Rule Number 10: The key to winter break is knowing your rotations
I know it's been a long absence blog-land. You're tired of me coming home and immediately showering before getting in bed with you. You miss my warm caresses. You wish our relationship was as tender as it was in the beginning. You miss the days of flowers, long-winded holiday cards, and poorly constructed analogies based off kitschy romantic comedies that we pretend to love. Well it's time to take it back to another level. I'm re-upping my vows, baby. So grab your third-date panties, I'll put on some Al Green, and we'll get this rolling.
Being home for the holidays gets weirder every year. I'm sure someone has devised a complex equation for how much time should be spent with certain categories of friends, but I find myself wandering in the dark many times. The key is knowing your rotations of friends and how to manage them to maximize the amount of time spent with people you want to see. But before we dive too deep, let's go over a few quick categories of people you might run across over your winter break.
The best friends: These are the people that you always hung around with in high school. They're the first ones you call when you get home, and likely the only ones that you keep in touch with while at college. This is the group that not only deserves most of your time, but will likely get it. Because frankly, who wants to manufacture a deep friendship in three weeks when you already have the people who have known you for, in my case, around nine years ready to welcome you home, drink vodka out of a plastic bottle with you, and laugh their asses off when you drink too much (because that's what real friends do). On a side note, for those of you who have seen me drunk at school...just know that there is no comparison to how trashed I get when I'm with the people who have known me my entire life. I literally cannot embarrass myself. Or so I think. But I digress.
The periphery friends: These meetings usually involve one time getting coffee to catch up on all the things that you won't follow-up on in the next few months. The meetings typically last for a couple hours, come in between days where you have big plans with your primary group of friends, and end in hugs and promises to keep in touch. Which you usually don't do. I'm just as guilty of this as most, so I really can't judge the ethical consequences of maintaining peripheral friendships. But the carrying capacity of good friends in one town seems to be around 6 or 7, and everyone else has the occasional coffee date status. Someone from the periphery might slip into the rotation of close friends for one specific break, but after college the peripheral friends tend to stay the same, just as the close friends usually don't change. That said, there's something to be said for a peripheral person who can slip into your "hang out every few days" winter break rotation. This is less likely in the first few breaks after starting college, but I've noticed in recent years that I'm beginning to re-connect with people who have grown from periphery friends in high school into people who I could see myself hanging out with much more often. Let's face it, people change. There's no sweeter feeling than upgrading a peripheral friend and seeing him/her more often simply because you get along much better now. This is perhaps the most exciting part about coming home for break.
A sub-category worth mentioning: the peripheral friend to whom you are suddenly attracted. This is a tricky category to work with over breaks. On the plus side, you won't see the person very often in the future, so there isn't too much to lose. On the downside, you could be sacrificing a periphery upgrade candidate for a casual hookup that will likely lead to a little weirdness because frankly, everybody knows every embarrassing incident about almost everyone in their high school. I've never seen this category work out successfully, but I do see the unresolved tension between some friends. It's...charming.
The ex-girlfriends: This is particularly relevant for me, since every one of my ex-girlfriends is from the Bay Area. As such, I run into many scenarios in which I have to weigh my desire to re-connect with an ex. On the surface, these meetings are no different than meetings with peripheral friends. Except, of course, that I didn't used to hook up with my peripheral friends. The question that always has to be asked when deciding whether or not to see an ex is "why should I bother?" Because seriously, why put yourself through the awkward catching-up phase with an ex if you plan on going back to school and not speaking afterward? It seems that every break, I manage to see at least one ex. The encounters all go well, and I come out of most of the meetings feeling pretty empowered about my past. That said, it's hard to keep in touch with exes, and illusory connections over break can be broken very quickly when each person goes back to his/her regular life. The jury's still out on whether this is ever a good idea. I maintain that it usually is, though I can't explain why I bother.
The randos: This category is reserved for the "friends of a friend who went to a different high school," the "guy I don't totally remember being in my History class, but is now offering me a beer at a party" and the "people I wouldn't say hello to if I saw them in the same restaurant as me." I won't spend too much time here, since nobody likes bumping into randos. But I will say that if you see me at a party, don't know me well, and I'm in the mood to run with that, you could be my best friend for a night. I suppose random re-connections can be kind of amusing.
The difficulty in coming home for winter break (and summer, to an extent), is that there is really no room to progress in any of these categories. No matter how much you connect with a peripheral friend, you will still go back to not seeing him/her for months, and the person will likely fall back to the periphery. The same goes for close friends. You fall quickly back into a close relationship with these people because you've known them forever, but the relationship is usually a regressive one. New things are not tried and progress is not made, because everyone is aware that regardless of how much closer you get to another person from your hometown, you ultimately have to leave again. Depressing as that sounds, though, this is counterbalanced by the fact that because these people have known you through your formative years and have grown up in the same town, there is more shared knowledge between you. It's much easier to fall back into old ways and keep up close ties with friends from home who have common ground with you. No matter how much you change or how far apart you move from your home friends, you can always reminisce on the time that so-and-so did something stupid in P.E. Health class or such-and-such happened at Junior Prom. It's human nature. The paradox of the situation is that the people that nature deems you to be closest to are also the people who you will see less often than your other friends.
Enter my pop culture reference. I was listening to a song by Dom called "Burn Bridges," which triumphantly declares that "friends that you trust probably know way too much, you should just love em and leave em." As if that wasn't enough, the chorus says "burn bridges, make yourself an island, just forgive em and forget em." And when I say triumphant, I mean triumphant. Generally, the prevailing philosophy on friendship is that you should avoid burning bridges as often as possible. Then again, prevailing philosophy probably seems like a buzzkill to stoned twenty-somethings in Connecticut writing dreamy surf rock. The concept is interesting though. What if burning bridges can be a process of conquest and cleansing? Each time I come back home for a break, I find myself contemplating the point of maintaining the relationships that meant so much to me in high school. We are stagnant in our suburban nostalgia. We frequent the same haunts and find ourselves discussing the same insufferable gossip which we loved four years ago. We are living, breathing fossils when we come back home.
And yet I still think there's a point. A wise person once described a friendship to me between her and one of her best friends. They only see each other once a year and rarely talk when they aren't together in person. Yet once a year they get together for a weekend and everything flows back easily. The friendship is as strong and vivacious as any that she experienced in college. Without many questions asked, the friendship simply works. The glass half empty person would look at coming home as a fruitless quest to recapture the past. The glass half full person, though, takes stock of these various groups and puts them within a picture of both the past and the future. Like a basketball coach handing out minutes to his players, we all come home and work our rotations so that we can see people that we still love, people that were important for their own peripheral ways, and people who we once loved but still need to learn from. Perhaps I only say this because I am terrible at burning bridges. This is the first winter break, though, where I haven't been trying to light any new matches. I'm just rolling with whatever Walnut Creek throws at me. So far, so good.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Saturday, November 20, 2010
On Letting Go
Rule Number 9: Don't make mountains out of molehills...and the other maternal slogan greatest hits
I have an absurdly good memory about some things, although this usually doesn't help me. Sure I can talk your ears off about the revolving door band theorem behind Queens of the Stone Age or the artistic merit of American Pie, but this usually does more destruction to my image than good. One of the things that I've never forgotten, though, are the sayings that my mother used to badger into my head as a child. How about a quick tracklist, while we're at it.
Ellen Bill's Motherly Slogans - The Greatest Hits
1.Don't beat a dead horse - All greatest hits records need to start with a classic. And I was damn good as a child at beating a topic until it eventually had an aneurysm and had to be taken to the overripe subject hospital. Much like I did with that metaphor.
2. Watch your door - Because seriously, when you get out of a car...watch it.
3. You aren't doing anything stupid, right? - And as any son knows, this isn't really a question that has a right answer.
4. You can't always get what you want, Travis - I still don't think I've learned this one...
5. Don't make mountains out of molehills
Alright, so this is a Greatest Hits work in progress, but it got me to my main point, which is that I am an absolute legend at taking minute details and turning them into catastrophes. Like my mother, I'm a perfectionist and a bit of a control freak. Hence the repetition of "you can't always get what you want." I really didn't (and often still don't) understand that concept. And really, why should I? This is America dammit. We pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and claim all that is ours! Ronald Reagan baby!
Just kidding. In any case, inability to let things go and move on is much less becoming on a person when he's in college, in his twenties, and a business major. At a certain age people are supposed to learn to let the little things go and focus on the big picture. However, I'm better at creating invisible checklists in my head of all the times that a person or situation has wronged me. Eventually, the smallest detail can send this thesis of grievances snowballing into flat out stupid destruction. Ever had somebody erupt over an innocuous tone in your voice or a strange look. I'm that guy. I believe everything is pregnant with meaning and symbolism and that perhaps if I remember every detail, I'll be able to piece it all together into something perfect. The problem is, of course, that not everything has meaning. In fact, most things do not have an intentional meaning behind them. The way that I merge through traffic doesn't seem to me like it should be important to the passengers in the vehicle, but that is how I've treated life for a long time. Simply put, I cannot let things go, and this is wrong.
Two weeks ago, my ex-girlfriend Jenna passed away after a long bout with cancer. She was an incredible human being, and I was devastated over the time I had spent on trivial crap that I could have spent reconnecting with her. Of course, it also put a lot of other things from my semester into perspective. The minute details that I tend to complain about disappeared for a little while, and I saw the big picture. At the time, though, I knew that this transcendent understanding couldn't last forever. I wrote a lyric to a new song that said "I was a fool to think our youth was so invincible, and I'll be a fool again this time next month." It only took two weeks. I found myself snapping about little things and complaining about minutia less than a month after I had supposedly sworn out of my hyper-controlling ways.
Unfortunately, this blog doesn't have a happy ending. I mainly posted it because I was doing it again yesterday, and I woke up pretty frustrated about my inability to deal with my Achilles Heel. By this point, I've realized that you can't change people to the point where their major battles simply disappear. This is something that will always plague me, just like other things plague other people. Those slogans that your mother tells you as a child are important though. They're meant to be roadblocks to help you find your difficulties, and then weave through them. As it happens, my mom had to say either "don't make mountains out of molehills" or "don't sweat the small stuff" more than any other childhood slogan. And although this looks like it may be an incurable disease for me, I know that with that memory I can do my best to treat it.
Earlier this week I made a joke that my exorbitant complaints were like global warming. Everyone knows it exists by now, though it can't be stopped immediately. I need some sort of Kyoto Protocol to slowly diminish my impact on the world. From what I hear, the UN's working on it.
