Coachella '05 - the year i went.

so in april? '05 an interesting thing happened. april 30th, may 1st. i took a flight out to california, checked into a hotel @ an indian casino ,and attended the 2005 edition of the coachella music festival. 'course, if i remember right, i just stayed for day 1. it was depressingly boring being there alone so i just kinda hung out on the second day and got outa there. definately a group affair.

but i do have some grainy ass photos lying around someplace of the event. lets see what i can find. alright, so here's what i've got:
















so yeah, getting back to it, april 30 '05 to may 1 '05. well... since i'd've entered college fall '03, that year stretching to summer '04. then fall '04'd be the sophomore year, within the bounds of the months in harrison tower, and that'd stretch until the summer of '05. well... i think i remember skipping a class to attend the show hah. i guess i had to, in order to attend, but then i think the compromise was i got back to classes in order to miss the second day. but anyway yeah, was pretty cool, i saw some big bands, weezer, coldplay, bloc party, all great shows, plus other folks id not heard of before. so it was good times. the amount and type of people out there was also pretty amazing. my dad stayed with me in the casino. but he didnt go out with me to the show. i told him he wouldn't like it anyway. but yeah, it was pretty cool. i kinda wish i'd taken better care and organization with the photos though, as there's alot thats missing that i did get to see. i saw the raveonettes, i remember that, and buck 65. who else... well those big sculptures on display. drums you could play by walking up to them and stuff. pretty cool. of course the merch tents too, that and the water you had to buy but werent allowed to bring. and the swealtering heat of course. plus the cool-factor of sitting on the grass watching coldplay perform in the night main theater. great stuff.

metric spurring on memory of college and highschool

i'm listening to metric and i feel like talking about the past. specifically the college years.

alot of positive things happened in college. i got into alot of new music. all through this site called oink.me, british, with all sorts of different styles of music. and yeah, i would sit in my room, and just listen to music all day long. i used to watch donnie darko alot. and the song... i forgot the name, but i used to listen to that one alot. bloc party was an exciting new band back then. sigur ros was amazing but i dont think i got too into them until sophomore year.

freshman year memories?

well the first thing'd be like, the orientation. i went down with my group, the international affairs scholars. i still had the turban and beard, and got lots of positive questions and comments. when i said i played guitar & music i got alot of positive stuff from that too. girls and guys alike both seemed to kinda gravitate to me so i was kinda floored by that. i was looking forward to having a great year. i dont remember any of my classes from my freshman year. like... i just dont recall what i took, at all. but i remember the room. i was in a building called morrison tower. in the corner. i had a 3 bed room with two roommates. ive written alot about the roommates, but i had 2 to start, rem and... mark? and both left one by one. i was told i was too messy, by others, but i never really got straight answers as to why. i guess mark just moved out to live with his better friends. of course i felt let down. i was young. i just like... felt shitty about it. why did these kids not want to be my friend, instead the neighbors, and why was i so shitty as to be worthy of moving away from. but that's how it went down. and then there was rem, the second of the original two. he was a dude i recognized from my after-prom. he played sax in the band, i drove my beamer there, with... kristen... a girl who i basically have visited a bit since then but i didnt really well along with at all. like she was just fucking uptight as hell. thats probably telling anita about for a laugh.

but yeah... rem left. and i was by myself. but this didn't last, i had a football player shoved in there. he left for bigger and better things, had the connections as a player... i never really spoke with him much, again most of what i heard was either highly suspicious crap from the kid but he did basically get outa there real quick. and yeah... then he was out, and they stuck in... another guy. this one was a dude who literally dealt weed out of the room. crazy shit hah. he got kicked out after literally screaming at the dude down on the first floor. alot of this stuff i just remember observing, like as if i wasn't directly involved. there was another instance where i found a kid lying on the floor just as you walk in, turned out he was strung out on heroin he told tales of being like rich with horses, who he'd sold for junk. i didn't know if i could believe a word he said, but i'd grown up having been taught by my parents to trust all indian people, so i just kinda gave him this respect that perhaps he didn't deserve. perhaps vivek got the same thing. i don't know. but its weird. that guy was just like lying there, and there was like nobody around nobody to help him or anything. and weird thing was he wasnt even asking for help. he was just that out of it.

