Head spun on cold medication -- again -- with only forty-five minutes to go in an especially tedious day. I have some concerns about visiting my father's parents on Sunday, because they spent really a lot of money helping me through my undergraduate degree, and now I use that very expensive piece of paper to justify my over-qualification for doing the job I'm doing. I wish I could actually write for a living, but if wishes were horses we'd all be well-fed.
I have difficulty concentrating when my head isn't where it needs to be; right now it's floating in a Robitussin haze while I try to clear the yellow goo out of my face where it's collected over what I can only imagine has been a period of months. It certainly feels that way -- it's like somebody took these futile leg-weights I wear everyday and tied them to my eyebrows. Ten pounds of pressure dragging face into keyboard karjwgioawrvmawi.
Forehead typing. Now there's a thought to chew on, no?
I called this blog the Politics of Being Good because that was going to be the title of my first novel. I never did get around to figuring out what it was going to be about, but I did reckon it was a pretty happening name. Maybe one of these days I'll be able to hammer out some kind of a cogent story from the things I write down here. I don't put a lot of stock in "maybe", though, because it's really all up to me, isn't it?
To whom, I wonder, do I keep directing these questions?
It feels like somebody's driving a nail up my nose. Down another swig of Recommended By Doctor Mom. And I think I am damn close to tapped.
Going to listen to a great blues band tonight. All it's going to do is make me want to play. For my money that's a good, good thing. The new guitar sounds great; almost makes me happy I fell on the last one. Almost. Going to play some blues. Robitussin blues, I think. It's purple, though.
Okay. This is why I don't write when I'm stoned, even legally stoned. You'll forgive this, loyal readers -- I will be back tomorrow with something more reasonable. I'll review the great blues band. That's what I'll do.
Assuming my head is clear as the big blue sky above me.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Confessions of a reforming music snob.
Guess what time it is. Go ahead; I'll wait. It's like magic, that I'll get the urge to throw down in this stupid little writing space, and when I look at the clock it's almost always around the same time. Patterns and lines drawn in the sand, I guess; time has a way of looping back on itself and bringing us around to the symbols that matter.
I'm feeling a little pensive. I've written at length about music recently, but I've been talking like a reporter, updating a mostly non-existent audience about the comings and goings of my projects. I don't want to do that today, not at this time of day and certainly not on this particular day.
I have never understood how people can take music for granted. At times I'm even guilty of it myself -- you're at the mall or in someone else's car and a song comes on that you patently don't like. For me that can be a lot of different things, and it becomes a distraction -- an irritant -- something to be spat out and disposed of. What a crime on my part, and on yours.
Okay, so not every genre or artist is going to appeal to everyone; it's not supposed to and it doesn't have to. But being judgmental never got anybody anywhere. It bothers me to no end that people have such specific tropes in mind when they think of musical genres: the big one is "country". Apparently, digging country music bears the stigma of also owning a home on wheels, at least five belt buckles the size of dinner plates, enjoying huntin', drankin', and other things that end with apostrophes, and being married to an existing family member. What nonsense. Clearly, "country" is a genre label that is as broad and general as any other application of the word. I don't like a lot of what you might call the "new" country; Garth Brooks has never held any appeal to me, nor has Mr. Achey Breaky Heart -- you know, Hannah Montana's dad. But there are SO many other styles and subgenres (if you want to call them that) out there, it would be foolish and -- as I said -- borderline criminal for someone to paint with such a broad, misleading brush such a rich musical tradition full of genuinely talented artists. Translation: liking country doesn't make you a hick, and in fact you're the uneducated peon if you think Shania Twain is the alpha and omega of the genre.
But alas, I am obliged to swing a little mud my own way on this point. I have a slight tendency to be a little judgmental when it comes to music I deem unworthy or lacking in some way, and sometimes I'm right -- at least insofar as my own criteria are concerned. For example, if I say that a rap song praising the street credibility garnered through the purchase of a pair of "Air Force One's" lacks any semblance of inspired artistry from a songwriting perspective, I don't think too many people would disagree with me. That's not art: that's a shoe commercial, and I'm not interested in debating the nature of art as it relates to advertising -- Hendrix never had to defend his choice of bell bottoms in a song. It's NOT art. Sorry.
See what I mean about that judgmental streak?
But going forward I try (I really do) to see the bright side. Okay, does "Air Force One" say anything important? Not in the slightest. Does it have a danceable beat and is it catchy? I guess it is -- I don't dance, so I'm not an authority on what constitutes a danceable beat, but I am a musician and I know catchy when I hear it, and that song is catchy as all get-out. So in that respect, it fulfills its function in the musical pantheon -- let's face it, to paraphrase Brendan Fraser in Airheads, "Purple Haze" doesn't exactly have much to say either, lyrically speaking. Not everything has to be some kind of important statement or rich story; sometimes it's enough for a song to rock, or in this case I (begrudgingly) admit, it's enough for a song to groove.
I like to think of myself as being in self-imposed elitism therapy.
Then there are those musical genres that I don't necessarily dislike, I just don't get. The music makes no sense to my ear, and like so many of my forefathers who listened to the Beatles and heard only discordant clashing, I just can't wrap my head around the sound enough to make music out of it in my own head. It makes so little sense to me that I can't even properly label the genre(s?)...I've heard the terms "emo", "screamo", "scene", "post-punk" and a host of others bandied around, and I'm sure none of them are correct, but hopefully you get an idea of what I'm talking about. Like an elitist asshole I have listened to a lot of the better-known bands of this dubious genre and have in the past labeled it self-aggrandizing horseshit, full of middle-class white sorrow (read: self pity) mixed with pubescent rage against perceived authority establishments. Trite, immature nonsense, I figured.
Did I mention the part where this makes me an asshole?
Once again it's unfair of me to pass judgment on a host of musicians I only know peripherally, if at all. If I'm going to live the examined life, and definitely if I ever want to be taken seriously as a musician myself, I have to drop the pretentious bullshit (the same pretentious bullshit of which I'm accusing this entire genre) and do my research. As it turns out, there's more to the "emo/screamo/whatever" genre than I had originally allowed for -- big surprise. The genre is a wealth of incredibly talented technical guitar players, drummers, bassists, keyboard and MIDI players, turn table artists, and even singers and lyricists -- a fact I'd passed over because of the screaming (I can't always understand what lyrics are being...well, screamed) and the fact that many mainstream singers who actually sing seem kind of whiny to me. But for every sub-par Dashboard Confessional lookalike there's a tight, talented rock-influenced outfit like this one or a really surprising artist who's actually in line with some of what I do myself like this guy, and when I find out about them I feel like an even bigger prick for painting the entire genre with my dislike for what MTV tells me is representative of that music scene.
This is me, trying to stay real at 3am. I have a proclivity towards arrogance (as displayed by my use of words like "proclivity") but I try very, very hard not to let that affect the most important parts of my life that aren't people -- namely, the music (mine and yours). So I'm finally asking something of the folks who read this blog -- take a look at my profile if you don't already have a good idea what I'm about, see what I'm into musically and then educate me. Send me a suggestion or a link to something I've never heard of -- it can be in any genre, just tell me why it's cool and I'll check it out and probably write about my thoughts on it. Bonus points if it's you or a friend of yours -- I like to know musicians personally.
