creative writing exercise 7H

A fucked-up 14-year-old skates in the church parking lot and says to you, "This is how we pass the time in the evenings." You feel hard-focus, ready to toss away a talent to organize groups, and walk away, seeing people watch you and whisper in passing, "This is happening constantly."

Her plush old van looks crazy in front of my house even though neighbors know bad. She is high and says she has acid. We are older now. She wants to take me to the playground, and I say, “This is perfect.” Her dad had just said, “I know with me you feel less alone, but now you’re going to have to be on your own.” She told him, “You don’t look sleek. You lack style. You look weak.” Then she tells me, “I know what you need. And where to get it. And what it costs.” She says the night will go up in stoges and to start counting.

a quick one about a Motorhead sound-alike single

Last month Wet Denim released a single called "Double Fister." The song combines the heavy hard rock of Motorhead with a little peak ear-worm glam-metal Poison. The vocal is raw, the playing is tight, and the song don't need nothin' but a good time. (That's a Poison reference.)

The sound is a picture of leather, amp buzz, and stacked empty beer cans. Traditional, hard, raw, and catchy. You might find that stack of beer cans in Indianapolis, Indiana, the band's last known location.

 

 

a joke

The police offered to take me to the detox center, but I, of course, refused. Why would I even go? So instead I walked to the library, and this lady followed me. I knew she hated me, so I stayed away from her. She gave me the middle finger from across the street even though I didn't do anything. Later she emailed me a picture of herself having sex with three guys and she wrote a description about it all in the email to me. I did not know what to feel. Then I saw one of the guys in her picture sitting in his Mazda3 in the Safeway parking lot looking at his phone and shouting at it super-hard. We all heard it. She must have sent him one of the pictures with me in it.

 

about friends sending links to shitty music

Good aggressive music has some passion. The drummers are supposed to have a swing, barely perceptible variations of volume and pace. They aren't metronomes. Varying guitar strums, an improvised accent here or there, a quick adjustment as the music moves the musicians. The music has to move the people, not the other way around. Parents worry about their children, some bleach in children’s hair, some court dates replacing violin lessons.

a review of an album I liked—“Fear of the Plow" by noise rock band Haraball

Haraball make the raw, resentful sound of years squandered

Haraball deliver ugly defiance from the pulpit, and its hostage flock, having listened to the band’s unwelcome homily, so exhorted, have neither the time nor energy to hope for the best, for they expend their reserves steeling themselves for the worst.

Six years have passed since last we heard from Haraball, but this Norwegian noise rock band just released “Fear of the Plow.” The sound wears the spit of punk and hardcore and exudes a lack of reverence and dismal determination forged by life’s hard training.

Song structures are simple, but the music brims with texture and tension. For example, “The Squatter” stews in frustration. Having bottled it up too long, the lid bounces over the hiss.

And I like “Prison Cheese,” with its customary reverb and echo on vocals that pronounce and admonish, the bowling drums, the bass like a rolling slicer, and guitars full of subtle noise.

“Fear of the Plow” follows 2019’s “Hypno” and was released September 19, 2025, on the label Fysisk Format.