Salisbury.Fake Uncategorized

President, Beartooth, Bad Omens – Detroit 2/28

I, as you may know, am a fan of the screams. The music kind. I’ve spoken multiple times about my love for Sleep Token, and there are several other bands I enjoy just screamin’ in my earballs every now and then. I had the opportunity to go to a concert with two of my favorite concert buddies over the weekend, and I got to hear some of the best screamies I’ve ever experienced live.

I got to see Bad Omens live at Louder Than Life last year, something I won’t be repeating (the festival part), and that was kind of my first exposure to the band. To be completely real and rude, I didn’t like their song “Death of Peace of Mind” when I first heard it on a random Spotify Sunday. And then I heard Noah sing everything live and I understood exactly why he is so beloved. The man has range and I am here for it. Not only that, but the drummer for Bad Omens is insanely talented. II from Sleep Token gets a lot of accolades–well deserved, of course–but buddy boy Nick is also amazing. The whole band looks like they’re having fun, and that is always something I will love.

The show started with President. I’d heard two songs by them before we went to this show and I was less than impressed. Not a problem, really, I don’t need to love everything. But live? Holy balls, they were somethin’ real nice. I felt the lead singer was trying too much to be cinematic at times with his poses in the lighting, but as one of my friends pointed out, there’s only so much one can do on a stage sometimes. Which is fair. I don’t hold that against their performance because overall, I really liked what I heard. My watch buzzed at me to calm down a few times, because the thumps got me palpitating, haha.

Not the tall man (context below), but someone having a really good time and I liked the visual.

Beartooth is another band I’ve vaguely listened to now and then. I wanted to kind of prepare myself for the show to know some of their songs before we went to see them, but I drifted back to Sleep Token more than I didn’t. This portion of the show became a little uncomfortable for me because of my aversion to crowds. I know, you don’t like crowds, so why go to concerts? Because I like music and I try to do uncomfortable things to show myself I can. Well, at one point during this portion, a very tall man stood in front of me and my friends (he was 7 foot 1 inch, as he claimed) and blocked pretty much everything. He said he was trying to get into a mosh pit, which, fine, okay. I was already hyped up from being in a crowd of a bunch of people.

One moment I was standing with my friends, the next I was shoved really hard away from them. My flight mode kicked in and my whole brain went silent except for “DANGER DANGER DANGER” and I needed to get away. Bless my friends for trying to help me, but I had to leave the spot we were. I pushed my way through the crowd to the side and kind of moved back to the end of the main clump of people. My watch was definitely buzzing.

But! All is not lost, because I was able to see and hear much better from that vantage point.

As I said, I’ve not experienced much of Beartooth’s music, but I am definitely going to add them to some playlists. If I may be cheesy for a moment, I think one of my favorite parts of live shows is getting to hear the roar of a crowd. Except it’s not really a roar. It’s more like TV static from when TVs would go off-station. Just a quick, loud burst of a buzz before it quiets. It’s one of those feelings I can’t quite describe accurately, I think, because it’s like when I’m in the woods. I feel so big and so small at the same time. I’m part of a bigger thing, in a room full of people I’ll never see again (excepting my friends, of course), and we’re all there.

You can see where I moved to be away from the bunch of people for the rest of Beartooth, haha

There was a part of me that felt a little like I’m a loser because I couldn’t handle being in a crush of people. That I’d “abandoned” my friends to go be by myself because my brain doesn’t work right. But I didn’t leave the concert entirely. I moved to where I wouldn’t feel trapped, and I was able to still be part of it. The music still made my watch tell me my heart was too fast. I still ignored that. I’m pretty sure I looked pissed off because I just have one of those faces. My eyes closed against the flashing lights several times, but that added a new layer to the music for me. Sound has always been more important to me than visual, anyway. Between Beartooth and Bad Omens, I went with one of my friends to stand in a merch line. Which is an entirely new experience for me as well. I got shirts that are too big for me, but I have things to remind me I did something uncomfortable, didn’t die, and I enjoyed the music.

