom says. DHL is Hiring and I need a job. My other brothers are in town.  We made a cartoon. They went racing.
“How many siblings do you have?”
“Six.”
“Are you the oldest?”
“Yes.”

I awoke this morning, 4:23, sick as a dog, vomiting for an hour, two and half hours sleep. I couldn’t lay down in my bed. There was no where to turn. We had a full house.
Sick as a  dog, I got in the car and took 42 into a trance. I threw on Anonanimal, best driving music ever. I was Rabbit Angstrom, a copy sitting in the passengers seat. I had been thinking for about a week, after listening to that CD I had burned of Noble Beast. It was time for another, but in the infinite trance of this morning, it was perfectly appropriate. he sickness was gone. The destination was set in my mind, the same one I took about a year ago today. Its an eve, whatever you want to call it. In sixteen days the anniversary is upon us. The divorce, shells broken, nights spent at Ryle in solace and safety, the work environment all collapsing and coming together, call it the climax to the birth of a man.

I return on this day. Why.

I fuckin' hate Jason Mraz

I awoke this morning. This is the best part of the high school years, when you awake and its already day. Despite the fact that you’re getting up at the same time it appears as though you’ve slept in. Nature is already lit up, the trees are ripe with dew and there is a comfortable humidity in the air making your cut-offs perfectly temperate.

I awoke this morning. I began the search again. It was a few days before my birthday last week. I woke up and saw the morning like this again and it reminded me of a Crosby, Stills, and Nash song I was playing two years ago towards the end of my sophomore year. I had the big collection or whatever and really got into the first album, but had exhausted it by that point and was attempting to move through the eighties with acceptance but hidden weary speculation. “49 Bye Byes” There’s a long stringy guitar solo in the beginning, but its sustains and upbeat mood.
She was coming over it was my sixteenth birthday, finally. I could get my permit start driving, soon enough not having to have my girlfriend drive me everywhere (there’s a burst to your ego).
It’s always in slow motion. Picture a morning when you woke up, regardless of when you went to bed, or that you awoke at 6:30, you’re well rested. This day to follow is cake. Its the last week of school and as long as your grades aren’t in the toilet you’ve got a few insignificant finals to occupy yourself with.
I was sitting in my kitchen. My family was still a family. She said something about arriving at seven maybe? She texted she was here.
This is bittersweet.
 Bitter because we were to break up in less than a week or so. She had huge problem which I ignored until I watched it slap me in the face. I didn’t realize that what she was rapped up into was so deeply enveloped in her character, her being. In a flash of loss and searching she did what she thought was right, made her Father proud. What’s more important, right?

Sweet because she pulled up, approached the door, there was a mutual smile, a sweet kiss, and breakfast in this unbridled summer morning. We walked to her car got in, a casual drive with a destination and arrival time assigned.  Sweet because, this kid, who’s girl friend had to drive him, who made friends through business cards, and spoke with an accent reminiscent of Cagney, had felt love.

“To Be Sixteen in July”

Well, it was June. We were done, so to speak. I still needed a ride to the going away party, and not Mom. I sad in the passengers seat with a fury of wonder.”
 Do you realize what you believe in? Do you realize that you’ve let this person take complete advantage of you? This is horrific.”

That night I said good bye to an old friend. My friend was as she had always been and I realized that I cared more about her than this other girl, but such are the things of man.
I stood in the park with her, I kissed her, said “, This is real [a kiss] you’re letting yourself get trapped. You can’t give your life up to a stranger like this.”
She went home. I sat in  fury of curiosity. My Dad said that he didn’t want me staying out that late habitually. She called me in tears.
“It just doesn’t feel good.”
“You had to do it though. You have to end this, regardless of me or anyone other than your self, for your sake.”

