Allow Me, If I Can, To Tell Me About Yourself.

Perhaps not as a tool nor as a means to an end, but I have been listening to 'classes' from Joyce Carol Oates on Masterclass and, of course, there is never going to be something they're going to teach you that will open your eyes, but instead what happens here is that by someone speaking about writing to perhaps inspire and move you into the direction, to get you into the right mindset. In fact, it's nearly the opposite. This woman breaking down different paragraphs, and trying to explain what is happening in a paragraph makes EITHER her seem unintelligent or even worse, it makes her seem like she believes that WE the viewer is unintelligent. And at its worst, perhaps both are true. 

She discusses a story in which we are at the funeral(?) of twin girls and she'll mention their names and she'll say something along the lines of "and here we see there are two girls." 

Got it.

I also wonder, what would it be like to learn from someone younger, more dynamic. Danielewski. Eggers. Vandermeer. It isn't necessarily about the youth, but instead, perhaps, at the way they are able to view their audience. I believe that many from the older generation consider their 'students' as those who are coming to them for help like they need these fundamentals presented to them from the ground up. Whereas a younger teaching board would instead approach the students as peers, as exposed to similar resources (the main one of them being the process of trial and error) as they are/were and would spend more time refining than defining.

It reminds me of a time I finally dragged my ass out to a spoken word poetry night. And I parked, showed up, had my poems printed out. I knew I was going to take it on. I ordered a coffee and I stood outside the space for a moment. And in that moment, a man stood up and read a poem about his garden. And next, a girl stood up and read a poem about her room. And then the next man stood up and read a poem about the walk he took in a park beside his house. I packed up and left. I wonder:

Maybe these people do need help pulling out what makes critical and urgent art. What is/was the purpose of any of those things that they wrote. I thought about this yesterday while listening through ETID's discography. At what stage did these songs 'occur'? Are these songs that were written because they had to reach 12-16 tracks by August 2016? Or were they swirling in chaos in the practice space or recorded on an iphone voice recorder for weeks until they could finally get together, angrily refined until they eventually were complete enough to share? I hesitate to say this is the ONLY art that I want to consume, though I think it's the only type of consumption I'd consider art. Everything else is just output. Product.    

Small tape recorder making the scrawling sound.

no one is going to make something work out for you.

no one is hoping you feel safe or secure.

no one is here to make your path clearer.

no one will navigate the winding corridors for you.

there is no barrel on the horizon to center you.

there is no buoy dinging in the oceansilence.

if you think they've shut it off now,

just wait until the power's been cut.

you are framed in no reverent legacy.

you are the overgrowth,

the overgrown. 

 

Toppling the shipping containers to form a guest room.

i like the idea of making new year's resolutions throughout the year, even if they mean they'll save your life, but shrugging your shoulders and hoping you'll make it to the new year to utilize them.

while writing these thoughts and feelings and blurbs and blabs about the records that i loved in 2019, i keep thinking, "maybe i should dedicate myself more to this writing about music thing, maybe i should start posting at least once every two weeks. even a little playlist. even a couple albums i'm excited about. a song i rediscovered." i think about how even if no one reads it, writing about this is almost the happiest and most functioning version of myself that continues to ride forth. 

but i also think, "why am i even writing this, the BEST of the BEST [for me]?" i should write my favorite albums on a piece of notebook paper in length order and take a picture and post it on instagram and let the lack of likes make me feel unwelcome in the New World.

how do both of these things exist?

I think it's because the weight of either of them won't topple the boat, won't shake the island, won't wake the beast, won't swoon the maiden either way.

it doesn't matter.

Also,

there is the matter of

holy shit, can you believe that statement:

"there is the matter of"

____,

______________________

the poetry I wrote over the course of the year, the Pennies In the Fountain; I wrote a "collection of poetry" to "release" to friends and the entire world as well.  -- When you're reading poetry you almost have to role play someone who gives a shit and who's feeling it, not the other way around. You can't go into it thinking about, say, "Will Taylor Hall's trade to the Coyotes yield personal results and/or a run for the post season?" and then catch a stanza (jesus) and be moved to pause. You have to suspend your callousness, enhance your sense of wonder,  like seeing who can hold their breath under water the longest. Allow yourself.

Also, what the fuck, man,

I sent out a 60+ page story to four people and heard nothing back. 

Then I went back

and tried to finish it.

Like: 

"Hey, the people you chose specifically because you believed they'd give you honest feedback and spend time with the thing you did did not spend time on it. KEEP GOING."

Forgive it, man.  

Autonomous structure collapse, reanimated in organic posture.

What do people do every day? 

What do people do in their free time?

Like, 

>> what are you supposed to answer when someone asks "what have you been up to?"

Uhhh,

* Stressing and catching up with every record that comes out to make sure my Top 50 not only represents me very well, but also if enriching to listen to, write about, but also read about? 

* Working while imagining myself at home doing fulfilling things

* Reading a 59 page run of words that I call a novel in progress that I started working on in 2015 and power-fantasizing about me finishing it

* Hockey has been important to me

So much of the stuff that I genuinely enjoy has nothing to do with the people or the world around me.

