Yep, I have been dogging it, for lack of artistic direction. I've become consumed with the immediate and unable to find the magic, the whimsy. The press of culture has been stifling. The pressure of fitting into some kind of God damned role has been palpable, or I should say, more palpable than in past weeks and months and years even. I keep looking up and asking myself if this is all there is and I have been pounding my fist on the table with six empty chairs around it and rattling nothing more than my own glass.
There is no such thing as a dry spell. I know it is all still there, still pouring, still palpitating. What I want to get at, however, is after the flow. I am storing metaphor and analogy and analysis, but not having tapped the vein I want I have limbs dying for overdose and infection. "Eating heroin is one thing, but injecting it is another." Probably the funniest thing I heard this year. The funniest admonishment. It burns my ass sometimes to hear people complain about things that are fairly simply resolved. Hilarious in some ways. Met up with a friend of mine at the local hole and he told me about another friend who had a fiberglass, nuclear white, road bike.
Turned out the guy was high as fuck on mescaline and out for a joy ride and he rode with him up to his place and the guy just housed the hill there. Should I feel bad for feeling inspired?
I've (enter apostrophetics) been dogging it none the less. I can't describe the feeling. If you've ever read the phantom tollbooth you know what the love affair of language can be like. Sometimes she wears lace. Sometimes he wears the same lace the last time you had to suck him off for a solid hour because he lied about not jerking off before he came over and you found out second hand from his other friend he was banging beers back with before he decided to ring you up and now your neck hurts when you tip your head backward to drink water the morning after.
The point is, he doesn't realize you would be more than happy to throttle his neck the same and watch his eyes start to pop out until they turned back and up into his eyelids and the tears ran down your hands because that's what gets you off.
And that just turned way angry and too honest. I don't know. I can't speak to human engineering because I don't know enough, but I absolutely believe that engineering can be trumped by training. The problem and the pitfall is the belief and extrapolation from that idea that training can be unlearned. Somehow the incorporation, the building of the structure can be as easily or possibly as difficulty and painstakingly deconstructed. The question arises: if you have 24 years of programming and construction and habituation built into your psyche, how many years will it take to reprogram, reconstruct, repurpose, and rehabilitate those patterns into new ones? If it takes, just drawing cards from my own deck of experience, twenty minutes to demolish a level 3 Revell GT 500 painstakingly constructed over two weeks, it should be fairly easy. That's my deck.
It's been hard. Real hard. Violently hard. Violently happy. To the point where people know me well enough that I have to actively push away opportunities to ...I'm not a destroyer. But I know I am. I know I can be a creator too. I used to be. I used to create willy nilly and I still do, but the work goes into that. The creating. The destruction comes naturally. I'm not a big guy by any stretch, but I never thought five years ago I would ever be comfortable popping someone's eye with my thumb. Yeah, it was salty. Not good salty either. Like, I do not know how to describe it. It was like the saline was an afterthought. I did not realize, at all, how much energy I was burning to be, but I've felt the exhaustion of it, of late. It's been taxing. Who to tell what and how much. I'm rambling.
I know. I have been dogging it. Not on the low roads though. I'm kind of surprised some times how easy it's been. Violence as language. I think the Auralport has been a lot of language as violence. Which is a start, but not enough of a start. There's no point in conquest you can't talk about. No entryway. No friends. I just laughed saying that out loud. I am not an animal. I build models with tweezers. Still do. I suppose that is not making me any less creepy. I have fallen off. Maybe fallen in to. Something. Fighting fair is a sad man's game.
I am not an animal, but I am trying to work my way back to the human side of the master equation.
And so I present to you the Winter manifesto:
Do good. Do not just be better within yourself, because that is not enough. Be better within, and for, others sake. Do not just see stars, but see horses and do not steal them, only enjoy their being and watch and maybe tip a hat to that wilderness, but do not beg to be the center. Do not fight this winter, for any reason. Physically. Because you have one body and one set of knuckles and you have enough years on them to make making it past forty a probability instead of a certainty. Lose no more fractions of teeth. Put together your works and compose for compositions sake alone because recognition is fool's gold and the short path to the quitter's raga. Be bright and not literally, but for light's sake. Be motivated and train and not for the sake of preparations for conflict, however, be prepared to defend yourself, and only in defense cause a mother fu$$ing ruckus. Finish the twenty thousand words to your book you left hanging two years ago. No Damoclesean swords. Less reference. Clearer analogy. And I don't know how much further I should take it because I've already stepped into the boundary between what I know I can do and what I know I know I may not be able to do.
The Winter manifesto is this: take it head on and do not fear the cool.
The trees talk to me in summer, at night when the moon is out. I am looking forward to their silence and the peace of the death of the ground beneath my feet. I am looking forward to reclaiming the night that I leased to the summer and all her passerby and the bullshit.
