I say “professional” because I’ve been inside you, I’ve eaten in you, I’ve taken your proffered pills that cost 15x the amount I pay at the pharmacy. I’ve had stays elongate into irritable nights and days, endless hours that crawl under my skin like the side effects of so many prescriptions.

I’ve been around your kind, shuffled your halls. I’ve studied your texts, taken dutiful notes in your groups, been restrained by your straps and shots. I’ve taken a full load of your courses in a matter of days, talked to your Professors of Prescription Pads and Pats on the Back.

I’ve been shaken awake at 5am by your rough voice, your flashlights blinding my eyes while orderly arms held mine for vitals. Minutes later they’d leave me in the dark again, my sleep stolen by your thieves, violated, panting, sheets twisted around my thighs.

I’m a professional pill taker.
I’m a professional mental health harlot.
I’m a professional ward stayer.

My résumé speaks for itself. I’ll give you a moment to read.

I’ve fucked you unwillingly, I’ve fucked you willingly. Either way, I pay. Pennies fell from my pockets in offering. Loose change clanged to the tile like you loosened my hair from its tie.

No, no.
Bad, bad.
Shame on me for attempting to hold on to something I could use to die.

I’ve offered my arms for needles, for cuffs, for chemical and physical restraint.
I’ve offered my brain for careful mockery.
Is that not sufficient sacrifice to your gods?

Sanctuary! Sanctuary! Sanctuary!

I’ve crawled to your doorstep in need. I’ve left with less. My skull has rattled on the elevator ride down, terrified of sunlight.

You’ve taken the sunlight from me.

I’ve used your dirty phones to call people who care, been cut mid-conversation to “keep me from hysterics.” I’ve hysterically needed just one more word. I’ve needed something unwritten and been denied.

A secret shopper of behavioral health units, I’m the clientele you crave, the customer you need to stay in the business of brains. I’ve been a barcode. I’ve been a wristband. Your establishments have adorned me with plastic, dressed me in your fashions, stripped me of everything but the rough cloth I could not tear.

To hang myself.

Cold metal everywhere I could not pull free. Teasing me. Me! The harlot! The Perpetual Pill-Popping Tease! A harlot’s specialty!

To cut myself.

Crisis stability. That is what you offer. There is no “fixing.”

To my first point, I say again: I’m a professional. And as a professional I scream:

“Sedation” does not equal “stability.”

                                                              Messy…fucking…

 The Chokehold of Gravity

Lamentation ignored.
I should be allowed to shut the door
when trying to vomit forth
the blackout of my body.
Vainglorious hotshot holier-than-thou
swain lover of selfhood,
pets his pen and pad,
his credentials and badge,
with compassion ignorant
of trembling hands hidden
in a black robe.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?”
after 300 seconds,
does little to stitch
or even anoint the bleeding out of me,
on the Mylanta-bottle-green
of the floor,
the walls,
the everything in the room.
But even so,
even if I were granted
an audience to your compassion,
it would not be enough
to kill this thing that happens
when the swing stops,
the little girl tumbles,
and gravity is king.

                                                                             …puzzle…

So if you’ll allow me an opinion, or take into consideration the observations of a loyal and faithful customer, a professional prostitute of prescriptions continuing her education in mental instability, I cannot stress enough my main point of urgency:

“Sedation” does not equal “stability.”

between my crooked teeth
difficulty sticks in strings.
i wince against the rattle
of my [medicine] chest
but i hold the moment
by the fistful -
despite inexperience,
despite primitive implements,
i flash those teeth
and say “hello.”

JMT, 2009/2011

In my apartment, Vivaldi is playing at a volume loud enough to disturb the demon child and his deaf grandmother who forgets the rest of us can still hear her in the unit above me. I’ve just taken two Ambien and I must get this out before it kicks in and I reveal to you the seven secrets of Apollo, thus granting you eternal life and the sexual stamina of a god.

So let’s begin. This particular post has been in my queue for almost a year. Half-done. Almost done. Actually done, just too fatigued to post for fear of…something. Excuses perhaps. An explanation as to where I’m going. Where I’ve been. But in the end, maybe it doesn’t matter.