And since I haven't link-whored myself yet, for more information on what I do and why I'm so interested in not being critical of other people, check out my temporary music page on Facebook. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
I'm feeling a little pensive. I've written at length about music recently, but I've been talking like a reporter, updating a mostly non-existent audience about the comings and goings of my projects. I don't want to do that today, not at this time of day and certainly not on this particular day.
I have never understood how people can take music for granted. At times I'm even guilty of it myself -- you're at the mall or in someone else's car and a song comes on that you patently don't like. For me that can be a lot of different things, and it becomes a distraction -- an irritant -- something to be spat out and disposed of. What a crime on my part, and on yours.
Okay, so not every genre or artist is going to appeal to everyone; it's not supposed to and it doesn't have to. But being judgmental never got anybody anywhere. It bothers me to no end that people have such specific tropes in mind when they think of musical genres: the big one is "country". Apparently, digging country music bears the stigma of also owning a home on wheels, at least five belt buckles the size of dinner plates, enjoying huntin', drankin', and other things that end with apostrophes, and being married to an existing family member. What nonsense. Clearly, "country" is a genre label that is as broad and general as any other application of the word. I don't like a lot of what you might call the "new" country; Garth Brooks has never held any appeal to me, nor has Mr. Achey Breaky Heart -- you know, Hannah Montana's dad. But there are SO many other styles and subgenres (if you want to call them that) out there, it would be foolish and -- as I said -- borderline criminal for someone to paint with such a broad, misleading brush such a rich musical tradition full of genuinely talented artists. Translation: liking country doesn't make you a hick, and in fact you're the uneducated peon if you think Shania Twain is the alpha and omega of the genre.
But alas, I am obliged to swing a little mud my own way on this point. I have a slight tendency to be a little judgmental when it comes to music I deem unworthy or lacking in some way, and sometimes I'm right -- at least insofar as my own criteria are concerned. For example, if I say that a rap song praising the street credibility garnered through the purchase of a pair of "Air Force One's" lacks any semblance of inspired artistry from a songwriting perspective, I don't think too many people would disagree with me. That's not art: that's a shoe commercial, and I'm not interested in debating the nature of art as it relates to advertising -- Hendrix never had to defend his choice of bell bottoms in a song. It's NOT art. Sorry.
See what I mean about that judgmental streak?
But going forward I try (I really do) to see the bright side. Okay, does "Air Force One" say anything important? Not in the slightest. Does it have a danceable beat and is it catchy? I guess it is -- I don't dance, so I'm not an authority on what constitutes a danceable beat, but I am a musician and I know catchy when I hear it, and that song is catchy as all get-out. So in that respect, it fulfills its function in the musical pantheon -- let's face it, to paraphrase Brendan Fraser in Airheads, "Purple Haze" doesn't exactly have much to say either, lyrically speaking. Not everything has to be some kind of important statement or rich story; sometimes it's enough for a song to rock, or in this case I (begrudgingly) admit, it's enough for a song to groove.
I like to think of myself as being in self-imposed elitism therapy.
Then there are those musical genres that I don't necessarily dislike, I just don't get. The music makes no sense to my ear, and like so many of my forefathers who listened to the Beatles and heard only discordant clashing, I just can't wrap my head around the sound enough to make music out of it in my own head. It makes so little sense to me that I can't even properly label the genre(s?)...I've heard the terms "emo", "screamo", "scene", "post-punk" and a host of others bandied around, and I'm sure none of them are correct, but hopefully you get an idea of what I'm talking about. Like an elitist asshole I have listened to a lot of the better-known bands of this dubious genre and have in the past labeled it self-aggrandizing horseshit, full of middle-class white sorrow (read: self pity) mixed with pubescent rage against perceived authority establishments. Trite, immature nonsense, I figured.
Did I mention the part where this makes me an asshole?
Once again it's unfair of me to pass judgment on a host of musicians I only know peripherally, if at all. If I'm going to live the examined life, and definitely if I ever want to be taken seriously as a musician myself, I have to drop the pretentious bullshit (the same pretentious bullshit of which I'm accusing this entire genre) and do my research. As it turns out, there's more to the "emo/screamo/whatever" genre than I had originally allowed for -- big surprise. The genre is a wealth of incredibly talented technical guitar players, drummers, bassists, keyboard and MIDI players, turn table artists, and even singers and lyricists -- a fact I'd passed over because of the screaming (I can't always understand what lyrics are being...well, screamed) and the fact that many mainstream singers who actually sing seem kind of whiny to me. But for every sub-par Dashboard Confessional lookalike there's a tight, talented rock-influenced outfit like this one or a really surprising artist who's actually in line with some of what I do myself like this guy, and when I find out about them I feel like an even bigger prick for painting the entire genre with my dislike for what MTV tells me is representative of that music scene.
This is me, trying to stay real at 3am. I have a proclivity towards arrogance (as displayed by my use of words like "proclivity") but I try very, very hard not to let that affect the most important parts of my life that aren't people -- namely, the music (mine and yours). So I'm finally asking something of the folks who read this blog -- take a look at my profile if you don't already have a good idea what I'm about, see what I'm into musically and then educate me. Send me a suggestion or a link to something I've never heard of -- it can be in any genre, just tell me why it's cool and I'll check it out and probably write about my thoughts on it. Bonus points if it's you or a friend of yours -- I like to know musicians personally.
And since I haven't link-whored myself yet, for more information on what I do and why I'm so interested in not being critical of other people, check out my temporary music page on Facebook. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
11:32pm
On the one hand I wish I had more time to sit down and craft really good material for this blog. On the other hand I'm pleased that I have too much else to do.
After spending most of my life in one or another academic environment, it's kind of an unusual feeling to be overwhelmed with work that is entirely of my own construction. When I was in school it wasn't at all uncommon for me to be overloaded by essays and whatnot, usually because I was too lazy or too distracted to get the head starts I really should have on those assignments. Since moving back to Toronto in September I have been pretty lax on myself; giving myself some time to breathe and decompress from the insanity of 2008, but in and around the New Year I found myself getting bored. And bored for me equals madness -- not that good "I'm a crazy artist" kind of madness, either: more the "I am contemplating more and more often, and with greater aesthetic detail, burying a pick axe in someone's head for stealing my seat on the subway" kind of madness.
So here I am, on Obama Day, after spending several hours debating the finer points of political science with a bunch of armchair bureaucrats and half-drunk skate punks, trying to write in a blog to explain why I don't like wasting time.
Music is better than booze, for one thing. Even sitting around plucking away and trying in vain to get down the needling details of Gordon Lightfoot and Leonard Cohen is better than staring vacantly at a TV screen while my ninth drink slips slowly and inexorably toward its final resting place -- overturned on my floor to collect dust and bugs. Or, God forbid, falling prey to the Guitar Hero fanaticism that seems to have gripped my roommate of late. Talk about wasting time.
I feel at this point that I have to run to catch up with myself. I've talked my whole life about doing what I love, all day, every day -- and suddenly, with no real warning whatsoever, it's upon me. I spend my day writing -- what I'm writing doesn't matter, it's enough that I'm manipulating words and weaving rhetoric -- and when I come home I have considerable musical responsibilities to attend to. This is more fulfilling than any girlfriend, paycheque or other external satisfaction has ever been. I am thrilled, happy, grateful.
