(NOTE: Bob the Dirty Rat has a new web page. Go to this link for more info)
I like the word "con artist" because of the second word. The first word is an abbreviation of "confidence", but the artist part... that must stem from an innate recognition of the pure skill and talent that goes into deceiving people on a large scale.
Have you ever heard of a "robbery artist" or a "homicide artist"? Of course you haven't, because although there are some unique individuals who can elevate their respective vices to innovative heights, there isn't much artistry to be found in crime.
Except for fraud. "Con artist"... That sounds really cool, doesn't it? Never mind that they can ruin your life if you fall for their ruses. Never mind that they can make you feel violated and distrustful of human beings for the rest of your life, should you cross their path.
They're artists.
I just got done watching Catch Me If You Can for the first time on DVD. It was an interesting and borderline-irresponsible myth of a movie, with finely-directed performances and a plot based on the life of a real con man.
There was one scene that really got me thinking. It was the scene (spoiler alert, even though I'm probably the last person on Earth who hadn't seen this movie) where Leonardo DiCaprio, in the role of Frank Abagnale Jr., sort-of catches his mother with another man. He finds them in the bedroom together, looking flustered and surprised. He knows instinctively that his mother is having an affair with this man, who happens to be a good friend of Frank Sr. and an upstanding pillar of the community. The adults are bad liars-- their guilt is written all over their faces, and even though Frank Jr. didn't actually see anything, he knows.
He knows because he is sensitive, or at least that's how the filmmakers seem to explain why he went on to convince the world at large that he was a pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer. Frank Abagnale Jr., according to the movie, started forging checks and running grifts and became a really good liar because everyone around him (save for his father, played by Christopher Walken) was a bad liar, whose machinations and manipulations he could detect right off the bat.
I identify with the romanticized ideal of the con artist: bucking the system, using it to his/her own means, throwing the rules of the game back into the faces of the rulemakers. But Abagnale got caught, and anyway I'm no Frank Abagnale. Still, I relate to the con artist, because he is aware of the fragile illusion sustained between human beings, the pretenses, the sheer perceptual laziness that most people possess.
I used to run humble cons, victimless cons. A free meal, a place to crash, a ride to the liquor store, a drink at the bar, tickets to the theater, hot sex, books and albums, something to smoke... I never had a want or a need. My early twenties were a non-stop running tab, always at the expense of someone willing to foot the bill. I was real good at it, too. I never made people feel used afterwards. They sometimes never knew they'd been had to begin with, and I credit that to the only sincere aspect of my petty scams-- gratefulness.
It was easy to take money on loan, without any conditions to pay it back. It was easy to let someone drive me to the store, after they profusely offered. That was the angle I was working: everyone offered these free things to me. I did not ask for anything unless I really had to, and oddly enough those were the times when the cons didn't work as well. Those were the real times, the honest times, when I wasn't trying to persuade someone indirectly to give me what I wanted. And in those sober moments, my marks usually used common sense, and faced reality, and realized that they would have to tell me 'No'. And I would understand this, because I knew just how much I'd already gotten out of them, and I figured it was only fair, that I couldn't get over on people all the time, and if I really wanted it that bad all I had to do was work the right angle and voila!
I had no problem finagling, because I recognized that these very same people were running game on me in return. Their angle wasn't money, or gain, or profit, or anything tangible. They wanted my time, a resource more valuable than anything else.
Lonely girls who just didn't want to face another night alone; college drop-outs living at home with money to burn and no friends; aspiring artists who liked my ideas but had all the skill and talent of a skillet; parents who wanted desperately to be in touch with their kids, no matter how clumsy their attempts were; employers who were impressed when I didn't quit the job after three months; clients of drug dealers who didn't want to take a taste unless there was another body there to valdiate the occasion... these people used me just as much as I used them.
I didn't even use them, really. I just smiled and said what they wanted to hear, combined with a couple of brutally shocking and honest assessments of the world to balance out the beautiful lies that came out of my mouth. Like I said, I never asked for anything, and if I did ask I was prepared to take the 'No'. If more people had told me 'No' I might've stopped being such a bum sooner, but there was no paucity of people willing to give me what I desired just so I could make them feel less lonesome.
I never robbed these people, or betrayed them in any way. But I did get a lot of things out of them, and the best part is: I feel no guilt, because I did nothing wrong.
Every day is a con. This blog is a con. Life is a con, from beginning to end. You are either the con or you are the mark. All of us play each role at some point. Most of us spend our whole lives playing one role, being either a pawn or a player for the rest of our days, rarely glimpsing the shade of grass on the other side.
The lies you tell speak volumes about the lies you've been told. My lies are surgical and precise, because I abhorred the sloppy, haphazard lies that I was told as a child. I saw through all the bad liars and decided that I would craft better lies, the kind that last the test of time, the kind that hook you in and keep you there. Only when I decide to expose the hoax does the pull of the lure relent.
Ironically, it is the moment of pure truth that leads to the disenchantment with lies. For example: a woman can date a man and know from the start that he is a no-good wannabe-musician/starving artist/silver-tongued devil/pot-smoking bum, but it isn't until he offers evidence and proof that she seriously considers his qualities to be bad. The proof is often an undeniable reality-- "He'll never change" or "He doesn't love me" or "He's full of shit"... things like that.
Lately, I haven't been running any scams. I've been honest with everyone about everything. This blog has been more of a haven for my daily observations than an imaginary realm where I create things from scratch. I have been more concerned with irrefutable truth than with nimble-toed sophistry.
I need to start conning again.
I did more good than bad when I was full of hot air. I was more effective with my propaganda when I was appealing not to reason but to emotion. I was a nicer person, a funnier guy, a reassuring symbol of the times when I was pulling people's legs.
Now I'm just a dreary statistician, chronicling a "reality" that is only slightly more real than the outrageous tall tales that I could be telling. I mock myself by daring to think that there is one truth, one angle, one singular notion that the whole world adheres to faithfully.
I need to learn some card tricks. I need a top hat and a rabbit. I have to polish up on pulling quarters out from behind little kids' ears. I need to sharpen those Lie Knives and get to cuttin'.
I am an artist, and art is my con.
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Click Here To Go To 'EN MASS'
I posted on the En Mass blog today, so if you need a fix of me, go there and read about my trolley encounter.
Monday, September 27, 2004
CLOSURE
We live in a weird world.
Example #1: I was addicted to Craig's List's Los Angeles Rants and Raves section for quite some time. I used to go on the board and stir up shit, mostly because I was bored and angry.
Nowadays, I visit sporadically, and I don't post as often as I used to. But what's amusing is that people still remember my obnoxious posts. Seems that there is a new asshole on board, and evidently people have confused him/her with me. My old handle was invoked, which caused me great delight when I logged onto Craig's List an hour ago.
One person in particular, a girl whom I met on CL (who I refer to as "Buffy"), keeps trying to call me out. She and I used to IM each other. She still wants to brawl with posts, and I hardly care anymore.
I began to think about how drastically my life has changed in just six short months, and I think about how I don't need to stir up anonymous trouble online anymore.
I think that is called 'progress' but I could be mistaken.
Example #2: Friday night, after having dinner with Purple Paulie, Nona, and Peter, we stopped by a friend's home to watch some animation dailies. The house belongs to one of our voice talents, an actor who is out of town right now and depends on Paulie and Nona to housesit the dog.
Before watching the dailies, we did a channel check and ended up on the original Star Trek series. I used to hate this show as a kid-- not enough monsters in it for me. I personally preferred The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone to the exploits of the USS Enterprise.
When I was older and sharing an apartment with Paulie, I developed an appreciation for the show, based on the camp factor. No, I didn't become a Trekkie... but I did see the appeal after many years of detesting the show for being boring.
Anyway, suffice it to say I am not the biggest ST fan, and haven't seen more than a handful of episodes in their entirety. I had never seen the episode we happened to be watching the other night before, so imagine my surprise when one of the characters shared the same name (real, not pseudonymous) as Eve.
What's more: the plot of this episode revolved around this character's seductive powers. She rendered men insane by causing them to love her obsessively. She killed men by making them fall in love with her.
After a day that found me posting about the possibility of seeing Eve again, needless to say I was shocked to hear the following line of dialogue:
"Don't love her! If you love her, you'll die! Oh, M______, I love you!"
The actor who recited that line fell to his knees, as the beautiful character who shared the same birth name as Eve smirked and sneered.
I laughed.
At the risk of sounding like a complete kook who thinks the TV is talking to him, I got the message loud and clear.
Example #3: File this one under "L.A. Drama"...
I saw Ellen, one of Holly's friends, at the Garage on Friday, before I went to dinner with Paulie and friends. She informed me that Holly Golightly hadn't left town yet, due to the hurricanes and storms that were rocking the south.
I felt a momentary pang of guilt for not having called her on what was supposed to be her last day in the city. But I thought better of it-- I mean, it's not like she called me either.
Fast-forward to 3AM-- I was trying to fall asleep in my bed when I heard the phone ring. I figured it was Paulie, calling to make sure I got home OK, and so I ignored it and kept on trying to snooze.
I woke up on Saturday morning and checked my messages. The message was from Evan, the drummer in our band. He had called me at 3 AM to tell me that he heard from two reliable sources that Holly "got her ass kicked" in front of The Fox & The Hound in Studio City... by none other than her good friend Deborah!
I called Evan to confirm this. He said that he got a call around 2 AM from a friend who informed him that Holly was getting beat up in the parking lot by another woman. Then, Evan said, he received a message from Deborah, who was in tears. Evan got a hold of her and found out that she was the one who fought with Holly.
Hearing this news caused a mix of emotions in me. At first, I'll admit it-- I started laughing. I was still a little sore at Holly for her comments and behavior when I was hanging out with her last. And I know Holly well enough to know that she picks a lot of fights and talks a lot of shit, and it was only a matter of time beofre someone put her in her place... I just had no idea that it would be Deborah!
As I called various friends and bandmates up to get the scoop, I couldn't help but notice how forthcoming everyone was in regards to Holly. They were glad she was leaving; they felt burned by her in some way, either emotionally or physically; it seemed obvious to me that everyone had been holding back their contempt for her for a long, long time.
I tripped out as the bad blood came gushing out of everyone's mouths. They told me about the lies, the mind games, the deep-deated issues, like the real reason why Holly went to the Florida Keys a few months back. The reason? She wanted to crash her father's birthday party. You see, Holly's father left her when she was small, and she harbors much anger towards him. But to hear that story was a bit of a heartbreaker, because of the desperation involved in such an act. To impose oneself where they are not invited is more pathetic than crass, in my book.
Of course, all of these people took the opportunity to gossip. Thus, I "learned" that the reason why Holly makes out but never gives it up to her many suitors is because she has a deformity "down there"... This was coming from Evan, however, and his credibility is dubious at best. He doesn't know this information "first-hand", in other words-- he heard it from scores of guys who were no doubt upset that they didn't get laid with Holly. But then again, it would explain her uptightness concerning the sex act...
It is strange for me to hear people unveil their hidden animosities, because I belong to the "tell it like it is" school of Tactless Confrontation. That is, unless you have your head buried in the sand, you will ALWAYS know when I'm upset, because I do not hold back on that emotion. I may keep my crushes and infatuations cloaked and disguised, but you will know if I am mad or not in no uncertain terms. And so it is weird for me to hear others let loose and kick a person when they are down, even if she did things to deserve or warrant such abuse. It is weird because I'm so used to hearing them fake it up, never saying what's really on their minds for fear of offending smeone. To hear all these fake people suddenly drop the masks and own up to their hatred and bias is an unspeakably radical undertaking.
Suddenly, I felt sick. I no longer found this particular epilogue to a year-long saga funny. It made me a bit sad, to tell the truth. It saddened me because I know how fucked up Holly Golightly is, and I know she is a miserable person who cannot be happy with herself unless she has proven to everyone else that she is special. But what's really sad is that she brought all of this upon herself by not allowing anyone to help her center herself.
She always felt that the solution to her problems would be to get rich and famous. Instead, she is being chased out of town like a hunted animal in flight. She is not so much Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's as she is Blanche DuBois from A Streetcar Named Desire.
Yes, this town is brutal and unrelenting, but you really have to be a first-class asshole to incur the wrath of so many people in such a short time.
I flashed back to our conversation in the car over David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. I suddenly saw her in the Naomi Watts role, transforming from the happy-go-lucky aspiring starlet into the beaten and jaded wannabe-actress who missed all of her big breaks.
I wondered if there was anything I could do, and I realized that, no, there wasn't. She didn't want my help. She didn't want anything from me except to hear me agree with everything she ever said. And anyone who knows me well knows that getting me to agree with anyone on ANYTHING is a small feat unto itself.
Maybe if Holly had been interested in me as a person, then I would've done whatever it takes to help her find her way. But she didn't want anything from me, because I am not rich and I do not own a studio. Never mind that I was the most dedicated person in her band-- if it didn't nab her the brass ring, then it didn't mean anything to her.
An odd combination of pity and numbness filled me up inside. She let the city win.
I shook my head as I walked out the door, heading over to Evan's place to talk about this some more. Holly and Evan didn't get along, and so his words were not going to be sparing. I don't begrudge him that-- Holly was terrible in her treatment of him when the band was going full-swing.
I just have an image of an event I never saw take place, that of Holly being knocked down to the ground by the Amazonian Deborah. I imagine the pain that such a public humiliation could arouse in a massively insecure girl like Holly Golightly, who (despite my name for her) never really did go all that lightly about her business in the first place.
We live in a weird world, and what's weirder is that I'm getting by without getting caught up in all of the spectacle. I have found an even road upon which to travel, and it all has to do with escaping into my art. I was patting myself on the back today, congratulating myself for never falling prey to Holly's charms, for having the foresight to avoid getting mixed up in her bullshit, even as I spent over a year pining away for her and wishing that she and I could get together.
I feel proud, because in the past I would've been such a sucker. I would've fallen for her. I would've taken the bait, and suffered the consequences, all in the name of "passion". And for what? So that I could watch her self-destruct? So that I could be put through the wringer by someone who claims to love me?
I'm through with trouble women. I used to be able to pick 'em like nobody else. I'm still picking them, but I'm using my better judgement by not getting mixed up in their personal intrigues.
I'm getting better at this stupid, petty game called Life. I laugh in self-defense, really. I laugh at the absurdity, at the improbability, at the calamity and disorder and ruin that is modern existence. Talking with all these people today made me realize that, although my misanthropy continues uncontested, I can make my time on this planet more bearable by not actively participating in the idiocy that everyone else seems to to thrive upon, in order to get their kicks.
I also found it appropriate that my blog archives were accidentally erased quite recently. A good portion of those half a million words were dedicated to this rock-and-roll soap-opera, and not having them around for reference makes me feel clean, whole, perhaps even new. I need not be reminded of my weakness for a pretty face and a lovely voice. I can move forward now, leaving all of the vindictive spectres of my past behind me.
If I love women like Eve or Buffy or Holly, they will kill me. Plain and simple. The TV didn't lie on Friday night-- every other night it is full of shit, but last Friday it was truthful and accurate.
It's not just weird out there-- it's wicked, too. It's weird and wicked and wild in the real world, and there's a lesson for each of us to learn out there, every single day of our respective lives.
I hope I have learned mine.
Example #1: I was addicted to Craig's List's Los Angeles Rants and Raves section for quite some time. I used to go on the board and stir up shit, mostly because I was bored and angry.
Nowadays, I visit sporadically, and I don't post as often as I used to. But what's amusing is that people still remember my obnoxious posts. Seems that there is a new asshole on board, and evidently people have confused him/her with me. My old handle was invoked, which caused me great delight when I logged onto Craig's List an hour ago.
One person in particular, a girl whom I met on CL (who I refer to as "Buffy"), keeps trying to call me out. She and I used to IM each other. She still wants to brawl with posts, and I hardly care anymore.
I began to think about how drastically my life has changed in just six short months, and I think about how I don't need to stir up anonymous trouble online anymore.
I think that is called 'progress' but I could be mistaken.
Example #2: Friday night, after having dinner with Purple Paulie, Nona, and Peter, we stopped by a friend's home to watch some animation dailies. The house belongs to one of our voice talents, an actor who is out of town right now and depends on Paulie and Nona to housesit the dog.
Before watching the dailies, we did a channel check and ended up on the original Star Trek series. I used to hate this show as a kid-- not enough monsters in it for me. I personally preferred The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone to the exploits of the USS Enterprise.
When I was older and sharing an apartment with Paulie, I developed an appreciation for the show, based on the camp factor. No, I didn't become a Trekkie... but I did see the appeal after many years of detesting the show for being boring.
Anyway, suffice it to say I am not the biggest ST fan, and haven't seen more than a handful of episodes in their entirety. I had never seen the episode we happened to be watching the other night before, so imagine my surprise when one of the characters shared the same name (real, not pseudonymous) as Eve.
What's more: the plot of this episode revolved around this character's seductive powers. She rendered men insane by causing them to love her obsessively. She killed men by making them fall in love with her.
