the tonight show

the mind is a very mysterious thing. how is it possible to feel so lonely you could weep and still want to relish in this feeling, as if it were the ultimate source of joy?

tonight, i feel this way.

sad. i know.

the internet has made it impossible for me to meet people, whereas, with others, it's quite the opposite. there are people who would have no chance, in heaven or hell, at finding someone (a friend, a lover, etc.) if it weren't for this damned contraption. funny how the world's been turned upside down on itself.

mainly, i just feel like no one has time anymore to fit me into their schedule. i can't complain, though. i've been pretty negligent as a friend and, as they say, what goes around comes around, even when you anticipate it and realize the err of your ways.

oh well. oh well. oh well.

i need to record and release this detestable batch of songs. i want to make a solo album, proper. i know it may not have much of an impact (on anything), but i feel like it's something i should do. i don't know why. it just sucks that, on an amateur level, no one gives a shit and that, for whatever reason, with wider distribution, you get better sound quality. i'm almost certain (borderline paranoid) that the music industry is generated by a bunch of fat guys who sit behind computers all day, plugging and chugging certain time-tested formulas for success. nothing i listen to anymore sounds authentic. it sounds so...intangible (?)--impossible to recreate. i'm sort of disenchanted with the whole thing. i really want to figure out how some of these bands manage to create the sounds they do. is it better equipment? practice? do they know something i don't know? i mean, i can play their songs, as they themselves perform them, and it sounds nothing like the original. not quite as pristine. i hit every note, as accurately as possible. i sing every word, verbatim. still, the question remains: how do they do it? how does one manage to capture that "professional" sound? i'd really like to know.

i watched the final episode of the tonight show (with conan o'brien) tonight. made me feel really sad. it's so gimmicky, but the whole time i was expecting, waiting for conan to get choked up--and he did, he totally delivered. it was during his farewell speech. it's really kind of a cheap victory--to see your favorite television idols act against the behavior they're known for, but i won't pretend it's not exciting. conan is the reason i started writing--his harvard commencement speech opened so many doors for me, in terms of what can be done in literature and the many forms in which literature can exist. so, i feel sort of indebted towards him. i guess. i don't want to get sentimental.
anyway, his farewell speech was pretty great. he warned younger viewers to, "not be cynical," saying it's his least favorite quality in people. i thought that was pretty impressive, if not empowering. it's something i try to avoid, in my own life, whenever possible, but it's so damn hard. the world we live in almost demands it. oh well. i guess it's pretty sage advice. part of me (my cynical side?) wants to be like, "well, that's pretty easy to say when you're conan o'brien and you're a comedic genius slash icon for the 20-something demographic and you're that successful" and so on and so forth. but the other part of me just wants to believe in it and apply it to my own life. i mean, he's conan for a reason, right? maybe he has all the money and success and happiness because he's manage to avoid being cynical all these years.
i dont' know. it's hard to say.
i'm willing to try it out, though.
i have a hard time wanting to believe in anything--long enough to stick with it. i get so easily discouraged and i think that disappointment manifests itself as cynicism or general distrust of the world or whatever. so, i mean, it's so easy to get derailed. i don't want to make the mistake--lord, i surely don't--of confusing anti-cynicism with blind persistence. at some point, it's time to throw in the towel, i think. i don't want to be that creepy miss havisham archetype who never gives up on his or her dream. they tell you, in school, on the tube, wherever, to stick with it, achieve your goals, blah blah blah, but, at some point, i think it does more personal harm than good. you just have to be self-aware enough to realize when your ship has sailed. and, not only that, but accept it.
i guess. i don't know. this is all speculative.
anyway, that's probably about it for tonight. i feel drained. or lazy. i can't decide which. i'll keep you (imaginary readers) all posted on the latest as it happens. until then, yeah yeah yeah.

