Off to Buenos Aires

Off To Buenos Aires!

Plane leaves in 14 hours and I need to sleep. So excited I can’t describe it. What are my goals, what’s lies front of me, which parts of myself will I take with me, which will I attempt to leave behind? I will track as closely as possible my progression as a human being and the effect travel will have on me. And of course, the people. Essentially I am entering a foreign place both in the world and my head. I don’t know much of what to really expect, but will greet the experience with an open mind and a positive attitude. I will approach each passing moment with courage and compassion. What should I aspire to be while abroad? A good person who lives through impulse, intuition, and feeling. Can’t be afraid to put myself out there in an attempt to absorb new information and new experiences.

“All we’ve got to do is be brave, and be kind.” –The National

The funny thing you notice when you travel is that everyone else’s life actually goes on. The continuous story of a friend’s life is constantly being written, just as your own story is being written. We’re traveling all the time, crossing paths with others in the forest… yet eventually going off on our own, unaware of what creatures and landscapes lie ahead. I’m certain the adventures I’m soon to experience will be some of the most meaningful in my life.

As for the blog, it will continue to share my travels, thoughts, and writing with friends and family. Hopefully I won’t abandon it… I don’t plan on doing so. Anyway, pleasant journeys for everyone. See you in the future.

Adios North America.

Intentions for Digital Peacock

So I’ve been thinking about the intentions of this blog and some other little things:

Okay: human in the world. A young soul with no home, watching people run, fly, skip, fall, get up, say hi, move on, forget, look around, take chances, and find everything they’re looking and not looking for. I am homeless, except for my mind. I am a part of this seemingly endless process that takes us around the unknown world and back safely to the place we so sweetly began. I am a person about to embark on a journey to places I don’t even know exist. Existence is always strange, as it may always be. However I desire not to answer the questions that simultaneously plague and enflame all human minds, instead I seek to watch with detail my own existence, express it, and eventually convey my living experience (along with the thoughts that follow all experience) in an attempt to give back to this human community I believe in.

I’m interested in humans… our thoughts, our behavior, and the systems that influence them. I’m studying anthropology in an attempt to observe how humans construct meaning through culture and I’m curious about which aspects of culture inform human minds about “knowledge” (any type). Moreover, I want to look at the ways in which we form our conceptions of identity. I wish to understand the contexts that give rise to these mental and behavioral patterns that drive societal norms. I stand on the street with open eyes and ears, watching a man cross from one side to the other without a single indication of awareness that other beings abound at the doorstep of his face. Six cars drive by and I think about human seclusion.

I’ve been realizing the abundance of insignificant truth that we all live with. The truth that guides people’s lives yet simultaneously attracts them toward the top of a mountain that shows them a view of all the other truths guiding all other forms of life. Truth is relative, and it’s important for me to seriously put into question all that I think I know about the world. It’s a little disillusioning, however humbly liberating at the same moment. Who knows what our calling will be? My values are scattered, and so is my future. For it could take me anywhere, with anyone, on a search for any thing--- and that’s intensely exciting.

“In 2080 I’m sure to be dead, so don’t look ahead. Never look ahead.” – Yeasayer – “2080”

At 20 I feel changed in a way that gives rise to some incentive to document my life for my own purposes, and maybe one day for someone else’s. After two decades of exploring the labyrinth in and around my head, there are too many thoughts I can’t begin to keep track of, while I don’t even know what a thought really is in its truest form. For these reasons, I am giving into the process of creative expression. From now on, I will never live in solitude. My mind will work tirelessly to process this game called life... because all beings possess unique colors. This world is diverse and vibrant with immeasurable richness, all melting together and crafting a masterpiece that will exist infinitely in no one’s memory.

We are a living contradiction where every thought, action, and desire reflects both irony and paradox. Am I wrong to assume confusion in the deepest core of everyone’s mind, and thus everywhere else? No. I can only attempt to account for my own, so that’s what I’ll do.

I don’t know enough to write a novel and don’t have a story I’m compelled to tell. But I know enough to express thoughts, and that may be some sort of beginning. Everything has beginnings. I want to know about my mind and yours. How similar are they and why? I want to know why people do what they do. I want to learn from individuals themselves why they choose to occupy their time the way they do. If I can receive some sort of insight about these themes then I may be able to find some key commonalities and differences between humans that both divide and bring us together… and thus form my own theories about what defines humans as such a unique species.

I don’t know the direction this blog will take but I’m assuming it may soon turn into more of a travel blog that documents my time in Argentina. It may become less philosophical and act as more of a documentation, but may not. Who knows? I’ll always throw in some music here and there, being that harmonious sounds have always played an important part in my life. Anyways… until next time, may peace be with our minds.

