I Made It Rain Before, I Can Probably Do It Again

Posted on February 20, 2025 by max

I finally finished How I Met Your Mother. I think it’s hilarious that this show is one of the most recurring topics in this blog. But what can I say, it’s been an important part of my life. And guess what guys…

***I have to say it***
I liked the ending.

I think I saved myself from the disappointment by binging it. If I was watching it week to week, year to year, only for the last 10 minutes to undermine the perceived plot of the show, I’d probably be pissed too. However, the funny part is that I did watch it week to week way back when the last season was airing. I was 16. I used to watch it with my first girlfriend, Codename: Winterwood. It was our “thing.” We’d sit on the couch at her parents’ house and watch HIMYM together. I loved that, back then – the simple act of sharing a show with someone you love. I had never experienced that before. The lyric in “Losing A Whole Year” about being stuck with the tube didn’t seem tragic to me yet. What do you mean “stuck with”? The tube is awesome. I also don’t know what AquaLube is. This song is awesome!

When Codename: Winterwood and I broke up, we were about 3 episodes from the HIMYM finale. You can look up the dates and it tracks – we broke up a little after mid-winter break, which happens mid-February, putting our demise somewhere around the airing of S9E20 “Daisy.” After we broke up, I couldn’t bring myself to finish the show. It was ours – how could I do it without her? I saw this as some sort of pubescent martyrdom, the proof of my heartbreak, a romantic rejection of the sunk cost fallacy. 9 seasons worth of sitting on that couch was not for nothing.

***I’ll never found out how Ted met the Mother***
THAT’S how much I loved you.

To be honest, I held onto that sacrifice for the next 10 or so years. Any time someone brought up HIMYM, and the inevitable discussion of the contentious ending, I had a pre-packaged response ready to go. “Yeah, me and my ex watched it together, but we broke up right before the end so I never actually saw it.” It became an integral part of my romantic narrative, weirdly enough. I saw that first relationship, and that first shared experience with someone else, as something sacred that I didn’t want to mar with reality. I suppose I found the idea of HIMYM having a bad ending a little bit too on the nose. It seemed a little forced, no? That my love story should end up just as ugly as the show that defined it? In a way, sheltering myself from the ending preserved the illusion that was shattered by the break up. No, I would never have that magical storybook ending with my first love. That’s just reality – I can deal with that. What I could not deal with was that there’s no magical storybook ending even in the most romantic, idealized, fictionalized version of our world. I had to keep on believing. I had to believe this heartbreak wouldn’t be the end of me. I’m only 16 – there’s still another love story out there. Look how many people Ted had to meet before he found who he would end up with. He didn’t let one failure stop him.

***My first critical mistake in dating***
Identifying with Ted Evelyn Mosby.

Watching the show again as an adult, I was amazed at how many ideas of love I had learned from HIMYM. I guess in the 10 years since, the memories of the show had faded, or maybe I had repressed them along with the heartbreak, but the lessons I learned from Ted had remained. Or, I suppose, had remained. Honestly, after my most recent breakup, I’ve sorta stopped believing in the magic of it all. But not for lack of trying. I’ve been dating, yes, and having a lot of fun. Found a few women I like. But none of them that would make me want to double back in the cab and grab the blue French horn. I must have subconsciously started watching HIMYM again to try and remember what that feels like.

It was like a time capsule. I would laugh at Ted’s starry eyed optimism and reminisce on how strongly I used to replicate him. I thought of all the big romantic speeches I had given to the girls in my life. Remembered all the crazy grand gestures. To ask Codename: Winterwood to junior homecoming, I had a friend give her a pirate map of her school with only the first clue mapped out. She’d go to it, receive a clue from another friend, and add it to the map, all eventually leading to a treasure chest in her sixth period Spanish class that I was hiding inside of dressed as a pirate. I didn’t even know this teacher, I didn’t even go to this school. I skipped an entire day to orchestrate this, just to ask her to homecoming. Of course I did – I was in love.

Almost a decade later I took a 12 hour flight to see a girl for about 6 hours. At the airport, the TSA agent was curious why I only had a backpack for a trip to London. I said I was just popping over. I barely slept on the flight – too much coffee. I rode the train for an hour to her place, let myself in, and waited for her to get off work. I was exhausted but did my best to ask her about her day. She was overworked but did her best to tell me. We watched Gogglebox and pretended like the physical distance between us wasn’t smaller than the distance between us on that couch. We went to bed and then I woke up the next morning, rode the train back to Heathrow, and took another 12 hour flight home. Another hour Uber back to my place and slept for a week. I did all of this, just to see her for a few hours. Of course did – I was in love.

My first relationship and my last, bookended by How I Met Your Fucking Mother of all things. The romantic gestures that used to make me feel alive had turned into something that almost killed me. “Losing A Whole Year” of TV on the couch with Codename: Winterwood turned into “Losing Three Years” of a home and a life. I used to do Connor’s homework so he would drive me over to her place after school, just to watch TV. Now I understand the song, because TV became a deadly routine disguised as a last vestige of love. How time changes things. I don’t even feel like the same guy.