work in progress

the 5 types of assholes who work at your local guitar shop

1. the archetype

this is the guy you'd kind of expect to find at the local guitar shop. he's everything wrong with music today. he's thirty-something and has long, frizzy hair (he's channeling some iconic seventies rocker but coming up short, ultimately settling on michael bolton). he has a somewhat muscular build, which he accentuates with some abomination of an oxford polo or paisley garment, tucked above the naval (of course) into his dad jeans (tight around the fupa, and straight as an arrow down the legs) and always leaves his top two shirt buttons undone. he's a very spiritual person and believes in things like the ability to communicate profound sentiments through his guitar. if you were to wander through his garage (let's hope it never comes to that), you'd find a poster of jimi hendrix alongside an obnoxiously large confederate flag. he is genuinely unaware that both of these things, jimi and the confederation, are no longer relevant--let alone, living--and is oblivious to the inherent contradiction in displaying these two symbols of american iconography side by side.
he's particularly anal about the shop's merchandise. it's not store policy, but he feels compelled to post signs all around the store, informing customers not to touch--nay, look--at the guitars and other equipment unless they plan on buying. rarely, does he actually do any work himself, but spends his days wandering about the shop and tune-noodling all the guitars--that is, he does the thing where, instead of tuning like normal people, he makes a special point of hitting every harmonic he can think of, like a douchebag, and then peppering this strange practice with random zeppelin and jimi riffs intermittently throughout.
he has an asshole name like zander or some other new age bullshit. or carl. or--you know what, it doesn't matter what kind of name he has. he's the type of person who makes you hate his name just because it's his--even if it's your name, too. imagine you had no idea what child pornography was called. and then you found out it's name was carl. well, you'd probably hate hearing just the name carl. and you most certainly wouldn't want to have any affiliation with it. even if it meant something else first. that's kind of what it's like with this guy. he is a name upon which one associates all things douchey.
oh, and he plays in local bar bands--though, it's just a temporary thing. he's still waiting on his big break...whenever classic rock becomes popular again and, you know, not classic.

favorite quote:
"you know, i'm like--i'm not religious, i'm spiritual."


the middle-aged neil young fan

ok. i've kind of got a soft spot for this guy. he's got somewhat tolerable taste in music. i mean, he likes neil young, right? nothing wrong with that.

wrong...

this guy loves neil young for all the reasons neil young supporters hate him. where most fans actively choose to ignore the fact that young is canadian, this guy embraces it with gravy-chugging admiration. in fact, the sole this guy watches hockey is because he knows that young is from canada and hockey is sort of a religion there.

his other favorite artists are pretty easy to guess: the standard singer-songwriter fare (james taylor, bob dylan...you know, that whole crew of song scribes whose literate approach to songwriting has prevented them access into the arena of schlock country singers).

this guy really likes to sell you stuff. boy, does he. walk in with the sole intention of purchasing a set of strings and he'll try to push at least thirty additional accessories (the latest tuner, picks, mysterious crank-tools, chewing gum, etc.) on you before you leave, almost as a sort of punishment for only buying one thing.

3. the name-dropper

oh my 'lanta. this guy--whew! whatever you do, do not make the mistake of dropping the name of any band around this guy. he's played with them all. toured with the stones. dropped acid with blind melon. sucked diamond dave's dick...this guy has been to hell and back. and the only thing he prides himself on more than working at some crappy bumfuck music shop are these stories. you may think the best strategy for getting this guy the hell away from you is to act like you're not impressed, but this only incites him, encourages him to be even more obnoxious. if you want to play it safe, try this: walk right up to this guy and spew out the name of at least fifteen well-known bands within span of ten seconds. seriously, he won't know what to do. his brain will get all tripped up and, hopefully, if we're lucky, his head will explode--a fitting climax to his illustrious career as an alleged hanger-on--a grand finale and, ironically, the only truly interesting experience in this guy's life. too bad, he couldn't live to annoy you with the details.

4. the drum instructor

this guy is kind of like the black sheep of the guitar shop. they don't really advertise drum lessons or equipment at the store but there's always a little nook, in every guitar shop, for drum stuff. and it's this guy's job to guard that nook with his life. he's kind of like the sole indian in the store. he has his own little enclave, which the guitar assholes have generously set aside for him, but he's not allowed or encouraged to wander outside of this space. no one really like him and he doesn't care for anyone else, either. he's a drum instructor. plain and simple.
since every drummer, it seems, aspires to work in a music store (why?), it's pretty easy to guess this guy's influences. they're the same as every other drummers (they're a weird breed, drummers): dude from rush, dude from "dave," dude from zep, yadda yadda yadda. pretty standard stuff.

