Wednesday, December 9, 2015
12.9
The dog twitches so much when he sleeps that I don't think I could ever be comfortable next to him. His claws are like buzzsaws on the end of his flailing paws. I still lay down next to him and wait for him to calm, not because I need to, but because I think he needs it. He sighs so much. Maybe he's lonely.
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
12.7
[My previous post was spurred by this thought: What would I think if I were this man, receiving this question? I think his response was wrong. So does he.]
Full disclosure: there are a few curse words I quote.
I pray to Jesus, but I'm not a Mormon. I've eaten at Buffalo Wild Wings, but I'm still vegetarian. I live in a society that represses, but am I a racist? That's a really unbelievable thing to say--that "everyone is a little bit racist," (Schierbecker 2015) or that all people are sexists, or that everything is problematic in some way. There's a whole lot of troubling fallacy in that statement. If everything is problematic, every argument that disproves your position is also problematic and equally easy to discard. If every white man is racist and sexist(and no black person can possibly be), white men don't "deserve to be listened to." You can shout them down. Let me simplify: modern collectivism is unfalsifiable.
Mark Schierbecker cowers like a whipped dog. It's exactly what the questioners seem to want. You should watch his interview all the way through to find when people ask him why he's pressing charges against Melissa Click and somehow promoting white supremacist arguments. He tries so hard to support the movement he believes in, but the moment his personal motivations don't align with the group, he's targeted. Instead of being intellectually honest about his first amendment beliefs, he cowtows to the angry voices. He scrambles to say something that will make him likable again: "Fuck racists! . . . Fuck me too." His friend the publicist doesn't help him, and in fact left him in the lurch a few days later. Why did he say he was racist and go out of his way to acknowledge his white privilege? Why did she recant her support and actually accuse him of saying "indefensibly racist" things? I can tell you why: there are two main types of activists I can currently see. The first type are real humans who care about each other and are trying to fix the incredibly obvious social problems in the United States. The second type are members of a mob who don't allow themselves to see the humanity in the people they're lining up to crush. They've been given incredibly powerful weapons of guilt and shame and hate, and this poisonous second type of activist is so dedicated to the purity of their group that they're willing to destroy anyone who threatens its ideology.
The first activist is the kind of person I strive to be. I fail a lot, but it's not due to a belief system that holds "my type of people" as better than another. It's just simple human selfishness. It's because I think I'm better than everyone. Before you think you can disprove me, remember that you're not inside my head, and that I have no respect for when people think they know what other people's beliefs or emotions are. So you won't win that one. Regardless, when I fail to love other people in the same way God loves them, I am disappointed in myself. I recalibrate, and I try again. Today, I got so mad I yelled at a student because I'm awful. I will do better tomorrow.
The second kind of activist is the kind of person who wears pink on Wednesdays. I'm still trying to figure out how to sort these bilious mouth-breathers from the forward-thinking human-lovers they mix with. These are people who belong to a clique. Their social activism excludes others on purpose and often as a tactic for keeping the clique pure and the message dominant. White guilt is a really stupid side-effect of othering by activists. But the most disagreeable thing is that these sort of feel-good crusading activists tend to target their own supporters. A blog that tears apart conservative cartoons gets the treatment sometimes. So do people making beautiful comics about the cultures in which they live. So does Emma Watson. So does an autistic photojournalist trying to give an extremely difficult answer in front of people who hate him because he thinks they have a right to be heard. Schierbecker is me. He's you. He's every one of us who says anything problematic, which is, remember, anything. This isn't about being right. Not one of us has the whole truth. This is about not being the most spiteful, vitriolic, exclusive, victimizing, parasitic, selfish people on the planet. Mark Schierbecker, I stand with you. I don't care if that gets me in trouble. From what I've seen, it's a safe stance.
Full disclosure: there are a few curse words I quote.
I pray to Jesus, but I'm not a Mormon. I've eaten at Buffalo Wild Wings, but I'm still vegetarian. I live in a society that represses, but am I a racist? That's a really unbelievable thing to say--that "everyone is a little bit racist," (Schierbecker 2015) or that all people are sexists, or that everything is problematic in some way. There's a whole lot of troubling fallacy in that statement. If everything is problematic, every argument that disproves your position is also problematic and equally easy to discard. If every white man is racist and sexist(and no black person can possibly be), white men don't "deserve to be listened to." You can shout them down. Let me simplify: modern collectivism is unfalsifiable.