The idea of finding someone I would ever be compelled to do something huge for, ever again, seems ludicrous. Even sadder, it just seems exhausting. Why do any of it, if it’s going to end anyways? If even TED MOSBY gets an ending so bad that it ruins the legacy of one of the most popular shows ever made, what hope do I have? I don’t think I have another blue French horn in me. Hell, I won’t even go past Mid City to grab a drink these days. And the funny part is, the horrifically awful unbelievably tragic part is, the less I care, the more dates I go on. What lesson do I glean from this? I used to scrape and claw. I would find someone who lit me on fire and I would do anything for them. I would walk to the ends of the Earth. I thought I could move mountains for her. I thought I could yell at the sky and make it rain. Now I set a $40 limit for a first date and I have to start a Google Calendar. It’s all very sad. To have success in dating is to feel unfulfilled in love. Okay, I can accept that if I have to. I feel physically incapable of putting romance above my career, of putting someone else’s needs above my own. My body rejects it. It’s self preservation? What have I ever gotten from it? What did Ted ever get from it?

***But then I saw the ending***
And I liked it.

I know, I know, people were mad about Ted backsliding to Robin. BUT IT’S THERE FROM THE FIRST EPISODE. It’s so obviously the throughline for the show, especially on a fast binge. But maybe people were too preoccupied with the titular Mother. And I also know that people hated how little time was spent with the Mother post-titular Meeting. But… did they miss the titular Title? It’s about how Ted met her, not about what happened after. I know people think they know what they want, but it would have just turned into a generic sitcom happy ending. That’s not reality, and the show was (at least early on) supposed to be a more “realistic” take on a sitcom, of the winding messy roads we take, on the unknowable designs of fate and coincidence, the choices and consequences that add up in tiny ways and shape our destiny. It’s who we are becoming that matters, not who we become. It was never a show about Ted’s life with the Mother – he’s telling his kids this, they obviously already know that part. He’s telling his kids about his life that led him to their Mother – and that life revolved around Robin. Of course they were going to end up together. Or, at least, “end up” together in the sense that the show ends there. We’re left to assume that, in the language of storytelling, they live happily ever after forever and ever. Preserved in happiness for all eternity, because that’s where the story ends. Perhaps that’s why people don’t like the ending. They actually just didn’t want it to end at all. Because the show trained them to appreciate the journey. That’s the truth of the human experience, I think, or at least the glimpse of it that the show meant to reveal to us. In reality, there is no ending… there’s just things happening. I could never have the storybook small town ending with Codename: Winterwood because fundamentally, the “end” doesn’t exist. The only ending is when we die and the public opinion on death is even worse than the HIMYM ending. No, our romance ended where it needed to. So did every romance in my life. And rather than live believing I’m playing out some epilogue where the end of my last relationship was actually the end of the journey, I need to revert to my Tedness and get back out there and believe that I’m actually looking for The One again. Maybe it’s an illusion. Maybe it’s dramaturgy. But what’s the point of doing any of this if you don’t believe that? Why go on a date hoping to get swept off my feet if I don’t even believe that type of thing is possible anymore? I set myself up for disappointment by numbing myself against possibility. I don’t know. I don’t have the answers. I don’t know how to fix it. Maybe it just takes time. Maybe I’ll just wake up one day and remember how to do it. Maybe I’ll meet someone at a train stop and I’ll realize all the yellow umbrellas I’ve been overlooking this whole time. What other choice do I have? Believe that all of this is meaningless chaos we find patterns in so our brains don’t explode from entropy? Or do I suck it up, dust off the dirt, put some frozen peas on my black eye and yell at the sky again? I want to make it rain again. I know I can. Fate works in mysterious ways, after all – imagine if I had watched the ending of HIMYM, back then, and hated it. I never would have rediscovered it later and it never would have given me the faintest glimmer of hope that romance still exists out there. So, for better or worse, I accept my Tedness. No use running away from it anymore. I keep on trying. That’s all I can do. I made it rain before. I can do it again.

***So there***
How’s that for a speech?

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Onwards

Posted on January 29, 2025 by max

New music, huh. Where do we begin?

Well, I’m releasing music again. It’s been a long time. I haven’t put anything out since 2023, which feels bizarre. Required a bit of a redefinition of my “job” ~

***The lingering question***
Am I a musician if I’m not putting out music?

Obviously, yes. In the time since I last released, I’ve made more music than I have in years. In fact, I had an entire other EP that I was supposed to release last summer (more on that later). Dozens and dozens of sessions. Late night experiments making strange avant-jazz emo solo shit. An entire project of music made on stream with Nico. A year of feelings and thoughts and moments captured permanently in the only way I truly know how.

