post-war fundamentalism.

never in physical action had i discovered
the chilling satisfaction of words.
never in words had i experienced the hot darkness of action.
somewhere there must be a higher principle
which reconciles art and action.
- mishima

a fall weekday, 3-4:30p.

(also purchased three records today:
horseback's impale golden horn,
sailors with wax wings' self titled, &
grails' deep politics.)
[droneisin]

kihlsuhn.

i took a chance on a new artist earlier today based solely on the photograph provided to advertise the upcoming show. the photo is not the one above. silje nes is categorized as "electronic" but i can't really see the commitment to that particular genre, though it's rare that labels fully make sense anymore. pretty happy with the purchase, definitely suits a need for the melancholy, background skyrocket of particular writing days. you can check out a track from the record opticks over here. i find that without taking risks on a lot of bands going forward, i'm not going to find anything new or interesting worth hunting for.

also, i randomly did 10 clicks on the randomized "next blog" train on blogger. here's what i found:

- poems by a priest.
- a family blog
- a christian watching her child grow up
- a spiritual journey by a pastor
- QUOTE. life iz whaz up... END QUOTE. for real. but another christian blog.
- a christian blog by a priest/fireman
- a christian blog
- a family's travel log, wherein they move to argentina... to found a church
- INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE CREATIVE ARTS IN INTERDISCIPLINARY PRACTICE ADVISORY BOARD
- and what seems like a minimalist blog by a minimalist woman writing in her own corner of the web for little to no reason. a post, in full, goes as follows:

So Ray is now recovering from a broken rib in his back, which punctured his lung in an unfortunate altercation(scuffle) with a patio table. I think Ray won,as the table is a goner and Ray is still alive to tell his side of the story. He's in pain but the doc gave him some good painkillers so he'll at least sleep lots while he's waiting to heal.There goes golf season.

it's always interesting to see who else is out there. am i doing it right. is there a point to blogging vs. webmastering. should i start separate blogs for separate themes. are there hypotheses i'm solving for in every post. so on and so forth. i have literally been blogging since before it was blogging sometime in the ninth grade, keeping an almost daily account of what i was up to, to then breaking down stuff going on in classes, to a college breakdown, to a music blog, to a full music website, and then pretty much back around to this. i get curious what makes me think something is worth sharing, or not sharing. where the filter lies, where the eager sharing voice speaks up.

i wonder how someone finding my blog on a random Next Blog clicking spree would describe my blog in a 4-8 word summary splatter. and would they read through just a piece or a month or a page? would they ever come back? what validates something like that? what am i looking for?

intentional massive.

above is a letter from bruce lee. it reads as follows:

I, Bruce Lee, will be the first highest paid Oriental super star in the United States. In return I will give the most exciting performances and render the best of quality in the capacity of an actor. Starting 1970 I will achieve world fame and from then onward till the end of 1980 I will have in my possession $10,000,000. I will live the way I please and achieve inner harmony and happiness.

that is how you set a fucking goal. i think currently, i have no goals or end points. no directed ambition, no target, no vaulting point. it's something i feel like i might have to start aligning myself with. i've essentially set some personal pieces of improvement i'd like to hit, and some general morals and values i'd like to stick by regularly. but there's nothing i'm aiming for, nothing that calls me back to the track. the last thing i can think of that was a set goal was the nanowrimo writing goal, and i fell off pretty quickly with it. i think setting and sticking to goals is something that ends up being a learned behavior as opposed to something you can just set for yourself and expect to follow. if everything becomes a plan, if everything becomes goal-oriented, i think you start to do your own microtracking, your own follow-ups on yourself.

if i wanted to lose thirty pounds in three months, i couldn't just set it and expect for it to all wind up okay because i've set it up in such a way. i wouldn't realize, at first, that if i didn't lose ten pounds by one month, i'd have to realign my plan to accelerate in the next. it's just a cloud goal i'd have, and by trying to make it all happen by the end date, the whole process would become a maelstrom of trying too hard or giving up altogether.

so when i say i'd like to have one writing project finished a month, i'm not going to be good at coaching myself, at maintaining the course, and doing the small check-ups that i'll have to do to ensure it all works out. and i think i'd like to get more into that practice, or at the very least, start HAVING a goal to aim towards so i can relate to a failure/success paradigm.

also.
shows coming up:
- omar rodriguez lopez on march 29.
- sidefires april 7.
- fairweather reunion on may 14th. [possibly most important show of my life thus far]
- portugal. the man on june 3rd.
- earth on june 16th.

and, um.
to kind of wrap this all up, here's a majorly appropos video.

a new beginning for ecosystems.

this is the most informative and the video that translated the situation to me most accurately. i've seen most of the others. this one actually has those moments of "i was JUST standing there" that have been time lapsed or more pulled back in other videos. this one screams authenticity.

volume, and damn the siren.

topographic analysis.

that
is
all.

urkenheuim hotel.