And, goddamn it, thanks for pointing it out -- yes. I am very much alone. I guess the groupies are a little farther behind trying to catch up with me, and maybe once I get to that point I'll start feeling a little more in touch with humans. But for right now I'm holed up in my head, trying to wring every last morsel of inspiration I can from everyone and everything around me. It doesn't make for terribly reciprocal romantic liaisons, I would imagine -- don't try to love me when I'm in the state I'm in.
I'm going to cram that Guitar Hero up his ass. Love him like a brother, but I'm writing real music here, on an instrument not primarily composed of plastic. Do I feel superior? Yeah. Sue me.
On some level I feel kind of bad posting this kind of nonsense in an online forum -- because some people actually deign to read this stuff, and honestly I'd rather be entertaining you (all three of you). But sometimes I need to get this out of the way so I can get to the music -- like an archaeologist sweeping dirt off a fossil, except I'm more in the leafblower camp than I am in the little-noncy-brush camp.
What? You don't like it, don't read it! I didn't ask you to show up! Get the fuck off my lawn!
After spending most of my life in one or another academic environment, it's kind of an unusual feeling to be overwhelmed with work that is entirely of my own construction. When I was in school it wasn't at all uncommon for me to be overloaded by essays and whatnot, usually because I was too lazy or too distracted to get the head starts I really should have on those assignments. Since moving back to Toronto in September I have been pretty lax on myself; giving myself some time to breathe and decompress from the insanity of 2008, but in and around the New Year I found myself getting bored. And bored for me equals madness -- not that good "I'm a crazy artist" kind of madness, either: more the "I am contemplating more and more often, and with greater aesthetic detail, burying a pick axe in someone's head for stealing my seat on the subway" kind of madness.
So here I am, on Obama Day, after spending several hours debating the finer points of political science with a bunch of armchair bureaucrats and half-drunk skate punks, trying to write in a blog to explain why I don't like wasting time.
Music is better than booze, for one thing. Even sitting around plucking away and trying in vain to get down the needling details of Gordon Lightfoot and Leonard Cohen is better than staring vacantly at a TV screen while my ninth drink slips slowly and inexorably toward its final resting place -- overturned on my floor to collect dust and bugs. Or, God forbid, falling prey to the Guitar Hero fanaticism that seems to have gripped my roommate of late. Talk about wasting time.
I feel at this point that I have to run to catch up with myself. I've talked my whole life about doing what I love, all day, every day -- and suddenly, with no real warning whatsoever, it's upon me. I spend my day writing -- what I'm writing doesn't matter, it's enough that I'm manipulating words and weaving rhetoric -- and when I come home I have considerable musical responsibilities to attend to. This is more fulfilling than any girlfriend, paycheque or other external satisfaction has ever been. I am thrilled, happy, grateful.
And, goddamn it, thanks for pointing it out -- yes. I am very much alone. I guess the groupies are a little farther behind trying to catch up with me, and maybe once I get to that point I'll start feeling a little more in touch with humans. But for right now I'm holed up in my head, trying to wring every last morsel of inspiration I can from everyone and everything around me. It doesn't make for terribly reciprocal romantic liaisons, I would imagine -- don't try to love me when I'm in the state I'm in.
I'm going to cram that Guitar Hero up his ass. Love him like a brother, but I'm writing real music here, on an instrument not primarily composed of plastic. Do I feel superior? Yeah. Sue me.
On some level I feel kind of bad posting this kind of nonsense in an online forum -- because some people actually deign to read this stuff, and honestly I'd rather be entertaining you (all three of you). But sometimes I need to get this out of the way so I can get to the music -- like an archaeologist sweeping dirt off a fossil, except I'm more in the leafblower camp than I am in the little-noncy-brush camp.
What? You don't like it, don't read it! I didn't ask you to show up! Get the fuck off my lawn!
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
up for air
God, I gotta tell you. So much of this is fractal bullshit.
It's 12:02am. My alarm clock says 1:02am, because I refuse to fiddle with it twice a year when we have our arbitrary time change; I figure it'll catch up when it catches up. I'm starving myself back into clarity -- I reckon I deserved a couple months' leeway as far as steam-letting went, and now the steam has gone right the fuck back up into my neck where it used to rest, and it's making me severely uncomfortable. I distract myself with stars and streetlights.
I really, really dig the streetcorners in this city. I could just walk from corner to corner all day and especially all night. You think I'm kidding -- go stand on the corner of College and Bathurst on a really cold night, just outside Sneaky Dee's, and watch the drunks trudge by. Or swing down to Queen and Spadina and close your eyes and feel the vibration of bodies looking for something to eat, something to swallow, something to put their teeth in. You truly, truly don't need eyes to see that kind of heat rising in December, let me tell you what. It's palpable -- it's like standing next to a blast furnace. It's awesome, and not in that skater-boy kind of way, either. We could solve the energy crisis if we could determine how to catch libido in a bottle. Put your teeth in it and watch it burn.
But yes. I missed this city. It's a terrible cliche to say it's in my blood or my bones, and my friends never believe me when I talk that way anyway -- they chide me for trying to cover up nine formative years in rural Ontario and walk cool like I was always Here and never There. But I swear to God I never really left. There was always something exciting, something alive about the wild urban versus the mild suburban to me, even as a kid taking his first trips on a subway. I know it sounds romanticized, and it probably is on some level, in that very Lorca "Poet in New York" kind of way, but this ain't New York, so I feel partially liberated from that most supreme of cliches.
Blood runs under these streets, I'm convinced of it. This isn't violence the way you're thinking; this isn't gangs and mobs and bike clubs. It's not cutthroat politics or nightmare jetsetting. It's just blood, you know? Life. The good stuff. The stuff that makes me feel something, now that I kicked myself once again out of another year-long binge. It's like every so often I come up for air, before the next steam ship comes by and rolls me back under again. And every time I come up -- well, this is a lot like treading water, isn't it? I'm not saying anything, I'm not going anywhere particular: I'm describing a moment, treading water under stars and streetlights and distracting myself from my wrongheaded clock.
Yeah, a lot of this is fractal bullshit, but I think tomorrow I'm going to take a subway ride downtown and invest in a magnifying glass, some Super Glue and a couple of mincy little tweezers. See if I can't start putting some of this together -- never know, right?
You people are going to get sick of this shit, really quickly and really soon.
Funny, though, how I still find you inspiring.
It's 12:02am. My alarm clock says 1:02am, because I refuse to fiddle with it twice a year when we have our arbitrary time change; I figure it'll catch up when it catches up. I'm starving myself back into clarity -- I reckon I deserved a couple months' leeway as far as steam-letting went, and now the steam has gone right the fuck back up into my neck where it used to rest, and it's making me severely uncomfortable. I distract myself with stars and streetlights.
I really, really dig the streetcorners in this city. I could just walk from corner to corner all day and especially all night. You think I'm kidding -- go stand on the corner of College and Bathurst on a really cold night, just outside Sneaky Dee's, and watch the drunks trudge by. Or swing down to Queen and Spadina and close your eyes and feel the vibration of bodies looking for something to eat, something to swallow, something to put their teeth in. You truly, truly don't need eyes to see that kind of heat rising in December, let me tell you what. It's palpable -- it's like standing next to a blast furnace. It's awesome, and not in that skater-boy kind of way, either. We could solve the energy crisis if we could determine how to catch libido in a bottle. Put your teeth in it and watch it burn.
