At 14, I had already begun to feel like an outcast in both my personal and professional lives. My “professional” life was school, of course, and having recently turned the corner from matriculating lacrosse player into alienating BMX bike rider, it felt like I had disaligned with the prominent, acceptable political party. At the time, the two worlds did not cleanly overlap, and all but a few of my friends from one ran for the hills when I began to prioritize the other.

One carry-over was a popular kid, a sports stand-out, and the son of the football coach. He was a lifer in the conventional system, but had an affinity for the fringes where I now resided. He rode BMX with me whenever he could, and was good at it, and in my opinion him doing so was one of the only reasons that I wasn’t even more severely ostracized.

We got along well- causing trouble wherever we could find it, listening to Suicidal Tendencies on near-constant repeat, and riding bikes like we were being paid to do so. Being a sports kid in a sports family, I believed that things like football and lacrosse must have felt almost like jobs to him, and bike riding (especially with me) must have felt like a nearly-supreme rebellion.

Read On…

Always keep your tools sharp, whether you plan to use them that day or not…

When I was younger I had a few strange episodes that the doctors called “Complex Partial Seizures”. They would cause me to black out for a few moments, and for a short while after waking up, things were kind of blurry. Immediately prior to the blackout, I would see a strange picture in my mind, or flash back quickly to something from my past. Falling down the stairs of a hotel I was staying in with my parents and brother is what allowed them to learn I had been having them; I hadn’t shared the information because I was approaching 16 and knew that they would (justifiably) never give a driver’s license to someone that randomly went to sleep for a minute.

I was made to wait another year and a few months, which meant that I would be a little over 17 when I got my license. I had had one or two more blackouts in the time since falling down the stairs, but didn’t tell anyone because I was restless and felt I simply had to move my life forward. I had already been traveling extensively for both music and BMX bike riding, but I wanted to be able to do so independently and was unwilling to wait any longer.

Read On…

More decoration than obsession.

I don’t consider myself a person who steals, necessarily; Certainly not a thief. But I have stolen a handful of non-basic items each from equally unusual locations, and if presented with the option of a do-over, would handle at least a few of the situations differently.

In no particular order of vulgarity or priority:

#1: Hedgehog from a pet store in Eastview Mall
(Re-handling: Same.)

I worked at the mall for a period of time as a teenager, and while doing so made friends with an interesting girl that worked at the nearby music store (once upon a time there were these cool little retailers that sold almost nothing but music and assorted music-related novelties). She was unusual and, if for no other reason, we got along because neither of us felt any more at home in our weird work settings than we did in our own skin, but we were both really good at pretending in… both.

Read On…

Sometimes writing makes it feel fake, but reading makes it feel real…

The less sense everything else makes, the more sense that question makes. To me, anyway.

When I take my blinders off and look at where and how we’re living, confusion and disillusionment are never far behind. There is a strange falseness to so much of it, but also a head-shaking amount of reality, and I’m not sure which is more disconcerting.

As I walked out the door of my apartment building today (it opens on to a relatively passive street and is directly between an antique store and a fancy hair salon) a guy spouted off “Watch where you’re going, motherfucker!” In his defense, I think he was partially kidding- though in bad taste- and also trying to impress his friend. It was dark out, and my luck being what it is, I firmly responded with “Watch your mouth. Let’s start over… ” and he immediately apologized and continued on his way.

Read On…

Quote featured in “Becoming a Barbarian“ by Jack Donovan.

My dear,

As attraction and hesitation paint their stories with the same blood-soaked brush, my mind is a warm, cold, fearless, timid, dauntless wreck;

The peace and calm I feel are pushily urgent, and the weight of wanting makes my veins feel coursed with something unnatural.

It all rests neatly, for now, underneath a limitless excitement for something I had nearly disallowed, with someone I had clearly misread;

I enjoy my mistakes in judgement, on the rare occasion that they prove otherwise in my favor.
_

My temperature changes before a complete image of you has even formed in my mind;

It is palpable, even though you are miles away, and merely our hands have touched.

It is relevant, because distance lessens force, and familiarity breeds comfort;

We are distant, and unfamiliar, and yet I feel forceful, and comfortable.

Yours,

I was once told of a signature, “It isn’t real if it isn’t blood”.
I believed it then, and I believe it now.

