A beer for my dear

My dear wants a beer,

“A beer for my dear” I say

and hand her a beer.

My dear loves beers,

She asks for another beer.

I drink my beer,

And while at the fridge I hear

“Another beer, my dear?”

I give my dear another beer.

My dear drinks her beer.

My dear has had many beers.

“My dear,” I say,

“I must empty my rear,

Do not drink more beers.”

At the fridge I hear,

While emptying my rear,

“a dear for my beer”

my dear has gotten a beer.

I love my dear,

But she drinks my beer.

The TAG theory

Today I went to the library café to get a sandwich and an apple. I’m waiting on a line that’s doubling back and forth a couple times since it’s rush hour, and after about a minute or so of waiting I get to the fruit section. I reach for an apple and am stopped by a man behind the counter: “sir we ask that you please use the tongs”. Innately and internally my first response is an enthusiastic “fuck you dickhead” while I jump up and use my balls to slowly roll the apple down to a height where I can grab it. This might be an overreaction, so I’ll consider using my second internal response: “do you have a disposable latex glove I can use to grab the tongs to grab the apple?” After all, if it’s a problem with another hand touching a place where your hand is going to touch, doesn’t this make sense? But I’m such a pleasant citizen that I go to my third (and most pleasant! Because I’m pleasant) internal response: “why do I have to use tongs to grab an apple?”

He replies: “Well some people don’t like other people to touch things that they’re going to eat. If it was a banana it’d be a different story.” Immediately I’m thinking that in this case—those people are wrong. I have mathematically derived a list of places where this would make sense, or where it could be considered appropriate to require tongs in grabbing an apple[i] (this is an end-note). Since a library at a university does not fall under any of these four mandatory axioms that I have derived for tong-apple-grabbing (TAG)—we conclude that it doesn’t not make sense to use tongs in grabbing apples at a university library.

Another idea came to mind…

It seemed to this man, (or whoever instated the policy and required this man to enforce it) that people who preferred to use tongs to pick up apples made up a “group” and that the group’s wishes had to be respected. I see it differently. Even if they are a group—they are wrong. I envisioned a conversation where the man says to me: “these people have a certain view, and even though there might be evidence to suggest they are wrong, they still make up a large demographic and as a result they have to be respected.” I hoped I’d be lucky enough for a documentary of the holocaust to come on the TV, so that we could both watch hundreds of soldiers goose-stepping in the name of genocide and I could say, “you’re right man.”

This analogy has some faults in the sense that the people who are using tongs to pick up apples aren’t doing the same sort of “harm” as Hitler did to the Jewish or Gypsy people. But I would like to make sure it is understood that there is concrete and tangible harm being done to me in this case. No, it is not nearly as bad as the holocaust—it’s hardly a comparison. But it is bad. Tonight I will lose at least an hour of sleep thinking about this (at the very least) and other things like this. Tomorrow I will lose another hour, on an issue the same or philosophically comparable to this. These things have happened for years. 1 hour * 7 hours (a week) = 7 hours lost. 7 hours * 4 = 28 hours (a month). 28 * 12 = 252 hours (a year), 252*5(an approximation of how long these things have been on my mind) = 1,260 hours. Those hours will and have affected my health. Grades, social endeavors, sports practices, societal duties: these things have suffered. This is actual harm done. It’s not genocide—but it is tangible. It is not victimless. If you want to be nitpicky about hours (there’s no way he loses an hour a sleep a night over that), there are many nights that I’ve lost all my sleep over it. So this suffices as an appropriate average to me. One response might be that I should get over it, which prompts my first internal response: “fuck you dickhead”, followed by my second internal response: “(something about my balls),” followed by my third external (and very pleasant) response: “Why should I? And if I do, what comes next if this is left unchecked?”

Authors Note: If you have any mathematical proofs to submit that contradict my four axioms of tong-apple grabbing (TAG), please submit them to:

Sam Fishman

The University Press, Office 116A

Princeton, NJ, 10067

---

[i]

1) A sperm bank cafeteria

2) A malaria support group meeting: a meeting that people with malaria attend in order cope with their illness (and evidently to eat apples).