My bad.

Eschaton in b flat, hell portioned out in locrian mode

I find such a strange multifibered existence brought into focus when I examine the many realities I'm trying to meld in any given instance.

FOR 

EXAMPLE:

Trying to listen to an album called Occulting Disk by a guy who uses a self-invented instrument called the AudioVirus, attempting to visualize a screaming asteroid or comet that's not heading towards any planet along any particular vector and burning up, imagining these sounds as proof that we are conduits and not simply consciousness(es), letting the sounds shape my thought as winds shape mesas

WHEN
SUDDENLY:

Son wants to tell me about how he and his friend are killing other kids in video games

AND
THEN:

She Facetimes and tells me about how she's feeling sick and wants to see the dog .

--
I sometimes feel so much more at home,
                                         more appropriate when I'm left alone to these weird devices, escaping what other people who are let into my life are able to glean or affect or effect or impress on me.

How do you learn to let that go

and 

should you or 

should I just continue to compartmentalize

the savage

and

the scholar

and

the statistic?

Ya don't,

MAN.

You stay immiscibly hovering in the varying definitions, 

equally distant and connected to the varying frequencies, 

glowing in a light that radiates one wavelength when you're alone

glowing in a light that radiates one wavelength when you're not.

It's fine. 

 

 

 

The Academy of Ending Pain At the Expense of Regret.

I've watched a ton of movies this year. There's something funny about calling it film. I like when I call it film, the thought of someone else tossing eye rolls at me and not trying to reason.

HEY MAN DON'T YOU MEAN MOVIES?

Yeah man.

She brought it to my attention to me the other day: "When you get back out of seeing a movie, you are a completely different person. So filled with energy."

It's true. It's very strange.
I've been bringing my moleskine with me into the theater ..

     [it's not as if i dont bring it with me everywhere sitting in my pocket like a           prop on an animated character, something that's only brought out when it         suits the plot] 

and writing while i've been watching. It has some interesting scrawls. Like these from Hostiles:

DH Lawrence
x
Melancholia (1882)

Hardy->Bale

Swirling Darkness

Cast? Bearded SGT

     Rosamund Pike Burial Scene

Or this from the most recent viewing of Annihilation:
There's a failure in us as a society, maybe as a country, that we instantly sexualize the female gender the moment their shape takes the screen. A symptom of the widespread pornography epidemic. For example, Natalie Portman depressed and miserable on screen in a full body orange jumpsuit.

--

Woke up Monday with a mind full of hungover. I haven't drank alcohol in about a month. Maybe. I've tried to cut back since Dad's event, but also to figure out that strange stress phantom that was carrying itself around in my mind. It turns out that drinking only a single cup of coffee a day (instead of the standard 2 or 3) has drastically helped not only stress but overall mood and demeanor. I feel like it has something to do with high blood pressure. But Monday I woke up with the effect of a headache but without the pain, as if my physical brain has a parking boot on it. Thought has to reroute itself around the blockage, and by the time it arrives it doesn't want to exist. I need help, man. Maybe I'm just dehydrated. Sometimes I think about drinking buckets of water when I wash my hands but by the time I have a glass of the liquid near me I can't be bothered to drink it. Maybe I have a tapeworm.

I have to find inspiration to create soon. The microfiction anniversary came and went and I just don't find the excitement to write little stories that no one reacts to and I'm not inspired to create. Not just yet. I have a new mix cd completed and some thoughts about the songs but not the fully realized playlist. I'll have to sit and write it soon with some free time. I think I have some next week. 

I want to write here once a month. 

There is a glowing tremor within the fright

After a full night of restful sleep, I've been waking up in the mornings feeling arresting stress. Completely overtaking my mind and body to the point where I feel like I slammed a door shut behind me after running from an angry mob. Or like I just sabotaged a business with the push of a button and just got to my car, knowing that there were going to be headlines of a major collapse. I try to center myself for the most part, thinking about nothing, even thinking about SOMETHING to erase the phantom tremors. It's difficult, but eventually I steel up.

I wish I could wear the stress during the regular day, if in fact, that's what this is. I wish I could just be stressed out at the root of the issue and solve it. Figure it out. Come to grips with it. Handle it. Etc. This is the most stressful time of year for a retail manager, obviously. But there isn't anything more stressful than anything else. I have my team and they are handling the store operations just fine. I sometimes wish I could do more for them, but I know that's just the human need of having control speaking to me. I have to relinquish it.

We're not bleeding money. We're not in a bad place as a family as a couple or as members of society.

I'm... behind on writing an arbitrary personal top 100 albums of the year list that's FOR no one and that NO ONE is expecting or even wanting.

Christmas shopping is done.

Dad is stabilized after a couple of scares with his health.

Is this rationalization speaking? Are these lies I'm telling myself? I can see them, visualize them, quantify them. But isn't that what a delusionist would think and say as well?