Quickly and quietly, the trapdoor had closed on me. My attempts to reflect on things I had enjoyed or loved were immediately darkened by vicious pain and uncustomary confusion. They would not relent, and it felt like there was no escape.

In the span of a few short months I moved back to my hometown after a nearly 10-year absence, watched a successful business we had built collapse in on itself, and in the turmoil allowed a lifetime of unmanaged mental health issues get way ahead of me. I pushed away a person that would have loved and cared for me forever, lost the house I misguidedly bought upon my return, and left my brother unemployed during the Christmas season.

For much of that time I was struggling with an injury that left me sleeping sitting up with near-constant pain in my back and legs. The surgery performed to repair it did not do its job, and after the pain and recovery of that process, the original pain had barely changed.

Read On…

To those that care where they are, environment is never an afterthought.

What is “Thought Crime”?

“A thoughtcrime is an occurrence or instance of controversial or socially unacceptable thoughts.”

The term comes from the novel ‘1984’ by George Orwell. 1984 is the story of a man, and a society, that eroded into a cycle of forced control, blind routine and ultimately a total loss of free will. Out of fear, the citizens fight their natural instincts to think and act freely, and, also out of fear, the rulers of the society fight to suppress them.

No one on either side conceptualized or realized any sort of progressive or suitable destiny; Their lives began and ended a series of pre-manufactured actions and pre-determined conclusions…

Read On…

Simply closing your eyes, won’t make you blind.

Words as weapons, and weapons as friends;
Once the pen joins the sword, both weak and mindless, meet their end.

There is a gloom that lives here when the weather turns mean, and people either fight it like an enemy, or succumb to it, and spend an entire season in misery. I’ve never really minded it, with the exception of watching how it makes others treat, others.

The drive back to home base was short; A small consolation for the cargo I was retrieving being heavy, clunky, dirty, and freezing fucking cold. Metal pipes, even stored inside a garage door, didn’t seem to warm much past the single-digit temperature outside it. I drove appropriately cautiously, considering both the unusual weather and my irregular passengers.

Driving towards an underpass, I noticed a commotion.

Cars were honking and swerving, in very tight quarters, and for a reason I couldn’t quite distinguish until I got closer. Upon under-passing, I saw the obstruction:

It was a man. In a wheelchair. That had tipped over.

Read On…

There is no such thing as too small a token, when offered with true affection.

My dear,

I find no satisfaction in the unrelenting notion; I wish I would have somehow met you, long before. The cracks we continue to step in may have been shallower (or at the very least, different) had we had each other to watch, before we walked.

There is no use in crying over spilled blood ( …I believe Shakespeare said that), however the knowledge that something proves no use does not keep it from sneaking up on us when we feel of none, ourselves.
_

When confidence is asleep, its detractors tie it down;
The longer its eyes are closed, the tighter its hands are bound.

(I have been… asleep… for far too long.)
_

I want the warm clarity of ‘knowing’, without the cold mirroring guessing; I want factual measurement without fantastical underminement.

I now want many things that I have forsaken, by not caring enough to save them as they were dying, then.
_

You can untie my hands, and splash water (with lye) on my near-dead eyes. You can breathe calm and certainty, into lungs deflated by disbelief, and ambiguity.

Or, can you?

It’s too late, either way. You can catch the wayward glass, or watch it smash, and hide the pieces; I’m not sure which is my destined state.

But, the glass has already fallen, and the only hands with any chance are…

Yours,

Wolf Brigade: One decade, dead.

“Where are all the good men dead; In the heart, or in the head?”

For the few left alive that are actually good, the answer must be, neither.

If I wasn’t looking, I wouldn’t have seen; I’m never really sure if that is better or worse.

Any attentive, creative mind could write volumes (and I imagine even semi-interesting ones) about the oddity and unpredictability of the American grocery store. I can’t recall a trip in which I didn’t see something that, even on my widely-sliding scale, wouldn’t be considered major-league odd.

How we perceive what we see is what keeps the innocuous from becoming monotonous, I guess.

I’ve been forcing myself to stay even busier than usual lately; An often-unsuccessful attempt at a distraction from myself. I didn’t need anything, but wanted ice cream, and went to the smaller of the local grocery stores to get it. Independently owned, single location, and a strange mix of normal things and fancy things. I imagine the hybridization is a necessity, since if someone is spending $8 on a bag of hand-made, organic, ethically-sourced supercookies, they may need to save a bit on name-brand white rice and toothpaste.