Troy manages to dissuade the paparazzi. I look like I'm saying a friendly hello. Obviously LA and I get along just fine.

One thing I’ve always had difficulty with is this moment, right now. It’s never this moment. It’s always what will be, what has been, what I’m missing, what I don’t have. This moment is never enough. The funny thing is, right now, this moment is all I have. I have no grand plan. I have no synopsis of what will become of me, or my work, or travel plans. And even if I did, what would that prove? It still wouldn’t put words on paper. It would be a lot of moments I’ve never lived in, though I’ve in fact lived them. You don’t have to tell me that doesn’t make sense.

I dream of dreams. I dream of dreaming. How backwards it is, to dream of a dream. To desire the act of dreaming, rather than achieving. I suppose the phrase “stop dreaming and start doing” is being kicked around in my head. (Quoth the raven, nevermore.)

For a long time I had an “idea” of what I was, of what Gossip [&] the Devil “should” be and how it should be “presented.” Like so many things kept past their prime I held on to that idea because I’d constructed it, executed it and I was seeing dividends in the process.

But isn’t there some risk in the process? Of course. But that risk doesn’t disappear when dividends appear. In fact, the risk rises. The edge becomes thinner. So thin it cuts your toes every time you pirouette. To keep your toes something must change. Equally absurd is it to continue to turn until you have nothing but stumps to show.

And so, there is change.

Vicodin, nicotine, timed prescriptions and what will be the death of me. I'm a professional pill taker.

There is a ride in the ruins of a city that begs to be remembered. The music is faint and its seats are cold. All of this can be rectified. Not glorified. Not memorialized.

But revitalized.

There is a certain amount of posturing that exists in our business (read: artists), a delicate balance of confidence and ego, of the je ne se quois any one of us posses. It’s a hard mix to homogenize, but it can be done. More often there is an uglier imbalance of too much talk and far less talent.

This is mine. My name, my place. I’ve felt unsafe in my own home, a learned behavior poisoning my children, these words. The very things I slaughter for – instead I’ve taken to slaughtering the necessary parts to create them.

I talk about the phoenix, the specatle of the fire bird, the awe of the rebirth – I’ve found it well past due to become it, embody it, to MOVE. I love what I’ve created. It was all I had, for better or worse, for glamour or grit.

It isn’t all I have now, but it’s damn sure still worth fighting for. I’ve found going about things in a healthy way is difficult. Who knew, right? But, as Reno from Final Fantasy VII so eloquently put it: A pro isn’t someone who sacrifices himself for his job. That’s just a fool. And that includes this job – THIS job. This little worker bee has to put her life into the sting she creates and find a way to watch the splendor in the resulting swell.

Expect something different for what Gossip [&] the Devil is and perhaps should have been a long time ago. A broadening of content. The only “call to arms” for the Modern Orphans is to EXIST- same mission – less exclusion – less “prerequisite” – less bullshit. I’m tired. And frankly I’ve met some people in the last few months who have completely shattered my notions of what it means to be brilliant, talented and well aware of that fact – yet still humble. (I’m looking at you, Troy Baker.) Is there a certain amount of swagger involved with any artist? Sure. What I’ve “discovered” is it isn’t the things we do well that necessarily keep us going – it’s the areas we tend to fall just short in that drive us to succeed. Success isn’t nearly as good a motivator as the idea that you are but one word away from being told you didn’t land the job.

Every ink pen lying still, every note left unheard is a loss, something to be mourned but mourned DESPITE them, TO SPITE them if you so choose.

First meeting, 6 years ago. I was far heavier and had a youthful glow. Mat has continued to drink the blood of virgins and looks the exact same today.

To the Modern Orphans, my friends, to my fans, to my lovers, to my fantasies – there is little that is needed from me more than simple honesty.

Honesty.

Some of you have been with me for years. Literally since the beginning. But it isn’t just to you I owe this to -I owe it to me too.

A potential muse has spent many nights with me, swapping prescriptions and speaking so far above my head I had to reach for the stars to catch their words. I’ve spent time outside blackening my lungs with them, scribbling on crumpled napkins, trying to understand their ethos. I feel the first bite of new life. I feel the venom and thank the wily bastard who produced it.