Animal Collective: "What Would I Want Sky"

New track from Animal Collective that samples from The Greatful Dead's "Unbroken Chain".

Highly vivid and moving, especially when the vocals come in and the moment of clarity dawns. Check it out.

You Are An Improvisational Genius

A day in the life of you. Decisions. Actions. Movements. Thoughts. Are we enslaved to fate? Definitely maybe.

Tomorrow you will awake without knowledge of what the transcript of your conversations will look like if it were to exist. What to do, what to say, who to be? And then conscious thoughts emerge from your brain as if they were a swarming school of fish swimming without direction. But it’s all okay right? You’ll figure it out along the way.

It's impressive really, our artistry. Surviving alone has forced us to craft our extemporizing abilities. No scripts. We are improvising in every action, every decision, and every conversation. Except when we’re not. Except when we’re following orders. Except when we feel our body becoming too real. Except when we treat this majestic playground (the world) with an immutably stern outlook… that’s when we lose what makes us human. I don’t know what that really is (the unifying aspect of humanity), and probably never will, but I would guess that it has something to do with passion, meaning, connection, creativity, and an inexplicable desire to be valuable in such a confusing environment. We will share our confusion with one another for no reason at all. Or maybe for the purpose of masking it, or unveiling it, or describing it, or even battling it. Or maybe to display the extension of our compassion. But never for explaining it with any real seriousness; it is impossible to know anything, and simultaneously impossible to not know anything.

To treat the world as if it were clay to be shaped may lead to a colorful consciousness that yields glowing sensations.

Farewell Ride

I leave the country in five days. From now until then shall be my farewell ride.

Mostly when I walk around a communal area, say, a busy street, I tend to notice information and people organized into businesses: competing groups desperately vying with each other for society’s worth. Apparently true intrinsic value or substance has been reduced to a systematically agreed-upon material we call money. What is this material and why is it valued so strongly? Must the symbol for value/worth become more significant than our values themselves? Money is not the problem, it is the way in which we think about it and the way we often use it. It divides us and guides us into tunnels of greed and envy. It confuses us even more than we already are when we wake up every morning, blinking our eyes and wondering what strange happening the day might have in store. Looking around, it seems like we’re all trying to invent more moments in which we can become more efficient. And efficiency has become, for many, defined as the rate at which money can be gained when it should be defined as the rate at which we create meaning, construct compassion, generate pleasure, and aid others within our lives. Can I really devote my time to the accumulation of symbolic power for self-gain? I don’t know. I don’t think so, but many societies throughout the world seem to be not only following this groundwork, but spreading it as well. Why don’t we ask kids who they want to be instead of what they want to be? We should strive to be good people, not productive mechanisms working in the name of order.

“Get a good job. Be well-off. You’ll retire early and be happy.” ---- no. thanks.

I believe we need an abundance of art: writers, poets, musicians, painters, drawers, sculptors, dancers, filmmakers, photographers, engineers, architects, etc. that feel passionately about making communities more vibrant, substantive, expressive, colorful, and most importantly, more meaningful. We need an environment that harnesses respect for meaningful forms of human expression that deserve to be appreciated in our society. We need to encourage an atmosphere that opens up creative thinking in people’s minds, a new habitat for our individuality. We mustn’t think about moving the world forward (“efficiency”, “systems”, “machines”, “formulas”, "material productivity", “money”) anymore. Instead, we must move it outward (creativity, expression, interaction, communication, compassion, love), expanding and enlarging it in every infinite direction. Every day we are attacking both our ability to think differently and the ways in which we manifest that ability… in both kids and adults.

We shape our culture. How to inspire people to consciously shape their own is a question I ponder.

I desire to know what people most truly believe day and night. Or, moreover, I want them to express it, because the world is seemingly losing the voice of the person, the creator, the individual. We are drowning in ourselves as managed systemic contraptions, losing our sense of compassion, originality, and innovation. We all yearn to be given ideas to think about, art to absorb, significance to nourish. We value each other, not the structures that value their own survival at the cost of our imagination’s. Where there is fire, we shall dance.