After a day that found me posting about the possibility of seeing Eve again, needless to say I was shocked to hear the following line of dialogue:
"Don't love her! If you love her, you'll die! Oh, M______, I love you!"
The actor who recited that line fell to his knees, as the beautiful character who shared the same birth name as Eve smirked and sneered.
I laughed.
At the risk of sounding like a complete kook who thinks the TV is talking to him, I got the message loud and clear.
Example #3: File this one under "L.A. Drama"...
I saw Ellen, one of Holly's friends, at the Garage on Friday, before I went to dinner with Paulie and friends. She informed me that Holly Golightly hadn't left town yet, due to the hurricanes and storms that were rocking the south.
I felt a momentary pang of guilt for not having called her on what was supposed to be her last day in the city. But I thought better of it-- I mean, it's not like she called me either.
Fast-forward to 3AM-- I was trying to fall asleep in my bed when I heard the phone ring. I figured it was Paulie, calling to make sure I got home OK, and so I ignored it and kept on trying to snooze.
I woke up on Saturday morning and checked my messages. The message was from Evan, the drummer in our band. He had called me at 3 AM to tell me that he heard from two reliable sources that Holly "got her ass kicked" in front of The Fox & The Hound in Studio City... by none other than her good friend Deborah!
I called Evan to confirm this. He said that he got a call around 2 AM from a friend who informed him that Holly was getting beat up in the parking lot by another woman. Then, Evan said, he received a message from Deborah, who was in tears. Evan got a hold of her and found out that she was the one who fought with Holly.
Hearing this news caused a mix of emotions in me. At first, I'll admit it-- I started laughing. I was still a little sore at Holly for her comments and behavior when I was hanging out with her last. And I know Holly well enough to know that she picks a lot of fights and talks a lot of shit, and it was only a matter of time beofre someone put her in her place... I just had no idea that it would be Deborah!
As I called various friends and bandmates up to get the scoop, I couldn't help but notice how forthcoming everyone was in regards to Holly. They were glad she was leaving; they felt burned by her in some way, either emotionally or physically; it seemed obvious to me that everyone had been holding back their contempt for her for a long, long time.
I tripped out as the bad blood came gushing out of everyone's mouths. They told me about the lies, the mind games, the deep-deated issues, like the real reason why Holly went to the Florida Keys a few months back. The reason? She wanted to crash her father's birthday party. You see, Holly's father left her when she was small, and she harbors much anger towards him. But to hear that story was a bit of a heartbreaker, because of the desperation involved in such an act. To impose oneself where they are not invited is more pathetic than crass, in my book.
Of course, all of these people took the opportunity to gossip. Thus, I "learned" that the reason why Holly makes out but never gives it up to her many suitors is because she has a deformity "down there"... This was coming from Evan, however, and his credibility is dubious at best. He doesn't know this information "first-hand", in other words-- he heard it from scores of guys who were no doubt upset that they didn't get laid with Holly. But then again, it would explain her uptightness concerning the sex act...
It is strange for me to hear people unveil their hidden animosities, because I belong to the "tell it like it is" school of Tactless Confrontation. That is, unless you have your head buried in the sand, you will ALWAYS know when I'm upset, because I do not hold back on that emotion. I may keep my crushes and infatuations cloaked and disguised, but you will know if I am mad or not in no uncertain terms. And so it is weird for me to hear others let loose and kick a person when they are down, even if she did things to deserve or warrant such abuse. It is weird because I'm so used to hearing them fake it up, never saying what's really on their minds for fear of offending smeone. To hear all these fake people suddenly drop the masks and own up to their hatred and bias is an unspeakably radical undertaking.
Suddenly, I felt sick. I no longer found this particular epilogue to a year-long saga funny. It made me a bit sad, to tell the truth. It saddened me because I know how fucked up Holly Golightly is, and I know she is a miserable person who cannot be happy with herself unless she has proven to everyone else that she is special. But what's really sad is that she brought all of this upon herself by not allowing anyone to help her center herself.
She always felt that the solution to her problems would be to get rich and famous. Instead, she is being chased out of town like a hunted animal in flight. She is not so much Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's as she is Blanche DuBois from A Streetcar Named Desire.
Yes, this town is brutal and unrelenting, but you really have to be a first-class asshole to incur the wrath of so many people in such a short time.
I flashed back to our conversation in the car over David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. I suddenly saw her in the Naomi Watts role, transforming from the happy-go-lucky aspiring starlet into the beaten and jaded wannabe-actress who missed all of her big breaks.
I wondered if there was anything I could do, and I realized that, no, there wasn't. She didn't want my help. She didn't want anything from me except to hear me agree with everything she ever said. And anyone who knows me well knows that getting me to agree with anyone on ANYTHING is a small feat unto itself.
Maybe if Holly had been interested in me as a person, then I would've done whatever it takes to help her find her way. But she didn't want anything from me, because I am not rich and I do not own a studio. Never mind that I was the most dedicated person in her band-- if it didn't nab her the brass ring, then it didn't mean anything to her.
An odd combination of pity and numbness filled me up inside. She let the city win.
I shook my head as I walked out the door, heading over to Evan's place to talk about this some more. Holly and Evan didn't get along, and so his words were not going to be sparing. I don't begrudge him that-- Holly was terrible in her treatment of him when the band was going full-swing.
I just have an image of an event I never saw take place, that of Holly being knocked down to the ground by the Amazonian Deborah. I imagine the pain that such a public humiliation could arouse in a massively insecure girl like Holly Golightly, who (despite my name for her) never really did go all that lightly about her business in the first place.
We live in a weird world, and what's weirder is that I'm getting by without getting caught up in all of the spectacle. I have found an even road upon which to travel, and it all has to do with escaping into my art. I was patting myself on the back today, congratulating myself for never falling prey to Holly's charms, for having the foresight to avoid getting mixed up in her bullshit, even as I spent over a year pining away for her and wishing that she and I could get together.
I feel proud, because in the past I would've been such a sucker. I would've fallen for her. I would've taken the bait, and suffered the consequences, all in the name of "passion". And for what? So that I could watch her self-destruct? So that I could be put through the wringer by someone who claims to love me?
I'm through with trouble women. I used to be able to pick 'em like nobody else. I'm still picking them, but I'm using my better judgement by not getting mixed up in their personal intrigues.
I'm getting better at this stupid, petty game called Life. I laugh in self-defense, really. I laugh at the absurdity, at the improbability, at the calamity and disorder and ruin that is modern existence. Talking with all these people today made me realize that, although my misanthropy continues uncontested, I can make my time on this planet more bearable by not actively participating in the idiocy that everyone else seems to to thrive upon, in order to get their kicks.
I also found it appropriate that my blog archives were accidentally erased quite recently. A good portion of those half a million words were dedicated to this rock-and-roll soap-opera, and not having them around for reference makes me feel clean, whole, perhaps even new. I need not be reminded of my weakness for a pretty face and a lovely voice. I can move forward now, leaving all of the vindictive spectres of my past behind me.
If I love women like Eve or Buffy or Holly, they will kill me. Plain and simple. The TV didn't lie on Friday night-- every other night it is full of shit, but last Friday it was truthful and accurate.
It's not just weird out there-- it's wicked, too. It's weird and wicked and wild in the real world, and there's a lesson for each of us to learn out there, every single day of our respective lives.
I hope I have learned mine.
Friday, September 24, 2004
AWARDS OF THE HEART
For someone who is as anti-nostalgia as I am, I dip into the past a lot when it comes to writing.
I didn't post yesterday because I had nothing new to say. Everything I wanted to write about was old news. Without my Archives, I could easily get away with rehashing something I wrote a while back, but my newfound paucity of past posts has me straining to concentrate on the new.
The New, I find increasingly, is always the Old, repackaged and passed off as the New.
I think my beef with nostalgia is that you learn nothing from reveling in past glories/tragedies. The one thing I always do when I look backward on my life is to try and wring a new meaning from familiar territories that I have traversed. I have no desire to relive my youth-- rather, I try my best to look at it objectively, to see if I can learn from the past, so as not to repeat it in the future.
Sometimes, I discover things about me that have been hidden, things that I forgot, things that eerily reflect where I am today.
Lately my trip has been drawing, and how I've always treated it as the redheaded step-child of all my modest talents. I never took it seriously. I always saw it as something I could only ever be half-ass committed to, something beyond my reach in terms of mastery. I have always been content to just be able to doodle and that's about it.
About five hours ago, I was sitting in The Garage, supervising the animation process. Peter, Paulie's brother, has been bringing my creations to life. He's very good at it. He makes the arms and mouths move, the eyes blink, the eyebrows quiver, and it looks better than I could have ever imagined it.
Captain Capsule and Harvey Ray, two of Paulie's friends, were drawing dirty pics in the dust layer covering a 4x4 truck windshield. Paulie laughed and looked over at me and said, "We could get a class going. A seminar. 'How To Draw', a course taught by Dr. Sex McGinty..."
I laughed. Associations filled my stoned mind. I thought about when I was five, when my uncle showed me how to draw Popeye on a chalkboard in my grandfather's garage. That association segued into another, and I ended up recalling out loud an Expository presentation that I had to deliver in my Theater Arts class in high school.
Just to pass the class, each student had to have a presentation to give at one Speech & Debate/Drama tournament. I procrastinated, of course, confident that my then-formidable bullshit abilities would kick into overtime at the last minute.
A week before the major tournament, I was entered in a few debate rounds, but I hadn't come up with an Expository presentation yet. For those who need to be filled in, an Expository piece is like a tutorial, often utilizing an easel for charts, graphs, pictures, and whatnot. You had to come off as educational, I guess. I didn't have a clue.
Our Drama coach asked me if I had anything to offer. I got up in front of the class and made up something on the spot. I took some markers and started giving lessons on drawing cartoons. My Drama coach was delighted-- according to her, it was original, it was entertaining, and I was a good enough bullshitter to get away with it. She urged me to write something down, to spruce up my presentation, but I wasn't too enthusiastic about it. As long as I passed the class, I was happy. I didn't expect to win any honors.
Anyway, the tourney came, and I was "ready". During the times when I wasn't competing, I went to check out other presentations, to add my support. But I had an agenda: I had just met Eve a few weeks prior, and she was already done with her boyfriend, a classmate named Craig who was (and still is) a good actor. I was thinking of moving in on his vacated turf, because I was totally in love with Eve and she was extremely talented. I had seen her rehearsing her Thematic Interpretation piece-- a sampling of "Taming of the Shrew", "Pygmalion" and "My Fair Lady". She was not only physically beautiful but masterful when it came to acting out the multiple roles. She had ensnared my heart and didn't even know it.
Eve was friendly to me, and said she wanted to see me perform my Expository piece at one point during the day. "I like your style of drawing-- you have a lot of talent."
"Thanks," I said. "And you too-- you're very talented."
She smiled and said, "Whatever."
My first round went okay-- I was ballsy enough to get a little ridiculous with my presentation. "The fine art of the caricature, believe it or not, can be directly traced to the hieroglyph drawings of Ancient Egypt..." I drew a pyramid, and then I drew a pharoah, complete with one-eyed profile and awkward walk. People in the audience were smiling, and I think I garnered some extra points for daring to caricature one of the judges. People came up to me afterwards and patted me on the back, telling me that I must've had no fear, to be drawing the judges like that. If I'd cared one bit about winning a trophy, drawing my judges would surely have been tournament suicide.
My second round-- Eve showed up and sat with me in the back. Suddenly I was nervous, suddenly there was pressure. Fuck the judges, what would Eve think?
As the other participants performed, giving deadly dull demonstrations that were sure to win awards but were also potent remedies for insomnia, I passed notes with Eve. At one point, I threatened to draw her. She wrote to me, "No! I don't want to know what I look like!" It didn't stop me from drawing a cartoon version of her lovely face. She liked it-- she wrote to me and said she wanted to keep the note.
I was happy.
I didn't care about anyone else in that room. I did that presentation for Eve and Eve alone. I broke every rule, I straddled every line, I bullshitted and bullshitted and drew funny cartoons and made jokes and got good reactions. Too bad I was getting marked down for my sloppy, barely-there preparation. But like I said, I just didn't care.
The award I wanted to win that day was Eve's heart.
She and I were inseparable for the rest of that day. She complimented me on my bullshitting abilities. "How do you know all of this random, usless knowledge?" she asked. "I mean, I know it sounds bad to say it like that, but I think what you did was great. I say 'random' and 'useless' because it all seems so unrelated, like you had too many tangents to choose from."
"Thank you, " I said.
She revealed to me that she was an artist herself. She also happened to have some drawings on her. I demanded to see them, and she showed me. They were great-- she had a more realistic style, not cartoon-y at all. It was very detailed and shaded and feminine, done in muted colored pastels and delicate pencil sketches. We kept trading compliments, humbly dodging them as they came at us from the other. We talked and talked. We got real deep, asking probing questions and meditating about life.
It was at that tournament, hosted by Granada Hills High, where I learned about how her parents were divorced, and that they used her and her brother as bartering tools against each other in their post-marital dealings. I related my own broken-home status, and we sat there and comiserated and let time pass by like cars on the street. We snuck off campus to buy cigarettes. We hung out with Sharky and Meg, and afterwards, when the competition was done, we all went back to our Drama coach's house for a victory party... all of us, save for Eve, who wasn't allowed by her dad and stepmom to spend any time outside of school with the Drama folk.
Ironically, I placed third in a lesser category, Spontaneous Argument. I didn't place anywhere with my Expository piece, but I was the talk of the tourney anyway. The year after that, I learned that students from other high schools who had seen or heard about my presentation stole the basic premise and improved upon it, which didn't make me mad at all.
This entire memory took less than a minute to process in my head, as I sat in Paulie's Garage, watching Capsule and Harvey and Paulie use their fingers to draw in the caked-upon dirt. I wondered why it had been so long since I dwelled upon that day, which was really the first day of my courtship of Eve-- shortly after that day, I invited her to my Senior Prom, to be my date, and the rest is old hat.
I guess I have had no reason to reflect upon it, since I have spent the last decade concentrating on playing music and writing. But it's funny how, aside from a few moments when I was paid to draw caricatures for theater productions in and outside of high school, I pretty much downplayed the art and kept my focus on music and literature.
It was the art that persuaded Eve to consider me as a possible love interest, not the bullshit or the jokes or the devil-may-care attitude. She never got as excited about my songs or my words as she did over my images.
I look back now, and if there was one mistake I made (besides getting together with a girl as troubled as Eve to begin with) it was that I switched gears on her. The art faded into the background, and the desire to be a musician and a writer won out over something that I already possessed a knack for, something that didn't need too much extra work to polish. I mean, it wasn't the reason why we broke up eventually, but I wonder if it had something to do with why her affectionate attention waned.
Anyway, now I feel like I've come full circle, reclaiming this birthright that is my visual acumen. Right now, this is where I belong, this is where I want to be. And if one day soon I should happen to run into Eve on the street and we are not at each other's throats, she might be surprised to learn that I am returning to my roots.
She has returned to her roots-- she didn't act for years after high school, because the new guy she was with didn't like it. But I found out, through her mother, that she was acting again. I have found her online in actor/model registries and on some websites devoted to the projects she has been involved with, and it makes me happy to know that she is in the grind once again.
I'm a fucking detective-- somehow I found out where she is working now. It's a dentist's office. That's what she has been doing for a day-job for over a decade now, working the reception desks at dentist offices. When she and I were on speaking terms, she gave me mad discounts on my cleanings.
I'm overdue for a check-up.
Oh, that's soooo bad. I can't see her again, even if she would be proud to see me drawing again. I just can't. She drives me crazy. She haunts me everywhere I go. I saw her face instead of Holly's, and that's what kept me fascinated with Ms. Golightly for so long. Whenever I was with Holly I felt like Jimmy Stweart in Vertigo, holding the double of my lost love in my arms again.
A week ago I drove by the office. I saw her outside, puffing on a cigarette. I felt like a stalker, but if she had not been out there I wouldn't have cared. It seemed like she was waiting for me. But I get this vibe like she doesn't want to see me.
Even if she did want to see me, it's better that I don't see her again. There's some things on my chest that I will unload on her, and I just can't do that shit anymore. It's not right.
If there's one thing I learned from looking at the past five hours ago, it's that I represented something sublime to her at one time in our shared lives, and now that time is gone, and there's no sense in trying to put closure on it. It will not close that way-- it will only open up more questions, if I elect to check up on her again. I'm too wounded and angry to be civil, and it might get ugly. I'm too wrapped up in what I have going on right now to unravel all of the progress I've made.
I feel a lump of dread in my gut, because I have a feeling that, whether I like it or not, she and I will meet up once again, very soon. It seems like Fate is decreeing this, and I am hoping to avoid being caught up in that business again for as long as I can.
That means, I can't see her right now. I know where she is, I know how to reach her (she never changed her phone number) and I know what she is up to... but I cant see her.