But yes. I missed this city. It's a terrible cliche to say it's in my blood or my bones, and my friends never believe me when I talk that way anyway -- they chide me for trying to cover up nine formative years in rural Ontario and walk cool like I was always Here and never There. But I swear to God I never really left. There was always something exciting, something alive about the wild urban versus the mild suburban to me, even as a kid taking his first trips on a subway. I know it sounds romanticized, and it probably is on some level, in that very Lorca "Poet in New York" kind of way, but this ain't New York, so I feel partially liberated from that most supreme of cliches.
Blood runs under these streets, I'm convinced of it. This isn't violence the way you're thinking; this isn't gangs and mobs and bike clubs. It's not cutthroat politics or nightmare jetsetting. It's just blood, you know? Life. The good stuff. The stuff that makes me feel something, now that I kicked myself once again out of another year-long binge. It's like every so often I come up for air, before the next steam ship comes by and rolls me back under again. And every time I come up -- well, this is a lot like treading water, isn't it? I'm not saying anything, I'm not going anywhere particular: I'm describing a moment, treading water under stars and streetlights and distracting myself from my wrongheaded clock.
Yeah, a lot of this is fractal bullshit, but I think tomorrow I'm going to take a subway ride downtown and invest in a magnifying glass, some Super Glue and a couple of mincy little tweezers. See if I can't start putting some of this together -- never know, right?
You people are going to get sick of this shit, really quickly and really soon.
Funny, though, how I still find you inspiring.
Localized Irritant IV: Hey YouTube -- thanks for nothing
Yes indeed, a new year, a new gripe. You'll be seeing more work from me this year, I promise, but in the meantime I have to get the juices flowing again, and I find there's no better lubricant than sheer, unadulterated irritation. Welcome back everyone. Have a seat and adjust your faces.
So I'm reasonably sure, after four months working for a dot-com, that I've seen just about every permutation of YouTube videos featuring people:
a) getting hit with large, cumbersome objects
b) getting hit with small, fast-moving objects
c) getting hit with large, cumbersome and yet fast-moving objects like cars (whoever posted that gem was a little sick)
d) falling down stairs
e) falling off tables (I'm looking at you Scarlett)
f) being pushed off stairs and/or tables
g) getting struck in the nuts by small children (this one's for you guys out there)
h) slipping on banana peels
i) slipping on a buttered floor (my personal favourite this year)
j) otherwise maiming, injuring or damaging themselves, other people nearby, or property
Subjects A-J make me incredibly happy. I'll be the first to admit that pain is hilarious -- and for those of you reading this thinking, "Oh sure, wait till it happens to you"...well, apparently you haven't read any of my other stories. To me, few things are funnier than an unsuspecting younger brother being broadsided by a gigantic exercise ball, or an irritating roommate being pranked into nearly killing himself on a pre-buttered floor. I blame my propensity for this kind of humour on a childhood filled with "Three Stooges" and "Laurel and Hardy" reruns, that taught me physical abuse doesn't actually hurt or have consequences of any kind, but does make for hours of wholesome family entertainment. (At least in my family)
However, during my tenure at my current position, I've also been subjected to the other side of YouTube, the part that makes you break into hives every time you hear the words "user-generated content": I wish I had an appropriate title for these douchebags, but the only way I've heard them described (without epithets attached) are as "YouTubers".
Okay, there are a few entertaining video web logs (vlogs?) that I'll follow if I'm inclined, and one or two are real gems (the McDonalds Millionaire guy is an underrated genius), but the vast, vast, vast, VAST majority of the content on YouTube is as vapid, if not more so, than any text blog you might come across on LiveJournal or...well, Blogger, actually. Seriously, it's bad enough to have to plow through the mountains of blogging horse shit that clog up the internet without having to WATCH it too. I read about somebody's bitchy parents, or somebody's lame attempt at amateur political analysis, or somebody else shamelessly ripping off the work of known comedians, or whatever, and that starts veins pumping in my forehead. But my goodness -- it's a whole new world of rage to actually listen to these mouth-breathers speak...and to watch them is an even greater treat. I find words fail me in instances like this. They should have sent a poet. Or, contrarily, they could have just picked one out of the virtual gutter of weird-looking preteens with ninety facial piercings and a haircut that looks like it was done by Stumpy the one-legged barber (on account of the 45 degree bang-angle) who read garbage like "Twilight" and think it's a fucking documentary. I'll go there another time; that's hate within hate.
I just...I don't understand what prompts these people to share their thoughts with the world. Just because the venue is there does NOT mean you should necessarily utilize it. If you're going to blather your way through some kind of inane, half-formed opinion on Iraq or the current state of music or something (or else jump-cut your video to get rid of the hours of "ums" and "ahs" in between cogent sentences) you should at least think about maybe, I don't know, reading something other than Wikipedia for reference, or better yet, consider NOT SHARING your verbal diarrhea with the rest of the viewing public.
Same goes for all you twelve year olds who have taken it upon yourselves (or had it forced on you) to start playing guitar fifteen seconds after exiting the womb, so you now play like the bastard son of Steve Vai and an M60 machine gun. Okay, you're very good. No, I'm not jealous, but you're very good. And I don't blame you for wanting to share that skill with the world. FIND SOME NEW MATERIAL. If I have to listen to one more of you kids play Canon in D at a zillion miles an hour, or some weak metal shit that could just as easily be done through MIDI for all it sounds like decent melody, or even AC/DC at eighteen hundred times the normal tempo, I'm going to crawl through the screen and ram your Sears-brand shit festival of an axe right up your nubile, pre-teen ass.
And don't even get me started on all these gamer assholes who decide to take a good song (EVERY good song, it seems) that I'm trying to locate so I can learn it without having to download it, and set it to a video of some bullshit World of Warcraft ambush scene or -- worse -- Japanese animation of any make or model. I tried, guys, I really did. Lots of my friends are into anime, and they did everything in their power to find a series I might enjoy. No dice -- it all looks fucking stupid to me, and you're not going to change my mind. So do me a favour and keep your weirdo Full-Metal-Fruit-Basket-Ranma-Mon pseudo-porn away from the music I like. Isn't that the whole point of J-pop as a genre, so you people can learn Japanese empirically by singing along to your favourite theme song from yet another show about children piloting robots? Furthermore, who lets children pilot fifty-foot tall missile-toting death machines anyway?
...I just wrote the follow-up line to that thought six times and erased it six times because I don't want to come off as a total racist, so I'll just say "imagine your own Godzilla joke".
Anyway, I know -- why watch this stuff if it incenses me so much, right? Two reasons. First, it would probably be imprudent and potentially libelous to write about the stuff that's actually pissing me off right now, so I needed a surrogate, and internet losers are a nice, easy target (they don't move too fast on account of the years of immobility leading to muscle atrophy. Oh, and they're all fat, too). And second, like every other internet loser on the planet, if I didn't watch this stuff, I'd never know what to bitch about.
All I'm saying is that, with a little creativity and a little forethought, there could be tons of great "user-generated content" on YouTube, and maybe it would be a community that people would visit for more than just clips of their favourite films or "man-hit-in-genitals" videos. As it is now, it's just a virtual expression of the kind of talentless wasteland our culture has become. YouTubers: you make me very, very sad. And angry. Yeah, that too.