I have an absurdly good memory about some things, although this usually doesn't help me. Sure I can talk your ears off about the revolving door band theorem behind Queens of the Stone Age or the artistic merit of American Pie, but this usually does more destruction to my image than good. One of the things that I've never forgotten, though, are the sayings that my mother used to badger into my head as a child. How about a quick tracklist, while we're at it.
Ellen Bill's Motherly Slogans - The Greatest Hits
1.Don't beat a dead horse - All greatest hits records need to start with a classic. And I was damn good as a child at beating a topic until it eventually had an aneurysm and had to be taken to the overripe subject hospital. Much like I did with that metaphor.
2. Watch your door - Because seriously, when you get out of a car...watch it.
3. You aren't doing anything stupid, right? - And as any son knows, this isn't really a question that has a right answer.
4. You can't always get what you want, Travis - I still don't think I've learned this one...
5. Don't make mountains out of molehills
Alright, so this is a Greatest Hits work in progress, but it got me to my main point, which is that I am an absolute legend at taking minute details and turning them into catastrophes. Like my mother, I'm a perfectionist and a bit of a control freak. Hence the repetition of "you can't always get what you want." I really didn't (and often still don't) understand that concept. And really, why should I? This is America dammit. We pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and claim all that is ours! Ronald Reagan baby!
Just kidding. In any case, inability to let things go and move on is much less becoming on a person when he's in college, in his twenties, and a business major. At a certain age people are supposed to learn to let the little things go and focus on the big picture. However, I'm better at creating invisible checklists in my head of all the times that a person or situation has wronged me. Eventually, the smallest detail can send this thesis of grievances snowballing into flat out stupid destruction. Ever had somebody erupt over an innocuous tone in your voice or a strange look. I'm that guy. I believe everything is pregnant with meaning and symbolism and that perhaps if I remember every detail, I'll be able to piece it all together into something perfect. The problem is, of course, that not everything has meaning. In fact, most things do not have an intentional meaning behind them. The way that I merge through traffic doesn't seem to me like it should be important to the passengers in the vehicle, but that is how I've treated life for a long time. Simply put, I cannot let things go, and this is wrong.
Two weeks ago, my ex-girlfriend Jenna passed away after a long bout with cancer. She was an incredible human being, and I was devastated over the time I had spent on trivial crap that I could have spent reconnecting with her. Of course, it also put a lot of other things from my semester into perspective. The minute details that I tend to complain about disappeared for a little while, and I saw the big picture. At the time, though, I knew that this transcendent understanding couldn't last forever. I wrote a lyric to a new song that said "I was a fool to think our youth was so invincible, and I'll be a fool again this time next month." It only took two weeks. I found myself snapping about little things and complaining about minutia less than a month after I had supposedly sworn out of my hyper-controlling ways.
Unfortunately, this blog doesn't have a happy ending. I mainly posted it because I was doing it again yesterday, and I woke up pretty frustrated about my inability to deal with my Achilles Heel. By this point, I've realized that you can't change people to the point where their major battles simply disappear. This is something that will always plague me, just like other things plague other people. Those slogans that your mother tells you as a child are important though. They're meant to be roadblocks to help you find your difficulties, and then weave through them. As it happens, my mom had to say either "don't make mountains out of molehills" or "don't sweat the small stuff" more than any other childhood slogan. And although this looks like it may be an incurable disease for me, I know that with that memory I can do my best to treat it.
Earlier this week I made a joke that my exorbitant complaints were like global warming. Everyone knows it exists by now, though it can't be stopped immediately. I need some sort of Kyoto Protocol to slowly diminish my impact on the world. From what I hear, the UN's working on it.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
In Honor of National Novel Writing Month
Last year, I did a project for a semester which was loosely entitled "write a fucking novel you idiot." And I wrote a 50,000 word novella for my non-violence class which has now been sitting on my shelf half-edited and half-scorned. In any case, I've been dragged into the phenomena of National Novel Writing Month yet again (this time with more emphasis on the month portion, as I only have around 12,000 words starting the month) with the hope that now that I've done it once, this time will be a lot easier. That is far from the truth. In any case, I wanted to encourage other people to attempt to do this with me, even if you don't get to the 50,000 words by the end of the month. And I wanted to share the first couple pages of this years novel, which I've entitled Ferguson's Convenience Grocery. I hope you enjoy!
Drip, drip, drip. The pipes in the bathroom were faulty, and with every splash of water against the inside of an already mildewing cabinet, I could hear dollars passing from my wallet, sales that were never made. The Chinese water torture of capitalism was inflicting itself on my modest apartment, with a thin layer of plywood protecting the uncovered linoleum from the ugly rusted water that wove like the Euphrates through my bathroom fixtures. Ride the Tiger, or the Tiber, or however the saying went. Leaking or plugged, I was still sitting on my bed with a gun in my hand hoping that enough dollars and cents would amass for me to finally overcome the urge to pull the trigger. A plumber wasn’t an option; I didn’t make enough money to pay somebody else to fix my pipes, and given my godawful mechanical knowledge, I was a long shot to figure it out myself. Somehow, the price of a pack of bullets and a split second of courage seemed far less than what it would take to fix the leak. Fortune favors the bold whispered the steel between my lips. I wasn’t born to be bold.
For the last five years I’ve worked as the full-time owner of a small grocery store somewhere in between the outskirts and civilization in my loathsome Zion. My parents used to run the shop, but they felt driving my grandfather’s Mercedes into a power generator to be a more cogent use of their God given talents. The story made the news for a day or two. The paper even ran an exposé a month later on why a happily married, modestly kept couple would commit suicide in such an unruly fashion. They even put on the clothes that they had worn to my christening. Wool and cotton sparked into an electrical inferno that caused a power outage at the local shopping mall for 38 minutes. 38 minutes of lost receipts and marketing ploys. What nerve they had.
In any case, the daily operations of Ferguson’s Convenience Grocery fell to me, a twenty-three year old high school drop-out who had spent most of his high school years snorting cocaine off of toilet seats and listening to Pearl Jam in an effort to fit in. We all dropped out together in solidarity and, well, the movement seems to have passed us by. It was a shame for the rest of them, and I doubt that any of them ever found a calling in life. As for me, my quiet life of cleaning a 500 square foot prison cell of brand name snack foods and birth control was about as close to a calling in life as I thought I’d ever find. The fact of the matter is, as soon as my parents decided to break the mold, so to speak, I knew that I had fallen into a fortuitous position in the Ferguson family. Whereas previously my goals in life had ranged between fucking my high school prom queen out of spite and buying a car so that I could drive to Mexico and never look back, I now had an actual purpose for being in Boston. I had inherited a family legacy of selling alcohol to minors, poking holes in the condoms of especially snooty teenage yuppies, and doctoring price tags so that we could actually charge upwards of forty cents more than the manufacturer had determined appropriate. Or, perhaps these were all modifications that I invented once I become the sole owner and operator of my 500 foot purgatory. I didn’t get a chance to interview the corpses on their managerial techniques.
In all aspects of its existence, Boston proved itself to be the perfect location for my operation. The general uproarious behavior of the population allowed my apathy towards anything other than my store to fill a niche that the city so badly needed covering. You see, when a group of people historically shifts to one end of the political, social, and economical spectra, it starts to wonder why people with different views aren’t forcing a different result. Thankfully for Boston, I’m here to fill the void. Just try to give me a 100 dollar bill in payment for your Snickers bar. Watch me tell you to fuck off with my finger on the trigger of a loaded pistol in case you decide to cause trouble. Still think your city is full of working class candor and collegiate pride? I’ve got another story for you to tell your psychiatrist on Monday morning.
Everyone hated winter on the East Coast. The entire city braved the snow by resting their lives on the win-loss record of the New England Patriots. I wasn’t a sports fan, but my store was. My parents had long ago placed Budweiser advertisements with quasi-lifesize Patriots helmets on them, a green football field in the background and the team’s schedule fighting for room between the grandiosity of the helmet and the grittiness of the chalky frozen gridiron behind it. Each year the beer manufacturer sent me a new poster; the images never changed, and the names and dates on the schedule were the sole reminder that a year had even passed. Blue and red streamers adorned the front of the store, weaving around capriciously inside of the decrepit structure and its barred windows. I had even added a touch recently which I feel would have made my parents particularly proud. Over the glass window of the malt liquor refrigerator, I had posted a special edition beer helmet poster, one which I had asked for specifically from the man on the phone in God Knows Where, Virginia where they take orders for all of America’s beautiful brewed poison. The sign stated “Be a team player, always use a designated driver,” and included the ever-important Patriots helmet and Budweiser logo. The irony, of course, and it was so fucking clever to me, God everyone would love it, was that the only people who ever purchase malt liquor are homeless people and college students. If that isn’t a group of rag tag team players already, then I don’t know who is.
This winter was particularly comedic, with inches more snowfall in a week’s time than most Bostonians are used to in a month. The streets were continuously filled with a collage of black pea coats, weathered leather jackets and puffy outerwear that enveloped ruddy-faced owners. All I had ever seen in twenty-three years in Boston was a change in jackets as fashions shifted in and out of commonality. Microfibers of various sorts were clouded by the gray façade of irony that even in the shittiest climate to found a heterogeneous community, Americans would find a way. There was a reason why these no-named patriots didn’t pack up their belongings and move to California. They still had something to prove. As for me…I just had a grocery store.
Drip, drip, drip. The pipes in the bathroom were faulty, and with every splash of water against the inside of an already mildewing cabinet, I could hear dollars passing from my wallet, sales that were never made. The Chinese water torture of capitalism was inflicting itself on my modest apartment, with a thin layer of plywood protecting the uncovered linoleum from the ugly rusted water that wove like the Euphrates through my bathroom fixtures. Ride the Tiger, or the Tiber, or however the saying went. Leaking or plugged, I was still sitting on my bed with a gun in my hand hoping that enough dollars and cents would amass for me to finally overcome the urge to pull the trigger. A plumber wasn’t an option; I didn’t make enough money to pay somebody else to fix my pipes, and given my godawful mechanical knowledge, I was a long shot to figure it out myself. Somehow, the price of a pack of bullets and a split second of courage seemed far less than what it would take to fix the leak. Fortune favors the bold whispered the steel between my lips. I wasn’t born to be bold.