Bad Omens is ridiculously good live. When I heard them at Louder Than Life last year, I was blown away by the talent and class of their performance, and it was just as good, if not better at our Detroit concert. Noah said at one point how he was nervous, and he always gets nervous, but for some reason that night he was extra nervous. To which the crowd cheered support. And then he got right back to singing like he wasn’t actually nervous.

Because I am the person I am, that moment made me a little sad. I had the (entirely) original thought that it must get lonely sometimes for big-name musicians or creative people who perform. Like all celebrity worship tends to be about the way the person presents themselves. We are fascinated by who they are, and we learn all their “stats” like we’re going to be their best friends, forgetting sometimes that they exist off stage and they aren’t famous to the people who know them best. They’re just friends. They’re family, they’re people.

Like I said, not an original thought, but it must be so surreal to have tens of thousands of people full of adoration for you, and they don’t really get to know who you are. Not like your parents know you. Not like your best friend does. The ones who sit on the couch with you and play video games, or you bring presents to their kid’s birthday parties. You’re just you, and you don’t need to be the stage persona.

All of that to say, I am really grateful I pushed myself out of my comfortable place to be part of the audience at this concert. It was fun. It was a break from the reality of the world falling to pieces around us. I stood in the cold for about an hour and some change. I passed bracelets I’d made to strangers. Had small conversations with the nice guy behind me and my friends in line waiting to get in. We were cute, we were frozen, but we were happy.

Until next time, friends.

Salisbury.Fake Uncategorized

Some Thoughts on Dracula (2025)

Two posts in one day, what a time to be a chive, huh?

So yeah, as the title says. I took myself to the movies today, something I very rarely do. I don’t enjoy being around people I don’t know, especially when I’m trying to watch something and I might have feelings. But I wanted to support this film as the story is one of my favorites. Bram Stoker’s delivery aside, I think at its core, Dracula is a love story, and it’s the type I find most beautiful: the yearning.

First of all, whoever made the choice to cast Caleb Landry Jones as the count, give them a raise because my fucking god. I am actually struggling to find words other than just noises of astonishment. Incredible performance. He gave the right amount of camp and the 100% perfect amount of obsessive yearning the role demands. And it looked like he had fun doing it, so that added even more of a level of delight for me. I love it when it looks like someone’s having fun doing a project. There’s a moment (sorry for spoilers, but the story’s been out for decades and decades, so hush) when the count bites Mina, and I swear to the sun and all the planets in the sky, the anguish in his eyes at understanding what he’s just done. The shame, the despair. All of it, right there in his eyes. JUST his eyes because of how it was shot.

Christophe Waltz plays… himself. I don’t mean that badly, but he tends to deliver the same performance in most of what I’ve seen him in. Which for this role? It was perfectly fine. The priest needed a bit of sarcasm and nonchalance in his delivery of the most brutal lines. He’s been part of an order searching for the head of the snake, as it were, for four hundred years. I think they’re allowed a little macabre humor.

I keep getting stuck in my thoughts about Jones’s performance. I want to tell people to go watch it just to see him on screen. Is he this arresting in his other movies? I haven’t seen them, so I can’t compare, but I might need to if this is what he delivers.

Danny Elfman composed the score for this, and there’s the typical Elfman swoops and swings of the strings. Typical sounds rude, but maybe I mean classic. He’s got very distinctive style, and you can always tell when it’s him on the score because he has that kind of waterfall swoop of strings, and there’s a choir in there somewhere singing.

I’m gonna need a moment before I go do other things. What a way to spend a Saturday afternoon, huh? I need this to come out on … DVD? is that what kids use these days? Blu-Ray? I want to own this.

And that’s all I have for now. Thanks for stopping by my even further rambling thoughts.

Until next time, friends. It’ll be longer than a few hours, haha.

