life and art. art and life. it's fascinating how every moment, these can be the same thing. too many people resign themselves to moderate living. and that's not to say that living in moderation is a bad thing; we're getting our word betwixt themselves. in fact, matches would go so far as to say that moderate living is the best sort of artistic life. moderation, let's say, consists of being thrifty, unexcessive; self-entertainment and a simpler life. it's too easy to get caught up in the tide, finding the next big thing you can spend on and hoping it will lend a little happiness to a life that is so caught up in attaining it in the first place. life is about expression~ and expression is something that any activity can orangepeel away to. cook. hike. cakewalk and twostep your next hallway. ninja-press to that next wall and flicker flirtatiously with corners, running-back spin-move through boredom. freestyle walking was a revolution...life has many angles, all anxious to be explored, exploded.
moderation, in the first context, meant a muffling, a restraint, a blinder; all of these things, self-imposed. being average simply cannot be the best rule. but we are bound in cilice; every time we do something abnormal, every time we stumble on the sidewalk or sing in whispers under our breath, we feel a tinge self-consicous. we cloak these actions as best we can from other people. they are our individualities; they are our private selves coming public. and our private selves have somehow become unfashionable.
this is a sliver of madness. we should celebrate our uniqueness, not betray it thrice before the sun rises. ponder this: when we enter into relationships, when they begin to get serious...what we are most surprised at is not how much we care about the other person...we are bewildered that they care so much for us. the ritual of dating has been described by some as trying to appear as normal as possible (cool, in the parlance of our times) until the other person is roped into an affection beyond their conscious caprices. fuck. we are so far off the mark, and we know it. what have relationships become when we cannot be ourselves? is it so easy to scare people away? are our defenses so high? can we collectively agree to be ourselves? being comfortable is one thing...but nobody falls in love with normalcy.
this rant on individuality is coming off the heels of a now happily-rare mall visit, in which mattress (donned in hoodie) was completely ignored by the collective staffs of nordstrom and saks. which is a funny thing to be irked by, because m never wants to be approached by these people anyway...certainly, one of his most poignant pet peeves. still. you don't know how much money is in anyone's pockets (or how large of a credit line, waiting to curl around commodities like a curious kitten and gaze back lovingly with disastrously green-glittered eyes). silly to be passively-judgmental. for a moment he wished he had the means to the means to (think about it) an armani suit, but then the saucer of status-symbolism was poisoned and he choked back, cough gradually merging into a laugh, and strode on his merry way, content in his uniqueness (which sometimes translates into a lack of superior fabrics). who needs pleated slacks when you've got cozy corduroy. with a special pocket all of your cell-phone's very own.
"most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind."
~ h.d. thoreau
November 24, 2007
November 22, 2007
holiday
it's true, somehow today is different than any other day. the sun is shining; the air is clean....autumn is flaring through the leaves. waking up today did not feel like any other day; it felt like something good had been added. or something irritable, subtracted. one of the two. both perhaps.
is this just matches' mind, informing him of the holiday? it doesn't seem like it is. away from family, away for the most part from friends; there is no reason for this day to feel different from any other. there is no cacophony of sounds and scents swirling through the corridors, like there would be if he were in colorado. there is no clatter of polished silverware and the 'good' plates. what a concept~ how disparaging to be the 'bad' plates today...but bad is more, lumberjack, utilitarian, and has a distinctive charm all its own. wouldn't you agree?
there is something in the air, something chasing along with the wind. could it be that the fanciful thoughts of the entire city around m is somehow thickening the atmosphere? puffing it up like a heavy whipped cream for the pumpkin pie? have you ever been in a room with someone, and had the exact same thought at the same time, and then the acknowledgment of it trickles out in conversation? perhaps the 'holiday spirit' is no joke, perhaps today is energized and patterned extraordinarily. perhaps our thoughts leap to all our family, friends; the world is latticed and spyrographed into fractals. perhaps we feel each other by the thin strands of thought that still connect us, and perhaps that is a clear and distinct reality despite lack of evidence to grapple with.
