Like many of my compatriots in the millennial haze, my first foray into publishing came on the heels of a Myspace induction. Poems spewed forth from my insides, based on a purity of emotion all lyrically tilted, with outdated 1960s hippy sentiments coupled with an unabashed Bushian repulsion. I went by The Algorian Shore back then. I was in love with love at 16, but also moved by a hatred of a flag that ironically takes very good care of me these days. Back then, I couldn’t have cared less for its unfurling, with or without a removed hat and rigid salute. 

My bedroom walls were plastered with posters of sundry 60s icons. Having been wrought by the remnants of their era and its happening, I became so wrapped up in mid-century mythology that by the early 2000s I was nearly convinced I had experienced it myself. The Woodstock poster hung side-by-side with the I Have A Dream speech. Hendrix, Dylan and the Beatles grinned or frowned or set fire to guitars and in any case were my closest friends for a spell. They watched over me as I bled guitar chords with lyrics that tried to say something important. I wanted the spirit of that 60s counterculture to take up with my present. To become my future.

I had officially come of age September 11, 2001, and from the telethons and benefit concerts for New York that followed, I would learn so much about the music I’d love. Springsteen, Tom Petty, Neil Young. These people would explain to me what had happened that morning, why it happened, and what to do in spite of all the nationalism and fanaticism and bloodlust it spawned. That fateful morning, I was afraid we would go to War. We did. The world changed. Any hope for peace in our time was destroyed as it was meant to. I just wanted the music. Just wanted to play.

At 17, my Dad died of Lou Gehrig’s Disease after a multiple-year deterioration. Our family had one last week together, but my Dad would leave us sooner than later. He had been a regal man. A giant to some. A legend amongst a group of people who all watched him laid to rest. He had already been on his way; had composed his own obituary. Then into nothing. Just a hopeful sleep amidst pure love.

I was lost, but I went off to college anyway. I had to escape the rat trap. Small town cabin fever. But I didn’t go to class. Just hung out. Smoked cigarettes. Built little of a future life. I couldn’t have cared less. The days were nothing to me. It was the night I loved. I wanted exclusively to have fun. Be drunk and laugh. Smoke pot and converse. And listen to music.

At 19, I dropped out of school and moved to Asheville, North Carolina. The songwriters I embraced were Bright Eyes, Rilo Kiley, Laura Marling, The Tallest Man On Earth, Crooked Fingers, Okkervil River, Elvis Perkins. They had become just as much a constant in my life as John Lennon and Bob Dylan had been for me as a child, and I once again belonged to something outside myself. But it was different this time. This time, I was sure I could join them. There was a movement within me. I wrote song after song. Lyrics came easy. I could write like Conor Oberst if I didn’t try. I could sing like Will Sheff if I was honest. Authenticity was all I cared about. It was always all I would ever care about. 

I started to experiment with drugs. Pot constantly. My first psilocybin trip found me alone in my very blue room listening to Okkervil River and Damien Rice, strumming a major E chord for what seemed like centuries, as Eric Clapton’s specter climbed down from his poster on the wall and sat beside me, kept me company, guided the way. God led me. I grew stronger. When LSD came later, it would be the turning point of my life both good and bad. Illness would take hold. But the words flowed out of me. I didn’t even know where they were coming from. I still don’t.

I would realize that I would always need to work alone. I had too much inside of me to say that I wanted to say as it already was in my soul. And as quickly as possible. That first LP, Blame It On The Trees, took forever to get finished. I waited and waited. A year passed and it was released. That was way too long. I couldn’t let another year go by before I had recorded all the songs I had already written. I was sure that my story had to be told as it was happening. I needed to be understood. I needed to understand myself. And I could only do it through words and music.

The next few albums would happen quickly. Such a Sinister Sort of Sweetness; Hey There, Mr Cramely; Rocka Bye Babies. They were all recorded and released in a matter of months in early 2012. I was on my way. Nothing could stop me. 