but there were many nights of drinking. and not healthily, but like... excessive binges with kids who had no futures or at least thought it. gregs place, kirbys place, my place. name the spot, we'd drink. the shot, the beer. whatever. the cheapest was best as tey were perpetually poor and it kinda got you more beer for the limited funds they usually had. i just went with it, i had all the money i needed, but i didnt really feel welcome spending any of it either, as my folks, doctors though they were, had really encouraged me to spend frugally. so thats kinda how i was... to start. weed got involved at some point, like chris kinda like introduced us to weed. he had some hookup someplace, and we used it to get some. i mean i doubt id ever have come in contact with the stuff had i not know the guy. i mean i didnt know the first thing about where to get the stuff, or even like... what you'd even do with it. but yeah. classes were a blur. i probably didnt go to many, i dont know. it was a whirlwind, that first year. i dont remember too much of it. i spent alot of nights in my room probably freezing cold huddled by the pc. one warm spot was when i met shirley. shirley temple, she was a friend of tora's, who i'd previously gone after. in between there was joelle. but yeah shirley and i never really hit it off. i guess like... looking back... i was too immature. i mean everything was a blur then. and i had noone who helped focus me. not my folks, or anyone else. like my folks had made cutting my beard a sin, so for that, and the third culture kid shit i experienced, i mean i was just not in the mood to deal with them any longer, they had soured our relationship with years of shady shit.

so like, yeah, without role model, i gravitated to people similarly as nihilistic and directionless. heh... and in a way they gave me a direction, a purpose, to be as fucked up as i could be. as drunk... and yeah ive beenthinking lately of things that like your situations can enable, like your background and circumstances that can enable happenings. so like... the network of friends i had, that i'd carried from highschool, enabled much drinking. however snice the kids were all antisocial the party scene was out. and so i never got laid freshman year. that was one thing i was like... hugely against. i mean like, no dating in highschool. then like, a few awkward relationships freshman year. cause after shirley there was... carla. and she was weird. like as a relationship. i met her over in bolivia, where i went with the IA scholars, and me and a jewish kid had a fight essentially over who could get her, and in the end i guess i did. but then i didn't do much with her at all so there's that. but shirley was the one who i felt the biggest like... i guess... anything with. like i just was rediculously joyous aruond her, but like... it just ended. i dont know where it went, and i guess you could say i enjoyed what i could get but i didnt know enough to key into it and do anything iwth it. that's something that'd come much much later, after years of just slowly learning it all. good old parents and their backwards views on dating. thats right, restrict your kids for religious reasons, don't explain it to them, don't explain it as a choice, just brainwash them that their chosen religion is your prison.

besides those two, there was a brief period where i was after joelle, another brief period where i was after tora.

listening to metric just makes me feel young. makes me feel like how i did when i was in college that first year. like... anything was possible, at least i felt, and like... every day and night was exciting. and like... this record was one of those exciting things, somthing i can enjoy even today. so its like, in a way, parts of those times are still with me, with the music. much like in a way, massive attack's 100th window is with me from those days, portishead's everything is with me from that freshman year again, most of radiohead's stuff from that freshman year, franz ferdinand, postal service, bloc party, modest mouse, are all with me. its interesting how music can stay with you like that. like, for me, the japanese trip i took in highschool in MVS had a few albums surrounding it, jurassic 5's power in numbers, and then supercar's single, plus massive attack's 100th window. this was back in 2001 i'm guessing. between fall '01 and summer '02. my junior year @ mvs.

and yeah, back to college. this album, metric's '03 release Old World Underground. well, i was a freshman @ osu fall '03 to summer '04. that was my tenure @ school. and i vaguely remember that first summer back home too, like i was messaging folks n stuff. was kinda interesting. like AIM and all that junk. but yeah i felt freer then than i do now. but yeah... things went sour. really sour. drugs, alcohol, skipping classes, getting a letter reading i was under warning, then another letter saying i was suspended. then i tried columbus state, i hated it, i left. i tried wright stat,e i was turned down. i tried ohio state again, i left soon after applying.

three months after the 3 year anniversary of vivek's death.