For the last five years I’ve worked as the full-time owner of a small grocery store somewhere in between the outskirts and civilization in my loathsome Zion. My parents used to run the shop, but they felt driving my grandfather’s Mercedes into a power generator to be a more cogent use of their God given talents. The story made the news for a day or two. The paper even ran an exposé a month later on why a happily married, modestly kept couple would commit suicide in such an unruly fashion. They even put on the clothes that they had worn to my christening. Wool and cotton sparked into an electrical inferno that caused a power outage at the local shopping mall for 38 minutes. 38 minutes of lost receipts and marketing ploys. What nerve they had.
In any case, the daily operations of Ferguson’s Convenience Grocery fell to me, a twenty-three year old high school drop-out who had spent most of his high school years snorting cocaine off of toilet seats and listening to Pearl Jam in an effort to fit in. We all dropped out together in solidarity and, well, the movement seems to have passed us by. It was a shame for the rest of them, and I doubt that any of them ever found a calling in life. As for me, my quiet life of cleaning a 500 square foot prison cell of brand name snack foods and birth control was about as close to a calling in life as I thought I’d ever find. The fact of the matter is, as soon as my parents decided to break the mold, so to speak, I knew that I had fallen into a fortuitous position in the Ferguson family. Whereas previously my goals in life had ranged between fucking my high school prom queen out of spite and buying a car so that I could drive to Mexico and never look back, I now had an actual purpose for being in Boston. I had inherited a family legacy of selling alcohol to minors, poking holes in the condoms of especially snooty teenage yuppies, and doctoring price tags so that we could actually charge upwards of forty cents more than the manufacturer had determined appropriate. Or, perhaps these were all modifications that I invented once I become the sole owner and operator of my 500 foot purgatory. I didn’t get a chance to interview the corpses on their managerial techniques.
In all aspects of its existence, Boston proved itself to be the perfect location for my operation. The general uproarious behavior of the population allowed my apathy towards anything other than my store to fill a niche that the city so badly needed covering. You see, when a group of people historically shifts to one end of the political, social, and economical spectra, it starts to wonder why people with different views aren’t forcing a different result. Thankfully for Boston, I’m here to fill the void. Just try to give me a 100 dollar bill in payment for your Snickers bar. Watch me tell you to fuck off with my finger on the trigger of a loaded pistol in case you decide to cause trouble. Still think your city is full of working class candor and collegiate pride? I’ve got another story for you to tell your psychiatrist on Monday morning.
Everyone hated winter on the East Coast. The entire city braved the snow by resting their lives on the win-loss record of the New England Patriots. I wasn’t a sports fan, but my store was. My parents had long ago placed Budweiser advertisements with quasi-lifesize Patriots helmets on them, a green football field in the background and the team’s schedule fighting for room between the grandiosity of the helmet and the grittiness of the chalky frozen gridiron behind it. Each year the beer manufacturer sent me a new poster; the images never changed, and the names and dates on the schedule were the sole reminder that a year had even passed. Blue and red streamers adorned the front of the store, weaving around capriciously inside of the decrepit structure and its barred windows. I had even added a touch recently which I feel would have made my parents particularly proud. Over the glass window of the malt liquor refrigerator, I had posted a special edition beer helmet poster, one which I had asked for specifically from the man on the phone in God Knows Where, Virginia where they take orders for all of America’s beautiful brewed poison. The sign stated “Be a team player, always use a designated driver,” and included the ever-important Patriots helmet and Budweiser logo. The irony, of course, and it was so fucking clever to me, God everyone would love it, was that the only people who ever purchase malt liquor are homeless people and college students. If that isn’t a group of rag tag team players already, then I don’t know who is.
This winter was particularly comedic, with inches more snowfall in a week’s time than most Bostonians are used to in a month. The streets were continuously filled with a collage of black pea coats, weathered leather jackets and puffy outerwear that enveloped ruddy-faced owners. All I had ever seen in twenty-three years in Boston was a change in jackets as fashions shifted in and out of commonality. Microfibers of various sorts were clouded by the gray façade of irony that even in the shittiest climate to found a heterogeneous community, Americans would find a way. There was a reason why these no-named patriots didn’t pack up their belongings and move to California. They still had something to prove. As for me…I just had a grocery store.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Halloween in the Dub
As a few of you probably know, this year I decided to skip the alcohol-drenched college ritual of dressing up in as little clothing as possible, soliciting more alcohol at various fraternities and co-ops, and ultimately trying to end up in bed with somebody with an equally compromising costume...or as it's more commonly known, Halloween. I've always felt that Halloween was a bit overrated (seriously, if I can't make a costume out of what I already own, I won't), and this time around I actually had a valid excuse to return home (my brother was premiering his really awesome skate film, and I wanted to be there). Therefore, I took lukewarm holiday candor back to my suburban hometown in a quest to relax, study for an accounting midterm, and generally be a curmudgeon about October's finest shitshow. Well, after the video premiere last night, Veronica and I decided that since we had nothing better to do, we'd wander around Walnut Creek as sober observers of some of Halloween's finest specimens. We also decided to do this because the new Parkmead playground is possibly the most dangerous place in town, and that was our second best option. Seriously, why are some of the elevated shaped things stationary, while others move a lot if you jump on them? And why is there a toy that spins so quickly that Veronica suggested I used the sentence "in the moments before my death via centrifugal force, I realized something..." The horror of Downtown Walnut Creek couldn't have been half as bad as these toys meant for small children. But I digress.
For those of you who aren't from Walnut Creek, here's what you should know about my home town. Originally, Walnut Creek was a small suburban town with good schools; families used to move here in order to do all the normal suburban things, essentially. Recently, Walnut Creek has developed a more robust shopping and nightlife scene. Our downtown features every vomit-inducing designer clothing store you could imagine, plus the only clubs outside of San Francisco that actually look like they could be featured on an episode of Jersey Shore. As thus, my town is now home to an alarming amalgamation of egoistic snobbishness and post collegiate, white collar trashiness (along with some actually trashiness which can mainly be attributed to the many people from Concord/Antioch/Brentwood who visit on weekends to come to our bars). As a sober twenty year old with no intentions of partying on the Saturday before Halloween, I felt like Steve Irwin in the Outback. It was time to catch some fucking crocodiles.
Observation 1: Sluttiness is a self-fulfilling prophecy
One of the main events of the night, as it is anywhere on Halloween, is looking at the dreadfully simple, yet heroically slutty costumes. In college, this is considered slightly acceptable because you're in a bubble, going to college parties, conceivably seeking to hook up with people who are also within your bubble. However, when you're wandering through quiet suburban streets chain smoking and wearing what I could only describe as "a nightgown??" the acceptability is a bit...muddled. At one point a young woman who I walked by in a very short Snow White costume (which was actually pretty modest in comparison to some of the outfits we saw) actually very drunkenly yelled across the street "I feel slutty...hmmm." The males weren't much better, as almost every man I walked by was rocking the unbuttoned "cowboy/Chippendales/Patrick Swayze" outfit in an obvious effort to show off their rock hard abs...bro. My only conclusion from all this is as follows: if you dress like you want to have anonymous sex, you shouldn't be surprised when you stumble into that situation. Now, I'm not saying that these people should be ashamed - without Halloween, we wouldn't have the single best random hookup opportunity that college offers. It just gets a little alarming when you're in your mid thirties, have clearly rumbling ovaries, and aren't exactly as flattering as you were in your early twenties. I've said that you are what you eat and you are what you love...and now I'm going to say that you are how you dress as well. For better or worse. Mostly worse.
Observation 2: If you're over forty, you really shouldn't be going to clubs called "Vice" dressed as Dracula
This is a pretty simple observation, but the point is lost on many people. There should be age limits on dressing up in ridiculous costumes. Granted, the older crown had a much firmer grasp on what was appropriate and what was also clever, but still, go to a Halloween party at somebody's mansion if you want to pull that crap! There were a handful of incidents regarding people who were just way to old to be nodding their heads to Lil Wayne and drinking hard alcohol. I'm all for adults going out and having a good time. But at least try to look cool about it...and maybe do it on a night other than Halloween.
Observation 3: I really don't want to end up drinking in costume in my hometown 10 years after I graduate college
By far the bulk of the crowd we saw seemed to be the older siblings of people that went to high school with us. Whether they ended up taking the six year community college to underwhelming local job route or whether they just migrated back to Walnut Creek is irrelevant - the point is that people should try to leave the suburbs at some point, right? I've noticed that in Walnut Creek, the majority of new bars are swanky places designed to trick people into thinking that they're in a hip place like Santa Monica. Newsflash: you aren't. Your town isn't hip when fourteen year olds sit outside of a movie theater for three hours trying to bum cigarettes. Last night I actually had somebody who looked like he couldn't drive legally tell me that whiskey was his favorite alcohol too. So, by that logic, I'm relatively certain that you aren't in a swanky upper class club. However, many people seem to have tricked themselves into believing that they're a part of an admirable "scene." They dress up as Jersey Shore cast members (or perhaps those weren't costumes) and pretend that they are in the cosmopolitan cities of their dreams, when in reality, they are simply pencil pushers in the suburbs. And maybe this is enough for them. Honestly, it did seem like everybody that I saw was having a great time wandering around the sprawl from bar to bar, whistling at women and flexing their muscles. I can't judge happiness if that's what it looks like for some people. All I know was that it made me sad for the future of my town.
If there's any overarching theory that can be gleaned from these random thoughts, its that growing up in the suburbs is always a mixed bag. You have people raising families, people getting their first jobs and apartments, and people still living with their parents...it's a very socially diverse (if not racially diverse) constituency. For Walnut Creek, this is especially potent because of the developing nightlife that seems to draw these crowds from all over East Contra Costa County. It was nice to be able to look at the Halloween ritual as it would look like ten years after I graduate and know that for me personally, I wouldn't be caught dead anywhere close to it. For now I'll put on half-assed costumes and do the party runaround in college - really, that's what I'm supposed to do at this age and that's what I enjoy doing. And I'm not opposed to one day returning to Walnut Creek, having a beer and watching a basketball game at a bar. But if you see me downing shots in Crogan's when I'm thirty, please gag me, put me in a locked room, and force me to watch those horrific Carrot Top commercials for four straight days. That's the only punishment that could ever fit that crime for me.