3) A farmer’s market inside of a dog’s asshole (I realize this example is controversial: one might argue that while inside of a dog’s asshole it might be considered trivial to grab an apple with a tong since you’re already inside of a dog’s asshole, and any extra bacteria from your hand would have a negligible impact on your health as a result of this).

4) A private practice clinic specializing in switching the location of your hands and your reproductive organs. (Again, this is controversial: other tools might be required besides tongs in order to pick up an apple in this case)

First Radio Broadcast

A buddy of mine asked me if I wanted to do a short broadcast on a radio station for five minutes earlier tonight. I had the idea to do a segment called ""On the bluehill with Tony Bluehill" about a week ago. It would be a short broadcast that was funny, accessible, philosophical, and unambitious. I got pretty nervous about it a few minutes before I went on, peed three times, messaged a few friends that happened to be online at the time to listen in for support.

The experience was very nerve-wracking but I loved it--definitely going to do more of them, so if you know anyone in the radio business at your school/neighborhood contact me and I will write something.

I timed myself at about 5:30 when I ran through the ideas before I went on the air. I tend to mumble and speak very fast, so in practice I went through slowly. I ended up taking 10 minutes and was cut off about 30 seconds before I finished. I thought they'd already taken me off the air when I said "i'm almost done!" and "you cut me off!" The DJ seemed to not understand how to handle the situation, I didn't realize I had gone for ten minutes until someone told me afterwords. I'm sorry for any trouble I caused at the station.

When I went on the air I made an intro joke about a little known fact that Nirvana was the son of Led from Led Zeppelin (they had just finished playing Nirvana) and started "on the bluehill". I have a near-transcription of the radio show that I put some thought into and I hope it's enjoyable. I'm told the audio quality was bad and a lot of things were missed, hopefully I can get a copy of the audio one day.

Hello, welcome to the bluehill. I’m Tony Bluehill. We’re going to have a lot of fun. Before I begin, I’d like to say thanks to ----, the ----, and ------, who’s support and dedication to the Bluehill makes this possible. Since it’s our first time on the bluehill, my intentions are directed but susceptible to change, so if there’s something you particularly enjoy or dont, let me know. If I think you’ve got the right idea we’ll work with it. Or I’ll ignore you.

What I want to do, above all, is to entertain. To do this I’ve got a plan—to bring you into a world that I live in on a daily basis. I hope that you’ll enjoy this world. I want to make you laugh, while proposing philosophical dilemmas and ideas that I face in my life. Ok, so let’s get to it.

I was at a party the other night talking to a girl I’d just met. We were sitting at a table. I looked to the other side of the table and saw a large book on female anatomy. On the cover was the title of the book, the author, and a surprisingly large picture of a vagina. I asked if the book was for a class. She asked if my mother drank while she was pregnant with me.

I was in math class and a freshman girl sat next to me. She kept looking over at me, smiling too. Seemed alright. I did my best smile. She asked me what my major was, I said, “hamburger logistics”. She asked me what that was and I said, “any logistics relating to hamburgers.” She told me her friend was minoring in condiments and would do well to be on top of me.

What both of these stories have in common is that they didn’t happen. They didn’t happen in the way I described, but the things that I said happened; I lied about the responses. Did you think they were funny? There’s other things involved in them that we might get to today, probably not. First lets talk about what was actually said. In response to my question about whether the textbook was for a class or not, she said, “uh, ya” and looked like she wanted to be somewhere that I wasn’t. In response to my hamburger logistics answer she said “oh” and decided to stop speaking.

What happened in these two cases, that the type of response I sought to elicit was so different from the outcome? Before I go into that, lets make it very clear what my intentions were: I’m not a predator, I didn’t pick these stories because of a prejudice towards women or math students—that would be foolish.

My intentions were to be funny; and in the words of Larry David, to “elevate small talk to medium talk.” In one case: a suggestion at an obsession with female anatomy (the vaginal sort), and another, avoiding another boring conversation about majors.