so yeah, it's been three years and this is still a topic of conversation. i guess its worth reflecting about how it allw ent down.

well, its 2009 now, vivek was found dead in his apartment in 2006, april, just days after he and i finished a stint in the studio, rephraze studios, in dayton ohio.

i ran into vivek, or rather, vivek ran into me, in 2005. i was sitting outside, playing guitar, and there the kid was, walking down the street. it was late, i guess most folks wouldn't be up. but that was kinda the first sign i guess that things'd be interesting between the two of us.

i was a freshman in college in the fall of 2003 til the summer of 2004. i was a sophomore at the ohio state university from the fall of 2004 to the summer of 2005. im guessing i ran into that kid during my sophomore year, although it may have been in the summer. ive written out diagrams which have the exact dates, but for our purposes here, i'll say it's early 2005.

so im playing my acoustic guitar, playing a song i'd written whilst i was in england, perhaps in the summer of 2003, between my senior year of highschool (fall of 2002 to summer of 2003), and my freshman year of college (fall of 2003 to summer of 2004). the year is now 2009, and i have played the song as late as 2009, in open mics in Dayton ohio and Columbus ohio. so this is a song that has been with me for awhile. and has alot of meaning to me. it some say may very well be my best song. although Anita has claimed that of some of my most recently made stuff, which im glad to hear. its always good to improve.

and then vivek stops by, asks me if i was who he though ti was, i confirmed, and then we talked a bit, he mentioned he lived down the road, and that i was welcome to visit. i took him up on it, perhaps not that day, perhaps later, perhaps it was that day. but over time i saw his basement, where he slept, and saw his recording machine. i listened to his demos, and he was telling me i should record with him. but i was of course already real used to recording, kinda comfortable with my own setup, and so i was more or less like, nah thanks but im good. but basically yeah thats how we met. and then he gives me a copy of cakewalk, which still is installed on my computer sitting in the basement today. it is what i used to record my music in the years following. so from the summer of 2005 until about... well i came to columbus for the second time in the fall of 2008. i brought laptops which i used to record with. i brought my cakewalk computer in the winter of 2008, and i used it to record my demo with anita for our band the welsh assembly. so its been something thats stayed with me awhile.

and besides that, i invite vivek over a few times. we drank alot back then, so that'd happen, plus the uh... well he'd smoke weed, vivek was a big weed smoker back then, with his own pipe and he'd get his weed from his dealers. some of 'em were also his friends, and so that'd work out for him since he'd get the "friend discount" which is basically having a hookup purely for free weed. they would come over, bring their weed, and then they'd all smoke it. i was asked to try it, and after a few times of turning it down i tried. basically i was surprised with how it affected me. i got the sense his friends were doing other harder drugs, such as ether, and the like, but i stayed away from all that. it was the weed that i did, and i never paid for it, i would just go to vivek's house and smoke for free, and i really wouldn't go there to smoke either, it just happened to be there, i was going to meet a friend from highschool, someone who i just hung out with, and at that time i really wasnt hanging out with anyone else, besides my roommates, as i'd moved out the dorms ( like most people do in their sophomore year ) and i'd stopped keeping in touch with those folks who i'd befriended in my freshman year ( fall of 2003 to summer of 2004 ).

so through kirby, well, the guy was on some hallucinagen experimentations, he'd look stuff up on the net, decide if he wanted to try it out, if he did, he'd go out, buy some, and give it a go. see kirby was alright with drug experimentation, and he'd pick up all sorts of crap. once or twice shrooms were around. mostly it was dex. and he talked me into doing it with him. i dont know why but thats kinda how it went. so i did it, dex was the street name of a pill you would take for basically allergies i believe. im not too sure. but the pills were red, gell pills, and i to this day refuse to touch them as they give me a queasy stomache just thinking about it. you see, you would have to down about 3 to 4 bottles to get the full effect. really 1 or 2 would do it, but there were levels of highs kirby would describe as plateu's, and basically the better high would give you more effects. and essentially the more the effects, the better the high was considered. at least by kirby. i didnt know anything, and i just did what i was told.

