Archive for the ‘life’ Category

Wrestling with the darkness

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

So I thought I’d write from inside a dark mood. I’ve been given to many such moods as of late. They come and go, as the moon replaces the sun.. oscillating consciousness.. In the darkest of moods, one forgets of the possibilities of light.. as if darkness will rain eternal. The only method I have found for coping with this kinda darkness is to put your warrior hat on.. take a Christ like attitude as far as not being attached to.. well anything of earthly origins should we say?.. that kinda live dangerously and don’t cling too hard to life.. kinda thing.. that’ll take you through the eye of the most vicious of storms..  Christ was always good with that kinda thing.. a real roll model he is for that sorta thing.. and then the final thing, of course, is to put on a blind fold and ignore what your eyes see.. what your idea of reality is… and all the nightmares dancing before the minds eye.

This is not to deny any bleak reality’s reality.. no, far from that.. that’s what those drug taking sissies do.. fearer’s of black dogs!

Err, don’t ask me about my language here.. lets face it.. I’m in an odd mood.. I don’t fully embrace or believe what I’m saying here.. this is unreliable narration time.. where I take on the character of some.. odd spirit in my imagination.. and play with things from that perspective.. making a post such as this.. a bit on the opaque side.. if transparency would mean insights into my true state of.. well whatever. Nope.. all you’ll get here are clues.. clues with which it would take a mind far more disciplined then yours to truly read!

Err, there’s I go again, teasing you.. daring you..

But any who, that’s not what I wanted to go on about.. no, I wanted to go on about this darkness.. without all the silly embellishments and.. whatever… but I do bring up several good points in my silly dance.

Reality, as cognitized.. is an unreliable narrator

That’s why you want to put on that blind fold. See to some extent, no matter what, life is always a sorta roll of the dice.. the future is just that way. Now.. any good gambler will tell you about the statistical order that governs the law of out come of.. dice throws.. which is to say there is no chance, or chaos.. without order lurking around there somewhere.. but.. if you have chaos on the micro, you may not find order till you get to that macro.. it’s that kinda a deal.. and sometimes we just don’t know what is the chaos and what is the order..

So the point is.. whatever.. we don’t know.. and that’s pretty freaking important. When I have friends.. and they sorta reach there breaking point… when it would seem all hope is lost.. the council I usually provide is.. “well hold on a second, you really don’t know what is going to happen yet you know? So don’t freak out till it’s time to freak out.”

This would be wonderful advice for me in my current situation.. unfortunately there seems to be other voices in some of the people around me.. nearly preaching the virtues of the freak out. These people have good attentions.. and thus they are great way pavers.. of that road to hell. They have this kind of.. character.. where in they’d like to make them selves intermediaries between your self and.. reality, or whatever the hell it is.. telling you they kinda know better.. so to speak.. which.. unfortunately.. can be powerfully persuasive when you’re at your weakest moments.

It’s an interesting question to ponder, isn’t it… “what’s the worst that could happen?” I mean if you were to really think it out till the ends of eternity.. I mean how much of what differentiates a hellish life from the great life is a matter of the values we bring to it, and there for not intrinsic to it? How far down can you dive without hitting a horrible wall known in alcoholic circles as “reaching your bottom?”

I ponder these kinds of questions because of what I do value.. I mean.. I believe in values.. true values.. having the kind of commitments which you’ll take to the grave if need be.. you’ll accept a crucified fait if need be.. I’m not saying I desire that kinda thing.. just that I approve of that kinda commitment.. which is why when given a choice between selling my soul and having an easier go of it.. or getting fucking crucified.. I have a horrible habit of the fucking crucification…

Perhaps Jesus was a bad influence on me?

Oh I’m just having fun!!! What could be grander then thinking of Jesus as a bad influence on your life?!!  I think this notion is particularly powerful when you consider that most people do indeed think of that kind of commitment as.. well a horribly bad idea.