I survived another season. I know the next two will be beautiful.
Redesigns coming soon.
///Sneaker Pimps - "How Do" I grew up on sneaker pimps. through the conflict years. them, massive attack, and floyd, and disco. and the orb.
Clean with alcohol only. Do not attempt to replace blown fuses. Do not remove access panels. Return to certified mechanic for regular maintenance. Made in the USA.
Showing posts with label phantom tollbooth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label phantom tollbooth. Show all posts
7/20/11
A Thought About the World
I was thinking about the end of the world. Again. Not really the end, but the end of my world assuming I tough it out. Which is hilarious. To think that life is something that needs to be "toughed out". Walked off. I sometimes wonder if people who are basically set for life, whose only real decision to make is to go to work or not, or play the links in Carolina this weekend or shuffle off to Amsterdam for a bit to get away from "it all" ever feel like they're going to have to tough out the next few years. I suppose I don't really wonder. I'm sure they do. I like to think that I wonder so I can reflect more kindly on their various dispositions. Instead of wishing them all away to the heaven of hell's brambles. But I was thinking about the upcoming end of my iterations, when there is no more material to make new me's out of what is left of the old me's and no more material available to create new me-ness to replace the wholesale deletions. My thoughts turned, naturally as an American, to war.
When all of the oil runs out, and I hope it does sooner than later, mainly to generate some actual sea change and perhaps restructure the as we've accepted it into the as we've never known, but wished it to be, even if the restructuring ends up being more of a warp and upward mobile in ways I could never be societal metastization, what becomes of middle eastern interest? Do the propped up kings all topple over at once? Does religion come bursting in to fill the holes? Obviously it won't be anarchy. The world is far too connected for that to ever happen. Does america finally walk away from it all like some person stumbling home from a red light district in the morning with a massive hangover to their mattress stuffed with "just in case" money? And then I thought "who fucking cares."
I know I should. For my children's sake. But I'm never having kids. Right now my only claim to fame is that I escaped an abusive home and now have the power to break the cycle of violence and generational human corruption by not perpetuating it the only way I can guarantee the rest of the world will succeed. That's it. So I suppose that probably puts me in the category of people that "want to watch the world burn". Maybe not square in. But close. I don't think I have enough passion to make a sport of it. Which lead me to understand something. A carefree friend is enviable. A careless friend is a headache, but can be desirable in certain doses. A negligent friend is a liability. Well, I understood that before. But it reminded me. I don't know where I fit in there. Where do friends go that are constantly trying to snuff out the fires of their past? Burning their shadows away? Eating their demons.
I don't care how the world is going to end. Maybe the middle east will collapse in fifty years. I'm sure they'll find some way to make it work. They'll tough it out. Some things will change. A lot of things won't. I'll still have to take shit from people making snide remarks in the vein of "break a twenty (whistle) that's a lot of money to be carryin' around on a Tuesday" from asshole managers and foremen who make my monthly net in a couple days of work. I'll still have to deal with nurses asking me seven times if I've been shooting needles into my work scarred arms every time I get up enough money or desperation to see a physician. If it all burns down, I'll be third in line with a lawn chair, a cold beer, and a program to take in the floor show. Which is all fairly grim.
I did not mean to be that grim. Honestly. My life feels like a very long Vertigo shot. Time just keeps on racing away. The farther it stretches, the farther back I have to keep pushing things to stay alive, the more things fall out of focus and break down and it's the least I can do to hold onto the consciousness of here and now and impossible not to choke it to death with the force of the grip needed to keep it safe. I have no real stake in the outcome of the world's wars. I was unceremoniously ushered out of the war fighting arena, the academic arena, the peace keeping arena, the social and society arena, the tax paying arena. I don't know. I don't know where the fuck I'm going with this. Six hundred "no"s and one "yes". Two yeses. It's not that it gets difficult to believe things will improve. It's that it becomes foolish to believe so.
I don't want to believe that's it for me. Not in terms of writing. There's still much to be done and I know this is perhaps the stuttering beginnings of little stars and planets in the blueness of twilight before the moon rise of - what? Shut up. Shut it. Start over. There's still much to be done and I know this is perhaps the stuttering, tottering, beginnings of my flash in the pan in terms of production and development. A multi-year long stuttering to get that one paragraph out that I'll remember myself by. I don't want to believe the best I can hope for is to not get sick and have something to eat and enough to pay for cool in the summer and heat in winter and keep a roof over my fucking head and a cellphone turned on.