see for me, it was all exciting. i had no concept of the dangers i was putting myself in. i soon found out. weeks into our dex experiments, i was taken by an ambulence to the hospital. i was alright, but i was found unconcious on the ground. relatively so. according to kirby's later accounts, i was actually conscious, but delirious, and was easily talked into an ambulence. i have no memories of it. i do remember waking up to a doctor, who sternly lectured me for taking that which i had, mentioning how i could have killed myself. i slowly pulled myself together, made a phone call, and was out of there. kirby was waiting back at the apartment, the rat. he'd let me go off into an ambulence, knowing i'd be charged a few hundred dollars, knowing the drugs weren't fatal, yet he allowed it, letting me think i was going to die, letting me have the death scare and all that. its taken me years to even begin to conceptualize that i wasnt actually at deaths door, that the scare mongering physician had just pulled my leg to try and scare me straight, that it was more disapproval and conservative scolding than real life threat.

but later, i would find a circumstance where a drug could indeed take a life. i was sitting in a bar with a friend of mine from freshman year (fall of 2003 to summer of 2004) nick arnold and his girlfriend. i was sitting there likely soon after the recording sessions with vivek had completed (spring of 2006). i get a phone call and its jason, he lets me know vivek's body has been found. im surprised, shocked, as is nick, and i later found out he told his roommate jared baker, who i recently contacted ( june 2009 ) and had a word with. there were other friends whom i'd kept in touch with that year ( spring 2005 ) millie & nick, both whom i've contacted this year ( first half of 2009 ) and both whom i've got tidbits from regarding my own state after my friend died. according to millie, who i spoke to last month ( june 2009 ) i mentioned the death to her, and soon after i more or less stopped hanging out. she mentioned to me how she felt it was O.K. i was surprised she even had an opinion on it. it was new to me to think that Millie really was someone who'd cared about me. i guess i'd forgotten about my time with the Indian American Association at Ohio State University. I believe i was a student through some of it, but withdrew and later just went to visit the people i'd known.

But the funeral, it was tough, i saw faces of people i recognized from highschool, people who i played soccer with, shared halls with, but i got no resopnses. i feel like i was given the cold shoulder by alot of people. Blake Nolan surprised me the most really. Someone who'd been the captain, under which i'd been a freshman, yet i had not a single word from the guy when i walked up. I was in a sorry state, i hadn't seen these folks for years, hadn't yet broken the ice in my sociability, and had just endured the death of a friend who i hadn't really dealt with healthily. his death loomed in my mind, whilst my third culture kid stunted development had me at a loss for words in the presence of familiar faces. so i lost out on an oppertunity to connect with people. but they literally watched me walk up, didn't say a word, then watched me walk away. it was terrible. that is fucking rude ass shit. and these fuckers are stuck up bastards. it was a slow process for me to learn how many of these people didn't give a shit about me. for some reason i thought they did. i was sorely mistaken. i had just assumed it, and it really had never been there. had i opened myself up, shown myself off to folks, and gotten a true reaction and gague to what i was putting out there, i might have had some clue as to what really these people thought of me. but since i hadn't gotten that, and instead i had no litmus tests done, i had nothing to base my views on these people off of. so i mythologized them. and then those fantasies came crushing down in the face of a serious moment where real support was being extended, apparently i hadn't qualified for it. a shame.

general sum up

so i used to live in a place called harrison apartments on lane avenue in columbus ohio usa. this was from the year... well let me see. if i graduated from highschool in summer 2003 and then went to college in fall 2003, then fall 2004 i would have begun my second year. so in fall 2004 i begun living in harrison apartments, and lived there until likely fall 2005 as i stayed the summer that year while my roommates had moved out.

i did later get a chance to speak with one of my roommates, years later. my 23rd birthday, in beavercreek ohio. he came to me. as did another of my old friends. in 2009. and it was interesting. i got a chance to speak to the guy about how i kept to myself. about how i could have indeed spoken more. and all that. so i did. and it was good. it was an amazing conversation. and i got a chance to get alot off my chest.

the guy was called curt. the other guy was called kirby. i graduated MVS highschool in 2003, meaning my freshman year there was 1999. well... summer of 2003, meaning the school year began in fall of 2002. so i guess... fall of 1998? which would make... the one year i spent in their "middle" school be from the years fall of 1997 to summer of 1998. i met curt during that first year, from the fall of 1997 to summer of 1998. i met kirby in that first year of highschool, from the fall of 1998, to the summer of 1999. all three of us, kirby curt and myself, played soccer together. i actually managed to get the three of us to sit down and do some songs and stuff on a picnic table in MVS at the edge of the soccer field. Kirby joined a friend of mine named Kelvin in the fall of 1998 to summer of 1999 period to record a little song called masters of the night. interesting stuff... heh.