There seems to have been no real point to this post. I'll come up with something better next time.
Oh, and Happy 2009.
So I'm reasonably sure, after four months working for a dot-com, that I've seen just about every permutation of YouTube videos featuring people:
a) getting hit with large, cumbersome objects
b) getting hit with small, fast-moving objects
c) getting hit with large, cumbersome and yet fast-moving objects like cars (whoever posted that gem was a little sick)
d) falling down stairs
e) falling off tables (I'm looking at you Scarlett)
f) being pushed off stairs and/or tables
g) getting struck in the nuts by small children (this one's for you guys out there)
h) slipping on banana peels
i) slipping on a buttered floor (my personal favourite this year)
j) otherwise maiming, injuring or damaging themselves, other people nearby, or property
Subjects A-J make me incredibly happy. I'll be the first to admit that pain is hilarious -- and for those of you reading this thinking, "Oh sure, wait till it happens to you"...well, apparently you haven't read any of my other stories. To me, few things are funnier than an unsuspecting younger brother being broadsided by a gigantic exercise ball, or an irritating roommate being pranked into nearly killing himself on a pre-buttered floor. I blame my propensity for this kind of humour on a childhood filled with "Three Stooges" and "Laurel and Hardy" reruns, that taught me physical abuse doesn't actually hurt or have consequences of any kind, but does make for hours of wholesome family entertainment. (At least in my family)
However, during my tenure at my current position, I've also been subjected to the other side of YouTube, the part that makes you break into hives every time you hear the words "user-generated content": I wish I had an appropriate title for these douchebags, but the only way I've heard them described (without epithets attached) are as "YouTubers".
Okay, there are a few entertaining video web logs (vlogs?) that I'll follow if I'm inclined, and one or two are real gems (the McDonalds Millionaire guy is an underrated genius), but the vast, vast, vast, VAST majority of the content on YouTube is as vapid, if not more so, than any text blog you might come across on LiveJournal or...well, Blogger, actually. Seriously, it's bad enough to have to plow through the mountains of blogging horse shit that clog up the internet without having to WATCH it too. I read about somebody's bitchy parents, or somebody's lame attempt at amateur political analysis, or somebody else shamelessly ripping off the work of known comedians, or whatever, and that starts veins pumping in my forehead. But my goodness -- it's a whole new world of rage to actually listen to these mouth-breathers speak...and to watch them is an even greater treat. I find words fail me in instances like this. They should have sent a poet. Or, contrarily, they could have just picked one out of the virtual gutter of weird-looking preteens with ninety facial piercings and a haircut that looks like it was done by Stumpy the one-legged barber (on account of the 45 degree bang-angle) who read garbage like "Twilight" and think it's a fucking documentary. I'll go there another time; that's hate within hate.
I just...I don't understand what prompts these people to share their thoughts with the world. Just because the venue is there does NOT mean you should necessarily utilize it. If you're going to blather your way through some kind of inane, half-formed opinion on Iraq or the current state of music or something (or else jump-cut your video to get rid of the hours of "ums" and "ahs" in between cogent sentences) you should at least think about maybe, I don't know, reading something other than Wikipedia for reference, or better yet, consider NOT SHARING your verbal diarrhea with the rest of the viewing public.
Same goes for all you twelve year olds who have taken it upon yourselves (or had it forced on you) to start playing guitar fifteen seconds after exiting the womb, so you now play like the bastard son of Steve Vai and an M60 machine gun. Okay, you're very good. No, I'm not jealous, but you're very good. And I don't blame you for wanting to share that skill with the world. FIND SOME NEW MATERIAL. If I have to listen to one more of you kids play Canon in D at a zillion miles an hour, or some weak metal shit that could just as easily be done through MIDI for all it sounds like decent melody, or even AC/DC at eighteen hundred times the normal tempo, I'm going to crawl through the screen and ram your Sears-brand shit festival of an axe right up your nubile, pre-teen ass.
And don't even get me started on all these gamer assholes who decide to take a good song (EVERY good song, it seems) that I'm trying to locate so I can learn it without having to download it, and set it to a video of some bullshit World of Warcraft ambush scene or -- worse -- Japanese animation of any make or model. I tried, guys, I really did. Lots of my friends are into anime, and they did everything in their power to find a series I might enjoy. No dice -- it all looks fucking stupid to me, and you're not going to change my mind. So do me a favour and keep your weirdo Full-Metal-Fruit-Basket-Ranma-Mon pseudo-porn away from the music I like. Isn't that the whole point of J-pop as a genre, so you people can learn Japanese empirically by singing along to your favourite theme song from yet another show about children piloting robots? Furthermore, who lets children pilot fifty-foot tall missile-toting death machines anyway?
...I just wrote the follow-up line to that thought six times and erased it six times because I don't want to come off as a total racist, so I'll just say "imagine your own Godzilla joke".
Anyway, I know -- why watch this stuff if it incenses me so much, right? Two reasons. First, it would probably be imprudent and potentially libelous to write about the stuff that's actually pissing me off right now, so I needed a surrogate, and internet losers are a nice, easy target (they don't move too fast on account of the years of immobility leading to muscle atrophy. Oh, and they're all fat, too). And second, like every other internet loser on the planet, if I didn't watch this stuff, I'd never know what to bitch about.
All I'm saying is that, with a little creativity and a little forethought, there could be tons of great "user-generated content" on YouTube, and maybe it would be a community that people would visit for more than just clips of their favourite films or "man-hit-in-genitals" videos. As it is now, it's just a virtual expression of the kind of talentless wasteland our culture has become. YouTubers: you make me very, very sad. And angry. Yeah, that too.
There seems to have been no real point to this post. I'll come up with something better next time.
Oh, and Happy 2009.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Fa la la la la oh fuck it.
So I've discovered some pretty important things about myself recently. I'm prefacing this post with that statement so everyone reading this blog has fair warning that I'm about to be totally self-analytical and narcissistic. It's not entertaining, folks, but can you blame me? It's tough to be as entertaining as I am on a day-to-day basis without some kind of valve to let off a little of the existential steam now and again.
So I've discovered some pretty important things about myself recently. Ever since I returned to Toronto a few months ago, I've been trying to come to terms with the grand and sweeping and somewhat less-than-graceful forty-five degree segue the span of my recorded life took over the course of the last eleven months. Approaching the end of what qualifies, without a doubt, as the strangest year I've experienced in all twenty-four I've been breathing, I find myself reflecting on the spectrum of choices historically laid before me -- the ones I made consciously and the ones forced upon me -- and how they've led me to where I am, at 10:51 a.m. on 24 November, 2008.
Brief overview: this time last year I was dealing, poorly, with my move back to the home of my childhood, medicating my intense depression with too much alcohol and, contrarily, the promise of a move to warmer climes, a graduate education and -- ostensibly -- a happy marriage. I was working a comfortable job as the evening front-desk manager (read: receptionist) at a successful car dealership; my responsibilities were limited and the paycheques were sizable, particularly given the comparatively tiny sum my parents requested in the way of rent payments in exchange for food and shelter. Leaving aside the deep isolation I felt from my close friends and my fiancee (in Toronto and Texas, respectively), I had it pretty good.
