is there a key to happiness in a style of living? in a mode or pattern or rhythm, in a focused or unfocused impulse? m feels like there are sheets that steal over him, lucid ones, that somehow allow him to capture a purity or joy that is simply innate in all existence. ever-present. he can bring down his walls, seemingly all of his own volition (and yet also, definitively elusive in its recurrences), and let the sunshine stream down inward, deep, warming those most cavernous pools of thought lost within him and giving them a chance to cultivate all varieties of shadowed jungle plants, hidden subspecies of potential energy that can coil skyward until the thoughts find their way to the edges of his conscious streams, a nip of interest and absurdity, a tiny hand tugging at coattails.
he can do this; summon some monstrous and overwhelming excitement for the transition and passing of every moment, conjure a sparkly spell, a vivacious cloud of bees that dances around everything he can see. it is intensely engaging and he often reels, tilted whichways by the effects. but it seems to him to be, although immersed, also very disconnected in a crucial way from reality. it is potent and blissful, but it misses something....or does it? he isn't quite certain just yet. when he analyzes his idea of it recently, it appears thusly:
imagine a perfectly contented farmer, living peacefully and in harmony with his own quaint environment. his horses and strong and intelligent; his sheep are baa complacently as they bathe in warm sunbeams, never bristled by anything more menacing than a crisp breeze. his crops flourish; obviously he knows what he is doing, and nature approves. he crackles a thistle in between his teeth, twirling it now against his tongue, tasting the earth inside of it, and gazes over the rolling green meadows. he knows his place, he feels firm in his tradition and his foundations. he lives a peaceful life and listens to the music of the hills.
the farmer doesn't ask any questions...he knows what he knows. but one day, while he is sitting at the pub enjoying a rather sizable and frosty mug of spirits, he meets a traveler rollicking through the area. they talk warmly and become friends, though the traveler spends a good deal of time talking what the farmer considers to be nonsense about the 'meaning of it all' and such. the traveler shows him his paintings, his books, his music (radically divergent from the old-timey tunes the farmer's ear is accustomed to); everything of him in its due turn. the traveler unfolds a cassette tape and a crude set of paints from his red-spotted knapsack, and makes a gift of them to the farmer for his cordial company. they part ways after the night, and never see each other again.
the farmer ambles back to his farmhouse, and sleeps off the night. he goes to work in the morning, and the next day, and the next. on the fourth day, however, his sleep is stirred by a strange nightmare. he wakes in a daze, and spies the moon staring him down, sizing him up, from a lofted window in the heights of his house. draped in moonbeams, compelled by unknowns, he listens to the tape and dabbles vaguely with the paints, eerily absent of pigment in the nighttime shade. the music is modern, troubled; it is a mixtape composed mostly of progressive art rock and sprinkled with experimental instrumentals, the origins of whose sounds he cannot guess at for the life of him. he drifts off to sleep with the paintbrush in his hand and dark chords echoing in the hollows of his room.
things are never the same for the farmer. he cannot decipher the strange melodies or the significance of the colors and strokes, but he feels irresistibly drawn to them, to the ultimate detriment of his old way of life, his once-time peaceful mindstate. things are fine for him; his farm still flourishes though perhaps has more untended weeds than before, and perhaps the sheep complain of heat every so often because one or three have swollen up to the size of fuzzy haybales without the keen attention of his shears on a seasonally-watchful schedule as before. by most appearances, he is the same person, though perhaps seen a bit less in provisions marketplace of town and is often said to have a candle burning in his window 'til the midnight hours.
we know what has changed, though, don't we? he was struck by the thunder of humanity, of art, of the beautiful struggle. and mattress can say definitively (since he is acquainted with said farmer) that he is somewhat tormented, if not also invigorated and accelerated, by the teachings of the traveler.
so, m is elated to say that he feels he has the gift (or curse) of the farmer's previous life, but it would be a choice he would have to make...he is more naturally swayed towards the latter perspective, the artistic intervention. but, he could fight his nature and live an extraordinarily docile, naive, and complacent life. the tools are in his hands right now, these words; all he has to do is to toss them away without a second glance and be free of their burden forever. doesn't that seem on some level like an appealing prospect? to absolve oneself of responsibility for difficult philosophies, intricate sciences, emotional discoveries and upheavals, and again discoveries and again upheavals?