or perhaps holidays were special long before they were holidays. they are focii of energy fluctuations, a celestial landscape hitting its peaks. holidays may be what they are because people noticed this phenomenon, said 'this day is special', and marked it with a notch in a wooden wall.
how could you deny this strange, fluid chemistry? what is that? will it be gone tomorrow?
in other news, it feels so great to be getting paid for a day off. perhaps that isn't 'other news', and should be factored in ; )
is this just matches' mind, informing him of the holiday? it doesn't seem like it is. away from family, away for the most part from friends; there is no reason for this day to feel different from any other. there is no cacophony of sounds and scents swirling through the corridors, like there would be if he were in colorado. there is no clatter of polished silverware and the 'good' plates. what a concept~ how disparaging to be the 'bad' plates today...but bad is more, lumberjack, utilitarian, and has a distinctive charm all its own. wouldn't you agree?
there is something in the air, something chasing along with the wind. could it be that the fanciful thoughts of the entire city around m is somehow thickening the atmosphere? puffing it up like a heavy whipped cream for the pumpkin pie? have you ever been in a room with someone, and had the exact same thought at the same time, and then the acknowledgment of it trickles out in conversation? perhaps the 'holiday spirit' is no joke, perhaps today is energized and patterned extraordinarily. perhaps our thoughts leap to all our family, friends; the world is latticed and spyrographed into fractals. perhaps we feel each other by the thin strands of thought that still connect us, and perhaps that is a clear and distinct reality despite lack of evidence to grapple with.
or perhaps holidays were special long before they were holidays. they are focii of energy fluctuations, a celestial landscape hitting its peaks. holidays may be what they are because people noticed this phenomenon, said 'this day is special', and marked it with a notch in a wooden wall.
how could you deny this strange, fluid chemistry? what is that? will it be gone tomorrow?
in other news, it feels so great to be getting paid for a day off. perhaps that isn't 'other news', and should be factored in ; )
November 19, 2007
note
November 17, 2007
dominoes, continued
where was matches? that's right, the green greens. scenario: a thought gets lit, sparked dimly; it winds and coils along its path like a trail of gunpowder in a bugs bunny cartoon. it has an end, a purpose (let's not tangle with the whole predestination thing right now); it has an explosion that's only beyond sight because it lies around one of those stubborn corners. everything is around a corner, isn't it? a solid metaphor, an unnavigable opacity. where?...and then...there! only something interrupts...somethings distracts, something steals the motivation to pursue these trails into the night. the powder keg remains in uncharted space, lost to the world unrealized. a plot device that never came to be, phased out by the harsh re-scripting of the editor.
"drink up baby, stay up all night
with the things you could do
you won't, but you might
the potential you'll be, that you'll never see
the promises you'll only make...
drink up with me now
and forget all about, the pressure of days
do what I say, and I'll make you okay
and drive them away
the images stuck in your head"
~ elliot smith - between the bars
and life is edited, isn't it? what of all the unborn aspirations, the concepts, the hidden desires and frustrations? these things exist, certainly; just not objectively. one of the main problems that matches had with most existentialist philosophy is its emphasis on what comes to pass, as opposed to what could have been. what was in theory. and, this emphasis is understandable. but, how harsh a reality, where a person's composition is judged solely upon what exists. how can you say that a thought exists any less than an action? in the realm of politics, of people and relationships, we have to trust to objective realities, to actions. its the only manageable way, since there is no way to stroll casually down the streets in someone else's head. that is the way of things, the judge and the jury. but how stifling to say that in the grander scheme of things, in the nebulous qualities of the world beyond our own sociable interactions, that it is not intention or aspiration which counts, but only the actual manifestation of a thing.
this turns out to be one of the reasons that matches has to believe in some genuine capacity. without any notion of a god (or God, as you may see fit), there can be no secondary insights into our most personal of worlds, into the brambles of our minds and imaginations. for some reason, matches believes that these have to be acknowledged.
