Cliff Martinez: He had a Good Time

By twenty-nine, a man should begin to keep some significant record of his history; a fundamental requirement is only a basic understanding of his personal historical context. To see the cycles in humanity and see him or herself rolled in one and a few.  It is possible that women may write these sooner and there will always certainly be those that attain this kind of necessity earlier on in their lives.

Music is very important to this endeavor, as well as instructions going forward.  One must, and almost naturally does--as necessity is the mother of invention--to synthesize what they hear and read, what they know, and first begin by questioning inquisitively after their own knowledge's foundations.  The giants whose shoulders we precariously balance upon; and our giants have their own giants--who do they stand on? So on, and so on till life begins birthing the prefrontal cortex more earnestly.  This is why this kind of writing could perhaps be done sooner by women, and major experiences for them, like periods, come sooner than male's passages, which almost require young women and older men; the former for an understanding of one's sexuality, and the latter to help guide that sexuality to positive expressions that enhance manhood and self-worth in the young man.  The opposite players play for women, young men and older women; both assigned to similar roles for women.  The difference is the relationship being made with the body at such a young age and it's practical importance since memories reside partially in the nooks and crannies of our neurological system.

There is something beautiful in the teenage pang, where one doesn't eat or sleep and all thoughts go through the same drain that has the name and face of the most perfect partner the world could ever serve up.  Real love, I think, is a bit more practical than that, however it retains some of the former charm that sparky teenage love provides.  It is a lower rumbling flame, but a more sustainable one, that gets hotter with time. Without the sparks however, the rumbling flame and ever-warming coals would have no beginning.  It is required, and it is important. My goodness how much magnificent life I felt wasted on those manifold teenage loves. Yet it was important, it helps give perspective; I'm young enough to guess that this perspective is perhaps useful, but still too young in intimate experience to see if this matters practically in adulthood.

At thirty, my own theory goes, we inherit the world; at seventy, we are asked to give it up.  Before the former, they call us too young--and after the latter, they call us senile, and say the world is no longer the one we knew.  It's only half true; the colors have changed, the canvas is the same, and all that we are all painting is a mere dash that is fated to dissolve into a nearly invisible point on an eternal line--only God's eye to ever perceive it.

Or maybe it's all just written on our foreheads. 

501: A Thing of Beauty

The last post, in all its massive volume and bad grammar was the five-hundredth one on my blog. Neat huh? This is a good way to start the next five-hundred, lest death take me first, or the internet dies. 


"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: 
Its lovliness increases; it will never 
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep 
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. " 

- John Keats 

Memories, both painful and sweet, sting with varying force.  The force is particular to the memory, not the sweetness or bitterness of it. The periods of my past lives are things of joy forever, whose loveliness increases, unable to be allowed to pass into nothingness--at least not yet.  Old memories sometimes act like quiet little cottages where I am sometimes found looking over the frozen and forever solid past with ever new and old eyes. I can feel the opening of my chest and the spirits flying in and out like Rumi tells me to do. I can remember how my body felt through different points of it. The firmness of connection in my chest and the hot liquid of my heart dripping sickeningly down into my acidic stomach. If humanity can remember that the present, with all of it's own spikes and valleys, will too pass into a solid state of eternity by becoming a part of the frozen past, then perhaps we can already begin enjoying the quiet sweetness of a passing life, instead of appreciating it only when it is gone. 

I wrote an aphorism about this in my Madness six masks ago when I was still a saint. 

Save and Continue

You see the thing is, lately--I've been kind of out of it. I am cloudy and tired. I've run myself so far that I'm actually not only not producing, but actively not producing; that is to say that I'll hold my books while I have a conversation about other things, or I'll be watching a movie while I read.  In the attempt to take a break, I've found myself unable to.  It seems the secret is to work relentlessly. To make this the destination itself.  It's like Stockholm syndrome for one's self.

I know what comes next, the six to nine--the cycle itself is in the upper quadrant--also depends on the angle with which we view the cycle.

Enough.