For those of you who aren't from Walnut Creek, here's what you should know about my home town. Originally, Walnut Creek was a small suburban town with good schools; families used to move here in order to do all the normal suburban things, essentially. Recently, Walnut Creek has developed a more robust shopping and nightlife scene. Our downtown features every vomit-inducing designer clothing store you could imagine, plus the only clubs outside of San Francisco that actually look like they could be featured on an episode of Jersey Shore. As thus, my town is now home to an alarming amalgamation of egoistic snobbishness and post collegiate, white collar trashiness (along with some actually trashiness which can mainly be attributed to the many people from Concord/Antioch/Brentwood who visit on weekends to come to our bars). As a sober twenty year old with no intentions of partying on the Saturday before Halloween, I felt like Steve Irwin in the Outback. It was time to catch some fucking crocodiles.
Observation 1: Sluttiness is a self-fulfilling prophecy
One of the main events of the night, as it is anywhere on Halloween, is looking at the dreadfully simple, yet heroically slutty costumes. In college, this is considered slightly acceptable because you're in a bubble, going to college parties, conceivably seeking to hook up with people who are also within your bubble. However, when you're wandering through quiet suburban streets chain smoking and wearing what I could only describe as "a nightgown??" the acceptability is a bit...muddled. At one point a young woman who I walked by in a very short Snow White costume (which was actually pretty modest in comparison to some of the outfits we saw) actually very drunkenly yelled across the street "I feel slutty...hmmm." The males weren't much better, as almost every man I walked by was rocking the unbuttoned "cowboy/Chippendales/Patrick Swayze" outfit in an obvious effort to show off their rock hard abs...bro. My only conclusion from all this is as follows: if you dress like you want to have anonymous sex, you shouldn't be surprised when you stumble into that situation. Now, I'm not saying that these people should be ashamed - without Halloween, we wouldn't have the single best random hookup opportunity that college offers. It just gets a little alarming when you're in your mid thirties, have clearly rumbling ovaries, and aren't exactly as flattering as you were in your early twenties. I've said that you are what you eat and you are what you love...and now I'm going to say that you are how you dress as well. For better or worse. Mostly worse.
Observation 2: If you're over forty, you really shouldn't be going to clubs called "Vice" dressed as Dracula
This is a pretty simple observation, but the point is lost on many people. There should be age limits on dressing up in ridiculous costumes. Granted, the older crown had a much firmer grasp on what was appropriate and what was also clever, but still, go to a Halloween party at somebody's mansion if you want to pull that crap! There were a handful of incidents regarding people who were just way to old to be nodding their heads to Lil Wayne and drinking hard alcohol. I'm all for adults going out and having a good time. But at least try to look cool about it...and maybe do it on a night other than Halloween.
Observation 3: I really don't want to end up drinking in costume in my hometown 10 years after I graduate college
By far the bulk of the crowd we saw seemed to be the older siblings of people that went to high school with us. Whether they ended up taking the six year community college to underwhelming local job route or whether they just migrated back to Walnut Creek is irrelevant - the point is that people should try to leave the suburbs at some point, right? I've noticed that in Walnut Creek, the majority of new bars are swanky places designed to trick people into thinking that they're in a hip place like Santa Monica. Newsflash: you aren't. Your town isn't hip when fourteen year olds sit outside of a movie theater for three hours trying to bum cigarettes. Last night I actually had somebody who looked like he couldn't drive legally tell me that whiskey was his favorite alcohol too. So, by that logic, I'm relatively certain that you aren't in a swanky upper class club. However, many people seem to have tricked themselves into believing that they're a part of an admirable "scene." They dress up as Jersey Shore cast members (or perhaps those weren't costumes) and pretend that they are in the cosmopolitan cities of their dreams, when in reality, they are simply pencil pushers in the suburbs. And maybe this is enough for them. Honestly, it did seem like everybody that I saw was having a great time wandering around the sprawl from bar to bar, whistling at women and flexing their muscles. I can't judge happiness if that's what it looks like for some people. All I know was that it made me sad for the future of my town.
If there's any overarching theory that can be gleaned from these random thoughts, its that growing up in the suburbs is always a mixed bag. You have people raising families, people getting their first jobs and apartments, and people still living with their parents...it's a very socially diverse (if not racially diverse) constituency. For Walnut Creek, this is especially potent because of the developing nightlife that seems to draw these crowds from all over East Contra Costa County. It was nice to be able to look at the Halloween ritual as it would look like ten years after I graduate and know that for me personally, I wouldn't be caught dead anywhere close to it. For now I'll put on half-assed costumes and do the party runaround in college - really, that's what I'm supposed to do at this age and that's what I enjoy doing. And I'm not opposed to one day returning to Walnut Creek, having a beer and watching a basketball game at a bar. But if you see me downing shots in Crogan's when I'm thirty, please gag me, put me in a locked room, and force me to watch those horrific Carrot Top commercials for four straight days. That's the only punishment that could ever fit that crime for me.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Make War
I think this post is best started with a little introduction about how my day has gone so far. I woke up this morning to the realization that my application story to a short fiction class I'm hoping to take was due at 4 PM and I still had nine pages to write, pounded out 3,000 words of possibly the most personal writing I've ever done (while still going to Econ lecture), dealt with a few theft and tenant issues at the house, went to a largely unhelpful co-op wide manager meeting, and had an unsolicited conversation with my ex-girlfriend. I, therefore, feel it rather appropriate to discuss a topic I've been dealing with recently. Yes, you guessed it, it's the practical application of rage.
Rule Number 8: Make war with all the things that keep you from the place you know you need to be
Frankly, there is nothing more emo than using a phrase from a Bright Eyes song in a rule-based blog post regarding the general makeup of relationships. However, I'm short on metaphors and the fact that I'm even writing this is more an indication of how much I don't want to end my day by reading Willa Cather than anything else. With that in mind, let's get down to the basics. It's absolutely impossible to eradicate rage, destructiveness, and general disdain from your life. This blog was initially a tool to curb my destructive tendencies into something positive, and in that sense it has done its job, but I do believe that a healthy dose of warranted rage can go a long way in everyday life.
Allow me to explain what I mean, via a cultural reference, of course. The most interesting band that I've grown to love this year is a group called Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Frontman Alex Ebert formed the band based around the concept of a man (the pseudonymous Edward Sharpe) who was sent to Earth to save it from inevitable destruction. However, once he finally gets down to Earth, he gets sidetracked by all the things that we do (namely girls, drugs, and desert jam sessions). The debut album follows a linear narrative involving Edward Sharpe trying to fight his way out of the follies which we all encounter, but not through actual violence. Instead, this band is making war in an incredibly peaceful way that acknowledges the concept of love and death in our existence and seeks to use an understanding of both to exist successfully on Earth. The most powerful moment of their live show was when Ebert jumped into the audience, jumped around like a crazed baptist minister and repeated the refrain "I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die." Ultimately, he is a man who understands the fragility of life on Earth, and most importantly, understands that the constant threat of death doesn't have to scare us, but can actually serve as a revelation. We can fight against everything that keeps us from where we feel we should be both physically and emotionally, and it doesn't have to look like war as we've grown to understand it.
Now you may be saying to yourself, "that doesn't sound like rage." If so, you clearly don't understand my ability to take wholly dysfunctional ideas and turn them into beautiful blogo-gems. I would argue that the reason that Edward Sharpe works as a band is not because they live an entirely peaceful life. When it comes down to it, Ebert is a recovering drug addict from Laurel Canyon who has rounded up a group of people who seem to have similar stories. Ultimately, Edward Sharpe is more a band about making war against the things that have continually plagued these people than anything else. Now, I'm not advocating throwing on a loin cloth and dancing as the answer to everyone's problems. However, I think this provides a good contrast to the rage that I most often experience - the destructive, vindictive kind.
Flash back to my personal reality. Today (the first half of this blog was written yesterday) I went to San Francisco alone with the intention of spending some time at the Stanley Donwood exhibit, finding a restaurant to watch the Giants game at, and actually relaxing. While I was in the city, I climbed to the top of Buena Vista Park, the highest geographical point in SF. As I looked around this city that I loved, I felt that it would be a shame to be carrying a notebook and not actually write in it, so I wrote a little bit about the deficiencies that I see in myself that I've never fully been able to get over. It didn't seem self-deprecating or depressing, it was simply a list of all the things that I knew I needed to fight to get past in the future. What I've realized is that I can't actually avoid the fact that I am human...I will seek vindication and be flustered, stressed, and full of anger in many situations. As with any emotion though, it's not the actual feeling that matters, but how you direct it. Edward Sharpe didn't stick with me because they were a bunch of Laurel Canyon hippies. Living in Berkeley has given me a keen eye for a purely egotistical and self-righteous hippie lifestyle. What stuck with me was the fact that Ebert was more than willing to admit his flaws openly and candidly, and then get down in the muck and do something about them. Making war and being purposely abhorrent of the things that keep you from where you need to be is not a deviance from a peaceful lifestyle...in fact, its an absolute necessity in creating personal realization.
Ultimately, on a day to day basis I still do things out of vengeance and undirected, negative anger. This is something I should try to avoid in the future (although, in my defense, many of these things are uninvited and intentionally directed to incite my rage). Regardless, making war and getting angry about things shouldn't be frowned upon; really, it's the only reason things ever get done. I hate so many people, things, and situations that I've seen in my life, and moreover, I hate so many aspects about myself. My guess is that many of you feel the same way. So let's quit whining about it, dig in our heels, and do the fucking work. After all, we're all in this eternal quest to become better versions of ourselves together.
Rule Number 8: Make war with all the things that keep you from the place you know you need to be
Frankly, there is nothing more emo than using a phrase from a Bright Eyes song in a rule-based blog post regarding the general makeup of relationships. However, I'm short on metaphors and the fact that I'm even writing this is more an indication of how much I don't want to end my day by reading Willa Cather than anything else. With that in mind, let's get down to the basics. It's absolutely impossible to eradicate rage, destructiveness, and general disdain from your life. This blog was initially a tool to curb my destructive tendencies into something positive, and in that sense it has done its job, but I do believe that a healthy dose of warranted rage can go a long way in everyday life.