a bug just hit the window to the left of the computer screen, and m has never seen one of these things before. think of a lima bean with antennae~ don't worry, it's okay; just got the wind knocked out of it. if bugs breathe. do bugs breathe?
is it possible that those innermost notions could not be acknowledged? they are already so intangible, there is no way to convey them to another...no way to turn any perspective but one's own upon them. unless you get lucky and are an artist, and are adept and stealthy with such things~ pretty hard to start eight words with an 'a', one after another. always argumentative anthill. damn that was only three. but three of them were 'and' before. don't know if that counts, for whatever reason. ands get tossed around like styrofoam cups. anyway, all angles arch around an astounding area, an artificial aura aimed at an absolute and also ambiguous authority.
how's that for a mouthful.
"drink up baby, stay up all night
with the things you could do
you won't, but you might
the potential you'll be, that you'll never see
the promises you'll only make...
drink up with me now
and forget all about, the pressure of days
do what I say, and I'll make you okay
and drive them away
the images stuck in your head"
~ elliot smith - between the bars
and life is edited, isn't it? what of all the unborn aspirations, the concepts, the hidden desires and frustrations? these things exist, certainly; just not objectively. one of the main problems that matches had with most existentialist philosophy is its emphasis on what comes to pass, as opposed to what could have been. what was in theory. and, this emphasis is understandable. but, how harsh a reality, where a person's composition is judged solely upon what exists. how can you say that a thought exists any less than an action? in the realm of politics, of people and relationships, we have to trust to objective realities, to actions. its the only manageable way, since there is no way to stroll casually down the streets in someone else's head. that is the way of things, the judge and the jury. but how stifling to say that in the grander scheme of things, in the nebulous qualities of the world beyond our own sociable interactions, that it is not intention or aspiration which counts, but only the actual manifestation of a thing.
this turns out to be one of the reasons that matches has to believe in some genuine capacity. without any notion of a god (or God, as you may see fit), there can be no secondary insights into our most personal of worlds, into the brambles of our minds and imaginations. for some reason, matches believes that these have to be acknowledged.
a bug just hit the window to the left of the computer screen, and m has never seen one of these things before. think of a lima bean with antennae~ don't worry, it's okay; just got the wind knocked out of it. if bugs breathe. do bugs breathe?
is it possible that those innermost notions could not be acknowledged? they are already so intangible, there is no way to convey them to another...no way to turn any perspective but one's own upon them. unless you get lucky and are an artist, and are adept and stealthy with such things~ pretty hard to start eight words with an 'a', one after another. always argumentative anthill. damn that was only three. but three of them were 'and' before. don't know if that counts, for whatever reason. ands get tossed around like styrofoam cups. anyway, all angles arch around an astounding area, an artificial aura aimed at an absolute and also ambiguous authority.
how's that for a mouthful.
November 11, 2007
we keep it locked like dominoes
it would seem, lately, that thoughts are being marginalized by the rapidity of their succession and replacement. matches believes that this case spreads far beyond his own individual experience, that it dips into the generalities of the gene pool and is becoming somewhat of a problem. investigate yourself and see if your attention span has become somewhat corroded, like a grandfather clock with aged and rusted gears...apply this to any occupation of your time, stir, and see what bubbles up to the surface.
what do we really get out of most immersions of our time? how deep do we actually spiral into anything beyond the constant fluctuations of our lives? most people will pick up a book, read four pages, and move on to something else. get cracking on a job at work, only to commit dallyingly and thrift around the internet every other set of minutes. wrap snugly into a conversation, only to hypermagnetize and push away, only to trail off mid-sentence in the wake of some sidewalk-passing person or interesting two-second happenstance. there is something, some unrest, burrowing deeper and deeper into us....and for every millimeter it gains, it is reflected outward in magnifications and multiplications.