But I'm not the kind of person who's satisfied with "pretty good" (in fact, I don't really know a lot of people who are). Therein lay my first choice: I could either a) take advantage of the time and relative fiscal freedom afforded me by my living arrangement and use it to create works of unimaginable brilliance, or b) drink myself into a foolish stupor at every opportunity and lament the molasses-like passage of time I felt all the more keenly due to my separation issues. So suffice to say I fumbled that ball something fierce by choosing option "b".
Fast forward to January. Relationship falls through, blah blah, I've covered this. Shortly after this revelation I discover I have not been accepted to either graduate program to which I applied. And I'm still at home, still fancying myself a receptionist, and still living most of my life in largely self-imposed artistic dearth. Relations with my family are reaching an all-time low as they see me, fucking up on a supremely grand scale, and doing little if anything to slow my descent. Their responses to my increasingly erratic and self-abusive behaviour span the gamut from concern to confusion to anger as they struggle to come to terms with the selfish, irresponsible, and ultimately pathetic choices I have begun making with reckless abandon. My family is, in a word, a saintly group of people who did their very best to support me, and deserve far better than what I handed out in those months.
Fast forward again to July. My contract at the car dealership is about to expire, and I have no employment lined up. Every ounce of my energy is invested in finding accommodations in Toronto, because somewhere in my vodka-soaked brain, one of the last neurons standing has fired, prompting me to decide that all my problems would be solved by a return to the city I have always considered on some level my home. There is no plan -- there is no forethought. There is only this overriding desire to get out: out of my ancestral home, out of the mind-numbing sameness of the cultural wasteland in which my family has established that home, and out of the artistic abstinence and emotional time-release safe into which I had placed the core of whatever constitutes me. The only way out, I reasoned, was via a Budget rental truck and a one-bedroom somewhere in the urban spread.
Of course, that line of thinking was a shining example of the kind of Grade A, not-from-concentrate, 100% farm-fresh bullshit I was feeding myself at that time. Because geography has far less to do with your state of mind than the kind of on-the-pedestal importance I was placing on my big move south. It's ridiculous to assume that if you can't be happy in one place, you'll be happy in another. I'm not downplaying the importance of having your own space -- not at all. I am a very private person (believe it or not) and I really needed personal space in which to breathe -- space I necessarily couldn't be afforded living with three other people whose schedules coincided with mine to the point that I was never really alone for more than a couple of hours at a time. But the point is, I was unhappy in my own head -- and I could have been moving into the Penthouse Mansion and it wouldn't have made me any happier. What was required was a reboot of my personality, a ground-up rebuild of what was going to be the New Direction, now that the Old Direction had detoured, Earnhardt-style, rather spectacularly into a brick wall.
Fast forward to August. I receive a call from my best friend, with whom I'd been cohabitating prior to my big move back home. Turns out the surrogate roommate I'd provided when I had to leave him holding the back at the end of August '07 was unexpectedly moving out, giving him little notice and less time to find new digs for himself. It wasn't without some trepidation that I agreed to move back in; I had made a promise to myself that I would never live with another person again. But with my finances significantly depleted by the months of self-pity to which I'd subjected myself, the chances of finding affordable accommodations on the timeline I'd set out were slim to none. So I bit the bullet and made the move. It was exactly three hundred and sixty-five days to the day that I'd moved out when I came back to the same neighbourhood, the same apartment -- even the same room I'd left a year prior when I set out to pursue the Old Direction.
Since then...since then, the New Direction has rapidly come to fruition. The tenets of the New Direction are as follows:
1) My goals are my own, and no one else's. I very nearly relocated my entire life to a foreign nation, pursued a degree in a field I had no real desire to achieve, and realized a life the dream of which was not my own. In my estimation, it was a bullet dodged, and I have no interest in revisiting such a self-debilitating course of action.
2) My art is the most important thing in my life. For too long I allowed the ambitions of other people to impede my creative outlets -- I neglected my music, my writing and my penchant for performance in favour of following a "responsible" lifestyle. I have never laboured under the misconception that my artistic endeavours will ever garner me anything resembling a secure future, I have decided unapologetically that the creation of art supercedes any desire I might have to live a life of comfortable mediocrity. It sounds painfully idealistic, but if I don't give this a fair shake I'll spend the rest of my life waking in the middle of the night with that familiar itch on the inside of my stomach wall -- the nervous insinuation of "what if".
3) I no longer make apologies for the man I have become. I have walked across coal pits of considerable distance in order to come to these realizations, and I'm not willing to compromise the wisdom I've gained through exercises of existential agony in order to placate the people around me.
4) In opposition to this, I no longer take for granted the people closest to me in my life. My close friends and my family stuck by me when people of lesser intestinal fortitude would have rightly closed the book and walked away. These are people of the highest integrity, and I am truly blessed to count these people in the number of those I can trust and on whom I can rely when times get tough, as they doubtless will again in the future.
5) Perhaps most importantly, I believe in myself and in the tenets of the New Direction. For too many years I clung to the trappings of modesty and self-deprecation in order to somehow validate my talent and my value as a person. And while I haven't necessarily walked away from that philosophy, I have come to realize that I have to look out for my own interests and sell myself on my own merits, because if left to their own devices, there are precious few people who will do it for me -- and it's not the job of those people that will. So my assumed confidence may border on the delusionally narcissistic -- but I can safely say I don't care.
My best friend nailed it the other night when I apologized for coming in late (again). I have spent considerable time out on the town, as it were, meeting new people and reacquainting myself with the city -- and, of course, getting up to all manner of hijinks that will serve to paint the silly, silly canvas of my day-to-day with engaging and entertaining material for songs and stories alike, and truth be told I'm happier than I've ever been whilst throwing myself into these situations, but I felt a degree of guilt that I have been living as I have -- in accordance with the tenets of the New Direction. My friend voiced it thus:
"Simply put, you have spent the last six or seven years living for everyone else. Relationships you tried to make work despite overwhelming odds, a university career you never enjoyed, trying to make everyone around you happy and comfortable and proud of you. This is the first time in your life that you haven't been accountable to anyone, and frankly I think you deserve the chance to live for yourself, for a change."
I had never thought of it that way, but upon reflection I think he makes a good point. I'm wired to associate my own needs and desires with some kind of weird guilt complex, like there are more valid opinions to which I should subscribe, like my time would be better served ensuring that I avoid stepping on any and all toes. Hearing my friend validate my desire to pursue self-exploration, regardless whether or not that movement lines up with what other people perceive to be the smart move, was exactly what I needed in order to finally start to feel good about myself and my day-to-day.
What the hell am I trying to say in all of this? I can't say, really. All I know is that for the first time I'm happy -- unequivocally and without the caveat of anyone else's happiness infringing on the simple, base enjoyment of waking up in the morning and doing what I love all day long.
The album is in pre-production. I'm writing new material for the page and the stage. I've even launched myself back into acting. If you'd told me a year ago this is where I'd end up I would have been shocked, dismayed that so much would fall apart in a scant twelve month span, in mortal fear of the kind of pain and self-recrimination that would be necessary to get here -- but maybe, if I'm honest, I'll admit that even a year ago I might have been just a tiny bit excited that I would get a shot at all the things I loved -- the things I was willing to give up for the sake of living into a role I would have been forced to play for the rest of my life.