I came here because it is beginning to function in the way I require--the blog is beginning to create a feedback loop and become wholly my own.  It is interesting that it's taken nearly two years to really feel wholly at home here.  Some people tell me they read it--people I don't even know have told me this.  It is what always startles me--it's like my privates, get to share with their privates--and so the internet becomes one of the closest things to us in our generation.  For those of us who use it.  The fact that the American south refers to searching online as "Googling it," quite similar to the fashion in which they call nearly all colas "Cokes" is one way that we can look back on how entrenched in our lives this creation of Al Gore came to be.  As an aside, it must be noted that Gore stole the plans with which he created the internet from George W. Bush.  Further, whereas different sections of the US call the same sweet sweetish chemical liquid things like soda, pop, cola, Dr. Pepper, and Coke, all the sections predominately call use Google as a verb.

Isn't it amazing--George W. Bush was our President once.  Being an American is a pretty cool time right now, there is a change that has to come, it has to be us that brings it--our hubris would have it no other way! Let's do it as a planet this time though.  In fact I can think of changes that not only would bring help to the world, but also help reorient our identities.  The latter is crucial, because a lack of cohesive and certainly collective positive identity, leaves us a collectively diluted force of humanity...perhaps nature intends this pruning process of growth and decline. I digress.

I think we could all work for 'change' tirelessly and it would yet seem like we haven't done enough; which brings us back to the idea that the work itself becomes the vacation.

Andrea and I, my lady--lovely long suffering woman that is convinced she loves me (another kind of Stockholm syndrome perhaps?)--we move in sync, only no one knows the music we're listening to, and even we listen close to hear it's beat.  It's a neat way to get closer to God.  In the Church we have three vocations, the Religious life: like Deacons, Monks, Priests, Shaamans, etc. the Single life: I can't think of any but my mom right now--maybe St. Monica, perhaps my Aunt Marion after the death of her spouses physical presence; and the Married life--the latter, so common, and yet I often wonder if anyone remembers how amazing marriages are supposed to be.

"Let's just jump right in!"

Myself coming from some split up families, perhaps I began thinking of marriage in idealistic terms, and then later my anger gave way to my religious reasonings--however what is truly amazing, are the marriages that make it after the inevitable trauma.  A life so long together can simply not exist without different stages. My friend this evening said it in passing, but only because he's already passed by considerably more stages.  

This is behind and beside the idea that the work is the vacation.

Love is the key that unlocks everything. In acting, one looks for the love in every scene. The more complex or simple the love can be found, the affect on the character being portrayed is foundationally different.

I must act you know.  I have no option in this matter. My life will feel incomplete near the end if I don't act in my relative youth--relative by at least four decades.  I want to look back on that life, or still be living it in a new way.  The way the media is can't last, the world may shift before that--and if not, then the evolution will simply make the cycles faster.  Artists will begin working like corporations; it's blatant to see now for the widely known ones.  The part which will begin happening even more is they will begin matching up and setting the tone--the same way big oil gets together and helps set the tone, similarly you can see people like Jay-Z and Kanye West getting together to set a definite tone in rap.  They may sound East Coast and Mid-West blended--but their business ethics are world-wide.

What's terrific is that I do know, finally, what I suppose I have known subconsciously all along--I need a partner.  I real mate.  This is not Andrea, this is a male. My friend James and perhaps Adam have come very close to this--however we've not spent sufficient time yet to test this; it may have to turn into a Damon/Affleck over the fax machine kind of thing.  James already has this with another friend of his, but what we have is unique enough to co-exist.

Carnegie had his Scott, Jobs had his Wozniak, Dre had his Snoop, Jay had his Kanye--and these names flowed in both directions, I just put the primary ones to be remembered first.  Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, Seinfeld and Larry David.

So I wanted to write about the Irony Singularity.  We're coming to an amazing age in the internet.  All of us need to remember this because we'll look back on it like the wild west and tell stories about how easy it was to find anything and get on anywhere and how fast, etc. etc. The rich one's of us will continue as normal, our numbers will simply decrease till there is a new cycle and this is assuming the world doesn't blow itself up first (we do have some good ones).

