Thursday, January 31, 2008

note to self.

I am not interested in anything new, I am not motivated to research digital possibilities, all that is binary or convenient. I do feel as we make giant leaps forward. Leaps that, with each swallowing stride, reduce the need for tangible, visual, visceral communication. I was in the car with my friend Elizabeth a long time ago, and she was writing a poem, she was looking for these words that were "visceral". I feel like visceral experiences are becoming rare, being drunk on the digital is not nearly as intoxicating as being shot in the heart with the electric shock of experiencing the spin of earth under your own two feet. I tell you, you should grow your hair, long...down your back, to your thighs, your knees, your feet, and then to ground, and from there, let the earth take over...your hair will take root, and I swear you'll have some sort of epiphany. I'm reticent to put any effort into much of anything emerging these days. I'm becoming just like these old bitter men I used to laugh off, the ones who were ousted from their dreams, they tried their best to keep their balance on the shrugging shoulders of indifference, but they lost it, and fell off, and all become experts on how things were, they were "pure" and now they act as if they bowed out themselves...but it wasn't that at all. they were ousted and they reacted poorly, like any human with an archaic ego...I used to scoff at these people, and now i'm finding that I understand what they meant, what they were upset with, and I'm only 26. I'm stuck in the middle of seeing myself turn into these type of people, and at the same time, realizing how futile it is to hold grudges against anything or anyone, so that's why I'm enamored with an idea of resignation, pleasantly bowing and taking a seat in lobby of whatever generation i feel most at home. I can't ignore the advantages that come with development (medically and in energy research), but I seem to see the worst in it, and that is a drag. It a shot to my ego if I can't name a Jackson Brown song, it gets to me. I hate that I'm not familiar with 80's era Bob Dylan. Although, you'd think that me doing what I do, i'd be eager to know Logic or Pro-Tools inside and out...but I don't have the motivation. I feel odd if I choose to buy the new Tegan And Sarah CD, and not the Joan Baez record. I don't move ahead, I feel regressive. I had a good talk with a man named Barry who works at a record store today, and I realized that there is a 90% chance that I will not like a new band someone tells me to like..and that just isn't right. Where would my band be if it weren't for people who would give new music a chance, where would new authors be, where would new artists be? It's just a difference of mentality. I wouldn't be a good politician, I wouldn't embrace change. But hey, I'm on the internet as much as the next person. I pick and choose. I feel like with all this change going on, it's kind of like a movie with killer CGI...it looks really great, stellar even. The picture and the colors are so sharp, everything looks so real...it's a microcasm for our society's development, always growing, always moving forward...but I go to see a movie because of the plot, the story, the actors, the emotion it pinpoints visually, sonically and with a well writing script..not the fancy tricks of illusion and computers. The holes in development are hidden by bright colors and superficial grandiose fluff. It's a strange thought how the internet can be so helpful and so disastrous. I'm the man at the corner booth in the bar who is polite, opinionated and ignorant. I'm like an old stubborn man who is pleasant and cute because of his short sighted views. Is it ironic that i just blogged this?