***

You have by now read what happened in February of 2012. My nerves imploded. Shot to hell like a backfire, a gunshot rang long and tough. A scarecrow wishing well, dilection around me. Fear. Longing. Obsession. Lust. More fear. A frozen fog and a siren halo. I cursed as my heart gave out. Fell to the floor in response of death. Something changed in an instant. I was dead, then resurrected there on the kitchen floor, reborn as a savior to mankind.

In the hospital, things became very clear. I learned that the system isn’t there to help, the system is there to destroy something. And destroying, it succeeds in doing. I was afraid. We were inmates in there. Locked in a wing of Lutheran Hospital, I rewrote their Bible and cursed its very existence. Some things were funny, some were sad, and some were terrifying. Maybe I was dead. It remains a possibility. At the time I was pretty sure I was in the waiting room of purgatory. To be relegated to heaven or hell. Basking in the morning sun. Praying for a swifter repose.

At any rate, the hospital was what it was. The only thing it did well for me was to scream a few things off of my chest. Though I often think doing so is hardly the proper recourse, I was very much in pain. Sometimes I wonder if there’s actually something to be done about it. Life is a ridiculous proposition. It is at its worst a living hell. Different kinds for different people. Wrath. Bloodshed. Bloodlust. Bullshit. Oh to be brain dead. To be lifted up from this illusion.

Whatever the premise, the main thing I would grow to desire was not understanding, but a cautious dedication to the truth as I see it. I might always feel paranoia that I speak out of turn, or what I say is embarrassing–it doesn’t really matter. I have been shown multiple realities over the years, and the only constant is the past and its prophets, its legends, and its heroes. The present, what we witness perpetually, what we record to be sifted through later, is reliant on precedent, of the bridges once built or torn down, of emotional intelligence and a well placed filter. Whether of truths or lies, it is a consistent way of witness. All of a sudden, those giants of the past you worshiped were wrong weren’t they? The cotton candy world could never be. Just a strange place. It’s no wonder people lose their minds.

Through the path that brought me to believe these things, I have come to realize that saying them thoughtfully along some words and melodies 10 times in a row will leave me with something to cherish, something to hold out and declare as a piece of my soul, my contribution to the collective unconscious, morsels of universal truth that can never be wrong, just claimed or refuted. I stake a claim on those tidbits, those feelings of clarity and bliss you’re left with forever. It’s quite lovely. Rose colored. Blue. Just pick up a pen, pull a melody from the ether, and join all who came before. Produce a body of work. Leave your mark. If only for the purple haze or instant karma or tambourine man.

I was 12 years old, listening to this game on the radio like I did every game back then, no cable, no need, I got to always listen to the best announcer ever. We were quickly down by 12. I turned it off, went upstairs, saw my Dad, I told him the score. And I’ll never forget, he looked me dead in the eye and said to me, “but wouldn’t it be something if they came back and won?” I turned it back on in the 7th and listened through to the 9th and Tom Hamilton’s one and only mistake ever, screaming “the Indians win!” even though Vizquel had merely tied it up. Didn’t matter. I was jumping up and down trying not to scream. I should’ve screamed. But I listened to the end and heard Hammy make up for his blunder by uttering the most thoughtful line imaginable, “we said in the 9th it may take divine intervention…there’ll be a lot of people wondering.” Anyway, that’s why I believe in God.

Opening day this week. Keep your hat on.

Look, there’s a good few days of the year that I can highlight as anniversaries of my albums, as I’ve made a good few and there’s a fair few of them. Many. You could–and honestly I’d ask you to–just go to my Bandcamp page, find the cover you like the best, utilize a pair of nice headphones and listen for 45 minutes or so.

Anyway, the LP I’m highlighting today is now 13 months old, and there’s been an Irish twin in a way with the EP I put out in September. I like them both equally. For different reasons. I like most of my work for different reasons, all told. The older stuff is harder to listen to, sonically and content-wise, but I like much of the composing I was doing. If you listen through the static, you might find something interesting. I do. The melodies especially. I covet a good melody.

