raze strangled to adore you would be to smother you and yet i feel you gasping for air 050829 ... that bird over there as i wear no hat, i take my head from my shoulders and tip it to raze all the same 050829 ... raze i'm not sure what to say, outside of offering my gratitude. i have a black fedora, but i haven't worn it in quite some time. these days it seems more at home resting atop the face of an odd glass sculpture. and who might you be, strangled? 050829 ... strangled most likely one of many you've spoken with me before 051017 ... megan haven't read you in awhile.. wondering what you're up to 060503 ... crOwl megan...3three_questions_raze 060504 ... unhinged phoenix_girls on blue 060504 ... raze been having crazy dreams, playing a toy piano, drawing garish, evil-looking faces, finding sticks shaped like firearms...that sort of thing. i don't know any phoenix girls. i know of some brazilian girls, but only one of them is actually a girl. they had that song that just missed the summer. "don't stop". sort of sounded like sade on opium. 060505 ... crOwl the gift i made for you is in the mail. i had quite a time with the post office man, john. in between our conversation about trader joe's, he managed to inform me that canadian customs would kick it back the way i was trying to send it. therefore, i had to squeeze it like a hand into a leather glove. all said, it's on its way to you. enjoy. thanks again for the generous gift of your own music. we still play them. 060623 ... redtree asks what have you destroyed? 070225 ... raze i never even caught your last comment about having trouble with the post office. i've had some fun of my own, man...sometimes i think it would be simpler (& maybe more time-efficient in some cases) if mail were carried via imaginary horseback or something. it's amazing how difficult it can be just to send a simple item to someone a few hundred miles away. but anyway. that's an interesting question. there are certain things/people i would like to destroy but am unable to, due to inconveniences like laws. particularly my new neighbours, who are running a crack house & make a jaw-dropping amount of noise throughout the day & night, making it difficult for me to do much of anything productive or even relax in my own home. the drug squad won't do anything until i build up a case & basically do their jobs for them, so it looks like moving will be necessary if i ever want to get any amount of work done. it's a nice way to leave after spending seven years in this place. but i digress. i'd like to take a hammer and lovingly obliterate each of their faces until bits of skull and brain tissue begin to protrude. then i think i'd make abstract art on the floor, admiring the brilliant colours. for i am a kind and loving sailor. but that doesn't answer your question. i've destroyed a few relationships over the years. some of them intentionally so, with no regrets. some of them unintentionally. i seem to have destroyed my ability to enjoy drugs recreationally, though the blame for that arguably rests more with a former friend. what did steve earle say? "once you're a pickle, you don't ever get to be a cucumber again." i'm probably better off anyway. my mind is a strange enough place without any outside interference. i'll have to think on this one for a while. what i've destroyed... 070226 ... gja ill see your one and raze you two 070226 ... unhinged i think assigning that room the exact opposite function to what happened and how it was making you feel will help you heal from it. lamas say that the antidote to any affliction is it's opposite. so have i heard, and evidenced. 081212 ... unhinged i loved the outtakes, especially the longer ones. how many discs are in your discography these days anyways? 081212 ... raze too many! or to be precise, that "misfits" thing is "official solo cd" # 25. but there were also a few bands and side-projects back in my young and reckless days, where i guess you could say i was the frontman. if you add those cds to the pile, the number jumps to 54. if you count compilations no one ever heard and various odds and ends collections, it jumps again to 74. two of those are double-cds, and then there's the 3-cd mess of misfits. kind of ridiculous. but a lot of it is music that almost no one has ever heard, because for a long time i didn't really share it with anyone. it was just something that i did. it's still just something that i do, but at least now things look and sound borderline professional-ish at times, and there's more of a desire to share. some of the old stuff is pretty out there and raw, though in some cases that's why i'm still fond of it. and part of the reason there are so many cds is because i used to produce them at an insane rate, improvising everything while recording and not spending much of any time attempting to "produce" it at all. things started to slow down a bit once i became more interested in getting things to sound as good as i possibly could, with whatever equipment i happened to have at the time. now it's just that there are too many ideas and it gets hard sometimes to know what exactly to focus on. it's a nice "problem" to have, though i still have no idea where it all comes from. i think those lamas know what they're talking about. it's a little surreal to think that a place where something like that happened was so easily transformed into some sort of haven. then again, putting those shelves together wasn't all that easy. i think some of those things are designed just to give you an excuse to pull out your favourite dirty words. but if it hadn't happened in that room, i know it would still be a chaotic storage space, and i probably never would have gotten around to turning it into something worth inhabiting at all. strange how good things out of bad things sometimes come. hey, i sound like yoda... i hope something positive is able to grow out of the unforgivable thing that you had to experience, if that's possible. 