Well take these terrorist whom kill them selves in the process.. do we take a moment, ever, to respect there commitment? I’m not saying we have to agree with there politics.. or not think of them as.. at bottom evil and retched.. although I’m not saying they’re evil or retched.. cause you know.. I don’t know that I really know them well enough to make that kinda judgement call.. I’m just saying that we carry certain prejudices around with us.. that play a roll in all our judgements..  and I’m just trying to call you’re attention to that…

Another words.. the fun I’m having in all my crazy talk is in part one of pushing readers buttons.. or.. the buttons of the collective baggage of our times.. I’m saying that’s the crazy stuff.. not necessarily where I’m coming from.. and so it is that if my crazy talk seems too crazy, it might just be your projection.. as an effect of said baggage.

I don’t really know what to make of all this, to be perfectly honest with you. Is it simply a matter of me needing to be willing to face the darkest of possibilities without the flinch? Being able to do that, it strikes me, is an amazingly powerful thing… and that could be the silver lining of my situation.. a bit like God saying “don’t cry or I’ll give you something to cry about,” this being God’s way of dealing with the neurotic in us.

And as I write this I think “Jesus, I don’t write crap in how long, and then I start coming out with this kinda thing?” To my imagination this is some ballsy pros.. A bad ass rap if you will.. But the Buddhist idea that the demon is simply an angel of revelation before you’re ready.. does seems to me a powerful idea to my current state.

The demon’s goal, as near as I can tell, is to wake me up. And I can tell you that I am waking up.. and if what I’m waking up to is an ability not to flinch in such lower depths of despair.. that is an amazing freedom to bring back to the light with you.

Most of us, in our lives, on one level or another.. live in prisons.. and its our own fear and desire that has constructed our prisons.. and it is that wrestling with the darkness that can be a path to transcendence… which sorta reminds me of a recent news letter from Chris Brogan.

Meditations on the message of Chris

I’ve never had the pleasure of a real deep conversation with Chris.. I’ve tried to dance around and debate with him from time to time.. but I suppose he’s not really into that sorta thing. Still.. there are certain organization principles to his content that resonate for me.

Anyway…. in a recent post he talked about this metaphor of the Matrix movies.. on not fitting in.. and all that kinda thing… about this cage issue I was bringing up.. err.. how about a little video to illustrate my point of view?

So yeah.. I of course think Joseph Campbell is the master of this subject. At the very least Campbell is one of my principle mentors relative to life and this subject. If I take this video as a clue to my own life.. it’s down right creepy.. indeed if you juxtapose this post with the contents of this video, its creepy..

Earlier in this post I made a snide little bit of a comment about the sissies who need there meds.. My point being that what I am going through could be very easily classified as a mental disorder.. but… the meds roll is to intermediate.. to lesson the impact.. control it.. when it is the natural evolution of the disorder to have a break through.. that is the medication is a part of the cage. But psychiatry’s goal is usually not the break through but the.. making the symptoms livable..

What I’m wrestling with is more the ordeal.. and possible futures.. and while I wrestle I sharpen my axe… which is roughly the prep work for deeper wrestling or.. well.. this will start to get complex soon.. so how about a little post?

What am I driving at: Mediations on spiritual pathologies

Sunday, March 28th, 2010

I’ve been watching a seemingly endless array of movies.. that’s been my day today.. well that and an itty bitty bit of work.. fueled by the inspiration from some of those movies.. and perhaps this post will turn out to be similarly inspired.. but.. if I’m to post this, it can’t be too much of a post.. cause the real deal posts.. are too much work to have finished.. or to finish on a night like this.. it’s 5 AM after all.. and I’m tired.. so don’t expect too much.

So what am I driving at? No, not in this post.. but in life.. the life away from writing this thing.. Maybe I should try and explain what I mean.

One of the films I’ve watched in my recent array was a documentary on Thomas Merton.  Merton was a monk whom I read a bit of at some point around college.. He was important, for among other things, a kind of east west dialog.. and he was a bit of a prophet. I can’t quote him properly, but in my “what am I driving at question” he sorta communicated my meaning somewhere.. This idea that God is always giving us seeds, but those seeds rarely turn to fruit for the simple reason that the conditions aren’t quite right.