It ended without conclusion, and I was too young to take power and action. I realized that it was going to take me over. I may have been sixteen, but hell if I was going to let that happen.
I’m not saying I ended the relationship there and then, I’m not denying the back and forth conversation, the get - back - together walks, sharing stories:
“ I was folding clothes with this girl at work and she said ‘, have you ever heard of Barry Rowen?’ I said ‘why yes I have.’ She said ‘, He’s got these videos on YouTube and Emily Christman just loves them!”
Some where the conversation moved her being asked about her opinion on me. Her response provoke my mind, maybe she still like me. The conversation rolled on, that summer in its thoughtful solitude, ultimately moved us farther and farther apart.
I became a man, I separated myself from someone who was going to strangle the life out of me, she had already done it to herself.

The story ends, the girl is still around and as far as I know trapped in a relationship with a suicidal online boy friend. No seriously. I laugh now. I laughed before in disbelief, I was horrified in the middle because I was watching him take his toll on her, I laughed afterward to become normal again, distance myself, and return to  more realistic situations. Not conformity, i walked out on that plank and swam for a good while, in the end realizing the value of dry land.

So I think of that morning, because I figured out the song this morning, because I’m still living in that house (part-time), and because this setting will finally be gone in nearly a month.
I do not attend Ryle High School anymore. True Story.

Elliott Smith probably had a good day here and there.

FrAnkSLY

Don't get me wrong, I had some good time in high school.  I ran with crowds that I belonged in, I strolled with those that I didn't quite have anything in common with. I tried to be older and when that didn't work out, I acted younger. No one ever knew my real voice and I have paved a red carpet for myself. SO there is this comfort that I've lived in with my Senior Year. i can afford to hate people. If Justin Skaggs says "Fuck You Barry Rowen" to my face and I circulate a lengthy ballad of my hatred for the man I can't get punched out (friends in high places).

My Day:
Notes on Credit Balances
Draw pictures of Typewriters and faces being hooked
Watch the ending of Avatar
Start Avatar(after watching Definance(in global issues, cuz WWII is totally still a problem)
Watch Tim Roth and Gary Oldman tried to put Tom Shepard to Screen
Finish We Were Soldiers (and occasionally anti-semites Whutt?)
Login to the computers in CTA then hear ", Ya'll need to log off we have to leave." Then go to the cafeteria and read a walk to remember to the entire class (on an individual basis).
Premiere on Saturday, Fuck you iMovie!

Just a BTW

This movie is becoming more of a musical everyday, and maybe the subject matter will save it, but I'm really not too sure.

1.

"Unlike the comics, these things don’t go on forever in film and viewing it as a story with an end is useful. Viewing it as an ending, that sets you very much on the right track about the appropriate conclusion and the essence of what tale we’re telling. And it hearkens back to that priority of trying to find the reality in these fantastic stories. That’s what we do.”

bleep blop bleep blop bloop quite

TiRed oF tHIs pLaCe

Totally My Film

It was somewhere after new years, after Austin grabbed that perfect shot that seemed to some up the whole of what had been going down for months between these two people. It was that shot, the one in which he looses his voice, telling the camera that he too notices his supposed girl with another man. It’s not a shock, but its pretty crippling. Its incredibly apparent though, that’s the main feature of this piece of film. There was a moment that evening in the basement filled with Covington's finest musicians, amongst wannabes, high school alumni, and communal thrill-seekers. The moment he lifted that almighty Fender, which itself seemed to evoke the words “This will be the electric guitar I play,” this moment was strummed into the celebration of relief. A year was gone, and it isn’t as though in the grand scheme 2009 was terrible for everyone. For me I lost more than I’ve lost in my life, and more than I’ll probably loose for a good while. It wasn’t all horrible though I gained friends, rekindled relationships, and became aware of the world behind Larry A. Ryle. The point is if you gained anything of 2009, despite any loss there was an excitement as to what may be gained in the following year. You had endured and that was the biggest part.

“You are the cause to all my happiness, the cause to all my pain, I will drop my heart into your hand, forever you can claim, I’m not a man.”

The lyrics the exact mood of this endurance “, I’ve lived through you and ‘Our’ relationship, and now I’m moving on, alive.”