Mark Schierbecker cowers like a whipped dog. It's exactly what the questioners seem to want. You should watch his interview all the way through to find when people ask him why he's pressing charges against Melissa Click and somehow promoting white supremacist arguments. He tries so hard to support the movement he believes in, but the moment his personal motivations don't align with the group, he's targeted. Instead of being intellectually honest about his first amendment beliefs, he cowtows to the angry voices. He scrambles to say something that will make him likable again: "Fuck racists! . . . Fuck me too." His friend the publicist doesn't help him, and in fact left him in the lurch a few days later. Why did he say he was racist and go out of his way to acknowledge his white privilege? Why did she recant her support and actually accuse him of saying "indefensibly racist" things? I can tell you why: there are two main types of activists I can currently see. The first type are real humans who care about each other and are trying to fix the incredibly obvious social problems in the United States. The second type are members of a mob who don't allow themselves to see the humanity in the people they're lining up to crush. They've been given incredibly powerful weapons of guilt and shame and hate, and this poisonous second type of activist is so dedicated to the purity of their group that they're willing to destroy anyone who threatens its ideology.
The first activist is the kind of person I strive to be. I fail a lot, but it's not due to a belief system that holds "my type of people" as better than another. It's just simple human selfishness. It's because I think I'm better than everyone. Before you think you can disprove me, remember that you're not inside my head, and that I have no respect for when people think they know what other people's beliefs or emotions are. So you won't win that one. Regardless, when I fail to love other people in the same way God loves them, I am disappointed in myself. I recalibrate, and I try again. Today, I got so mad I yelled at a student because I'm awful. I will do better tomorrow.
The second kind of activist is the kind of person who wears pink on Wednesdays. I'm still trying to figure out how to sort these bilious mouth-breathers from the forward-thinking human-lovers they mix with. These are people who belong to a clique. Their social activism excludes others on purpose and often as a tactic for keeping the clique pure and the message dominant. White guilt is a really stupid side-effect of othering by activists. But the most disagreeable thing is that these sort of feel-good crusading activists tend to target their own supporters. A blog that tears apart conservative cartoons gets the treatment sometimes. So do people making beautiful comics about the cultures in which they live. So does Emma Watson. So does an autistic photojournalist trying to give an extremely difficult answer in front of people who hate him because he thinks they have a right to be heard. Schierbecker is me. He's you. He's every one of us who says anything problematic, which is, remember, anything. This isn't about being right. Not one of us has the whole truth. This is about not being the most spiteful, vitriolic, exclusive, victimizing, parasitic, selfish people on the planet. Mark Schierbecker, I stand with you. I don't care if that gets me in trouble. From what I've seen, it's a safe stance.
Sunday, December 6, 2015
12.6
"Let me start by saying 'I am not a racist.'" Somewhere in the hall, a gasp. "Of course, I can't start by saying 'I am not a racist," because somewhere along the line the ability to label prejudice was taken from the individual and given to the collective. That's fine. I don't cry about that; no one has ever been able to control the labels other people ascribe to them. Billions of people live and die without being able to break from the mold others pour them into." The building is stuffy with people, the dense choke of breath recycled wafts its way up to me and slithers around my nose. The young woman who asked the question is livid, and I can see her emotion shake off her in waves, the crowd around her pulsing slightly with it, resonating her outrage.
