(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.
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...
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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.
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.
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")
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.