I have a difficult time making distinctions between myself and God sometimes. This is not to say that I have a hyper inflated ego, or anything like that.. but that the nature and depths of consciousness are such that.. well I suppose you could argue that it’s only from the stand point of the ego that we are so differentiated from the world that we could look at our selves as distinct individuals.. as a pose to seeing all the mutual dependancies.. from which we are a product.. and it is in this sense that I find the difficulty in distinguishing myself from God.

But my analogous thought to Merton’s, or my analogous meaning.. think of all the thoughts that you think over the course of a day, or a few days, and think of each thought like a seed from God.  Ok.. I know, you’re thoughts? But where do our thoughts come from? Where do they come from prior to there dawning on our awareness? They are, are they not, products of complex dynamics.. inside of which we are linked to, well, everything. Do you follow?

And these thoughts are also expressive of something else.. which is like.. oh lets call it our existential relationship to reality… err, maybe that’s not the best thing to call them.. or not the meaning I’m after here. Maybe it’s more like.. they are expressive of the course we are trying to navigate through life. They are somehow about choices we make.. we make the choice to think down a path.. or look down a path.. or perhaps to walk down it. These are the thoughts of that path.

But the choice of paths.. and all of this.. I use the phrase “choices we make,” but again there’s the ambiguity here. Conscious will is not really the thing in charge of our lives.. there is, after all, fait.. the seemingly random nature of the universe.. the issues of mice and men.. and of course, the unconscious factors. So when I ask “what am I driving at” what I’m trying to do is look at all those thoughts, and see what the path might be that they are expressive of.

I think of prayer life.. or my relationship to the divine.. as kind of “call and response” esk. I believe we all, even the atheists among us, have prayer lives.. have relationships to the divine. Now.. this is a “transfiguration of the common place” esk point of view.. This transfiguration of the common place.. well among other things was a book by Arthur Danto on Aesthetics.. It was a wrestling with issues of modern art, or what is often called modern art.. Dushamp’s water fountain, Warhol soup can’s.. some John Cage fun..

The idea is what is the implication of “the frame.” Well it’s quite a rabbit whole to go down, to try and fully explain this.. but the point is.. that there’s something we call “prayer,” there’s something we call “a relationship to the divine” and these terms.. are frames.. that frame things a certain way.. but if the thing we are trying to refer to with our frames.. is something intrinsic to the nature of.. lets call it prayer or relationship to the divine.. it might be possible to find things that hold these same intrinsic qualities.. which we do not put in these frames.

And so it is that I’ve spied the “unconscious spiritual lives” that exist in all of our lives.. without us even being aware of it. We, without realizing we are doing it.. say a prayer… ask God for something.. and we even get our selves an answer.. all while not being at all aware of it.

There is this notion that things are in “God’s hands.” This is.. a mysterious thing, is it not? Do we believe there’s some invisible force behind phenomenological reality? Well, in psychology it is fact in the sense that those things that we do not work out within our selves, we are forced to work out in our lives.. as our psychology makes them manifest them selves in our lives.

This is a complex point.. I mean what’s the distinction between us doing it and God doing it? This point is made even more complex by the fact that the psychologist is… in a very basic sense, a kind of substitute for a priest.. and that what we now call “psychology” was once called “spirit.”

In any event, I have my eyes firmly focused on this problem.. this question.. and the sorta unfolding of my own destiny and how that relates to these sorts of questions.

Sick again

Friday, January 8th, 2010

I seem to have this bad habbit of getting really sick for about a week or so every few months.. so.. if I’m not responding or interacting with you.. or you wonder what’s up with me, now you know.

Whatever it is, if I move my body in the wrong way it hurts..  this and I’m out of it, my mind isn’t really working right… I haven’t tried to really focus on anything for a bit.. but.. I don’t know

Latter:

I had to get up today to make sure I was there for the meals on wheels people. This is a long story.. its for my dad, and if no one is there when they come, the protocol is that they call the police and the police do a “wellness check” on my dad… so it took a lot of me to be up for that.. and then it was time to leave the house, and try and get something to eat.. which ended up being a painful ordeal.. just going out of the house to get in the car takes a good deal out of me…

As of now I’ve been up for sometime.. I’m sitting in front of my computer.. I’ve been screwing around with trying to make music.. I figure it probably doesn’t take too much to sit at my computer.. but every time I have to get up, be it for the bathroom, to get something to drink, to find tissues, whatever.. takes a lot out.. and my ability to focus is impaired..