for the first time in what seems like years, but could just be months, i've been able to take multiple days off and call it a 'vacation'. i've known about it for a while, but didn't book a trip anywhere. there were a few concepts i'd had but one of them is nothing but brash begging for disappointment, one was something i'd wanted to save for a friend and i which didn't work out, and the last requires a car for multiple days, something i'm not currently able to acquire. so it's just me and the world here, brooklyn and long island. all the missed and ignored media i've had for months. some writing i've done. some thought lines to unravel. performing, essentially, what the body does during sleep. the kind of maintenance that requires little effort but sets all the pieces into regiments. defragging.

the first day of my 'vacation', though, saw me at a hospital for a decent portion of the day as my mother was having some respiratory issues. she's a heavy smoker, super serious about the addiction, really fairly major part of her character, and it's starting to catch up to her. it's sad to watch all the things you hear about in books and commercials and television and knowledge in general being acted out directly in front of you as opposed to diagnoses and diagrams and stock footage. while she was in with the doctors getting a ton of tests and what not, she told me i could take her car and go do something else, go home, etc.

i went record shopping. picked up the new lupe fiasco, the new get up kids, radiohead's kid a, minus the bear's omni, a record by sunn0))), and liquid swords by GZA. sick pull. a week prior i'd picked up this is hell's weight of the world, the new earth record, glos' harmonium and the recently disbanded depreciation guild's spirit youth. i think i posted last week about wanting to have a collection to be proud of, etc. i guess that's something that constantly changes with your taste and your growth, but these records all seem to be solid solid pulls. i have two boxes of CDs that i have to go through to see what are actually pieces i still want in there. needless to say, i spent a ton of time with all of those. the new lupe record, lasers, is going to be massive. i'm trying to get as many plays through it as i can before it becomes ubiquitous. though lately, i'm very much barred from all of the outside influence. it took me a couple weeks of listening to kanye's track "monster" before someone told me that the single had been played to death. good news, i guess? i'm also starting to take bands a lot less for granted. where at one point, when i'd see a band taking off, i used to kiss them goodbye, sort of like a minor league manager would shake hands with an upcoming ace, knowing full well he'd never be through the system again. now i know i have to see them as much as possible, appreciate them as largely as i can before they disappear. it's becoming almost an epidemic, bands who are doing the right thing, pushing boundaries or at the very least steeping themselves deeply in quality ideas and influences, deciding to call it quits after all of their invested time doesn't yield the same kinds of rewards that they used to. the underground is almost nonexistant. all indie means is it's not completely massive yet. it's a weird industry. but braid has reunited, is doing their thing again and i'm very excited to catch them a few times in their second wind. same with the get up kids, and even glassjaw. important bands are answering the absence. that can't be all, though. can't have the same old stuff on repeat. classics are and always will be classics, waiting on a shelf or on a harddrive for us. but it needs to stay fresh. there needs to be progress. and with lupe's record, i feel that. there's a little more digging that has to occur. but i'm willing to do it. eyes on the liner notes. hungry, always. internet wise, i just saw a new youtube trailer for the lead singer from misery signals' new project called solace which sounds incredible. and the guy who did the song "black and yellow", wiz khalifa has a pretty dope mix tape called kush & orange juice which is somewhat viral right now. with all of my free time, i've had the chance to check it ALL out, in depth, give it solid listens. give it the respect it deserves. very excited. even rediscovered a band called sweek that does the whole russian circles/explosions in the sky thing rather well. their record the unbelievable cinematic crash from '05 is legit!

watched a decent amount of movies as well, so far. mala noche by van sant, mister foe with jamie bell and i just rented four lions, a movie from britain that actually satirizes terrorism. i remember seeing the trailer a while back and it looked great.

finished reading fahrenheit 451, and completed both little big planet 2 and killzone 3.

also, will be printing copies of MMX: THE MOLESKINES starting tomorrow.

off 'til monday.
stoked.

of the earth.

wow. i only needed to see this photograph to need more, but this guy's story (myth or no) seems to be something that makes me want to be a floating phantom on his shoulder. in the introductory piece to the link i'm going to provide, it gave me these morsels of information, all of them more eye expanding than the last:

- he wore a suit made from leather boots he FOUND
- he slept in caves
- his race/origin is unknown, but portuguese or "black" has not been ruled out
- he was driven mad by either economic ruin or a broken heart or both

gold. i see titans of the street like this on a fairly regular basis during my commute. and there's something about sitting down and talking to them that gives me the vibe that i will take something from it, not valuable in any way other than rich, possifiction. because who knows. regardless of what may run rampant in my imagination, half of what these guys have seen or thought because of what they've seen, is probably just as good, if not better.

more:
“If there’s any place left where you can keep your secrets, with the Internet and everything out there, it should be your bones.”

slow to standing.

challenge yourself. it's something that we'd all put on a coffee mug if we could, sitting at our little dinette in our little apartment, something that we could look at and feel good about, just because we've seen it, and bought the mug, and think that way a little bit, and admire it, and quasi believe it. but really, there's a kind of fatalistic fire that i've been engulfed by over the course of the last few months as i've been staring around at me across the people who i know are capable of massive things and massive thought who are just sitting on it, and pouring the contents of their mugs into their stomach and going to work. and then we go to work. and it's very serious. and we get home. and put together little parties for ourself until we have to get up tomorrow and restring the puppets.