and obviously, he is reducing this to absurdity...nobody can really choose to go entirely in one direction. but it seems to him that so, so many people choose the route of 'today, and then tomorrow, and then tuesday', a day-to-day as it were. gleaming shards and fragments of deeper thoughts either when forced to, or when forced by boredom; not entirely by free will, in fact almost avoidant by nature of these concepts. and yes, please ride on him for generalizing about this, because no, it really isn't a fair judgment without knowing them well.
but he doesn't feel like he can turn back at this point; he would feel utterly useless and much like he betrayed his true self if he buried his head in the sand and gave up on digging both archaeologically and inventively through those sediments, choosing to be caved in, but restricted in transcendental dimensions of movement. he wants to be able to move his mind, his intangible perceptions, through that matter....even if his body may be cemented into place by them in its utter unfamiliarity with more spiritual natures. there is an antenna, or a whirling compass needle, somewhere inside of us...just waiting to be known by feelings and words instead of science.
this mind/body dichotomy is burly. lend the wisdom to know the difference~
June 24, 2008
June 21, 2008
"okay, dr. seuss"
it is an intensely exciting thing to be, to feel like a person outside of society while still within its confines. someone fundamentally disconnected and admissibly, wholeheartedly, desirably undefined. one of the greatest thrills, for matches, comes at any time, in any place, sitting and contemplating this distinction amidst a collection of persons whom he does not know. it is somehow exceedingly liberating to be able to say "i am this, i am that", and conversely to acknowledge that shape-shifting and chimeric tendencies are twisted somewhere around our very roots, deepest in our nourishing soil, and that they they assist us immeasurably in extracting the energy and intrigue from a liberated life. our preconceptions are seasonings, and they will alter appropriately the raw ingredients which providence provides, the most basic senses and combinations thereof, such as a sleepily geometric intricacy.
realize that one's purpose is separate; that each person has a mission and a set of experiences completely unique to their muddled and meddlesome mind. there is no need to find oneself snared in the seaweeds of lower ambitions....we can swim to higher places where we may see with more clarity, and breath with both less and more concentrated effort (depending upon the concentration. think about it). everyone at some point feels the spin, the pivot of a real ambition sneaking up on them. if programmed to defend well, then you might turn it away without questioning the real purpose of the game....but if you are open to another outcome, happily unfocused, then you might let it slip by, and find out that losing one game was the best thing to ever happen (and the start of something completely new).
happily unfocused. this might be a good definition for the mindstate of m over the past few years. dazed, disillusioned and again re-illusioned, but open, welcome and accommodating. antimatter believes that life naturally behooves us to stay, at least in some proportion, in this state....constantly off-balance, switchfoot, preparing for another potential or possible. focus is wonderful - it creates a thought-space where one can truly fine-tune an aspect of themselves, and dig deep to find out what can be known or said about something that drives them. but life is a balancing act, and to build a sandcastle higher than one's own height can mean two things: bridging toward the sky, and allowing a perspective that attains and projects vast complexities upon the surrounding world, or blocking one's view, distancing you from the natural freedom and chaos which comprises the lurching waves of life, of experience. which is an apt metaphor, because life has this tendency of eroding away what you have built when you become too focused; whittling away at the base while the top tier totters, imperceptible to one clinging onto it.
how does one struggle with meaning? tune in for more next time.
colin and m have just now decided upon the metric: for a dollar to still be spendable, there must still be at least 87.7% of it there. it would be inconceivable to chop a $20 in half and all of a sudden have forty spendables. the economy would crash.
realize that one's purpose is separate; that each person has a mission and a set of experiences completely unique to their muddled and meddlesome mind. there is no need to find oneself snared in the seaweeds of lower ambitions....we can swim to higher places where we may see with more clarity, and breath with both less and more concentrated effort (depending upon the concentration. think about it). everyone at some point feels the spin, the pivot of a real ambition sneaking up on them. if programmed to defend well, then you might turn it away without questioning the real purpose of the game....but if you are open to another outcome, happily unfocused, then you might let it slip by, and find out that losing one game was the best thing to ever happen (and the start of something completely new).