So either I’m doing it wrong, or they didn’t want to hear it. I’m more inclined to think they didn’t want to hear it. A statement I’ve heard from people in an attempt to answer this kind of question is: “those people weren’t the right audience for the joke.” Effectively saying, “those people want the same conversations and pre-composed sentences with words like “chill” and “nice”. I think that statement is arrogant. Maybe even unfairly arrogant.

I believe these women were put-off because I wasn’t playing by the rules of how someone usually speaks the first time they meet—I was violating this social contract of conversation in a math class, or at a party in the earlier hours before everyone’s drunk. I don’t know what a social contract is, but it seems I have violated it in both cases. So, is that why it is funny? Because they are absurd things to say? Maybe it is my ignorance regarding the contract in those particular moments? If so, why didn’t I remember signing a contract in the first place? I think that in order to have gotten the responses I sought, I would’ve had to approach these people more delicately. Maybe tell my actual major and that I liked her shirt, and after things had settled down I could pull out a hamburger joke. The problem, in addition to having to waste more time talking about nothing, is that the time may never come: you may never get your hamburger joke. You’d have wasted your time with a person who knows you as well as a doorknob does. That person will never know about the individual things you’ve got to say, hopefully interesting things you’ve got to say, and you won’t know if they’ve got some hamburger jokes of their own.

I’ll leave you with a one last story and a thought. A few days ago I was at a market buying some lunch. It was one of those places where they’ve got food from all around the world. I go to buy a gyro from the greek section. I’m at the cashier and I’m curious about the proper pronunciation of the word so I ask her, “Do I say hee-row and preserve the etymology and pronunciation of the word and the possible cultural and societal ideas that the word communicates, which I have no idea about frankly. OR, do I just say “gyro”, after all I’m probably pronouncing it wrong anyway, I doubt any of these ingredients are authentically greek, so this thing might be a different food item all together, and maybe calling it hee-row would be offensive to the greeks. The cashier says, “that’ll be five dollars” and reaches for my money.

I’m not mad, I’m not upset, at the time I laughed. In life…so far as I can tell, there are people who don’t want to deal with those things, and rightly so. The point is, you have to know when to make the call, when to make your hamburger joke. Not everyone is going to be interested in what you have to say, so use your instincts. Whatever those are. So the cashier doesn’t care, the girl in your math class might. The guy at the bar might. And don’t lose hope either, sometimes things will come up, and you’ll see the world is just as insane as you are. Think about this: a group of people in a boardroom, successful people, people with more money than most people will ever have, decided together that the sequel to sex and the city, Sex and the city 2, the feature film about sex and the city, HAD to be 2 and a half hours long. That was it, “if we’re gonna make this movie guys,” they said, “it’s gotta be 2 and a half hours long.” I’m not sure it had to be two and a half hours long, and I’m not sure any explanation would make me believe otherwise.

So what do you think? How does one deal with these issues in conversation? I’m testing the waters here. Should I tell more stories and analyze less? These are decisions I plan to make, and hopefully you’ll all have some helpful words. Things will only get better on the bluehill: Especially since i’ve decided that the subject for every show will be hamburgers and reproductive organs. I’m Tony bluehill, and I hope you’ve enjoyed your time with me here on the broadcast. Have a good night.

-FR

watching the windows

I was watching the windows; full of droplets of water: each of them rushing in their own direction, orders from the wind. They were running in accordance with all the rules nature set for them. Diving straight down, straight across—sagging. Erasing other drops; becoming smaller drops. Rain on a window; I’m watching the window.

I’m trying to figure out what type of day it is, I’m also trying to figure out what I really think the type of day it is. The second’s harder, and out of the two it’s the only one that makes sense to answer. On the T.V. there’s a scene in rural Ohio, a factory documentary, over 15 years old. The music’s graying, the landscape’s greening and bored. Someone’s talking: “The factory spans 3 acres, that’s over 140 football fields.” I look around and its women’s heads on men’s shoulders, hoodies and blackberries; some people are sleeping too. I look back at the window, everything is happening at once somehow; the people are happening and the video and the windows. Incredible. I look around again for anyone’s eyes, to see if I’m the only one who isn’t asleep.