If I want to see her again that badly, I can just remember those good times from the past, and she can live inside my head for a spell, and then she can be erased with the flick of a Bic and a cloud of white smoke barreling through a tobacco pipe straight to my lungs.
I shouldn't go looking for her.
No, I shouldn't.
I'm not going to crack.
I promise.
I didn't post yesterday because I had nothing new to say. Everything I wanted to write about was old news. Without my Archives, I could easily get away with rehashing something I wrote a while back, but my newfound paucity of past posts has me straining to concentrate on the new.
The New, I find increasingly, is always the Old, repackaged and passed off as the New.
I think my beef with nostalgia is that you learn nothing from reveling in past glories/tragedies. The one thing I always do when I look backward on my life is to try and wring a new meaning from familiar territories that I have traversed. I have no desire to relive my youth-- rather, I try my best to look at it objectively, to see if I can learn from the past, so as not to repeat it in the future.
Sometimes, I discover things about me that have been hidden, things that I forgot, things that eerily reflect where I am today.
Lately my trip has been drawing, and how I've always treated it as the redheaded step-child of all my modest talents. I never took it seriously. I always saw it as something I could only ever be half-ass committed to, something beyond my reach in terms of mastery. I have always been content to just be able to doodle and that's about it.
About five hours ago, I was sitting in The Garage, supervising the animation process. Peter, Paulie's brother, has been bringing my creations to life. He's very good at it. He makes the arms and mouths move, the eyes blink, the eyebrows quiver, and it looks better than I could have ever imagined it.
Captain Capsule and Harvey Ray, two of Paulie's friends, were drawing dirty pics in the dust layer covering a 4x4 truck windshield. Paulie laughed and looked over at me and said, "We could get a class going. A seminar. 'How To Draw', a course taught by Dr. Sex McGinty..."
I laughed. Associations filled my stoned mind. I thought about when I was five, when my uncle showed me how to draw Popeye on a chalkboard in my grandfather's garage. That association segued into another, and I ended up recalling out loud an Expository presentation that I had to deliver in my Theater Arts class in high school.
Just to pass the class, each student had to have a presentation to give at one Speech & Debate/Drama tournament. I procrastinated, of course, confident that my then-formidable bullshit abilities would kick into overtime at the last minute.
A week before the major tournament, I was entered in a few debate rounds, but I hadn't come up with an Expository presentation yet. For those who need to be filled in, an Expository piece is like a tutorial, often utilizing an easel for charts, graphs, pictures, and whatnot. You had to come off as educational, I guess. I didn't have a clue.
Our Drama coach asked me if I had anything to offer. I got up in front of the class and made up something on the spot. I took some markers and started giving lessons on drawing cartoons. My Drama coach was delighted-- according to her, it was original, it was entertaining, and I was a good enough bullshitter to get away with it. She urged me to write something down, to spruce up my presentation, but I wasn't too enthusiastic about it. As long as I passed the class, I was happy. I didn't expect to win any honors.
Anyway, the tourney came, and I was "ready". During the times when I wasn't competing, I went to check out other presentations, to add my support. But I had an agenda: I had just met Eve a few weeks prior, and she was already done with her boyfriend, a classmate named Craig who was (and still is) a good actor. I was thinking of moving in on his vacated turf, because I was totally in love with Eve and she was extremely talented. I had seen her rehearsing her Thematic Interpretation piece-- a sampling of "Taming of the Shrew", "Pygmalion" and "My Fair Lady". She was not only physically beautiful but masterful when it came to acting out the multiple roles. She had ensnared my heart and didn't even know it.
Eve was friendly to me, and said she wanted to see me perform my Expository piece at one point during the day. "I like your style of drawing-- you have a lot of talent."
"Thanks," I said. "And you too-- you're very talented."
She smiled and said, "Whatever."
My first round went okay-- I was ballsy enough to get a little ridiculous with my presentation. "The fine art of the caricature, believe it or not, can be directly traced to the hieroglyph drawings of Ancient Egypt..." I drew a pyramid, and then I drew a pharoah, complete with one-eyed profile and awkward walk. People in the audience were smiling, and I think I garnered some extra points for daring to caricature one of the judges. People came up to me afterwards and patted me on the back, telling me that I must've had no fear, to be drawing the judges like that. If I'd cared one bit about winning a trophy, drawing my judges would surely have been tournament suicide.
My second round-- Eve showed up and sat with me in the back. Suddenly I was nervous, suddenly there was pressure. Fuck the judges, what would Eve think?
As the other participants performed, giving deadly dull demonstrations that were sure to win awards but were also potent remedies for insomnia, I passed notes with Eve. At one point, I threatened to draw her. She wrote to me, "No! I don't want to know what I look like!" It didn't stop me from drawing a cartoon version of her lovely face. She liked it-- she wrote to me and said she wanted to keep the note.
I was happy.
I didn't care about anyone else in that room. I did that presentation for Eve and Eve alone. I broke every rule, I straddled every line, I bullshitted and bullshitted and drew funny cartoons and made jokes and got good reactions. Too bad I was getting marked down for my sloppy, barely-there preparation. But like I said, I just didn't care.
The award I wanted to win that day was Eve's heart.
She and I were inseparable for the rest of that day. She complimented me on my bullshitting abilities. "How do you know all of this random, usless knowledge?" she asked. "I mean, I know it sounds bad to say it like that, but I think what you did was great. I say 'random' and 'useless' because it all seems so unrelated, like you had too many tangents to choose from."
"Thank you, " I said.
She revealed to me that she was an artist herself. She also happened to have some drawings on her. I demanded to see them, and she showed me. They were great-- she had a more realistic style, not cartoon-y at all. It was very detailed and shaded and feminine, done in muted colored pastels and delicate pencil sketches. We kept trading compliments, humbly dodging them as they came at us from the other. We talked and talked. We got real deep, asking probing questions and meditating about life.
It was at that tournament, hosted by Granada Hills High, where I learned about how her parents were divorced, and that they used her and her brother as bartering tools against each other in their post-marital dealings. I related my own broken-home status, and we sat there and comiserated and let time pass by like cars on the street. We snuck off campus to buy cigarettes. We hung out with Sharky and Meg, and afterwards, when the competition was done, we all went back to our Drama coach's house for a victory party... all of us, save for Eve, who wasn't allowed by her dad and stepmom to spend any time outside of school with the Drama folk.
Ironically, I placed third in a lesser category, Spontaneous Argument. I didn't place anywhere with my Expository piece, but I was the talk of the tourney anyway. The year after that, I learned that students from other high schools who had seen or heard about my presentation stole the basic premise and improved upon it, which didn't make me mad at all.
This entire memory took less than a minute to process in my head, as I sat in Paulie's Garage, watching Capsule and Harvey and Paulie use their fingers to draw in the caked-upon dirt. I wondered why it had been so long since I dwelled upon that day, which was really the first day of my courtship of Eve-- shortly after that day, I invited her to my Senior Prom, to be my date, and the rest is old hat.
I guess I have had no reason to reflect upon it, since I have spent the last decade concentrating on playing music and writing. But it's funny how, aside from a few moments when I was paid to draw caricatures for theater productions in and outside of high school, I pretty much downplayed the art and kept my focus on music and literature.
It was the art that persuaded Eve to consider me as a possible love interest, not the bullshit or the jokes or the devil-may-care attitude. She never got as excited about my songs or my words as she did over my images.
I look back now, and if there was one mistake I made (besides getting together with a girl as troubled as Eve to begin with) it was that I switched gears on her. The art faded into the background, and the desire to be a musician and a writer won out over something that I already possessed a knack for, something that didn't need too much extra work to polish. I mean, it wasn't the reason why we broke up eventually, but I wonder if it had something to do with why her affectionate attention waned.
Anyway, now I feel like I've come full circle, reclaiming this birthright that is my visual acumen. Right now, this is where I belong, this is where I want to be. And if one day soon I should happen to run into Eve on the street and we are not at each other's throats, she might be surprised to learn that I am returning to my roots.
She has returned to her roots-- she didn't act for years after high school, because the new guy she was with didn't like it. But I found out, through her mother, that she was acting again. I have found her online in actor/model registries and on some websites devoted to the projects she has been involved with, and it makes me happy to know that she is in the grind once again.
I'm a fucking detective-- somehow I found out where she is working now. It's a dentist's office. That's what she has been doing for a day-job for over a decade now, working the reception desks at dentist offices. When she and I were on speaking terms, she gave me mad discounts on my cleanings.
I'm overdue for a check-up.
Oh, that's soooo bad. I can't see her again, even if she would be proud to see me drawing again. I just can't. She drives me crazy. She haunts me everywhere I go. I saw her face instead of Holly's, and that's what kept me fascinated with Ms. Golightly for so long. Whenever I was with Holly I felt like Jimmy Stweart in Vertigo, holding the double of my lost love in my arms again.
A week ago I drove by the office. I saw her outside, puffing on a cigarette. I felt like a stalker, but if she had not been out there I wouldn't have cared. It seemed like she was waiting for me. But I get this vibe like she doesn't want to see me.
Even if she did want to see me, it's better that I don't see her again. There's some things on my chest that I will unload on her, and I just can't do that shit anymore. It's not right.
If there's one thing I learned from looking at the past five hours ago, it's that I represented something sublime to her at one time in our shared lives, and now that time is gone, and there's no sense in trying to put closure on it. It will not close that way-- it will only open up more questions, if I elect to check up on her again. I'm too wounded and angry to be civil, and it might get ugly. I'm too wrapped up in what I have going on right now to unravel all of the progress I've made.
I feel a lump of dread in my gut, because I have a feeling that, whether I like it or not, she and I will meet up once again, very soon. It seems like Fate is decreeing this, and I am hoping to avoid being caught up in that business again for as long as I can.
That means, I can't see her right now. I know where she is, I know how to reach her (she never changed her phone number) and I know what she is up to... but I cant see her.
If I want to see her again that badly, I can just remember those good times from the past, and she can live inside my head for a spell, and then she can be erased with the flick of a Bic and a cloud of white smoke barreling through a tobacco pipe straight to my lungs.
I shouldn't go looking for her.
No, I shouldn't.
I'm not going to crack.
I promise.
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
WORD OF ADVICE
If you've spent most of your afternoon installing a starter into your car and you've only had two hours' sleep, it probably isn't a wise decision to smoke imported hash before you go off to do eight hours of work between the hours of three and eleven in the morning...
Trust me-- and don't ask me how I know. I just do.
Trust me-- and don't ask me how I know. I just do.
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
"LIke A Scene From A Movie"
I was seriously frustrated by some car problems I had yesterday morning-- for more on this, read my post for En Mass to get an idea.
By the time I got home and slept, I was in quite a state. Only a phone call to my mother calmed me down. She didn't have any soothing advice for me, because I asked for none. Instead, she told me about her day, her problems, her dilemmas, and it made me feel better about my own.
Normally, I get alienated by people who don't ask me about my life, but my mother is my mother-- she already knows what my life is all about, all I have to do is confirm it for her.
Later on in the evening, I went over to Holly's place. She and Deborah and their friend Richard were eating, drinking and sitting by the jacuzzi. I figured it would be nice to relax and spend some quality time with Holly Golightly and company before she left.
I was prepared with a piss-and-vinegar 'tude and some pot in my bloodstream. For one thing, I cannot stand Deborah-- she is fake and shallow and proud of it. Richard is cool, but I feel bad for him-- I think he's sprung on Deborah, and therefore puts up with her shit with an almost inhuman tolerance. And I don't like Holly when she is with Deborah, because she starts competing with her over who is more shallow.
After some jacuzzi time and some beer and wine, we retired to Deborah's apartament, to watch Cold Mountain. My stomach sunk when I heard the title-- I know it's supposed to be a good movie, but I wasn't in the mood for an overlong period piece.
To my surprise, the movie was excellent. It's about an old-fashioned subject, really, that of true love standing firm through thick-and-thin. I relate to that topic, because I was once that type of guy-- the type who would walk through Hell Itself for just ten minutes with the one I adore. I would put myself out on the line every time for love, and it always knocked me around a bit, but it never beat me.
I haven't walked 500 miles for a woman in over a decade. Eve was the last girl I did that for, and she showed her appreciation by dumping me the minute I relented in my subservience to her.
She had no faith.
I have been accused of that very thing, but that goes to show how little people know my heart. I believe in love, for example, but then again my definition is a little different than with other people.
To the majority of people out there, love is holding hands and staring into each other's eyes and smooching and buying flowers and candlelit dinners and pillow talk and drawing little heart shapes in the peanut butter...
To me, love is honesty. Love is not using the other to gain advantage. Love is standing up for what you believe in. Love is defending someone's besmirched honor. Love is sacrificing yourself and your happiness so that others can be happy. Love is loving the unloved as well as yourself, and staying true to your principles in the process. Love is loyalty and trust.
Everything else is just foreplay and sex. I wish people would call these things by their proper names, and not by the societal definitions.
Anyway, to truncate the events of last night: I really dug Cold Mountain. Sure, I made snide remarks throughout the movie along with the others, but that's me, that's how I express what I like sometimes. My teasing is done out of love.
But during the movie, Holly's comments struck me as very telling. She found the war scenes boring, and didn't make any connection to current events. She kept finding fault in Nicole Kidman and Jude Law's accents, when really they were quite passable. It didn't detract from my enjoyment of a film that I had absoltuely NO choice in selecting for viewing.
Towards the middle, there is a scene where Law's character beds down for the night with a lonely woman whose husband was killed in battle. She does not want to sleep with him; rather, she only wants a person lying in the bed next to her.
Holly said at that point, "If this were reality, he'd stop trying to find Nicole Kidman and just stay there."
I looked at Holly. "But he loves Nicole Kidman."
"Yeah, but he's warm, in bed with Natalie Portman... it's just not realistic."
I thought about the many times she had me spend the night in the bed with her, as she cried her tears and whined about this city that crushes her spirit. Not once did she ever ask me about my hopes and dreams, my fears, my desires. Not once did I make a move, and now I know why.
I guess I didn't really love Holly after all.
Does it sound like sour grapes, like the words of a man who didn't get what he wanted? If you feel that way, then go ahead and think it-- I won't stop you from thinking that. But I know deep inside that, if Holly had truly inspired passion in me, I would've gone to great lengths to show her how I felt.
And when it is all said and done, the reason why I never made the move is because she turns me off, with her pithy cynicism and lack of depth.
She relayed an anecdote while we were in the jacuzzi that made me cringe. "In high school, I had a wealthy boyfriend, and on the last day of school a bunch of us went to his house for a party. His parents were out of town, so he opened up bottles of Dom for all of us. And we all sat in the jacuzzi, drinking champagne bottles, and one of our friends said, 'Poverty sucks'. We all laughed, it was so funny, like a scene from a movie... I was just reminded of that right now, sitting here with you guys."
It would've been funny to me if I'd felt that Holly had changed since those days she recollects so fondly. But I didn't laugh, because I know she still feels the same. That's why we never saw eye to eye on certain things. That's why I know the real reason she is going back to Florida. That's why, as much as I love her, I cannot truly connect with her in a deep, meaningful way.
She doesn't believe in love. She doesn't believe in the hard work that goes into loving someone or something so much that everything else gets pushed to the side. Love, to her, is a champagne bottle in hand and a denouncement of poor people. Love, to her, is being onstage, playing Rock Star and preening like she's been signed to Sony, while her bandmates are the ones who are making it all happen. Love, to her, is saying whatever she thought I wanted to hear because she thought that she was charming enough to make me do anything she asked me to do.
At one point, Deborah, who ironically was acting cool and mellow for once, got up from the couch and sat in Holly's seat while Holly was using the bathroom. This left a big open space next to me. If we'd been alone, Holly would've snuggled next to me and made herself comfy. But because we were sitting with these people that she obviously admires so much, she sat in another chair.
I made a comment. "I guess I have cooties, don't I?"
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"You'd rather sit over there than next to me," I said.
"No, it's just that... it's just that I like to lean on a pillow, and..."
"Whatever." I was smiling, relishing this moral relativism on her part. For all her talk of "I love you" and all that entails, she really doesn't know anything except how to protect her self-image.
Deborah was being flirty with me, which made me a bit nauseous, seeing as I despise her and what she normally stands for. The fact that I found her slightly more tolerable than Holly should tell you how awkward I felt after a while.
Richard, drunk and lethargic, slept through most of it.
After the movie ended, I finagled a ride to work out of Holly. I needed to feel like I'd gotten something out of this whole evening. Sad, isn't it? I was looking forward to a nice night, and instead I ended up looking forward to getting a ride to work.
I don't feel so bad about not being more forward with her. In fact, I feel a small tinge of pity for her, because I'm not sure if she's going to find what it is she is looking for unless she stops living in a fantasy world where she gets everything for nothing.
I always doubt my ability to love, but after last night, I am now convinced that I know a lot about loving. I have loved in the past, and I guess I know what it is I want now because no one seems worthy. And yet, I go on loving many things: art, poetry, literature, cinema, the spaces between friends and intimate moments with strangers, life, love, and liberty... I love all of these things so much that I am vicious when it comes time to defend them.
