high-priced gurus, whatever, etc.

went to newcastle today and visited with kristen's family. finally met grandma helen, nathan and her dad. plus: we watched some old home movies.

we ate at a "pizza and grinders" place called mancino's, which i'd never heard of before. it's apparently a small local chain. they had really good pizza and they gave out generous portions of their dipping sauces, unlike so many major chains (i'm talking about you, papa j's and little seizures!).

with our bellies full of greasy pizza and nacho cheese, we walked around the local cemetery. saw a lot of unusual names and names too real that you could not make them up. i think that if i ever decide to take fiction-writing seriously, i'll scout the cemeteries for character names. a: because they sound good and b: they already sound like good names for fictional characters: they sound real, they ring real, because they are real. they are names that belonged to real people. also: why create names to immortalize when i can give pre-existing and now-deceased people a second shot at infamy?

i've been watching a lot of russian animation and czech new wave stuff recently. i think i've found my artistic niche. i love the way every frame mirrors the blood-stuff of my soul--so loose, grotesque and so cluttered together, not unlike schizophrenic art. i feel like i'm finally starting to think for myself rather than watch things because i know they're supposed to be great--not that i didn't enjoy the stuff i watched before but i feel like i've finally stumbled upon something so close to home, so in line with the way i see the world. i've finally found a suitable filter--i'm looking at the world through the right artistic prescription and it's so gratifying.

so far i've watched:

tale of tales
hedgehog in the fog
the cameraman's revenge
winnie pooh (the russian version)

and

story of a (one) crime

in my research i also came across the work of lotte reiniger, who is notable for producing the oldest surviving cartoon, brilliant silhouettes animated against a color-shifting background. though: reiniger is german. not russian.

i'm trying to take it slow though i feel compelled to devour as much content as possible. i have to resist this urge because i want to remember and retain and absorb as much of it as i can. i burn through things too quickly and i feel like i trivialize them in the process.

i'd like to use this influence to create more nuanced art (visual and otherwise). anything i can do to enrich my fairly lackluster output thus far would be great.

sketch

he walked in, eyes squinting, as if trying to read some very small sign on the back wall, though there was nothing there in my estimation worth straining to see. he sat down at the bar and rested his cigarette on the lip of the most immediate ashtray. it appeared that he'd been dressed by a seven year-old. this is how i knew he was highly fashionable.

largentdupoche

it's been a while and i've had a lot on my mind lately. i'm feeling frustrated though because i'm unable to express all that's been troubling me--it doesn't come so easy when it's something i care about. i can write a million songs about nothing but i can't write one about something that actually bothers me. i wonder why that is. i have to approach everything indirectly. once i recognize what it is that i'm tackling--be it through song or writing--i'm instantly blocked. i have to pretend that i'm not conscious of it, which is near impossible. there's a good hemingway quote on the matter which i've quoted too many times before so i won't bother with it here (the one about butterflies becoming cognizant of their ability to fly and thus they are no longer able to fly). i just wish i could communicate in any capacity the things that really matter--the things that affect me deeply. maybe i'm just not meant to be a writer or an artist. i have an ever-looming suspicion that this may be the case, as much as it pains me to confront that possibility. i see how writers like dickens or O'Connor are able to craft a story and load it with so much poetic detail and do it so effortlessly and i get discouraged. there's something that's preventing me from completely letting go--perhaps it is this awareness. i don't know. it's so frustrating: having so much to say and no way to say it. oh well.