Salisbury.Fake Uncategorized, Weekly Update

Writing Journal #18

Salutations and saturations, friends. It’s still cold as balls. I’m slowly editing Lazarus, and that’s about all there is to it. I haven’t really done much in the way of writing yet this year, and while it’s a little weird that I haven’t, I’m oddly okay with it.

I have two big projects I want to get done, publish Lazarus, and then get a first draft of a hard sci-fi story I got inspired to do a little while ago. I have a lot of plans for future projects. Short stories and so on.

It’s February. I just realized how very little I blogged in January. I wasn’t really doing anything. Just working and … probably watching too many episodes of X-Files (Walter Skinner can get it, yo, god damn.) But now I’m on a different shift at work, so my mornings have been freed up quite significantly. I’ll find a balance, but I think I’m going to enjoy very much the time before work to be productive.

I’d always have such ambition to do stuff after work, but I’d get home and want to do nothing. Work all day to go home and do more work? No, thanks. But with the before work hours of free time, I’ve done so many things. I feel unstoppable. Which is probably just the manic part of my depression getting all demonic and cackling as we burn out. But I’m going to view it as a good thing for now.

I chopped up five pounds of onions this morning to put in the freezer for when I want to make a batch of soup. I did the same with some celery and some carrots. I’ve been meal prepping all the things, and it has been incredibly helpful as someone who doesn’t like spending money on fast food stuff. I’m cooking so much more for myself and it is a gosh dang delight. I made red lentil curry that gave me the biggest joy I’ve had in a while when it comes to food.

That’s not writing, but life aids the story. I’m reading the second book from my Bingo Board. I don’t know if I’ve talked about that yet. Last year, I did a bingo board of things I wanted to do in 2025. I did about half of them, which was neato. Didn’t get a full bingo because I set it up strategically so I wouldn’t get one unless I did the fitness things. Clearly, a strategy that didn’t work. So, this year, I went for books. I picked thirty books I want to read and I’m marking them with stars once I finish. I know bingo boards only have 25 spots, but the extra five are “bonus bingo.” Books I have in case there’s one I decide I really don’t want to read. There’s one I’m toying with not finishing, and it’s one I’ve tried to read several times. But that’s me, never wanting to give up on someone or something.

The first one was the previous post on this site, The Sun Also Rises. My goal is to do a book photoshoot after I finish one and then do a book post on here. We’ll see how well I do! I look forward to it all, really. Some of the books are ones I’ve had for a long, long time. I do still want to read them, which is why they exist on my shelves and not in the donate piles.

I think that’s about all the news from this side of the trees. I hope your books are comfy and your words are easy to find. I’ll talk to you soon, probably. I’ll always find something to yap about!

Until next time, friends.

Salisbury.Fake Uncategorized

Where Did You Go?

Snowflakes float in whirling dances from a gray sky. Dusting the leaves carpeting the back yard. Silence broken by the electric kettle bubbling in the corner of the counter. Boiling water for a cup of tea that I’ll probably let go cold before I remember I made it.

The question sits on my spine. Gentle and heavy all at once. Where did you go?

I stare out the window at my big tree. I call him Charlie Boy. The thought hits me, that he isn’t mine. I wasn’t here when he was first planted. But I’m here now. I worry about him when the winds are too heavy in the summer. Or just the other day when it buffeted my car on the drive home from work. I worried Charlie Boy might not make it. Because the elder things of the universe I inhabit are precious and lift me with life.

I hold out my hand to the person I was four years ago. I ask her to forgive me for getting lost. She wants to know about it. Where I disappeared to. How I found my way back. I don’t have the heart to tell her I’m still a bit aimless.

Are human beings the only sentient things that yearn? Because sometimes I get so tangled in a web of yearning that I forget to breathe. I yearn to dance like the snowflakes. I want to feel the way the wind blows through my branches, like Charlie Boy.