If love is co-dependence and self-delusion, then yes, I don't know the first thing about love.
But I suspect that it is much more. It is faith, yes, and it is trust and loyalty, but it is also dignity, and I am glad that my time with Holly nears its end with me realizing how undignified our bond is. Sometimes I feel so dirty after hanging out with her and her friends, because I feel like I have just been spoonfed a load of horseshit, and most times I do not call her on it because I know how upset she'd be if I exposed that part of her.
Call it what you want. I don't care. I guess I am picky, and have impossibly high standards for people. But is it too much to ask humans to act like humans, instead of slaves to fame and fortune?
I wish Holly the best of luck. I think last night was our last night. I don't know if I have it in me to see her off before she goes. I've had enough of trying to convey my emotions to a person who doesn't even know what it is that drives me as a person. You blog-readers out there-- you know more about me than Holly does.
So I am calling it quits right here and now. Holly is gone, as far as I'm concerned. There will be no need to see her on her way. She'll write, she'll call, when it is convenient for her.
I think it's better this way.
By the time I got home and slept, I was in quite a state. Only a phone call to my mother calmed me down. She didn't have any soothing advice for me, because I asked for none. Instead, she told me about her day, her problems, her dilemmas, and it made me feel better about my own.
Normally, I get alienated by people who don't ask me about my life, but my mother is my mother-- she already knows what my life is all about, all I have to do is confirm it for her.
Later on in the evening, I went over to Holly's place. She and Deborah and their friend Richard were eating, drinking and sitting by the jacuzzi. I figured it would be nice to relax and spend some quality time with Holly Golightly and company before she left.
I was prepared with a piss-and-vinegar 'tude and some pot in my bloodstream. For one thing, I cannot stand Deborah-- she is fake and shallow and proud of it. Richard is cool, but I feel bad for him-- I think he's sprung on Deborah, and therefore puts up with her shit with an almost inhuman tolerance. And I don't like Holly when she is with Deborah, because she starts competing with her over who is more shallow.
After some jacuzzi time and some beer and wine, we retired to Deborah's apartament, to watch Cold Mountain. My stomach sunk when I heard the title-- I know it's supposed to be a good movie, but I wasn't in the mood for an overlong period piece.
To my surprise, the movie was excellent. It's about an old-fashioned subject, really, that of true love standing firm through thick-and-thin. I relate to that topic, because I was once that type of guy-- the type who would walk through Hell Itself for just ten minutes with the one I adore. I would put myself out on the line every time for love, and it always knocked me around a bit, but it never beat me.
I haven't walked 500 miles for a woman in over a decade. Eve was the last girl I did that for, and she showed her appreciation by dumping me the minute I relented in my subservience to her.
She had no faith.
I have been accused of that very thing, but that goes to show how little people know my heart. I believe in love, for example, but then again my definition is a little different than with other people.
To the majority of people out there, love is holding hands and staring into each other's eyes and smooching and buying flowers and candlelit dinners and pillow talk and drawing little heart shapes in the peanut butter...
To me, love is honesty. Love is not using the other to gain advantage. Love is standing up for what you believe in. Love is defending someone's besmirched honor. Love is sacrificing yourself and your happiness so that others can be happy. Love is loving the unloved as well as yourself, and staying true to your principles in the process. Love is loyalty and trust.
Everything else is just foreplay and sex. I wish people would call these things by their proper names, and not by the societal definitions.
Anyway, to truncate the events of last night: I really dug Cold Mountain. Sure, I made snide remarks throughout the movie along with the others, but that's me, that's how I express what I like sometimes. My teasing is done out of love.
But during the movie, Holly's comments struck me as very telling. She found the war scenes boring, and didn't make any connection to current events. She kept finding fault in Nicole Kidman and Jude Law's accents, when really they were quite passable. It didn't detract from my enjoyment of a film that I had absoltuely NO choice in selecting for viewing.
Towards the middle, there is a scene where Law's character beds down for the night with a lonely woman whose husband was killed in battle. She does not want to sleep with him; rather, she only wants a person lying in the bed next to her.
Holly said at that point, "If this were reality, he'd stop trying to find Nicole Kidman and just stay there."
I looked at Holly. "But he loves Nicole Kidman."
"Yeah, but he's warm, in bed with Natalie Portman... it's just not realistic."
I thought about the many times she had me spend the night in the bed with her, as she cried her tears and whined about this city that crushes her spirit. Not once did she ever ask me about my hopes and dreams, my fears, my desires. Not once did I make a move, and now I know why.
I guess I didn't really love Holly after all.
Does it sound like sour grapes, like the words of a man who didn't get what he wanted? If you feel that way, then go ahead and think it-- I won't stop you from thinking that. But I know deep inside that, if Holly had truly inspired passion in me, I would've gone to great lengths to show her how I felt.
And when it is all said and done, the reason why I never made the move is because she turns me off, with her pithy cynicism and lack of depth.
She relayed an anecdote while we were in the jacuzzi that made me cringe. "In high school, I had a wealthy boyfriend, and on the last day of school a bunch of us went to his house for a party. His parents were out of town, so he opened up bottles of Dom for all of us. And we all sat in the jacuzzi, drinking champagne bottles, and one of our friends said, 'Poverty sucks'. We all laughed, it was so funny, like a scene from a movie... I was just reminded of that right now, sitting here with you guys."
It would've been funny to me if I'd felt that Holly had changed since those days she recollects so fondly. But I didn't laugh, because I know she still feels the same. That's why we never saw eye to eye on certain things. That's why I know the real reason she is going back to Florida. That's why, as much as I love her, I cannot truly connect with her in a deep, meaningful way.
She doesn't believe in love. She doesn't believe in the hard work that goes into loving someone or something so much that everything else gets pushed to the side. Love, to her, is a champagne bottle in hand and a denouncement of poor people. Love, to her, is being onstage, playing Rock Star and preening like she's been signed to Sony, while her bandmates are the ones who are making it all happen. Love, to her, is saying whatever she thought I wanted to hear because she thought that she was charming enough to make me do anything she asked me to do.
At one point, Deborah, who ironically was acting cool and mellow for once, got up from the couch and sat in Holly's seat while Holly was using the bathroom. This left a big open space next to me. If we'd been alone, Holly would've snuggled next to me and made herself comfy. But because we were sitting with these people that she obviously admires so much, she sat in another chair.
I made a comment. "I guess I have cooties, don't I?"
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"You'd rather sit over there than next to me," I said.
"No, it's just that... it's just that I like to lean on a pillow, and..."
"Whatever." I was smiling, relishing this moral relativism on her part. For all her talk of "I love you" and all that entails, she really doesn't know anything except how to protect her self-image.
Deborah was being flirty with me, which made me a bit nauseous, seeing as I despise her and what she normally stands for. The fact that I found her slightly more tolerable than Holly should tell you how awkward I felt after a while.
Richard, drunk and lethargic, slept through most of it.
After the movie ended, I finagled a ride to work out of Holly. I needed to feel like I'd gotten something out of this whole evening. Sad, isn't it? I was looking forward to a nice night, and instead I ended up looking forward to getting a ride to work.
I don't feel so bad about not being more forward with her. In fact, I feel a small tinge of pity for her, because I'm not sure if she's going to find what it is she is looking for unless she stops living in a fantasy world where she gets everything for nothing.
I always doubt my ability to love, but after last night, I am now convinced that I know a lot about loving. I have loved in the past, and I guess I know what it is I want now because no one seems worthy. And yet, I go on loving many things: art, poetry, literature, cinema, the spaces between friends and intimate moments with strangers, life, love, and liberty... I love all of these things so much that I am vicious when it comes time to defend them.
If love is co-dependence and self-delusion, then yes, I don't know the first thing about love.
But I suspect that it is much more. It is faith, yes, and it is trust and loyalty, but it is also dignity, and I am glad that my time with Holly nears its end with me realizing how undignified our bond is. Sometimes I feel so dirty after hanging out with her and her friends, because I feel like I have just been spoonfed a load of horseshit, and most times I do not call her on it because I know how upset she'd be if I exposed that part of her.
Call it what you want. I don't care. I guess I am picky, and have impossibly high standards for people. But is it too much to ask humans to act like humans, instead of slaves to fame and fortune?
I wish Holly the best of luck. I think last night was our last night. I don't know if I have it in me to see her off before she goes. I've had enough of trying to convey my emotions to a person who doesn't even know what it is that drives me as a person. You blog-readers out there-- you know more about me than Holly does.
So I am calling it quits right here and now. Holly is gone, as far as I'm concerned. There will be no need to see her on her way. She'll write, she'll call, when it is convenient for her.
I think it's better this way.
Monday, September 20, 2004
CHRONIC DENSITY STEW
Just so you know: even though we did nothing together this weekend, Holly and I have plans for later this week. It's her last week here, but I don't know how she wants to celebrate, if she's up for celebrating at all. I might be mistaken but I think the general outlook on all of this is that Holly Golightly is leaving L.A. with her tail between her legs. I hope that observation is proved wrong-- I hope she gets grounded in Florida and returns with a stronger game plan.
I think some more massages are in order. I was very impressed with my kneading skills last week-- I still know how to make the spaghetti strap drop properly...
Whatever. Lately I've been so single-minded, in pursuit of the finish line in regards to this cartoon, that I've been neglecting other areas completely. Granted, I want to focus on visual arts more, but all my recording equipment is just sitting there, giving me the bad-eye as I get sleep during the day and change my clothes when I wake up, not even stopping to record at least one drum machine track.
This is a stark contrast to my activity four years ago. I was on fire, possessed, driven by a compulsive need to record every masturbatory musical wank, every blip on the creative radar, foul-ups bleeps blunders and all... a song a day, sometimes done alone like Prince, sometimes with collaborators. Some of it was good, a lot of it was bad, but I had this stoned technique down pat.
It started with a spliff or a pipe-hit to the head, followed by a few minutes of delirious contemplation. Awash in a stew of chronic density, I would suddenly become inspired and stand up, walk to the studio, and compose something, anything, as long as I was creating. People would stop by, usually stoner friends who played instruments or sang or rapped or whatever the fuck. Either way, the construction of a groove became the priority, and my friends knew they could count on me, hunched over the samplers and the tape decks, adding layer upon layer to the mix.
Sometimes people brought drinks. Most times they brought pot. On occasion, someone would bring some girls, but it never really got that wild. The girls just wanted to sit in the room and watch the process in action. They were shy, and refused to contribute whenever I shoved a microphone in their face or a technological gadget in their hands.
That all changed when I moved out of Sherman Locs. I never regained that freedom, that realm of possibility and magic. I have a chance now, because I plan to be here in Burbank for a long time.
I haven't felt comfortable enough in my new abode to pick up where I left off. Plus, I haven't had the time. But Sunday afternoon, I had the time. I strapped on my bass guitar and cued up a jam I'd put together six months ago. It was a weird concoction: acoustic guitar run through a microphone and a reverb unit; MIDI-linked drum machine patterns and samples; and a few odd vocal takes courtesy of myself and Bro Man.
I decided to try new new style out. I've been poppin' and slappin' on the bass, ever since the Blonde Rick got ganked and I borrowed Purple Paulie's P-Bass. I'm not up to the level of a Les Claypool or a Flea, but I'm definitely making up for lost time. I don't know why I waited so long before getting into this style of bass-playing-- maybe it's because that fake Rickenbacher was lousy when it came to slapping. And I didn't have any other basses around.
I puffed some herb. My head swam, my eyes burned, my fingers loosened. I plugged in, I adjusted the volume level. I played the song and selected a new track.
I jammed for twenty minutes.
It wasn't all good, but there were some moments where I was cookin' like Emeril on a munchies binge. There were some formidable grooves here and there. I pranced about the room, stomping in my slippers, nodding my head as the JBL speakers tittered and hummed. It felt good, it felt sacred, it felt sexy. I twirled, I closed my eyes. I focused on rhythm over melody, percussively snapping at the syncopated peaks, finding new pockets and avenues, exploring, learning from scartch, using intuition. It was splendid. It was temporary escape, momentary meditation, the flurry of activity lost to passing time and the thrill of creating. No interruptions, to places to be... at least until later.
The rest of my weekend was standard fare, but I think I've made peace with this new apartment. It has been very good to me, very friendly. I feel good vibes when I'm at home, and my neighbors leave me alone and I treat them accordingly. No more wild parties and massive smoke-outs. No more loud jams at 3AM. No more senseless cajoling to slow down my progress.
I'm glad I had fun back then, but nowadays I'd rather work seriously. Part of work, however, is knowing when to take a break. If I want to put something down but feel like I've hit some sort of wall, I step back. I light a joint. I smoke a cigarette. I watch some TV. I turn on the radio or put in a CD. I rethink my strategy. I regroup and find my bearings.
Then, when I'm feeling inspired again, I go back to the drawing board until I get it right, or at least in a state that I can work with later. A lot of my songs and projects evolve over time, depending on what I bring to it, when I bring it, and how I'm feeling when I bring it.
Here's to another streak of daily compositions. Even if they are mere thumbnail-sketch demos, they count. Even if I never intend to develop the song into anything more than words, music, and voice, that's okay-- it's all about keeping it consistent, not about crafting ultimate perfection.
I like perfection, but it takes too long, and cost a lot of money that I don't have. I just want to get it down, in a recognizable mode, so that I have something later on down the line that I can refer to when it comes time to separate out the truly A material from the less-than-stellar stuff.
I am very happy to be home recording again. Music was my diary for quite a while, yielding lengthier entries than even this here blog, whose Archives I've inadvertantly destroyed. That's fine-- with my songs, I still have my tape masters, and there's plenty of them to choose from.
Talk to y'all later.
I think some more massages are in order. I was very impressed with my kneading skills last week-- I still know how to make the spaghetti strap drop properly...
Whatever. Lately I've been so single-minded, in pursuit of the finish line in regards to this cartoon, that I've been neglecting other areas completely. Granted, I want to focus on visual arts more, but all my recording equipment is just sitting there, giving me the bad-eye as I get sleep during the day and change my clothes when I wake up, not even stopping to record at least one drum machine track.
This is a stark contrast to my activity four years ago. I was on fire, possessed, driven by a compulsive need to record every masturbatory musical wank, every blip on the creative radar, foul-ups bleeps blunders and all... a song a day, sometimes done alone like Prince, sometimes with collaborators. Some of it was good, a lot of it was bad, but I had this stoned technique down pat.
It started with a spliff or a pipe-hit to the head, followed by a few minutes of delirious contemplation. Awash in a stew of chronic density, I would suddenly become inspired and stand up, walk to the studio, and compose something, anything, as long as I was creating. People would stop by, usually stoner friends who played instruments or sang or rapped or whatever the fuck. Either way, the construction of a groove became the priority, and my friends knew they could count on me, hunched over the samplers and the tape decks, adding layer upon layer to the mix.
Sometimes people brought drinks. Most times they brought pot. On occasion, someone would bring some girls, but it never really got that wild. The girls just wanted to sit in the room and watch the process in action. They were shy, and refused to contribute whenever I shoved a microphone in their face or a technological gadget in their hands.
That all changed when I moved out of Sherman Locs. I never regained that freedom, that realm of possibility and magic. I have a chance now, because I plan to be here in Burbank for a long time.
I haven't felt comfortable enough in my new abode to pick up where I left off. Plus, I haven't had the time. But Sunday afternoon, I had the time. I strapped on my bass guitar and cued up a jam I'd put together six months ago. It was a weird concoction: acoustic guitar run through a microphone and a reverb unit; MIDI-linked drum machine patterns and samples; and a few odd vocal takes courtesy of myself and Bro Man.
I decided to try new new style out. I've been poppin' and slappin' on the bass, ever since the Blonde Rick got ganked and I borrowed Purple Paulie's P-Bass. I'm not up to the level of a Les Claypool or a Flea, but I'm definitely making up for lost time. I don't know why I waited so long before getting into this style of bass-playing-- maybe it's because that fake Rickenbacher was lousy when it came to slapping. And I didn't have any other basses around.
I puffed some herb. My head swam, my eyes burned, my fingers loosened. I plugged in, I adjusted the volume level. I played the song and selected a new track.
I jammed for twenty minutes.
It wasn't all good, but there were some moments where I was cookin' like Emeril on a munchies binge. There were some formidable grooves here and there. I pranced about the room, stomping in my slippers, nodding my head as the JBL speakers tittered and hummed. It felt good, it felt sacred, it felt sexy. I twirled, I closed my eyes. I focused on rhythm over melody, percussively snapping at the syncopated peaks, finding new pockets and avenues, exploring, learning from scartch, using intuition. It was splendid. It was temporary escape, momentary meditation, the flurry of activity lost to passing time and the thrill of creating. No interruptions, to places to be... at least until later.
The rest of my weekend was standard fare, but I think I've made peace with this new apartment. It has been very good to me, very friendly. I feel good vibes when I'm at home, and my neighbors leave me alone and I treat them accordingly. No more wild parties and massive smoke-outs. No more loud jams at 3AM. No more senseless cajoling to slow down my progress.