laudanum

i was watching 'night of the hunter' early this morning. though i did enjoy it, i was having trouble really immersing myself in the story--experiencing the film, so to speak, though i know that sounds kind of lame. what was preventing me from getting the most out of my viewing experience had nothing to do with the movie itself but with something i've been wrestling with lately--this feeling i have like i've devoured way too much culture. i'm only twenty-five and i feel like i've already consume way more sensory information than the average baby-boomer--more than i probably should have. my head is a mess of broken images and pseudo-intellectual terminology--sound bites and fragmented passages; scenes with no context, though they play out in my mind anyway, with great emotional resonance. basically: i feel like i've seen way too many movies, read way too many books and listened to way too many records--i have a lifetime's share of cultural trivia swirling around chaotically in my head and i'm starting to believe (though it may just be unfounded worrying) that i'm going to have some form of a breakdown wherein my brain's hard drive becomes overwhelmed and crashes. i've said this for a long time but i really do need to stop and reflect on everything i've experienced, taken in visually, intellectually, etc. i need to go back and watch movies i've already seen to refresh myself and learn again what made them so profound to me in the first place--not even profound--i need to watch them again because, in a way, they've defined me. sometimes it's subtle--it's the way an actor delivers a line that i remember or a particular scene set to the perfect song. but i feel like these things add up. even if i hate a movie or a book i've still spent time with it--i've still been affected by it. i'd be naive to dismiss something entirely because i didn't enjoy it. people aren't just little reflections of the things they like and only the things they like--also having an affect are the things we don't like--and it's these things, i believe, that have just as much influence on how we perceive the world. we learn what we don't like by measuring it against the things we do like and vice versa. i feel like i take this for granted. i need to refresh myself from time to time--remind myself of things i dislike in this world because they're just as instrumental in carving out my essential identity. if i could, i'd go back and watch every movie i've ever seen, re-read every book i've ever read, just because i feel like i've forgotten so much. i need to remind myself of my convictions (are convictions something you can forget?), rediscover the beauty in things i once found new and have since neglected if only because i'm a wanderer by nature--always in search of something new, never wanting to revisit old territory, though i know that it's in my best interest sometimes.

wip

every friday and sometimes for an hour here or there throughout the week (when he couldn't sleep or didn't have to work) he drove the thirty miles or so to the nearest guitar shop where he ostensibly went to look for new equipment, though his intentions were more than transparent to anyone who talked to him. what he really wanted (and what contributed significantly to his inability to sleep--the frequent bouts of excitement and anxiety) was to start a band. he'd been in bands before but not since he was a teenager. he was in a led zeppelin cover band throughout most of the latter half of high school and he liked to cite this as the one reason he got laid. he believed this with such absolute conviction, in fact, that he wondered if it ever would have happened otherwise--if today he'd still be a virgin had he decided not to play in a led zeppelin cover band. the truth was: he didn't (at the time) particularly even like led zeppelin. he did it because he was approached by a fellow student whom he envied, though he'd never admit it, for his popular standing with the lower caste of students--the kids who smoked cigarettes and never seemed to wash their hair. he also did it because it felt right--like an opportunity to finally prove his worth as a musician and by extension lap up all the glory that came with being in a rock n roll band.

he got a random phone call one evening. it was the summer before his junior year. he didn't have a lot of friends at the time but he had a close network of a few friends and that was enough to make him not feel like he'd somehow failed socially. it was after hanging out with these friends--they'd just been to a late-night drive-in screening of some big-name comedy that summer--that he received the call. the voice on the other line was unfamiliar--crisp and cool-sounding, unlike his friends, whose voices he could recognize by their characteristic awkwardness--the undulating speech patterns and voice-cracks; the way they enunciated poorly and spoke in broken sentences. this voice was different. it carried an air of distinction though he'd only as of yet heard it request his name.

this is he, he said.
hey. this is mark schroder. i'm in your bio class.
immediately, he was seized with an impulse to not sound dumb. this was mark schroder after all--king of the rejects; the one kid who would probably make a name for himself after high school.
listen: i have a proposition for you. me and some other guys--you know mike stawalski, right?--well, me, mike and some other guys were looking to start this band--like a led zeppelin cover band--and we were wondering--because i remember you saying something about playing drums--if you wanted to be our drummer?
he pulled the phone away briefly and tried to suppress a smile. his mom watched him in the other room and pantomimed the barely visible smile. he looked away irritated. a.) because it confirmed that he truly was smiling--a weakness as it indicated he was giddy and unable to control himself or act cool because mark schroder actually wanted anything to do with him and b.) because he wanted to remember this incident unlike how it was--with his mom in the other room smiling at him because she could easily detect just how difficult it was for him to suppress his excitement.
well, i'm no jon bonham, he said, finally, priding himself on managing to be so witty under such stressful circumstances (this was mark schroder he was talking to), to which there was no response on the other line--just dead silence, the opposite of the reaction he was anticipating from mark though he instantly understood--mark wasn't the type of guy who would laugh at such stupid banter. mark had sex regularly with at least three different girls and had pictures to prove it--the only reason he was talking to him, he decided, was because he needed someone to drum in his band. the last thing mark schroder wanted was a friend.
alright then, mark said, after an infinite pause. practice is friday. be there.
sure thing, he said, to the sound of a click on the other line, indicating that mark hadn't the time to piddle around with formal goodbyes or general telephone etiquette.

