Song: Doesn’t Take Much

The same weird alchemy seems to be at work in favor of every other capitalist out there. Also, remember, if you don’t own the factory, you are not a capitalist. It doesn’t matter how much Ayn Rand you have read, crypto you own, or how much you love your boss. If you don’t own the factory, you’re one of us.

Song: I Can Be

Song: Something’s Gonna Spill

Song: Alright Jesus

What if Your Neighbors Were Not The Actual Problem?

Allow yourself to imagine the following scenario: You move into a new neighborhood. Your next door neighbor doesn’t cut his grass as frequently as you think he should. You also don’t like how instead of installing a privacy fence in the backyard, he has allowed the small trees the previous owner of his house planted along the fence line to fully flourish, effectively creating a prettier kind of privacy fence. Imagine that periodically your neighbors have a bonfire in their fire pit throughout the years. And—because you have nothing else to do—you call the fire department. Imagine seeing the fire department pull up, and in each instance, you observe the neighbor and the fireman talking and joking with each other (are they talking and joking about you?). Every time the fireman leaves with a good natured handshake. Imagine you keep gaining weight. Imagine every time you are on the front porch you anxiously look at your neighbor and his sons joyfully living their lives and paying you no mind. But still the grass doesn’t get cut as much as you believe it should, and you take it to the local government several times. And regarding the trees in your neighbor’s yard, you state (on record at a local meeting) ‘I can’t see what they’re doing back there’ as the reason this is cause for concern. Imagine this goes on for years, and then one day, your neighbor hires a landscaper and suddenly all of your complaints are gone. You don’t know why he did it, but he did. Imagine this happens, and—ostensibly—you have been given what you want, BUT, you are still very unhappy. You still don’t feel good. You still wake up in the middle of the night and pace around your yard. You still wring your hands and sit on your front porch looking anxiously at his yard. Something is still wrong. You’re still not happy. What do you do?

Song: I Am In Knots

Song: I Been Working!

No Motherfucking in the Dairy

I just heard one of the most impressive standalone statements I have ever heard. It may actually guide me through the rest of my life. I stopped at the UDF on Winton Road on the way to a client meeting to get a bag of Grippos and a Coke. An older woman and a younger woman walked in right behind me. The younger woman was loudly detailing a conflict she had experienced with someone they both appeared to know, and was using a lot of profanity. The older woman interrupted her with the command: ‘Stop Motherfucking, we in The Dairy’. The younger girl immediately stopped swearing and lowered her voice. The reference to ‘The Dairy’, and the authority in her voice, almost seemed to sanctify UDF. It was impressive. And now I know: You do not Motherfuck in The Dairy. Under no circumstances.

Coffee with Portal

I pulled up my driveway after going to get coffee and decided to just sit there for a minute, listen to Portal, and center myself for the morning. It was still raining a little, and was dark and windy. I had parked next to a large bush that stands at the stairway to my deck, and watched it blowing around in the wind. Then I squinted and stretched my head forward. Was the bush moving closer to me? It was. Was the house moving closer to me? It was. I bordered on dizziness as the chaos in the music intensified, and the entire surface of the world seemed to slide off of its base towards me. Was reality unraveling? Then I realized when I pulled into the driveway I had forgotten to put the car in park, and I had just lifted my foot off the brake. Anyway, Portal is good if you’re into that type of music.

Song: Crime is Not a Crime

Saying It Out Loud

I am struggling. As a person who is not always great at self care, I’ve decided to try something new by just putting it out there. I have a bad tendency to try to move through troubles like some kind of stoic cowboy, but it occasionally reaches a tipping point where I’m in over my head. Here are 2 anecdotes from my life that illustrate the issue: 1. When my sister’s softball team went to the YMCA when we were little, I decided to try out the deep end of the pool even though I wasn’t a good swimmer. I couldn’t stay afloat and thought I was going to drown. The lifeguard saw me struggling and appeared to be about to jump in to help me, but I smiled and made a hand gesture indicating I was okay in one of the brief moments my head was above water to prevent her from rescuing me. I eventually made it to the side of the pool, but why did I do that? I don’t know. 2. One time I was getting a tooth drilled at the dentist. The dentist had given me Novocain, and was doing that asshole dentist thing of talking to me while there was a suction thing in my mouth and expecting me to answer. At one point he said, ‘Spencer, you’re making faces at me. Are you in too much pain?’ I pulled the sucker thing out of my mouth a little and said, ‘I don’t know. How much pain am I supposed to be in?’ To which he responded, ‘None’. And gave me more Novocain. How much pain am I supposed to be in? What an odd way to approach that. I’m saying it out loud this time, just to try something different. Also, I’m friends with my sons on here, so maybe it’s a good thing to model. Maybe somebody else might find it useful. Maybe I’ll find it useful? Anyway, I’m going to try to get some sleep now. That shit has been pretty touch and go for several days. Thanks for listening.