I'm glad I had fun back then, but nowadays I'd rather work seriously. Part of work, however, is knowing when to take a break. If I want to put something down but feel like I've hit some sort of wall, I step back. I light a joint. I smoke a cigarette. I watch some TV. I turn on the radio or put in a CD. I rethink my strategy. I regroup and find my bearings.
Then, when I'm feeling inspired again, I go back to the drawing board until I get it right, or at least in a state that I can work with later. A lot of my songs and projects evolve over time, depending on what I bring to it, when I bring it, and how I'm feeling when I bring it.
Here's to another streak of daily compositions. Even if they are mere thumbnail-sketch demos, they count. Even if I never intend to develop the song into anything more than words, music, and voice, that's okay-- it's all about keeping it consistent, not about crafting ultimate perfection.
I like perfection, but it takes too long, and cost a lot of money that I don't have. I just want to get it down, in a recognizable mode, so that I have something later on down the line that I can refer to when it comes time to separate out the truly A material from the less-than-stellar stuff.
I am very happy to be home recording again. Music was my diary for quite a while, yielding lengthier entries than even this here blog, whose Archives I've inadvertantly destroyed. That's fine-- with my songs, I still have my tape masters, and there's plenty of them to choose from.
Talk to y'all later.
Friday, September 17, 2004
BORN INNOCENT
I am melancholy in that classic sense that sometimes (usually when I am alone but it also happens when I'm in a large crowd) I get overwhelmed by the scope of this world and the idea that we even exist, and that humans suffer, and that lessons aren't learned and mistakes keep being made, needless mistakes that anyone with half a visionary eye could prevent with just some decency and common sense...
My defense mechanism is to embrace nihilism, embrace nothingness, telling myself nothing matters. This is accompanied by a shriek or a howl, deep from the bowels of my churning guts, a primal concession to the pain of being a man. I smile as I talk freely of death and dust and disease, daring all others to peer past the layers, to dig beneath this clever charade, to "get" the cosmic joke, to catch me winking as I speak of entropy and gravity and cruel destiny...
But inside I am a sensitive child who searches madly, perhaps in vain, for one man or woman who can prove me wrong irrefutably. My desperation reeks, stains my clothes and forewarns others of my impending arrival; there I am, with lantern in hand, searching for God underneath carriages and in shop windows, shouting at passerby who deride my station, who cannot see that I merely strive to serve something greater than myself, because there HAS to be something greater than me, something out there that is greater than all of this... otherwise it is all rubbish, isn't it?
I don't expect everyone to understand, especially those who have never felt the degree of discomfort that a great deal of folk have felt, the agony of waking each morning and knowing there are many reasons to end one's life, the pressure to live up to invisible expectations, the eyes of an imaginary God scanning you, infusing you with guilt as you walk this scorched earth... No, I don't expect you to sympathize or relate.
Don't let my fatalistic words throw you-- my mood right now is the result of little sleep and a wide-open imagination tarred and feathered by the psychoactive properties of high-grade marijuana smoke. But these blue moods are brilliant in the most tragic possible sense, in that way that enables misery to become pleasurable, and in a way that makes one wish that the pain could be prolonged somehow, because it is so beautiful, so sad, so doleful and remiss, what a songwriter I admire once referred to as 'sweet pain'...
Music elicits the melancholy, the bad blood, the listless humor, to stir inside me. Certain songs come on at just the right moment and paint a watercolor landscape that cascades over my eyes, washing clean the impurities, causing me to see beyond what is front of me. And I hate it, because sometimes I don't want to like these songs, I don't want them to speak to me and reaffirm the things that I know to be true, the damned regulations and self-imposed rules and the crazy meaningless rituals that bring things supposedly into focus...
I can't stand Sarah McLachlan. I don't know why I don't like her-- she bugs me. But she has a song, and it's called "Adia", and it is speaking to me as I reflect upon my breakfast with Holly. The song has invaded my mind because it was playing in the restaurant where she and I ate yesterday morning.
I needed to know what the song meant, so I did some searches. This link says the same things that other sites have said about the song, so I have included it here for cross-reference.
Once again, the actual meaning of a song that I am haunted by is miles away from the meaning I attribute to it. "Adia" is about a female friend of McLachlan's who was hurt when McLachlan, weasely whore that she is, started dating the ex of said friend. But I think about "Adia" as my words to Holly this morning, as I struggled to explain indescribable feelings, inarticulate emotions, trying to pinpoint instances and convey the gist of my heart to her.
Being a bit psychic, she got the picture.
Holly is the Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands that Bob Dylan sang about, a woman who is defined by her sadness. There is a glimmering glimpse of her inner turmoil trapped in the glassy cage of her downturned glance that, when leveled at me, dilates and pulses with emergency. And she looked at me today and instead of telling her I loved her (like I've done so many times before) I tried to transmit it through my actions, my facial expressions, my eyes.
The song played. My heart ached. McLachlan sang:
Adia I do believe I failed you
Adia I know I let you down
don't you know I tried so hard
to love you in my way
it's easy let it go...
We talked about the band, what a glorious failure it was, how saddened we were that it didn't go anywhere, how joyfully dismal our prospects were... She never doubted my commitment to it, not once.
It was at that moment that I realized that the band was a literal symbol for our love.
We never dated, never made love, never fell into that trap. We shared countless nights in bed, talking, dreaming aloud, crying in each other's arms, sharing our torments (she more than me, I might add-- she never asked me about my personal demons, and it's just as well), exchanging the softest of kisses, tender like a piano playing in the dark...
I wrote a short story once about a couple who decided to have an imaginary baby. When the relationship between the two became strained, they stayed together because of their "baby", but later on in the story the woman wanted out-- she no longer wanted to play this game with her man, and she came to view their "baby" as a farce and indicative of how non-existant their bond was becoming.
The band was my "baby" with Holly. We nurtured this thing together, the two of us. It was a proxy relationship-- God knows the both of us are too neurotic and wounded to conduct ourselves properly. This was the closest thing the both of us could manage, both of us having been hurt so much and now being so wary of afflictions like love and desire.
I told her I would miss her immensely. I told her that she was the most important thing in my life in the past year, and that the general happiness that I have been feeling lately is due to her having faith in my talent and abilities. I told her that I would visit her in Orlando the first chance I got. I told her that I would never forget her.
For a second, I thought about how tough the first few weeks would be without her, knowing that she is not around.
Adia I'm empty since you left me
trying to find a way to carry on
I search myself and everyone
to see where we went wrong
'cause there's no one left to finger
there's no one here to blame
there's no one left to talk to honey
and there ain't no one to buy our innocence
"You're too sensitive," I told her, when she said that this city was killing her and that she needed to leave. "I know, because beneath this stoic facade, I am also."
'cause we are born innocent
believe me Adia, we are still innocent
it's easy, we all falter
does it matter?
"This is not the end, of course," she said, sipping on her tall iced tea. "I'll be back for showcases and promotions and stuff like that... I just don't think I can live here, it's too fake."
"Babe, I've lived here all of my life," I said, "and although it sometimes takes the piss out of me, it has never won. I have never let this city win."
Adia I thought we could make it
but I know I can't change the way you feel
I leave you with your misery
a friend who won't betray
I pull you from your tower
I take away your pain
and show you all the beauty you possess
She picked up the tab-- last time we met for breakfast I handled the bill. It was her turn. She asked me to come back to her apartment to help her move some things. I met her there and helped her dispose of a crusty old coffee table that had been left outside on the patio for all the years she lived there.
We sat down and watched a tape of the new season of The Ali G Show, as I massaged her back. The spaghetti strap gave way, falling to the side. My hands were rough, her back was tense and knotty. The room was virtually empty, a shell of its former cluttered atmosphere. It was spare and stripped-down. I liked it.
Kisses, but nothing out-of-the-ordinary... warm embraces, realizations that time is running out; realizations that, even if time wasn't running out, there is nothing that either of us could do that would make it any better, except to just enjoy these moments for what they were-- fleeting indulgences.
If you'd only let yourself believe that
we are born innocent
believe me Adia, we are still innocent
it's easy, we all falter, does it matter?
We laughed at the misadventures of Borat from Kazakhstan. The two of us hadn't sat down and laughed like that together for some time.
'cause we are born innocent
believe me Adia, we are still innocent
it's easy, we all falter ... but does it matter?
I told her I would call her later on in the evening, but I didn't get the sleep I normally allow myself. After working at The Garage, I called it an early night, drove home, and slept until it was time to go to work. I will call her before I leave from work, and I will call upon her tonight. We will drink wine and nuzzle close to each other and wait out this sentence until the last day, when she drives away from this godforsaken place and leaves me here to rot...
believe me Adia, we are still innocent
'cause we are born innocent
believe me Adia, we are still innocent
it's easy, we all falter ... but does it matter?
Goddamn you, Sarah McLachlan.
My defense mechanism is to embrace nihilism, embrace nothingness, telling myself nothing matters. This is accompanied by a shriek or a howl, deep from the bowels of my churning guts, a primal concession to the pain of being a man. I smile as I talk freely of death and dust and disease, daring all others to peer past the layers, to dig beneath this clever charade, to "get" the cosmic joke, to catch me winking as I speak of entropy and gravity and cruel destiny...
But inside I am a sensitive child who searches madly, perhaps in vain, for one man or woman who can prove me wrong irrefutably. My desperation reeks, stains my clothes and forewarns others of my impending arrival; there I am, with lantern in hand, searching for God underneath carriages and in shop windows, shouting at passerby who deride my station, who cannot see that I merely strive to serve something greater than myself, because there HAS to be something greater than me, something out there that is greater than all of this... otherwise it is all rubbish, isn't it?
I don't expect everyone to understand, especially those who have never felt the degree of discomfort that a great deal of folk have felt, the agony of waking each morning and knowing there are many reasons to end one's life, the pressure to live up to invisible expectations, the eyes of an imaginary God scanning you, infusing you with guilt as you walk this scorched earth... No, I don't expect you to sympathize or relate.
Don't let my fatalistic words throw you-- my mood right now is the result of little sleep and a wide-open imagination tarred and feathered by the psychoactive properties of high-grade marijuana smoke. But these blue moods are brilliant in the most tragic possible sense, in that way that enables misery to become pleasurable, and in a way that makes one wish that the pain could be prolonged somehow, because it is so beautiful, so sad, so doleful and remiss, what a songwriter I admire once referred to as 'sweet pain'...
Music elicits the melancholy, the bad blood, the listless humor, to stir inside me. Certain songs come on at just the right moment and paint a watercolor landscape that cascades over my eyes, washing clean the impurities, causing me to see beyond what is front of me. And I hate it, because sometimes I don't want to like these songs, I don't want them to speak to me and reaffirm the things that I know to be true, the damned regulations and self-imposed rules and the crazy meaningless rituals that bring things supposedly into focus...
I can't stand Sarah McLachlan. I don't know why I don't like her-- she bugs me. But she has a song, and it's called "Adia", and it is speaking to me as I reflect upon my breakfast with Holly. The song has invaded my mind because it was playing in the restaurant where she and I ate yesterday morning.
I needed to know what the song meant, so I did some searches. This link says the same things that other sites have said about the song, so I have included it here for cross-reference.
Once again, the actual meaning of a song that I am haunted by is miles away from the meaning I attribute to it. "Adia" is about a female friend of McLachlan's who was hurt when McLachlan, weasely whore that she is, started dating the ex of said friend. But I think about "Adia" as my words to Holly this morning, as I struggled to explain indescribable feelings, inarticulate emotions, trying to pinpoint instances and convey the gist of my heart to her.
Being a bit psychic, she got the picture.
Holly is the Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands that Bob Dylan sang about, a woman who is defined by her sadness. There is a glimmering glimpse of her inner turmoil trapped in the glassy cage of her downturned glance that, when leveled at me, dilates and pulses with emergency. And she looked at me today and instead of telling her I loved her (like I've done so many times before) I tried to transmit it through my actions, my facial expressions, my eyes.
The song played. My heart ached. McLachlan sang:
Adia I do believe I failed you
Adia I know I let you down
don't you know I tried so hard
to love you in my way
it's easy let it go...
We talked about the band, what a glorious failure it was, how saddened we were that it didn't go anywhere, how joyfully dismal our prospects were... She never doubted my commitment to it, not once.
It was at that moment that I realized that the band was a literal symbol for our love.
We never dated, never made love, never fell into that trap. We shared countless nights in bed, talking, dreaming aloud, crying in each other's arms, sharing our torments (she more than me, I might add-- she never asked me about my personal demons, and it's just as well), exchanging the softest of kisses, tender like a piano playing in the dark...
I wrote a short story once about a couple who decided to have an imaginary baby. When the relationship between the two became strained, they stayed together because of their "baby", but later on in the story the woman wanted out-- she no longer wanted to play this game with her man, and she came to view their "baby" as a farce and indicative of how non-existant their bond was becoming.
The band was my "baby" with Holly. We nurtured this thing together, the two of us. It was a proxy relationship-- God knows the both of us are too neurotic and wounded to conduct ourselves properly. This was the closest thing the both of us could manage, both of us having been hurt so much and now being so wary of afflictions like love and desire.
I told her I would miss her immensely. I told her that she was the most important thing in my life in the past year, and that the general happiness that I have been feeling lately is due to her having faith in my talent and abilities. I told her that I would visit her in Orlando the first chance I got. I told her that I would never forget her.
For a second, I thought about how tough the first few weeks would be without her, knowing that she is not around.
Adia I'm empty since you left me
trying to find a way to carry on
I search myself and everyone
to see where we went wrong
'cause there's no one left to finger
there's no one here to blame
there's no one left to talk to honey
and there ain't no one to buy our innocence
"You're too sensitive," I told her, when she said that this city was killing her and that she needed to leave. "I know, because beneath this stoic facade, I am also."
'cause we are born innocent
believe me Adia, we are still innocent
it's easy, we all falter
does it matter?
"This is not the end, of course," she said, sipping on her tall iced tea. "I'll be back for showcases and promotions and stuff like that... I just don't think I can live here, it's too fake."
"Babe, I've lived here all of my life," I said, "and although it sometimes takes the piss out of me, it has never won. I have never let this city win."
Adia I thought we could make it
but I know I can't change the way you feel
I leave you with your misery
a friend who won't betray
I pull you from your tower
I take away your pain
and show you all the beauty you possess
She picked up the tab-- last time we met for breakfast I handled the bill. It was her turn. She asked me to come back to her apartment to help her move some things. I met her there and helped her dispose of a crusty old coffee table that had been left outside on the patio for all the years she lived there.
We sat down and watched a tape of the new season of The Ali G Show, as I massaged her back. The spaghetti strap gave way, falling to the side. My hands were rough, her back was tense and knotty. The room was virtually empty, a shell of its former cluttered atmosphere. It was spare and stripped-down. I liked it.
Kisses, but nothing out-of-the-ordinary... warm embraces, realizations that time is running out; realizations that, even if time wasn't running out, there is nothing that either of us could do that would make it any better, except to just enjoy these moments for what they were-- fleeting indulgences.
If you'd only let yourself believe that
we are born innocent
believe me Adia, we are still innocent
it's easy, we all falter, does it matter?
We laughed at the misadventures of Borat from Kazakhstan. The two of us hadn't sat down and laughed like that together for some time.
'cause we are born innocent
believe me Adia, we are still innocent
it's easy, we all falter ... but does it matter?
I told her I would call her later on in the evening, but I didn't get the sleep I normally allow myself. After working at The Garage, I called it an early night, drove home, and slept until it was time to go to work. I will call her before I leave from work, and I will call upon her tonight. We will drink wine and nuzzle close to each other and wait out this sentence until the last day, when she drives away from this godforsaken place and leaves me here to rot...
believe me Adia, we are still innocent
'cause we are born innocent
believe me Adia, we are still innocent
it's easy, we all falter ... but does it matter?
Goddamn you, Sarah McLachlan.
Thursday, September 16, 2004
SHEENA IS A NEO-CON
Who knew the late, great Johnny Ramone was a Republican?
Man, these guys are too young to be dropping off like this. I though The Ramones-- The Beatles of the post-Boomer generation --would live forever. I though they would never die. Now there's only Tommy left, and he probably extended his life by being the first original member to leave the band, opting to help engineer and produce their albums instead.
Finding out that Johnny Ramone was a conservative is a strangely delightful discovery, because it nails on the head what I feel about punk rock, and why I always felt drawn to its primitive power.
Being a punk was not about having a 'hawk and wearing Doc Martens. Being a punk was not about studded leather jackets and a speed addiction. No, punk rock and being a punk was all about being yourself.
The Ramones had long hair, a no-no in many punk circles... didn't matter, they invented it for all intents and purposes. All of their idols wore their hair long, though: Iggy Pop, Roky Erikson, The Velvet Underground, The Sonics, The Beach Boys, and of course Phil Spector all had massive hairdos.