There are a great many documentaries and documentarians to dislike out there

Morgan Spurlock!

and bias is far too loud and strong to evoke the true situation deeming a documentary like an article or a novel, an attempt to encapsulate a moment in time. I’m no better than anyone else. I take bias and mold it to how I pictured the situation  and in the end all documentary film makers realize in their frustration to extract a plot (due to an overall lack of every detail regarding the situation) that it is best to simply capture the meaning and hand out the lesson of the moment. What did the character do? What did he learn?
It’s critical. It’s being critical of one of my best friends and it’s just hard sometimes.
I never had the intention of making a feature film. I was told “Bring your camera and come over!” We hung out, we still hang out, but now that I have edited every moment meticulously, now that ever joke I make, the ones referring to a time that we hung out, is a product of an editing love affair, whats real? I think I have filmed one night in the past four, going on five months. I’ll be at one year of filming come May 8th.

I want to tell a story. My intentions are almost humanitarian. I want the people who see this film feel that they aren’t alone, that here is a friend of mine who was bon iver, who was an avett brother. This is Louis, The Tallest Man on Earth.

Prevail:
I don’t plan. If I planned shots, if I scoped out destinations, we would be hollow. We’ll do take away shows here and there, thats what keeps it real. What it comes down to most of all is Louis knows I’m making a movie with all this footage. He wrote all the songs which mean he put in all the detail. he sings it loud and picks it out, dishing out how he made it through, and I film it.

Once we feel we’re older, the moment the album is done, it will feel like it.

This is Henry.
Henry owns a small congregation.
The longest production for a Barry Rowen Film
Is gone be totes good BTW!

Dear Wes Anderson,

I hate you now. You took all the good songs. hipsters will murder you in your sleep several years from now having discovered your films.


-Barry Rowen (Dictated and Read! bitch)

BTW

I can squeeze radio scripts out of the palms of my hands with time to import Dean Martin Vinyl and watch Breaking Bad.

Scurred

I've been listening to a lot of first aid kit, a lot of Nico, and periodically watching Nicholas Meyer's "Time After Time" (No relation to the Cyndy Lauper song, sadly)
Present day video of First Aid Kit:
http://www.vimeo.com/6416192


Future Day (The 80s?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KiU5P4ihIQ&feature=related


You're welcome....

Tuesday will be the day that I die.
By Barry Rowen

Darling it’s time a write you a letter because tomorrow will be the day I die.
Let’s not dwell on the subject, okay?
We’ve seen this coming, at least I have.
Whether it’s my fault or the other party involved, is rather unimportant.
Tomorrow is Tuesday, I die on Tuesday. It’s set in stone.
I know what you’re thinking.
“You didn’t die last Tuesday.”
Well last Tuesday wasn’t his this Tuesday and this Tuesday I die. It’s that simple, but I can understand you having a hard time.
I’ve got ten minutes before my nightly workout, more than enough time to roll over some of the good ole’ days with you. Well, where do we start…
We were born on the east coast and searched for a marital existence within the Midwest.
We found a farm to rent where I made a living raising cattle, pigs, and llamas. Of course due to the “accident” I couldn’t milk a cow, but once we figured that out…
Remember that time we dressed the llama up like your mother, yeah good times.
Who knew she resembled a llama quite so well.
From our love affair came a son. I don’t really feel the need to tell him though. This news would only burden him and I just don’t feel it’s my place. Ever since he bought that turtle it seems that he’s had his hands full. I remember his first infatuation with animals at the Zoo when he was three. I had wandered off looking for a bar and left him in the capable hands of a female gorilla. I returned, somewhat intoxicated, admittedly, to find Pepito’s legs broken.
Darling, he’s not a man, he cried for days, and I was just like well, you know what there something called a good impression.
Moreover though, I am going to die!
Sad? Perhaps, but we must take it in stride, perhaps I belong elsewhere.
We both know I am an active Hindu so of course after I have died; my soul shall invade the body of another benevolent creature on this earth.
I have made every effort to prepare for such an incident. Last night I went on a website that Jimmy Whales told me about call Wikipedia. Lovely site, FYI ha. I researched many animals such as the giraffe, antelope, cantaloupe (because they rhymed ha), camel, grizzly bear, and tiger. I feel that I am more than prepared at this point to take on the shape of any creature in the afterlife, which should occur somewhere around Wednesday.

