July 8th in Joko History
Doesn’t the very term “Joko History” itself imply narcissism? See, I could name two or three things that have really bugged me over the years as I have observed other bloggers that I am in danger of repeating right now: an inflated opinion of oneself (by using the calendar as a medium for re-posting, I am dispelling some of that perception in that these vids that just so happen to coincide with this date), or that one’s past works were so important that they deserve re-posting. The latter is more of an issue when one has a contiguous community like the old MySpace and bloggers begin re-posting things that a good portion of the reading community have seen before. Of my to two to three score regular readers on FriendBurst, I’m confidant that at most, half a dozen of you have seen any of these before. If you are one of those half dozen, I beg your indulgence.
This week in Joko History:
From Four years ago this week:
ATLAS INVISIBLE- This was one of these weird God-shot incidences that I happened to catch on video. Ten, 15 years ago, I wrote a song called “Atlas”, which was about a person (an ex of mine) taking too much upon themselves… I wrote it down. Many years later (at the time of this vid), I found those lyrics, but without the chords that went with the song (which I had forgot). I went to go look for them… and found myself on ATLAS Road. Weird coincidence or “God shot”?
Next we come to July 8th, 2008. By this point I had moved from California to Washington state. I had a whole new territory to explore and record as part of the Tour d’Joko. One thing that the western slope of Washington’s Olympic Mountains are known for is that they are the only place in the continental USA where one can find a rainforest. I went and found it. Unfortunately, as it is quite undeveloped, there are no signs that tell you “WELCOME TO THE RAINFOREST!”, so it becomes possible to become lost. Which I did.
FAST FORWARD ANOTHER YEAR to July 8th 2009. This video, for me, represents a bit of a transition that I did not even know I was making at the time. Who here remembers the blogger “JD” from the old MySpace days? His blogs would the make the top 20 in the heyday when half a million blogs came out everyday on MySpace. We became friends through MySpace, and he was visiting Seattle at the time.
“As if everybody here expects everybody else to read every fucking thing they put online!”
“EXACTLY!!
Even in just two years, it is funny how my opinion of how who will read what whomever puts online has changed. JD (who is a really good writer whom has probably written all kinds of amazing stuff that I have not read, nor has he read my stuff in the last two years simply because we are not on a common platform like the old MySpace used to be. He expected all his readers to follow him to his new platform [naughtyjester.com] just as I expected all my readers to follow me here to FriendBurst. Neither thing has happened).
And in conclusion, we come to the Summer of 2010. One year ago. It was a summer of much creativity, produced by my newly found SObriety…
One year ago today, I put out this video of me playing El Condor Pasa.
The first week of July is like the first week of “true” summer, no matter where you live in the USA. Got any memories that aren’t reliant on YouTube archives you can share?
I remember JD, but I can’t recall any of his blogs. Looks as though he hasn’t blogged at that link in a little over a year. Surprisingly I hadn’t seen any of those videos.
July reminds me of vacations to our cabin in the Ozarks when I was a kid. Vess pop that you had to use a church key to open and baths in one of those round tubs you could barely fit in with that floating soap that I can’t recall it’s name. Fishing and swimming by day and trying to sleep at night when the bugs sounded as if they were going to come through the screen and eat me.
Summer is going by way too fast…
Anyway, it’s interesting who you can meet off the internet. Of course there’s Metalfan. Oh, but no one knew about us, right? lol. I’ll have to maybe blog that again, if anyone is interested.
Then, there is this guy, who is Russian, and he is serving in the US military helping to train in hand to hand combat. He’d been a guest here for quite a few months. Interesting and awesome person. His lady friend came with too, and we all used to debate in the Myspace forums about various issues… It was fun.
This was/is very interesting. Did not know you at myspace…I do miss it over there the way it used to be. Nice videos,good play on the uke.You have a nice face Joko. Now when I read your blogs I will have something to paste them too. Thanks for sharing your memories. mari ana.
I propose a new term, “Jokocism”. Please define.
Some of us repost as a matter of an educational position paper on issues of import (at least to us), and to make them available to new readers.
And please excuse my my low self-esteem moniker – that is just one of the issues that my therapist and I are working on together.
Always fun.
Howdy Joko.
We would camp at Starve Hollow S.P. in Indiana every summer with Our cousins. We would fish and swim (not at the same time of course) and walk up and down the dirtroads. At the time surf music was popular and was playing at the little sugar shack that was beside/on the manmade lakeside beach.
We swam at our own risk and the music and the shack stayed open ‘a little past dusk’.
We’d go to sleep with the dark and wake with the sun.