Which, I guess, ultimately is to say, space has been both kind and unkind. Kind to the people I care enough not to belabor, but unkind to the glass hearted intrepid nuclear radiant wayfarer. There have been complications. Unmediated things have come undone. I went about a month at one point without thinking about suicide. And then you feel it creeping up the back of your neck. The little worlds threading their way through the nerves in your right ear, across the back of your eyes to your left ear and lacing themselves together tighter and thicker until you feel like the bones of your forehead are going to collapse under the compression and your insides are going to come out like frosting squeezed out between the fingers of a kid crushing a sandwich cookie in his fist. So much time is spent in sorting. This is real. This is not. That is doable. This will kill you. This is tenable. That is not. You said this out of your mouth. You should have said this. Do not say that. This is valid. That will get you interned again. The sorting gets confusing. Frustrating. Makes me angry. And tired. Of many things. So much left to do.
The world as movie: I would have walked out years ago. Myself as movie: I already know how it ends, but I'm not walking out yet. I still haven't seen that one scene where I'm riding down a dirt road in a 240z with my korgy in the passenger seat barking at the rabbits in the brush while the sun sits on the mountains for a nap before the milky way belts across the sky like Beethoven through a concert hall. I don't know if I'll actually make it that far in or what planet that'll happen on. But I'm tryin' to tough it out. It would help if a tollbooth were to appear in my bedroom someday. I would never look back.
///Annie Lennox - "No More I Love Yous" remember this one? I still do. I was in love with Annie Lennox for a long time. All of ten years old and the lyrics to this song felt like she wrote them for me. I used to sit alone in my room and sing nirvana's half the man I used to be. It's funny, I guess. Not that the pain hasn't changed. Funny that the monsters are still outside after all this time.
When all of the oil runs out, and I hope it does sooner than later, mainly to generate some actual sea change and perhaps restructure the as we've accepted it into the as we've never known, but wished it to be, even if the restructuring ends up being more of a warp and upward mobile in ways I could never be societal metastization, what becomes of middle eastern interest? Do the propped up kings all topple over at once? Does religion come bursting in to fill the holes? Obviously it won't be anarchy. The world is far too connected for that to ever happen. Does america finally walk away from it all like some person stumbling home from a red light district in the morning with a massive hangover to their mattress stuffed with "just in case" money? And then I thought "who fucking cares."
I know I should. For my children's sake. But I'm never having kids. Right now my only claim to fame is that I escaped an abusive home and now have the power to break the cycle of violence and generational human corruption by not perpetuating it the only way I can guarantee the rest of the world will succeed. That's it. So I suppose that probably puts me in the category of people that "want to watch the world burn". Maybe not square in. But close. I don't think I have enough passion to make a sport of it. Which lead me to understand something. A carefree friend is enviable. A careless friend is a headache, but can be desirable in certain doses. A negligent friend is a liability. Well, I understood that before. But it reminded me. I don't know where I fit in there. Where do friends go that are constantly trying to snuff out the fires of their past? Burning their shadows away? Eating their demons.
I don't care how the world is going to end. Maybe the middle east will collapse in fifty years. I'm sure they'll find some way to make it work. They'll tough it out. Some things will change. A lot of things won't. I'll still have to take shit from people making snide remarks in the vein of "break a twenty (whistle) that's a lot of money to be carryin' around on a Tuesday" from asshole managers and foremen who make my monthly net in a couple days of work. I'll still have to deal with nurses asking me seven times if I've been shooting needles into my work scarred arms every time I get up enough money or desperation to see a physician. If it all burns down, I'll be third in line with a lawn chair, a cold beer, and a program to take in the floor show. Which is all fairly grim.
I did not mean to be that grim. Honestly. My life feels like a very long Vertigo shot. Time just keeps on racing away. The farther it stretches, the farther back I have to keep pushing things to stay alive, the more things fall out of focus and break down and it's the least I can do to hold onto the consciousness of here and now and impossible not to choke it to death with the force of the grip needed to keep it safe. I have no real stake in the outcome of the world's wars. I was unceremoniously ushered out of the war fighting arena, the academic arena, the peace keeping arena, the social and society arena, the tax paying arena. I don't know. I don't know where the fuck I'm going with this. Six hundred "no"s and one "yes". Two yeses. It's not that it gets difficult to believe things will improve. It's that it becomes foolish to believe so.
I don't want to believe that's it for me. Not in terms of writing. There's still much to be done and I know this is perhaps the stuttering beginnings of little stars and planets in the blueness of twilight before the moon rise of - what? Shut up. Shut it. Start over. There's still much to be done and I know this is perhaps the stuttering, tottering, beginnings of my flash in the pan in terms of production and development. A multi-year long stuttering to get that one paragraph out that I'll remember myself by. I don't want to believe the best I can hope for is to not get sick and have something to eat and enough to pay for cool in the summer and heat in winter and keep a roof over my fucking head and a cellphone turned on.