***A less lingering but still fair question***
Where is the music then?

To answer that question, we have to travel all the way back to “Junk Male.” The EP, not the short film. Now that I can officially say the rollout has been put to rest (long overdue), I suppose I can outright explain my intentions and vision and other things I can only truly reflect on now that the era is over. “Junk Male” was my reaction to the moment “Happy, Healthy, Well-Adjusted” had on TikTok. Tl;dr a video I posted in my garage turned my life around overnight, and it freaked. Me. Out. I was so new to making solo music. My band had just broken up and I was learning how to produce and write and express my singular vision for the first time. It was terrifying. I had always relied on my friends to help me decide what was good, what felt right, what was worth playing and releasing. And suddenly, a song – well, not even a song, the unfinished chorus of a song – had millions and millions of views on an app I had been posting on for 6 days. I was acutely aware, then, of my shortcomings. I didn’t know how to finish the song. I didn’t have a brand for people to attach themselves to. Shit, I didn’t even know if I liked the song.

HHWA came out at a time when MGK’s “Tickets to My Downfall” was in the zeitgeist and fans of the post-MGK style of pop punk revival attached themselves to the distorted guitar stabs and the self-deprecatory-pseudo-flex about my grandma’s necklace. This was awesome and I am so grateful that the song was able to be attached to this wave, but the problem I had at the time was that I didn’t want to be a pop-punk artist. This may sound a bit gatekeepery, but as a kid who grew up listening to the genre’s more left-of-Green Day emo offshoots I reviled even the TERM “pop punk.” I remember a time where referring to that type of music by that title would get you laughed out of a RYM forum. Call me old-fashioned but I didn’t think anyone making genuine “punk” would ever call it that themselves, let alone POP PUNK. I grew up with the idea that if you had to call yourself punk… you weren’t really punk.

Of course, nowadays I have an entirely different view (or perhaps just a more nuanced one). But at the time, I was still mourning the loss of my band (which, let’s face it, was very pop punk). Perhaps I thought that pop punk had ruined my life. Perhaps I thought it was impossible to make genuine homages to this sound without a full band behind you. This may seem strange given my output since, but I was determined to take my solo stuff in a completely different direction. I had attached myself to Dominic Fike, late-game Brockhampton, Aries, Jean Dawson, stuff in that camp. Everything I was making was supposed to be in THAT world. THAT was the kind of solo artist I wanted to be. This was what everything I made during this time sounded like. Everything except HHWA.

To be honest, and maybe this will lift the curtain a little bit, I was inspired to make HHWA after my friend Slush Puppy released a song called “Juliette.” I loved the kick-kick-snare. In my quest for Lorem-placement subtlety, I forgot that songs were allowed to be unabashedly loud-soft and have an indulgent angsty chorus. As an experiment, I made a quick demo using two different sets of lyrics from unused band songs. One set for the quiet verses, and one set for the chorus. I didn’t think much of it. It was just a fun thing to do. At the time, I was still in the thralls of Codename: Emily, so as I was wont to do in my quest for her validation I sent the demo over to her.

***Her response, and I quote***

“Max, this is it.”

This spark of reassurance set the tone for the next few years of my career. I posted a snippet of me playing the chorus from the speakers in my garage and the rest is history. The song, and by extension my fledgling artist project, was immediately placed in this post-MGK camp. And to be honest, I was PISSED. Didn’t they see this is supposed to be an IRONIC pop punk song? Don’t they see this song is making FUN of them? God, I was insufferable1.

Maybe I was just self-sabotaging my own happiness. I should have been so excited that my dreams were coming true. But no, like an ingrate, I couldn’t be happy because it wasn’t coming true my way. Talk about control freak. In all of my writing sessions post-HHWA, everyone wanted me to recapture that pop punk magic. I refused to do it. I was going to control my own destiny. So for my follow-up, I decided to release “The Outsiders,” a song I did with Slush and Nico. It was about as different from HHWA as I could manage, but it was a lot closer to all the other unreleased stuff I was making. Remember, HHWA was an outlier. Suffice to say, The Outsiders did not blow up the same way HHWA did. I shouldn’t have been surprised – I didn’t ride the proverbial wave, and I suffered the consequences. To me, though, it was a conscious sacrifice. I’d rather maintain my artistic integrity than pander to whatever preconceived notion the internet had created for me2.

After “The Outsiders”, I doubled down on this indie-chill vibe and released “Fresh Green at the Gallery.” Despite my attachment to this song, it did not live up to the HHWA numbers. In fact, despite being on New Music Friday, Fresh Green kinda flopped. At this point, I was freaking out. Did I make a mistake betting on myself? Was I supposed to just be the pop punk guy? Who was I to question my talents, and more so – who was I to reject the listeners who had changed my life? These fears and insecurities came to a head on my 25th birthday, when I wrote the first verse and chorus of my song “Birthday.” It was a return to pop punk, and what do you know – it blew up on IG Reels. And how did I react? Again, instead of being grateful for the internet, I interpreted this moment as my greatest fears coming true. Maybe I wasn’t this genre-defying musician after all. Maybe I was just the pop punk guy. Maybe I couldn’t escape my nature. Maybe the internet knew better than I did.