I've discovered some pretty important things about myself recently. Foremost among them is that I deserve things, things I had until now ascribed strictly to other people and never to myself. I've fucked up large in my life, over and over, but the more I think about it, the more I think I might have finally afforded myself a legitimate opportunity to make good on all those things I have always said I'm about.
They say everybody gets a second chance. At long last, I'm starting to think they're right.
So I've discovered some pretty important things about myself recently. Ever since I returned to Toronto a few months ago, I've been trying to come to terms with the grand and sweeping and somewhat less-than-graceful forty-five degree segue the span of my recorded life took over the course of the last eleven months. Approaching the end of what qualifies, without a doubt, as the strangest year I've experienced in all twenty-four I've been breathing, I find myself reflecting on the spectrum of choices historically laid before me -- the ones I made consciously and the ones forced upon me -- and how they've led me to where I am, at 10:51 a.m. on 24 November, 2008.
Brief overview: this time last year I was dealing, poorly, with my move back to the home of my childhood, medicating my intense depression with too much alcohol and, contrarily, the promise of a move to warmer climes, a graduate education and -- ostensibly -- a happy marriage. I was working a comfortable job as the evening front-desk manager (read: receptionist) at a successful car dealership; my responsibilities were limited and the paycheques were sizable, particularly given the comparatively tiny sum my parents requested in the way of rent payments in exchange for food and shelter. Leaving aside the deep isolation I felt from my close friends and my fiancee (in Toronto and Texas, respectively), I had it pretty good.
But I'm not the kind of person who's satisfied with "pretty good" (in fact, I don't really know a lot of people who are). Therein lay my first choice: I could either a) take advantage of the time and relative fiscal freedom afforded me by my living arrangement and use it to create works of unimaginable brilliance, or b) drink myself into a foolish stupor at every opportunity and lament the molasses-like passage of time I felt all the more keenly due to my separation issues. So suffice to say I fumbled that ball something fierce by choosing option "b".
Fast forward to January. Relationship falls through, blah blah, I've covered this. Shortly after this revelation I discover I have not been accepted to either graduate program to which I applied. And I'm still at home, still fancying myself a receptionist, and still living most of my life in largely self-imposed artistic dearth. Relations with my family are reaching an all-time low as they see me, fucking up on a supremely grand scale, and doing little if anything to slow my descent. Their responses to my increasingly erratic and self-abusive behaviour span the gamut from concern to confusion to anger as they struggle to come to terms with the selfish, irresponsible, and ultimately pathetic choices I have begun making with reckless abandon. My family is, in a word, a saintly group of people who did their very best to support me, and deserve far better than what I handed out in those months.
Fast forward again to July. My contract at the car dealership is about to expire, and I have no employment lined up. Every ounce of my energy is invested in finding accommodations in Toronto, because somewhere in my vodka-soaked brain, one of the last neurons standing has fired, prompting me to decide that all my problems would be solved by a return to the city I have always considered on some level my home. There is no plan -- there is no forethought. There is only this overriding desire to get out: out of my ancestral home, out of the mind-numbing sameness of the cultural wasteland in which my family has established that home, and out of the artistic abstinence and emotional time-release safe into which I had placed the core of whatever constitutes me. The only way out, I reasoned, was via a Budget rental truck and a one-bedroom somewhere in the urban spread.
Of course, that line of thinking was a shining example of the kind of Grade A, not-from-concentrate, 100% farm-fresh bullshit I was feeding myself at that time. Because geography has far less to do with your state of mind than the kind of on-the-pedestal importance I was placing on my big move south. It's ridiculous to assume that if you can't be happy in one place, you'll be happy in another. I'm not downplaying the importance of having your own space -- not at all. I am a very private person (believe it or not) and I really needed personal space in which to breathe -- space I necessarily couldn't be afforded living with three other people whose schedules coincided with mine to the point that I was never really alone for more than a couple of hours at a time. But the point is, I was unhappy in my own head -- and I could have been moving into the Penthouse Mansion and it wouldn't have made me any happier. What was required was a reboot of my personality, a ground-up rebuild of what was going to be the New Direction, now that the Old Direction had detoured, Earnhardt-style, rather spectacularly into a brick wall.
Fast forward to August. I receive a call from my best friend, with whom I'd been cohabitating prior to my big move back home. Turns out the surrogate roommate I'd provided when I had to leave him holding the back at the end of August '07 was unexpectedly moving out, giving him little notice and less time to find new digs for himself. It wasn't without some trepidation that I agreed to move back in; I had made a promise to myself that I would never live with another person again. But with my finances significantly depleted by the months of self-pity to which I'd subjected myself, the chances of finding affordable accommodations on the timeline I'd set out were slim to none. So I bit the bullet and made the move. It was exactly three hundred and sixty-five days to the day that I'd moved out when I came back to the same neighbourhood, the same apartment -- even the same room I'd left a year prior when I set out to pursue the Old Direction.
Since then...since then, the New Direction has rapidly come to fruition. The tenets of the New Direction are as follows:
1) My goals are my own, and no one else's. I very nearly relocated my entire life to a foreign nation, pursued a degree in a field I had no real desire to achieve, and realized a life the dream of which was not my own. In my estimation, it was a bullet dodged, and I have no interest in revisiting such a self-debilitating course of action.
2) My art is the most important thing in my life. For too long I allowed the ambitions of other people to impede my creative outlets -- I neglected my music, my writing and my penchant for performance in favour of following a "responsible" lifestyle. I have never laboured under the misconception that my artistic endeavours will ever garner me anything resembling a secure future, I have decided unapologetically that the creation of art supercedes any desire I might have to live a life of comfortable mediocrity. It sounds painfully idealistic, but if I don't give this a fair shake I'll spend the rest of my life waking in the middle of the night with that familiar itch on the inside of my stomach wall -- the nervous insinuation of "what if".
3) I no longer make apologies for the man I have become. I have walked across coal pits of considerable distance in order to come to these realizations, and I'm not willing to compromise the wisdom I've gained through exercises of existential agony in order to placate the people around me.
4) In opposition to this, I no longer take for granted the people closest to me in my life. My close friends and my family stuck by me when people of lesser intestinal fortitude would have rightly closed the book and walked away. These are people of the highest integrity, and I am truly blessed to count these people in the number of those I can trust and on whom I can rely when times get tough, as they doubtless will again in the future.
5) Perhaps most importantly, I believe in myself and in the tenets of the New Direction. For too many years I clung to the trappings of modesty and self-deprecation in order to somehow validate my talent and my value as a person. And while I haven't necessarily walked away from that philosophy, I have come to realize that I have to look out for my own interests and sell myself on my own merits, because if left to their own devices, there are precious few people who will do it for me -- and it's not the job of those people that will. So my assumed confidence may border on the delusionally narcissistic -- but I can safely say I don't care.
My best friend nailed it the other night when I apologized for coming in late (again). I have spent considerable time out on the town, as it were, meeting new people and reacquainting myself with the city -- and, of course, getting up to all manner of hijinks that will serve to paint the silly, silly canvas of my day-to-day with engaging and entertaining material for songs and stories alike, and truth be told I'm happier than I've ever been whilst throwing myself into these situations, but I felt a degree of guilt that I have been living as I have -- in accordance with the tenets of the New Direction. My friend voiced it thus:
"Simply put, you have spent the last six or seven years living for everyone else. Relationships you tried to make work despite overwhelming odds, a university career you never enjoyed, trying to make everyone around you happy and comfortable and proud of you. This is the first time in your life that you haven't been accountable to anyone, and frankly I think you deserve the chance to live for yourself, for a change."