"What I can say is that I can't comprehend racists." The mere mention of the word from a mouth--my mouth--of privilege strikes a note of discord in the gasps that filter to my pedestal high above the mob. Indiscretion! How dare he say such a thing! That word is ours; he can't know it like we do. "For my entire life, I have valued the viewpoints of others. I have worked to read and internalize the values and challenges of disenfranchised people. I seek the voices of race, of class, of disability, of youth, age, sexuality, and gender. I try to understand their viewpoints. I do my best, but I can only read so much. Every story is unique and can only add its melody to the hymn of humanity building in my heart. I have to try. But I'm limited to one slice of personal familiarity. I'm such a small thread in the tapestry of life that I only touch a very slim section." I can hear the creaking of their old ideologies now, trembling under the ponderous weight of my accusation: can A White Man be right? Can he get through a thought, a sentence, a word, without some twistable sentiment that can be turned and driven straight back, as a knife, into his gut? "How am I to understand the struggles and consequences of trans, gay, old, young, disabled, poor, or black? I am a white, cis straight man. And you know the awful truth? I don't even understand what it means to be that--how could I? Because some of us are racist. And I don't get it." Damn him, the packed humanity whispers. Damn him, not for what he's said, but for who he is. Racism is only practicable by the powerful against the weak. He'll understand what racism looks like when we're done with him. I knew I hadn't said anything wrong, but
"What I can say is that I can't comprehend racists." The mere mention of the word from a mouth--my mouth--of privilege strikes a note of discord in the gasps that filter to my pedestal high above the mob. Indiscretion! How dare he say such a thing! That word is ours; he can't know it like we do. "For my entire life, I have valued the viewpoints of others. I have worked to read and internalize the values and challenges of disenfranchised people. I seek the voices of race, of class, of disability, of youth, age, sexuality, and gender. I try to understand their viewpoints. I do my best, but I can only read so much. Every story is unique and can only add its melody to the hymn of humanity building in my heart. I have to try. But I'm limited to one slice of personal familiarity. I'm such a small thread in the tapestry of life that I only touch a very slim section." I can hear the creaking of their old ideologies now, trembling under the ponderous weight of my accusation: can A White Man be right? Can he get through a thought, a sentence, a word, without some twistable sentiment that can be turned and driven straight back, as a knife, into his gut? "How am I to understand the struggles and consequences of trans, gay, old, young, disabled, poor, or black? I am a white, cis straight man. And you know the awful truth? I don't even understand what it means to be that--how could I? Because some of us are racist. And I don't get it." Damn him, the packed humanity whispers. Damn him, not for what he's said, but for who he is. Racism is only practicable by the powerful against the weak. He'll understand what racism looks like when we're done with him. I knew I hadn't said anything wrong, but
Friday, December 4, 2015
12.4
She just walked past me and asked if it's three yet. I almost, reflexively, looked at my watch, which I do when people ask me what day of the month it is, or how long until dinner, or why I'm waiting for something, or when my birthday is. Instead, I just smiled and said "Yup! You can go home." We both laughed. There was an extreme bitterness in the laughter, since we shared this unspeakable resolve common in teachers, that no matter the monstrous thoughts we have between seven and three, we will retain our dignity just as long as we survive. We can then push through the shroud-doors and out of this voluntary mausoleum and return to a nearly human life outside. We can take again the mantle of humanity, living again outside these walls where we constrain children's minds to the exact pattern of their forbears.
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
My Acolyte Journey: 2014.1
Habits
Tove Lo.
I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't use. I don't hook up. I'm not familiar with the particular vices of this song, but I love listening to it. It hurts more now, though. I may not love the words, but it's more painful to think that maybe she does.
This is Delight's favorite song from the Top 40. She listened to it on loop for days. She liked a couple other Tove Lo songs Of course, her favorite was the un-remixed version, but we're looking for the Hippie Sabotage remix that Stephen liked better. It's good. I'm done playing.
Tove Lo.
I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't use. I don't hook up. I'm not familiar with the particular vices of this song, but I love listening to it. It hurts more now, though. I may not love the words, but it's more painful to think that maybe she does.
This is Delight's favorite song from the Top 40. She listened to it on loop for days. She liked a couple other Tove Lo songs Of course, her favorite was the un-remixed version, but we're looking for the Hippie Sabotage remix that Stephen liked better. It's good. I'm done playing.
My Acolyte Journey: 2014.2
All Eyes Are on You Now
Deas Vail. Adolescence practically requires each person to see the world as a vast Truman Show, an endless multitude of people all constantly judging your every movement. Each and every person you meet sees every mistake you've ever made and has incisive knowledge of your inner foibles. When you've got a zit on your jawline, everyone can see it and thinks its disgusting. When you forget someone's name, they hold on to that moment for years. When you open your chips and they spill out on your lap, everyone's laughing internally, cataloging your idiocy to tell all their friends later around wine and cheese. "Do you remember in sixth grade when Hannah called the teacher 'Mom?' That was truly her lowest moment!"