Be You, Tea Full

“The town’s so small, how could anybody not look you in the eye or wave as you drive by? The world is such a wonderful place.” – Band of Horses (“Ode to LRC”)

Beauty beauty beauty beauty beauty. It’s everywhere: color, shapes, texture, sound, emotion, language, thought, interaction, fear, dreams, creativity. It’s easy to forget though, our physical and mental lives become normalized too often. It feels like we’re all searching for an answer or something to magically make us happy, but the pure aspects of our world and the fact that we simply exist in such a strange and unique place should keep us beyond fascinated for all of our lives. I often forget how shockingly amazing everything around me is at every moment. When I go on trips I often return feeling as if I’ve been living blindly for too long. Living with a paper bag suffocating my senses and my ability to see things how they truly are. Traveling, exploring the unseen corners in your mind, is a gift. The world in my head is far more grandiose than the one my eyes can see… or are they one in the same?

Appreciate the wonders of this planet and let them urge you to do something and be someone…anyone. If these thoughts of appreciation and gratitude swarmed our minds all the time though, then their significance would die. We would be in awe in every moment, and thus the awe would become conventional, nothing would stand out, and we would perceive the world as bland. However it’s important to see that we exist in an infinite toy store within the ocean of space that fits inside our eyes. (Silly thought: If all of this is produced by my brain, then it feels like my eyes are backwards. They should actually be looking inside my head if they want to see the world, but it looks like it’s the other way around, maybe?) Our sensory world is generated within our head and our head is matter inside the sensory world. The concepts of “inside” and “outside” are relative to us humans anyways. What a wonder. The mystery remains utterly mesmerizing; it bathes me in joy.

“After all these years I have observed that beauty, like happiness, is frequent. A day does not pass when we are not, for an instant, in paradise.” – Jorge Luis Borges

Waking Life - Life Is Not A Dream

Purely amazing and inspirational scene from Waking Life, a powerfully philosophical 2001 film written and directed by Richard Linklater.

Thoughts...

Julian Casablancas: New Solo Album

Julian Casablancas, lead singer for The Strokes, has just announced a forthcoming debut solo album, entitled Phrazes for the Young, that should be out sometime this fall. Along with the announcement came a promo video that you can watch HERE. The music for the video is seemingly the opposite from what I'd expect out of the voice that usually wails and groans in front of the typical guitar-heavy Strokes sound that we're used to. It's synthy and electronic, however simultaneously tasteful and enticing.

The video has a couple interesting quotes that appear relevant to things recently written about here: "try not to give advice you can't follow" and "DRUNKENESS is cowardice. SOBRIETY is loneliness" - cynical yet provoking words. Moreover, the images seem to be following a steady theme by comparing the systematic elements of modern human life with a greater nature.

As for news on the Strokes highly anticipated 4th album, we're still in the dark. Hopefully someday soon.

Kite Or Something Like It

For some reason I love this.

Bars And Zoos And Rambling

(I’m realizing after 5 posts the difficulties of maintaining this blog and how much easier it is to go out or watch a movie or read something than it is to thoughtfully write. But I guess there’s so much to think and say... there always is.)

Weekends are always something. I find it interesting… compartmentalizing days into groups of seven and then having two of them act as socially established “rest days”: the two days when working people have leisure to do what they desire, or not, depending on who they are and what responsibilities their lives have captured. Light from the moon has shined brightly this past weekend, however my elderly dog sure couldn’t notice. My experience this weekend comprised of friends, playing music, and bars, two of which were great while the latter lagged just enough for me to notice.

I felt like I was in a zoo, but I guess that’s not so wrong considering that’s kind of what it was. Drinking away our inhibitions so we can blabber about nothing, people, events, what someone said, and all the other bullshit the eats up the content of our language as if it were the first meal it had consumed in months. And in bars, everyone tries to look cool despite the fact that they resemble rambling rodents, (the idea of cool being relative anyway). However it’s not just in bars that this happens, it’s everywhere. So the problem is not as much with places of social gathering or alcohol consumption as it is with social values, maybe, and how they can control us. I’m not really sure what I mean or where I’m heading with this but it just feels like all the helpless singles in bars looking for love or sex or good conversation or whatever would be better off getting what they truly desired if they, well, actually did what they truly desired. It just seems like people go because people go. In other words, it is what people do, and that’s why more people do it… a complicated way of saying “conforming”. Maybe I was the only one that didn’t want to be there wasting away my precious moments looking around and listening to ridiculously insubstantial conversations between people (some of which I was admittedly a part of), but it feels like that couldn’t have been the case. People must wake up the next morning and yearn for something more, right? I do. The experience itself, though, was rather rewarding. The whole “fly-on-the-wall” feeling is comforting in a way (and I did have other flies there with me), probably because I enjoy watching people and simply observing. Once again I find hypocritical elements in myself, for it is immensely difficult to not conform and to carve a separate path. It wouldn’t be worth it if it were easy though.