Another interesting thing durnig that whole tenure at MVS from the fall of 1998 to the summer of 2003. well, the tenure at the miami valley high school. Matt White broke his own arm running into a pole... yep. there was also the soccer deal which must have happened my senior year. fall of 2002 through summer of 2003. for whatever reason everyone in my class was relatively decent about hazing people. i mean i dont really think we ever had our own equivolent of evan hatten or blake nolan. those guys were fucking insane. heh. but then maybe that was just my fearful view at the time.

and i do actually remember our last soccer game, sitting on the bench with stadium lights across the field, a jv player kicked up to varsity for the final game, and it was emotional for the coach, mario carillo. we all could kinda romanticize it a bit, sitting on the field with the lights in the twilight. playing hard but losing ugly. but that day was not so much about the game as it was about the passing of the torch, the ushering on of the children who had done their time, and the chance for a new veteran to take the top rank, and a new newbie to come and be the chum bucket cleaner.

i remember getting on stage for senior recidal, which would be the fall of 2002 through summer of 2003 year, and yeah... that was nice. standing ovation from people like mandy gutmann and who else... elizabeth grimes maybe?... it was interesting. all of the beautiful girls who i'd consecutively had crushes on, suddenly liked me, and for what? a song on a stage. apparently it held some power, apparently i had some power, because i had the power to make them sing and clap in joy. smiles, standing folks, claps. it was great. and i just loved how it seemed finally after years of just kinda minding my own business, i had this moment of shared extasy with all these people who i'd rubbed elbows with for in some cases up to five years, and they managed to see the joyful kid i was inside, and they liked it. its a shame i cuoldn't have come out of the shell more often, but that one experience assured me that yes i was human and yes these people were approachable, that yse there were parts of myself these folks liked, and that perhaps i was going about this whole people thing wrong.

i participated in an open mic-contest thing in ohio state freshman year, which would be from fall 2003 to spring 2004. that year was eventful. just the roommates alone were crazy. i had 2 to start, one moved out, then the other, neither really felt they liked me, and both found places elsewhere. so i began with a 3 bed-room, and ended up with just one. i don't know exactly why it broke down like that, but perhaps they were just fucking racist heh. perhaps they didn't know how to deal with people different than them. but yeah. indian kid with a head covering ends up alone in his 3-bed room. rem was crazy. mark was just interested in his own shit. but then the replacements came. the football player, who had a couch he slept on intead of the... well... basically instead of the bed. kicked his girlfriend in the face with his knee after he stuck his finger into the electrical socket. apparently had all these stories of crazy sex parties and shit that he and his football player friends would go to and just have massive sex with tons of chicks. rediculous shit hah. but the dude was like raunchy as fuck. grimy, grotey, i couldnt see what any chick could find nice about the guy. but yeah. after that, there was the drug dealer. and he was fucking crazy. we had beer cans all over the table, my head got gashed open, and uh... yeah. he got himself kicked out, and earned me a warning for the booze hah. and then after that... well... heh. that was oui. and he didnt last long either. but he was my gay roommate, who i had for a little while. basically most people couldnt get over the fact that my clothes were lying around, but really. fucking clothes lying around? ive seen MUCH worse. i didnt leave food out, there was never much of a mess. just clothes. so im guessing it had more to do with me. apparently i had a dark cloud over my head, either that or they were racist ohioans, which isnt hard to imagine heh. i think though people got i wanted to keep to myself and they didn't bother me too much. i guess i still hadn't yet learned how to talk to people, carrying that over from 5 years of highschool. (98-03). but i kinda relate that to my being a third culture kid, during the years of my immigration (92-95). and how that kinda effected things afterwards.