The outing was a non-necessity, and I was in no particular hurry. I noticed an interesting young couple pull in a few spaces down in a well-kept older convertible, and waited a few moments to exit the car and move behind them, as opposed to walking near arm-in-arm in the small lot. They would very likely never have noticed; I would have noticed.

Read On…

Greg Walsh, by Mark Twight.

(Originally seen in Raze magazine, Issue #1, 2018)

I over-think. But I am not the oft-seen “over-thinker/ under-doer”.

I think hard about deep water because I know I can and will put myself in it, and that it often gets deeper far quicker than even my over-thinkery could account for. Anticipatory pre-redundancy system; If you’re thinking about a single back-up plan, then the need for two is probably already one step ahead of you.

I did not over-think the booking of a recent trip to Salt Lake City to talk and train with a bunch of people I had never met in an environment I had never been in with a purpose that was completely (intriguingly) murky. When the offer was made, I immediately signed on the dotted line and began my plan. My lack of hesitation speaks loudly to the offerers’ quality and quietly to my mental disclarity.

My “plan” was to figure out at all costs how to unravel the tightening knot that my body and brain had found themselves in prior to making a daunting cross-country trip to talk physicality and philosophy with people so interesting to me that I would have walked the distance had that been the directive.

Read On…

I had no idea where any of it would take me, but I knew with every fiber of my being that I was going to live and die, finding out…

When I was a kid, there were still (and only) home-phones. I’m not old, but I’m old enough to have had the good fortune to experience many now-dead things that required deliberateness and patience… though we didn’t know or appreciate that at the time.
 
The simple act of hand-dialing a number, the tolerance of… a busy signal. The fact that if you missed a call, you may not know until either someone told you, or they called back. Clear to see why optimal communication required evolution, but valuable to recall some of the virtues the inefficiency helped develop.
 
Sometimes, though, one edge of the knife is sharper and more malicious than the other… As is the case with the most important phone call I have ever missed.
 
I was goofing around with the neighbors; Stirring up dust, breaking something so we could figure out how to fix it, or building something so we could figure out how to break it. It was past dusk on a warm spring night, and time to go home.
 
I had missed a call. The handwritten recap said “Chris: 8:40pm, no message”. Then, it was not thought of twice to return a call the next day, unless a specific directive was given otherwise. And just after 9pm… The time had not yet come when a phone call for any reason at any hour was common fare. In school the next day we were sure to catch up on anything he wanted to tell me on the phone.
 
Such was the world, before it became a technological macrocosm of careless instantaneousness and largely unnecessary immediacy.
 
Chris was absent from school the next day. Odd, but not alarming… Until, it was.
 
As it occurred in a pre-device-based-Newspeak world, true voice-based interaction began to circulate that something had happened to Chris. Although I have notes from the time surrounding these events, all they said about this day was “No one knew the truth yet”, followed by “Heard from Meghan. Chris is dead.”
 
The girl that shared the news with me was not someone that would have moved in my orbit, ordinarily; Chris and I were quite close, and she knew that. She was also a friend of his, and as it did with all of us, shock and grief blurred any notion of adolescent caste system or social-order hierarchy.
 
As depicted in any movie on-or-relating-to the topic, small groups huddled together in stairways, girls walked arm-in-arm, crying down the hallways… Boys looked solemn, but tried not to look “weak”.
 
Details were surfacing, but the blur still outweighed the clear. We learned at the very end of the day that Chris had hanged himself in his bedroom the night before. I learned the next day that he had not died immediately, but that his parents had found him, taken him to the hospital, and then lost him. Once examined and investigated, it appeared to have been more a plea for attention than an actual attempt, and that it had simply (and not simply) gone as wrong as any cry for help could have.
 
In the same distasteful manner as followed several other situations I stumbled into as a youth and young adult, I was a different person after that day, and not in a good way.
 
Chris was the charismatic ladies’ man, with the gorgeous older sister and the cool car. His car was the first place I ever heard Black Sabbath, and his stories were the first I heard of… a lot of things. This was my also first look into the vicious unpredictability of the human mind, as- on paper- what happened made no sense to anyone that had ever met him; Especially the friend he had called on the phone, not long before it occurred.
 