http://www.vimeo.com/10023492

Hands are Quaking

my heart swings like that screen door after we came in from running through the sprinkler
jim handed us those twizzlers-don’t take candy from strangers- well, he was our creepy landlord.
Do you even remember him? He stole money from Mom and Dad, there was a lawsuit.
I remember that day because Mom forgot to pack my lunch. The school offered me a hot lunch, my first, which would ultimately be one of three.
I say my heart swings because the wind came on and...
the song i mean
“The Wind” came on and i was ultimately driven away form this sorry state...
I
I made a genius list. am i choreographing my own self esteem? Maybe but lets not write YES just yet
The chat icon is staring at me in the right corner, not her Barry, mind your theories
there are no girls at ryle anymore.
Where did i spend my day?
Ryle
Fleet foxes always remind me of 42 and black and night and a stairway to an abyss
you think she’s having a good time tonight, you think she self assured, you hope, but you know your feelings are probably hers
she was there three years ago, it stands to reason she’ll be there for the next three. doesn’t it?
unless you move to Wisconsin
unless your father reads a blog
unless Guatemala is one of your top followers

I’ll come to my senior exit project drunk, i swear. I’ll throw wine bottles at Novak and make out with the sluttiest girls as we chant in our muffled alcoholism “California Dreaming.”
I’ll vomit and mop up the poetry when I sober up. T.S. Elliot- was creepy and his voice had the shakes ( Shakes: See: Michael J. Fox disorder).

A Letter:

Dear Bon Iver,

During the last summer I discovered your album “For Emma, Forever Ago.” Needless to say I was entranced, particularly with a song titled, “Flume.” In recent times I have come to the conclusion that these songs relate a great deal to how I was feeling when I listened to them.

Mr. Iver, I feel that you are man after my own heart, thus I feel you won’t mind answer a simple question from a huge fan (I have a Bon Iver T-shirt and I’m considering buying another)(no, it’s true!).


The Question:

WHAT THE HELL ARE ANY OF YOUR SONGS ABOUT?


A big fan,
Barry A. Rowen

i-dont-know-if-i-can-take-it.... part 2

How do I perfectly illustrate the fact?
There are no beautiful secret women anymore. I know every single one, and worst of all they know me. There is no loving from a far, no fawning over. There is a list I keep inside of my head, warding me away from those who are cute, but nuts. I don’t want to objectify, but the well has run dry. There are no kids that get my humor anymore, if they ever really did. I suppose in past years I was too distracted with those who got it and could perform it.
I turned to my friend after we had finished watching the Hurtlocker and sang along with the metal guitars which accompanied the credits and sand like nickelback”,Irack war, it’s Irack, we’re soldiers what? Fightin’ in the war! War soldiers, a combination of soldiers.... in the war.” He stared at me with awe, it was a stupid joke, but he probably didn’t even recognize that.
Hockney said to me the other day how she would like to here me play the banjo for the class sometime. I thought to myself, what would the lyrics be?
“Special Topics! It’s simple math, but I suck at it cuz, I suck at math!
That girl is pregnant and that girl is fat,
and she works at taco bell and she never shuts up,
and I felt like my job had come full circle when she came into Walgreens to buy her first pack of cigarettes (I had always sold them to her mother).
And she’s really fat and loud.
And fuck this class.”
The lyrics didn't Rhyme though.

We had to pick a poem today for English. This is where we take a poem analyze it for a page, etc. We do it at lunch and mine usually contains a picture or a funny title, but more and more I just get pissed off and it’s insulting. Today i just grabbed a picture off Hamm’s bookshelf. It was a copy of some poem Austin wrote and I typed up a page on it.
I sang a song for the student teacher in Euro.
I made a 120 slide cartoon during CTA.