The Ramones were a bunch of leather-jacket-jeans-wearing longhairs from Queens... they definitely didn't come off as hippies, even if some of their musical tastes went along that line. They didn't care about politics, except for "Bonzo Goes To Bitburg", and obviously Johnny was a good enough sport to let Joey pull that tune off.
All that matters, though, is the fact that Johnny Ramone made it cool to not play jack-off guitar solos ever again. Johnny Ramone made it cool to care intensely about being in a band. Johnny Ramone made it cool to play nothing but downstrokes on the guitar, in rapid-fire motion.
I remember watching Rock and Roll High School for the first time on TV, when I was 16, and I remember how deadly serious Johnny seemed. He hammered away at that axe, and he gave me hope. I saw what he was doing on the guitar-- it was the same thing I was doing, just playing some barre chords and strumming wildly as pockets of distortion blasted through squealing amplifiers.
I played guitar on a five-string piece-of-shit no-name electric that I bought for $50 when I was a teen. I used a 50 cent piece as a pick, and I scraped the fake metal off of the cheesy pick-ups within weeks of my purchase. I didn't know any chords-- I would run my index finger along the neck and simulate a barre chord, the missing high E string helping me complete the auditory illusion. My fingers weren't strong yet, I couldn't hold more than one note at a time.
But it didn't matter, because punk changed the game. You didn't have to be a Guitar Institute grad to learn how to play "Blitzkrieg Bop".
The Ramones were so cool, because they changed the world without having to bitch and moan about it. They just did what they wanted to do, and three decades later people are still trying to catch up to it. They seemed to love every minute of their careers, and their music has made me smile, laugh, cry, and pogo with reckless abandon countless times. Their music gave me the courage to go out and play music on my own, despite being about as good as a carton of year-old milk.
It wasn't about who you voted for or what kind of pedal effects you used-- it was about making music that didn't suck. Rock had become excessively fat, and The Ramones cut out all of the lard, made rock music into a lean and wiry beast that needed to be caged up lest it decimate everything in its path.
I wonder how the guys got along-- was it a hassle, or was it fun? A little of both, I suspect... and underlying everything was a love for music that moved you rather than merely entertaining you.
The Ramones didn't have to sell out or make a record to reach today's crop of kids. They did it their way, and that's what you'll hear in obituaries all over the world in the next week or so. Too bad that half the people who like punk msic now didn't like it when it first came out-- maybe if they'd been more accepting, then it only would've taken 15 years for punk music to win the battle.
And let's face it-- it was a battle. If you opted to "be yourself" then it meant opening yourself up to ther hostilities of less-understanding folk. Dyed hair, black attire and ripped jeans marked you as a weirdo, someone who needed to be dealt with in redneck quarters. To be punk meant knowing that you were a sitting duck, and that no one-- not even other punks --would help you out or take it easy on you.
Thank God I was never a punk-- I was weird in my own way. I wore homemade T-shirts that depicted a peace sign underscored by the word WAR; I had hair down to my shoulders but I didn't listen to hair metal; I listened to The Doors, N.W.A., and Dead Kennedys and liked them all equally. I was a punk in the sense that I didn;t give a fuck what you thought about me. I didn't wear Sid Vicious T-shirts, and I sneered at anyone who did.
Oh shit-- this post smacks of nostalgia...
No, never mind-- it's not nostalgic to recount how things used to be, especially if you like how things are now.
I mean, I've always known that The Ramones couldn't live forever, but it was fun pretending they could for as long as they lasted.
Man, these guys are too young to be dropping off like this. I though The Ramones-- The Beatles of the post-Boomer generation --would live forever. I though they would never die. Now there's only Tommy left, and he probably extended his life by being the first original member to leave the band, opting to help engineer and produce their albums instead.
Finding out that Johnny Ramone was a conservative is a strangely delightful discovery, because it nails on the head what I feel about punk rock, and why I always felt drawn to its primitive power.
Being a punk was not about having a 'hawk and wearing Doc Martens. Being a punk was not about studded leather jackets and a speed addiction. No, punk rock and being a punk was all about being yourself.
The Ramones had long hair, a no-no in many punk circles... didn't matter, they invented it for all intents and purposes. All of their idols wore their hair long, though: Iggy Pop, Roky Erikson, The Velvet Underground, The Sonics, The Beach Boys, and of course Phil Spector all had massive hairdos.
The Ramones were a bunch of leather-jacket-jeans-wearing longhairs from Queens... they definitely didn't come off as hippies, even if some of their musical tastes went along that line. They didn't care about politics, except for "Bonzo Goes To Bitburg", and obviously Johnny was a good enough sport to let Joey pull that tune off.
All that matters, though, is the fact that Johnny Ramone made it cool to not play jack-off guitar solos ever again. Johnny Ramone made it cool to care intensely about being in a band. Johnny Ramone made it cool to play nothing but downstrokes on the guitar, in rapid-fire motion.
I remember watching Rock and Roll High School for the first time on TV, when I was 16, and I remember how deadly serious Johnny seemed. He hammered away at that axe, and he gave me hope. I saw what he was doing on the guitar-- it was the same thing I was doing, just playing some barre chords and strumming wildly as pockets of distortion blasted through squealing amplifiers.
I played guitar on a five-string piece-of-shit no-name electric that I bought for $50 when I was a teen. I used a 50 cent piece as a pick, and I scraped the fake metal off of the cheesy pick-ups within weeks of my purchase. I didn't know any chords-- I would run my index finger along the neck and simulate a barre chord, the missing high E string helping me complete the auditory illusion. My fingers weren't strong yet, I couldn't hold more than one note at a time.
But it didn't matter, because punk changed the game. You didn't have to be a Guitar Institute grad to learn how to play "Blitzkrieg Bop".
The Ramones were so cool, because they changed the world without having to bitch and moan about it. They just did what they wanted to do, and three decades later people are still trying to catch up to it. They seemed to love every minute of their careers, and their music has made me smile, laugh, cry, and pogo with reckless abandon countless times. Their music gave me the courage to go out and play music on my own, despite being about as good as a carton of year-old milk.
It wasn't about who you voted for or what kind of pedal effects you used-- it was about making music that didn't suck. Rock had become excessively fat, and The Ramones cut out all of the lard, made rock music into a lean and wiry beast that needed to be caged up lest it decimate everything in its path.
I wonder how the guys got along-- was it a hassle, or was it fun? A little of both, I suspect... and underlying everything was a love for music that moved you rather than merely entertaining you.
The Ramones didn't have to sell out or make a record to reach today's crop of kids. They did it their way, and that's what you'll hear in obituaries all over the world in the next week or so. Too bad that half the people who like punk msic now didn't like it when it first came out-- maybe if they'd been more accepting, then it only would've taken 15 years for punk music to win the battle.
And let's face it-- it was a battle. If you opted to "be yourself" then it meant opening yourself up to ther hostilities of less-understanding folk. Dyed hair, black attire and ripped jeans marked you as a weirdo, someone who needed to be dealt with in redneck quarters. To be punk meant knowing that you were a sitting duck, and that no one-- not even other punks --would help you out or take it easy on you.
Thank God I was never a punk-- I was weird in my own way. I wore homemade T-shirts that depicted a peace sign underscored by the word WAR; I had hair down to my shoulders but I didn't listen to hair metal; I listened to The Doors, N.W.A., and Dead Kennedys and liked them all equally. I was a punk in the sense that I didn;t give a fuck what you thought about me. I didn't wear Sid Vicious T-shirts, and I sneered at anyone who did.
Oh shit-- this post smacks of nostalgia...
No, never mind-- it's not nostalgic to recount how things used to be, especially if you like how things are now.
I mean, I've always known that The Ramones couldn't live forever, but it was fun pretending they could for as long as they lasted.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
FIREWORKS
Watching video of footage of fireworks at The Garage yesterday, I was reminded of footage I've seen of combat in Iraq, both Persian Gulf and Enduring Freedom campaigns. Then the reason why Americans light fireworks for the Fourth of July hit me in a way that I haven't felt since I was 19 and discovered that people watch fireworks on their lawns if they live close to where they can be seen from the sky.
I always thought every family let off their own fireworks at home. And every year our Fourth was the same: barbecue, Twilight Zone marathon, mild arson, and morning-after clean-up duties. 1993 was the first year I celebrated the Fourth away from the homestead, and it shocked me when me and my friends were driving to Saugus to watch the display out there, and I looked at all these families out on their front lawns, staring at the sky, watching symbolic re-enactments of the battles that won our independence from the Brits.
It was one family after another, entire blocks standing around, looking like extras in an alien visitation movie. It was like a party, and you could see that people were making the rounds and saying "hi" to their neighbors and sharing drinks and letting their minds get swept away by the seductive squiggles of blazing powder, the punctuated pops, the fizzling embers dissipating into barely-visible cloud layers...
I realized, then, how insular my life was. 19 years had passed, and I didn't know that these things happened annually. I mean, I'm not that dense-- I've always known that no other countries celebrate our Fourth, for example... and let's face it, there are plenty of Americans who are shocked to learn this information. But my solipsistic way of thinking has often led me to moments like this, when I am faced with my own ignorance and shortness of scope.
I'd like to think that I am open-minded, and for the most part I am. But I know the truth, that I am petty and angry and sometimes hypercritical, and I do it all without raising my body temperature one Kelvin. I can be a cold-blooded sonofabitch, and that kind of gets in the way of personal enlightenment.
I sat there watching the footage, making the connection. "The Star-Spangled Banner", all that jazz about rockets red glare, bombs bursting in air, the whole nine... I imagined for a stoned moment that I was a Jamestown colonist watching from afar as muskets discharged and fires blazed into the night and cannons erupted, sending sparkling death-lanterns soaring across the air...
I then imagined that I was an embedded reporter, gathering images to be broadcast on the news, transmitting the aurora lights of battle carnage in such a way as to elicit not gasps and horror but "oohs" and "ahhhs".
I don't know why these images entered my mind, but I was so compelled to describe them in my blog later on that I scribbled the word FIREWORKS across my knuckles as a mnemonic device, to remind me lest I forget.
**
Here's some random silliness.
Despite my recent rants aganst nostalgia, I have been remembering some odd things I used to do when I was a kid.
Before I go further, let me say that the thing about nostalgia that bugs me is the schmaltz that so often goes into it. I have no qualm with revisiting the past to see how much (if any) progress I've made. I just don't like looking back on it like it was a much better time... because, really-- it wasn't.
Anyway, let me tell you about Butt-Rhymes.
My cousin Bobby invented it. Bobby and I were like best friends, because he was less than a year younger than me. Bobby grew up to be a tatooed gangster, but he will always be seen, in my mind, as the cousin with the girly laugh and a stranger sense of humor than I could ever imagine. People who don't know him are afraid of him, but all I see is a goofy kid who never really grew up.
One day, for no fucking apparent reason, he started ending all of his sentences with the word "butt" followed by a word or phrase that rhymed with the last word of the original sentence. So, for example, if he said "I'm going to the bathroom", he'd tack on a Butt-Rhyme (my eventual name for such a bizarre word game) in the manner of "butt-vacuum".
It's very addicting, especially if you were or are as immature as I was or am.
One of these days, I'm going to do an entire post filled with butt-rhymes, a sort of experiment that only I care about... butt-lout.
But until that day, I'm content to only use it once in a while... butt-style.
I never got around to asking Bobby where he got this fool notion, but after a while I found myself thinking of Butt-Rhymes obsessively, during class lectures and elsewhere. I told some friends about it, and at first they all thought it was pretty stupid... and then, weeks later, they couldn't stop doing it... butt-ruin it. Butt-pursuin' it. Butt-intuitive.
Oh yeah, I forgot some of the corollaries: you can riff on multiple Butt-Rhymes, if the moment strikes you and you're on a roll... butt-hole. Butt-rigamarole. Butt-mink stole. Butt-climb a pole.
Also: the object is to be clever, but sometimes Butt-Rhymes can be competitive. If two or more Butt-Rhymers are in a cipher, trading Butt-Rhymes back in forth, a sort-of duel can arise, where two Rhymers try to top each other. This is similar to going on a roll, except the two Rhymers take turns... butt-burns.
Ultimately, cleverness wins out. If one Butt-Rhymer feels that they cannot outdo a fellow Butt-Rhymer in "battle", then deference is gracefully given... butt-Jeremy Piven.
Here's an imaginary Butt-Rhyme duel, in case you're still lost:
BR#1: "Hey, what's up, dude? Butt-rude."
BR#2: "Butt-feud."
BR#1: "Butt-lewd."
BR#2: "Butt-in the nude."
BR#1: "Butt-Quaalude."
BR#2: "Butt-interlude."
BR#1: "Butt-snood."
BR#2: "Butt-'Hey Jude.'"
BR#1: "Butt-I'm not really in the mood."
BR#2: "Butt-screwed blued and tattooed."
BR#1: "Butt-it's pronounced 'Froyd' and not 'Frood.'"
BR#2: "Aww, man, I can't top that!"
BR#1: "Butt-bat."
BR#2: "Butt-scat."
And so it goes.
Don't bother telling me how asinine it is-- it's not like I have made a hobby out of this. However, when I was younger, I spent a lot of free time toying with this weird...game. And every time I introduce it, people get caught up in it... butt-minute.
I suggest you try it with a loved one. They're the only people who will put up with this kind of nonsense from you, so don't try it with strangers.
I always thought every family let off their own fireworks at home. And every year our Fourth was the same: barbecue, Twilight Zone marathon, mild arson, and morning-after clean-up duties. 1993 was the first year I celebrated the Fourth away from the homestead, and it shocked me when me and my friends were driving to Saugus to watch the display out there, and I looked at all these families out on their front lawns, staring at the sky, watching symbolic re-enactments of the battles that won our independence from the Brits.
It was one family after another, entire blocks standing around, looking like extras in an alien visitation movie. It was like a party, and you could see that people were making the rounds and saying "hi" to their neighbors and sharing drinks and letting their minds get swept away by the seductive squiggles of blazing powder, the punctuated pops, the fizzling embers dissipating into barely-visible cloud layers...
I realized, then, how insular my life was. 19 years had passed, and I didn't know that these things happened annually. I mean, I'm not that dense-- I've always known that no other countries celebrate our Fourth, for example... and let's face it, there are plenty of Americans who are shocked to learn this information. But my solipsistic way of thinking has often led me to moments like this, when I am faced with my own ignorance and shortness of scope.
I'd like to think that I am open-minded, and for the most part I am. But I know the truth, that I am petty and angry and sometimes hypercritical, and I do it all without raising my body temperature one Kelvin. I can be a cold-blooded sonofabitch, and that kind of gets in the way of personal enlightenment.
I sat there watching the footage, making the connection. "The Star-Spangled Banner", all that jazz about rockets red glare, bombs bursting in air, the whole nine... I imagined for a stoned moment that I was a Jamestown colonist watching from afar as muskets discharged and fires blazed into the night and cannons erupted, sending sparkling death-lanterns soaring across the air...
I then imagined that I was an embedded reporter, gathering images to be broadcast on the news, transmitting the aurora lights of battle carnage in such a way as to elicit not gasps and horror but "oohs" and "ahhhs".
I don't know why these images entered my mind, but I was so compelled to describe them in my blog later on that I scribbled the word FIREWORKS across my knuckles as a mnemonic device, to remind me lest I forget.
**
Here's some random silliness.
Despite my recent rants aganst nostalgia, I have been remembering some odd things I used to do when I was a kid.
Before I go further, let me say that the thing about nostalgia that bugs me is the schmaltz that so often goes into it. I have no qualm with revisiting the past to see how much (if any) progress I've made. I just don't like looking back on it like it was a much better time... because, really-- it wasn't.
Anyway, let me tell you about Butt-Rhymes.
My cousin Bobby invented it. Bobby and I were like best friends, because he was less than a year younger than me. Bobby grew up to be a tatooed gangster, but he will always be seen, in my mind, as the cousin with the girly laugh and a stranger sense of humor than I could ever imagine. People who don't know him are afraid of him, but all I see is a goofy kid who never really grew up.
One day, for no fucking apparent reason, he started ending all of his sentences with the word "butt" followed by a word or phrase that rhymed with the last word of the original sentence. So, for example, if he said "I'm going to the bathroom", he'd tack on a Butt-Rhyme (my eventual name for such a bizarre word game) in the manner of "butt-vacuum".
It's very addicting, especially if you were or are as immature as I was or am.
One of these days, I'm going to do an entire post filled with butt-rhymes, a sort of experiment that only I care about... butt-lout.
But until that day, I'm content to only use it once in a while... butt-style.
I never got around to asking Bobby where he got this fool notion, but after a while I found myself thinking of Butt-Rhymes obsessively, during class lectures and elsewhere. I told some friends about it, and at first they all thought it was pretty stupid... and then, weeks later, they couldn't stop doing it... butt-ruin it. Butt-pursuin' it. Butt-intuitive.
Oh yeah, I forgot some of the corollaries: you can riff on multiple Butt-Rhymes, if the moment strikes you and you're on a roll... butt-hole. Butt-rigamarole. Butt-mink stole. Butt-climb a pole.