All eyes are on you now.
Except that's not true. Nobody notices; you're background material. People aren't constantly searching for your hidden problems. They're all so focussed on themselves that they don't have time for you. And thank God for that, because this song is a horrorscape if it's true. Actually: nobody cares, and it's wonderful.
Why do we all think such awful things about ourselves? This is the stuff of nightmares! This is as terrifying as the implications of the Hymn of Acxiom, but broader and less modern. It's the omniscience of the priest, the gossip chain of the village ladies, the seeming judgement of the schoolchildren in the other desks--the oldest fear since society formed. This is what you wake up to at three am and worry about at quiet moments. It's not true, but that doesn't stop our phobia from building to an all-consuming emotional "Show us what you're made of/What you are afraid of/All eyes are on you now."
I like the song. It makes me feel bigger and lighter, even though it has such a heavy message. It makes me feel like shoving my hands deeper in my pockets and walking faster, getting where I'm going so I can win whatever I'm doing. I know the music doesn't match the words, now that I've read them. I don't think it matters. There are songs you listen to because the music blows you away, songs you listen to because the words move you like a bird on the wing, and songs that have both. This song is not both, I think. I wouldn't buy it, but we all know how useless I've made that metric. It just tells you if I want it, not if I enjoy it or find it worthwhile or think it deserves to be the penultimate song of a list of Stephen's best from 2014.
One more. Delight's song.
Deas Vail. Adolescence practically requires each person to see the world as a vast Truman Show, an endless multitude of people all constantly judging your every movement. Each and every person you meet sees every mistake you've ever made and has incisive knowledge of your inner foibles. When you've got a zit on your jawline, everyone can see it and thinks its disgusting. When you forget someone's name, they hold on to that moment for years. When you open your chips and they spill out on your lap, everyone's laughing internally, cataloging your idiocy to tell all their friends later around wine and cheese. "Do you remember in sixth grade when Hannah called the teacher 'Mom?' That was truly her lowest moment!"
All eyes are on you now.
Except that's not true. Nobody notices; you're background material. People aren't constantly searching for your hidden problems. They're all so focussed on themselves that they don't have time for you. And thank God for that, because this song is a horrorscape if it's true. Actually: nobody cares, and it's wonderful.
Why do we all think such awful things about ourselves? This is the stuff of nightmares! This is as terrifying as the implications of the Hymn of Acxiom, but broader and less modern. It's the omniscience of the priest, the gossip chain of the village ladies, the seeming judgement of the schoolchildren in the other desks--the oldest fear since society formed. This is what you wake up to at three am and worry about at quiet moments. It's not true, but that doesn't stop our phobia from building to an all-consuming emotional "Show us what you're made of/What you are afraid of/All eyes are on you now."
I like the song. It makes me feel bigger and lighter, even though it has such a heavy message. It makes me feel like shoving my hands deeper in my pockets and walking faster, getting where I'm going so I can win whatever I'm doing. I know the music doesn't match the words, now that I've read them. I don't think it matters. There are songs you listen to because the music blows you away, songs you listen to because the words move you like a bird on the wing, and songs that have both. This song is not both, I think. I wouldn't buy it, but we all know how useless I've made that metric. It just tells you if I want it, not if I enjoy it or find it worthwhile or think it deserves to be the penultimate song of a list of Stephen's best from 2014.
One more. Delight's song.
My Acolyte Journey: 2014.3
Marlboro Lights.
Natalia Kills.
The Internet at home is so slow I could walk to down and take a course on lockpicking to break into the library and look up the information I need before Google would load. That might be an exaggeration. Still, as long as I'm here . . .
For my use, this song would be called Fireball, and no mistake. I'm tempted to stop writing there and just let sleeping dogs lie, but that's not why I'm here. Marlboro Lights is about a relationship that's ending or has just ended and the narrator knows why, knows it won't be anything but over, but clutches the pain to her breast and quaffs it like medicine. Her lover is gone, but somehow, she gets better because of it: "And I lie here on the bedroom floor/Where your feet walked out and your daggers fall/And I, I get a little bit better." It's hard to death if "A rooftop ledge/Could just fix everything," but she's fixated and it's fixing her.