I attended the wake, and at that time, had not yet been exposed to such sadness and widespread grief. I had been to funerals for people I knew and cared for, but a kid, taken in that way… In a community where such a thing was, at the very least, uncommon…
 
It was nearly debilitating, and combined with the fact that many in attendance were no more than casual school acquaintances and wouldn’t have had anything to do with me outside of these heightened circumstances, it felt even more isolating and volatile. Since isolation and volatility were already concepts I had made unintentional friends with, I chose not to attend the funeral.
 
Though I’ve lost many friends since, and far too many in far too similar a manner, I have not attended another funeral. I pay respects in my way; I attempt to pay respect with my entire life. I know the weight and gravity such things hold over me, and also how easily they can all join together and drag me under.
 
The fact that we had been made to endure a loss such as this together manufactured a fleeting sense of class camaraderie in the weeks following, however all pieces of the situation drove me to feel otherwise. Certainly a bad habit that I’ve held on to since, but circumstantial unity was never a notion that stuck with me; I isolated and removed myself even more from “conventional” life, and the paths it set me on and doors opened by doing so are certainly the only un-scarring take-aways from such a sad and overwhelming event.
 
I liken the psychological aftermath of such a thing to the storied BB lodged in the knuckle; Everything still mostly functional, but routinely painful, and truly unforgettable.
 
All aspects of what transpired were sharp and mean in ways I was unprepared for, and also as confusing and troublesome as they were avoidable; By me (maybe).
 
We’ll never know. But rest assured, I’ll always wonder.
 

-ist: A suffix of nouns, denoting a person who practices or is concerned with something, or holds certain principles, doctrines, etc. (apologist; dramatist; machinist; novelist; realist… )

Everyone’s gut talks to them differently; I’m still not sure whether the way mine communicates is a blessing or a curse.

I moved to California in January of 1999 to work at what could be considered the only “real” job I’ve ever had. I’ve never not worked- I started when I was 15 and haven’t stopped since- but it has always been for either small companies, for myself, or in a placeholder-type position while I was occupied (or about to be…) with travel for bike riding or music.

Moving to the LA area from my hometown of Rochester, New York for a real job was a decision I did not take lightly, and once made I had no intention of putting in a simply mediocre run at it. As soon as the amazing opportunity presented itself I took it, and the heartache of leaving my family, friends, and hometown was matched and possibly even overshadowed by the clarity I felt towards the potential magnitude of the situation I was entering. Working for a major bike company (among some of my childhood heroes) was something I never could have imagined would lead me into the murky and dysfunctional situations I would later come upon.

Existing in the action sports industry in Southern California afforded me more than a fair share of interaction with people I could neither relate to nor take seriously, and when I saw yet another trimmed, skinny goatee climb out of a giant, lifted Ford truck at a skatepark in Orange County, I had profiled and dismissed it before the boot had even hit the pavement.

Over walked a tall, good-looking, dark-haired guy wearing a button-up shirt with a big fly collar, oversized pants, and dress shoes… wheeling what appeared to be a really nice BMX bike. Unless he had a change of clothes in one of the gigantic pizza-pockets on the back of his jeans, it looked as though he were going to ride the skatepark in an outfit that would have been more fitting at a Top-40 nightclub in West Hollywood. In an industry and region of the country where people were routinely made fun of for simply having the seat of their bike too high, the oddity of his outfit made it a spectacle, and a curious distraction.

Once the ice was cracked during routine exposure and casual conversation over the coming months, it became clear that Andy was the troubled, caring kind- much like most of the people I’ve been closest to in my life- and also extremely insecure, but for no discernable reason. Another addition to the unfortunate and bewildering script: Handsome, extremely talented in a variety of useful ways, and a do-anything-for-you sort. Plane re-routed and new arrival airport is two hours from the intended? Andy will get you, and somehow make the headache into an amusing adventure.

Having a fondness develop for someone you assumed you were going to dislike always seems to add extra depth or deepened authenticity to whatever shape the relationship took from that point, since it was forced to rise from adversity.

He ended up taking a sales position at the same company I was in, and he was preternaturally good at it. His bad habits followed him, and over the next few years, everyone in our circle did everything they could to chase him back to the things he loved and excelled at each time his demons tried to drag him away.