There aren’t any eyes but I wonder if it’s because I always sit in the back of the bus.

Sex and the City 2

If you can think you know that there are things in the world that are good, things that are bad, and things that are everywhere in between. The moment you declare a taste that isn’t common to society two major things happen, (many other things happen of course, lets leave them for another time) and both represent a difference in personal ideology. One thing that happens is that you become completely sure of your decision to appreciate something most don’t as a result of your superiority in taste. (Intellectually, tastefully, whatever sort of superiority it is, it’s there). Your superiority may not even be something you consider, you might feel that your opinion was merely different. One doesn’t have to say “I am better because of “X”. But if someone appreciates “X” and considers “X” to be good while others do not appreciate “X,” then their judgment is superior—whether it is the individuals desire to be superior or not. I won’t go into what should be seen as good or bad, it’s hardly an answerable question—just be aware that it is a necessity that some opinions be better than others.

Another thing that happens is the personal doubt that comes with a decision that most don’t agree with. Am I just full of it when I say I appreciate something that society doesn’t? Is society more accurate than I am in their judgment of what is good and what is bad?

These two points of view represent, to some extent, every being whose enjoyments come from things different from what is typical in society. The difficulty with these beliefs is that the faith in them has to come from within, society does not support them and thus your everyday existence will continue to contradict your opinions more and more because they are so seldom found in the world. Imagine if the universe were found to really be a big bowl of spaghetti; (let’s assume we had a way to know this undoubtedly). No one would ever believe you, even though you spoke truth. The only thing preventing the truth from vanishing forever is your own knowledge of the truth, (the truth from within), and society will continue to condemn it and make you feel less secure that what you used to know for fact was ever true at all…

Until society comes along and creates something that reassures you of all of your uncommon opinions and ideas that have never helped you in society at all. Society creates/does something so horribly idiotic and ridiculous that you cannot, no matter how many tell you contrary, believe it is good. All of the opinions you have about how few people in the world you could have a profound friendship with; all of the opinions you have about how horrifyingly bad the movies and music have been that no one else had any problems with; all of the times you keep your 5 dollars in your pocket instead of buying alcoholic whipped cream. All of these things never completely reassure you that what you are doing is right—that “rightness” only comes in the beginning and as time drags on you can begin to lose confidence in the decisions you make. This is until society comes along and creates something so powerfully horrible and thoughtless, something that no matter how much you question your ideals, you are immediately revoked of all doubt that what you are thinking is wrong. Sex and the City 2 does just this, and it, and things like it, has helped save many intelligent but worn-down minds.

It’s an objective statement that Sex and the City 2 didn’t need to be 2 hours and 26 minutes long. It’s so painfully obvious that I won’t argue why it didn’t need to be. Some people at some point sat down in a room with this script, with a full team of educated and trained individuals and agreed: “We need ~$95,000,000 and 2 hours and 26 minutes to make this work (wiki), there’s no way we’re letting our generation’s most comprehensive satire of gender roles in society fall short of perfection.” (Or something like that). Either they actually believed that (I suspect that they didn’t), or they were betting on society’s lowest common denominator to come through and make them the big bucks. I’m being generous by saying “betting”—they knew. Their financial statement reveals they made $305,153,249 in Gross Revenue (again, wiki) which means hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. I’ll be generous and I’ll subtract from this total the boyfriends who got into fights with their girlfriends and saw the movie to show how much they cared. I’ll also subtract the parents who had to pay for their tween daughters—and it’s still in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The film, of course, did horribly even in society’s reviews of it; but the money the film generated speaks louder—it enables more creations of this kind. The only use for such things is to make everything else comparatively better. (This is a crutch that should be avoided--it promotes badness)

The next time you indulge in something that attracts no approval, labels you by others as a faux-elitist, and separates you from the warmth of belonging; remember Sex and the City 2, and all of Sex and the City 2’s. Sometimes something comes around where it is undeniable (to yourself) that you are not a faux-elitist douchebag. You simply dislike something that is worth being disliked, and the ones who like it could not convince you otherwise, no matter how many of them there are—even $300,000,000 worth of them.