cheap speed

the past few days have been hell. absolute hell. i fear i'm losing my mind. furthermore, i fear that, this time, i'm only on the verge of something long-enduring and impossibly painful.
i can't make sense of the world around me. i can only relate the thoughts in my head through analogy--like everyone else, only i'm constantly aware of this kink in human language. and it's driving me absolutely crazy.
i can't seem to make the words come, when i need them. i'm always half a second late with a joke or a reply. and, rarely, do i ever feel proud of what i strive so meticulously to say. it's just there--conversational confetti. a nineteen-eighties birthday party. recorded on a shitty consumer-grade video camera. the kind of parties you forget. or the kind of party, so unremarkable, you can't distinguish your own subjective experience from the one recorded on camera and revisited, unexpectedly, years later.
i don't know. i have no idea if this makes a lick of sense to anybody.
i feel overwhelmed most of the time. over-stimulated and bored. presently, i have the t.v. on as i'm typing this. yet, it no longer distracts me--peripheral stimuli. i think that's a bad thing.
but i'm not so sure.
i'm an old soul in the space age of the internet and blahblahblah.
a modern age prototype--the next stage of human evolution, inextricably linked to the technological era.
i am unable to distinguish between the thoughts in my head and the personality i choose to publish on myspace.
i am a powerpoint presentation--simplified for mass appeal.
there's a story by kurt vonnegut. it's about human beings in the future. the government attempts to suppress the intelligence of all humanity by implanting this device in their ears which makes it impossible to think abstractly for an extended period of time. the device rings after so many seconds--instantly jarring the subject and causing them to refrain from any sort of deep thinking.
i feel like that most of the time. if i focus too long on trying to find the right word or construct an abstract idea with too much effort, i start to lose it. something happens and i become completely self-aware of my own thinking. it's a nightmare.
they say it's impossible, that it is an ineffable concept, to communicate how the brain works, from a subjective experience, and it pains me--deeply pains me--to know that i'll never be able to accurately and thoroughly explain what goes on in my brain. i will never get better, because i can't even explain what's wrong with me. and if everyone's subjective experience is truly unique, then, i fear, there's no hope for me. no great and unanimous solution. similar symptoms don't necessarily dictate similar solutions. and i don't think there's any sort of great almighty medicinal formula that's going to cure my faulty wiring. most people find comfort in knowing they are unique. i find it distressing as hell.
no one will ever fully know you. and that's what makes me sad. beyond words. sad.

the end of the world (all over again)

new article today on npr dealing with something i've been arguing against for a long time: namely, how social networking sites and the convenient nature of internet shopping sites like amazon are keeping people inside and, in turn, not experiencing life outside their digital world.

here's the link:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122307381

semen stains the mountaintop

i woke up this morning, following a sickly indulgent and unsatisfactory nap, with a bit of an epiphany. of course, it's possible, someone has thought of this before, but i want to be sure to record it before it escapes from me--also, for posterity, in the event that i need to prove that i thought up this little theory.

here goes:

i think it's entirely possible, given what we know about certain sensory hallucinations, that dreaming is really nothing more than our active brains trying to make sense of outside phenomena. there's an experiment, widely distributed on many internet sites, that consists of taping ping pong ball halves to your eyes and then tuning a radio to white static. it's said that if you do this, you will start to see very unusual and dream-like images. your brain is trying to make sense of the world it cannot see--in turn, rationalizing an imagined experience when and where certain sensory information is being withheld or deprived. therefore, it makes sense that, with your eyes closed (or open but not functioning as they would in a conscious state), your brain attempts to make sense or translate all the outside sensory information while you sleep. this is why, when you leave the tv on or radio, while you're sleeping, you'll sometimes have weird dreams influenced by these songs or the dialogue in a movie slash tv show. it's something we see in movies, too. not that movies are always honest depictions of life, but the concept is still the same. a character will be asleep and hear his or her name called only to realize, upon waking up, that the person they had imagined was calling their name, in the dream, was actually someone else.

i'm sure this has all been thought of before. but i was really proud of myself for making this connection.

yeah. i'm retarded.

btw:

below is the link to the ping pong ball experiment, apparently referred to in the trade as "the ganzfeld experiment" (just in case you thought i was making this whole thing up).



http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/11/ganzfeld_hallucinati.html

a veritable avalanche of simple metaphors

don't step twice
on the barely trodden ground
in a snow-swept motion
your footprints
get erased
without a trace
they vanish
and you're left without
leaving a hint of
who you were
and when we're gone
no one really gave a damn
the tallest fortresses
obscured
by the next breed
of monuments
and skyscrapers
only get so high
like you and i
before they crumble
into obscurity
nothing really matters
in the end
in the end
it's all relative
but we're living for the moment
say goodbye
let it pass on by

it's such a waste of time:
feeling sad
i feel like there's so much more
i could be doing with my time--
actively pursuing intellectual pursuits
actively making myself a better human being
actively mating
actively breeding
i just want it to end
the sad songs
bleating from the stereo speakers
of my automobile
as i casually remember
their poignancy
and why it is i feel so sad
all the time
if only i could become
constantly aware
of the constant sadness
in my life
and in my brain
the potential sadness
lurking in the recesses
of my battered dumb teenager brain
all the time
then, i could be happy
better off
oh well

i want to get married
find a mate
do all the things
i think will make me happy
but at what cost?
i don't care
i just want it
and i want it now
i can only twiddle my thumbs for so long
i'm getting bored
i'm getting old
i'm getting old and boring
they can see it in my complexion
my flesh is dulled with
a cruel and unintentional celibacy
i need sex
but not really
only sometimes
and even then
it's not sex i want
but someone to
blah blah blah
it makes me sick
to my bloated stomach
when i realize how ordinary
and unremarkable i am
how my creepy sub-conscious
becomes realized
manifests itself
as the striking
spitting image
of everyone else
i should really get over myself
i really should