I am finding pieces I set down along the way. Pieces I deemed not necessary for the misery percolating in my pancreas. How can I be sad if I am smiling all the time? How can I be tragic if I am full of kindness?

I want to see where I go, so I’ll keep walking forward. Hand firmly clasped in my past self’s fingers. She got me here, I won’t let her fall behind. I’m grateful to her. For carrying us this far. But it’s time she got some rest.

Salisbury.Fake Uncategorized, Weekly Update

Writing Journal #13?

Lucky numbaaaaahhhhhhh 13. Or something. I have returned from my time in the trees, and I did no editing. I did read a few books while out and about (Quicksilver by Callie Hart, Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy, and The Lost Woman by Sara Blaedel), and I hiked for a bit. The state park I went to is one I’ve not visited before, so it was nice to do some wandering in unfamiliar territory. At one point, I thought maybe I’d wandered off trail, and I got nervous I’d be lost. But, clearly, I am not. Have a picture:

Writing wise, I plan on editing the proof copy of the project I am almost finished with. I still have some changes I need to make to the final text, and seeing them in printed form will definitely help with that. I ordered a proof version to make sure everything was where it should be, and it ain’t, sooooooooo back to the GIMP drawing board.

I have sneezed almost ten times in the last six minutes. My face is betraying me.

Anyway, since NaNoWriMo is disbanded, I’m participating in a November Writing Thing on the forum I’m part of, and I have a title, and I have almost 1500 words so far, but I hate them, so I’m going to (pause for sneeze) redo them and try again. The title will stay, though. I do like that one a lot. I’m only shooting for 15k words instead of the 50k because I am trying to finish a project, and I don’t want to be too spread across the lands. (Like butter over too much bread, eh, Bilbo? [I had to, sorry]).

That’s all the soup in this tureen, chickens. I hope you’re well, and I hope your words are coming along pretty.

Until next time, friends. Have another photo.

Salisbury.Fake Life, Uncategorized, Weekly Update

Little By Little

Sometimes, my dad hugs me just a little longer and I am lighter than I was before. Sometimes, my sister drops a random moment and I laugh like it’s how I breathe. My stepmom will give me a smile and I am okay for another day.

My niece tells me about her little almost seven years old life, and I wonder if anyone ever listened to me with such gusto.

I’m always going to be thirty years older than her, and I still see how small she was when she was born. She’s not my kid, but she’s my kid.

When I see the little ways people love me, the quiet ways, the moments just us, it makes me panic that I don’t appreciate it enough, that they don’t know how much it means to me.

I’ve hated my birthday for a long time, never wanting to be reminded of my own existence. I know I’m here, don’t tell me about it. But this year I started asking myself why.

The attention being on me is certainly one of the reasons I hate it. I hate being cared about so openly. It makes me feel like I need to do something to “pay back” and when people don’t want the reimbursement of their love, I don’t understand.

But I want to.

I want to stop being uncomfortable when someone does something for me because they want to, because I exist in their life and they find value in who I am. I want to see why birthday candles are fun things to look forward to, the wishes blown out a promise of future happiness.

I spend as much time as I can around my birthday in the trees. Seeing the world as big as it is reminds me I’m small and insignificant, but not so I can use that to hate myself. It is my way of proving to myself that my existence is necessary. That I am part of the great woven masterpiece I drape around my shoulders, and I am not meant to leave it yet.

Little by little, I tell myself. Little by little, we’ll find our way back. One day, I’ll smile when my birthday rolls around. One day, I’ll embrace myself the way my father hugs me, and I’ll hold on a little longer each time, too.

Until next time, friends.

Salisbury.Fake Uncategorized

Dear Vessel

My favorite band for most of my life has been Hanson. Yes, the Mmmbop boys. They’ve never stopped making music and they constantly tour. They have a massive fanbase, made mostly of millennials, but they are beloved in their own right. I’ve been to a few of their concerts, and loved them. They know their fans and they know their crowd.