Monday, January 28, 2008

First Impressions

I'm surprised I don't know more people who like The Doors. The Lost Angeles answer to bubble gum. I think that a lot of reasons my friends don't listen to them is because the first song they heard was "Light My Fire"...that intro is somewhat of a turn off, maybe a little bit campy. They need to dig deeper! Songs like "Love Street", "Backdoor Man", "Not To Touch The Earth", "Crystal Ship", etc. I am not someone who claims Jim Morrison to be a great poet, but he had his moments. I think of him in two phases. The young eager Jim, and the jaded, bearded, bluesy, fat Jim..I prefer the latter. I love The Doors, I used to do reports on Jim Morrison in high school, and I've watched the Oliver Stone film many times. I imagine that it would've been hell to be in a band with someone like Morrison, very volatile, drunk, self-destructive. Although, he did create some moments. I love The Doors, I love that Morrison was offensive and thought provoking, I love that Robby Krieger played flamenco guitar, I love that Ray Manzarek played the bass lines on his organ, and I love that John Densmore carried the songs right where they should go. The did have some cheesy songs, but I think it was all a growing experience for them, pushing their own walls back further. I have a bottle of wine cozied up next to me on a love seat, hypnotized by a combination of a gas powered fire in a lovely fireplace with fake wood, and exhaustion. My head is having a hard time supporting itself, like an infant with their soft skulls and constant need of support. I'm reading a book called "The Partly Cloudy Patriot" and it's a nice easy read, dotted with informative bits of history and irony. So it's a worth while read, I don't like pointless reads. I stay from the Dan Browns and John Grishams..and I don't even konw why. I just feel like I'm wasting my time. I mean, I wouldnt' feel good about myself if I put down an Ayn Rand book for a Michael Crichton book. (did I spell that right?) Oh well, I'll slip right in to a dream about traveling to Russian with a Jewish girl and visiting St. Petersburg. I watched a DVD about Ayn Rand the other night, it's strange because I always put her in this place of obscurity, like all the other antiquated philosophers, but she was alive until the 80's and she lived in Hollywood and New York, she was interviewed by Donahue and she was on 60 Minutes. Blah.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

no agenda


oh my russian, you're such a shy one, keeping your tounge and trying your best to be invisible and elegant all at once. I believe in your humility only to a point, after all, you're russian. You russians and your pride. You are built on an understanding, a grasp of suffering and an intrinsic solemn romance. The burden of true love, it makes your bones hurt. I think you create your own weather, your own rain clouds and heart stopping winters. You built the stigma of Siberia upon your own ideals, your accurate look on the contradiction of living. I'm obsessed by your pride amongst industrial squalor, soaked to the bone with polluted snow and the purest vodka. I desire my own life to be as mysterious as your beauty, as expansive as your geography, as volatile as your history, and as sacred as your tradition. Adoration.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

remembering a day i had in portland

I read this in my journal, and it reminded of a good day. it's not crazy, creepily, disgustingly, or pathetically personal, so whatever. feast your eyes upon restlessness!

"What a colorful coffee shop, filled with your typical 'progressive, culturally aware, arrogant in their proclamation of compassion for humanity and free trade, pseudo whatevers'. I wonder how close I come to fitting in, or am I failing in my attempts to blend into to the local grid (organic grit). Are there Orange trees growing out of shoes, and am I filling the air with the aroma of orange blossoms? We like to pride ourselves on an intellect (we hope to have) that we prefer to attain on our own time, we want to smell like the old pages of a Foucault book. Books and Vinyl, it's nothing unique, it just feels a little more pure. The effort and the search for origin and tradition, although, we are all mirroring something we saw somewhere. Can you pick out the honest ones?
"death to everyone" (this must refer to the music I was listening to while I wrote this)
I'm thankful that my eyes and heart don't ignore the hurt, and I'm thankful for the God send distraction and facade of happiness that only becomes real with love. I suppose that heartbreak validates any passing euphoria. The miracle of a good day."

I started a new book called "The Partly Cloudy Patriot", it's by Sarah Vowell. This is the second book of hers I've read. She's a good, light, historically informative read. She's obsessed with Lincoln, and has a bottomless vault of information concerning American Presidents.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