Moving backwards in time, making music, as it always is, was great. Sometimes moments occur when everything fits together perfectly like a bunch of confused puzzle pieces somehow melting into place at unexpected times. I think that’s what a large element of making meaningful art or music is all about, or really anything rooted in communal improvisation (film, dance, writing, acting, photography, drawing, painting, anything really). These single moments of magic that can never be exactly replicated serve to inspire an abundance of creative thought, and then the energized passion moves in all unexpected directions. Yet they’re inexplicable and just come out of nowhere, or maybe some invisible energy that exists between people that mystically finds its home for a brief moment and decides to express its gratitude to the outer world. And consequently pure and natural creativity becomes manifested. Either way, it’s both empowering and humbling to feel a part of. When musically improvising with a group it feels like I’m dancing around digging for these moments, and when they come it’s often overwhelming. The momentum washes over like a passing wave and everyone rides it into bliss. And just like a wave, it will never last forever, but will always be uniquely replicated.

Quick Response Piled On Top

Early this morning I posted some thoughts that I have since put a little more thought to:

I believe this natural inclination to forget the inevitable fleetingness of our lives and memories is one thing that keeps us living with such passion. It helps me realize that we are small, passing, and imperfect, yet empowered to decorate our lives the way we desire and fill them with baskets of joy, pain, and everything in-between. If we were to look at life and realize how we’re all tiny grains of sand that will eventually whither away on a beach that expands beyond all thought and matter, then we would feel entirely hopeless; meaning would slip away after it realized it was never there. However this is the truth (maybe…), and it is bittersweet. As individuals we are nothing, which gives us the power to be anything, and thus everything. We produce our own meaning, significance, and self-worth.

Nevertheless, the question of what we are still bugs me. How are we a unified species at all if we're constructing our own values and defining ourselves independently? Something to ponder...

Remembering and Forgetting: Moments with Meaning

How does our mind decide which of our past experiences to actually remember? Surely there is far too much mental baggage for us to be able to dig out from the basement of our brains all of the important moments of our life that have molded us into the people we are now. Even the most meaningful of conversations I’ve had with friends or substantive self-realizations will inevitably be forgotten one day. Or how about the major themes of books and films, moving artwork I’ve once dived into with open eyes and a curious heart? Fleeting, fleeting, fleeting, all of it appears to be fleeting. And I’ve only lived two decades… it seems pointless to try and imagine the value my memories will have when my years have aged to 60. Or are they harnessed in a cozy nest of subconsciousness that operates invisibly. If so, what is my relationship with this subconsciousness: does it control my thoughts and actions, or am I actively and continually reorganizing its possessions?

The reason this seems so important is because it can help us indicate how we construct meaning in our lives. What we truly value in the world today is shaped by our interaction with the thousands of yesterdays. However this interaction is constant and ever-flowing, and moments of change or enlightenment of any sort can be easily hidden in the mundane regularity of everyday patterned existence.

So how can we encourage moments of true value, ones that burst with orange oceans and rains of wisdom?

Everyday I wake up and believe that this day is the most important day in my life. However, one day in the future I will have forgotten everything that happens to me today, and it will consequently become insignificant to my life from a grand perspective.

I always forget that I won’t remember everything. Actually… every, single, day, I forget that I won’t remember everything.

Yet tomorrow I believe I will awake to skies full with scattered clouds of shapes I’ve never seen before. Life will once again begin again.

Back Home // Zebras at Lunch

Back home in the ever-so-hospitable southern United States. Two weeks here.

Everyday navigating through an intricate jungle in my head takes me on emotional boat rides where turquoise monkeys and purple koalas sing me songs that are vaguely familiar.

Today my body drove me to the bookstore where I surfaced through sections on poetry, travel, philosophy, art, and fiction. Amazing it was… making me realize the amount of knowledge I yearn to absorb and never will. But even more so, it dawned on me how remarkable and abundant substantive writing is these days. People doing what they generously must do are quite admirable. Making their way between speeding distractions and vile impulses, the sculptors of these books were given conceptual valuables to share and express. And so they did.

I’m feeling rather poetic today, considering poems of Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda traveled home with me just hours ago and are now residing in my room to be stroked and spun. In honor of this mood, I’ll share some words I wrote:

(Sidenote: Due to the fact I can't single space separate lines when pressing "enter", I decided to post this piece in paragraph form. Oh, and I don't write these very often...)

Zebras at Lunch

Your attachment to imagination both destroys and creates toys that take you on first-time train rides into mirrors.