081212 ... unhinged at the moment it's not possible. but with some time it might be as long as i don't let myself get too bitter about it in the process. 081213 ... raze i still wonder who "strangled" was. i have a few guesses, but none of them quite seem to fit. 121212 ... leif I listen to your albums every fall and winter. They've become a permanent part of my process of shedding and hibernating. Thank you for your sound blankets. 130110 ... leif you're quite welcome, leif. did you blathe before under a different name? because i may owe you several albums, depending. i tried to email you, but gmail told me the address doesn't exist. 130110 ... raze jesus. i somehow accidentally blathed as your name. i'm really sorry. i didn't mean to do that. 130110 ... raze i think some wires got crossed with the email business. 130110 ... raze note to self: LOOK AT THE "YOU" BOX. YOU YOU YOU. 130110 ... raze remembers his own name but yes. if you wouldn't mind shooting me a quick email or something...things got so crazy for a while there with all the people i was sending music to, it was difficult to keep track of everything. i've scaled things back a lot, and it's much easier now. chances are i owe you somewhere between two and four albums, and i'd like to get those to you. 130110 ... raze i think i figured it out. i emailed you at the hotmail address. i don't know if you still check that one. there should be an email from a few months ago sitting in there too. 130110 ... leif Haha. I was reading along and saw 'leif' and thought hmmm when did I write that? ;) You can email me at this.leif@gmail.com For whatever reason, I can't remember my hotmail account right now. Also, for knowledge sake, my most commonly used pseudonyms: ethereal, puredream, autumn, and auburn. 130110 ... raze thank you muchly. long-winded email is a-comin'. 130110 ... raze there's a new film that shares this name. it's been described as a "gladiator-women-in-a-dungeon-thriller", and something of a female version of "fight_club" (though the plots of the two films have little in common outside of people punching each other in the face). it's strange when the name you've chosen here and never used anywhere but here shows up somewhere outside of here. it's strange to read about the film and think, "this has nothing to do with me, but there i am, sort of, kind of." it's like i snuck inside the thing and no one knows i'm hiding in there but me, and even i didn't know it until i ran into myself when i wasn't looking. 140114 ... raze (never got any response to that long-winded email, either. ha, and heh, and hi-ho-hee.) 140114 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I never did say that I liked your name here. Tear down and lift up, the paradox of ambiguity. Like Plato's "Pharmakon" meaning both poison and cure (or so I read in an essay once). 140114 ... e_o_i (pretends to be sentimental tenor Josh Groban): "You raze me UUUUP... so I can stand on mooooun-tains..." 140114 ... raze i am swooning! and it's funny — the name was chosen because i was in kind of an angry place and i wanted an interesting word that had something to do with destruction. the idea was to get as far away from anything recognizably me as possible without becoming someone else. i assumed i would write random clusters of words and stay all anonymous and shadow-dwelling forever. i was…not right about that. now i am the least anonymous and most open and "me" i've ever been here, and the name feels like a bit of an odd fit sometimes, like it isn't quite me anymore and i'm just stuck with it because calling myself johnny_west again would feel really weird. then i dig into the etymology of the word and read (in part): 1540s, alteration of racen, "pull or knock down" (a building or town); from earlier rasen (14c.), "to scratch, slash, scrape, erase" and i think, well, i still do those things. i've always been doing those things. i scratch and slash and scrape and erase, especially when it comes to music. so maybe the name does still make sense. maybe it is still me. plus, it's easy to type quickly without thinking... 140114 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Yes, tear down: makes me think of razing fences. Or raising them. You said it: "opposites interact." And appleologies for that "paradox of ambiguity" - if I'm gonna be pretentious, I shouldn't be vague as well. I should be specific and pretentious. Anyway, hello (a dull word on its own, so) - an email message and a mail letter in response to mailed music are planned, in that order.(Passive tense will be repudiated. Bridges will be simultaneously torn down and rebuilt. The sun will turn to sweat and the moon to mushroom casserole.) 140626 ... lux do you easily forget those who disappear? 