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Chasing Ghosts

Posted on March 22, 2019 by "Bad" Billy Pratt

“And now I tell you openly: you have my heart, so don’t hurt me… You’re what I couldn’t find…”

I’ve never experienced anything more ethereal than when our eyes met before homeroom. It couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds, but it hung in the air like an eternal sunrise. Nothing I’ve experienced since has matched this feeling- for only a moment, I stood before the face of God. Drug people lament the way it used to be, before things were cut with fillers; watered down; muddled; meaning progressively lost; purity replaced by mayhem; innocent experimentation escalating to candyflipping handfuls.

The first moment you fall in love; the first semester at college, and you’re popping pills at a party- throbbing waves of intensity. And you think you’ll take that feeling with you, like you finally won the ring-toss at a carnival. This is your big pink elephant, and it’s yours forever. You think it’s going to feel that way every time, with every girl, but every time you go back, there are more pieces missing. The fifth time through the haunted house at Adventureland and the plastic skeleton doesn’t have the same resonance. You become the old, recluse pothead rolling his eyes at kids going on stoner adventures- paint chipping away; hardwood floors stained; crabgrass growing through the cracks of the cement.

Elizabeth Warren and the Death of MTV

Posted on February 10, 2019 by "Bad" Billy Pratt

“You smile like a cartoon, tooth for a tooth; you said that irony was the ‘shackles of youth…’”

If you’re someone who likes getting the ending up front, I’ll spare you the details: the hero of the story is Bill Berry. I had gotten a copy of R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People (1992) the week of its release- the cassette was yellow- and immediately fell in love with the record. While it would be years before I could appreciate the clever writing of singer Michael Stipe, the album served as a welcome departure from what I understood as music in the early 1990s. While Axl Rose and Metallica were producing work of equal measure, R.E.M. was my first exposure to the idea that things didn’t always need to rock- R.E.M. wasn’t afraid to give a moment space and allow a song to breath- this gave “Drive” room to brood ominously and “Everybody Hurts” time to emotionally settle. “Nightswimming” is still one of my favorite songs and always manages to make me cry.

On Writing and “The Pussy” (2016)

Posted on December 8, 2018 by "Bad" Billy Pratt

When asked for writing advice, Delicious Tacos likes to keep things simple: get up early, every morning, and write. And there’s something to that- the foundation of writing is interpreting the disorganized thoughts of the writer through language and bringing those ideas to a place of external organization- coming to terms with what is initially termless. This is why keeping a journal is often recommended as a form of therapy. However, this only explains the process of writing- the easiest and most direct way to become a writer– rather than explaining what the goal of a writer should be, something that warrants equal examination.

A good writer is tasked with splitting his veins open with a razor blade and covering his keyboard in blood- a prolonged and terrible ritual. You’ll know a piece is finished when your face is numb, eyes unfocused, and body trembling. You’d think Delicious Tacos would have something like this- the horrible reality of being on the writing grind- considering I learned it from reading his work.