This brings me to Kuhn, and the Structure of Scientific Revolutions and Freud's skepticism of the Kantian knowledge that Descarte's 'self' imposes on our collective psyche that Jung wants us to tap into.

See, I was stuck, and now I can go do my homework. Except that now I'm really too tired--however I am uncorked somewhat.  Speaking of uncorked, I received a great phone call the other day, and consequently, I will be playing a Greek God between classes on Saturday; further more, it's a role I've played before.  I'm glad that it's at my school--however it does give me a chance again to find the love in the scenes.  Like the final exchanges between Dionysus and Pentheus where I lead him to spy on the Bacchic chorus and say, "The mind you had before was sickly; now your mind is as it should be." What do I love in leading him, in securing him confidently towards a horrific doom (so horrific I wonder if Euripides does this as a comedy) --Where is the love "when bull led man to the ritual slaughter-ring."? Is it for myself? for my mother? for my reputation? These answers are crucial--and so too with all of life. Where is the love, and then work from that foundation.

So in relationships, as we were discussing before, and the way that work becomes the vacation, as we discussed even prior to that, love, is loving the act of loving actively.  It's another kind of singularity. It's inelegant and convoluted--but it's also 3:40 am--forty into the witching hour. Loving all stages of relationship is work, yet in doing so--when considering that it is wise to view work as the vacation (the Stockholm syndrome to the self) then loving to love actively becomes the most enriching experience--that vocational marriage that brings you closer to God. The act of enjoying the suffering at all the different levels of intimacy as two heated hearts burn ever closer to one another's center.

Quench the thirst and stay hungry.

Ah welcome, you've made it this far, quite a trek it's been with this voluminous article, si? I'll give you a brand new aphorism from my book for your time invested here; it's one of the most choice of my many mountain tops.  If you come a little further near the end of this article, you'll see here are the clouds, and let us go a little beyond, where the sun has nothing to hide behind anymore--there, in the sky, behind the Giant's tree, do you see the Madman who laughs at Everything? He's laughing out words, simply, slowly and to everything including himself.  As if the words have the agency and his laughter is their tool; the words using his voice, and his body; setting him among the mass that burns for the sun's fiery embrace, repeating, "Violence, is dominoes."

Milk this Cow, the best way we know how [...]

Conceptually, I loved the sense of this photograph.  The interplay with the black of the desk, and the same filtered black on the page of the book really grabbed me; as if reality tried writing itself out in ink. Ink, surely conjures up an image of running blood and to think of that spilled ink in words on canvas as most-morbid black and deadly-deafening off-white makes the aesthetic delightful to my dangerous palate--assuming the feeling of having many palates is assumed accurately to be a predominate trait in human beings.

We are an interesting, interesting species. My, how our own divinity humbles us.  I like those that think of humility as a blessing, I find it much more accurate than the former.

I once trained a new salesman--a reoccurring theme in my thus far brief tale--who went on for the whole day about the Gospel group he was in with his large family. We walked on the sidewalks of a small neighborhood north of Dayton. It was sunny, it was a beautiful day actually, and at the end of it, I asked the day's running commentary on self-satisfaction if he thought he was humble.  I believe I was going through my conversion around this time, or at least in the beginning stages of it, and it was as effortless as it is for me to ask these same questions currently--frankly, they will aide in my friends abilities to accomplish the task at hand.

My friend, he said he was the most humble man I'd ever meet. 

Wednesday is Trash Day in my world.

I was going for a drive, or just driving back--enjoyment of process blurs the lines--and I was looking at this great neighborhood I live in, or at least close enough to call it my own. It's like Pleasantville driving through, I took a video, and may add it to this article in the future. I was perplexed by how much somewhere else must look like ultimate shit because this place has to look so great. It's the nature of things; it's simple mathematics and science.  We have it mostly clean and beautiful, with our lawns, however small and full of weeds--so somewhere else is getting the majority of our shit.

This started with some article about landfills I read in the last few weeks.