***To further complicate the lingering question***
How do you even DEFINE a musician?

I decided if I was going to be the pop punk guy, I was going to do it on my own terms. Again, control freak alert. I had a collection of songs from the last year that eventually became “Junk Male.” I set out to reinterpret them through a pop punk lens. Ultimately, as much as I tried to escape my roots, the pop punk was a part of my soul, and the songs very easily fit this sound. I got a band together – Jeremy, Reef and Daniel – and got to work recording these songs in a live setting. My vision here was that if I was going to make a pop punk record, I would do it in a way that felt like a true authentic homage to my favorite aspects of the genre. Rather than rehashing the Blink-182, Fall Out Boy, Green Day sounds of my other contemporaries3, I wanted to lean into the more abrasive side – the eyebrow-raising rawness of “Pinkerton.” The cathartic navel-gazing of Max Bemis, the dark sensitivity of Brand New4.

What came of out of it was a messy, rough-around-the-edges, expressionist body of music that was released to the world as “Junk Male.” All of my self-loathing, my hatred of the internet and LA that led me to this point, the exhausting experience of my communion with my Codename: Emily muse, all of it wrapped in a garage room-sound, RAT pedal Strat, trash can snare drum, first-take vocal authenticity. I almost killed myself engineering the live band with zero experience, and nearly succeed when I decided I’d be mixing the entire thing as well5. I had something to prove to the world, which is a monumental task, but not nearly as Sisyphean as trying to prove to myself. In the end, after months and months of painstaking work, I did it. I made something real.

***And what did I learn?***

I really didn’t needa do all that.

I succeeded in making exactly what I set out to, but at what cost? The shortcomings of “Junk Male” come from the vertical nature of its creation – all the parts, all the lyrics, the sound design, all came from one person who had hubris but was ultimately unqualified for the job. It was not a fun project to make. The concepts and ideas present in the record felt like toxic sludge passing through me. I felt like I was presenting myself in the absolute worst light. I distanced myself from this feeling by calling the narrator of the EP a “character.” Once it was finished, I was so removed from the thoughts and feelings that informed the record that I had no other choice but to rationalize it as performance art. To top it off, the self-isolating way I created the record led to a deep feeling of loneliness and disillusionment with my job and craft. Getting “Junk Male” out of my system felt more painful than triumphant.

Once I put it out into the world, I felt deeply embarrassed. Not just because of the revealing nature of the songs, but because of my thoughts and behavior. With this finished body of work in front of me, it was easier to reflect on what had led me to create it. It felt foul, sick, misinformed. It wasn’t some sweeping statement on the genre, the state of the industry, a monument to self-refliance, no – it was just music. Just like everyone’s music is ultimately just music. I felt so ashamed for spending so much time making something as a REACTION to something else. Why was I on SUCH a high horse about this whole anti-pop punk thing? Who was I to pass judgment on anyone else in the scene? Why was I so ungrateful? Jesus, did I say any of this bullshit to people around me? No wonder I was so lonely. No wonder I hated LA. Maybe I was a real junk male, after all. And here I was thinking it was performance art.

I feel much better now, luckily. I suppose that’s the whole purpose of making stuff. It’s a way to take the thoughts and feelings you’re unable to cope with and put them into this sorta sensory time capsule so that once they part from you they’re not a part of you. This gross, ugly version of myself is now not myself – it is forever externalized in the EP “Junk Male.” I can finally move on.

With “Junk Male” behind me, my love letter to the genre written and delivered, I can say without a doubt that I’ve gotten my pop punk rocks out. I don’t think the genre has anything left for me. And for all the disdain and contempt I’ve treated it with, it has given me so much love and connection and catharsis and understanding in return. Pop punk, I love you. I’m sorry for all the shit I talked. MGK, I’m sorry for deeming the scene post-MGK as if that was something derogatory. I’m sorry that I made an EP to prove that I was better than anyone else. I’m not. Pop punk made me. It was my first favorite genre. Listening to “1,039 Smoothed Out Sloppy Hours” as an 11-year-old gave me the faintest glimmer of an idea that perhaps I could write songs, too. Pop punk incubated me, pop punk taught me I-V-vi-IV, pop punk put my song on a wave that’s led me to live the life of my dreams for the last few years. Thank you, pop punk.

***I’m sorry***
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to say that without wincing a little bit.

Aaaaand this brings us back to today. Where’s the music? Well, like I said before, I made a whole other EP. It was the conceptual follow-up to “Junk Male.” I called it “Icky Guy.” It was completely finished, in the label’s system, and ready for release. So what happened? Well, to be honest, it followed in “Junk Male’s” footsteps a bit too much. It delved into hip-hop, sure, had a grandiose maximalist slant to contrast “Junk Male’s” minimalism, but ultimately it didn’t feel like a true progression. A baby step, but enough to warrant an entire other EP? I wasn’t confident.

Deliverance came this summer when I went through my breakup. The world was uncertain again, and I was able to reconsider all aspects of my life with this in mind. Will my choices take me where I need to go? A lot of things didn’t make it through the grinder, but first on the chopping block was the EP. “Icky Guy” was going to push me further down the path “Junk Male” created. This was by nature – it was the successor, after all. Furthermore, the songs were OLD. Some of the verses I had written almost seven years ago! The worst part? I feel like this EP still had something to prove. If I’m being honest with myself, I made it with the intention of impressing others with its weirdness and abstractness and boundary pushing. This music wasn’t for me. And suddenly, as if from a distant dream, I remembered what I set out to do, all those years ago, before HHWA.