This one. The World is a Living Organism. The last of a trilogy of albums that stretched my technical abilities and taste and precision all of which I accomplished through the magic of a MacBook Pro, Garageband and LogicPro, decent microphones, and a MIDI controller, the latter which I found at a garage sale for $10, never used. At least a $100 instrument, one that blew my mind open for thinking of other sounds that would actually kind of sound like the instrument it approximates. Thumping drums. Organs. Pianos. Brass. Strings. Things I had only ever approximated with a little Casio that sounded like it sounded. There’s an element to those songs that is so fabricated it’s almost comical.

But I love composing. It starts with a melody, goes from there. Melodies are my favorite things about my songs, like I think it is for most folks. It’s what you remember. The one you hum. It’s the lead first, and then the counter melodies–counter melodies everywhere, counter melodies filling the stereo field. Note by note. Lines that weave in and out from each other and set to a pace proscribed by what the song is, what it must be. Really, if you’ve never written a song and used whatever you had around to record it and share it and stand by it, you are missing out on one of the most true and utterly artistic acts. A song can say absolutely anything you want it to, even nothing at all.

I wish I could make a living doing it. But you know what? I have a really easy life. Art or no Art, I’m blessed. Sometimes I forget. I’m ambitious. I want to be the best. Sometimes I think I am.

But don’t just take my word for it. Listen to the music. Don’t pay for it if you don’t want to, but take a moment. Hear a song from beginning to end. Dare yourself to pay attention to an act of creation wrought and hung up ablaze, trying a motion toward infinity and its ilk.

Pick the cover art you like the best. Pick the one you like how the songs are named. Wonder what it took to do all of this. We are a generation and generations contrived with fear and loathing, suspended disbelief and fascinations. Distracted. Sit down for a while. Take a deep breath. Hum along.

This little 4-song single is about what it takes to write without stopping and still reach for the new and different. These songs are a craft. For a few years there, I was churning out bunches of new tunes to the deaf ears of millions. Unmasked. Sordid. And truly, and I’m sure, no one has heard this record. At least in the 7 years since I put it out. It’s a damn shame really. Though it is what it very much is. Whatever it means to not be able to stop writing is something I think about a lot–but which is, as I’ve learned, just beside the point. I have Songs and I have music. They’re both a strange thing. I don’t really know where they come from. It’s not always 1.21 Gigawatts, but like these 4 songs, I am really very glad I’ve written so many, my life story in their way. As I was living it. The feelings and motifs which would be too scarce to recall now are front and center in my art. Strokes of brilliance the same. But with art, as life, comes loss. Hopefully just the circus. Hopefully just the matinee. Hopefully just the masquerade. Oh I sure do like watching you walk away.

I played an open mic a couple weeks ago. Shorter distances between performances these days, at least. Just my second time on stage since before Covid, December 2019, and a few years of well over a hundred shows undertaken to general indifference. I’m trying to find the passion for live music. It is and has always been a chore for me. I’ve never gotten that much out of it. I like sitting around the house playing quietly to a few people. Patrons in coffee houses and bars aren’t usually paying too close attention. And I don’t have the fanbase to play to a quiet and present audience. Sometimes, there is an ostensibly destined synergy, and color erupts from the speakers, but more often than not I have left the microphone without a glad participant.

Even so, I still want people to hear my music, and to do so in a way they can connect to beyond the pretense of a crafted album, recorded in starkness. Music, after all, is not meant to exist in a vacuum. It is a living thing, providing life and hope for something better, something transcendent maybe. I don’t know. Music means all sorts of things to different people. Writing it has historically offered me a way to cope with illness, a yearn for an understanding or at least a shared journey toward something more than first meets the observer.