Last year, May 2024, I first heard Chokehold by Sleep Token and I kind of “oh, well, that’s different.” and I didn’t give it a second listen. Then I heard The Summoning on an instagram ad for a spicy book I didn’t read, and I looked it up properly on Spotify. There were several people who commented on videos saying, “I just don’t get Sleep Token. They’re not even that good. They’re not metal.” (Which is funny because the band has never said they were, and there’s just been this grumbling about them for whatever reason.) People were actively hating on the music because they didn’t “get it.”

I’ve listened to Sleep Token almost exclusively since that day.

When the new album was announced earlier this year, I kind of felt like a poser because I wasn’t really into the lore of who Sleep is or whatever, so when people were discussing the theories behind the released songs and what they meant, I just kind of “but they sound right.”

I think that’s where I’ve been so fascinated. The music is correct. It fits into the spaces of my brain that need filling, and I don’t need to change the metaphorical station to remain content.

I do have a superpower of being able to listen to a song on repeat for days on end, but I wasn’t doing it often. Usually just for writing sessions if I needed to keep a certain emotional mindset. When Even In Arcadia was released, I listened to it on repeat for months. Over and over and over until I felt like the very drumbeats were stamped on my bones. It’s a perfect album, in my opinion.

I wish I could tell Vessel thank you. I wish I could tell him that the way he hears the world is such a beautiful, heart-wrenching thing. He uses phrases like “buckling sutures” and words like “loamy” in his lyrics.

I got to see them in concert last night in Cleveland. I’m glad my friends took videos and photos because I just listened. I sank into the happiness that I rarely allow myself to feel and I heard Vessel sing. He’s incredible live. The whole band is. I got to hear my favorite songs (Vore, Infinite Baths) and I got to spend the night with some of my favorite people experiencing the wonder Vessel is.

Sleep Token fans get a lot of shit, and some of us deserve it because there are more than a few who don’t know how to behave around others. Some don’t know how to respect privacy. Some who don’t know how to just listen.

But there are those who are eager to fall into the sound, Vessel. I promise we hear it and we see it and we love it. We love you for who you are. The man behind the mask can stay unknown because the words you give us through Vessel are enough. You are enough.

One of the friends I was with last night took a video of me during the performance of Vore, my favorite song of the entire discography, and I wish I could show Vessel. I don’t consider myself beautiful, but the pure joy on my face gave me a moment of seeing it. That’s what Sleep Token does for me. It allows me to see myself the way others see me.

So, thank you, Vessel.

Salisbury.Fake Uncategorized, Weekly Update

Random List of Facts About Me

A Q&A no one asked for:

Q: What is your favorite food?
A: Cheesy carbs, but also peanut butter

Q: Do you have a favorite color?
A: Blue, in any hue

Q: How about hobbies?
A: Sure, writing–although that one is more of a life. Reading (I’m currently reading two books, Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, and No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. I just finished Accomplice to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer.)

I also enjoy hiking, art museums, listening to music, visiting my family, and seeing my friends.

Q: How big is your family?
A: I have a blended family, which gives me two brothers and three sisters. Most of us live in the US, but one sister lives in Japan with her family. I have four nephews and a niece. They range in ages from 6.5 years old to two less than a year old.

Q: What music do you listen to?
A: Pretty much everything. I’m not a country music fan, but I appreciate people are. I don’t usually listen to rap unless I’m in the mood for it. My most listened to band right now is Sleep Token (shut up, they’re good to me), but I also am very fond of soundtracks, “classical” music, and other assortments of musical acts like Dead South, Bedouin Soundclash, Breaking Benjamin, Noah Gundersen, Elbow, Modest Mouse, Heilung, Hozier, Juice WRLD, Keane, Linkin Park, Hanson, etc.