From now on at G[&]D you’ll find the “me” who isn’t necessarily always in Seattle, or Chicago, or with Amanda Palmer, or with Marilyn Manson, or with our lovely Monsieur Devine.  Characters are necessary, but a character is only that – temporary. Eventually you have to own up to the fact that, sooner or later, someone is going to catch you without makeup, and that’s far more telling than any spider-web spin of tongues and teeth could ever provide. Bat those doll-lashes, purse those doll-lips, find those doll-veins. At the end of the day you still close your eyes and try to make sense of the ink-blots stuck to the back of your lids.

Next up I’ll FINALLY provide promo to MD’s incorrigible poetry (sorry, Mat), a long-due post on mental illness (and some great books for reference), anime masturbation and yes, perhaps even some poetry. (Bated breath, I know.) In the meantime – keep dreaming.

This post is thanks mostly in part to my friends both new and old, who keep me honest:  Jai Marie (who asks the tough questions), Troy Baker (“Stop dreaming and start doing.”), Elias Mallin (“Julie, you talk enough bullshit. Now write it down.”), Peter Pixie (“POST IT.”) and, as is usually the case, to Mat Devine (co-creator of Hopeless Beach), who I had the pleasure of meeting six years ago today. Thank you, truly, from the bottom of my heart for inspiring me to work, write and NEED again. After all, there is someone in the world studying me – and I don’t have the heart to help this poor student fail any attempt at higher education:

“Nothing’s too excessive when you’ve got nothing left. We’re all here ‘cos we lost control. If we all should die tonight, we will have no regrets. If this night should take my life we can’t go back. We’ve got nothing left. You can see the plastic, dripping of your face, we may not all be pretty – but we feel pretty fake.” – Die Tonight, Live Forever

I found innerpartysystem’s “indefinate hiatus” announcement surprising not only because I was certain their best work was yet to come (which is saying something, considering the brilliance of the work they’d already done) but because it was following on the heels of their Never Be Content EP that was released earlier this year, and a new studio album that was announced for a release later in 2011.

IPS at the Metro, 2008

They’d heavily promoted the American Trash single not just with words but with an entire merchandise bundle to go along with the EP. The follow-up single, Not Getting Any Better, came with a stellar 8-minute video and a heavily promoted remix contest, falling into the hands of such up-and-coming and established artists like Designer Drugs and Treasure Fingers. I’d read numerous sources citing IPS as one of the “bands to watch” since they hit the ground running in 2007.

Everything just seemed…right.

“While we will always treasure our time as innerpartysystem, we as individuals have chosen a path different from the one the band originally set out on.” – from the IPS announcement

The “path” they’d set out on was one that took the current pop culture mindset and applied an attitude reminiscent of what grunge did in the early 90′s. During a time where any and everything could be considered “famous,” IPS seemed disgusted with the state of pop culture affairs and had no problem vocalizing said disgust. From the creative suppression organized religion and small-town mentalities can impose to failed relationships, they ran the gamut of emotion for stellar lyrical content. Musically they took the metallic crunchiness of late 90′s rock and the 21st century Pro-Tools explosion and gave birth to something I personally had never seen or heard before. It was refreshing. It was exciting. It gave me hope for a better musical landscape in the future. What they did was no easy task, and managed to walk a fine line without crossing over into pretension or some laughable echo of a TOOL album remastered with super-synth and auto-tune. (Even when they were performing entire sets using little more than their iPhones.) The modern desire to turn people like Snooki and the cast of Teen Mom into “celebrities” was virtually puked on with contempt. They took all of this, made it current, and what’s more: They were damn good at it. They slaughtered the idea that electronic music was soulless, a vapid excuse for no-talent wannabes.

In 2007 I was in Chicago to see my friends in Kill Hannah perform an intimate set as part of their annual New Heart for Xmas weekend. What I didn’t expect was one of the opening acts – a then relatively unknown innerpartysystem (with a much smaller version of their light show) – completely blow my mind. I had no clue what happened to me, like a drive-by fucking. It left me breathless. It was like one of those whirlwind crazy boyfriends: You wonder if they were real,  if that one night reading poetry and fucking in a school parking lot were actually a part of your tangible life, or a figment created because you needed it at the time. I didn’t know shit about IPS then, but I stood in awe of their art in a way I hadn’t for a band in a long, long time.