This is a lot to say that I’m trying again. After a few very difficult albums made by myself, I have left writing and recording for a while, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, please enjoy an hour-long playlist representing the show I will play when I receive an offer for an hour onstage, by myself, hopefully to a room of at least 10 people who are listening. Until then…

This space isn’t really for disseminating information anymore, if it ever really was. And I’m no expert on anything but the Beatles; I can write a pretty nice thing that takes you a couple minutes to listen to or read. This is my outlet and this is where I’m going to print these words. I really can’t say what the political talking heads might have me believe, it’s all nonsense anyway, filtered through a neoliberal or neoconservative–together or apart, it doesn’t really matter they’re the same when it comes to Foreign Policy–disco ball, shimmering down bullshit on to the general public, who are all horrified one way or the other. I happen to think, regardless of the media and its advertising money, that the carpet bombing of refuge camps and hospitals could never be the right thing to do, even or especially in War, and could certainly never bring Peace, or any end but the end that it is so clear is being worked toward. I actually don’t think peace or freedom is even a possibility, or wanted or anything. Israel doesn’t want peace. And there is no freedom now, even for Israelis. Governments desire a misplaced revenge, perhaps, but probably just the natural gas and possibly the extermination of enough people to wipe them out of existence, if not now and all at once then over generations of lost souls and a collective trauma to make it so any hope of a Good Life is completely off the proverbial table, forever. There is no Peace. Whatever began this war began in a way that peace was never an option. It was Apartheid and now it is Genocide. It was always in the back of the mind of the only true Middle East US ally that Palestine was and is just a cuticle to be ripped off, the pain lasting for a day or so, and the ends justifying the means–natural resources and a cleansing of a people. A Bandaid until it heals to their liking. Let it be known clear, the US is complicit, perhaps wholly responsible for the continuation of this catastrophe. And I, for one amongst many, won’t have it, though there’s goddamn nothing to actually do but scream. Even so, I will be a good little Democrat and punch my ticket in a year for another or the same fucking asshole. Will Gaza still be standing?

Idiots and Mass Murderers run countries. The United States government is a crock of shit. Free Palestine. What the fuck.

I wrote and am currently working on getting a script made. Here is the soundtrack as it is written into the text.

https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/1wL1gyesJcL6FAiIoP4vFC?utm_source=generator

In August, 1988, I was born, Michael Timothy McGuire, to two beautiful people who I love dearly. I was graced with being able to grow up with three older sisters. They’re lovely and I love them. Those of my family who remain on this plane of existence still get along and speak often.

The Supposed So began in 2011 as a recording vehicle for the songs I was writing. A prolific outpouring would follow in the coming years, finding me composing and recording constantly, releasing via Bandcamp on my own imprint Checked Out Records.

Diagnosed with Bipolar I Disorder in my early 20s, I also spent much of that decade in and out of hospitals, struggling in particular with the manic side of my bipolarity, once finding myself living on the streets of Portland, Oregon, pacing the city without sleeping for weeks. I probably should have died, honestly. I chronicle my experiences with this mental illness rather more often than is completely necessary. But I do find it fascinating.

Time lived in Maine, Ohio again, New York City, and Massachusetts would see me release numerous albums and EPs, as well as four poetry books, and collections of essays and short fiction.

I released the albums Thoughts in the Belfry and Just a Bit More, As Always in 2020, each including rearranged and rerecorded versions of previously released songs.

My debut novel length work of fiction, The Supposed So: A Fictional Memoir In Five Parts, was released in February 2021. It exists.

Three albums followed in 2021, 2022 and 2023: Need Something and Paper Glasses On and The World Is a Living Organism respectively. And not to be bested, September 2023 saw the first EP under my given name, Self-Titled. These four musical experiments are the best things I have ever done.

I am a graduate with an English degree from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. It is a generally worthless degree but it does prove that after 15 years as a 3-time drop out, I can finish something meaningful. I at least rediscovered just how much I love to read, which I now do approximately 85% of my downtime. I like either Virginia Woolf or Carson McCullers the best out of all living or deceased authors. They were each one of a kind.

On a more personal level, I am a deep admirer of all things funny, funny people, and people who make me comfortable enough to be funny with. I am a student of the history of and current stand-up and sketch comedy and wish I could do either one or both. Indeed, there is a hell of a lot to laugh about. I live my life attempting to do so.