With this clarity, I didn’t feel capable of spending one more second in my self-defined pop punk world. It wasn’t authentic anymore. By this point in my life, I had touched a little money, been through a serious relationship, traveled the world. I was about to be 28. I didn’t live in the garage anymore. Making “Junk Male” didn’t prove I wasn’t “the pop punk guy” – growing up did. All this time I was pushing so hard to escape from a trap I didn’t realize I myself was perpetuating. It was time to let it go. It was time to move on. “Icky Guy” was a relic, an appendix, an epilogue to a story I didn’t want to tell anymore. I thought it was about time I returned to the original vision. In a whirlwind, I created an entire new EP with Tyler. God bless his heart, we did this shit FAST. And so, the new record feels more pertinent and true to what I’ve experienced in the last six months. It feels fresh. It feels necessary in a way the other EP didn’t. So, rest in peace “Icky Guy,” we may never see your like again. Maybe as a YouTube exclusive.

Choosing to part ways with a completed body of work was the single most empowering thing I’ve ever done as an artist. No longer am I making music as a reaction to external factors. No longer am I trying to control the narrative around me. For the first time since the overnight success of HHWA, I feel like the reins of my career have been passed back into my hands. I accept and stand behind what I am about to put out into the world, and relinquish any semblance of control over what happens from here on out. I made this music for me.

What do I glean from this? Did I actually learn more from NOT releasing than I did by releasing? What exactly am I doing here? After all, the question remains – what is a musician? What is an artist? Is anyone who picks up an instrument a musician? Is anyone who shares a piece of art an artist? If I’ve learned anything from my relationship with pop punk, it’s that using concrete terms and definitions to understand something as nebulous and unfathomable as art is an exercise in futility. No, I’ve learned my lesson. In my year off of releasing music, am I still a musician? There’s no objective answer. I suppose the only solace, the only guiding light, the irrefutable cartesian conclusion, comes from deciding how I, in the deepest most subjective reaches of my overly analytical soul, feel about it…

So, how do I feel about it?

***To answer the lingering question***
I am more of a musician than I’ve ever been.

With all that said, I present to you the new era. “Loser,” the first single, comes out February 4th, 2025.

Thanks for reading -mbk

FOOTNOTES:
1. I mean, I’m writing a blog about it 4 years later, so I haven’t really gotten much better. Your fault for reading
2. In retrospect, there’s a much more nuanced way I could have played this, but I am grateful for this choice
3. No shade – love these guys – just wanted to prove something to myself I guess lol
4. I know, I know, sorry
5. Except 2AM which Nico mixed thanks Nico:)

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Closing Time

Posted on January 23, 2025 by max

There are times in my life where I feel Open to the universe, and times where I feel Closed to it. I don’t think I have much control over which state I’m in, or when I switch, but I would like that to be a possibility. I try to pay attention to which state I’m in. Lately, I feel Closed, and I wonder why. I was literally just open.

***Times in my life where I was Open include, but are not limited to***
The beginning of junior year of college
Early Covid
7th Grade
Like literally just a bit ago

I mark these Open Times in my life by an abundance of energy. I am able to make new friends and connections. Money seems to flow (both in and out). There’s a sort of “lubricant” in my daily activities that allows everything to just slide into place. Conversations come natural, opportunities present themselves. I ride this wave of energy until my social calendar is full to bursting, I’m swamped with meetings and appointments and suddenly I’m too busy to sleep and eat and then.. I crash. I Close.

***Time in my life where I was Closed include, but are not limited to***
The end of junior year of college
Late Covid
8th Grade
Right now

I’ve been around the block. I know the EXACT moment when I Close. It’s like the world becomes 2D. Everything is difficult now. What was once just “making a cup of coffee” becomes like 10 distinct steps – grind the beans, boil the water, pre-heat the vessel. What was once “take a random 3-week trip to New York” becomes “share a railway apartment with someone you don’t know who has the opposite schedule of you, wear 3 layers because it’s 9 degrees outside, live 15 minutes from the L train.” To wit-

***I ask, Closed:***
Why am I in New York, again?

Again, Closed me is left to deal with the choices of Open me. I know, I know. You’re probably thinking this sounds like some manic-depressive spiral, but it’s not1. It’s almost like there’s a spectrum of energy to the human experience and I have reduced it into some sort of binary system. Very progressive of me. I suppose it’s just a way to make sense of the phenomenon.

I mark the Closing Times in my life by a conservation of energy. Making new friendships feels convoluted and inscrutable. I have a stronger conception of money (in the psychological sense). Rather than feeling like I’m “gliding” around, I am aware of every bump I grind against, and every bump I present to someone else’s grind. Conversations are bogged down by internal narration and opportunities seem locked behind a closed door. Eventually, I grow tired of this valley and force myself to fill my social calendar, plan meetings and create opportunities and the cycle repeats.