140627 ... flowerock I enjoy most of the words you share. I imagine you to be male, canadian, pale with reddish sort of messy hair. maybe that s because red blather is red and you seem like an excited child like dreamer person. I wondered if you might be female but saw that you refered to yourself as "his(he)" here. why do I need to know? I am curious. nosey. hi. thanks for the creative words you share here. I see raze as the "name of red" and unhinged as the name of blue, though many of you blather folk write just as much and interestingly... they just seem to stand out and be who I read most often since arriving here. 140819 ... raze you're close! i'm a dude, and i'm canadian, but the hair is brown. it can get messy, though, given how long it is. and i guess i would probably be described as pale, or at least fair. so that's a solid three out of four. your powers of appearance-related deduction outstrip mine something fierce; way back in the day, i imagined mikey to be a beautiful blonde-haired woman. turned out mikey was a guy. i felt pretty silly when i figured that one out. anyway. thank you for the kind words. i'm glad you're here too. there haven't been many new blather faces in recent years. i've tried a handful of times to get some friends to write here, with the hope of injecting a little more life when things were getting really slow. that's something i never thought i would do, since blather always felt too private to share with most people i knew outside of it. the people i introduced it to either didn't get it, or else they said, "this is the coolest thing i've ever seen! i will write things!" and then they wrote a few times before forgetting all about it and never writing again. in hindsight, it's probably better that it happened this way. i don't know how many people from my "regular life" i'd be comfortable with looking over my shoulder here. but it's fun to have the chance to watch someone get excited about the uniqueness of this place, seeing it with new eyes, when it was starting to seem like that might not happen again. there are countless beautiful and fascinating things to read here and on blue, from hundreds of people who are long gone and a few who are still around — there's probably enough to spend a lifetime exploring — and yet sometimes i miss the noisier times a little, even if the quieter times make it easier to appreciate what's already here. so keep making your noise, and i'll keep making mine. :) that i would become one of the faces of this red place is like some sort of crazy cosmic joke, given how much effort i used to put into being more or less faceless. i regret that now. i did get to share some music with a lot of people here, and that was a great thing to experience, but i wish i hadn't been so skittish back when things were busier and there were more people to bounce off of at all hours of the day and night. it's hard to believe now, but there was a time when you had to scroll down forever on blue to see everything on the "recent" page on any given day. i don't think anyone ever thought it would get to the point where red was busier than blue some days. even if it never quite gets back to that level of activity again, i'm grateful blue and red are both still here, still evolving, still just as strangely beautiful as ever. i feel lucky that i get to have this place where i can be completely uninhibited and express things i might not be able to express anywhere else, and know i'm not just screaming into a tunnel. i've had my ups and downs here, but without blather there would have been a lot less beauty in my life, and there are some great friends i never would have known at all. i wouldn't be half the writer i am now without this place, though i'm still not sure i'm a real writer as much as i'm "one who writes things that sometimes have swear words in them". as for unhinged, i think over the years she's kind of become the beating heart of this place (i don't know what body part i would be in that analogy … maybe the feet?), pouring everything into what she writes in a way few people anywhere would be brave enough to do. if she ever wasn't here anymore it would feel very wrong. so i'm honoured that you'd put in the same category with her. and hey, it's good to be curious! i still wonder a lot about people who are here, along with those who've been here but aren't any longer. blather people have always been some of my favourite people. in some ways we probably know one another better than some of our off-blather friends know us — even those of us who've never interacted in any direct way. 140819 ... flowerock I tried to invite a friend here too. He thought it was neat but I guess he didn't wanto write. He's a poetry or literature major I think and write neat things so I thought he might fit in here. I told him to only share it with people he thought were good quality ; ) I am curious about blather people too. in a way though it is fun to wonder and leave them as names and words. I do imagine faces behind the names though, and wonder how close I am to reality. I guess I was close on your appearance, but who knows how close? Maybe you re much taller shorter smaller larger older or younger than I imagine. I wonder what people think about me if anything at all. I come across people from my home town or who have been there while I lived there (on blue) and wonder if we crossed paths... I met so many people passing through tucson when I was there (1995-2012ish). my love who showed me this place has history here(more on blue I guess) and I love reading his old thoughts. any way... I ll keep making noise and listening to all of yours. I think i prefer less action on recent page but then Thats just how it s been since I got here too. Maybe more would be more fun too. 140819 ... leif I appreciate your heart, which I feel through your words. 