happily unfocused. this might be a good definition for the mindstate of m over the past few years. dazed, disillusioned and again re-illusioned, but open, welcome and accommodating. antimatter believes that life naturally behooves us to stay, at least in some proportion, in this state....constantly off-balance, switchfoot, preparing for another potential or possible. focus is wonderful - it creates a thought-space where one can truly fine-tune an aspect of themselves, and dig deep to find out what can be known or said about something that drives them. but life is a balancing act, and to build a sandcastle higher than one's own height can mean two things: bridging toward the sky, and allowing a perspective that attains and projects vast complexities upon the surrounding world, or blocking one's view, distancing you from the natural freedom and chaos which comprises the lurching waves of life, of experience. which is an apt metaphor, because life has this tendency of eroding away what you have built when you become too focused; whittling away at the base while the top tier totters, imperceptible to one clinging onto it.
how does one struggle with meaning? tune in for more next time.
colin and m have just now decided upon the metric: for a dollar to still be spendable, there must still be at least 87.7% of it there. it would be inconceivable to chop a $20 in half and all of a sudden have forty spendables. the economy would crash.
June 16, 2008
flounder found
found a list on the ground. found a scrap of paper. found a bit of someone's life, similar to mine. but really, how much sameness does it take to be similar? i'm a person, bret's a person; you're a person. that person over there is a person. and when you're feeling lonesome, hopefully you can remember that. we could be roaming an earth, or another planet, that houses 6 billion persons who aren't persons at all; we could be swimming in differences and difficulties. it would be extraordinarily hard to progress through even a day if there were no medium of connection, no 'humanity', upon which to anchor ourselves.
even so, it seems like the general tendency is to distance oneself from the crowd of unknowns. and we're not talking separate or sub-species here, we are talking about an individual meeting another individual. we've got more barriers than we know what to do with; they are overwhelming and end up gripping up even though they are the means for a grip upon our worlds. is it such a bad thing to be a fluctuating entity? to alter with every moment?
m. feel incredibly lame for not updating these writings in the past few weeks. where are one's priorities? should have (hoping for) a slow weekend this time around though....it looks promising.
even so, it seems like the general tendency is to distance oneself from the crowd of unknowns. and we're not talking separate or sub-species here, we are talking about an individual meeting another individual. we've got more barriers than we know what to do with; they are overwhelming and end up gripping up even though they are the means for a grip upon our worlds. is it such a bad thing to be a fluctuating entity? to alter with every moment?
m. feel incredibly lame for not updating these writings in the past few weeks. where are one's priorities? should have (hoping for) a slow weekend this time around though....it looks promising.
June 10, 2008
ananundrum
the new coldplay album has some gems on it. it doesn't make the impression to matches of a pristine record, but there are some ins and outs that are not to be missed. if you're into it, spend a listen on 'life in technicolor', 'lost!' (god, any song with a running&chasing beat has such a persuasion on m), the first 2:42 of '42' (the latter portion, mattress really wishes they had committed to instead of abandoning the maddening spiral they had started for such a poppy-positivity), and of course the title track 'viva la vida'. he wonders if '42' is thus named because that is the second-count upon which they decided not to deliver on the building intensity. also notable is the last 17 seconds of 'cemeteries of london'. but then, matches tends to be easy to please.
you're a fan, if you got that.
haven't been setting aside the necessary time to write lately, which is a shame. it's great to be social, but he feels so hindered, in the sense of living life in general, when he cannot spill some real thoughts out of an inkwell and onto his shoes. it is the difference between the consciousness expanding forward in phantom form, grasping and mingling with everything....the difference between that and, dragging one's brain behind on a long leash, inspecting it later for the rubbish and residue which it collects over the course of travels. counting on photographs to do your forward-looking, is backwards in retrospect; he never remembers all the little hums and whistles which he pretends to log away for later contemplation whilst he is distractabusy. he lives much too much in moment-to-moment, and also in his head in a very odd sort of manner, and he worries that it will be his undoing as a writer. or perhaps his greatest tincture. can one be worried that something will be fantastic, domineering? that it will be too much so?