Music to get you in that Christmas Spirit

Friday, December 25th, 2009

I must confess, it doesn’t feel much like Christmas around here.. 2 years ago this month my mom died, I’m now taking care of my dad.. who has alzhiemer’s… I’ve been pretty tuned out of mass media lately.. so none of the usual Christmas messages have reached me.. I feel like I should be with family, but no one has invited us.. so its all just rather hard.

But then I started searching youtube for Christmas music, and my move improved.. its funny how.. even when you feel so out side of this world.. not connected to.. whatever Christmas is supposed to be.. somehow there’s still magic in the day…

Bet Middler on Acid (as Cheesy as they want to be)

 

And just cause we can’t get enough….

Just cause…

Every Body Loves Charlie Brown

King Diamond, you can’t beat this!!! (This one is SOOO my favorite!!! Just warms my black heart!!!)

A little Motorhead?

How about a little old fashion Iron Maiden?

And our old friend Rob Halford

 Yeah, so that def lifted my spirits today.. help yours any?

 

Here comes the darkness: The State to take my father away

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

Me And Dad

I will no doubt blog more on the subject.. unless lawyers should instruct me against such things… but I figure I should say something at this point.. though I will keep it ominously bare of details… suggestive to the imagination.

I’m on the verge of an emotional breakdown.. or.. maybe I’m not. There’s an ambiguity to it.. to it all.. but there are definitely moments where I feel myself to be at that verge. It could be cast into the light of appreciating that today is the 2 year anniversary of my mom’s passing. As near as I’m able to understand, the pain is still more then I’m able to fully take on.. so I experience it in ways where its like.. various psychological forces acting as intermediators between myself and the pain.. but this month.. every once in a while I find myself dropping down into that pain..

To further complicate matter’s there is my father… whom it is my job to take care of. No, I don’t feel I’m doing the greatest job at it.. but.. there is this intervention force, that is now thinking about taking my father away.. placing him in some sorta “home” -ish situation… my approval doesn’t matter…. they’re just going to do it.. and.. while my plan was to put him into an assisted living situation… to begin looking at it sometime after the new year.. It is that this intervention force… errr… it all looks quite dark to me.. like humanity subordinated to the machinery of the state.. so while I don’t object to my father being put in such a situation, I do object to the course they take in achieving this.,.. To how I’m treated.. and even, in places, how my father is treated: The Process

They have inaccurate perceptions of things, and they don’t care that these are inaccurate.. they will not subject them to debate..  or that there manner of proceeding could do more damage then good.. they seem to merely care about there perceptions..

The part of me that thinks my father could be better off in such a scenario is not terribly bothered by all this..  I mean that I’m having trouble coping, and that it may be adversely effecting my father… but the system still echo’s Nietzsche’s line “The state that coldest of cold monsters.”

Anyway, I’ll likely post more sometime soon.

My recent networking wifi internet woes, and the studio move

Monday, December 7th, 2009

I’ve been going without internet for a while now.. well.. actually I only have internet on my laptop, not my desktop.. which is all backwards… I went without any internet for about two days… and this apparently triggered a freak out online.. which is sorta mysterious.. and mystically my friend Greg PC showed up at my door to help matters… he’d never been to my door before.. and somehow the knocking at the somewhat late hour freaked me out and it took a while to regain my head.. so why not talk about this story?

It all started when I bought a certain microphone preamp.. Microphone preamps can be quite expensive.. I’ll likely make a post about this soon.. I got mine for a little less then half the list price.. well, it was used.. but Jesus, half off the list price? I would not have been able to afford this preamp other wise.. and it was a kind of preamp I REALLY wanted! So lots of excitement.. couldn’t wait to try it out.. but there was one problem..

The manual was more adamant then any manual I had ever seen.. on the importance of grounding.. which is to say.. the 3 prong plug thing.. blah blah blah.. and in the room that used to be my studio.. there was no such 3 pronged plug.. which meant.. if I wanted to play it safe.. I’d have to move the studio.. which.. was no small feat!