Gold doesn’t bring smiles or vials of pleasure, for the weather will remain bleak and brutal if we chase treasure and not ourselves. For better these days are too short to follow anything less than a steady pace and gentle nature.

There’s only so much I can say, Who wants to be rich and live in the suburbs these days? I’m over here having lunch with my fears. You are not alone… and you will walk if you wish, for we all exist on the other side so when the world ends we will burn with life.

Now toss me in a boat floating in a paper bag and let it fall softly off a cliff near my bathtub in the sky. Ask the zebras if I die. The ticking clock will tell them Everything, while the answer slips away slowly into Infinity.

Seclusion in Airports

If it weren’t for circumstances out of my control then I wouldn’t have ever written these simple words.

Airports are some of the most interesting places in the world… especially chaotic airports during a thick and rugged thunderstorm. (That’s me… right now). Check in, take my bags, boarding pass, security, people, food, bookstore, gate 19, music, rain, delay, people, chatter, more rain, more delay, music, people, chatter, lines, board, sleep, dream. Rule: don’t speak to anyone that doesn’t work here unless you’re asking for the time or complaining. However asking about someone’s life, where they’re going and why, who they are and who’ve they’ve become over the years, what they’ve learned through the many minds they’ve encountered and interacted with, or why they chose to occupy their time the way that they do, even for the simplest understanding to satisfy a natural curiosity, is clearly not customary or conventional.

Are we the way we ought to be?

How ought we behave in airports? This seems like an issue involving airport etiquette or politeness. What is assumed as respectful here is leaving people alone and minding your business… sort of strange and unfortunate considering this is a place of such rich social and cognitive diversity.

As I sit hear on the airport carpet with headphones plugged into my ears (a perfect example of a living contradiction), I simply wonder why this ideal world doesn’t exist. I simply wonder why we, or I in this case, fear connection when it seems like that’s a large part of what we live for. What drives this fear- is it something social, biological, maybe psychological? Where does it come from and how do we battle it? Something we most strongly desire as humans is to feel united, connected in some way, but we don’t take actions that would manifest social norms to encourage this ideal world. And furthermore, I question how we change these behavioral patterns; it often feels like we possess the power to craft and re-craft what we consider as cultural standards for our generation and future ones as well.

The loss of community in this country seems to be a reoccurring social theme that we as individuals tend not to address as seriously as it deserves to be addressed. Instead, the focuses for many people appear to be time and money, two social constructs that organize and re-order our conceptions of this curious actuality called life, steering us away from the fact that we’re constantly existing in a wondrous and mysterious phenomenon. I’m starting to feel trapped here in this airport, literally and figuratively. Music is my escape.

However on a more optimistic note, I look around all the time and see interaction, smiles, laughter, reflection, compassion, generosity, courage, and love. Observing such human variety in a place like this, I can only believe there’s so much that could be gained from conversations with people who move through these modern social travel centers.

I believe genuinely in a true human community, and observe traces of such a manifestation frequently. It’s thoroughly wonderful and comforting on a profound level when we touch such moments, even if they’re fleeting.

This could just be me. I always might be wrong. I don’t sincerely feel like I truly know anything in the world. Mystery is beauty is life. Question.

"Look at me, oh, look at me. Is this the way I've always been? Oh no. Oh no." -Passion Pit ("The Reeling")

Beginnings

I’ve never managed a blog before or even posted on one, but early this morning for some reason I felt a spontaneous inclination to start one… so I unexpectedly followed up on it without truly knowing why. It could be that today I’ll get on a plane and leave the beautiful Providence, Rhode Island to head for my hometown Nashville for a couple weeks. Then my world will take a drastic shift as I travel to Buenos Aires, Argentina for six months to study and explore various aspects of the culture there. It just seems like the right time to start a project like this. Having just turned 20, I’m overcome with a desire to start expressing substantive elements of my existence and documenting thoughts and muses about my experience. Who am I? I’m just a college student inspired by music and other forms of art who is searching for what it truly means to be human in the world today. I love people and don’t understand them, or even myself. Confusion serves as my impetus for intellectual journeys and nights of self-reflection. Art, particularly music, steers me toward compassion and beauty, as well as the impulse to create.

Managing this blog will be a immense challenge, but it will surely keep my mind stimulated, and hopefully yours too. I’ll be posting music I find particularly moving or meaningful as well as poetry, photography, quotes, and videos that seem to express ideas that are original, creative, and thought provoking. Truly I hope to encourage further questioning of my mind and yours, as we are all imaginative individuals in an intricate and elaborate society.

Intellectuality is rooted not in formal education as much as it is informal expression.

Much peace be with our minds.