his castles are still in the sky. he apologizes if sometimes his statements tend to jump onto the page (screen) and solidify themselves there....he tends to trust his mind to the tipping point of absurdity and has hopes of thoughts falling, domino-like, in an if not logical, at least personable and traceable progression. he has a tendency towards the belief that anything can be relevant. have you ever picked up a tarot card deck? he rarely does, but this is what he finds so entrancing about them: no matter what card falls, it will have a conceivable relation to something happening in your life. tarot is a thought-exercise, it is a collection of perspectives and colored-tints which one may find some help looking through, sifting through, and letting them sway the direction of one's thoughts into eddies and waterways operating under the same principles as the universe. that is, either chaos or control. which is it again?
m really has some faith that drawing a card may influence the outcome of events. why? because it spins the mind, windmill. he has seen instances of a thought effecting/affecting an actual outcome...we all have, especially if we can choose to reduce the notion to absurdity by saying that when your child wanted an ice cream cone, you bought them one. that isn't what he means, of course; his indication is much more intangible. but we can, hopefully, acknowledge that the mind exerts a definite power over its surroundings, beyond the realm of simple physical cause and effect. if you find a genuine positivity and curiosity amidst a job interview, then you will get that job. qualifications, shmalifications. this sort of thought, this wild expression, expands beyond the mind that has spun it....it leaks out of the body, trickling from every possible angle, practically beaming; it is infectious in its spread and has no boundary. perhaps it involves another, unknown dimension. he isn't here to explain the science of it to you, but, there it is. your body is unconsciously affected by your emotions; body language tells us that arms cross defensively, and that eye contact is more embracing than open arms. these are not top-snaggle examples, but they are certainly a physical manifestation of a seemingly transcendental phenomenon. thought.
"Ha ha, just joking; only trying to see who's listening
Now heads up, time to test the potential of your faults
And the results will stay confidential
For as long as you face the front of your self-esteem;
Lose focus, get broken at the seams.
Let's open up the conversation for comments
To complement your circumcised mind-state, while I ride on your anxieties
Trying to speak to the class, and justify the act,
By pointing my finger at your head, and asking you, 'what the fuck is that?'"
~ deep puddle dynamics - 'the scarecrow speaks'
how many times have we dug ourselves into a dominantly depressed hole of mind, only to find that the answer lied in us fooling ourselves all along? humans are inherently facetious; the angle which our mind takes upon any, any situation dictates the majority of its impact upon us. the outside world may be rock-like, unthinking, but it speaks its mind through our extremes, our reverend suppliance to unknowns and subconscious jitters. the illusion is that it controls us, but all along it has been we who have dropped the reins. which is an apt word, because we could so simply, yet unfathomably difficultly so deep into the game, reign over our lives in a completely different and remarkably similar fashion.
you're a fan, if you got that.
haven't been setting aside the necessary time to write lately, which is a shame. it's great to be social, but he feels so hindered, in the sense of living life in general, when he cannot spill some real thoughts out of an inkwell and onto his shoes. it is the difference between the consciousness expanding forward in phantom form, grasping and mingling with everything....the difference between that and, dragging one's brain behind on a long leash, inspecting it later for the rubbish and residue which it collects over the course of travels. counting on photographs to do your forward-looking, is backwards in retrospect; he never remembers all the little hums and whistles which he pretends to log away for later contemplation whilst he is distractabusy. he lives much too much in moment-to-moment, and also in his head in a very odd sort of manner, and he worries that it will be his undoing as a writer. or perhaps his greatest tincture. can one be worried that something will be fantastic, domineering? that it will be too much so?
his castles are still in the sky. he apologizes if sometimes his statements tend to jump onto the page (screen) and solidify themselves there....he tends to trust his mind to the tipping point of absurdity and has hopes of thoughts falling, domino-like, in an if not logical, at least personable and traceable progression. he has a tendency towards the belief that anything can be relevant. have you ever picked up a tarot card deck? he rarely does, but this is what he finds so entrancing about them: no matter what card falls, it will have a conceivable relation to something happening in your life. tarot is a thought-exercise, it is a collection of perspectives and colored-tints which one may find some help looking through, sifting through, and letting them sway the direction of one's thoughts into eddies and waterways operating under the same principles as the universe. that is, either chaos or control. which is it again?