rant

one thing that irritates me about journalistic integrity as a concept is that not only is it bullshit but it demands in a way that is severely misguided that the journalist suppress their natural human reaction to an event--to put on this act of pretending to be neutral, which in and of itself is ridiculous since true objectivity is pretty much impossible. since when was it bad to have an opinion on something? why can't people (especially liberals) take a stand on an issue--defend their positions intelligently (or, hell, they don't even have to do that--conservatives don't seem to have any trouble presenting their argument as brazenly sensationalist as possible)? do people really need to hear the most neutral version of a news story involving actual human beings and human experiences?

this whole thing with james o'keefe infuriates me. not only is his so-called "scoop" completely sanctimonious (how hard would it be, really, to make a case that right wing newsgroups like fox news are slanted in their reporting? i mean, haven't they already done this with documentaries like outfoxed? isn't it more or less common knowledge that the right can get away with being horribly biased and not having to make apologies for it or make cowardly public good-faith gestures like firing their staff after these accusations are made because everyone knows that arguing with the right-wing is like talking to a stubborn two year-old?) but it pretends to expose this great truth--to uncover this scandal--that is sort of irrelevant. everything schiller said was true. the tea-party are a bunch of ass-backwards politically uninformed morons, abrasive and destructive and obtrusive in their supposed ideologies, which, on the whole, are really nothing more than xenophobia and racism and sexism dressed up in a gaudy suit of twisted morals and biblical half-truths. it's not that schiller indicted himself in any way that pointed to his left leanings. he just called a spade a spade. conservatives are racist. they are stupid. why should he or npr have to apologize? i mean, grow some fucking balls. jeezus.

rymijo

a friend of mine passed away yesterday. i found out second-hand, from my father, who saw the obituary in the paper.

he wasn't a close friend--we were pretty good friends our freshman year of high school but drifted apart in later years when we no longer had classes together.

his name was erik.

erik j. roell.

the last time i remember seeing erik was at best buy where he worked. i wasn't sure if it was him at first. i hadn't seen him in so long and i didn't know that he worked there. when i realized that it probably was him, i tried not to make eye-contact. not because i didn't want to talk to him. i would have loved to talk to him. we were both just so painfully shy, it would have been awkward and i have a tendency to avoid awkward situations at all costs--even when i have no real reason to and that it might (as it definitely did in this case) come back to bite me in the ass.

i do regret not talking to him this final time (i feel like such a coward for letting something so trivial get in the way of not even at least attempting to say "hi") but i also regret not continuing our friendship throughout high school to the present. it's sort of a cliche: anytime someone dies, you always hear people say things like "i wish i'd done this" or "i wish i'd done that" but the fact that it may be an unoriginal sentiment does nothing to lessen my regret.

i was in history class with erik once. our teacher was giving a lecture. we were supposed to be taking notes. out of nowhere, i received an anonymous note, the corner of a notebook page ripped off and folded once with no addressee. i looked at the girl in front of me incredulously. "for me?" i asked. she nodded. i opened it up and knew right away who it was from. i could tell by the handwriting. also: because of what it said. it was from erik. scrawled on the inside was an inside joke that would be near impossible to make funny or communicate in writing. i looked up from where i was seated and saw erik in the front row with a wry smile on his face. i burst out laughing. at which point, erik quickly looked back down at his notes, straight-faced and denying by his stoic composure any involvement with the note or the subsequent disturbance. everyone immediately swiveled around in their seats to look at me, trying to figure out why i was laughing. our teacher looked me dead in the eyes and asked if everything was alright. he had no idea erik was involved even though erik was a mere two feet away from him. i said that i was fine, red-faced and trying to regain my composure while erik somehow miraculously seemed unfazed by the event except to turn around after all the commotion had settled and smile at me in a "haha-got-you" sort of way.

these are the sort of gags erik liked to pull on people and one quality that i've always tried to emulate and search for in others (though i've never met anyone who could do it quite like erik--he had such a distinctive sense of humor).

i'll continue this later...