The biggest issue, of course, was the internet.. Version is my ISP.. it comes into my room via a drilled hole in the wall.. to this modem with wifi.. which I connected to via an ethernet cable but.. its not terribly mac friendly the way they’ve set it up.. so.. in order to ACTUALLY have wifi throughout the house.. and to actually be able to move files between computers.. via Wifi.. I can’t use there wifi..

I don’t really know what I’m doing.. so I wont go into all the gory details… but something funky was going on.. and I don’t get it.. where I couldn’t get my bass station and time capsule to get internet via the modem.. which is both why I had not internet for two days, and also why this laptop is my only internet connection.

I don’t really understand the networking thing today.. all the details..  Mac’s tend to simplify all the technical stuff.. but.. they simplify it to a point that.. if you have to go out of the simple zone.. you’re suddenly in this very disorientating world.. if you don’t know what your doing. Definitely painful!

But the good news is the studio is now mostly moved.. to the TV room.. which is sorta dramatically different, and has 2 dramatic implications.

  1. Its a lot bigger.. which means I can bring parts of my studio into service which I’ve more or less had hidden away for ages… like say my 16 channel digital mixer
  2. It’s a lot bigger.. which presents a different sorta acoustic situation.. the principle issue for acoustics in this situation is you don’t want the acoustics of the listening space interfering with the sound your ears are hearing.. and small spaces are notoriously hard to deal with… in the TV room.. there’s lots of space.. so.. by the time the audio bounces off a wall or something, and gets back to my ear.. it’s so low in volume.. that its not really coloring my impressions.. plus there are fairly sound absorbing surfaces in the space.. so.. I could finally make the move away from headphones to monitors.

I suppose this bears talking about. For a number of reasons it is considered a no no to mix on headphones.. but, given a choice between low end monitors and a terrible acoustic environment.. and higher end headphones.. take the headphones!!!

The jump to monitors, at least for me, is pretty mind blowing.. and yes… they are, at least in terms of price, low end monitors.. but I think they are quite nice.. as does Mr. BT.. and the guy at the store was like “yeah, if I had only this much to spend this is what I’d get.” Oh.. and not only are they relatively cheap.. but they were having a Thanksgiving weekend special deal on them!

Of course the only trouble is one of the monitors is defective.. so I have to go return it for another pair once they get them in.. hopefully tomorrow.. but.. what you find is a whole lot more detail.. you’re able to hear.

This is a somewhat odd thing.. you listen to.. well mostly I’ve been listening to the sound track of command and conquer.. which I’ve always regarded as a somewhat generic sound track.. but now that I can hear the details.. I’m actually quite impressed.. of course you can argue that they sure as hell should have made it sound better on lesser speakers.. but that’s sorta besides the point..

Anyway… yeah.. so I feel like I’m leveling up!

Debating Participating in Black Friday

Friday, November 27th, 2009

So I find myself debating participating in this here black friday stuff.. but.. I find there’s a couple problems.

  1. What exactly is on sale? Its not real clear to me what is… or where I should go..
  2. Much of what I’ve seen on sale, via the internet, is sorta like.. not really that big a deal.
  3. Dealing with all the people who are out, waiting in lines, all the rest of it.. not really my idea of a good time.

One of  the rumors that was going on was about Apple having some pretty decent deals on computers. There’s one computer that I kinda sorta find myself looking at from Apple.. I don’t REALLY feel the need to upgrade accept.. well.. if I want to go out and do live shows.. and just cause of how Apple sorta sets up there line.. this forces me into there more expensive computers.. and um.. well.. they are offering around $100 off.. which.. is fine accept that I was thinking if I was going to buy said computer, I’d wait till Apple refreshed it.. and that $100 off.. I guess I just sorta feel like.. if you factor in the need for an upgrade.. it should perhaps be less then that anyway.

Other then that there is a thing going on at guitar center… which is not terribly huge.. but I do have stuff there thats on my to do list..