I find that in the Closing Times I do my best, deepest creative work. I unwind the tangled mess of life experiences and feelings I allowed to wash over me in the Open Times. It’s like the Open Times are times when I go spelunking into the dragon’s den to nab the jewels. No time to think, no time to question – if I do, I’ll psyche myself out. And as soon as I grab the jewels I was looking for, I realize how precious they are to me and suddenly the cave is this dark scary place of dangers and I have to force myself to navigate myself out of it, protective of my prize. But when I emerge, I am richer, and foolishly confident, and ready to enter the cave again.

Of course, in practice, it doesn’t seem as obvious. For example, 3 years ago today, it was the Open Times. See if you can see the signs of the incoming Closure.

1/23/22
GREAT FUCKING WEEKEND

Will i remember this forever? as one of the goat weekends?

[REDACTED RECAP]

lots to do this week. tomorrow coffee w Codename: Ace. that’s about it
– upload video
– change cover art
– plan social posts
– new video skit thing?
– tiktok
– write diary entry thing. about what?
– meet w [REDACTED]
– watch music videos
– tax return
– financial planning/budget
– hit up [REDACTED]. SIGN FUCKING LEASE

so much to do. can’t overload myself!!

i can balance everything. i can center the pendulum.

***Freeze frame – cue narrator***
He could not, in fact, center the pendulum.

Interestingly enough, that weekend was the weekend I first met Codename: Didi. She felt like one of those gifts from the universe that just keep coming in the Open Times. I was thinking about her, today, walking through Williamsburg. We came here together – I had never been to New York before her. It was around this same time of the year. Back then, I only wore 1 jacket – it didn’t feel as cold. The L Train was so romantic to me. Joe’s Pizza was the Mecca of slices. McCarren might as well have been Central Park. But now, three years later and that relationship is Closed, and I’m wearing a scarf and winter gloves because the cold snap makes my commute to the L train dreadful so when it’s delayed I’m screaming! I know the location of every Joe’s and don’t bother with anything but the cheese because it’s the best value-per-calorie pit stop to power my 15,000 steps. And you cannot, in fact, walk around McCarren for an entire day.

I would hope that I’m dead-on about these week-month long states of Open and Closed. I am scared to think that I was, in fact, in a multi-year long Open Time that culminated in that weekend in 2022 and now I’m staring down an equal and opposite Closing Time. I wonder, as I contemplate leaving LA for NYC, am I leaving the Long Summer for the Long Winter? Because right now, it’s fucking cold.

Ultimately, the metaphysical question at the bottom of this is:

***Which do you have control over?***
Opening or Closing?

Logically, at least in my Westerner’s concept of the thing, to “Open” is a choice. To say “Yes.” We live in a world of stasis it is up to you, dear observer, to say “Yes” and ALLOW the river of energy to flow through. However, I postulate this – perhaps it is to “Close” that is the choice. Perhaps, naively, we live in a world of abundant energy and we must choose for our own sake to sometimes say “No.” To say enough is enough. The optimist in me (deeply buried) thinks that it’s okay to step out of the river because it will keep flowing with or without me. That’s the kind of world I want to live in. Today, that’s the world I choose to live in.

***So again, I ask:***

Why am I in New York, again?

Because in a moment of joy and love for life and spurred on by the promise of adventure I bought myself a ticket, somehow knowing that the dates would line up with a cold snap when I would be forced to either slip on the frozen sidewalks or move heaven and earth to bring the sun out and melt away the ice.

And just like that, out the window – a sliver of blue.

’Til next time – mbk

FOOTNOTES:
1. It probably is, to some degree. But I like to think I manage the amplitude of the waves, so to speak, so as to minimize the crash.

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Friday Was My Birthday

Posted on January 12, 2025 by max

I spent my birthday in San Diego this year. I didn’t expect to be here this weekend, but I came down here in light of the wildfires in LA. It’s hard to process the reality of living through a catastrophic natural disaster.

Was I overreacting by leaving? I live downtown, after all. My building is made of concrete and is at least externally is functionally fireproof. So right now downtown is the safest place to be in LA and that’s probably the only time you can say that. Downtown LA gets a bad rap, but I feel vindicated in my love for it during this disaster – thanks, firesafe building code. Down in San Diego, the air quality is pristine and I can sleep well knowing Milo isn’t breathing in toxic debris and carcinogens. So in that regard, I think I made a good judgment call, and feel lucky I was able to choose to leave rather than being evacuated.

The level of destruction is unimaginable, and the under-preparation of our city officials is deplorable. A moment of crisis reveals the fundamental cracks in the structure of Los Angeles, and I am convinced more than ever that it is a city dying at the hands of its government.

In San Diego, away from the hellscape, life is idyllic. I feel guilty sitting on the boardwalk, writing this blog, knowing what tragedy unfolds back home. I have to wonder – if, God forbid, a fire struck San Diego, would it take the same toll? This doesn’t feel like a city whose leaders would let that happen. San Diego beams with pride and the care its officials have for it is evident in every park and beach and free-use third place. San Diego feels like a place with a sense of purpose with leaders aligned with that vision. After a weekend here, I can understand why people settled here.