Q: Do you believe in God?
A: Not really. I used to. I was raised Mormon (LDS) and was fairly active in the church until my early twenties, and then I kind of had some stuff happen that didn’t really shake my faith, more confirmed some things I’d thought for a while. I do believe in a spirituality of sorts, not necessarily religiously. I find a lot of solace in nature, and I like being reminded there’s more out there much bigger than I am, and I can get easily lost in the thought of how rivers know where to go. Spirituality often gets misconstrued as having to do with religion, but I think it’s more a connection to our place in the universe. For whatever reason, evolution gave us the ability to have a deep thought now and then, and a lot of us humans ponder why we’re here. I certainly don’t know the answer to that, but I do know I’m doing my best to enjoy being here.

Q: What is your biggest fear?
A: The dark, deep water, mirrors, losing my family. The dark is, of course, the possibility of what’s inside the darkness, deep water because there’s an element of the unknown and darkness, losing my family is pretty obvious, haha. I don’t mean the natural way of life loss, though. I mean more the metaphorical loss. Mirrors because I don’t need to see things in there that don’t need to be.

Q: Is there a Mr. Salisbury Fake?
A: No, and I don’t seek one. There is loneliness from time to time, but that’s human nature. I am quite content by myself. I think one day it’d be cool to be married, but that would probably be a weird relationship to outsiders. I’d like having someone, but I’d also really like being left alone, haha.

Q: Are you romantic?
A: Unbearably so. I think there is beauty in romanticizing life to an extent. I don’t think it’s good to let romance become delusion.

Q: So, if you did get married, what would your choice of ‘first dance’ song be?
A: Blue Skies by Irving Berlin, but specifically from the Picard season 1 soundtrack.

Q: Are you happy?
A: Happiness is such a fleeting feeling and something I think as elusive as perfection. I don’t strive for happiness, I strive for contentment. Far more achievable and far more sustainable. Happiness is important and something to enjoy when it appears (such as seeing my brother’s kids play together), but to me it’s far more important to understand it’s okay not to be happy all the time. Generalized contentment is my preferred goal, and so in that line, I say yes. I am content. Wanderlust and yearning aside, I am content.

Q: Did you make up all of these questions for this interview with yourself?
A: Yes. Yes, I did.

Until next time, friends.

Salisbury.Fake Life, Uncategorized

What Even Are We?

Wow, two posts in one week, is it Christmas??

I find myself in this pit of angst.

Or a sort of angst.

Every so often I get this bout of “stronger than normal” depression and I find myself restless to the sky with how empty life can be, even if it’s so full.

Those questionnaires at the doctor’s office all “do you struggle to enjoy things you once enjoyed?”

I struggle so fiercely it hurts and people tell me they’re worried about me, and it makes me think, “Oh, I should get better at hiding this.”

Don’t weigh the world down with your non-emergent saddies, me. You’re not being blown to bits every day, so what can you possibly find to be sad about?

It’s not even sadness, though. That’s what I think throws people when I tell them I’ve been living with major depressive disorder most of my life. “But you’re so funny! You’re always making others feel like they matter!”

I’m fuckin’ hilarious, yes.

Because I don’t want you to see inside me.

I don’t want you to see the ugly tar dripping down the walls of my mind because you would be horrified. The mess manifests on my kitchen counter in weeks of tupperware I can’t wash because then that means something bad might happen.

“It’s my emotional support yogurty jar I could have rinsed out but didn’t because I need to see how awful of a person I am.”

We joke and we laugh about the things breaking us apart, and I want to keep laughing, but I am so tired.

I know there are reasons to stay, and they are keeping me here, but isn’t it all right if I just crumble for a bit? I don’t not love you, I just need to be by myself so I don’t appear weak in front of you. Weakness only I dump on myself as a label because everyone else calls me strong.

Let me sit down.

Let me see the way the sun sets and the moon rises while eating a bag of Doritos stale from having been left open in the pantry too long.

Let me be sad without wanting to fucking fix it because I want to see it in its grotesque formless mass. I want to hold it and see the places I rip myself into shreds. So I can see it coming next time.

I’ll be fine.

Until next time, friends.