m really has some faith that drawing a card may influence the outcome of events. why? because it spins the mind, windmill. he has seen instances of a thought effecting/affecting an actual outcome...we all have, especially if we can choose to reduce the notion to absurdity by saying that when your child wanted an ice cream cone, you bought them one. that isn't what he means, of course; his indication is much more intangible. but we can, hopefully, acknowledge that the mind exerts a definite power over its surroundings, beyond the realm of simple physical cause and effect. if you find a genuine positivity and curiosity amidst a job interview, then you will get that job. qualifications, shmalifications. this sort of thought, this wild expression, expands beyond the mind that has spun it....it leaks out of the body, trickling from every possible angle, practically beaming; it is infectious in its spread and has no boundary. perhaps it involves another, unknown dimension. he isn't here to explain the science of it to you, but, there it is. your body is unconsciously affected by your emotions; body language tells us that arms cross defensively, and that eye contact is more embracing than open arms. these are not top-snaggle examples, but they are certainly a physical manifestation of a seemingly transcendental phenomenon. thought.
"Ha ha, just joking; only trying to see who's listening
Now heads up, time to test the potential of your faults
And the results will stay confidential
For as long as you face the front of your self-esteem;
Lose focus, get broken at the seams.
Let's open up the conversation for comments
To complement your circumcised mind-state, while I ride on your anxieties
Trying to speak to the class, and justify the act,
By pointing my finger at your head, and asking you, 'what the fuck is that?'"
~ deep puddle dynamics - 'the scarecrow speaks'
how many times have we dug ourselves into a dominantly depressed hole of mind, only to find that the answer lied in us fooling ourselves all along? humans are inherently facetious; the angle which our mind takes upon any, any situation dictates the majority of its impact upon us. the outside world may be rock-like, unthinking, but it speaks its mind through our extremes, our reverend suppliance to unknowns and subconscious jitters. the illusion is that it controls us, but all along it has been we who have dropped the reins. which is an apt word, because we could so simply, yet unfathomably difficultly so deep into the game, reign over our lives in a completely different and remarkably similar fashion.
June 1, 2008
all smiles (all sparks)
the editors - all sparks
a good listen. not too many artists have figured out the seduction of negative space in music. and for a photographic concept, it seems to be found in many more places, or at least has the potential to appear on (or off) the scene. also, for a different feel, check the cover of 'feel good, inc.' by the editors. acoustic.
sitting on the waterfront today in cloudy weather, matches felt the fireworks trickle back into his vision. they have been tragically absent for some time. but when you can look at the world, at anything inside of this gigantic conglomeration of whatever-you-wish-to-call-it, and see the purity of existence (a term stolen from sam cooper yesterday)....things set themselves alight in the air, breeze-like, and spin the mind like a waterwheel.
in other news, herbie hancock's "head hunters" is where beck got samples for his recent goodness. certainly worth a listen. its got the funk that beck whittled off of it, but it also has the jazz.
matches has been making a tidy little sum off the beaten path of his job, by way of marketing research studies. who would have thought that with the economy as it is, people would be handing out money for cursory opinions of their marketing techniques and products? interesante. he feels a little silly; a little like he is fueling the possibility of them honing their advertising or products to the point of precision towards their intended markets. he thinks that he wouldn't want to have a hand in tweaking the subtleties of market-interest; at least not to the point of helping companies convince people to buy their products without thinking about it. but, he has to have a little bit of faith in the capabilities of people to make their own decisions, and to remain independent thinking entities amidst the tides of america~ plus, its kind of interesting to go to these things. you meet and have interesting conversations with people you would have never otherwise had an opportunity to meet, and one learns a little something every time one passes by. it's fun; a thought exercise. he could just as easily be fucking with these people's heads, and completely skewing their targets. and the money doesn't hurt.
san francisco last weekend was great. it goes to remind m how he really should be tucking aside moneys to up and visit his friends in other distant places. like jay on martha's vineyard, and yes eric in vietnam. passports were created to collect stamps, not dust. as an additional bonus, he could live for something like $3 a day once he stepped off the aerobus. oh, that the plane ticket were not the obstacle! also, the phobia of flying over titanic bodies of water. there is always that.