It’s tempting to view any city as an unplanned hodgepodge of housing and commerce that somehow magically adds up to a good or bad vibe. This is wrong. Think about the extraordinary amounts of earth and mountain that must be moved just to erect a building. The hours and years spent creating a statue for no sole purpose but to be a symbol of the city’s ideals. The collective coordination and focus it takes to put on a weekly farmer’s market. These things don’t just happen. A city is alive only because of its peoples’ commitment to keeping it so. There is an immense amount of responsibility on those in charge to progress the city towards its collective ideal.

LA is an extraordinarily beautiful place. I wrote recently about Eaton Falls and how wonderful it is to have a natural haven so close to the urban jungle. I fear it may be completely burned down now. I remember gawking at the dichotomy of the Barbie House next to the Goth house on the Pacific Coast Highway. Are they still standing? Runyon Canyon is a panopticon where you can see the valley and Santa Montica and the Hollywood sign from one place. Probably gone.

I don’t know if it’s because it was close to the gold mines. I don’t know if it’s because Union Station used to be the gateway to the west. I don’t know if it’s because it falls on a particularly powerful nexus of ley lines. But Los Angeles is the place. There is an undeniable magic to the soil of Southern California. Anyone who has been to LA can feel it. It’s been a creative Mecca for as long as the layman got the foolish idea in his head that he could go somewhere and become an artist. The city of angels is a historic site of life and culture and ideas on a scale replicated nowhere else.

***And what did they do?***
They let it burn.

I admire the responders doing their best to control a blazing conflagration larger than the island of Manhattan. But it’s been days and it’s what, 8% contained? Blame the Santa Ana winds, maybe. Or, blame cutting $17 million dollars of fire prevention funding.

***I wonder who that money went to?***
Congrats on the McMansion!

It’s the same greed that’s been killing every thing that made Los Angeles LA. How many movies are shot in California anymore? It’s too expensive to film in Hollywood anymore, so now Hollywood is in Atlanta or New York or Vancouver. Angeleno Heights turned into a playground for the Silverlake mustache-beanie-neo-Hipster gentry. Lowriders became Cybertrucks and West Coast hip-hop moved from South Central to some white dude doing “Not Like Us” on karaoke night. To be an artist you have to either get lucky in the dance-app lottery or pay $70,000 a year to go to film school and have 4 roommates and share 1 bathroom. You’re an artist – starve. It’ll be good for your jawline. We all have to be models, now, too. The next Humphrey Bogart would probably need a Turkish hairline if he even wanted to land a commercial.

I don’t know. Hollywood is a dream factory but it’s also a business. I suppose there’s always been this duality woven into the fabric of LA. But at some point, the balance shifted. Something happened, and I’m not sure who to blame, but it’s probably no single person in particular. But I’ll personify them anyways and say they took the ambitions and ideals of the people who made LA what it is, and they twisted it and distorted it and bled it dry and they let it burn. No wonder downtown is the last safe place. It’s the only place that’s solid.

I love downtown LA. I love walking out of my loft in the Fashion District and seeing the merchants selling their textiles. You could go on Amazon and buy Gorilla Glue for $15 or walk around for a few minutes and find it somewhere else for $4 cash. I love the Flower District and its flower shops where you can buy a dozen roses from the price of a single Urban Stem. I love that the Broad is free to visit. I love the architecture. I love that there’s a functional if under maintained public transportation system. I love that Molina Grand Park spans three city blocks and on the second block you can take the elevator underground to the city records backrooms. I love that the bars here are old and would never be caught dead on a TikTok trend. I love that the Hotel Cecil is haunted and at least leaves some sense of the supernatural left for us to imagine about. I love that Dogtown has all these bridges and I also just love that it’s called Dogtown. I love that Johnny Knoxville broke his angle trying to jump the river. I love that the gentrification is at least somewhat limited to Geoffrey Harrison Palmer and his obsession with buying entire city blocks and turning them into tacky, vaguely-Italian-in-a-Vegas-strip-type-of-way apartment compounds with names like Medici and Ferrante. Just kidding, I don’t love that. As a second-generation half-Italian I find it weird. Vaffanculo.

For all intents and purposes, the intents and purposes of our city’s officials have been commercialization at all costs. Profit-driven development at the expense of disaster prevention. LA has become a cash cow so bastardized by the opportunists devouring it that the city has become hollow and we’re seeing the consequences of that in this crisis response. Opportunism breeds. A DJI drone crashed into a fire plane while capturing illegal footage that would’ve ended up on some short form compilation somewhere. Millions of likes and shares for a meager $1.50 payout from Meta at the end of the quarter. This is not a metaphor, it’s a microcosm.

Condemnation aside, I feel a sense of hope. I see my friends selflessly helping others evacuated at the risk of their own safety. Thousands of pounds of clothes and groceries donated. Resources shared. Is this… a sense of community? It takes a cataclysm to pull together 500 square miles into something of a small town. The people care. I care. I wish there was more I could do.