the worst of it is our growing inability to be alone, to self-sustain, to steal away into the darkness and proceed in some intangible direction, unmapped on the radars of others. matches speaks of thoughts, of personalities (which is perhaps an inappropriate word as it begs the question of company...a "personality" is only an applicable word insofar as it defines one person's lines against the silhouette of another's), of whatever that point of consciousness is that sleeps about an inch-and-a-half behind your eyes or around the borders of your brain, depending upon whom you ask~ are you a seaworthy captain who welcomes the storm with a glimmer of madness in his eyes, or do you turn back shivering from the breezes when you feel them winding thicker, and then thicker, like strands curling around the basin of a cotton-candy machine?
a constant barrage of distractions and stimuli takes away our abilities to really be with or commit to a thought....they get both lodged and lost (fallen behind) within the ever-flowing stream of ideas, or events, or what have you in the way of distractions. how often is it that we actually sit with an idea, alone, turning it over in our hands like a snow globe (one of matches' favorite images)? how often does the average person meditate upon possibilities, upon potentials? so often our thoughts fly like darts, straight to the target of utility, and do not stray beyond or beside their prescribed paths. this makes for good workers....but not an imaginative and sane populous. matches has spent a good deal of time at meditation centers in respective corners of colorado...how fascinating an occupation of one's time. how dizzying and without landmarks; so unlike real life where the mountains are always west. it is extremely difficult at first to orient one's self within your own mind, and thus it is so easy to see why people would choose distraction over immersion. but it is such an unreal landscape, such a curious place to travel to. it is always new, always interesting, always morphing seasons with the rapidity of clouds changing shapes...languidly, but look away and...drastically! how mercilessly without a sound color scheme...there are malaised purples swirled in with coralled oranges and green greens.
will get back to this point...chris wants to play dominoes. how odd, considering the name of the post~
"in every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty."
~ ralph waldo emerson
what do we really get out of most immersions of our time? how deep do we actually spiral into anything beyond the constant fluctuations of our lives? most people will pick up a book, read four pages, and move on to something else. get cracking on a job at work, only to commit dallyingly and thrift around the internet every other set of minutes. wrap snugly into a conversation, only to hypermagnetize and push away, only to trail off mid-sentence in the wake of some sidewalk-passing person or interesting two-second happenstance. there is something, some unrest, burrowing deeper and deeper into us....and for every millimeter it gains, it is reflected outward in magnifications and multiplications.
the worst of it is our growing inability to be alone, to self-sustain, to steal away into the darkness and proceed in some intangible direction, unmapped on the radars of others. matches speaks of thoughts, of personalities (which is perhaps an inappropriate word as it begs the question of company...a "personality" is only an applicable word insofar as it defines one person's lines against the silhouette of another's), of whatever that point of consciousness is that sleeps about an inch-and-a-half behind your eyes or around the borders of your brain, depending upon whom you ask~ are you a seaworthy captain who welcomes the storm with a glimmer of madness in his eyes, or do you turn back shivering from the breezes when you feel them winding thicker, and then thicker, like strands curling around the basin of a cotton-candy machine?
a constant barrage of distractions and stimuli takes away our abilities to really be with or commit to a thought....they get both lodged and lost (fallen behind) within the ever-flowing stream of ideas, or events, or what have you in the way of distractions. how often is it that we actually sit with an idea, alone, turning it over in our hands like a snow globe (one of matches' favorite images)? how often does the average person meditate upon possibilities, upon potentials? so often our thoughts fly like darts, straight to the target of utility, and do not stray beyond or beside their prescribed paths. this makes for good workers....but not an imaginative and sane populous. matches has spent a good deal of time at meditation centers in respective corners of colorado...how fascinating an occupation of one's time. how dizzying and without landmarks; so unlike real life where the mountains are always west. it is extremely difficult at first to orient one's self within your own mind, and thus it is so easy to see why people would choose distraction over immersion. but it is such an unreal landscape, such a curious place to travel to. it is always new, always interesting, always morphing seasons with the rapidity of clouds changing shapes...languidly, but look away and...drastically! how mercilessly without a sound color scheme...there are malaised purples swirled in with coralled oranges and green greens.
will get back to this point...chris wants to play dominoes. how odd, considering the name of the post~
"in every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty."