Never discourteous, never disheveled, never so focused on himself that he couldn’t be asked to lend a hand to others; It was his casual day-to-day demeanor and admirable code of conduct that kept anyone from noticing that he was drowning.

He had moved into a room in the beautiful home of a friend and co-worker of ours, and the hope was that the proximity to normalcy would help him out of the dark, but it did not appear to be working. After receiving a frantic call, I hurried over to the house and found Andy in his room, with a loaded gun to his throat.

I believe strongly that the pure discourtesy of me being forced to intervene was the deterrent he needed that day, coupled with not wanting to disappoint someone that had put faith, time, and effort into him in both personal and professional realms. I was not afraid for my safety while intervening, as no matter how convoluted his mind was I knew he would never harm me, but I was enormously fearful of mishandling something so volatile.

It took several significant missteps and some pretty flagrant irresponsibility for the owners of the company to intervene, though when they finally did, I was tasked with delivering the news. I told them he was really struggling, had a lot of support within the company, and really needed the stability the job provided, but “risk” vs. “reward” for careless people that only see black, white, and green looked a lot different than it did to me; No professional risk could be outweighed by the potential of personal reward.

I was ordered to fire Andy, on a Friday afternoon, as per the handbook. Another co-worker was made to be in attendance as well, but I said the words, and knew it to be a mistake in both fact and conscience before I had even begun the wrong-minded task. The twists and pitfalls and gravity of what was unfolding within the company, and the amount of daunting-but- positive things I was spearheading, infused pressure to tow the company line even though I knew in heart and head that it was wrong. If I had flat-out refused, I believe many of the valuable projects we had in the works would have suffered; That presents as nothing more than trite, weak-minded justification, now with all things considered.

I fired Andy, and he killed himself the next day.

If humanity’s blight of selfishness that I had stood against and written about throughout my entire young adult life and avoided in all aspects of my “career” could manifest in such a profound way by my hand, there was a chance (at least in my mind) that I had been mistaken about the strength of my conviction to a self-less path. In a time when the questioning I was doing of myself was already nothing short of debilitating, adding that level of self-doubt to the list taught me some lessons in darkness that I definitely did not need to learn.

The end result is the end result. Of course there is rational discussion and point/ counterpoint conversation that could be had, but they would all end with the commiserators eyes on the ground, shoulders lazily shrugged, while the simple truth remains:

Were there other serious factors in play? Yes.

Had they all performed their uprising and been put back down, time and time again, with Andy’s life impacted but intact? Yes.

Did I cut the final fray of tightrope that resulted in the loss of that life?

Yes.

Was it possibly just a slight tipping of the already-in-motion “Hand of Fate”, and not an unexpected shove off of a seemingly stable ledge?

Anything is possible.

It is a possibility that he had planned it all along, and regardless of how his week went, Saturday night he was going to make damn sure of how the next one started.

But.

Hypothesis does not ease guilt or sorrow, and compartmentalizing the negative (especially that which we carry a burden of fault for) into the “Everything happens for a reason” folder, doesn’t either. There is no new-agey phrasing that can distract from the fact that I fired a good friend against my better judgment, while they were struggling, and he took his own life the next day. I will read that sentence until the day I die and never feel even 1% better about it than I do right now.

I’ve made a self-preservation-measure of peace with my mistake, but that doesn’t mean it will ever sit still, or play nice; As it shouldn’t.

Close friends, appreciated acquaintances from underground culture, people I looked up to for many of the same madnesses and idiosyncrasies that led them down their path to self-destruction…

The self-guided hand of doom has not discriminated in my life, and instead of the impact of the blows softening (as many tend to do with time), it now all just seems more horrible, and somehow, avoidable.

Several such situations have affected me in ways I still feel every day, but even the heavy ones can’t hold a candle to the heartbreak and self-scrutiny that resulted from the loss of my friend Andy.

A still-treasured gift; A reminder, a decoration, a warning, a weapon… A thing-of-no-thing.

Originally published in ‘Devotion Magazine’ Issue #2, in October of 2021. Thank you to all involved for presenting it so beautifully.

______________________________________________________

My path to strength was not born of a hunger to be physically strong.
I rode BMX bikes all the time, I ran around the city, carried equipment, played outside… I was strong enough to do what I was doing, and early on, that seemed like plenty.