Allow me to explain what I mean, via a cultural reference, of course. The most interesting band that I've grown to love this year is a group called Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Frontman Alex Ebert formed the band based around the concept of a man (the pseudonymous Edward Sharpe) who was sent to Earth to save it from inevitable destruction. However, once he finally gets down to Earth, he gets sidetracked by all the things that we do (namely girls, drugs, and desert jam sessions). The debut album follows a linear narrative involving Edward Sharpe trying to fight his way out of the follies which we all encounter, but not through actual violence. Instead, this band is making war in an incredibly peaceful way that acknowledges the concept of love and death in our existence and seeks to use an understanding of both to exist successfully on Earth. The most powerful moment of their live show was when Ebert jumped into the audience, jumped around like a crazed baptist minister and repeated the refrain "I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die." Ultimately, he is a man who understands the fragility of life on Earth, and most importantly, understands that the constant threat of death doesn't have to scare us, but can actually serve as a revelation. We can fight against everything that keeps us from where we feel we should be both physically and emotionally, and it doesn't have to look like war as we've grown to understand it.
Now you may be saying to yourself, "that doesn't sound like rage." If so, you clearly don't understand my ability to take wholly dysfunctional ideas and turn them into beautiful blogo-gems. I would argue that the reason that Edward Sharpe works as a band is not because they live an entirely peaceful life. When it comes down to it, Ebert is a recovering drug addict from Laurel Canyon who has rounded up a group of people who seem to have similar stories. Ultimately, Edward Sharpe is more a band about making war against the things that have continually plagued these people than anything else. Now, I'm not advocating throwing on a loin cloth and dancing as the answer to everyone's problems. However, I think this provides a good contrast to the rage that I most often experience - the destructive, vindictive kind.
Flash back to my personal reality. Today (the first half of this blog was written yesterday) I went to San Francisco alone with the intention of spending some time at the Stanley Donwood exhibit, finding a restaurant to watch the Giants game at, and actually relaxing. While I was in the city, I climbed to the top of Buena Vista Park, the highest geographical point in SF. As I looked around this city that I loved, I felt that it would be a shame to be carrying a notebook and not actually write in it, so I wrote a little bit about the deficiencies that I see in myself that I've never fully been able to get over. It didn't seem self-deprecating or depressing, it was simply a list of all the things that I knew I needed to fight to get past in the future. What I've realized is that I can't actually avoid the fact that I am human...I will seek vindication and be flustered, stressed, and full of anger in many situations. As with any emotion though, it's not the actual feeling that matters, but how you direct it. Edward Sharpe didn't stick with me because they were a bunch of Laurel Canyon hippies. Living in Berkeley has given me a keen eye for a purely egotistical and self-righteous hippie lifestyle. What stuck with me was the fact that Ebert was more than willing to admit his flaws openly and candidly, and then get down in the muck and do something about them. Making war and being purposely abhorrent of the things that keep you from where you need to be is not a deviance from a peaceful lifestyle...in fact, its an absolute necessity in creating personal realization.
Ultimately, on a day to day basis I still do things out of vengeance and undirected, negative anger. This is something I should try to avoid in the future (although, in my defense, many of these things are uninvited and intentionally directed to incite my rage). Regardless, making war and getting angry about things shouldn't be frowned upon; really, it's the only reason things ever get done. I hate so many people, things, and situations that I've seen in my life, and moreover, I hate so many aspects about myself. My guess is that many of you feel the same way. So let's quit whining about it, dig in our heels, and do the fucking work. After all, we're all in this eternal quest to become better versions of ourselves together.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Bullitt
Rule Number 7: There is no longer such a thing as a real life Steve McQueen, but that won't stop him from making you look like an asshole
I've had a few heated debates recently with a friend of mine (who was just staring at me self-righteously while criticizing my blog's direction) who suggested (demanded) that I stray away from the rules based formula of my blog. And I will say that her argument has some merit (begrudgingly, of course). It's been a few months since my breakup and in many scenarios, these "rules to dealing with a breakup" will start to sound like melodramatic sob stories. So I give to you my new formula. Continue on with the rules format (suck it, Katie), yet remain vague and nebulous about what exactly I'm giving you rules for. In fact, in some cases like tonight, I'll just open my blog with a poorly-constructed witticism and hope that it tricks you into thinking I'm clever and that these rules actually matter. Don't look now, but you've just been played, oh reader.
And now onto the crux of the matter. What's the deal with Steve McQueen? Taking a quick glance at Mr. McQueen's Wikipedia page, one can learn that he possesses not only the dashing good looks and rebellious persona that have made so many young women swoon throughout the years, but that he's also a certifiable badass. He served as a marine, did all his own stunts, was an avid motorcycle racer, had a black belt in some variety of martial arts that I've never heard of, and did all of this while snorting cocaine and having inconceivable amounts of movie star sex. He even died in Mexico for Christ's sake. The man was more legend than flesh and bone during the apex of his fame. And what was this man's key to success? Acting in roles where he pretended to be unassuming, careless, and generally aloof. And this is what gets men laid. Not being a marine or a black belt, but pretending like none of that matters and that really you'd rather just smoke a cigarette on the hood of a car in the desert. Do you still wonder why there were so many sexually frustrated authors and physicists?
McQueen is a perfect example of a trend in our culture that seems to have started with post-modernism and has now expanded to include Pavement, James Bond, and Burt Reynold's moustache. Disillusionment is chic. It's one thing to do a lot of cool things with your life, but it's an entirely different thing to have an air of superiority. Much like women are led to believe that they need to be either sun-stained skinny models or intriguing indie goddesses, men are pretty much led to believe that they should be unassuming action figures, alcoholics, and sex fiends. I understand that this is making a lot of assumptions about what females are actually looking for in men...but let's face it ladies, a lot of you would rather go for the guy staring down a bottle of whiskey in the corner of a club than the guy talking your ear off with genuine, caring questions about your day. The problem is that I've never actually met a man who fully embodies this disillusioned apathy that is so idealized in modern culture. At some point, we have to show some emotion. Steve McQueen's don't actually exist in real life; or rather, they don't exist beyond the Hollywood ideals that we cast upon them. Remember Tom Cruise? We all thought that he was one of the coolest guys in Hollywood. Then the homoerotic Top Gun scene started gaining some indie steam, he came out as a Scientologist, and jumped on Oprah's couch. As much as men can pretend to be disillusioned and to feign indifference, ultimately, we will all fall short of the ideal.
Now I've put myself in a vulnerable position, because as a single man I'm not supposed to reveal that I have emotion and am supposed to actively ignore any woman who I am remotely attracted to on the off chance that someday she'll see me stare longingly at a proverbial green light on the opposite dock (hopefully at the same time as she notices my grungy stubble and dirt-stained jeans) and realize that I'm her soul mate. I blame you F. Scott Fitzgerald, and you Charles Bukowski, and mostly, I blame you Steve McQueen. That said, I do believe that there is hope for the men in society who don't live up to this ideal (read: all men). The hope? We're all in the same boat together. Granted, there will always be the eternally douchey jock crowd that will never admit that they have emotions beyond "this Natty Ice tastes great." But for the rest of us, there is some solace in the fact that eventually, even if we don't play into the eternal aloofness hypothesis, we will all meet somewhere on our journey towards the middle. I do have faith in the crowd of women who don't idealize me or my kind as cooler than we should be. And occasionally, it is a little fun to play the game and come off as indifferent when in reality, most of my instincts are bouncing off the walls like children on Christmas. In the end, though, a man will not end up with a woman who thinks he is Steve McQueen. Men will end up with women who understand that they are exactly as they are, and that there's a reason for that.
Mr. McQueen's Wikipedia page also lists three different wives. I have a feeling those romantic failings didn't occur because McQueen was too cool to handle. I have a feeling they occurred because after all, even the coolest actor that's ever hit the big screen is still human after all.
I've had a few heated debates recently with a friend of mine (who was just staring at me self-righteously while criticizing my blog's direction) who suggested (demanded) that I stray away from the rules based formula of my blog. And I will say that her argument has some merit (begrudgingly, of course). It's been a few months since my breakup and in many scenarios, these "rules to dealing with a breakup" will start to sound like melodramatic sob stories. So I give to you my new formula. Continue on with the rules format (suck it, Katie), yet remain vague and nebulous about what exactly I'm giving you rules for. In fact, in some cases like tonight, I'll just open my blog with a poorly-constructed witticism and hope that it tricks you into thinking I'm clever and that these rules actually matter. Don't look now, but you've just been played, oh reader.
And now onto the crux of the matter. What's the deal with Steve McQueen? Taking a quick glance at Mr. McQueen's Wikipedia page, one can learn that he possesses not only the dashing good looks and rebellious persona that have made so many young women swoon throughout the years, but that he's also a certifiable badass. He served as a marine, did all his own stunts, was an avid motorcycle racer, had a black belt in some variety of martial arts that I've never heard of, and did all of this while snorting cocaine and having inconceivable amounts of movie star sex. He even died in Mexico for Christ's sake. The man was more legend than flesh and bone during the apex of his fame. And what was this man's key to success? Acting in roles where he pretended to be unassuming, careless, and generally aloof. And this is what gets men laid. Not being a marine or a black belt, but pretending like none of that matters and that really you'd rather just smoke a cigarette on the hood of a car in the desert. Do you still wonder why there were so many sexually frustrated authors and physicists?
McQueen is a perfect example of a trend in our culture that seems to have started with post-modernism and has now expanded to include Pavement, James Bond, and Burt Reynold's moustache. Disillusionment is chic. It's one thing to do a lot of cool things with your life, but it's an entirely different thing to have an air of superiority. Much like women are led to believe that they need to be either sun-stained skinny models or intriguing indie goddesses, men are pretty much led to believe that they should be unassuming action figures, alcoholics, and sex fiends. I understand that this is making a lot of assumptions about what females are actually looking for in men...but let's face it ladies, a lot of you would rather go for the guy staring down a bottle of whiskey in the corner of a club than the guy talking your ear off with genuine, caring questions about your day. The problem is that I've never actually met a man who fully embodies this disillusioned apathy that is so idealized in modern culture. At some point, we have to show some emotion. Steve McQueen's don't actually exist in real life; or rather, they don't exist beyond the Hollywood ideals that we cast upon them. Remember Tom Cruise? We all thought that he was one of the coolest guys in Hollywood. Then the homoerotic Top Gun scene started gaining some indie steam, he came out as a Scientologist, and jumped on Oprah's couch. As much as men can pretend to be disillusioned and to feign indifference, ultimately, we will all fall short of the ideal.