~ ralph waldo emerson
November 5, 2007
musica
it should be noted that matches has more business plans and ventures than could ever possibly take off, considering the status of his capital and ambition. well, ambitious, yes. actually committed to creating the reality? less so. if the university ever takes off, it will be anchored to a coffee shop of some sort. such a good one, he must keep the sheet over it for now. but that's phase one, first phases being alternately the hardest and easiest depending upon the alignment of the stars and such. they can be naively brilliant and also catastrophically shortsighted. the word of the day is out of the way~
here, a thought comes this way, drifting lazily off of the scissoring speaker-fades from one corner of the room to the other. "how is it that music is more expressive than mere words?" thank brett for that question. why is it that mattress can lose himself within a rhythm; what severs the knots of identity and tugs your shoes off, floor-ward. forward. comfortable; select. because music stirs up some tempest, some tornado at which the listener is centered, touching and disrupting all that comes within this space. no longer matches, no longer idle and solitary....music is natural companionship, it lends second and sixteenth dialogue to whatever is seen, whatever is felt. it crisps thoughts like marshmallows, making them scintillating and making them sticky, webbed to the moment; it hardens their boundaries and lends them authority. music is masonry; music is un-fuck-with-able.
how can it create this shield effect? is it spellbinding; does it trick the mind into lucidity? or is it an actual transcendent, something beyond that takes us to a higher place? could that be created by people like us? is it possible that the divine trickles down through us, that our minds slip upon it every so often like patches of black ice, and it cracks us in the head with a dose of truth? matches thinks so...it's a combination of that, and the ability to perceive divinity channeling through sound that creates these poetic negative spaces. so don't count yourself out if you don't make beautiful music...it takes a special something just to be able to really appreciate the notes that are already out there.
"we are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."
~ w. wonka
here, a thought comes this way, drifting lazily off of the scissoring speaker-fades from one corner of the room to the other. "how is it that music is more expressive than mere words?" thank brett for that question. why is it that mattress can lose himself within a rhythm; what severs the knots of identity and tugs your shoes off, floor-ward. forward. comfortable; select. because music stirs up some tempest, some tornado at which the listener is centered, touching and disrupting all that comes within this space. no longer matches, no longer idle and solitary....music is natural companionship, it lends second and sixteenth dialogue to whatever is seen, whatever is felt. it crisps thoughts like marshmallows, making them scintillating and making them sticky, webbed to the moment; it hardens their boundaries and lends them authority. music is masonry; music is un-fuck-with-able.
how can it create this shield effect? is it spellbinding; does it trick the mind into lucidity? or is it an actual transcendent, something beyond that takes us to a higher place? could that be created by people like us? is it possible that the divine trickles down through us, that our minds slip upon it every so often like patches of black ice, and it cracks us in the head with a dose of truth? matches thinks so...it's a combination of that, and the ability to perceive divinity channeling through sound that creates these poetic negative spaces. so don't count yourself out if you don't make beautiful music...it takes a special something just to be able to really appreciate the notes that are already out there.
"we are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."
~ w. wonka
November 3, 2007
afternoon leaf formations
matches wishes he had song lyrics to convey his thoughts and feelings. but situations are so much more complex; what if nobody has ever been in precisely the same configuration of events and existence that m is in now? if you want to filter it down, sift out the details, and be left with large, generalized lumps and thumps...then perhaps. but the intricacies are the difference between he and anyone else; they matter~ he wants to hear new words. human themes are larger than atomic....we are more, somehow, than the sum total of our parts. and that allows a lot of room for confusion.
he will, perhaps, scribble down his own lyrics someday. it will be like a cushy, comfortable couch that has had all the ages to adapt exactly to his shape and subtle nuances. he will fit snugly within the words, and they, him.