I had several cold glasses of weakness splashed in my face as a kid;
One that sent me back to the shallow end was an unprovoked group beating simply for being different, and being left to fend for myself in a strange city, injured, when it was over.

“Weakness” now had an archetype and a face, and in my mind… it was, me.

“I was lucky it wasn’t worse”, says the unprepared fool, to himself; While there are occasions for hope and luck, they are not when the chips are down in ways involving true risk and potential harm. At 15, and with no perspective on that fact, I was made to learn.

My perspective shifted instantly; Things like training weren’t even remotely near my radar yet, so I stacked the “strength” deck with observational obsession, and weapons. There has not been a day since I was 15 and beaten by those four strangers in the back of a van that I have not had something weaponizable on my person; Much different however, as I learned far later, is the art of knowing what that actually means, and how intensely fallible it truly can be. Again- luck, is not a bankable entity.

My mind had begun to sharpen, by demand not request, and it was frequently put to the test. I was in over my head more often than I care to remember or share as a teenager, often voluntarily and with righteous intentions, but upside-down nonetheless. I learned a lot, and “strengthened” in many unconventional ways, while also developing what I now know to be many significant dysfunctions and insecurities.

My youthful path was crooked but straight, and the next snag I hit took any straws-and-sticks strength I had pieced together and toppled it as if it had never stood at all.

In a nationally publicized case, a 4-year-old girl was kidnapped from her front yard in a suburb of Rochester, and a massive search ensued. I worked at a health food store in the mall at the time, and in the interest of brevity (and also since the story is outlined in detail elsewhere) I will simply say that the man that kidnapped and killed her, worked beside me. Day in, day out, the day before, and the day after he took her.

I had driven him to his home, I had heard his depraved stories, I had marveled at his unnerving idiosyncrasies, I had met his wife and son, I had covered his shifts. And I had… missed it. And when I learned it- after a significant period of time and via the local news- I was broken by it. In some ways, I still am.

Strength and confidence were no longer bolstered with a fistfight, or a bike sprint to avoid the cops, or getting up to ride again after falling down hard; Those things merely felt like reprieves, like the barrier-to-entry for even a moment of clarity or sanity.

My weakness was now a black hole of self-disbelief; I had pursued these paths of integrity, I had chosen to walk against the grain, I had routinely come to the aid of those in jeopardy… But yet, when it really counted, I might as well have had both eyes closed.
_____________________________

Perspective on my purpose and existence shifted in the year following the circumstances shared above. I have my brother to credit for dissuading me from a path of revenge I was calmly and strategically set on, and once I had reconciled his correctness, I set about correcting myself.

There is often only one way to be sure something you do not want to happen again, does not, and it is doing everything in your human power to forcefully ensure that it does not.

I did not want to be attacked again, without at very least being able to offer suitable response. I did not want any manner of oversight or ignorance or observational failure to prove costly to anyone close to me. I was just a normal kid, but now very much felt like I had a responsibility:

To be strong.

None of it, I took lightly. I ran shows in Rochester, and even when they weren’t, they were safe.

I rode my bike at all hours of the night with all manner of less-observant types for years, and even when they weren’t, they were safe.

I wasn’t particularly tough, I had no other trick up my sleeve, I just simply watched… all the time… and would rather have gone down at any cost than let harm befall, and been left to reconcile.

My strength became my focus and will; Much later, with the addition of intentional physicality, I learned the value of aligning all three. Later yet, I now preach what I practice, and live by what I teach.

I will never be the physically strongest among us, and I will never again be tougher than I have been in the past; Because strength has never been a singular novelty for me- nor, has it ever come easy- I know I will also never be anything less than the person in the room willing to go to any length to preserve the safety of the others in it, and that if one pillar of my strength breaks, I have painstakingly and redundantly build others to fall back on.

I have seen many with simple muscles, fall to those with thicker, harder mettle… And those with “undefeated minds”, but unkept bodies, topple to a strong breeze.

There must be a nearly-dysfunctional level of entwinement in order to ensure that any thread of strength will bind to the others, when holes have begun to appear, and no matter the weather.

_______________________________________________________

‘Pound the base until it no longer shows wear,
recognize and repeat the hits that landed the hardest,
and tie it all together with the desire and fire to do it all again- Forever.