All and all, I’m against buying stuff that I wasn’t going to buy anyway. I tend to have a pretty broad range of things I’m thinking about for studio upgrades, or whatever.. which gives me flexibility where.. if I see something going cheap.. ok, maybe I’ll pick that thing up.. but if its not in that thought process.. its not a deal.. its getting you to spend money on something you  wouldn’t other wise spend money on.

I will say, from what I’ve heard.. that Wallmart is sorta the place to go.. and that they have sales on both Blue Ray players and HD TVs that are pretty remarkable. Also I’ve seen individual movies at Amazon that are quite well priced..

Some of the visual effects I’m looking to do requires multiple video cameras.. so I was thinking if there were such things at a low enough price today, that picking one up might not be a bad idea.. plus to have HD for a multi cam shout would be desirable..

But over all? I think I’ll pass.

The one thing I will say is that.. this is the start of a time that’s pretty horrible if you want to go shopping for anything… I mean the mob scene at the stores… and this sorta makes me nervous in that.. I’m really feeling the need to update my wardrobe a little bit, and maybe my father’s to.. all I really have to ware, pants wise, is swet pants… and every single pair has ether a whole in the pockets, or along the legs.. plus.. not really the most fashionable thing, ha?

Struggling With Your Self

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

Howz abouts another crazed entry? Sure, why not? I hear this first paragraph is very important.. you gotz to makez it keyword rich.. but is that how you wantz to start off your blog entry? With some keyword rich action? What is this, a newspaper; where we gotta give you an overview of whatever it is I’m going to post about in the first paragraph.. and then kinda go into it a little here, a little there.. circling around.. till I’m finally allowed to deep dive? Is that how we are to do it? How it’s supposed to work? Well I mean.. whatz ifz I’z wants to do something else.. I mean.. half the time I start a post and I don’t know what the hell it is I’m going to write about it.. till I getz to it. So who knows whatz the hellz this one’s going to be about? More social media bitching perhaps?

I don’t know.. I’m in a weird mood thinking about everything… See I’ve been sick in bed for a freaking week.. and it sucks.. cause I walk around wondering what the hell happened to my momentum.. plus my life is at this weird point where we kinda don’t know what’s up.. with various things.. and.. its like the cliff hanger sustains.. so we can’t quite acclimate to to whatever the actuality turns out to be.. and we got a lot of this kinda thing to start working out.

But then I fell into this odd way of thinking… that basically.. its kinda all in my mind anyway.. or I mean.. a certain amount of it is. Or.. see it’s like.. what’s there to be anxious about, really? I’m not saying there’s not a lot.. or that there’s not a lot on my plate, and life isn’t overwhelming in reality.. and that I’m still feeling like I’m failing to live up to it all.. I’m not debating that part of it.. more the big picture anxiety over living through this and getting to some better reality.. All the feeling of..  like that will never happen… and the wondering how much of my life’s efforts might be in vane, or any of that. 

So here’s a little tip from you’re uncle Matt.. when you’re in that there valley of darkness.. this is not the time to assess such things! In the dark.. so much is in shadow.. and.. what you see in the shadow.. in all the question marks… tends to be just a projection of your mood.. and if your mood is dark.. well.. there you go. And with this comes the question of.. just what is momentum..

A couple latter:

Seems like I’m circling around a thought worthy of examination..  which is like.. about the baggage we cary with us through our life.. its effects on pathology, and the unfolding of our lives.. This feeling like.. if we could just break through it.. but somehow breaking through seems.. beyond what we are capable of.. and you wonder if you’re like some elephant that was taught he was caged.. by a giant chain around his leg.. and now it’s just a string.. but we still feel the cage.

I have found.. I absolutely can walk outside my own cage. I have.. in various ways.. and yet it is still there.. and yet, is it?

Geo's Frame

One of the things I was thinking about.. oh a month or back or so.. was the importance of interacting with lots of people.. for the sake of my sanity.. And in social media.. I discovered this by going to a bunch of tweet ups.. I have lots of social media friends.. friends I enjoy hanging out with.. having a beer with.. etc.. But now it’s looking like I might not be able to make so many tweet ups.. meet ups.. or whatever. 