Also: the object is to be clever, but sometimes Butt-Rhymes can be competitive. If two or more Butt-Rhymers are in a cipher, trading Butt-Rhymes back in forth, a sort-of duel can arise, where two Rhymers try to top each other. This is similar to going on a roll, except the two Rhymers take turns... butt-burns.
Ultimately, cleverness wins out. If one Butt-Rhymer feels that they cannot outdo a fellow Butt-Rhymer in "battle", then deference is gracefully given... butt-Jeremy Piven.
Here's an imaginary Butt-Rhyme duel, in case you're still lost:
BR#1: "Hey, what's up, dude? Butt-rude."
BR#2: "Butt-feud."
BR#1: "Butt-lewd."
BR#2: "Butt-in the nude."
BR#1: "Butt-Quaalude."
BR#2: "Butt-interlude."
BR#1: "Butt-snood."
BR#2: "Butt-'Hey Jude.'"
BR#1: "Butt-I'm not really in the mood."
BR#2: "Butt-screwed blued and tattooed."
BR#1: "Butt-it's pronounced 'Froyd' and not 'Frood.'"
BR#2: "Aww, man, I can't top that!"
BR#1: "Butt-bat."
BR#2: "Butt-scat."
And so it goes.
Don't bother telling me how asinine it is-- it's not like I have made a hobby out of this. However, when I was younger, I spent a lot of free time toying with this weird...game. And every time I introduce it, people get caught up in it... butt-minute.
I suggest you try it with a loved one. They're the only people who will put up with this kind of nonsense from you, so don't try it with strangers.
Monday, September 13, 2004
"PRURIOSITY"
I am holding in my hands a copy of a book entitled Slang and Euphemism, by one Richard A. Spears. This edition I picked up in a used bookstore for pennies on the dollar. It was printed in 1981, and I know that more current copies exist.
But I'm still completely fascinated by the book.
I like words. I especially like knowing the origins of certain words. Not all words-- I didn't learn Latin or any horseshit like that. If I confess to having a word jones, I guess it would help to learn Latin, but life is too short to waste on a dead language. English, the mongrel successor to so many previous and current languages, is alive and vibrant.
And slang is something that I have a deep interest in, simply because it is gutterspeak and dwells on the prurient. My curiosity for the prurient can be called "pruriosity", I suppose.
Oddly enough, the entries with the most listed synonyms are words like smockage or occupy. No shit-- running a close second are words that deal with the male and female genitalia, and drug nicknames as well... but occupy beats them all, with almost three pages of hysterical phrases and slang terms to describe the act of sexual inetrcourse. For that's what occupy meant during the 1400s to 1600s in America and the U.K.: fucking. It was impolite to say you were "occupying" someone or something.
Here's the entry as listed in the book:
occupy to coit a woman; to take sexual possession of a woman. This word was avoided in polite company during the period when it was used in this sense. The following synonyms and related terms refer to males or both males and females except as indicated. Both transitive and intransitive senses are included...
And then the motherfucker goes on for half the frickin' book, listing hundreds of like-minded words and phrases. Here's just a sampling:
BLOW OFF ON THE GROUNSILLS
BUZZ THE BRILLO
CHUCK A TREAD
DANCE THE BUTTOCK JIG
DANCE THE MARRIED MAN'S CATILLION
DANCE THE MATRIMONIAL POLKA
DO A BOTTOM-WETTER
DO A RUDENESS TO
FEED THE DUMB-GLUTTON
FOREGATHER
GET A BELLY FULL OF MARROW-PUDDING
GET A PAIR OF BALLS AGAINST ONE'S BUTT
GET HILT AND HAIR
GET HULLED BETWEEN WIND AND WATER
GET JACK IN THE ORCHARD
GET ONE'S LEATHER STRETCHED
GINICOMTWIG
GO BED-PRESSING
GO CUNNY-CATCHING
GO LIKE A BELT-FED MOTOR
GO LIKE A RAT UP A RHODODENDRON
GO TWAT-FAKING
HAVE A BIT OF CURLY GREENS
HAVE A BRUSH WITH THE CUE
HAVE A GAME IN THE COCK-LOFT
HAVE A NORTHWEST COCKTAIL
HAVE GIVEN PUSSY A TASTE OF CREAM
HAVE LIVE SAUSAGE FOR SUPPER
HORIZONTALIZE
LERICOMPOOP
LOSE THE MATCH AND POCKET THE STAKE
MAKE FEET FOR CHILDREN'S SHOES
MIX ONE'S PEANUT BUTTER
NOCKANDRO
PALLIARDIZE
PLAY AT COCK-IN-COVER
PLAY AT COUPLE-YOUR-NAVELS
PLAY AT ITCH-BUTTOCK
PLAY AT THE FIRST GAME EVER PLAYED
POCKET THE RED
RIDE BELOW THE CRUPPER
SHAKE A SKIN-COAT
STABLE-MY-NAGGIE
TAKE A TURN ON SHOOTER'S HILL
TAKE NEBUCHADNEZZAR OUT TO GRASS
VARNISH ONE'S CANE
WHAT MOTHER DID BEFORE ME
WORK THE HAIRY ORACLE
YENTZ
ZIG-ZAG
That was merely a small portion of the number of synonyms listed under occupy. And smockage was no different-- it is defined here as "chasing women; copulating with women; copulation" and dates back to the 1600s in Britain. Synonyms include such gems as "BLANKET HORNPIPE" "FOUR-LEGGED FROLIC" and "TWO-HANDED PUT".
Because it was published at the advent of the 1980s, many words that have since become associated with hip-hop and punk culture are missing, but some words that are now linked in people's minds as being "rap-related" were (surprise surprise!) around long before the first MCs took microphones up in their hands. One example: "ho" (spelled without the silent E) means what it means in most rap circles, and is designated as being heavily used in African-American communities as far back as the turn of the 20th Century.
It's like how people say Snoop Dogg invented that "izzle-shizzle" speak. Jazz players were using that slang as a code way back in the '20s and '30s. Frankie Smith had a hit song out around the time this edition of the slang tome came out; the song was called "Double Dutch Bus" and was sang almost entirely in "izzle-shizzle" speak.
But most people prefer to think that Snoop made it all up. And Snoop doesn't really try to educate people on that point, as if he is content to let people assume that he is the newest in cutting-edge linguists. I mean, Snoop got game, but he didn't make up no fuckin' language. He added to rap's vocabulary-- but he didn't make up no fuckin' language. Snoop has gone platinum many times over... but he didn't make up no fuckin' language...
Anyway, despite being outdated, this book has been keeping me in stitches for the better part of the last 24 hours. I will never wait in line at a Port-A-Pottie in quite the same manner ever gain, because I will smirk whenever the OCCUPIED sign comes up on the door.
**
All weekend I've been having vivid dreams involving ex-girlfriends. I wonder if they are sending me messages across the astral plane, messages telling me to stop thinking of them as I slumber. Maybe they want to be left alone, and tire of having to purge me from their mind constantly. But it is I who requests asylum from this psychic nocturnal onslaught.
I know that I am on their minds often, because when I run into them on the street or somewhere neutral, they don't seem very surprised to see me. They have a look on their faces like they are sick of seeing my ugly mug in their nightmares, in their daydreams. I have that effect on people-- either you never remember me, or you never forget me. There is no in-between. I demand nothing more or less than the opportunity to haunt you for a lifetime.
To get me back, these women torture me in my dreams, the only time when I have no psychic barriers erected, when my true emotions and feelings are revealed, when I have no defenses and I am vulnerable. They invade my sleep, and whisper terribly erotic aphorisms in my dream ear, as I float around like a mad Mary and lose all semblance of restraint and calm.
In my dreams, they forgive me, they take me back, they admit they were sorry, they admit that they wronged me, they confess that it was all their fault, and if I could only lend an ounce-- no, even a small gram --of mercy upon them, then it would all be better...
I awaken from these dreams, laughing at myself for having the gall to even conjure up such ludricous imagery. Of course, it was I who broke the trusts, it was I who ended the games before they evolved into deeper bonds, it was I who sabotaged the whole affair so that I could walk away and not feel fettered by unrealistic hopes and expectations...
Well, now I'm exaggerating. I wasn't that much of a cad...
Still, I keep having these visions in my sleep, visions of former lovers wagging their fingers at me, telling me that if I don't try to mend my ways now, I'll live the rest of my life in lonely exile, unsatisfied and unloved. But it's my dream, occurring inside my very own head, and what's more, I know this to be true. Thus, I cannot take the dreams seriously, because it's how I feel about myself and the shitty way I treat people who have half an interest in me. It has nothing to do with what my exes actually feel about me.
It is my perception of what I think they feel about me.
I remember Vera. Junior year, first real relationship that didn't have any of the adolescent drama that the average person tries to stir up... When we broke up, I thought she hated me. Years later, in Manhatten, New York, on the corner of 33rd and 3rd, I met up with her again, and she told me that it took her five years to get over me. Five years.
Five years.
That blew me away.
Five years.
In all of that time, if only I'd not been so hard on myself, I could've picked up where I'd left off with her, and maybe we could've made it work...
Yeah, right.
Who am I fooling?
The past is past, and no amount of dreaming is going to get me to look back on those times with the obligatory rose-colored specs.
I don't want to be afflicted with the Nostalgia disease, the one that makes fools of us and drives us to our knees, the one that traps us wholly, as we slowly freeze, as we let imagination fly high on the breeze, as we mutter to ourselves "Oh please God let me somehow get myself free of this glamorized look at my past, a perspective that if I am not careful will outlast me..."
That's all I ask-- to be left alone, to face the future without regrets.
That's all I ask, ladies... now let me sleep.
But I'm still completely fascinated by the book.
I like words. I especially like knowing the origins of certain words. Not all words-- I didn't learn Latin or any horseshit like that. If I confess to having a word jones, I guess it would help to learn Latin, but life is too short to waste on a dead language. English, the mongrel successor to so many previous and current languages, is alive and vibrant.
And slang is something that I have a deep interest in, simply because it is gutterspeak and dwells on the prurient. My curiosity for the prurient can be called "pruriosity", I suppose.
Oddly enough, the entries with the most listed synonyms are words like smockage or occupy. No shit-- running a close second are words that deal with the male and female genitalia, and drug nicknames as well... but occupy beats them all, with almost three pages of hysterical phrases and slang terms to describe the act of sexual inetrcourse. For that's what occupy meant during the 1400s to 1600s in America and the U.K.: fucking. It was impolite to say you were "occupying" someone or something.
Here's the entry as listed in the book:
occupy to coit a woman; to take sexual possession of a woman. This word was avoided in polite company during the period when it was used in this sense. The following synonyms and related terms refer to males or both males and females except as indicated. Both transitive and intransitive senses are included...
And then the motherfucker goes on for half the frickin' book, listing hundreds of like-minded words and phrases. Here's just a sampling:
BLOW OFF ON THE GROUNSILLS
BUZZ THE BRILLO
CHUCK A TREAD
DANCE THE BUTTOCK JIG
DANCE THE MARRIED MAN'S CATILLION
DANCE THE MATRIMONIAL POLKA
DO A BOTTOM-WETTER
DO A RUDENESS TO
FEED THE DUMB-GLUTTON
FOREGATHER
GET A BELLY FULL OF MARROW-PUDDING
GET A PAIR OF BALLS AGAINST ONE'S BUTT
GET HILT AND HAIR
GET HULLED BETWEEN WIND AND WATER
GET JACK IN THE ORCHARD
GET ONE'S LEATHER STRETCHED
GINICOMTWIG
GO BED-PRESSING
GO CUNNY-CATCHING
GO LIKE A BELT-FED MOTOR
GO LIKE A RAT UP A RHODODENDRON
GO TWAT-FAKING
HAVE A BIT OF CURLY GREENS
HAVE A BRUSH WITH THE CUE
HAVE A GAME IN THE COCK-LOFT
HAVE A NORTHWEST COCKTAIL
HAVE GIVEN PUSSY A TASTE OF CREAM
HAVE LIVE SAUSAGE FOR SUPPER
HORIZONTALIZE
LERICOMPOOP
LOSE THE MATCH AND POCKET THE STAKE
MAKE FEET FOR CHILDREN'S SHOES
MIX ONE'S PEANUT BUTTER
NOCKANDRO
PALLIARDIZE
PLAY AT COCK-IN-COVER
PLAY AT COUPLE-YOUR-NAVELS
PLAY AT ITCH-BUTTOCK
PLAY AT THE FIRST GAME EVER PLAYED
POCKET THE RED
RIDE BELOW THE CRUPPER
SHAKE A SKIN-COAT
STABLE-MY-NAGGIE
TAKE A TURN ON SHOOTER'S HILL
TAKE NEBUCHADNEZZAR OUT TO GRASS
VARNISH ONE'S CANE
WHAT MOTHER DID BEFORE ME
WORK THE HAIRY ORACLE
YENTZ
ZIG-ZAG
That was merely a small portion of the number of synonyms listed under occupy. And smockage was no different-- it is defined here as "chasing women; copulating with women; copulation" and dates back to the 1600s in Britain. Synonyms include such gems as "BLANKET HORNPIPE" "FOUR-LEGGED FROLIC" and "TWO-HANDED PUT".
Because it was published at the advent of the 1980s, many words that have since become associated with hip-hop and punk culture are missing, but some words that are now linked in people's minds as being "rap-related" were (surprise surprise!) around long before the first MCs took microphones up in their hands. One example: "ho" (spelled without the silent E) means what it means in most rap circles, and is designated as being heavily used in African-American communities as far back as the turn of the 20th Century.
It's like how people say Snoop Dogg invented that "izzle-shizzle" speak. Jazz players were using that slang as a code way back in the '20s and '30s. Frankie Smith had a hit song out around the time this edition of the slang tome came out; the song was called "Double Dutch Bus" and was sang almost entirely in "izzle-shizzle" speak.
But most people prefer to think that Snoop made it all up. And Snoop doesn't really try to educate people on that point, as if he is content to let people assume that he is the newest in cutting-edge linguists. I mean, Snoop got game, but he didn't make up no fuckin' language. He added to rap's vocabulary-- but he didn't make up no fuckin' language. Snoop has gone platinum many times over... but he didn't make up no fuckin' language...
Anyway, despite being outdated, this book has been keeping me in stitches for the better part of the last 24 hours. I will never wait in line at a Port-A-Pottie in quite the same manner ever gain, because I will smirk whenever the OCCUPIED sign comes up on the door.
**
All weekend I've been having vivid dreams involving ex-girlfriends. I wonder if they are sending me messages across the astral plane, messages telling me to stop thinking of them as I slumber. Maybe they want to be left alone, and tire of having to purge me from their mind constantly. But it is I who requests asylum from this psychic nocturnal onslaught.
I know that I am on their minds often, because when I run into them on the street or somewhere neutral, they don't seem very surprised to see me. They have a look on their faces like they are sick of seeing my ugly mug in their nightmares, in their daydreams. I have that effect on people-- either you never remember me, or you never forget me. There is no in-between. I demand nothing more or less than the opportunity to haunt you for a lifetime.
To get me back, these women torture me in my dreams, the only time when I have no psychic barriers erected, when my true emotions and feelings are revealed, when I have no defenses and I am vulnerable. They invade my sleep, and whisper terribly erotic aphorisms in my dream ear, as I float around like a mad Mary and lose all semblance of restraint and calm.
In my dreams, they forgive me, they take me back, they admit they were sorry, they admit that they wronged me, they confess that it was all their fault, and if I could only lend an ounce-- no, even a small gram --of mercy upon them, then it would all be better...
I awaken from these dreams, laughing at myself for having the gall to even conjure up such ludricous imagery. Of course, it was I who broke the trusts, it was I who ended the games before they evolved into deeper bonds, it was I who sabotaged the whole affair so that I could walk away and not feel fettered by unrealistic hopes and expectations...
Well, now I'm exaggerating. I wasn't that much of a cad...
Still, I keep having these visions in my sleep, visions of former lovers wagging their fingers at me, telling me that if I don't try to mend my ways now, I'll live the rest of my life in lonely exile, unsatisfied and unloved. But it's my dream, occurring inside my very own head, and what's more, I know this to be true. Thus, I cannot take the dreams seriously, because it's how I feel about myself and the shitty way I treat people who have half an interest in me. It has nothing to do with what my exes actually feel about me.
It is my perception of what I think they feel about me.
I remember Vera. Junior year, first real relationship that didn't have any of the adolescent drama that the average person tries to stir up... When we broke up, I thought she hated me. Years later, in Manhatten, New York, on the corner of 33rd and 3rd, I met up with her again, and she told me that it took her five years to get over me. Five years.
Five years.
That blew me away.
Five years.
In all of that time, if only I'd not been so hard on myself, I could've picked up where I'd left off with her, and maybe we could've made it work...
Yeah, right.
Who am I fooling?
The past is past, and no amount of dreaming is going to get me to look back on those times with the obligatory rose-colored specs.