I feel sick and privileged escaping to San Diego for the weekend. I feel selfish that I had the nerve to have a birthday in the wake of this tragedy. I love LA, I really do. It represents so much to me and to other artists and dreamers like me. But I can’t help but feel hypocritical and part of the problem. I came here chasing the dream of Hollywood. I am the gentry I condemn. I try my hardest to engage in LA like an Angeleno and not a tourist. But it feels futile when the government does its best to destroy it.

The optimist in me says the light at the end of this horrific tunnel will be widespread change. A renewed sense of appreciation and community. A return to the ideals. But the pessimist says that dream is long dead. If it wasn’t, how could any of this have happened? All I know is, If Blackrock buys the ashes of the Pacific Palisades and sells it to Geoffrey Harrison Palmer and he builds another Vincenzo or Mario or whatever, I think we’re justified in eating the rich. It’s been long enough. We’re artists and we’re starving.

Stay safe everyone -mbk

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Why Do We Still Seek Fire In A World Full Of Flashlights?

Posted on January 7, 2025 by max

I can’t say for certain, but I am 99.9% sure my ancestors – at one point or another – huddled around a fire, perhaps as a beacon of light in a dark and stormy night, perhaps as a source of warmth to protect them from the bitter cold. In the Year of Our Lord 2025, I can assume – but again, I can’t say for certain, as I have not seen it firsthand – many people have simulated this, somewhere in the wilderness around a campfire, or in their homes around a fireplace. Does man love fire, or does he fear darkness? Some days, I lean towards the latter – why else would we have invented the light bulb? A simulated fire that is both stronger and safer than a true fire could ever be. Or, at least, brighter. Remember the last time you were driving and a lifted truck with LED headlights pulled up behind you? That shit is BLINDING. Why carry a torch when you could carry, well, a torch?

***For the Yankees***
Torch is British slang for a flashlight.

Pun aside, the question remains – why carry a torch? What is the purpose of fire in the modern world? We live in a society of neon signs and color-changing smart bulbs that can illuminate any room more effectively than a candle. And yet, there is still place for a candle. WHY? I ask. There’s no logical answer other than that we actually do just love fire, inherently, perhaps separately from its ability to banish the darkness we fear. Anyone who has a felt a fire knows its warmth. But we all also understand its destructive capabilities. Unchecked, a wildfire can run rampant and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Burning is one of the most, if not THE most, brutal ways to die. And yet we still seek fire. Why, when we all carry a flashlight in our pocket?

Each one of us carries kindling around with us as well. Sometimes, when we meet someone special, a spark is created, and if we’re lucky, the spark catches the kindling and creates a fire. In my life, I’ve sought this many times. I love the feeling of catching fire specifically. Once I do, I let the fire burn just up to the point where the kindling starts to feel scarce, then I put it out and move on to the next fire. But what happens when the spark turns into a wildfire that completely destroys not only all of your kindling but also any source of firewood in the nearby forest? How then do you rebuild? How can you possibly face the darkness which you’ve so nimbly avoided by hopping from fire to fire your entire life?

Well, maybe the answer is to just grab a flashlight. The first time you do, you realize how much brighter it is than any little campfire or ember you’ve ever seen. Sure, it’s not as bright as the wildfire, but you’ve seen the damage a wildfire can do and you never want to see that again. Besides, even if you wanted to light a fire right now, all your new kindling is fresh wood that’s still too wet to catch anyway. But there’s still the problem of the darkness, so you need the light, and we live in a world of flashlights, so you grab one.

Okay, we’ve solved the darkness. But we’re still cold. So cold, so numb. The brightest flashlight can never be as warm as the tiniest ember. You can turn on the flashlight but it’s not nearly as satisfying as catching the fire, even when all the fire does is turn into a tiny ember. You’ve felt the fire, so you know the value of the ember, but you’re afraid of it turning into a wildfire again. Does having the flashlight make it impossible to light a fire? Why seek the fire when you already have the flashlight? Well, because it’s cold. But if the flashlight prevents the fire… is it not logical to turn it off and man up and face the darkness for the first time? What scary things lurk in the forest? Why did our ancestors light the fire in the first place? And what happens if the last wildfire destroyed not only this forest but every first and there’s no more firewood in the whole world and you’re going to be dark and cold forever because that was the last fire ever and now that it’s out there will never be light again?

No, that can’t be true, you refuse to accept it, so in defiance you vow to seek the fire even in a world of flashlights because the fire is what’s kept life going since the first fish had the balls to step onto land to dry off. Even in a vast city of lights and shiny things you look for the fire because the fire is real and it’s the only thing that’s going to keep you warm, and you need the warmth just like your ancestors did before you and your descendants will after you and you’re a fool to think any society or civilization is more powerful than the fire because statues crumble and castles fall and skyscrapers topple and flashlight batteries die but fire is eternal and you’re really so arrogant to think that you have the power to stop or put it out because when it returns it will come back and burn up everything up again and again and again until the end of time.

Or something.

***To state the obvious***
I’m not really talking about fire.

’Til next time – mbk

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