I am currently taking a break from writing music to focus on more long-form essays and script writing. I have finished two feature length scripts, the first of which — More Adventurous or, I Plan on Sleeping In — will somehow be featured in a film festival in December 2023. Not sure how that’s gonna work, but I’m honored. The film takes its name from a Rilo Kiley album and a song by The Postal Service. It takes place in 2005 rural Ohio and it is funny and touching and I like it a lot. My second, Tell Me Why, Willard Bronson, is funny and dark and is yet to be featured in anything. So it goes. As far as the essays…they aren’t usually all that funny. But no one can do all things all the time. I’m trying to remind myself of that. The collection, with reverence to: essays 2016-2022 also exists.

All of the things I have mentioned, sans scripts, can be witnessed or purchased via the links on this page. Sign up with your email via the widget to your right to follow along in real time.

I will soon inhabit the Hudson Valley of New York with the love of this and all of my past and future lives, my wife, photographer Allie Tsubota.

Super weird that this album happened over six years ago. But also weird that it was only six years ago. A hell of a lot has happened since 2017, not least of which is growing six years older, into my 30s, into the collective fever dream that is 21st Century America.

This was my first proverbial New York record. Allie lends her voice to some of these songs, and we released it as Dad’s Typewriter. The only other release under that name is the ‘Song of the Summer, 2017’ single, recorded about the time this album was released. Joining on that track was Alyssa on violins and Casey on trumpet. All of this music is overtly about the world Donald Trump was helping lead us further into, as if he was the last runner in an idiot relay, taking Reagan, Bush, and Bush II, and adding a creepier, more visually disgusting take on fascist ideology and white male bullshitting.

I digress. But this is a protest album. For sure.

At any rate, it was recorded in Allie and my very first apartment in Queens, the one with all the bugs. We weren’t there long. Just long enough for me to get a job at Strand Bookstore, finish writing this album, and record it. Allie lends her beautiful voice to a few of these tracks. The sounds try their best to be what they are.

I really like this album. It was a turning point. Moving to the big City. Falling deeper in love every day.

Perhaps it is obvious, but I have begun the process of phasing out the The Supposed So alias. You will still find those records on Spotify, etc. by searching said name — they are still Supposed So records, of course — but my Bandcamp has been changed to michaeltimothymcguire.bandcamp.com (as has my website and instagram, but you may have noticed I did this a while ago) to reflect the scope of work I’ve made over the years.

This has been a long time coming. The Supposed So, Dad’s Typewriter, M.C. Guire — these are all monikers I’ve used since around 2011 with an implicit meaning I don’t jive with anymore, and I want to go forward with my creative practice openly under the name that is my name. The Supposed So title especially has been with me for over a decade, and I am really proud of what I accomplished with it as my crutch, hiding behind it in order to stand up a little straighter, sing a little louder, mind the madness a little clearer.

37 projects were completed as The Supposed So. 220 original songs. 2 live albums. 2 retrospectives. 70 Supposed Covers. A complete reimagining of Alkaline Trio’s Good Mourning. Not to mention the 2 Dad’s Typewriter releases and the Mick ‘n’ Allie single I did with Allie.

My new EP, Self Titled, is alive and well on Bandcamp. And will hit streaming services Wednesday Sept. 20th. It’ll be my last music for a minute.

Thanks for hanging around, folks. I miss you.

For more than half my life, I have been writing music. Mostly alone and in the apartment; the musician, a homebody, can’t go out, won’t go out. The deepest intuition I have revolves around never being too far away from a comfy and familiar place to pick up the guitar, or to just write down some words, and, hell, maybe even come up with something that transcends my surroundings, the current self a fiction to the past. Without home, I would never stop walking. I know this.