The thing about hanging out with lots of different groups of people.. having lots of different types of friends is.. the way we kind of define our selves socially.. that is how our identity in part comes from this social interaction.. and Well this might sound like crazy talk.. it’s part of a theory I developed under the influence of psychedelics.. that as a part of social cohesion.. there is a kind of center point that happens when you interact with one or more person.. that.. in a certain way.. could be thought of as a kind of modified version of Freud’s super ego.. whatever it is that brings us together.. or whatever it is that we have in the way of shared values.. because like our value system.. and the basis of social hierarchy.. sorta.. 

Steve Garfield's Unfair Advantage @ Boston Media Makers

For men, of course, pecking order is very important.. and the vibe you have about your place in the universe.. and all this.. Now.. the deal about the value of lots of people.. means you have lots of little places where different things are valued.. different parts of your being..  So.. your view of your self.. if not super good.. could have something to do with the folks you are hanging out with.. the world  you’re in…

This is not to cast aspersions to the folks I regularly hang with.. but that my regular experience is not… ideal in terms of my whole self.. that its unbalanced.. 

So in this sense.. the cage within.. and is it really a cage at all.. how much of this feeling is a part of a sense of identity.. based on the world I’m experiencing myself through? Is what I’m asking…

Humanism, dissent, and conversation

We are a complex web of interrelated wills..  a will echo system if you will.. that has some sorta interrelationship with our needs as human beings.. and how well or poorly these things are being met. To attack the problem in a kinda Maslow hierarchy sorta way.. it can be hard to reach higher stages of spiritual enlightenment when there’s some question of if you’ll even be able to eat tonight.. But I think there’s lots of hierarchy’s in us.. not just Maslow’s.. surrounding all sorts of things.. so that there are certain things we can’t achieve until this other set of things is taken care of.. and this is the sorta thing that can create creative blocks.. or just whatever.. and sometimes you just have to kinda put you’re ear to the unconscious to find your way to the next place you need to be at.

So in this way it’s all quite hard to tell what’s really up inwardly.. what’s creating the cage phenomenon of the mind sorta feeling.. 

A couple latter:

I think I mentioned somewhere.. this association I’m having between sickness and and neurosis.. neurosis being a substitution.. substituting illegitimate suffering for legitimate suffering.. not that being sick isn’t a legitimate thing.. but.. it’s at least neurosis like in that you aren’t doing anything about whatever the thing is.. that you should be doing something about.. and the like between excuse and reason can be fuzzy.. 

Speaking of which.. I’d finish this thought.. but I have things to attend to.  

 

Hello World, and other fine tunes: Of blogging and Social Media: existential relationship to strategy

Monday, September 28th, 2009

sick matt

I guess I’ve been posting some crazy ass posts while sick, ha? It’s good to post! I encountered this bit of inspiration over at Pluperfecter.. this interview of Steven aka Vaspers the Grate from some 5 years ago.. On the subject of what a blog is.. Steven quoted Doc Searls… a blog post being like an email to the world.. and this thought just sorta inspired me.. should I blog like that? Should I blog as if this were a personal email to the world? Me to you? And you over there as well? 

You know.. I can dig that kinda idea.. like.. I don’t know.. so often there’s all this “how to blog” crap.. smart crap though it can be.. it’s the game of it.. everything from your SEO / SEM / Copywriting, key working, whatever ing..  top 10 lists.. and God knows what else. I mean sure.. it can all be good.. but um.. I don’t know.. I never feel totally comfortable with it.. just as I’ve never felt totally comfortable with best practices.. I’m not trying to refute there utility.. and it’s not that I want to sabotage my own plight.. It’s just that sometimes it feels like just a lot of rubbish to get in the way… You know?

I don’t know.. I feel as if.. on some level.. if I blog there should be some sorta strategery about it.. or some purpose.. some excuse to poor energy into it.. I wonder if I’m adding any value to the world or to anything.. Why am I doing this again? If strategical.. shit, my spell checker didn’t underline that word.. is that a real wold?.. err.. strategical tactical al-tick-al whatever..  el.. Salvador of dolly.. parton.. pardons.. I don’t fucking know.. but just the.. 