it is when you feel that you fit perfectly within the world that life is beyond extraordinary. all existence becomes an extension of you, and not in an egocentric or selfish way. hopefully. you are, and everything else is, and you are flush, together, like bread and butter, or swiss clockwork gears, or what have you. life is easy, and if not effortless, at least melodious. actions become lazy and yet attuned and alert, like the droning motions of a fly who snaps around in right-angled foursquare movement. have you seen those flies? matches has. always to the left, they fly.
these things become easier to reflect upon when you are no longer in them. funny, that.
one of matches' favorite affirmations of life is to seam himself into a crowd, and then try to explode his consciousness into it, imagining all the far reaches of those people's lives. can you imagine the snow-flurry of your own life, all in one go? the intricacy of the flakes? can you imagine how everyone else has just as much density in their own lives? how rich with experience are these spaces which we walk through...it's like having taste-buds instead of skin, and wading through an oversized creme-brulee. there have to be more than four dimensions.
on that note, might it be said that matches finds creme-brulee every bit as rewarding as ice fishing, but without all the hassle of freezing temperatures and disappointing yields.
then there are these moments of sublimity where all the distinctions are brushed aside (they will come back, pendulous), and unity prevails. this is kind of like the fitting-in-the-world thing. where then are our neuroses, our concerns and cares? how out of our mind are they...like all notions of business-casual at your son's little-league game. how brimming with something simpler, something important; some adhesive that tugs us back together even when we think we are at a breaking point. we have something very special to offer up to the universe, to existence, to any god, and it doesn't require anything more of you than being yourself. the problem is that its walls are so papery, it's just as simple to barrel through all the way, breaking out the other side, and not even have noticed the transition. it is a subtle warmth...half-imagined and half-there. there are many impostors, and we have come to be guarded, to second-guess.
o the fool~
that you may astound us all~
"if there's one thing that tells me that everything's gonna be okay, it's a whole lot of people dancing at the same time."
~ jesse k.
he will, perhaps, scribble down his own lyrics someday. it will be like a cushy, comfortable couch that has had all the ages to adapt exactly to his shape and subtle nuances. he will fit snugly within the words, and they, him.
it is when you feel that you fit perfectly within the world that life is beyond extraordinary. all existence becomes an extension of you, and not in an egocentric or selfish way. hopefully. you are, and everything else is, and you are flush, together, like bread and butter, or swiss clockwork gears, or what have you. life is easy, and if not effortless, at least melodious. actions become lazy and yet attuned and alert, like the droning motions of a fly who snaps around in right-angled foursquare movement. have you seen those flies? matches has. always to the left, they fly.
these things become easier to reflect upon when you are no longer in them. funny, that.
one of matches' favorite affirmations of life is to seam himself into a crowd, and then try to explode his consciousness into it, imagining all the far reaches of those people's lives. can you imagine the snow-flurry of your own life, all in one go? the intricacy of the flakes? can you imagine how everyone else has just as much density in their own lives? how rich with experience are these spaces which we walk through...it's like having taste-buds instead of skin, and wading through an oversized creme-brulee. there have to be more than four dimensions.
on that note, might it be said that matches finds creme-brulee every bit as rewarding as ice fishing, but without all the hassle of freezing temperatures and disappointing yields.
then there are these moments of sublimity where all the distinctions are brushed aside (they will come back, pendulous), and unity prevails. this is kind of like the fitting-in-the-world thing. where then are our neuroses, our concerns and cares? how out of our mind are they...like all notions of business-casual at your son's little-league game. how brimming with something simpler, something important; some adhesive that tugs us back together even when we think we are at a breaking point. we have something very special to offer up to the universe, to existence, to any god, and it doesn't require anything more of you than being yourself. the problem is that its walls are so papery, it's just as simple to barrel through all the way, breaking out the other side, and not even have noticed the transition. it is a subtle warmth...half-imagined and half-there. there are many impostors, and we have come to be guarded, to second-guess.
o the fool~
that you may astound us all~
"if there's one thing that tells me that everything's gonna be okay, it's a whole lot of people dancing at the same time."
~ jesse k.
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