Casual Conversations: A love story

[damooch916]

Seinfeld: Season 2, Episode 1 “The ex girlfriend.”

Three in the morning is the wrong time to evaluate your proximity to casual behavior. It’s a time for the gruesome. The hour of “the others.” 

 

At three am, nothing good can, or even should, happen. 

 

On the road, right outside your door, a maniac is fleeing from the house lights of some hellish bar scene. His eyes are swollen from cheap vodka and his vehicle screams into the newer and fresher darkness. The desperate line the lobbies of cheap motels; their appendages aching to bond in profane ugliness.

 

At three in the morning living ghosts pound the door to their neighborhood bagman. Bar flies turn into butterflies. Brutes find relief in their celestial ritual and the hideous feel normal in the company of their own.

 

At three in the morning, knowing the rules will keep you alive (unless you’re already dead and no one has the guts to tell you). After parties turn into clouds of real time regret. Alleys sing like cathedrals. Angels carve their wings off and dance badly. Dimly lit houses welcome various strangers with the same face. 

 

At three a.m. minutes stretch like plastic wrap and time goes into hiding. Dark becomes blackness. Your body becomes a helpless jelly and bad choice sits like a stenographer, clicking every action into your tortured memory. 

 

At three in the morning, you’re living life away from the rails. 

 

Because nothing good comes from three in the morning. And everywhere you go, it’s some place you shouldn’t be. 

 

Unless, of course, you’re laying in bed watching Seinfeld. Some former heathen, wearing domestication like a pair of never-broken-in boots. Your body buzzing with the expectation of amplifier ache. Tossing and twisting. Negotiating with a higher power, “please, oh please … just let me sleep like the normal…”

 

Seinfeld: Season 2, Episode 2 “The Pony Remark.”

It started with a simple oscillating fan. But my body caught onto the ruse - and suddenly, sleep wouldn’t come. I added podcasts. But eventually the voices couldn’t speak over the crackling of my brain fire. I added the tv. Seinfeld. But sleep won’t come. My check is here. My payment is due. 

 

My crimes against normal living have been counted and no matter how deep down I dig … I’m gonna stand for all those stolen nights. Those fits of weirdness are here to collect on my attempt to go “regular.”

Every dreary cafe that I haunted after some maniacal gig. Every curving car trip into a mist of horrible outcomes. Every taste of poison. Every jolt of electricity in the late hours. There’s a price to be paid for hot-wiring the night in the off hours, Jack. You’ve fractured the pathway to regularity - and there’s no trail of breadcrumbs to find your way back.   

 

Musicians don’t become normal people. If we’re lucky, we become people imitating normal people.

 

Music is a lifelong contract. A baked in agreement that, in our youth, we were all too eager to sign away. The deal is simple: we’ll play loud, grease fire grind rhythms for the depraved and unquenchable … but we can no longer play the circadian rhythm. It’s a vampiric bargain (it used to be a Faustian bargain, but none of us have had soul since the 70’s).

 

“Oh well,” we say, shrugging at the Blues God, “I’ll never reach my middle age anyways, hoss.”

 

Then, of course, you do. 

 

Some 40 year old road person. Your hands banged into mush from years of instrument abuse. Getting loaded on the weirdness of sobriety. In bed, flipping your gym membership over in your meaty fingers and wondering aloud, “can a protein bar really be considered healthy (it isn’t healthy, but this won’t stop you from playing concerned, before you give in and eat one)?”

 

Some bumbling oddity, catching fits of the uncanny valley at a grocery store because you can’t fathom the idea of yourself in the frozen foods. That’s the reality of the domestic musician. Just you and your existential crisis while studying the ripeness of bananas. 

 

Seinfeld: Season 2, Episode 3 “The Jacket.”

Let’s face it, we were never fun. Not here. Not ever. 

 

Casual conversation has never meant casual. At the fiverr forum, casual conversation means “less formal.” That’s how we like it. We’re up tight, wound up, jittery, coffee enthusiast, creator types. And that’s us at our best. We’re nitpicky, overly stuffy, deadline junkies. We have just enough time to waste and not enough time to care. That’s our way. We hand crafted this routine - and our favorite game is to moan about it in C minor (Or Eb Major 7 if you’re really picky). 

 

Sure. We could venture into those opaque underworlds. Those mysterious side pockets where fiverr groups congregate, absent of rules and regulations. But that lacks the grit and teeth gnashing of braving the true fiverr forum. Anyone could read relevant content. That’s for the meek. I want a day’s worth of arbitrary updates. I want to sift through 100’s of crisp, faux congratulatory threads - until my eyes bleed from the dryness of scanning for something meaningful and my brain breaks like an unkept motor. 

 

Feed me. 

 

And why not? The gangs all here. Same as they ever were and only the names have changed. 

 

We’ve got the lady who posts something helpful on every thread, whether she knows the specifics or not. 

 

The bitter artists decrying the foul nature of undercutting the market. 