Ok.. so there’s an ecosystem that works a certain way.. which causes somethings to rise, somethings to fall.. blah blah blah.. and the el strategic-o tacktic-o is in part born out of a close observation of how all this works and “How you to can be a social media rock star” or at least.. well.. whatever.. and I think all this is important.. and if you have a goal.. and that goal is your success metric.. well.. you ought to adopt all that…

But then I think.. and I think real deeply.. so deeply.. it-id scare your mofo ass.. you know.. like “what’s this life for” deep? Well screw that line of questioning as that make you walk around like a head without a body.. lol, which is to say not walk all that well at all. . No what I’m thinking more is like.. look inward.. Who is you, what is you about? Like really on the super deep levels. Deep enough that you eventually get to darkness and must confess incomplete knowledge on the subject.. and here, if nothing else.. aren’t you supposed to be the supreme grand-poo-bah expert on the subject of who and what you is? And you don’t fucking know? If  you hit rock star big.. good luck to you’re F’n biographers right? 

Yeah, I’d bitch at those vicarious-ism addicts to… which would bring me to this crazy existential question I’ve been pondering lately.. but.. we’ll skip that for now..

I’m thinking about mind mapping the subject.. kinda mandala esk action for yeah.. like what’s all the crap on your mind.. not just consciously.. what are the things you are after.. what’s up with these obsessions of yours.. looking at all the aims you gotz in your life.. map that shit out.. see the cross relationships.. 

So like each thing you do is like a piece of puzzle of a bigger you… a Nietzschean super man quest.. err.. well maybe you’re not that bad ass but.. to one extent or another we are always in a process of waking up to our selves.. and we have.. lets say it is a part of the soul.. a kind of destiny.. that we are always driving towards.. with all our pathology stuff.. conscious or not.. this is what all our impulses are doing.. even if we are tangled in knots and.. our lives a mess.. and whatever else..

So if  you view a blog inside of these terms.. if it, in the biggest of all pictures, is about your becoming.. then it’s success has to do with your becoming’s success.. and that is an utterly different thing from all SEO / SEM, top 10 lists of whatever strategical tactical al-ical of the smart sort… or that is just a part of this larger thing..

bedroom mobile sound work

A few latter:

Well I gotta work out what I’m going to do with this whole blogging thing.. or it’s on the to do list of stuff to work out.. but I like this idea of the personal email to the world.. and I like the idea of being an anarchist in the writing..  

View from the sick haze

Saturday, September 26th, 2009

I am sick.. have been sick for a bit now.. 7, 8 days? Sick in bed?

There’s a strange surreal dream world.. that happens as waking life withers.. away to very little… See the unconscious, who speaks in dreams… is to balance the attitudes of consciousness… and when there is so little consciousness.. what is it to balance? Unless being sick its self is an effort to balance.

Everything feels just a little bit bent.. that odd taste in your mouth..

Outside life slips away.. you say “well I’m sick, what can I do about it?” But these words feel like neurosis…  In your heart you feel like you need to fight.. to fight your way into the light.

And what are the inputs.. laying hear in this bed in the basement.. surrounded by a mess.. this laptop playing movies.. we’ve gone through Lord Of The Rings, Basic Instinct, Bourn Identities… many commentaries..  online documentaries of Carl Jung.. a few pages of his seminars on Thus Spoke Zarathustra.. swings at working on the DMI class homework.. that should have been emailed days ago. There’s a couple recent, and one current, sound on sound magazines just to the side..

In sickened states I have made my way to grocery stores to try and stock up on OJ, NyQuil, fruit… something or another to eat.. and still.. even now, fast food takes up too much of my diet..

Where my life is now.. it’s not a good place.. and the sickness keeps me from being able to do much to improve it.

As I write these words I feel tired… should I just layback down, roll back over, and reenter the dreams?

I’ve had some odd dreams lately.. I can’t remember most of the sick ones.. but before the sickness got me.. I met my son.. whom I had had with some women I had never physically met but only talked to online.. and how happy I was to meet him.. and to take up the fatherly roll.. in the dream he was my son, no question about it… but you and I, us waking life people.. we know that for children to be made, it helps to have a conception..