lately he has begun studying his old notebooks, his elder scribblings, and trying to thieve some perspective from them. perhaps this is what sparked the fireworks. it is quite an interesting thing to see the legacy of one's own life, to view it in a later and (hopefully) wiser state of being. he hears people talking all the time about how they cannot stand to look at their previous thoughts, works, songs, etc....but he doesn't share in this outlook. not in a smidgen of the least-ness. he values his past; it will always be engaging to distill old thoughts and situations through the filter of the advanced mind. 'distill' was a word he gleamed from the old pages (which have become quite detached from their bindings....both literally and metaphysically, now that he considers it). it is small treasures like the use of a word which has fallen out of memory, which can effect a domino-fall within him. one can feel the smile forming, growing, now erupting out of the body through all sensations and nerves. a genuine smile has an explosive tendency to it; an expansive nature. then there is the magical trans-barrier, when it sometimes expands beyond a person, into liminal space, and wraps itself around another person. that is, well....something, to see it light up another face, that thing that wound itself out of your own thoughts, your own emotions. it is a physical sensation, a touch; invisible to the eye yet reaching, disarming, penetrating. yet you know its power, can feel it like a fireball erupting through your frame which spreads dizzily, sillily (word?), washing over your surface like a quick surf chasing the shore.
i feel it all, i feel it all.
a good listen. not too many artists have figured out the seduction of negative space in music. and for a photographic concept, it seems to be found in many more places, or at least has the potential to appear on (or off) the scene. also, for a different feel, check the cover of 'feel good, inc.' by the editors. acoustic.
sitting on the waterfront today in cloudy weather, matches felt the fireworks trickle back into his vision. they have been tragically absent for some time. but when you can look at the world, at anything inside of this gigantic conglomeration of whatever-you-wish-to-call-it, and see the purity of existence (a term stolen from sam cooper yesterday)....things set themselves alight in the air, breeze-like, and spin the mind like a waterwheel.
in other news, herbie hancock's "head hunters" is where beck got samples for his recent goodness. certainly worth a listen. its got the funk that beck whittled off of it, but it also has the jazz.
matches has been making a tidy little sum off the beaten path of his job, by way of marketing research studies. who would have thought that with the economy as it is, people would be handing out money for cursory opinions of their marketing techniques and products? interesante. he feels a little silly; a little like he is fueling the possibility of them honing their advertising or products to the point of precision towards their intended markets. he thinks that he wouldn't want to have a hand in tweaking the subtleties of market-interest; at least not to the point of helping companies convince people to buy their products without thinking about it. but, he has to have a little bit of faith in the capabilities of people to make their own decisions, and to remain independent thinking entities amidst the tides of america~ plus, its kind of interesting to go to these things. you meet and have interesting conversations with people you would have never otherwise had an opportunity to meet, and one learns a little something every time one passes by. it's fun; a thought exercise. he could just as easily be fucking with these people's heads, and completely skewing their targets. and the money doesn't hurt.
san francisco last weekend was great. it goes to remind m how he really should be tucking aside moneys to up and visit his friends in other distant places. like jay on martha's vineyard, and yes eric in vietnam. passports were created to collect stamps, not dust. as an additional bonus, he could live for something like $3 a day once he stepped off the aerobus. oh, that the plane ticket were not the obstacle! also, the phobia of flying over titanic bodies of water. there is always that.
lately he has begun studying his old notebooks, his elder scribblings, and trying to thieve some perspective from them. perhaps this is what sparked the fireworks. it is quite an interesting thing to see the legacy of one's own life, to view it in a later and (hopefully) wiser state of being. he hears people talking all the time about how they cannot stand to look at their previous thoughts, works, songs, etc....but he doesn't share in this outlook. not in a smidgen of the least-ness. he values his past; it will always be engaging to distill old thoughts and situations through the filter of the advanced mind. 'distill' was a word he gleamed from the old pages (which have become quite detached from their bindings....both literally and metaphysically, now that he considers it). it is small treasures like the use of a word which has fallen out of memory, which can effect a domino-fall within him. one can feel the smile forming, growing, now erupting out of the body through all sensations and nerves. a genuine smile has an explosive tendency to it; an expansive nature. then there is the magical trans-barrier, when it sometimes expands beyond a person, into liminal space, and wraps itself around another person. that is, well....something, to see it light up another face, that thing that wound itself out of your own thoughts, your own emotions. it is a physical sensation, a touch; invisible to the eye yet reaching, disarming, penetrating. yet you know its power, can feel it like a fireball erupting through your frame which spreads dizzily, sillily (word?), washing over your surface like a quick surf chasing the shore.
i feel it all, i feel it all.
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