In high school (especially near the end), it wasn’t unusual for one of our scheduled lessons to be substituted for some life career inspirational speech type thing. I got the value, I really did. People at our age either had a solid direction of where they wanted to go or were in dire need of one, and if nothing else, it was generally a great distraction from the otherwise dull world of geography or getting our fingernails dirty in ceramic clay.
The particular speaker on this day was hired for some sort of a memory-secret he had developed, explaining how we could unlock our inner genius in ways which would benefit our futures or something else to that effect. I can picture myself now, as I leaned back the best I could on our only relatively comfortable seating area in the main hall. It was a raised plan, so each row of seats were elevated a foot higher than the one in front of them, and no doubt some kids legs were limiting my chance of a decent back rest, but I don’t really remember. What I can assume, however, is that I had very little interest in what was being said and naturally escaped into my happy world where I was king and the sheep were revolting.
“And by the way,” the man announced in the distance. “Don’t blame your parents if they get divorced the moment you leave school, as they were most likely staying together for your sake, waiting for the best opportunity to least affect your studies.”
This line woke me up from my daily vision. It seemed like a strange thing to say, out of place and unrelated to anything this man had said before. Perhaps this was something the speaker was going through right now, and he was talking about it out loud in order to justify his own actions in front of an audience. Some divorce in his personal life granting him the insight to rightfully dub himself an authority on the subject.
Even more peculiar still, my parents had recently sat me down to announce their own termination of marriage, which is probably why the line had echoed so much louder than whatever the fuck else this man had been teaching. Granted, my parents didn’t have the decency to wait for me to finish high school before making the split, but I guess when you’re fed up with a person, you’re fed up with a person. They’d been together for 25 years or something anyway, which is a decent run by today’s standards. Well done, mom and dad.
The abrupt ode to divorce had inconveniently woken me up from my fantasies, and so I looked around to reevaluate my surroundings. Nothing else seemed out of the ordinary—some of our overachievers were over listening; the cooler kids looked bored and mumbled to each other; girls and boys passed little folded up notes between themselves—your typical uniformed high school scene. That was, except for Jimmy.
Jimmy was one of my bestest friends, a true mate, I knew him super well. But right now, he looked different. He had scored a fortunate seat a few below me, the ever favourable wall position, where one was allocated the luxury of being right at the end of the seating plan, able to turn sideways and lean their back against the wall. Except he looked anything but comfortable.
His face was distorted, frozen in an almost angry position, wrinkles folding in all the aggressive places. His lips curled tightly into a colourless line and his eyes looked swollen and puffy. The dude seemed like he was in pain, arms crossed in that bad body language type of way, posture all wrong, his whole demeanour suggesting he was about to cry or perhaps punch someone in the teeth.
It was then I put two and two together, and realised Jimmy was feeling what I felt in that very moment. I had been over to his house many many times, and knew both of his parents well. To any outsider, they seemed happy, almost your typical white picket fence two dogs one cat moviesque kinda family. But right here, I could tell this wasn’t the case. Who knew what happened behind closed doors anyway. His parents put on a smiley face when visitors were around, but Jimmy was fighting the same demons I was. The demons of confusion and rejection. The idea that the world you had grown comfortable in and secured yourself to, was about to be gutted and turned inside out.
I felt shameful as I related his pain to my life. How had I been so ignorant as to not pick up on this before? My mate, Jimmy, suffering in front of my own very eyes, experiencing the divorce battle which I thought I fought alone. And in that moment, I felt connected to him on a different level, and decided I needed to confide in and comfort the guy. I needed to go against my masculine training and open up to my buddy, and then perhaps neither of us had to face this struggle alone. That’s what friends are for, after all.
When the bell rang, I waited to catch him alone and then approached with care. His eyes still betrayed some deeper feelings, his expression still hinted at some agony, and so I compassionately placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Hey, man. You alright?” I began.
“Yeah, I’m cool.” he sighed.
“I mean, like, is everything alright though? At home and stuff? Between your mom and dad, are they cool?”
“Huh?” he looked at me curiously. “Yeah, why?”
“I dunno. You just seemed really upset in that talk, is all.”
He laughed.
“Ah no, man. I’m just really stoned. That speech was fucking boring!”
Then we both laughed. I guess it was.
And now, here’s Jared Woods with the news:
JUICE NOTHING
Everything, All Of The Time: The History Of The Universe; The Meaning Of Life; The Future Of The Human Race; And All The Stuff In-BetweenIt was over a year ago that I was drunk on the tube and had an epiphany that went like this: OMG, I am super smart. The reason being that, over my lifetime, I have thought about a lot of deep stuff and stuff, and developed (what I figure is) a different but complex belief in the world and the Universe and everything else that exists, always. But the shame was that I’d never told anyone my conclusions, and yet I had this perfect blog platform where I could reveal my genius to the world. I quickly took out my notepad and scribbled down some key-notes, before falling asleep and missing my stop. Perhaps not that smart after all.