Which, I guess, ultimately is to say, space has been both kind and unkind. Kind to the people I care enough not to belabor, but unkind to the glass hearted intrepid nuclear radiant wayfarer. There have been complications. Unmediated things have come undone. I went about a month at one point without thinking about suicide. And then you feel it creeping up the back of your neck. The little worlds threading their way through the nerves in your right ear, across the back of your eyes to your left ear and lacing themselves together tighter and thicker until you feel like the bones of your forehead are going to collapse under the compression and your insides are going to come out like frosting squeezed out between the fingers of a kid crushing a sandwich cookie in his fist. So much time is spent in sorting. This is real. This is not. That is doable. This will kill you. This is tenable. That is not. You said this out of your mouth. You should have said this. Do not say that. This is valid. That will get you interned again. The sorting gets confusing. Frustrating. Makes me angry. And tired. Of many things. So much left to do.
The world as movie: I would have walked out years ago. Myself as movie: I already know how it ends, but I'm not walking out yet. I still haven't seen that one scene where I'm riding down a dirt road in a 240z with my korgy in the passenger seat barking at the rabbits in the brush while the sun sits on the mountains for a nap before the milky way belts across the sky like Beethoven through a concert hall. I don't know if I'll actually make it that far in or what planet that'll happen on. But I'm tryin' to tough it out. It would help if a tollbooth were to appear in my bedroom someday. I would never look back.
///Annie Lennox - "No More I Love Yous" remember this one? I still do. I was in love with Annie Lennox for a long time. All of ten years old and the lyrics to this song felt like she wrote them for me. I used to sit alone in my room and sing nirvana's half the man I used to be. It's funny, I guess. Not that the pain hasn't changed. Funny that the monsters are still outside after all this time.
5/6/10
pictures and links and interesting things
okay so i feel bad. mainly because i feel like this thing doesnt contribute anything to society. well, to society that exists beyond the four walls of my room.
would links help? dull the doldrums. do you remember reading about that in the phantom tollbooth?
yeah, it was a good book. so how about this. ill put links to things that are interesting to me sometimes instead of just telling you about it, ill show you fuckers. and then youll be sorry. youll all be sorry!
or not. probably not. so pictures, links
, and was there a third thing? there wasnt was there. there feels like there should be a third thing.
oh yeah the third thing... im gonna go back through the receipts and tag all of the artists i mention at the ends of posts so that well no that has no bearing on what you will or will not be able to see. oh well. how about this: you know that time i said it would take a tiny bit of work to make this account of human collapse even more fun to look at? i barely do. its hazy. no im kidding its clear as fucking day light on the belly of a beached albino sea cow. yeah, ill do it. and then we'll really be in love.
///The Roc Project Feat. Tina Area - "Never (Past Tense)" only because there was a 120 minute mixtape once upon a time that had this song in the mix. it isnt particularly good. there's very little i would count as special about it. but the song that was mixed in after it was amazing. sadly it was a live mix on the vaunted, now dissolved and refaced, 99.1 whfs. back when the radio still had something interesting going for it besides the prairie home companion. remember that show? it started off as trancemissions and then turned into zoltar's closet. shit was tizzight. anyway... this song was not great but the one after it that i remember to this day, but couldnt tell you the name of if you held a gun to my head, was soooo good. so i keep this song around to make absolutely sure i dont forget its conjoined hotter sibling.
would links help? dull the doldrums. do you remember reading about that in the phantom tollbooth?
yeah, it was a good book. so how about this. ill put links to things that are interesting to me sometimes instead of just telling you about it, ill show you fuckers. and then youll be sorry. youll all be sorry!or not. probably not. so pictures, links
, and was there a third thing? there wasnt was there. there feels like there should be a third thing. oh yeah the third thing... im gonna go back through the receipts and tag all of the artists i mention at the ends of posts so that well no that has no bearing on what you will or will not be able to see. oh well. how about this: you know that time i said it would take a tiny bit of work to make this account of human collapse even more fun to look at? i barely do. its hazy. no im kidding its clear as fucking day light on the belly of a beached albino sea cow. yeah, ill do it. and then we'll really be in love.
///The Roc Project Feat. Tina Area - "Never (Past Tense)" only because there was a 120 minute mixtape once upon a time that had this song in the mix. it isnt particularly good. there's very little i would count as special about it. but the song that was mixed in after it was amazing. sadly it was a live mix on the vaunted, now dissolved and refaced, 99.1 whfs. back when the radio still had something interesting going for it besides the prairie home companion. remember that show? it started off as trancemissions and then turned into zoltar's closet. shit was tizzight. anyway... this song was not great but the one after it that i remember to this day, but couldnt tell you the name of if you held a gun to my head, was soooo good. so i keep this song around to make absolutely sure i dont forget its conjoined hotter sibling.
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