The Download EP didn’t leave my musical rotation for months. 6 songs repeated over and over in the car, on my headphones, on my computer. Don’t Stop was the single I didn’t know I wanted, but couldn’t stop once I started. Don’t stop. Ha.

In 2008 I was lucky enough to seem them nearly a dozen times in support of Kill Hannah’s “Hope for the Hopeless” tour, when I decided I missed the touring life. (I needed to remember how it felt not to bathe and lose entire days in booze and bad drugs, apparently.) I drove across the country and flew when driving wasn’t possible, everywhere from Houston, TX to Milwaukee, WI. Eventually I ended up in Chicago at the end of 2008 and to catch the final stop at the Metro, where the show not only took my breath away but hijacked the entire crowd. That show I nearly fell off the balcony from exhaustion. I had no voice left (hello end of tour) – but I forced it out to chant SHE WAS SIMPLY JUST A CONCEPT right back at them when they asked. Their cover of Joy Divison’s Transmission STILL gives me goosebumps.

They decimate you live.

I didn’t see them again until Valentine’s Day of 2009, when a ninja trip to Denver, CO reminded me that driving 10 hours, doing a show and driving 10 hours back takes a lot more stamina than I remembered. Of 48 hours, over 20 of those were spent driving but the handful spent at the Marquis Theater watching this band DESTROY their crowd made the drive more than worth it. That show remains one of the most violent and beautiful things I’ve ever been a part of, a show that truly changed my life and the way I think about music and the industry that comes with it. I was crushed, hit, beaten up, wasted and tripping on ecstasy. If Heaven actually existed, I couldn’t think of a better place than the moment I was standing in. I thought: This is it. This is immediate. This is now. This. Is. Living. Kris and Jared lept into the crowd even as Patrick was still screaming “it’s just, don’t stop!” and Jesse danced around on something other than booze. You couldn’t see anything after the strobe lights died. I couldn’t tell the difference between sweat and booze soaking my hair and clothing.

I knew as soon as the crowd let me breathe that I would never see IPS like that again. Everyone knew the words. Little girls, old men, bartenders, babies, addicts, schizophrenics, hipsters, metal heads, scene queens…everyone. Four days after the show I posted a blog on Myspace that said:

“I’m quite confident that this will be one of the last times I see IPS like this. They’re blowing up, and will soon be on their way to ‘don’t have to sell our own merch’ status…they want to sell records, make music and worm their way into the ‘man’s’ territory (to eat it from the inside out) – which they’re doing. So, say your goodbyes now kids. They’re going up and away from the Earth.” - from my Myspace blog

Their self-titled album was released and the video for Don’t Stop had to be re-shot because of its original “edgy” content. This Empty Love, Heart of Fire and Die Tonight, Live Forever also received video treatments, and to this day I still watch the former at least once every couple of weeks. I love it THAT much.

After that their sound moved from a less rock/electronic hybrid (they pretty much ditched the live guitar, much to my dismay) and more into strictly dance/electro territory, and lost member Jesse Cronan to his own endeavors. By the time the Never Be Content EP came out I was certain the band had a renewed vision, a direction they’d all agreed on. Their video for the first single, American Trash, seemed to support this and their previous themes of slamming pseudo-drug-glam culture and jaded ass kissing. The song was nestled between songs about love and loss – which was something I’d come to expect from them.

“I get my facts from the TV. Believe in everything I read. It’s such an ignorant bliss when the whole fucking world wants to be like me. ‘Cos I’m just American trash. Stupid American trash.” – American Trash

All systems seemed go – as mentioned before with the bundle packages, remix contests, hit shows at SXSW and gigs with Moby in NYC (where one could be shuttled to and from in a limo with bottle service) – I was left screaming “GROUND CONTROL TO MAJOR TOM!” when the bomb was dropped that they’d each be heading in different directions. Where were they going? What planet was I on?