Alas, it is at least 17 if not 25 years into my songwriting career that I have decided to look back while reaching forward, a mental state I struggle with. My work is usually about the past, or just the past through the present’s mindset, but it is a problem of geometry as much as one of time and space. My head hurts thinking about it, but when I sit down to ponder, I often simply remember. I drag the compass round and round. I ruminate over a couple words repeated once, an awkward pause, a profession of love rescinded, of a posturing mentally ill person saying and doing what the mentally ill say and do, now paranoid everyone remembers the worst of times and not in relation to the best of times. Like I tend to. I try to find something profound to say about my biggest mistakes, but a lot of it involves whittling away at my psyche so prone to nostalgia through a lens of shame and regret. I think about the same few things too often. Sometimes I see the tallest hurdle in my ever getting completely well are the memories of the people who never stopped to wonder what was happening to me, this person they once loved, or thought they loved, or wanted to love, or whatever. There are still just the memories. But healing is a community endeavor.

That being said, the music takes its own form. I didn’t try very hard with this new EP. I didn’t try to over-produce a Supposed Masterpiece, didn’t cover the arrangements with sweeteners, didn’t bury myself in noise. I took my coffee black and gasped at how much I forgot I like black coffee. I laid down simple takes into a shitty microphone, and that’s about it. I left the windows open. My neighbors complained (they like to complain) but I finished it. It’s how it should be. It’s sad sometimes. But so am I sometimes.

It took a long time to finish. Months. It was really almost as if I didn’t really want it done. I’ve made a lot of things no one’s ever heard. What’s one more in the bag, huh? Could I take that level of disappointment again? Could I stand being ignored? Swept away under a rug in a room no one goes into anymore? Maybe that’s why I didn’t try very hard. I’m tired of trying so hard. There isn’t a lot of rejoice in hard work gone unnoticed. Making music is hard work. And so I guess I figure it’s time to sit back and let the music go where it needs to. And so it is. Rock and Roll isn’t dead, but neither is the pursuit of honesty, righteousness, an open heart, a close up look at someone destined for and basking in an enormous body of work. If at all, words and music should stand up in front of the class and declare something no one else can declare. Something to be heard. Even if – hell, even if it’s just because I want to hear it. I need the past like no one needs the future. I need the songs to tell me what it all means. But we were all so young once. What are the bare bones of a life? When does art set out on its own?

All of this is really here nor there. I’m trying to come to terms with my past being the past. It should color the present. If any one thing in my life didn’t happen, I wouldn’t be sitting here, writing this, with clarity and precision, with a healthy body of work growing into something I never thought it would be, with a brilliant mind for a life partner, with the wisdom I know I have, with the knowing that I have repented to my god, at least, for every mistake I mourn. Every day so many things cross my field of memory. In the end, I am happy I’m alive. I really could be dead.

But, we finish with the music. Which is important but not more important but not less important, just important. It happens to be very good. “Ruby Ward 6” is a temptress. “When the Years” is a lament. “Demolition” is a prudence. “Because Because” is an anthem. “One Man Band” is a love letter. These five songs are by Michael Timothy McGuire. Not by The Supposed So. By me. This me. Take it or leave it. I’ll be listening. Leave the windows open.

I have a new EP out as of last night, released under my real name, the one my parents gave me: Michael Timothy McGuire.

Five tunes. Little production. Recorded with the windows open. And an as usual open heart. Honesty here. Clarity. Simplicity. Songs written in the Spring. Then distracted by summer. Hard time staying awake. Tired of The Supposed So. Tired of making music.

I’m at my best in the Autumn days, so maybe there will be more songs on their way. But for now, I’m gonna say how do you do to writing music. And focus my efforts elsewhere.

This is also a fond farewell to Massachusetts, I suppose. I made a lot of things here. Much music. My best music, really. So many essays. Got a degree. Some really great bookstore working. Days and days, some good some bad. As with all things, a bittersweetness to savor. New York awaits soon enough. As long as I’m with Allie, anywhere sounds great.

Five songs, folks. Worth a listen. Streaming services later. For now, the link below is where you can find it.

Also, the Guardians are bad. Doesn’t look like an October to remember for Cleveland baseball fans. Win or lose this month, next year will be interesting.

Anyway, music. Music. Give it a spin.