tired of my romantic life

I've found a loop hole and exploited it for the past five years of my life. I've made a few key decisions, let down some key people, and gotten away with murder. I've created my own room, with my own walls, littered with fragments of grand ideas. I study them for a few hours and drive myself to take a non-position on living. I'm swimming inside my brain, always hitting the walls and swimming back the other way, hitting another wall and so on. I continue this mindless wander and tell myself I'm in tune with intellect, philosophy and spirituality. It's humorous really. I love the irony of a man humbly proclaiming to have only scratched the surface of whatever great mystery he's discussing, and in some backwards way, through this "humble proclamation" reveals his underlying ego. I live a fake life where I'm afforded the luxury of time to ponder everything that is pointless, remain neutral, and leave the coffee shop making no progress in my development. I merely achieve to delay it, and drown myself in archaic ideas that really go no where. There is an urgent reality to living, and it involves practice, not theory or childish ambition; the responsibility of a sober and honest love, where you make yourself a servant. I haven't ventured into the reality of an existence in which your focus and propensity (or lack there of) to deal with the machine of living leads to great consequence. I've floated through my difficult years in hopes that I could skip them, but can anyone really skip them? And do difficult years ever pass completely? I'm suffering from lack of enthusiasm, and when I do become eager, it's for something distant. When does freedom catch up with you? I just spent some time looking at old pictures of my life of touring with Mae, and how sad and maybe even selfish is it that I need photos to remind me of how fortunate I am. And how cliche is it that I am just now beginning to realize that there is very little that can make me truly happy, that can truly put my mind at ease..it is like I'm living in a way that keeps me from enjoying what I think is genuine and not fleeting, and at the same time, I'm living a life that is very close to the one I imagined for myself when I was younger. The grass is always greener. I apologize for this post, it's probably a testament to the world I've created for myself in my own head, and it's that fabricated world which I'm reacting to, not the real world...and that is a problem. So what. So, there are two versions of myself, one is thankful and always grateful, the other is a drag. It's all so frightening. I'm very scattered, parts of me all over the place, and on any given day, i'll pick one part of myself, and play like it's all of me, when in reality, it's just a pathetic mood that is brought on because I'm bored. I'm just feeling what every person in the whole world feels, no big deal. Restless and unenthusiastic.

I was falling asleep earlier today, Virginia was dragging me to bed, but then I was awoken back into the reality the timeless truth and the safe bet on human suffering, and the backbone that love provides, hidden somewhere. It is truly saddening and awe inspiring. Some of my most thoughtful considerations occur when I can't control my mind and its wonderings. I tell myself I'm going to write them down, but I never do. I just wake up the next morning with the same predictable ambition, that I assume by now, is used to being abandoned. My journal is littered with words and regurgitated ideas, and sometimes when I read over them I'm not ashamed, and that is a good feeling...sometimes, I can barely read it, and that is OK as well. If I could just ignore everything, I would be a lot better off. So many things get inside my head just enough to annoy me, and to make me a drag. I whine...shut up. It all drives me to the bars.

All of you proud swans, floating about, unaware and fooled into elegance; on seran wrap ponds with nothing to speak of, just drifting about, looking pretty and unaffected, spouting your rehearsed lines, posing for pictures. The world is far gone.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

blind finger pointing

i'm fed up with something lately, but i'm not really sure what it is. So, instead of rambling on aimlessly, i'll just relay excerpts from the book I'm reading. i'll leave it to the experts. All of these are from "The Idiot"

"Verily, when God desires to chastise a man, he first of all deprives him of reason"