The next day I found two videos, that percolated up naturally in my internet catch-ups of the day, and both are shared below. I first found the movie trailer, and then today, the video that is directly below. The movie looks really good. Also, if you didn't know, I can't imagine I'll die a carnivore.  There's this new video about pig-abuse, and it's too miserable to share. Even the description of it is like a linear description of evil--all so we can have bacon more conveniently; I'm uncertain this is what is meant by, "life, and life more abundantly."  I'm not saying give up killing animals to cook their meat--I'm saying give up the way we've allowed it to become industrialized--I'm sure a lot of people would just stick with tasty veggies, often meaty in their own right, if that was the case.

Let's toss that meal, and then go watch this movie.

The messed up thing is that this issue will coincide directly with the impending water crisis.  The landfills (just review the language we use!!) have containers with seals that are most likely going to snap open around thirty years--the liability for the companies that put these containers down is twenty-eight years.

So thirty years in the future, when water is already sparse, some seal pops and leaks thirty/forty year old garbage into a freshwater resource through our over oiled soil, the next generations left holding the bag because the previous one lawfully washed itself of all liability.

We're that generation--we choose what gets allowed and push it in a certain direction.  Not just with awareness, but with bold action.

I'll only speak of mine, after I've done it--else a quickly written blog with some videos and hypothetical commentary based on loose research is just repeating the cycle of non-resistance; where instead we should be using the tactics and strategy of non-violence against our corporations.

Fire inside

My songwriting process evolves as new things become commonplace.
I suppose it is time I learn one never fully agrees with their former selves, and perhaps this is an important quality to keep alive.  It is not a contempt, but a love for one's evolution--even if it looks like things are going backwards--that allows it to be framed this way.  I use the example of retrograde motion constantly; click the words linked before the semi-colon for a clearer picture of how an experience of one part of being feels according to my thinking.

I have a lot of work to do on some important cycles, the other one's are taking care of themselves, as I presume the one's which require work will too work themselves out.  The real benefit is knowing that not only is that true, but that also these cycles which need work will use the individual (or society or culture or history, etc. etc.) that their cycles pertain to.  They are fully at the mercy of who is caught in their wave, their undercurrent and their luscious curls.  We are as much agency as the cycles themselves--to keep them enjoined is the--in part--the 'Madness,' I'm always going on about.  No split between power and knowledge, combined agency with what we customarily call 'circumstance,' and a scrutiny of the dusty old words which carry fluid definitions.

I've left a lot uncompleted in life, I am compelled to leave more uncompleted because I am under the belief that my desires are being outstripped by my age--this is, I think, the thinking that leads to lives of regret. We are the ones who write history now, and we have even less to lose than our forefathers in many senses.  The world of cynicism requires our response in boldness.

"Strike with chaos." 

                             -Sun Tzu

Madness is coming; you know that right? You can't even imagine how much has built up by now; you'll listen, or have listened, to some of it cracking in above. 

Music is still alive.

I don't wanna love you like a man
By being above you like a man
I don't wanna hurt you like a man
But that's what I am

Don't wanna cheat and lie like a man
Hold it all inside like a man
Hide you behind a veil like a man
But that's what I am

I don't wanna, I don't wanna be like them
Those other men
Whatever came before me, well that was then
I'll be better than, those other men

I want you to cry like a woman
Take me for a ride like a woman
Use beauty as revenge like a woman does, with a man

I don't wanna, I don't wanna be like them
Those other men
Whoever came before me, well that was then
I'll be better than-

I don't wanna, I don't wanna be like them
Those other men
I'll be better than-

So don't become my beautiful friend
The one I don't go home with
When the night ends

I don't wanna, I don't wanna be like them
Those other men
Whoever came before me, well that was then
I'll be better than-

I don't wanna, I don't wanna be like them
Those other men
Whoever came before me, well that was then
I'll be better than, those other men
Those other men, those other men, those other men

-Adam Cohen 

'Like a Man'

Surfer Rosa

"Big stone fall and break my crown" 

-Pixies