 

The newly crowned “forum fixer” with his laundry list of “helpful hints” that would settle this “broken mess” with the wave of his hand. 

 

Don’t look now, here comes sarcastic “retort” writer and her equally valuable friend, “try marketing” guy. 

 

There goes “posted this thread on that thread” lady…

 

… and “I hate this place, I’ll see you tomorrow” guy. 

 

It’s lovely to meet you all again. And again. I especially love your new faces and totally different names. Sincerely wild thing, you make my heart sing. 

 

No, we’ve never been fun here. That’s all part of the game. For better or for worse. In sickness or in health. The fiverr forum is this. This is this Stanley. It isn’t something else. And good thing, because the consistency is the main appeal. I don’t want your fixes, with its aim to squash redundancy and it’s attempt to make things better. Screw better. Better is for the victims. Give me all those perverted “new level alert” threads and those treacherous “I hate buyers requests” complaints. That’s the meat. The good stuff. 

 

That’s the vampiric pain of the fiverr forum and that’s why I love it. We’ve all lived through it long enough for everyday to feel the same. The monotony tastes warm and gooey. Admit it, you love it. You want it this way. It’s not just good enough, it’s your sanctuary. 

It’s not dress pants - but it is sweatpants.

 

It’s not Starbucks - but it is the three hundred coffee capsules you don’t have to worry about running out of. 

 

It makes an old road hand like me feel a brush with routine behavior. At three in the morning I can lay mangled up in bed, the smooth sounds of Seinfeld soundtracking my restless legs, jump on the fiverr forum and guarantee the results. It’s not pizzazz. It’s not exotic nutrients. But it is jello. And jello, even after eating it everyday for ten years, is still jello.  

Don’t ever change, Casual Conversation. Because the nights get long. Sometimes they even get strange. But with enough hope - there’s always a place for weird creatives to call home. 

[theratypist]

Damooch I saw this post at page 8 but I'm glad I did.... I wonder where you got your thoughts for this one 😆

[damooch916]

Amazing! 

I was just standing, fully upright, in the middle of my kitchen wondering, “why have I walked in here” when the thought occurred to me…

“…What I really need is a master of professional communication. Especially one without prospects, begging for work in the middle of a seller dominated environment.”

And poof! Here you are. 

Which begs the question: are you a wizard? I have strong policies against working with wizards. I’m not prejudice or anything, but is it really so wrong to recognize that they smell like that?

Granted, I’m sure that you’re a great person, or essence, or tangibly translated ethos in the form of human quintessence or whatever, but a wizard is a wizard. The last thing I need is for some pointy hatted, robe wearer, taking grooming tips from the local motorcycle gang to show me the value of creative writing by changing me into a squirrel or something. It’s obnoxious. Dude, I get it - you’re one broom away from commanding an army of monkeys or whatnot, but can I please just get “500 words on security systems” and close out this order? 

Now, I recognize that this wizard disapproval is not your fault. 

It likely stems from a summer job that I had a few years back. I was just a novice musician at the time and jobs were scarce. To keep the lights on, I was forced to take a house keeping position at the local castle. As you’re probably aware, castles are filthy. High windows. Skull jars. Torn books. It’s a tough job. 

To make matters worse there was no sign of industrial cleaner anywhere. I kid you not, this guy hands me a bucket of water, a broom and hightails it to bed for the evening. Obviously he can’t be bothered to pick up after himself, after all he’s waved his arms around and spouted nonsense all day.

Well, imagine my surprise to find his hat just sitting around. So I’m looking at this thing, right? And I’m wondering “what’s the difference between this and a witches hat? Is it fabric? Do brimless hats indicate more or less power? Is this one of those one-sized-fits-all deals and let’s be honest, is all elastic just a magic trick?”

Next thing I know, I’m wearing the hat. 

Okay. I’ll take the heat for that. Although (and I have no evidence to support this) I sincerely believe that the hat put itself on my head. 

I assume you can guess what happened next. I’m waving this broom over here. Waving that bucket over there. Splashing water on base boards and conjuring windex from the great beyond. In all the bustle, I guess I woke up the wizard. Or maybe it was the completely blaring classical music. 

Maybe this was an inappropriate time to question the validity of his title. This loon kept referring to himself as a “sorcerer.” I don’t know about you, but a guy wearing a blue traffic cone doesn’t get to call himself a sorcerer. 

 

Ohhhhh. I remember why I walked in here. My glasses! 

Never mind. 

[vickiespencer]

Here is my favorite saying compliments of @damooch916 concerning Unlimited Revisions.

A seller with unlimited revisions is learning a craft on your dime. 

The point of being a buyer - is to buy. It’s not to offer paid training. There’s only one “service” in the world where you feel better knowing that you’ve purchased someone’s “first attempt.” And even pimps know not to offer revisions. 

[melanielm]

This isn't specific to this gig, but has anyone noticed an amazing number of writers spamming every single one of their gigs in this section lately? They're all eerily similar, too.