Now I've put myself in a vulnerable position, because as a single man I'm not supposed to reveal that I have emotion and am supposed to actively ignore any woman who I am remotely attracted to on the off chance that someday she'll see me stare longingly at a proverbial green light on the opposite dock (hopefully at the same time as she notices my grungy stubble and dirt-stained jeans) and realize that I'm her soul mate. I blame you F. Scott Fitzgerald, and you Charles Bukowski, and mostly, I blame you Steve McQueen. That said, I do believe that there is hope for the men in society who don't live up to this ideal (read: all men). The hope? We're all in the same boat together. Granted, there will always be the eternally douchey jock crowd that will never admit that they have emotions beyond "this Natty Ice tastes great." But for the rest of us, there is some solace in the fact that eventually, even if we don't play into the eternal aloofness hypothesis, we will all meet somewhere on our journey towards the middle. I do have faith in the crowd of women who don't idealize me or my kind as cooler than we should be. And occasionally, it is a little fun to play the game and come off as indifferent when in reality, most of my instincts are bouncing off the walls like children on Christmas. In the end, though, a man will not end up with a woman who thinks he is Steve McQueen. Men will end up with women who understand that they are exactly as they are, and that there's a reason for that.
Mr. McQueen's Wikipedia page also lists three different wives. I have a feeling those romantic failings didn't occur because McQueen was too cool to handle. I have a feeling they occurred because after all, even the coolest actor that's ever hit the big screen is still human after all.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
The Deodorant Theorem
Rule Number 6: Nostalgia is the best medicine, and the worst drug
This may not be much of a rule, but it's something that I came up with when I was in high school, and I've never gotten over it. And by that I mean that I thought I was so damn clever for coming up with this when I was sixteen years old that I'm going to ram it down everyone's throat until it finally gets published in a coffee table book with advice for high school graduates looking back upon their golden years. I'm serious. Add this to my list of ambitions.
Regardless, describing the effect that nostalgia has on people is enormously difficult. It can be simultaneously very heartening and very distasteful. Either way, our brains are hard-wired with so many implicit connections that reminiscing on the past is impossible to avoid. Take this example: have you ever bought a new style of deodorant? The first time you use deodorant, you can smell it on you for a few days and you think to yourself "hot damn this deodorant smells great, girls are going to love me for wearing this, I'm like Fonzi in this shit." OK, well maybe I just really like a new style of deodorant, but even if you aren't as enthusiastic about smell as I am, you notice that you smell different. But after a few days, your nose and brain get used to the smell. Your body accommodates, and the scent disappears. Now, try switching deodorants for a few months, and then switching back to the original scent. You'll smell it again, and not only that, you'll remember everything that happened during those few days when you first used the deodorant. Yes, this is an experimental process that takes a few months and a couple sticks of deodorant, but I promise I'm not full of shit. I also promise that this won't be worth your time to try if you haven't noticed it already, but whatever.
The point I'm trying to get at is that we unconsciously absorb so many things. There are times when I think I've totally forgotten some parts of my life, and then I'll walk into a room, look at a specific corner in a way that reminds me of another time, and drift into oddly specific memories of years past. For instance, every time I walk into the production studio after my DJ shift at KALX I'm reminded of a specific date that I took an ex-girlfriend on a few years ago. These two things are likely very thinly related, and I still haven't figured out the reasons why I make these connections, but I think that's the point. Nostalgia isn't supposed to make any fucking sense. Unless you think about the deodorant theorem. Much like how our noses accommodate a new smell, our brains accommodate moments that are repeated and ordinary. People generally look back on the past fondly because it is a new stimulus that their brains have forgotten for a while. It is the deodorant that you haven't used for a few months and are just trying on again. While that's a nice feeling, it's very frustrating that we can recognize in hindsight that maybe we should have taken things more seriously while we were involved. Everyone's had the experience at some point of looking back on time spent with a long-lost friend or ex-girlfriend and realizing, "man, I shouldn't have taken that for granted." Nostalgia is a great medicine, but it's an addicting depressant as well.
I've realized recently though that "not taking things for granted" isn't realistic. Our brains are hard-wired to deal with nostalgia in the way they do precisely because they aren't hard-wired to handle full ranges of emotion and comprehension at all hours of the day. We have to take some of this information, store it up, and bring it out in idle times where we have a few moments to become nostalgic and think back on how we felt in the past. If we were always so sentimental, nothing would ever get done. We'd all be likened to the elderly man telling his grandchildren about the "good old days." So how do we get around this and not take things for granted when we're in the moment?
I haven't totally figured out an answer to that question. I have too many regrets in the recent past to think that I'm even making progress in that field. If anything, I think the best we can do is enjoy the waves of positive nostalgia, and when the negative inevitably arrives, take a deep breath and move forward. Nostalgia can be a great medicine, but ultimately the goal in life is to live comfortably drug-free, whether medicinal or not. As far as dealing with the present, my goal is to live intentionally. I will still take things for granted, but I know that I am capable of opening up my brain to what's actually occurring around me. Instead of falling into deep moments of thought about the past and future, I can close off that part of my brain for a bit and just notice the present. It's difficult, but worth attempting.
I have to go to Walgreen's today to buy a new stick of deodorant. I think I'm going to buy something I've never bought before and make a statement about my future. These are the days that I'll remember if I ever try my experiment again, and I'm alright with that. And maybe someday I'll be ready to come back to what I've been wearing recently and will remember some of the things that have happened over the past year. If I'm lucky, I just might look back fondly.
This may not be much of a rule, but it's something that I came up with when I was in high school, and I've never gotten over it. And by that I mean that I thought I was so damn clever for coming up with this when I was sixteen years old that I'm going to ram it down everyone's throat until it finally gets published in a coffee table book with advice for high school graduates looking back upon their golden years. I'm serious. Add this to my list of ambitions.
Regardless, describing the effect that nostalgia has on people is enormously difficult. It can be simultaneously very heartening and very distasteful. Either way, our brains are hard-wired with so many implicit connections that reminiscing on the past is impossible to avoid. Take this example: have you ever bought a new style of deodorant? The first time you use deodorant, you can smell it on you for a few days and you think to yourself "hot damn this deodorant smells great, girls are going to love me for wearing this, I'm like Fonzi in this shit." OK, well maybe I just really like a new style of deodorant, but even if you aren't as enthusiastic about smell as I am, you notice that you smell different. But after a few days, your nose and brain get used to the smell. Your body accommodates, and the scent disappears. Now, try switching deodorants for a few months, and then switching back to the original scent. You'll smell it again, and not only that, you'll remember everything that happened during those few days when you first used the deodorant. Yes, this is an experimental process that takes a few months and a couple sticks of deodorant, but I promise I'm not full of shit. I also promise that this won't be worth your time to try if you haven't noticed it already, but whatever.
The point I'm trying to get at is that we unconsciously absorb so many things. There are times when I think I've totally forgotten some parts of my life, and then I'll walk into a room, look at a specific corner in a way that reminds me of another time, and drift into oddly specific memories of years past. For instance, every time I walk into the production studio after my DJ shift at KALX I'm reminded of a specific date that I took an ex-girlfriend on a few years ago. These two things are likely very thinly related, and I still haven't figured out the reasons why I make these connections, but I think that's the point. Nostalgia isn't supposed to make any fucking sense. Unless you think about the deodorant theorem. Much like how our noses accommodate a new smell, our brains accommodate moments that are repeated and ordinary. People generally look back on the past fondly because it is a new stimulus that their brains have forgotten for a while. It is the deodorant that you haven't used for a few months and are just trying on again. While that's a nice feeling, it's very frustrating that we can recognize in hindsight that maybe we should have taken things more seriously while we were involved. Everyone's had the experience at some point of looking back on time spent with a long-lost friend or ex-girlfriend and realizing, "man, I shouldn't have taken that for granted." Nostalgia is a great medicine, but it's an addicting depressant as well.
I've realized recently though that "not taking things for granted" isn't realistic. Our brains are hard-wired to deal with nostalgia in the way they do precisely because they aren't hard-wired to handle full ranges of emotion and comprehension at all hours of the day. We have to take some of this information, store it up, and bring it out in idle times where we have a few moments to become nostalgic and think back on how we felt in the past. If we were always so sentimental, nothing would ever get done. We'd all be likened to the elderly man telling his grandchildren about the "good old days." So how do we get around this and not take things for granted when we're in the moment?
I haven't totally figured out an answer to that question. I have too many regrets in the recent past to think that I'm even making progress in that field. If anything, I think the best we can do is enjoy the waves of positive nostalgia, and when the negative inevitably arrives, take a deep breath and move forward. Nostalgia can be a great medicine, but ultimately the goal in life is to live comfortably drug-free, whether medicinal or not. As far as dealing with the present, my goal is to live intentionally. I will still take things for granted, but I know that I am capable of opening up my brain to what's actually occurring around me. Instead of falling into deep moments of thought about the past and future, I can close off that part of my brain for a bit and just notice the present. It's difficult, but worth attempting.
I have to go to Walgreen's today to buy a new stick of deodorant. I think I'm going to buy something I've never bought before and make a statement about my future. These are the days that I'll remember if I ever try my experiment again, and I'm alright with that. And maybe someday I'll be ready to come back to what I've been wearing recently and will remember some of the things that have happened over the past year. If I'm lucky, I just might look back fondly.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
You Are What You Love
So as to not waste any of your precious time, let's jump right into the rules, since this is something that needs to be discussed ad nauseam. I also need to have time to vigorously pat myself on the back for using the phrase "ad nauseam" in a sentence.
Rule Number 5: You are what you love, and not what loves you back
Alright, so I had to steal this rule from a Jenny Lewis lyric. Haha point and call me a hipster. Regardless, it's a very good representation of the topic of l-o-v-e in our society today. And the reason I know this is because I've been force fed a poor interpretation from traditional times. Yes, it's that Corinthians Bible verse that's read at every wedding. "Love is patient, love is kind, love is a handful of meaningless adjectives strewn together in a way that's designed to make children weep and women swoon." OK, I made that last part up, but there's no arguing that stylistically this verse is a bit bogus. That's not to say that I don't like the verse or its message, I really do believe that a loving relationship should be based on all the things listed in that verse. However, I don't think this actually encapsulates what love really is (despite it's many efforts to define it). Love is not based out of reciprocity and isn't always related to a relationship. In many instances, love is vicious, capricious, forgetful and disappointing. It leads to situations where you can go from talking to someone multiple times a day to never speaking again, usually out of some sense of pride, vengeance or pain. The Bible interpretation may sound pretty in the maid-of-honor's speech, but something so huge as love doesn't really boil down to two people, it actually only involves one.