150827 ... leif Light for my dark days--I'm so thrilled to receive your mail. *crosses fingers for arrival this week* 151203 ... leahcar Your name reminds me of a store in the mall I used to visit as a teen. It's a pleasant memory. Thank you. 191118 ... raze for a name i wasn't sure about when i first chose it and eventually thought i'd outgrown only to wind my around to realizing i was instead growing into it, i'm glad it triggered some good memories for you. 191119 ... raze it's taken me this long to realize i never answered the question lux asked seven years ago. i don't think you hang around here anymore, so you won't see this, but: no. i don't think i can ever forget anyone. even when i want to. and if you are who i think you are, i haven't forgotten you either. i carry you in my heart, and you'll stay there until that muscle has turned to cold clay no longer willing to be sculpted into anything that moves. 211001 ... tender_square long overdue appreciation post. not only does he lay bare on these red walls all that courses through his big, bold heart, not only does his language leap from the screen and shake us into feeling, not only is he the most championing ’skite in our red family, but many of us wouldn’t be here writing right now if it wasn’t for him. full stop. raze either reached out to invite you here for the first time (either over from blue or to blather in general) and/or encouraged you to return to this community after absence. he fought off a plagiarist in 2013 and did it again when they returned in 2014 because he wanted to protect the sanctity of this space. he blathed here alone for a period in 2013 and again in early 2021 with the hope of calling voices back to sing in harmony on this song without end. he’s revived the “beautiful_buried_red_blathes” thread to bring our attention to the fact that there’s so much amazing undiscovered writing on this site waiting to be found again. and, as kerry has said on this site before, he gives so much of himself in everything he writes here. and he brings it every.goddamn.day. raze, your writing is gorgeous, arresting, thoughtful and true. your talent and passion is endless. never stop being you. 211107 ... raze you know, i can't think of too many times in my life when i've been speechless, but this is one of them. i've spent half the day trying to come up with a good response, and i've got nothing. all i can say is thank you, as inadequate as those words feel right now. not just for what you've said here, but for *being* here, and for all the beauty you bring to this place just by being yourself. sometimes i think all y'all are going to make my heart explode. but maybe that wouldn't be such a bad way to go. (and it's pretty fitting that right now my name is next to unexpected_compliments on the recent page.) 211107 ... kerry hear! hear! tender_square put my own thoughts into words more eloquently than i ever could. thanks for bringing me back to red, raze. 211108 ... raze thank you for being here, kerry, and for giving all that you do. my life is so much better for having your words in it, it's not even funny. 211108 ... Bizzar I need to say thank you again here. Your recognition of my name was like a welcome home. As I have said, I have often turned to the blue_pages in moments of need - sadness, loss, grief, emptiness - trauma and depression can be a hell of a drug. Last week I lost a childhood friend, one who was very dear to me in youth, and with him he took so much of me. And to come here, and once again feel home, it was the pull that I needed today. Tomorrow might be heavy again, but today is just slightly less so. So thank you, again. 220221 ... raze i'm so sorry for your loss. and i'm so glad you feel safe and welcomed here. i hope writing offers you some amount of catharsis. everything you've written today is so powerful and beautiful and honest. thank you for sharing what's in your heart. 220221 ... Bizzar you never need to thank me, friend, for kindness, as yours is spread all across these_red_pages for all to see. i love that as soon as a new name pops up on here, that it will only be a matter of time before you create a page for them welcoming them. though, i don't have much of a memory of you from blue (unsure if you wrote under the same alias), your presence is certainly warm and welcomed here on red, and yours was the first name i came to expect any time i would arrive here. thank you, friend, for your warmth and your words. when i am in need of distraction, of a brain break, of something beautiful in a world so unforgiving, it's comforting to know that i can always find it here among the written words of you and so many others. 