-FR

Article I saw on the subway today

I saw an article on the subway today, took a picture of it on my phone and transcribed it out.

"I've always been able to look at a woman and picture in my head how her tears would look, sagging from the whiteness of the eye, hanging from their eyelashes, touching the ground. I don't care for most of them, I sit alone watching them and their lovers and friends, and they probably look down on me for it. I've sat alone in small cafes for hours, touching ass-to-ass with all sorts of lovers and friends, watching the lights, and the walls, and them. I never intend to listen but somewhere along the lines their mannerisms tear their way through the carefully constructed environments they're in. Too much nodding, too much smiling, too American, too ugly, too French. Too stupid. It's these mannerisms that detract from the candles, the perfectly aligned bottles sitting at the bar--nestling on racks of wine too old and too good for me to understand or identify, the postures of the waiters and waitresses, the glimpses of Ecuadorian line cooks gliding through the kitchen as they prepare your Entrees.
It takes a different kind of person to catch their mannerisms--to understand that they don't really appreciate the live music in front of them, or the atmosphere around them. It takes someone who doesn't clap at the loud solos from the band just because they're the most audible or because they're the fastest, it takes someone who genuinely cares about the environment they're in. It's the people who are willing to--who prefer to--drink the expensive scotches in plastic cups, the angry bar patrons who slug down hundred year old wines like malt liquor, who understand what an environment is about. It's about enjoying yourself. Do you remember why you're at a nice restaurant with your lover or your friend? Of course you do. You're going to have a nice time, you're going to impress. The ones I look at, the ones who would use a fork to hold a fork to eat their food if they were told it was classier, these are the ones to stare at. They sit uncomfortably, worried about their back protruding out below their necks if they slouch, worried about their legs slipping from their neatly tucked positions between the legs of the table, contemplating the horror of their linen napkin dropping to the floor. Ooing and awing at the leather-bound menus, anxious to show their friends how they will be ordering in french, taking the better part of an hour before they arrived to perfect their accent for their particular choice.
I guarantee the bum drinking something brown out of a styrofoam cup is enjoying himself more than you, wondering what fork you're supposed to use for this next bite, or what romantic line you'll spew next to get somebody wet. And not just in that moment either, that bum's probably sucked a dick or two just to get the money to have that one drink. I bet the cum residue on his teeth doesn't bother him as much as it'd bother you if I grabbed a piece of kobe beef and ate it with my hands."

Enjoy,
FR

Profile

I had to write a profile piece for an english class earlier this year. I liked it, here it is, hope you'll get something from it.

http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/w4m/1698559815.html

Blue

We were walking around New York City streets at any time between midnight and two in the morning. The people around us were winding up and winding down, and there was a hint of oppression the air, which added weight to our steps and deflated our postures. I was with Pierce and a few other friends on a Friday night in SoHo, drained from the nights’ activities, waiting on call from my mother. Everyone felt like I did; no one said anything.

We passed trash bags piled on the corners of streets, watching the occasional rat scurry into a pile of trash, or out the door of its’ studio loft. In one of the piles of garbage lay a computer chair; one of those computer chairs that all of us had seen telemarketers sitting on while they called us during dinnertime, with three wheels and a mesh seat. One of the three wheels was missing, and as a result the chair sat on its stump with the other two wheels locked in place. I walked past the chair and the trash, through the green light across the street, and paused when I heard a yell and turned around. “WOHOAH!” Pierce grabbed hold of the chair for a second, looked around with hopeful eyes and a determined swiftness of motion, and located the entrance to a garage. The entrance was massive, with the ramp extending upward so far that I could not see the top of it from across the street. He picked the chair up, ran towards the entrance, and I let out an elderly sigh. We all did. “Come on Pierce…”