The better interpretation actually comes in the forgotten verses before it, and the aforementioned Jenny Lewis song. I'll deal with the Bible first. Before the laundry list of adjectives that starts in verse 4, the Corinthians letter says this:
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing."
Sounds a little different, right? In the later definition, love is something that is based around how you interact with other people. This time, love is just something that you can possess regardless of how the other people around you act. This is where Jenny Lewis comes in. The lyric that I posted for Rule #5 is especially important to me right now because I've seen the vicious, capricious, disappointing side of relational love recently - and really, for a long time now, as I've essentially bounced between relationships since high school. In other words, I'm very jaded. I don't know what this love thing is, but I want nothing to do with it because it's burned me one too many times. But Lewis reminds me that I am what I love, and not what loves me back, because often those are two different things. Now this is sort of like the "you are what you eat" saying in that if I eat a pear, I'm not actually a pear, but you get the drift. I can love things like writing, music, sports, whatever, and that's how I'm defined, not by my interactions with other people.
That's not to say that interactive love with other people is not important...in fact it's probably the most important thing in life. But in times where I find myself disappointed because I put so much into a relationship (this applies to friendships too) only to have it fall apart, it's nice to be reminded that the end result of my efforts doesn't reflect on who I am as a person. I am what I love, and while sometimes those things are torturous, malicious, and generally don't love me back, I can still take some comfort in knowing that I am the only person who defines myself and how I love things and people alike.
Rule Number 5: You are what you love, and not what loves you back
Alright, so I had to steal this rule from a Jenny Lewis lyric. Haha point and call me a hipster. Regardless, it's a very good representation of the topic of l-o-v-e in our society today. And the reason I know this is because I've been force fed a poor interpretation from traditional times. Yes, it's that Corinthians Bible verse that's read at every wedding. "Love is patient, love is kind, love is a handful of meaningless adjectives strewn together in a way that's designed to make children weep and women swoon." OK, I made that last part up, but there's no arguing that stylistically this verse is a bit bogus. That's not to say that I don't like the verse or its message, I really do believe that a loving relationship should be based on all the things listed in that verse. However, I don't think this actually encapsulates what love really is (despite it's many efforts to define it). Love is not based out of reciprocity and isn't always related to a relationship. In many instances, love is vicious, capricious, forgetful and disappointing. It leads to situations where you can go from talking to someone multiple times a day to never speaking again, usually out of some sense of pride, vengeance or pain. The Bible interpretation may sound pretty in the maid-of-honor's speech, but something so huge as love doesn't really boil down to two people, it actually only involves one.
The better interpretation actually comes in the forgotten verses before it, and the aforementioned Jenny Lewis song. I'll deal with the Bible first. Before the laundry list of adjectives that starts in verse 4, the Corinthians letter says this:
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing."
Sounds a little different, right? In the later definition, love is something that is based around how you interact with other people. This time, love is just something that you can possess regardless of how the other people around you act. This is where Jenny Lewis comes in. The lyric that I posted for Rule #5 is especially important to me right now because I've seen the vicious, capricious, disappointing side of relational love recently - and really, for a long time now, as I've essentially bounced between relationships since high school. In other words, I'm very jaded. I don't know what this love thing is, but I want nothing to do with it because it's burned me one too many times. But Lewis reminds me that I am what I love, and not what loves me back, because often those are two different things. Now this is sort of like the "you are what you eat" saying in that if I eat a pear, I'm not actually a pear, but you get the drift. I can love things like writing, music, sports, whatever, and that's how I'm defined, not by my interactions with other people.
That's not to say that interactive love with other people is not important...in fact it's probably the most important thing in life. But in times where I find myself disappointed because I put so much into a relationship (this applies to friendships too) only to have it fall apart, it's nice to be reminded that the end result of my efforts doesn't reflect on who I am as a person. I am what I love, and while sometimes those things are torturous, malicious, and generally don't love me back, I can still take some comfort in knowing that I am the only person who defines myself and how I love things and people alike.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Back to the Future
As a kid, I was always infatuated with a particular scene in Back to the Future Part II. One of the characters (I'm pretty sure it was Biff) went into the future, got an encyclopedia full of sports results, and then when he went back in time started wagering huge amounts of money on surefire gambles. As a unashamed capitalist, I thought this was the coolest thing that could ever happen. If only I could know with 100% certainty that I would achieve a certain result, I would be a much happier (and much richer person). Or would I?
This brings me back to the breakup/loneliness/general despair rules
Rule Number 4: If you've done it before and it didn't work, it's not going to work this time around.
The thing about predicting the future is that, most of the time, we can already do it. Most of the situations that I face on a day to day basis are relatively simple. Most of the situations I've faced regarding relationships are even simpler. We have enormous levels of social context about what should and should not be acceptable in romantic relationships. Whether we learned it from One Tree Hill or Seinfeld or Boy Meets World doesn't matter, what matters is that essentially from the time we realize that we have pleasure organs...erm...reproduction organs...anyway, from the time we realized that, all we've really talked about is how we interact with the opposite sex. Between this and the abundance of television shows that literally are designed for the sole purpose of forcing viewers to sit down and harangue others for their poor relationship decisions (I'm looking at you MTV), the book is pretty much written on how to deal with relationships by now. So why, with this immense relational vocabulary, do so many people act as if they are illiterate?
I think my personal hindrance is that I'd rather take sure consequences that I know I can handle rather than uncertain consequences that may or may not be worse. And this is where the Todd comes in. As a huge Scrubs fan, I've wondered why the Todd continues with his sexual innuendo despite the fact that he knows it will always end with him getting slapped, threatened, etc. But here's the key - that's the worst that ever happens. I'd argue that the Todd continues in his devious ways because he knows that he can handle those consequences, but what he can't handle is forcing himself to change his personality, perhaps opening himself up to rejection. He'd rather be the hilarious, piggish Todd that everyone knows than try to be sensitive Todd, or angry Todd, or even sexually active Todd. At times, we are all Todds. At least in my experience, this very human issue rears its ugly head most often when you are alone with your own thoughts. At least in my experience with breakups (and I'm not even just referring to mine at this point), the person who has been broken up with always has an intense desire to pick up the phone and continue trying to contact the person who dumped him or her. It's pretty simple...nothing that he or she will say will make you happy. And you know this. Yet you still call. Because you are the Todd. You aren't even listening to what I'm saying right now are you? STOP DIALING DAMMIT.
Alright, so maybe that was an exaggeration, but I do believe that people continue to make the same mistakes because they can mitigate the consequences, rather than risking something better (or worse, but usually better). Most people are like mice running through mazes. They'd rather live in the half-misery of making the choice that feels right but doesn't lead to the cheese than actually ignore their instincts and go for something better. As I mentioned in my last post, this is essentially my journey towards edifying myself personally in the places where I would usually make the same mistakes. While I would love to be able to go into the future, find out when the A's win the World Series (please, let it be 2011) and come back and bet my life savings on it, I can't. Looking backwards, though, I think I know enough about where I've been to know what to avoid.
This brings me back to the breakup/loneliness/general despair rules
Rule Number 4: If you've done it before and it didn't work, it's not going to work this time around.
The thing about predicting the future is that, most of the time, we can already do it. Most of the situations that I face on a day to day basis are relatively simple. Most of the situations I've faced regarding relationships are even simpler. We have enormous levels of social context about what should and should not be acceptable in romantic relationships. Whether we learned it from One Tree Hill or Seinfeld or Boy Meets World doesn't matter, what matters is that essentially from the time we realize that we have pleasure organs...erm...reproduction organs...anyway, from the time we realized that, all we've really talked about is how we interact with the opposite sex. Between this and the abundance of television shows that literally are designed for the sole purpose of forcing viewers to sit down and harangue others for their poor relationship decisions (I'm looking at you MTV), the book is pretty much written on how to deal with relationships by now. So why, with this immense relational vocabulary, do so many people act as if they are illiterate?
I think my personal hindrance is that I'd rather take sure consequences that I know I can handle rather than uncertain consequences that may or may not be worse. And this is where the Todd comes in. As a huge Scrubs fan, I've wondered why the Todd continues with his sexual innuendo despite the fact that he knows it will always end with him getting slapped, threatened, etc. But here's the key - that's the worst that ever happens. I'd argue that the Todd continues in his devious ways because he knows that he can handle those consequences, but what he can't handle is forcing himself to change his personality, perhaps opening himself up to rejection. He'd rather be the hilarious, piggish Todd that everyone knows than try to be sensitive Todd, or angry Todd, or even sexually active Todd. At times, we are all Todds. At least in my experience, this very human issue rears its ugly head most often when you are alone with your own thoughts. At least in my experience with breakups (and I'm not even just referring to mine at this point), the person who has been broken up with always has an intense desire to pick up the phone and continue trying to contact the person who dumped him or her. It's pretty simple...nothing that he or she will say will make you happy. And you know this. Yet you still call. Because you are the Todd. You aren't even listening to what I'm saying right now are you? STOP DIALING DAMMIT.
Alright, so maybe that was an exaggeration, but I do believe that people continue to make the same mistakes because they can mitigate the consequences, rather than risking something better (or worse, but usually better). Most people are like mice running through mazes. They'd rather live in the half-misery of making the choice that feels right but doesn't lead to the cheese than actually ignore their instincts and go for something better. As I mentioned in my last post, this is essentially my journey towards edifying myself personally in the places where I would usually make the same mistakes. While I would love to be able to go into the future, find out when the A's win the World Series (please, let it be 2011) and come back and bet my life savings on it, I can't. Looking backwards, though, I think I know enough about where I've been to know what to avoid.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Wasted Hours
What would it look like if every time we felt lonely or self-destructive, we made an attempt to better ourselves? How would that work?
That was my Facebook status from this morning, and has been something that I've willingly chosen to wrestle with all day. I wanted to force my own hand. I wanted an answer to the question of why after twenty years of living I haven't found a way to successfully deal with loneliness. Why when all goes wrong, I still feel like a neurotic fifteen year old in the bedroom in the house I grew up in trying to play power chords on a guitar and illegally downloading Gin Blossoms ballads about how unfair life truly is (my fifteen year old safe would hate to know that I don't like the Gin Blossoms any more...but hey, Empire Records was a big stage of my life). And this morning was like any other. I woke up, reached for my phone to send a text message that I knew would bring no good to my life, and then I stopped and waited. What if every time I felt self-destructive, I did something constructive for my life? I ended up downloading a podcast from my church at home, an institution that I have not stepped foot in since summer (and even then, I rarely was able to attend), and I listened. Instead of talking myself into or out of what to feel, I let myself be influenced by something that I knew would be good for me. And so sprung this crazy idea.
