20 Sept 2020> Last night we were on a field trip to some factory/school in Mexico. We were with a group of 30 or so ppl we didn't know, tagging along in back. The leader was consulting a map + stopped + told us to go back + up these stairs which required going thru security so we stood in line 1st + some others in our group were behind me. We went thru + they were detaining a black guy but let us through w/ hardly a cursory glance which bothered us. We waited for the next person in our group to come thru to tell them but nobody we recognized came along, just other people that went thru security + continued on their merry way. So we exited back out to look for this group but we didn't remember what any of them looked like. We wandered around this strange industrial building looking for this group we were sposed to be a part of... poked our head thru various doors which usually had random stuff going on + nobody resembling any 1 in our group. We went in 1 door that had all these exhibits on the history of butcherism, so it occurred to us we were in a slaughterhouse, but really it was like a slaughterhouse school as there didn't seem to be any actual animals in there. We saw these 2 girls + 1 of them said "hey Derek" + casually started talking to us. We asked if they were part of our tour group + they looked puzzled so we said "u look familiar, where do i know u from?" They looked hurt at 1st that we didn't recognize them then started to sing some jingle about cavemen + we were like "South Dakota?" We apologized for not recognizing them, explained how we got lost from our group + how we were terrible w/ faces, might even have face blindness + we're chatting w/ these 2 girls saying how weird this all was when 1 of the guys in the group spots us + to him it looks like we just left the tour to chat w/ these girls. We started to introduce him + explain but it was too complicated + awkward. He took us back to a bar where the rest of the group was just hanging out giving us the cold shoulder, like we had abandoned them.

IRL, last night we were watching Singing in the Rain when some of our power went out, the monitor (but not the laptop), some of the lights, Inurnet, etc. We checked the breaker box but nothing was tripped. We went thru + flipped the various breakers (which are all labeled incorrectly) off + back on but nothing helped. It was (still is, now the next morning) weird, our oven (electric) doesn't work but our fridge + washer/dryer work, ½ the lights around the house work w/ no rhyme or reason + same w/ the sockets... it's not a particular part of the house or circuit. Some of the lights sorta turn on like where u just see the filament glow a brownish yellow. Devices are bleeping here + there cuz their backup power is running low, including our Verizon relay box, which might explain why the Inurnet still didn't work when we plugged the modem into an outlet that works. We were wondering if we were just going crazy, debating whether to call an electrician but figured as long as the fridge worked (+ our stove is gas) it wasn't an emergency. So we rigged an extension cord up to finish watching Singing in the Rain (on DVD, so we didn't need Inurnet)(+ don't ask why we're watching Singing in the Rain, suffice to say we'd never seen it + desperate times call for desperate measures) + notice a 24-hour electrician parked outside our house so we put on our mask + go outside + ask him if he has time to look at a problem we're having + he says yah as soon as they finish w/ our neighbor + then another neighbor (maskless) comes by walking his dog + he's got the same issue, ½ his shit randomly works but not his fridge so it's a bit more dire for him but at least we know it ain't just not us + then PepCo is there + the electrician says it's probly a phase problem + there's PepCo ppl in bunny suits poking around w/ flashlights going into holes underground so we figure things we'll work themselves out + go to sleep + then had the above dream + we slept good, unlike the night before when we woke up @ 1 a.m. w/ a splitting headache that lasted the entire day. Last year when we were seeing doctors about our Ménière's they would ask if we get headaches + we'd say no cuz we never used to or if we did we drank some water + it went away cuz we were dehydrated, but in the last few weeks we've had 2 or 3 days where on top of tinnitus + weird ear pressure we have these headaches, sometimes w/ weird aural hallucinations... so maybe we are having vestibular migraines, as the doctor diagnosed (in addition to Ménière's). We feel bedder now + slept well tho it was still dark when we woke up + we didn't know what time it was cuz the clock don't work + the power is still ½ out + as we speak can see the pepco truck out there. We tried to go to the outage status page on our phone but the pepco.com site is down, which is troubling, when the power company's webpage goes down. Then we figured we may as well write this on our laptop since we got nothing else to do + now that we finished writing this guess we'll read a book (The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma, which so far is really good).

Speaking of vestibular migraines, we saw the Swans documentary Where Does a Body End, which included a bunch of footage from the last Warsaw show we saw. Although we're listed in the credits of "fans interviewed," our interview didn't make the cut (unless it's somewhere in the bonus footage).

24 Sept> Released another single from our forthcoming Herd of Birds album, called Totem #9. Lyrically it was inspired in part by the BLM "siege on Swann st" that went down in front of our house (what we neglected to say then is that a few days after the protest we found a hatchet in the bushes in front of our house, which sorta changed our perspective on things (that the protest was not as peaceful as they said)). Musically, we set out to write a pop song in Aeolian scale (essentially a C major scale but starting on A so it sounds minor... not that we know shit about music theory but we were reading about Aeolius (the keeper of winds in The Odyssey) + discovered there's a scale named for him) like REM's "Losing My Religion," but seams the song ending up sounding more like Tom Petty, not sure why, maybe it's the triplet guitar strum rhythm? A lot of the songs on this next Herd of Birds album use triplets + swing beats, which are really hard to program on computers so we had to jigger the high hats on a separate track at ¾ time from the rest of the tracks (or steal a Purdy shuffle beat, like what Bonham uses in "Fool in the Rain," (which we sampled before on "unsound")). The song is so poppy we're debating whether to even include it on the album since it feels out of place.

[... continued notes on Totem #9 in post #831]