Song: The Bus To Sleep Land

Song: Juices

A Thematic Primer of Bring Me The Beasts Albums:

1. Blip!: A bunch of instrumental shit I wrote just trying to vibe. 2. Everyday Jihad: This is a collection of my first songs. There is no cohesive theme. 3. Everything in the Medicine Cabinet Has Expired: The songs on this album are all comprised of bits and pieces of poems I wrote in my early twenties. 4. arrow.: This instrumental album is all about my relationship with the conception of God and whatever that means. The album is instrumental because I don’t believe it’s appropriate to convey feelings and thoughts about The Devine in words. 5. Antarctica: The bottom line is that in my mid teens I fell down the Lovecraft rabbit hole, and this instrumental album is my imagined soundtrack to a movie about a group of explorers who head to Antarctica and find out some horrible truths, ie, my soundtrack to At The Mountains of Madness. 6. Exiting The Butcher Shop: This album is about me dealing with me. If there are any Freudians out there, this is the one to analyze. 7. Unlove: This album is about experiencing, surviving, and coming out the other side of divorce feeling stronger and knowing yourself better. 8. We All Go Through It: I am too close to this material to ascribe an overarching theme to it. I really just tried to write good songs and paid more attention to making good music and being more intentional about production. This album, in a way, is about the constant mantra I have in my mind of ‘do the work, ignore the noise’. 9. I Did The Best I Could: I have made 8 albums in 1 year. This is the best of what I accomplished with my meager human talent, presented to you in full earnestness.

Song: It Is Staring You Right in the Face

Song: The Sun Is Always Exploding

The Shape Of Revolution Music To Come

Revolutionary music used to vary from culture to culture and era to era, but we already have (at least) 2 great protest songs specifically about Jeff Bezos in the last 5-10 years (Amazon Prime by Mikey Mike, and Bezos 1 & 2 by Bo Burnham) I’m looking forward to ‘The Best Of Fuck Jeff Bezos’ revolutionary playlist destined to come out in 5-10 years when we are all terminally online and in a shared and homogeneous world culture. I’m sure it will be lit! Also, Elon Musk is a bitch.

Song: Certain Chemicals

Bukowski

“What matters most is how well you walk through the fire”. - Charles Bukowski What a good ass quote. When I first started reading poetry, I was struck by the motivation it contained, and by the kind of stoic perseverance it pointed towards. As shit started to get real in life, I still found comfort in it. It still reinforced me. I have to admit though—these days—I find myself asking, ‘Why the fuck is so much shit on fire?’ This is me using dark humor as cope, but for real, if anybody has something soft for me to walk through or even sit down on for a moment, hit me up.

Song: Unlove

Pizza

The guy bringing out your no contact curbside pick up pizza with a big smile: Hey! How are you doing? You: Good! How are you? Him: do you remember me? You: (smiling, trying to mentally connect his face to someone you might remember, but failing), ah, I don’t know man. Where should I remember you from? Him: high school! (Sees you trying to make the connection but failing, tells you his name) You: (not even remotely remembering the name or the face, but appreciating someone being excited to see you and not wanting to be rude) Oh! How are you! Him: Good man! How are you? You: I’ve made a lot of bad decisions. Him: (handing you the pizza) That sucks! Have a good night! You: Yeah! You too! Good to see you!

Song: The Archaic Smile

Song: Eastgate

Song: Roll Credits

Song: One Time

Song: Bringing Me Down

Song: Exiting The Butcher Shop

Song: Borehole

Song: allow. accept. release.

Song: about

Song: rise.

Song: phase.

Song: arrow.

Good Vibes

My oldest son Eliot is such a good guy. He was getting off of his third shift and I invited him to go to Meijer with me, which he joyfully accepted. He played Captain Beefheart in the car and explained some stuff about Slavic languages to me. The social parts of my brain aren’t very active in the morning, so I’m generally pretty grumbly, but his good nature is always in effect, and he chatted pleasantly with people in the store, and then he went into Waffle House to get some breakfast, and I could see him chatting up the lady behind the register and other customers. He brings such positive vibes everywhere he goes. People should be more like Eliot.

Song: Arrive

Song: Humphrey Bogart

Song: Let’s Do Some Punk Rock

Song: Boats

Song: Climate Change

Sing Your Life

I think the biggest impact I have had on my children is that all of them seem to have internalized my compulsion to break into impromptu musical numbers narrating/riffing on whatever may be going on at whatever moment. I’m proud of this.

Travel Restrictions

Ted Cruz = No Fly List Me = Fly AF List

Fortune Cookies

Life hack: While eating at a Chinese Restaurant with friends/family, read your fortune cookie (which is no doubt not a fortune and more of a generic Hallmark card piece of motivational advice) in your best Jordan Peterson/Kermit The Frog voice. If you’re eating with adequately woke people, you will make up in laughs what the cookie didn’t deliver in wisdom.

Incoming Call

I was just laying on my left side in bed, holding my phone in front of my face and scrolling through my newsfeed. I thought, ‘I should get some sleep. I have to be at work in a few hours’. Then my phone rang, and I saw that the call was coming from Gene Wilder. I was like, ‘Gene Wilder has never called me before. I think I might actually be asleep.’ and then I woke up. I was laying on my left side, but my phone was plugged in across the room. I’ve never had a dream that was so boring it became interesting before.

Parenting Tip For The 1%

I’m pretty sure the main takeaway from the Trump presidency is for rich parents, and I’m pretty sure it’s this: Don’t leave it to ‘the help’ to raise your children. Especially if you are always going to side with your horrible, sociopathic spawn if ‘the help’ ever tries to do anything outside of making every day seem like Christmas for them. Or, to get right to the point, don’t have children. The world will be a better place if you refrain from reproducing, and—I don’t know—get really into model trains or something.

Tweet (Parody of the song Hurt)

Bold AND Beautiful.

I wasn’t a super popular kid in elementary school, and ended up spending large portions of summer vacation watching Soap Operas with my Mom. The Bold and The Beautiful was my favorite, so I thought I’d make a little collage of my favorite characters. I was always struck by their monosyllabic, strong, naturalistic first names.