i have been the Messenger of the Great Excuse on a fairly constant basis. justine called me out on it in a pretty sterile moment in front of dan smith, something about me completely stopping my creative process while we were together. getting home, watching tv, accomplishing nothing. filling the mug. dave called me out on it i think it was during the onslaught of birthday facebook wall posts with something like, "here's to all of the projects that we should have started but have never finished" or something along those lines. i am fully accountable for that entire process. and in the last year, i've "put out" some things i've been proud of, stayed motivated and active, and have continued to build this kinetic force of building hands that i am a bit addicted to. not entirely looking for fame or infamy because i'd eventually fuck that up too. just want to leave behind a library to validate my existence and to chronicle the things i've thought and felt and been able to spawn. even if just amidst friends. to let them know that the possibility is there.

there are a few things that gripped the lower wrungs of my ribcage in this year in particular that didn't hurt or kill me or injure me, but they definitely had me full on by my entire frame and showed me a few things i might have been meant for or against.

my grandmother died in january, and to be honest, it's not even a matter of losing a human being who i'd had a history with. she was a woman related to me and a lot of the older pieces of my family have stories about her, but for my little branch of the family, it meant nothing. she gave birth to my father and walked away. his sisters and brother raised him in her household while she kind of watched from the outside. as i grew older and understood what kinds of implications that had on his entire life, and related a lot of the stories and events i had been present for and grasped the weight of, i started to realize that i had no built-in commitment to this person. i kind of allowed a lot of my contextual obligations to fall off and started to react accordingly. and i'm at where i'm at now, where out of respect for the family members i do honor, i made myself present at the first ever funeral i've ever been to. and i wasn't just that 29 year old oddity standing on the outskirts, i definitely approached people i haven't seen in a long time, paid my respects, engaged them in conversations about their lives, the particular context and so on. aortal bookkeeping, on some level. but in that room, i started to get a massive grip on mortality. not the idea, so much, that i was eventually going to die and would no longer get to do the things that i wanted to do or experience, but moreso that i would never get to allow the people around me to really know how i felt about them. and really, that's the kind of memories that i want to pass on to others. sheer validation. the concept that i've noticed what they're attempting, that they were appreciated, that they're beautiful in all the ways they had anything to do with. they're white hot intelligent when they went for it. that i recognize that they went for it. things of that nature. i want everyone to know their fullest potential, and i'll do whatever i can to bring them to it. i want to be the one holding back the sheet metal until the last fucking second while everyone's slipping underneath, moving forward, surviving on, against an oncoming horde or inferno. i want to make sure they're all going to make it.

i have personally always written letters or stories or put things out expecting a response. even just last night, when i was talking about the whole new stand-up comedy endeavor i'm going to start to approach soon, i guess i was sort of hoping someone would say, "i agree with your attempt. it resonates to me. i have high hopes in your endeavor." but i have never received the kind of echo that i'd hope to get. i can only do the best thing i can with what i've got. and if i'm going to try anything, i'm going to do it based on my own reaction to it. if i feel that it's shit, it's shit. and i'll create again, and improve. and again and again. bigger and sharper. carved up and more beautiful. irrefutable. i want it always to be something i'm proud of. i want it to be done because it's done and what i wanted and not because i had to. i'm seeing so many more opportunities out there, and not just things to be looked at and held up against. everything is interactive and small. and hilarious. there is no good day for anything to happen, no right moment. sometimes you just have to sit next to the fat guy on the bus. this is what's happening. i've always waited for the formula to solve itself and calmly insert the variable and have it smoothly coagulate. always. i'm exhausted with the waiting for the lead up, and the pause in a conversation for myself to insert what i'd been waiting a week to say. it's 2:45 in the afternoon and i think you're beautiful. you just might enjoy something i've got.

and last night, for the first time in what feels like a year, myself, dave, brian, and anthony were together in a quiet room in our own space, sharing these massive thoughts and concepts and ideas. we were starting with catching up, but actually spoke on and on about different themes and issues and so on and it's something that was completely unreal. the group of friends i've known has always existed just behind the doors for me. and it actually made me really sad to see that it's still in tact, it still exists, it's still a reality. but we've all kind of shut the doors a bit. it made me feel that every single one of my friends is too busy to pick up the phone to hear something i've got in store for them. i was told, "that's just how it goes, i guess." but i can't agree to it. i refuse to. i have a social life. i have a job that i work, and it's not some part time gig. i don't shirk responsibility or chores or requests or my cat or hygiene. i have the same amount of time in every day that every one else has to deal with. and i still have the time to put together these dream journals, the poem, the mix cd, to handwrite the tracklistings, to copy the stuff i'm handing out, to cut and compile it, and to keep working on more. to ingest films and records and to feel a way about them. i guess it kind of made me wonder about what i might be doing wrong, what i might be leaving out that everyone else is keeping in. i want to reflect things off of these people and build massive temples of light. but i end up feeling like that six year old neighbor knocking on the door to look at your baseball cards. again.

i wrote her a letter.
i compared you to her.
you will never hear your name.