“I wrote a hit play and directed it, so I’m not sweating it either.”

-Max Fisher

I know I'm months away from road trips, yard sales, girls, college, literature, new music, ryle in the AM, but I can still predict every school day. Where I will be, who I will talk to.
Tomorrowisfridaytomorrowisfridaytomorrowisfridaytomorrowisfridaytomorrowisfridaytomorrowisfriday

and tomorrow is Monday.

I don't know if I can take it...

Kim Hockney in the morning, I hate when I'm early.... she talks about how wonderful the morning is, as i wonder why she wear a black buttoned up shirt, with pinstripe pants, all tied together with a leopard print scarf around the waist... I'm only one man... so.ugly.

I will play the banjo. I will play Popeye the sailor man. I yam what I yam
I can't handle another day for being told I need to get involved in the Ohio kids theater program that her daughter is involved in. Then invariably for the 800th time my global issues teacher will ask me whether i think being in Iraq is good. Are we doing what we can for child prostitutes? Can we help Restevicks? What about Darfur? Everyone.Is.Fucked. This world, its horrible - closings thoughts on the class. She has lost all reign, the kids chewing tobacco in the back, on a whim unraveled a poster of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and taped it on the wall.

I will eat lunch and work on power points. I will hate AP English and live on Hamm's promises of the exam's simplicity. Euro. Majorie, I love you. You're an idiot, and I have fallen for it.
Favorite June Madison Quote of the day:
" I don't wanna have to tell y'all this, but when you type in 'Dick's' you have to type in Dicks sporting goods. I mean I really don't wanna have to day that, but they'll block it otherwise."

Breathe on the weekends, that's why I had to quit Speech.

Jackson C. Frank

Clearification

I worry. I worry a great deal about stability int eh future. I dug up some papers the other night in a bench which my mom took in the divorce. She took the bench without looking at what was inside. Over the course of the six years we were a family we accrued a lot furniture, it almost seemed like a hobby of their’s to me. With so much furniture, we didn’t have enough uses so my mother used it primarily for storage. These cupboards, drawers, dressers, they all contained the stuff that was laying around the house.
Card stock
Calendars
Stickers
Photos
Coupons
Tins filled with numerous treasures that erupted memories of humbler beginnings (My uncle’s watch)

This bench had the very same, and like with all other furniture it contained the lost writing of my father. I don’t know too much about his early life after high school. He graduated at sixteen and from there went to college. He was a very Barry Rowen type, know for his humor and wit. In the middle of an October night in the dead town of Alexis his father sat up in bed and held his chest. His wife asked him what the matter was and he believed it was heartburn. She promptly went down the stairs to get some antacids. She returned to find him in distress.
“Are you okay?”
“No”
He was dead at forty-seven.
I’ve been past the funeral parlor where arrangements were made.
“That’s where I picked out the box they put my father in.”
He said this to me a few years ago, before he divorced. He was funnier then, I think, this was a time when we could get a gag going between the two of us, comic genius.
I think about this grand story of a man coming to terms with his fathers death, dropping out of college, falling in love, having his first child, a son. I think how this story is twenty-four years old and the youngest heir, my step brother from Guatemala, Dominic is just about to learn everything. He spelled his name this week and I thought as I have int he past about the time before i could read. In particular I remember sitting in a car in Madison or maybe Jefferson -back home in Wisconsin at least- attempting to decipher a billboard. It’s a large step, reading, there aren’t as many secrets anymore, it’s just the beginning. It starts there, give it ten years and you know when your relationship is about to begin with a girl.

We’re all at this point right now, this turning, I see it in Lou, Brianna, Kirsti, Myself. Where does it all come together and where do we go from here and oh, yes, where are we, and where were we to begin with.
“Tear down the house that I grew up in, I’ll never be the same again.”
I’ve written so much more year after year and a pages document greets every week finding solace in whatever situation. I have pages of reason, epiphanies, transcript, script, ideas, filler...