I had never thought of it that way, but upon reflection I think he makes a good point. I'm wired to associate my own needs and desires with some kind of weird guilt complex, like there are more valid opinions to which I should subscribe, like my time would be better served ensuring that I avoid stepping on any and all toes. Hearing my friend validate my desire to pursue self-exploration, regardless whether or not that movement lines up with what other people perceive to be the smart move, was exactly what I needed in order to finally start to feel good about myself and my day-to-day.
What the hell am I trying to say in all of this? I can't say, really. All I know is that for the first time I'm happy -- unequivocally and without the caveat of anyone else's happiness infringing on the simple, base enjoyment of waking up in the morning and doing what I love all day long.
The album is in pre-production. I'm writing new material for the page and the stage. I've even launched myself back into acting. If you'd told me a year ago this is where I'd end up I would have been shocked, dismayed that so much would fall apart in a scant twelve month span, in mortal fear of the kind of pain and self-recrimination that would be necessary to get here -- but maybe, if I'm honest, I'll admit that even a year ago I might have been just a tiny bit excited that I would get a shot at all the things I loved -- the things I was willing to give up for the sake of living into a role I would have been forced to play for the rest of my life.
I've discovered some pretty important things about myself recently. Foremost among them is that I deserve things, things I had until now ascribed strictly to other people and never to myself. I've fucked up large in my life, over and over, but the more I think about it, the more I think I might have finally afforded myself a legitimate opportunity to make good on all those things I have always said I'm about.
They say everybody gets a second chance. At long last, I'm starting to think they're right.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
honesty.
I
I am a liar --
I have been.
From air I called dust; phantoms;
I made them dance and
it was as though I had made them live.
They danced; not alive, they are
blown asunder in your breath.
I have stolen --
valueless, infinite.
Blood with blood I salved wounds
and taken from me I took back;
Your trust: your enduring faith,
again and again I took you,
valueless and paid for.
II
He watched himself fucking against a bed corner,
driving her into the mattress, her face away from his,
and the guilt in him, watching him, being him, denied him.
When she came, she looked back, into his face,
and he closed his eyes and wiped cooling sweat from his back.
Shortly afterwards he packed his bag.
III
I was soft --
self-determined endgame.
Father Jack and all the rest, in high
judgment seated among shadows and flags;
the impurity of mind, manufacturing ghosts,
the impurity of breath, making of them particulates.
Crushing paranoid collapse: remove the witness.
IV
He lay on his back where he had fallen in the gravel and mud,
and it seemed the stars were a cosmic baseball field mirroring the ground;
he knew fear then, by the stains on his jacket and the star-bright pins
of his eyes -- he knew his polluted mouth and his swimming teary vision,
and the words -- caution, always caution -- in his stereo-looped sense memory.
Stumble drunk Tuesday night, walking home to nothing.
V
I am called Traitor --
President-in-Exile, fraud.
Mirror-flash recognition; it's as we feared, Sir:
we've been compromised by
That -- you have always known That --
oh, his fractured Ghost, come to claim him, finally,
In His coal-mine eyes he will claw and
That will be his prison.
VI
Standing quietly with his hands muting strings, waiting for the words --
and they do not come. Hum pitch and stuttered coughs and
and
It's like waiting for dawn at two-twenty-seven a.m. Ring.
Aside-set for bruises, chair shuffle waste of time. He's choked, and
the audience has gone looking for another show.
VII
You, That -- we,
forgive him?
for
give him?
Oh, only in exchange.
Yes.
VIII
I don't know your God. I have not walked with Him; I don't understand His significance. These steps I walk alone, not in the sand. I leave no footprints to be followed, only breadcrumbs and blood.
I don't know your God, but I have run from your Devil. He is your Devil, too, after all, isn't he? A decade's worth of running, and the breadcrumbs are all consumed. That -- He -- there, behind me, cold on my shoulder like a lesson.
I have run from your Devil for ten years, and He has been My Devil; and I have been yours, and You have been His, and We are ourselves all angels.
And we forgive.
IX
Today I stand. I carve it in my arms, to remember, always to remember.
I am Myself, angel -- That. Fraud; Being; Perfect.
It's getting light. Finally, it's getting light.
X
Say it again -- make it real -- please, time is running out --
Today I stand.
Today I serve the truth.
I am a liar --
I have been.
From air I called dust; phantoms;
I made them dance and
it was as though I had made them live.
They danced; not alive, they are
blown asunder in your breath.
I have stolen --
valueless, infinite.
Blood with blood I salved wounds
and taken from me I took back;
Your trust: your enduring faith,
again and again I took you,
valueless and paid for.
II
He watched himself fucking against a bed corner,
driving her into the mattress, her face away from his,
and the guilt in him, watching him, being him, denied him.
When she came, she looked back, into his face,
and he closed his eyes and wiped cooling sweat from his back.
Shortly afterwards he packed his bag.
III
I was soft --
self-determined endgame.
Father Jack and all the rest, in high
judgment seated among shadows and flags;
the impurity of mind, manufacturing ghosts,
the impurity of breath, making of them particulates.
Crushing paranoid collapse: remove the witness.
IV
He lay on his back where he had fallen in the gravel and mud,
and it seemed the stars were a cosmic baseball field mirroring the ground;
he knew fear then, by the stains on his jacket and the star-bright pins
of his eyes -- he knew his polluted mouth and his swimming teary vision,
and the words -- caution, always caution -- in his stereo-looped sense memory.
Stumble drunk Tuesday night, walking home to nothing.
V
I am called Traitor --
President-in-Exile, fraud.
Mirror-flash recognition; it's as we feared, Sir:
we've been compromised by
That -- you have always known That --
oh, his fractured Ghost, come to claim him, finally,
In His coal-mine eyes he will claw and
That will be his prison.
VI
Standing quietly with his hands muting strings, waiting for the words --
and they do not come. Hum pitch and stuttered coughs and
and
It's like waiting for dawn at two-twenty-seven a.m. Ring.
Aside-set for bruises, chair shuffle waste of time. He's choked, and
the audience has gone looking for another show.
VII
You, That -- we,
forgive him?
for
give him?
Oh, only in exchange.
Yes.
VIII
I don't know your God. I have not walked with Him; I don't understand His significance. These steps I walk alone, not in the sand. I leave no footprints to be followed, only breadcrumbs and blood.
I don't know your God, but I have run from your Devil. He is your Devil, too, after all, isn't he? A decade's worth of running, and the breadcrumbs are all consumed. That -- He -- there, behind me, cold on my shoulder like a lesson.
I have run from your Devil for ten years, and He has been My Devil; and I have been yours, and You have been His, and We are ourselves all angels.
And we forgive.
IX
Today I stand. I carve it in my arms, to remember, always to remember.
I am Myself, angel -- That. Fraud; Being; Perfect.
It's getting light. Finally, it's getting light.
X
Say it again -- make it real -- please, time is running out --
Today I stand.
Today I serve the truth.
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