I don't want to be afflicted with the Nostalgia disease, the one that makes fools of us and drives us to our knees, the one that traps us wholly, as we slowly freeze, as we let imagination fly high on the breeze, as we mutter to ourselves "Oh please God let me somehow get myself free of this glamorized look at my past, a perspective that if I am not careful will outlast me..."
That's all I ask-- to be left alone, to face the future without regrets.
That's all I ask, ladies... now let me sleep.
Friday, September 10, 2004
EXPLOITATION
Ironically, almost a full year afterwards, the people at www.exploitingeve.com have finally posted a story culled from my now-defunct Archives.
Here's the link.
Oddly enough, they copied my old template and everything!
Enjoy.
Here's the link.
Oddly enough, they copied my old template and everything!
Enjoy.
I LOVE YOU MARY JANE
A short history of my psyche:
When I was born I was prone to seizures. To combat this, my physician placed me, an infant, on phenobarbital. I was on this addicitive concoction until age five, when I was slowly weaned off of the stuff.
This explains my preference for drugs, especially psychedelics. I spent the years between my infancy and my first pot experiences wondering what the fuck was wrong with me. Why was my vision of the world so markedly different from that of my family and friends? What made me such a freak? What could fill the void, and explain the mysteries of nature to me in a way that I could truly understand?
My first acid trip was at age nineteen, and the remarkable thing about it was how familiar it all seemed, like I'd done it before. A warm feeling of deja vu overcame me, and I was not afraid of the hallucinations that manifested themselves to me during my trip. It was as if I'd been waiting my whole life to interpret these symbols, to divine their meanings.
Lately I've been smoking more pot than normal. This is due to working with the likes of Purple Paulie, who is an enthusiast. Today, when I get off of work, I'm going to see what happens if I cut down on my intake.
It's been over a decade since I first tried pot, and the conclusions I've reached are far from extraordinary.
1. Pot is good for the appetite.
2. Pot is good for making you sleep.
3. Pot is great for cases of nerves.
4. Pot temporarily fixes a broken heart.
5. Pot sometimes eases a stressed-out soul.
I like smoking pot. I like the sensation of my mind flooding with a whirlpool eddy of ideas, sparkling ripples of thought swirling incessantly, rootless and active. I like the euphoria, the childish smile that is carved out on my face when I am high.
I don't drink. I don't shoot hard drugs into my veins. I hate "uppers" like speed. I have allowed cocaine here and there, but marijuana is my first and only love. I haven't dropped 'cid in almost ten years, but I still occasionally eat 'shrooms and take some potent E, although with the latter I only indulge once in a blue moon.
Do I embrace the marijuana high as an escape? No, I don't think pot is a very good drug if escape is what you seek. Heroin seems to me like the true escape drug. I have smoked opium but never shot smoked or snorted heroin, and I figure it's just as well, because I think I could really get to liking that shit.
Do I embrace marijuana to cope with my mental scars? Sure, why not? I mean, I don't smoke every time I dwell on my fucked-up-ness, but maybe I should. Would it kill me to use pot as therapy? I already use writing as therapy, so I guess while it wouldn't kill me, it also wouldn't really help me all that much. I get better results from being stone cold sober in front of a typewriter or a keyboard.
What is it about the marijuana high that comforts me? The insularity of the high is an attractive quality. I feel 'safe' when I am high off weed. I feel secure, like I don't give a fuck... if I already see through people when I'm clean, then being high makes me feel like everyone is opaque. I am more attuned to searching someone else's soul, my eyes scan more intensely, I make better deductions when my logical brain half is stunted and my intuition is allowed free reign.
Smoking pot puts me in touch with my instincts, the ones that get buried by societal norms, the ones that people tend to cover up for fear of being seen as a weirdo or, worse, an artist!
Smoking pot doesn't make me a better person, not by a long shot. But it does help me keep my priorities straight. It keeps me humble, keeps me in sync with the rest of the universe, keeps my path solid and my steps stable.
I approach it sometimes with religious fervor, and sometimes I just smoke absent-mindedly, forgetting that only fifteen minutes earlier I had toked a bowl and cannot get any higher than I already am.
Judging from my dedication to the herb, you'd think that I worship Ja. I should convert to Rastafarianism, that seems like a train off thought I could subscribe to. Haille Selassie a prophet? Okay. Sure. Whatever you say... now pass the dutchie.
Whatever the reasons I have for my drug use/abuse, I think that I keep it in check. I don't allow my indulgences in pot mark who I am as a person. My image is that of a normal Joe, who doesn't stand out, who sort of blends into the scenery. This is a far more subversive tack to take, because it allows me access to people and situations that I would be denied if I styled my hair with dreadlocks and wore tie-dye tees.
When people find out that I am a stoner, they are surprised. Even more surprising to them is when they discover that I'm high at that moment, as they are speaking with me. I hide it well, because of my natural predisposition to come off as if I know something that you don't know. I am the Keeper of Secrets in the eyes of many, and what's satisfying to me personally is that I have no secrets to keep-- it's all an open book waiting to be written down.
Pot won't kill me. I'll die from cigarette-related causes way before I ever come down with anything as a result of doobie-snacking. I am resigned to possibly getting cancer-- I don't look forward to it, but I am resigned to it anyway. I am also more likely to develop diabetes than I am to develop any kind of pot-related malady.
I figure that I'll probably smoke pot until I get tired of it, and even then I'll probably just switch to eating it instead of smoking it. I could learn some recipes. I already have this quick recipe for pot hors d'oevres Tim Leary style: take a bud, place it on a small island of cheese and stack it atop a Ritz cracker; microwave for ten seconds; then eat. It's chewy, tasty, and gets you mad high.
Come 4:20 AM, I will be smoking a bowl in my car, waiting for the shift to pass uneventfully. Then, when eight hours have run through my life effortlessly, my weekend begins.
And I will see you next week. Take care.
When I was born I was prone to seizures. To combat this, my physician placed me, an infant, on phenobarbital. I was on this addicitive concoction until age five, when I was slowly weaned off of the stuff.
This explains my preference for drugs, especially psychedelics. I spent the years between my infancy and my first pot experiences wondering what the fuck was wrong with me. Why was my vision of the world so markedly different from that of my family and friends? What made me such a freak? What could fill the void, and explain the mysteries of nature to me in a way that I could truly understand?
My first acid trip was at age nineteen, and the remarkable thing about it was how familiar it all seemed, like I'd done it before. A warm feeling of deja vu overcame me, and I was not afraid of the hallucinations that manifested themselves to me during my trip. It was as if I'd been waiting my whole life to interpret these symbols, to divine their meanings.
Lately I've been smoking more pot than normal. This is due to working with the likes of Purple Paulie, who is an enthusiast. Today, when I get off of work, I'm going to see what happens if I cut down on my intake.
It's been over a decade since I first tried pot, and the conclusions I've reached are far from extraordinary.
1. Pot is good for the appetite.
2. Pot is good for making you sleep.
3. Pot is great for cases of nerves.
4. Pot temporarily fixes a broken heart.
5. Pot sometimes eases a stressed-out soul.
I like smoking pot. I like the sensation of my mind flooding with a whirlpool eddy of ideas, sparkling ripples of thought swirling incessantly, rootless and active. I like the euphoria, the childish smile that is carved out on my face when I am high.
I don't drink. I don't shoot hard drugs into my veins. I hate "uppers" like speed. I have allowed cocaine here and there, but marijuana is my first and only love. I haven't dropped 'cid in almost ten years, but I still occasionally eat 'shrooms and take some potent E, although with the latter I only indulge once in a blue moon.
Do I embrace the marijuana high as an escape? No, I don't think pot is a very good drug if escape is what you seek. Heroin seems to me like the true escape drug. I have smoked opium but never shot smoked or snorted heroin, and I figure it's just as well, because I think I could really get to liking that shit.
Do I embrace marijuana to cope with my mental scars? Sure, why not? I mean, I don't smoke every time I dwell on my fucked-up-ness, but maybe I should. Would it kill me to use pot as therapy? I already use writing as therapy, so I guess while it wouldn't kill me, it also wouldn't really help me all that much. I get better results from being stone cold sober in front of a typewriter or a keyboard.
What is it about the marijuana high that comforts me? The insularity of the high is an attractive quality. I feel 'safe' when I am high off weed. I feel secure, like I don't give a fuck... if I already see through people when I'm clean, then being high makes me feel like everyone is opaque. I am more attuned to searching someone else's soul, my eyes scan more intensely, I make better deductions when my logical brain half is stunted and my intuition is allowed free reign.
Smoking pot puts me in touch with my instincts, the ones that get buried by societal norms, the ones that people tend to cover up for fear of being seen as a weirdo or, worse, an artist!
Smoking pot doesn't make me a better person, not by a long shot. But it does help me keep my priorities straight. It keeps me humble, keeps me in sync with the rest of the universe, keeps my path solid and my steps stable.
I approach it sometimes with religious fervor, and sometimes I just smoke absent-mindedly, forgetting that only fifteen minutes earlier I had toked a bowl and cannot get any higher than I already am.
Judging from my dedication to the herb, you'd think that I worship Ja. I should convert to Rastafarianism, that seems like a train off thought I could subscribe to. Haille Selassie a prophet? Okay. Sure. Whatever you say... now pass the dutchie.
Whatever the reasons I have for my drug use/abuse, I think that I keep it in check. I don't allow my indulgences in pot mark who I am as a person. My image is that of a normal Joe, who doesn't stand out, who sort of blends into the scenery. This is a far more subversive tack to take, because it allows me access to people and situations that I would be denied if I styled my hair with dreadlocks and wore tie-dye tees.
When people find out that I am a stoner, they are surprised. Even more surprising to them is when they discover that I'm high at that moment, as they are speaking with me. I hide it well, because of my natural predisposition to come off as if I know something that you don't know. I am the Keeper of Secrets in the eyes of many, and what's satisfying to me personally is that I have no secrets to keep-- it's all an open book waiting to be written down.
Pot won't kill me. I'll die from cigarette-related causes way before I ever come down with anything as a result of doobie-snacking. I am resigned to possibly getting cancer-- I don't look forward to it, but I am resigned to it anyway. I am also more likely to develop diabetes than I am to develop any kind of pot-related malady.
I figure that I'll probably smoke pot until I get tired of it, and even then I'll probably just switch to eating it instead of smoking it. I could learn some recipes. I already have this quick recipe for pot hors d'oevres Tim Leary style: take a bud, place it on a small island of cheese and stack it atop a Ritz cracker; microwave for ten seconds; then eat. It's chewy, tasty, and gets you mad high.
Come 4:20 AM, I will be smoking a bowl in my car, waiting for the shift to pass uneventfully. Then, when eight hours have run through my life effortlessly, my weekend begins.
And I will see you next week. Take care.
Thursday, September 09, 2004
MY ARCHIVES ARE GONE
I'm not lying.
They are gone. I wrestled with the Blogger beast last night, trying to figure out some things. I guess I didn't really have them all saved elsewhere when I deleted them... so now they're gone.
Good riddance.
Half a million words, in two years' time... and I hated all of it. I can't tell you how liberating it feels right now, to be rid of all of that.
I should be sad. I should be upset and angry at myself for losing all of that work.
But I'm not.
However, I didn't intend to lose my Archives. I didn't chuck them due to self-destructive tendencies... I really thought I had them saved when I deleted everything, in an attempt to start anew with a whole new template.
The links and other stuff are still here. That's cool. And don't worry about me-- I'll be writing up a storm in no time, re-stocking my Archives with fresh new material.
I think, subconsciously, it had been bothering me for some time, the notion of keeping all of this crap online, useless posts and futile attempts at community from the likes of me.
Maybe deep down inside, I wanted to destroy those Archives. Maybe my conscious mind wouldn't hear anything of the sort.
Either way, none of it was worth saving. Moving residences four times in two years has taught me the value of certain things. I keep my notebooks, my handwritten pages, things like that...
Computer blogs? Let them rot in cyberspace, in the "blog-o-sphere"...
I suppose that, if I ever found my Archives somewhere, I'd be a little happy. But really, it's better this way.
Really.
What better way to start anew, with a fresh pallette?
It's one thing to stop blogging-- that's easy. But to jettison the bulk of the Archives? And keep on going? Unthinkable.
Of course, it wasn't intentional... but it reminds me of my younger days, when I used to burn my papers when I was sick of the sight of them.
That's the only kind of nostalgia I dig, the kind that gets burned to a crisp.
It was two years ago this month that I started blogging. What was I, two years ago? On the verge of losing my job; riddled with pain thanks to a bruised tailbone; depressed and living with Down Low, months away from the ultimate humiliation of having to go back home; nothing creative going on...
And now? It's like I am a new person. I have my own place, my own vehicle, a good job, creative activities keeping me busy, and my confidence has been restored.
Blogging helped me through a terrible time in my life, and now that I am past it, I'd like to dedicate the rest of my blogging to new heights to scale, different perspectives to take.
Rejuvenation is the name of the game.
We played our last gig, Holly and Mikey and I. No misty eyes here. Bridget from Grass Under Bare Feet showed up-- thanks Bridget.
It's funny-- a while back I printed up the first six episodes of the DEJA VU chronicles, so at least THAT's still around. That was the one thing I was the most proud of, I guess. I mean, I liked it enough to print it up and all...
But it's over now, that whole episode of my life. It's run its course.
And soon she will be gone.
Autumn signals The Fall, the harvest of what we have sown. Blogging breeds nothing, therefore it is fitting that I am left with nothing as this new harvest moon overtakes us.
"When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose..."
--Bob Dylan
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose..."
--Janis Joplin
I still have my other blogs, the ones that I neglect. I still have my novel, frozen in half-finished time as it is. I still have this blog, although the records of the numerous daily posts that got me here are missing in action.
Boo fucking hoo.
It was getting stale.
Here's to a new template, symbolizing a new value system and a new way of looking at things.
Here's to The Future...
They are gone. I wrestled with the Blogger beast last night, trying to figure out some things. I guess I didn't really have them all saved elsewhere when I deleted them... so now they're gone.
Good riddance.
Half a million words, in two years' time... and I hated all of it. I can't tell you how liberating it feels right now, to be rid of all of that.
I should be sad. I should be upset and angry at myself for losing all of that work.
But I'm not.
However, I didn't intend to lose my Archives. I didn't chuck them due to self-destructive tendencies... I really thought I had them saved when I deleted everything, in an attempt to start anew with a whole new template.
The links and other stuff are still here. That's cool. And don't worry about me-- I'll be writing up a storm in no time, re-stocking my Archives with fresh new material.
I think, subconsciously, it had been bothering me for some time, the notion of keeping all of this crap online, useless posts and futile attempts at community from the likes of me.
Maybe deep down inside, I wanted to destroy those Archives. Maybe my conscious mind wouldn't hear anything of the sort.
Either way, none of it was worth saving. Moving residences four times in two years has taught me the value of certain things. I keep my notebooks, my handwritten pages, things like that...
Computer blogs? Let them rot in cyberspace, in the "blog-o-sphere"...
I suppose that, if I ever found my Archives somewhere, I'd be a little happy. But really, it's better this way.
Really.
What better way to start anew, with a fresh pallette?
It's one thing to stop blogging-- that's easy. But to jettison the bulk of the Archives? And keep on going? Unthinkable.
Of course, it wasn't intentional... but it reminds me of my younger days, when I used to burn my papers when I was sick of the sight of them.
That's the only kind of nostalgia I dig, the kind that gets burned to a crisp.
It was two years ago this month that I started blogging. What was I, two years ago? On the verge of losing my job; riddled with pain thanks to a bruised tailbone; depressed and living with Down Low, months away from the ultimate humiliation of having to go back home; nothing creative going on...
And now? It's like I am a new person. I have my own place, my own vehicle, a good job, creative activities keeping me busy, and my confidence has been restored.
Blogging helped me through a terrible time in my life, and now that I am past it, I'd like to dedicate the rest of my blogging to new heights to scale, different perspectives to take.
Rejuvenation is the name of the game.
We played our last gig, Holly and Mikey and I. No misty eyes here. Bridget from Grass Under Bare Feet showed up-- thanks Bridget.
It's funny-- a while back I printed up the first six episodes of the DEJA VU chronicles, so at least THAT's still around. That was the one thing I was the most proud of, I guess. I mean, I liked it enough to print it up and all...
But it's over now, that whole episode of my life. It's run its course.
And soon she will be gone.
Autumn signals The Fall, the harvest of what we have sown. Blogging breeds nothing, therefore it is fitting that I am left with nothing as this new harvest moon overtakes us.
"When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose..."
--Bob Dylan
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose..."
--Janis Joplin
I still have my other blogs, the ones that I neglect. I still have my novel, frozen in half-finished time as it is. I still have this blog, although the records of the numerous daily posts that got me here are missing in action.
Boo fucking hoo.
It was getting stale.
Here's to a new template, symbolizing a new value system and a new way of looking at things.
Here's to The Future...
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