Thesis Diary #2: Social media will ruin your life

It's almost true. Social media has opened my world up to so many wonderful and fortunate things. I'd never be writing for as many great websites and publications if it wasn't for social media. I'd never have met my last two girlfriends (one was an ex-fiance, believe it or not) if it wasn't for social media. I've met a lot of people on social media in person and it's enhanced my life in so many ways.

But it'll absolutely fucking murder you in your sleep. There's nothing that kills productivity quicker than ego-stroking at the lightning pace of 140 characters in under a second. I know about this, because I really am that egotistical. I'm not even ashamed of being egotistical. How egotistical is that? Fuck all the haters - self-indulgence feels good, so I do it! Though for the remainder of my entire life, I'm limiting myself to using it for no more than an hour or so a day.

Last week as I sat down to write, I thought to myself "Fuck it, I'll lurk Twitter for a little bit." I had two fucking screens going - one focused on bullshit the other on nothing in particular. My screen space was being twice as efficient at being as inefficient as possible. So I told my computer to go fuck itself and sat down to read some source material. One book I found quite enlightening if not self-absorbed is The Rebel Sell: How the counter-culture became the consumer culture and it basically pillories hipsters for being completely retarded - soon irony will be for the masses and they'll tear up their Pixies posters in audible, annoying rebellion.

How does this relate to rock journalism? Well, I'll figure that out later. It's what my tutor has suggested for me to do. So I'm doing it.

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http://twitter.com/crushtor

Thesis Diary #1: Rock n' roll journalism in Australia

It seemed like rock and roll journalism in Australia used to be a hell of a lot of fun once upon a time. Considering our small population, everyone in the "scene" knew one another at least by word of mouth and probably saw and met them at one point. My supervisor, Dr. Tony Moore could write letters to radio DJs and have it read and mocked openly on air - now I couldn't even get my tweet professing an unhealthy obsession with Belinda Carlisle flashed up during a 80s revival night on Channel V. I sincerely doubt I could call up Richard Kingsmill on Triple J and ask "what the fuck is this shit, dude..." although I'd very much like to. I pay his salary, god damn it!

Luckily, I've found that there's a wealth of scholarly material on rock journalism in Australia and rock music in general. Archives are out there to be trawled through and I fear that I'll be spending more time acting rock historian than intrepid thesis writer and lose the plot entirely. "Have you heard of Ram magazine?" Tony asks sincerely, forgetting that he's about 20 years my senior. "You should read that. It was heaps into heavy metal." I'm sure he doesn't know who the Katatonia refers to on my t-shirt. Even so, he was once refered to as the "suede crusader" who flew the flag for rock music when the industry was embracing any band that owned a Fairlight CMI and had crates of hairspray on backorder - so he knows a metalhead when he sees one. Or a punk rocker, indie kid or whatever you choose.

So the past few days have been about asking questions in an academic way and not to draw any conclusions from them. It's encouraging to have a supervisor that's into the subject as much as me ("I wish I did something like this for my honor's thesis," Tony says almost every time we meet) and so far, things are looking up. Today I didn't even feel to get out of bed - now I want to rock out with my theories out.

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http://twitter.com/crushtor

The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World

As a child, I kept to myself and I kept everything to myself. For everything I did, there was a lie to cover it up. So accustomed to lying, it rapidly displaced truth. It just became easier that way.

So around this time last year, I resolved thusly: to tell the truth. When I started and continued, I felt relief. I no longer felt a fraud, I no longer felt trapped by my own "bullshit." I was a free man, free from the mental gymnastics required to keep all my lies afloat and free of the guilt of deceiving loved ones and others.

So what happens when I keep things to myself again, I wondered? The past few weeks I've felt flat and frustrated until I explored my feelings within - the causes of which are numerous - and I admitted to myself: I felt angry. Then once the truth was exposed, the anger faded into a feeling of positivity, a feeling of power. Old habits die hard, especially in phases of transition and upheaval.

In this phase of the dating moratorium when I have felt most alone, I have felt an intense want to express my love - sensually and platonically - without an outlet. It's the loving part that feels wounded most of all during the whole integration process of taking one's loneliness and re-framing it as a positive and rewarding solitude.

Throughout childhood and adolescence I found it easier to "not miss anyone" due to a fear of abandonment - but now I am feeling the lack and the sorrow that comes with the foreign concept of "missing" people. I would be lying to say that I do not. A couple of weeks ago, it's possible I could have returned a contrary answer. But now I allow myself to and emerge on the other side as a stronger man.

Thus, the past couple of months have been fueled by a tendency to bullshit myself, yielding varied results. Scarcely a year has passed since the beginning of my personal journey towards manhood and I've learned so much. But twenty-three years of bullshitting oneself is not simply unlearned in less than one. But the challenge is to sustain myself through the bullshit and emerge on the side of truth - and I wouldn't trade it for anything in this world.

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http://twitter.com/crushtor