Foundation – Skill – Will:

Three-headed serpent, all equally valuable, with infinite variables,
and each much less fearsome minus the others.’

War of Attrition is a project I’ve worked on since 1999.

There was a brief period in, I believe, 2002 when I pulled the website down for a bit, because I had done some grassroots promotion in California (stickers in different strategic places, little flyers in other notable ones) and it had gained more traction than I was comfortable with.

Shortly after, I got my head straight and it has been up, since.

In 2019, I turned many of what I believe to be the stand-out stories and pieces of writing into an actual book; As vain and odd as it is to see yourself drawn, and significant chapters of your life in illustration, I asked two of my talented friends- Paul Waggener and Michael Childers- to bring an element of the stories to “life”. Pictured above and below are two piece of Paul’s artwork.

There was a period of about five years- maybe 1992 until 1997- where things were just… Too fucking much.
I believe at any point during, I could have ended up somewhere bad, nowhere at all, or completely gone.
Many of the significant stories from that period are featured on this site and in the book; Many others are not.

I had my tires slashed at a weird apartment I lived in downtown (that we had shows in, had a full-sized trampoline in, and also had a wedge ramp for riding and skating… that year could be a book of its own… ), and the cutter sent me a postcard about it.
It said ‘Two flat tires and no girlfriend.’

At that same location, I hit a restaurant owner with a frying pan that he had thrown at my friend Curly, because he didn’t like that we lived upstairs, and also threw a treacherously drunk metalhead down a steep flight of stairs while his – 95% naked – girlfriend screamed bloody murder (he was trying to get into our place, thinking it was the party location that was actually one level up… ).

I was robbed at knifepoint at a gas station two blocks from another sketchy apartment, almost fought back, and then three other people stepped into the light from alongside the dark building, I saw a man being beaten with a hammer while on a bike ride just few blocks from home, three out of every four shows we played or booked ended up in some sort of non-minor melee, and I channeled all of it into every time we played a show and every time I rode my bike. It was exorcism. Catharsis. Without those two outlets, I would have been, doomed.

Somehow each weird job I had (health food store (2), pool supply center, skate/ snowboard shop, show booking, running a band… ) was more dysfunctional than the last, and almost as if they were in some sort of competition with each other to be so.

We learned that the proprietors of the pool supply center (a part-time job that a friend had gotten me) were selling significant amounts of cocaine out of it, often even while we were there; Especially considering my sensibilities at the time, that discovery did not go particularly well. We came back at night, and destroyed anything we could- from their vans, to the awnings and signage, and so on- both for putting me at risk, and for having such lack of character that they’d unknowingly put a bunch of teenagers around that type of corrupt venture.

I loved every minute of the skate shop I worked at and helped run; I was brought in to add a BMX line to it, and did just that.

But.

The ’90’s in action sports and such, were not like now. It was not docile and accepted and assimilated in some gross way by every store in the mall. We had people attempt to steal that we would catch and simply lock the doors on, we had others offering anything and everything for anything and everything, there were more soft drugs moving through that place than on the first Bad Brains tour, and there was no less than five fights per week, either in our tiny lot or inside the store itself. It was the still-dysfunctional-but-positive counterpart to the past several places I had worked, and I couldn’t have been enthralled by it all.

Booking shows in the early ’90’s here in Rochester should have come with a Surgeon General’s warning. I was stolen from, threatened (a lot), tricked by clubowners, more frequently than not lost money, even more frequently than that, didn’t make any, hit from behind (several times), I beat the fuck out of people that deserved it and hated every minute of it, and I put on some of the very best shows the city has, and ever will, see.

It was the Witching Hour; Powerful, dangerous, and magical. The bands we had access to, were the ones that made it all happen. Or, at very least, the ones at the tail end of the first to EVER make it happen.

The fact that many of the shows are now storied, fictionalized, and still discussed, is because we were ready to let them be the madhouses they aspired to; We didn’t want them to be peaceful, or clean, or simple. We wanted them to be insanity. We wanted to be able to either control it, or destroy everything. And we did; Both.
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It didn’t take long to figure out that if I was going to retain any amount of sanity and virtue amidst these trials and tribulations that made me feel like a freak, a monster, and a coward, a killer, a victim and an attacker, and a success, a maniac, and a failure, I was going to have to do some deep-digging and soul searching, and earn it.