Over the next few weeks as I deal with the post-breakup blues, I want to discover things about myself that I didn't previously know. And I want to encourage other people to do the same. Some days may be trivial and many may end in me performing the perfunctory duties of my everyday life without much thought for myself. But in between, within those wasted hours, I will continue with this journey. I will stop and take deep breaths whenever I feel myself slipping, and ask these questions over and over, a personal mantra repeating endlessly in my brain. The continuing story of Bungalow Bill will move onward. And maybe I'll learn something from the process. As for now, here are a few rules to follow if you find yourself similarly lonely, exhausted, and wearing articles of clothing that ex-girlfriends actually made for you years ago (true story...actually all of my sleeping garments have some relation to an ex-girlfriend).
Rule Number 1: The soundtrack to your life is very, very crucial. One thing that I've realized in the past few weeks is that soul music does exactly what it's intended to do. Despite the fact that seemingly every soul musician ends up a born again Christian due to an ill encounter with steaming grits, is murdered by his father, or suffers a tragic drug overdose, the music actually does make you feel better. Ya know, if you ignore the fact that most of the lyrics are about crippling depression and just enjoy the dance that you can do to it. Oh, Al Green, you are an ironic bastard. Whatever you do, though, don't listen to Joy Division. I see you looking at your record player and hoping I'll let you put on your copy of Closer. Just remember, what happened to Ian Curtis can happen to you too.
Rule Number 2: Find your own way to meditate. Let's all face it, meditation is weird. You just sit there, pretend like your back doesn't hurt like hell, and try to clear your mind of all feeling, which of course causes your brain to react negatively and flood you with feeling. The concept isn't all bad though. I'm definitely a fan of things that distract me in a positive way from whatever is actually going on in my life. For me (at least today) it was downloading that podcast. In the future, I'm not sure what it's going to be. But I'm 99% positive that it won't involve sitting uncomfortably upright while I wonder if my Mom's concerns about me one day becoming a hunchbacked curmudgeon weren't completely unfounded.
Rule Number 3: People don't like it when you bitch. And people also don't like it when you mope around and consciously enunciate every grunt and breath that you take as if you're trying so hard not to bitch. I am making this rule not because I suspect you, reader, of being guilty of said crime. I'm making this rule because I think my housemates will forcefully extract me from my room if I walk around narrating my own life and complaining about not having enough tortillas when everybody knows I'm actually just pissed because I don't have a girlfriend anymore. If anything, this blog is to stop me from doing that by actually dealing with my emotions, trivializing them, and putting them out on the internet where, if I'm lucky, somebody trying to find an in-depth Beatles analysis might stumble across them. This may seem worse, but if you ever see me in person you'll agree that it's totally better.
As time goes on, I'm sure I'll add rules to this list. I really expect to add a lot of things to this process. But one way or another, I'm ready to begin a process of bettering myself in simple and complex ways. I'll let you know how it goes. Keep an eye out though. If cases of whiskey start disappearing from Trader Joe's and I haven't posted an update in a while, you might need to send out a search team. If we're lucky, though, I'll make it through the days unscathed, using those wasted hours for something more.
That was my Facebook status from this morning, and has been something that I've willingly chosen to wrestle with all day. I wanted to force my own hand. I wanted an answer to the question of why after twenty years of living I haven't found a way to successfully deal with loneliness. Why when all goes wrong, I still feel like a neurotic fifteen year old in the bedroom in the house I grew up in trying to play power chords on a guitar and illegally downloading Gin Blossoms ballads about how unfair life truly is (my fifteen year old safe would hate to know that I don't like the Gin Blossoms any more...but hey, Empire Records was a big stage of my life). And this morning was like any other. I woke up, reached for my phone to send a text message that I knew would bring no good to my life, and then I stopped and waited. What if every time I felt self-destructive, I did something constructive for my life? I ended up downloading a podcast from my church at home, an institution that I have not stepped foot in since summer (and even then, I rarely was able to attend), and I listened. Instead of talking myself into or out of what to feel, I let myself be influenced by something that I knew would be good for me. And so sprung this crazy idea.
Over the next few weeks as I deal with the post-breakup blues, I want to discover things about myself that I didn't previously know. And I want to encourage other people to do the same. Some days may be trivial and many may end in me performing the perfunctory duties of my everyday life without much thought for myself. But in between, within those wasted hours, I will continue with this journey. I will stop and take deep breaths whenever I feel myself slipping, and ask these questions over and over, a personal mantra repeating endlessly in my brain. The continuing story of Bungalow Bill will move onward. And maybe I'll learn something from the process. As for now, here are a few rules to follow if you find yourself similarly lonely, exhausted, and wearing articles of clothing that ex-girlfriends actually made for you years ago (true story...actually all of my sleeping garments have some relation to an ex-girlfriend).
Rule Number 1: The soundtrack to your life is very, very crucial. One thing that I've realized in the past few weeks is that soul music does exactly what it's intended to do. Despite the fact that seemingly every soul musician ends up a born again Christian due to an ill encounter with steaming grits, is murdered by his father, or suffers a tragic drug overdose, the music actually does make you feel better. Ya know, if you ignore the fact that most of the lyrics are about crippling depression and just enjoy the dance that you can do to it. Oh, Al Green, you are an ironic bastard. Whatever you do, though, don't listen to Joy Division. I see you looking at your record player and hoping I'll let you put on your copy of Closer. Just remember, what happened to Ian Curtis can happen to you too.
Rule Number 2: Find your own way to meditate. Let's all face it, meditation is weird. You just sit there, pretend like your back doesn't hurt like hell, and try to clear your mind of all feeling, which of course causes your brain to react negatively and flood you with feeling. The concept isn't all bad though. I'm definitely a fan of things that distract me in a positive way from whatever is actually going on in my life. For me (at least today) it was downloading that podcast. In the future, I'm not sure what it's going to be. But I'm 99% positive that it won't involve sitting uncomfortably upright while I wonder if my Mom's concerns about me one day becoming a hunchbacked curmudgeon weren't completely unfounded.
Rule Number 3: People don't like it when you bitch. And people also don't like it when you mope around and consciously enunciate every grunt and breath that you take as if you're trying so hard not to bitch. I am making this rule not because I suspect you, reader, of being guilty of said crime. I'm making this rule because I think my housemates will forcefully extract me from my room if I walk around narrating my own life and complaining about not having enough tortillas when everybody knows I'm actually just pissed because I don't have a girlfriend anymore. If anything, this blog is to stop me from doing that by actually dealing with my emotions, trivializing them, and putting them out on the internet where, if I'm lucky, somebody trying to find an in-depth Beatles analysis might stumble across them. This may seem worse, but if you ever see me in person you'll agree that it's totally better.
As time goes on, I'm sure I'll add rules to this list. I really expect to add a lot of things to this process. But one way or another, I'm ready to begin a process of bettering myself in simple and complex ways. I'll let you know how it goes. Keep an eye out though. If cases of whiskey start disappearing from Trader Joe's and I haven't posted an update in a while, you might need to send out a search team. If we're lucky, though, I'll make it through the days unscathed, using those wasted hours for something more.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Joseph Arthur @ The Rickshaw Stop (January 20)
There’s no better way to start the year than to start it alone, right? Or perhaps that’s not exactly how the saying goes? Regardless, Joseph Arthur decided to begin his year with a solo tour with a scope so expansive that it seemed as if he were trying to persuade fans into forgetting that he had ditched his band. Unfortunately for Arthur, a lackluster performance left these same listeners wishing for another performer on stage to pick him up.
Touring solo for the first time after 2009’s release of Joseph Arthur and the Lonely Astronauts’ Temporary People, Arthur’s first album with an acknowledged backing band, Arthur aimed to create a unique concert performance based around his abstract art, on-stage looping techniques, and ability to create interesting soundscapes despite being the only musician on stage. Moreover, each concert was being professionally recorded and offered to fans in DIY brown sleeves after the show’s culmination. While at various times during the show he seemed like Bob Dylan or Samuel Beam, the unpolished performance ultimately fell more into the company of Russell Brand.
Billed as an 8 PM show, the night began with most patrons filing in on time, only to realize that due to some disconnect between Arthur and the venue they would not be hearing the featured musician for some time. There were no opening acts, and Arthur meandered to the stage at 9:26, almost an hour and a half after the “Evening with Joseph Arthur” was scheduled to begin. Evidently, promptness was left off Arthur’s checklist for his two-night stand in San Francisco. That was about all that Arthur didn’t bring on tour, however, as the musician had lined up an armada of various guitars, harmonicas, microphones, and paintings on stage to hype his appearance as a jack of all trades artist. For the first few songs, it looked as if Arthur had accomplished his goals, and the combination of electronically created automatic harmonies and looped drum beats expanded the sound of the event from a single musician with an acoustic guitar to one that often accompanies a much larger group. Unfortunately, the consistency of the performance failed to live up to the standards which Arthur’s talent naturally would have commanded.
Arthur’s most persistent problem of the night was an inability to reign in his usually wistful falsetto. Instead, the song’s which were dominated by this type of singing often fell flat and out of tune, much to both fans’ and Arthur’s frustration. While he owned the problem and talked to both fans and sound technicians about ways to mask it with excessive microphone reverb, Arthur’s vocal efforts found strained until he finally hit his stride in the last song of the night, “She Paints Me Gold.” Despite his difficulties, though, there were enough highlights from the night to make the show enjoyable. A stunning version of his hit, “Honey and the Moon,” which contained drastic vocal melody changes, was one of best received songs of the night. Arthur also managed to touch on the moody brilliance of his recorded work with particularly passionate versions of “A Smile that Explodes” and “Black Lexus.”
The true disappointment regarding the show, though, was how contrived it all felt. An impressive artist, Arthur’s only painting on stage seemed to be more of a gimmick, as all he did was draw red crosses on a white canvas with an already painted woman’s silhouette on it. His set breaks were timed so that the concert could fit on two different burnt CDs, and at the end of the show Arthur grabbed his guitar and played a song at the merch booth to buy time for the CDs to finish finalizing. What could have been a beautiful acoustic experience instead seemed like a desperate reach for recognition and, most importantly, money. Joseph Arthur may be one of the more poetic acoustic artists of this generation, but his lack of business tact and a usable falsetto made his stop in San Francisco a letdown.
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