We moved towards him in the garage, there was nothing that could be done to stop him. We all sat on the park bench, watching our child play in the sandbox, biting our nails feverishly hoping that our boy wouldn’t fall off the swing and scrape his knee. He ran up the ramp with the chair dragging behind him, it’s stump scratching against the cement as it bounced on and off the ground, creating sparks of friction between drops. He reached the top, standing long-legged in the skinniest raw APC Jeans one could buy. He was wearing his new Nike sneakers, and was smiling from cheek to cheek, which revealed his teeth and the brightness of his undisturbed youth. He could see us watching nervously, annoyed even, and it made it all the more enjoyable for him, this harvesting of our worries. He laughed and threw the chair in front of himself, planting his left knee into the seat with his right foot kicking at the ground as he flew down the ramp. Every time it looked as if he might fall, he simply let out an excited yell followed by an exaggerated and put-on display of nervousness and caught himself. He reached the bottom of the hill, hitting the curb and jumping off the chair—letting it fly into the street with a crash. He started running, so we followed to keep up—laughing at the awkwardness of his thick, down, multicolored vest bouncing up and down in contrast to his oppressively skinny jeans.
“My motives, (laughs)…well…yeah I was hyper. I mean it was a slow night we weren’t doing anything, we were just walking around. And so—I—just took that chair and I thought it was a good opportunity to ride it. And so I found the most dangerous thing I could do with it—you know, besides getting hit by a car or something—and rode it down that huge ramp. Just to do something fun and outrageous.”


Pierce gives reasons for these sort of things if you ask him, but you don’t really need to. You can see the desire to do something, or to go somewhere in his disposition, and he’ll always do it even if you don’t feel like it.

He grew up in a household in Flatbush Brooklyn as an only child with two parents and an abundance of pets. His father is the head of a veterinary hospital and his mother does a fair amount of volunteering and holds part-time jobs. As an early child he lived in a stable household, and went to Poly Prep Lower School. Chubby, and formally dressed in outfits of his mother’s choice, he spent his days in checkered turtleneck sweaters and khaki pants.

I met him in 7th grade, after a year of being at Poly. I came to school one day to find the front of my off-white locker covered in Coca-Cola; I had been the victim of a prank. I asked a few friends and learned that Pierce had done it. He didn’t know it was my locker, or who I was, he was just flying down the ramp and I got in his way. We started playing guitar through $5 portable amps in the boy’s middle-school locker room until the late bus, talking about music and our aspirations. His home life became messier between his parents, as did mine, and we both looked to music to foster our independence so that we wouldn’t have to depend on anyone at home.

When it comes to talking—not speaking—important talking, there are few better than Pierce. He looks at you with vulnerable blue eyes, his bottom lip pursed neatly under his upper lip, and watches you, waiting for you to say something no one has said before. It makes you feel like you’re going to be someone when you’re in his presence, the admiration he has for you gives a gift of confidence.

Even five years later, without the rounded face from baby fat, he still carries this innocent effect. It attracts men and women, this aura of benevolence. On people in general he said,

“I like people who ask questions, who have interesting things to say. The girls I like; beyond physicality, they understand the feeling. Like even if they don’t listen to some band, I can show them, and they understand it. They can express a feeling that they get, or like an imagery, like if you listen to a song and say, ‘oh, I feel like I’m falling,’ that’s very interesting to me. It’s beyond an emotional thing.

“People give off smells, or so I’ve read. People give off smells that you can’t actually smell, but it’s like a scent. It’s like animals, it’s like this animalistic thing that people still have. You can just smell something and, I don’t know, you want it.”