However, I felt it was a decent enough idea to pursue, except that as each month came and went, the thought of even trying to tackle the right words to reveal my perception on EVERYTHING put me right off, and I’d fall back into more silly music blabber or some other fruitless egotistical garbage. But something happened in my head last month, and I was just like, fukkit, whatever, I’m not doing anything else, let’s just get this one done.
So I did, and while I could never expect anyone to read what is essentially my own Bible, quite a few people did read it in the end, and I got a ton of unexpected positive feedback. Well, until I posted it to Reddit and they tore my anus out like a tube of mince, but hits are hits, so I’ll take what I can get.
The point is, if you have an hour or so to spare, please read it. It’s definitely the cleverestest thing I have ever written by quite a long shot, and maybe one day you’ll join my church, I dunno.
The Best 50 Bands I've Seen Live
Just released, and this is another one I have been planning to write since forever. Originally my plan (around 2008) was to write a blog detailing every single band I’ve ever seen, but as time went on, that feat turned into something impossible, because I see quite a lot of bands. So I decided to exclusively focus on the top 50, and nearly released the thing much earlier on in the year. That was until I realised I was going to Reading Festival last month, and figured it would be best to wait for that just in case some good ones cropped up there. Good thing I did too, as fucking eight bands from that festival passed the audition, so that was nice.
Anyways, I hope you read it, because YOU WILL NEVER HEAR FROM ME AGAIN. rofljk, but something similar:
Some of you may remember (lol) in the May News I told you guys I would be using my Get Out Of Jail Free Card the following month, but this never happened. So let me say this again, this time with feeling: I am using it now. There will be no article released in October. There are countless reasons for this, but none of which revolve around neglecting Juice Nothing whatsoever. A little further than tradition, I am contemplating launching four fucking pieces over November/December, and so make no false assumption that writing will be on a break. I’m speeding up. But it does mean you won’t read anything here for a while, which could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending whose side you’re on.
JUICE NOTHING v3.0
The new Juice Nothing design is going to take a long time, I make no light of that, and so until there is some actual news on the subject (which will be way into next year), I am going to drop it off of these regular updates all together. However, all you need to know is that it’s looking cool and I am having loads of fun with it, but as far priorities go, it is at the bottom of the foodchain. Life bro, wow.THE FUNPOWDER PLOT
A Poet's ProposalMember Freewheelin’ Troubadour has dominated the FPP year so far, and for good reason. Our newest video is something completely different, where a select few of us were let in on a little secret: our boy was going to propose to his lady-friend Sarah. So under the guise of one of his poetry gigs, we set up cameras and filmed the whole thing go down. It was beautifully romantic, the dude has a way with words, and above all else, it was so fucking cool to shoot something and have it out the door within a week and a bit. More of this is what we all want, except no one else wants to get married.
Related: Since before Funpowder Plot, there have been discussions of a very special type of video being shot, all my idea of course. I have actually spoken about it so many times over these news items without giving anything away, but it finally looks like everyone is on board. We even set a date, but due to some weird stuff happening like people having birthdays (selfish!) and me moving house, it simply hasn’t aligned properly yet. But we have never been so close to taking the plunge, I can smell the fear on all of us, and I pray that by the next time I update this news shit, this video will be out and viral. But I guess we can never know how these things pan out.
COMING DOWN HAPPY
Not much to report except that the third song off The Black EP is staring down the finish line, and as it stands (perhaps slightly prematurely), I consider it the best thing I’ve ever done. The music is probably about 90% composed; the lyrics are around 80% written; and the drawings are maybe like 30% done? It ain’t easy, but I am aiming for an end of October release, probably Halloween. I’m real eggs :DThe sad thing about this project is that it looks like I am going to miss my main 2013 goal. I wanted to get The Black EP done by the end of the year, but I have slowly fallen behind with each song through no fault of my own, and now it’s looking fairly impossible. I am sure the last song will see the light of day around January 2014 at latest, and then even radder stuff will happen, but I will confirm all of this at a later stage. Anyways, sorry I guess.
THE GOAT’S NEST/THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON DRUGS
I have a saying that goes “I always keep my promises because I never make promises” but all of that turned out to be a lie. Last news item, I promised that my debut novella would see an end of year launch. However, I now know that this won’t be happening if I do it the way I want to do it, and I am going to do it the way I want to do it, so there you go. A big factor towards all of this is that I sent the first draft to a bunch people to get some feedback, and I received a lot of constructive yet disheartening opinions in return. Serves me right. Due to this, there will be one final rewrite, and only then can I begin the very difficult process of getting this thing out there in a way I hope everyone thinks is cool. But I swear, if there is one Juice Thing to get excited about next year, this would be it. Even if it’s just me who gets excited. I am excited, actually.Anyways, class dismissed.
Jared
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