220720 ... raze i was johnny_west and baby satan on blue in the old days, but i never felt like i contributed much of value over there. i was a confused, angry, lonely teenager back then. i don't think i knew what i wanted to say yet. i probably wouldn't have been brave enough to say it even if i did. this was the place i came to put myself back together after i fell apart. like you, i think too much of my pain has been preserved on blue. the scars might be twenty years old, but it still hurts to touch the places those wounds used to be. something i've always found both beautiful and bittersweet about blather is the way it flattens out time. here_is_now. everyone who's ever passed through is still just a whisper away, even if they're long gone. and in a place where all we are is words, it feels like we've always shown one another the truest versions of ourselves. for a long time, i thought i would be one of those very vivid ghosts. i never thought i'd be in it for the long haul. i tried to run away more times than i can remember. but something kept drawing me back. this place and the people here are now such an integral part of my life, i can't begin to put into words what red and all of you mean to me. i know there are no true leaders here. the way we all work together to shape this space into something much more than a website is part of what makes it so special. but if i've helped in some way to make you or anyone else feel valued and protected, i think it's one of the most meaningful things i've ever done. i love this red_family with every atom of who_i_am. thank you so much for being a part of it. 220720 ... tender_square i'm three days late, but i just want to say congratulations on writing one thousand blathes in less than a year. (see "unnamed" to read his crowning achievement.) you're a marvel. thanks for all the gorgeous words you craft and hang on these red walls day in and day out; i'm richer for knowing your heart and we're lucky to have you keeping us going. 220930 ... raze i've been trying to figure out what to say in response to this that isn't either some sort of deflection of your incredibly kind words or a big fat "no u", and i keep coming up short. so i'll just say thank you and hope it's enough, knowing it can't be. 221001 ... Bizzar i wanted to respond to the last message you left me. i just wasn't in a place where i could. things got heavy, but heavy... i am used to at this point. i might disappear from time to time. but i'll never give in. thank you, as always, for your kind words, friend. 221107 ... tender_square i am continually blown away by how your heart remains open after all the creative and personal rejection you've endured. a friend once asked me how i could still love after another heartbreak and the only answer i could give was "of course i still believe." you and i are idealists cut from the very same cloth. i read your words here every day and am always struck by what you notice, by your relationships with the natural world and with others, and by how lyrically you capture what you're learning and what's challenging you. you are a wildflower blooming in what sometimes feels like the most inhospitable soil. i just wanted to stop here and say that i see you. and you're the most beautiful bloom i've ever laid eyes on. 230611 ... raze thank you for being here. thank you for being you. (also, if you were trying to make me cry just now, you done good, kid.) 230611 ... insouciant I appreciate the kind words you left on my name-post. I have a bad habit of feeling I'm forgettable. Your words make a difference. 230613 ... Soma Thank you again for inviting me back to blather. I find solace here. I appreciate your words. 231025 ... raze there's a scene near the end of "road to perdition" where one character tells another, "i'm glad it's you." there's so much emotion in that moment, it almost breaks the film in half. things have been pretty slow on red over the last little while. i know that's always been part of blather's appeal — that we can be alone together in this hidden place — but on days when i'm the only one here, it can get lonely. i thought this would be another day where i'd be pretty much on my own. but here you are baring your soul on these_red_pages. i'm glad it's you. 231025 ... releaseofwarmth My guy! 240306 ... releaseofwarmth would also encourage/request you remove my duplicate post blathe in stationary_rain_dance mostly because that bitch is long, and also in general if you feel compelled. my own inability to tamper with anything that gets posted here is going to mess with my sensibilities for a while yet. thanks for hashing it out though. I'm sure you were instrumental behind the scenes. what else is new. 240306 ... raze i wish i'd been able to see your initial message here last night/this morning, when everything was upside_down and nothing anyone said was showing up. i would have high-fived you. to make up for lost time, now i gotta give you the full ten. also, what you wrote on that blathe ... holy shit, man. talk about taking something that wasn't much of anything to begin with and soaking it with meaning. 240306 ... releaseofwarmth thank you, and compliment accepted (it's not hard everybody!) but don't undersell the value of what you wrote in that blathe yourself. maybe I wrote more words or tried harder but it does nobody any good to compare the value of yours to the value of mine. they are their own value, like fingerprints being over modest is just as bad as being over arrogant. even if most people find arrogance harder to take. it still ends you up in the same kind of space of unfairness. so look at it as addition not improvement, polite_canadian and carry_on 240306 ... Soma You are a point of consideration every time I read or write here. I must admit, I feel a bit guilty whenever time slips away from me and I wander away for a while. It feels a bit like not just forgetting to go home, but realizing you've neglected the housecat as well. I mean that with ever so much kind fondness for the you I see. If you held a smidge of resentment about it, much like a cat, I wouldn't mind at all. Really, thank you. 241114 what's it to you? who go blather from