It’s funny to describe an IPS show as a “religious” experience, given their distaste for such things. I highly doubt that was their intention and none of them set out to be any kind of messiah or harbinger of enlightenment to the 21st century youth. If anything there was a very Timothy Leary-esque message behind those bright lights that told you to “think for yourself and question authority” and find in their music what they were trying to say, because they certainly weren’t handing it to you.

Frankly I wouldn’t want them to. I don’t know what led to their hiatus other than the admission that each of them wanted to go in their own directions, much like Jesse had months before. I have no doubt I’ll see them together again, but in what form, and what message will they want to convey? Much of the magic IPS possessed seemed intrinsically due in part to the mental makeup of its members together as a unit. It’s a hard pill to swallow that they came across a fork in the road and each took the one the other wasn’t traveling.

I can only hope that as long as I keep moving I’ll stumble across said roads some day. (However this time I won’t rack up a $250 bar tab in Dallas buying Patrón, since I insisted that was all anyone could drink.)

(What the fuck DID happen in Dallas anyway?)

Patrick, Kris, Jared (and Jesse) – good luck and thank you.

SOLD | OUT

The limited-edition, vellum covered chapbook featured every one of my previous publications, plus a few exclusive works and a psychosocial history outline (blacked out government document style) from my personal collection – all wrapped together with laser guided precision. From “He’s A Drummer By Trade” to “Voyeur” this was the coveted first edition, hand bound in house by Gossip [&] the Devil Inc. Though any artist would love to admit they just knew it was going to happen, the reality is most of us sit there and hope it’ll happen.

Acclaim for Julie M. Tate [&]

The Rough Chronicles of Bipolar Romance:

“It’s very sexual…it’s amazing. I loved it…[she's] my favorite underground poet.” – Mat Devine,  vocalist, Kill Hannah

“The Rough Chronicles of Bi-Polar Romance should not be a limited edition. It should be dispensed far and wide for the reading world to quietly taste…” – W. B. Burkholder, editor, Troubadour 21

“There are writers who speak to the minds of us and then there are those few who speak to the souls and hearts of us. They talk to our guts…They make us shiver and shake with their words and they make us know them a bit deeper than we had ever imagined we would.” – Tairrie B. Murphy, vocalist, My Ruin

“An absolutely fantastic writer.” – Eric Victorino, vocalist, Strata/The Limousines

“I love [her] website.”- wiL Francis, vocalist, Aiden/William Control

“If you submit this [poem] to any other format…it’s going to get rejected. This poem will be rejected by most other poetry formats but it’ll make you famous…I actually had it in an envelope to reject it, but I couldn’t do it, it’s too good.” – Larry Ziman, editor, The Great American Poetry Show

“I’m scared you’re going to fuck your talent off, which would be a shame because you’re just too good.” – Ai, winner of the 1999 National Book Award for Poetry

“‘This is Your Capitan Speaking’…read like [a] short story.  I didn’t want the poem to end.” – Danielle Dreger-Babbitt, Seattle Books Examiner

None of this – NONE OF THIS – would be possible without you, Orphans, fans, supporters, gawkers, voyeurs, perverts, addicts and DIY-ers. You KNOW who you are. You’re the dreamers, schemers, the take-a-chancers, the middle fingers in the face of your roadblocks and naysayers. YOU.

It’s 2011 and shit is about to start happening.
Get ready for the 5th Season. More soon.
Cheers!
xx

Though forgotten, it hasn’t moved.

xx

xx

It seems that inspiration is so few and far between anymore. Stepping outside my front door affords me very little save the cigarette slowly burning between my fingers, and the irreparable damage I’m doing. Many of my old tricks just seem, well, old, and even the snippets from my phone are as tired as soggy eggs. You look around and find your friends bore you beyond your capacity to accept such things, the art on the walls becomes desaturated and mute, movies blend together, even the music you listen to becomes one long note in one ear, through the brain and out the other, taking any patience and passion you had with it. Even albums that have never failed you before numb your senses, like the frustration that builds when your method of masturbation just doesn’t work anymore. Winter has begun, the season to button down and get to work, but instead you button down, layer, button again, layer, take a benzo until finally you’re in a cotton cocoon, relaxed thanks to the chemicals and not because you’ve accomplished anything real. Night and day mean nothing behind black curtains. Aches and pains are your ghosts of Christmas present and, as far as you can tell, the future as well. Sparks try to light, and for a moment you’re sure the fire will roar to life so you’re forced to remove the aforementioned layers with deft fingers to lie bare against the carpet.

