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January 14, 2010

Johnson Dynasty

Another member of the Johnson dynasty is writer/drawler/drummer Zach Johnson, who writes very well at any age, but particularly well on the site of his cousin Rian Johnson (dir. of Brick, The Brothers Bloom.) This bit is from 2005, I believe: 

I’ve been short with my mom all day, too. I dunno why. She asked me to unload the dishes and I didn’t answer her. “Zach?” she said. “Ok,” I said. Earlier she was asking me to clean my room sometime this summer, which is a very reasonable thing to ask considering the state of my room, but before saying it she said this: “I didn’t want to ask you, because I didn’t want to bother you with something like cleaning your room when you were busy, but you always seem so tired or busy that I never know when to ask you.” I was playing the piano, and she was hesitant to ask me to clean my room sometime this summer because she didn’t want me to get irritable. I’m very irritable a lot of the time when I am doing nothing in particular.

I wanted to cry then, too. I get the feeling that a lot of people have been short with my mom throughout the years because she is so soft-spoken and loyal. It can be very easy to brush-off the people who love you the most without even giving it much thought. You know they’ll always love you, and so you don’t have to worry about being loving towards them if it’s not convenient at the moment. And they keep on loving you, and they hope you won’t be short with them, and they are overjoyed when you are just nice to them. It makes me want to cry whenever I see that my mom is happy just because I wasn’t short with her. It makes me feel like puking.

(via)

What’s so good about Johnson’s writing, and especially his tour diaries , is the way he portrays himself. Much of the writing I’ve read in recent years is about the lies you tell about yourself. Johnson’s writing is more like telling other people the lies you tell yourself.

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