This boy is fifteen years my junior.
The stack of papers was just that, a huge stack. This was computer paper filled with the processed light purple in of an electric typewriter and notebook paper filled with small comic sans black handwriting, the kind that i modeled my handwriting together because it was simplistic and cool. My penmanship still lack comparatively. I didn’t know what to do with all this documentation, I took it all to my room and my sister was the only one to even catch a glimpse of it. I found page after page of another novel, song lyrics, poetry, and diary.

What do I do with this? How do I use it? Is it kryptonite? Is it brilliant?
It was almost like finding everything I had ever written, and when you find a copy of all the paper you’ve put your heart and soul into, you feel, unoriginal.
When I tell a cheap joke or get antsy from boredom and someone sees it (a girl). I feel like my father, my uncle, my aunt and their coupled sadness. I don’t feel they’re all failures, but they aren’t doing what they wanted.

When do you realize where you are and feel comfortable with your surroundings? I don’t think he’s sad, he has a woman whom he loves now, he has a son, incidentally. What do you when placed in such a situation, all you can do. Raise him!
I thought I’d burn everything I’ve ever written. I haven’t yet. Clearification.

Will this boy come out with pages of his own, will he play soccer, will be a dictator ( that would be awesome, that’s racist, still awesome thought).
I have a blog now which means I can announce my change of religions, my faith in humanity, my atheism realized and not, my love of chris parnell and phil hartman, the way writing the truth about my love can only come out as poetry, my continuing curiosity about Nick Drake and how it will never be satisfied, how northern kentucky drove me to wherever I end up, the girl, the comfort, and the movies that were born out of it all.

School in the morning, High school.
After two five day weekends in a row, I don’t think it can really claim and legitimacy when being in session. Ryle, don’t take yourself too seriously, you’re a girl when it comes to snow.

Chris Parnell

A Monologue No One Bothered to Hear

My name is Barry Rowen.
Yes that one.
I'm not like the others, no I'm Barry Rowen.
You're thinking ",That guy, he's arrogant. He looks like Harry Potter at forty.
He probably listens to Death Cab and loves the movie 'A Walk to Remember"
No.
I'm better than a man I'm a symbol.
people look at me in the hallways and say; "That man looks like he is on a mission!"
That I am.
Aside from my preoccupation with Mandy Moore's filmography...
I have the same goal as any other man.
I long for a love.
A girl who can hum a good tune, one who can break the hearts of many with the simple appreciation for a yellow sun on a spring day.
Here's the kicker.
I met this girl.
And in real life she was as heavenly as I had dreamed.
The parted hair, genuine kisses, and the hug to bond our bodies together for generations.
For, perhaps if this world did survive to any degree, they would learn to love from our example.
Us, their key to success.
It was lasting, it was weathered.
A year and a half and my life was set.
Sixteen months and on nineteen days.
I had never fathomed such a standing ovation.
In a week that ovation sat down.
We walked of stage.
THERE WAS ANOTHER MAN.
An owl...
no seriously




"Weeks spent in a drunk stuper, by all accounts I am a man," I said
but even I Barry Rowen did not believe that.
I was loose cannon that needed a spark.
I slept in memories
and I was hungry for future
There was a scene to be played out in my mind. I would arrive on the doorstep of my fallen love and her winged lover. I would take him aside and say...

"Leremy, we're both men. At least of the male distinction in both our respective species....
I digress you Bastard! Give me back my woman!"
It was uncontrolled and fueled by Bourbon, but the wake up call had not yet come.
He took his wing and with one swift "Thwack" and an expletive filled "Hoot"
I was on the ground.
A brief glimpse of myself in some broken glass lit by moonlight, I didn't respect myself.
I looked just like him, some redneck in a brown wife-beater.
The blood on my lip sobered me up and I walked away.
I sat in my apartment a good while. I went to a movie I listened to some Death Cab.
I wrote a letter to my friend Anita
Then I took a nap.

In a few months and several hours I had moved on.

I am a Man.