Life becomes frozen pizza, and computer crashes. It becomes dust and almost’s. Your heroes are getting married, or overweight and droning on and on about God, or their underage girlfriend, and their simply FANTASTIC relationship with both, or throwing out scraps that try and pass as art, bullshit.

No city waits for you, no one waits. As a good friend once said, “no one dreams anyway.” You’re overweight with the things that don’t matter, starving for the things that do.

Any healthy man can go without food for two days – but not without poetry. – Baudelaire

The aeroplanes sound so far away.

for two seconds / one syllable
/ takes so much
effort. my  / therapist suggested i try
but she’s /getting
paid
and i’m not. - jmt

Where do the Orphans go when the shops close until further notice?

Turn on: Two ugly little ill-colored pills. 20mg. I’ve officially flipped the switch in my subconscious at the end of the day, when the shadows become reality, when a liquid projection screen is draped across my stomach, the quilt a child would use to hide beneath becomes the thing I hate. I turn_on when I turn_in.

Tune in: Laughter, the crowded, suffocating sounds of a cafeteria in middle school, influxes on words that aren’t there, spoken by tongues of people I don’t know, and don’t care to know. Everything amplifies – the sound of a heartbeat, of electricity moving through the wires of my home. Each loosened leaf hits the ground outside my window with a microscopic crunch. Sleep is not the stuff of dreams.

Drop out: I fall asleep, but keep falling. I fall asleep, but keep falling. I fall asleep, but keep falling.

It hasn’t changed here. My struggles are the same, and I have spent nearly an entire year in the abyss. But something calls to me, despite the things I see when I close my eyes: the girl in a blue dress, frayed rope, a voice begging to just. sleep.

“And I can’t…I can’t ever wake up…”

After an artistic crisis of faith, an Anne Sexton poem shoved my face into the bed and asked for one last request before it died. I asked for it to live.

…They take off shoes. They turn off the light.
The glimmering creatures are full of lies.
They are eating each other. They are overfed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.
- Anne Sexton, The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator

My sanctuary has never been my dreams,  it has been my pen. I’m starting to realize I’ve locked myself out using the same key to get back inside. How many people hold the same keys?

you’re gonna love me because i’m psycho.
i’m bare faced and my little girl tongue
is stuck where you can’t see
i’m addicted and flying when you’re crashing
when you’re convincing me therapy and empathy
are the two roads to follow
the insides of success are paved with something far more sour
like the tea leaves you read
you fucking fraud
i’m starving though i might look otherwise
i’m trying motherfucker,
i’m failing motherfucker,
i’ve a simple heel with a sharp, calloused curve,
a short line to the back of the knee, the hills of the ass,
a dip into the open-air back, an exposed nerve, a torn attempt,
a broken neck, a bobble head, a nervous mouth, crooked teeth,
and somewhere underneath that mess, well,
you know. - jmt

Jingle, jangle, jingle, jangle, the rumble of an upset stomach, of bullshit in the distance. I’ve reached the end of the glitter era, of the era that peacocks more than it makes art. Of the era that is in direct violation of the message to begin with.

To the Orphans, who never orphaned me – we begin…again.

40+ submissions. 1 acceptance. A year later, it’s in a national publication. The Great American Poetry Show. I hold the hard-backed book built on such hope now, in my hands. Would fate be so funny as to send it to me now, nearly 6 months to the day of my last post? Surely not. Even my muse rattles his cage with laughter.

Wake up, wake up wherever you are. Remember dreaming, remember believing? Remember applying such things to your reality? Pick up the wand to your respective mediums and wave it through the unrelenting air. It will give way, it will part for madness. The onslaught of madness. That wry smile on every face screaming, “Stay mad! Stay relevant!”

Thank you to Larry Z., Ai, M3, Mat D. and of course, as always, to the Orphans. xxoo