"What do I want with your nature, your Pavlovsk park, your dawns and sunsets, your blue skies and your smug faces, when all this feast that has no end has begun by excluding me alone? What is there for me in all this beauty, when I am forced to be aware every minute, every second, that even this tiny fly buzzing in the sunbeam near me, even that is a participant in all this festival and chorus, knows its place, loves it, and is happy, while I am the sole outcast, and only my cowardice has prevented me from wanting to face it before now! Oh, I know very well how the prince and rrest of them would have liked to make me sing for the sake of decency and triumphant morality that celebrated classic stanza of Millevoix's:
'Oh, let them see thy holy beauty
Those friends deaf to my departure!
Let them die full of years, let their death be mourned,
Let some friend close their eyes!'
-instead of all these "mischievous and wicked" speeches. But believe me, believe me, my dear innocents, that even in these edifying lines, in this academic benediction on the world in French verse, there is embedded so much concealed bitterness, so much irreconcilable, self-deluding, rhymed malice, that even the poet himself my have fallen into the trap and taken that malice for tears of affection, and so died, God rest him! Let me tell you that there is a limit to the shame inherent in the realization of one's own insignificance and weakness, beyond which a man cannot go, and at which he begins to take an immense satisfaction in this very shame of his....Well, of course, humility is a mighty force in that sense, I admit that--but not in the sense in which religion accepts humility as a force. Religion! I admit the existence of eternal life, perhaps I always have. Suppose that consciousness, kindled by the will of a higher power, suppose it looked round at the world and said: 'I am!'--and suppose that it has been commanded by that higher force to annihilate itself, for some sufficient reason, even without any explanation--it had to be, all that granted, I admit all that, but again comes the eternal question: what point is there in my humility in all this? Why couldn't I just be devoured without demanding that I praise what is devouring me?"


"I challenge you all now, all you atheists: how are you going to save the world and where have you found the right road for it to travel--you, men of science, industry, co-operation, wage-levels, and so forth. How? Credit? What is Credit? Where will credit lead you?"

"But a friend of humanity with an unsteady moral basis is a devourer of mankind, not to speak of his vanity; you only have to wound the vanity of any one of these numberless friends of humanity and he's ready at once to set fire to the world and its four corners out of petty revenge.."

"Show me a force which binds today's humanity together with half the power it possessed in those centuries. And now dare tell me that the springs of life have not been weakened and tainted under this 'star', this net which ensnares the people. And don't try to browbeat with your prosperity, your riches, the rarity of famine and the speed of communications!"

"You know, a woman can torture a man with her cruelty and mockery without feeling the slightest twinge of conscience, because every time she looks at your she thinks to herself: 'Now I'm going to torment him to death, but I will make it up to him later with my love"

Thursday, January 10, 2008

...

Sunday, January 06, 2008

back in va

I would guess that I am mostly a cynical person with a pleasant rational disposition. I can't explain my outlook because I'm constantly surprised (for the better and worse) by my actions, and the actions of others. I believe that we are mostly unable, ungracious, ungrateful, selfish and conditioned to have tunnel vision. Although, at times, we are made aware, and at times infected with the mystery of some elusive ghost-like benign will, or sickness. It's as if the person you love the most in the world leaves you, and your bedroom still holds the faint memory of unconditional love, it survives in small hints, rare increments, fractions that can over take you in waves. Annoying fits of nostalgia that infect your behavior; some remnants of a general morality that offends no one, a morality fit for children. I think that beauty and hope mostly spawn from the unversed innocence, the naive ignorance of love and birth; a mystery that can never be predicted, understood, nor destroyed If we were ever lucky enough to understand it, we would surely ruin it with our famous arrogance and grandiose gung-ho. We could mix the substitute chemicals in state subsidized labs and bottle it, sell it and claim the soul remains the same. Thank God for the mystery and inebriation. My parents are the best counter to my gripes. As much as I point out the weakness of people, they can just stand there looking at me, not saying a word. Love shouts and whispers all at once..it just stares and lets me run my mouth all I want, grinning at me with a dismissive smirk and patting my head when my rant is done and I'm all out of breath. I can't get on board with optimism, but the good that does intertwine with the atmosphere and deserts, forests and plains, suburbs and sky scrapers. That benign will never settles until you trap it in something you value. It won't lie on your doorstep. It will always be influx, traveling from the slums to the gated communities. It is not socialist or capitalist, republican or democrat, upper or lower class, man or woman. It still flows to the outskirts, all the while exhausted and confused at the enigma of human nature. God made love non-sensical, it leaves us unable to explain actions that can stand in offensive contradiction to logic. Love is non-human, like venom that paralyzes our rationality and leaves us vulnerable, primitive and elated.