This animalistic style of life is what Pierce has adopted. It is not animalistic in it’s primal ways, but in its impulsive and natural manner. He believes in people and in things in a time where all most can foster is skepticism. Under this amiable innocence though, lies a serious figure, devoted to a career involved in what fostered his independence, his music. This figure makes its appearance in his band, The Revelry, which he has been a part of for years now. His eyes contain the same blue when this figure of independence is revealed, but there is a stern confidence in how he speaks. He does not act cocky or all-knowing, he says interesting and knowledgeable things and gives no opportunity to be analyzed, only to be heard. What feels right is right, and what looks right is right. His perspective is that of a pallet of vibrant colors, visceral and distinct.


I showed up at 9:30 PM to The Revelry’s most recent and most anticipated gig at Don Hills on Spring street, fifteen minutes before they got on stage. I’d planned to show up early to catch a few songs from the warm-up band because of the notoriously terrible reputation they had built up, but I ended up coming too early even for this and suffered through nearly half a set. Standing with a few friends of mine, Pierce, and the rest of The Revelry, I was almost sure that I wouldn’t be able to foster any energy from his show because of the horrible state of mind that this band had put the entire room in. This is all necessary to know because the crippled state of mind that the crowd was in before The Revelry went on was unsalvageable by even the greatest of bands. In the tens of times I have been to Don Hills, there has never been a more restless crowd of youth—all looking for blood.

The band sets up on stage and the warmth of familiarity spreads throughout the audience, people like these faces, they have seen them incrementally for years and have watched them evolve physically and musically, as if they were their offspring. Everyone is immediately screaming, cheering, and chanting. It’s a sports event. The collective audience experiences a catharsis of anger, and within a minute of the first song mosh-pits and violence develop. The music is barely there, it only provides a rhythm for the brutally primal audience. What is most interesting is the effect this has on Pierce and the band. They play louder, better, cleaner, and with more energy. Pierce hops back and forth with his guitar—all motions are exaggerated, just as they are in the audience. There is a living organism taking and giving energy between the audience and the band, battling for supremacy. With a guitar and a microphone in The Revelry’s hands, there is a small revolution being held and no one knows it, they just feel violently ecstatic.

It was here that it became clear to me where the roots of Pierce’s amiability come from, as I was pushing and being pushed back and forth, covered in sweat, teetering in and out of consciousness. I entered a state of numbness in which I could only describe sound as muted. I looked at Pierce singing for the first time ever in the band while I sat down, recovering from my crowd participation, and I was crippled by the image of it. I could not think of anything, my entire head was filled and overwhelmed with this open-mouthed image. The root of this amiability came from the ability to sense energy, to sense emotion, and to feed off of it and to replicate it for the pleasure of those around him. This sort of aesthetic beauty is seldom found in characters, beauty that goes beyond analytics and symbolism. It can only be described as nature, or natural, and though I could not say whether I was the only one in the audience who felt it, I knew Pierce was feeling it as well.

So where does that take us, the idea that Pierce’s amiability lies in the ability to tap into natural beauty. Ironically it can’t be analyzed, where it comes from, or what it’s purpose is. To do either of these things would be to change the very meaning of what it is, and that is all it is—it. The only way to describe it is to look at the sky on a semi-cloudy morning and watch chaos play out beautifully and uncontrollably without any explanation of order, and to feel overwhelmed and overjoyed by it for a reason that doesn’t exist in words. It is simply blue.

“I’m a huge blue guy. I can’t get enough of it. Depending on the shade its kind of a moody color, but also, you can think of it in a bunch of, I mean, you could, depending on your perspective of blue, it could be a sad color or a very happy color, you know”

“It makes me feel like a wave.”

“It just makes me feel like a wave, I don’t know. I feel like blue is a very honest color. I feel like red is very flamboyant and then black, black is like maturity, I think, and then red is very…I don’t know–I just have a feeling. Maybe it’s just what I’ve connected it to. Like I’ve seen mature people wear black. But I don’t know. Red is a very flamboyant color. Cause, I mean, scientifically with like rays and things it’s just the first color you see always if you look around. If you look in one spot it’s the first thing you see. Everyone is flamboyant, and you want people to see you. Blue blends in. But it can stand out. Once you see it, it can stand out a lot. “