I don't know if I'm projecting myself on this song like the thin light from an overhead projector on a hot classroom wall, fading in sunlight and aching for the final bell to ring and the referee to just call the match. Maybe I'm not, and it's just resonant in me like shook foil, terrible and fragile, a connection so tenuous that it shatters my illusions with a single strike and lays waste to my imagination of "okay." Maybe it's exactly my story and maybe I'm playing human and pretending I'm important, but either way I'm not okay, and my thoughts of Fireball whiskey doesn't make me feel a little bit better.
Would not buy.
Done thinking.
Natalia Kills.
The Internet at home is so slow I could walk to down and take a course on lockpicking to break into the library and look up the information I need before Google would load. That might be an exaggeration. Still, as long as I'm here . . .
For my use, this song would be called Fireball, and no mistake. I'm tempted to stop writing there and just let sleeping dogs lie, but that's not why I'm here. Marlboro Lights is about a relationship that's ending or has just ended and the narrator knows why, knows it won't be anything but over, but clutches the pain to her breast and quaffs it like medicine. Her lover is gone, but somehow, she gets better because of it: "And I lie here on the bedroom floor/Where your feet walked out and your daggers fall/And I, I get a little bit better." It's hard to death if "A rooftop ledge/Could just fix everything," but she's fixated and it's fixing her.
I don't know if I'm projecting myself on this song like the thin light from an overhead projector on a hot classroom wall, fading in sunlight and aching for the final bell to ring and the referee to just call the match. Maybe I'm not, and it's just resonant in me like shook foil, terrible and fragile, a connection so tenuous that it shatters my illusions with a single strike and lays waste to my imagination of "okay." Maybe it's exactly my story and maybe I'm playing human and pretending I'm important, but either way I'm not okay, and my thoughts of Fireball whiskey doesn't make me feel a little bit better.
Would not buy.
Done thinking.
Monday, November 23, 2015
11.23
The weather was perfect, finally. I ran outside and picked up my bike, ready to go to the park. From inside, I heard a distant voice: "Wear a helmet!" Ugh, parents. I turned around and had to tramp all the way back to the closet for my helmet. I clipped it on and ran back outside, jumping the two steps down the porch.
I swing my leg over the bike and rip off down the sidewalk. I'm pedaling as fast as I can because I'm afraid I'll be late to show up. All my friends are going to the park because it's the first perfect day of summer, and the pool is about to open. Everybody's going to be there, and I'm going to be late because I had to take out the trash and clean my room first. Parents! I'm flying down the sidewalk now, my feet going a hundred miles an hour. I can hear the wind in my ears roaring like a hurricane. Maybe I will make it on time, if I keep going like this.
Except: I still have to go down Creedy Hill.
I brake hard at the top of the hill, breathing hard. The hill seemed to go down forever, and down there, at the bottom, was the park. Down there, the pool and the creek and the playground waited. Down there, kids were lining up to jump in the pool, to zoom down the slide, to scream and slip and swim. Up here, I had only Creedy Hill between me and paradise, and Creedy Hill was a killer. One time, I heard about a kid who tried to ride a skateboard down it and ended up in the hospital because he went through a wall at the bottom. The last time I went down the hill, I walked my bike. In fact, I have walked down the hill every time I ever come to it. But I'm late--the only way to get to the pool in time is to ride down the hill on my bike. So I take a couple deep breaths and push off.
Already, I'm going too fast, and I pull on the brakes, but it doesn't slow me down as much as I want. I start to see the houses as a blur and the road races under me like I'm riding a rocket. I'm trying my best to steer straight down the sidewalk and not fall over, and the whole time my ears are full of such a huge woosh that I can't hear myself yelling. All of a sudden, I'm on the ground. WHACK. I can hear my bike crashing down the hill, and I'm gasping for breath. I stand up and check that my arms and legs are still attached, and when I do, whack! I hit my head again! Right above me, there's a huge, low-hanging tree branch that must have caught the top of my helmet and knocked me right off the bike. I pull the helmet off and I can see an enormous crunch in the top. Man, if I hadn't worn that helmet, the branch would have taken my head right off. I run to grab my bike and jump back on the bike, not afraid of anything. I'm super excited to tell my friends how I survived Creedy Hill.
I swing my leg over the bike and rip off down the sidewalk. I'm pedaling as fast as I can because I'm afraid I'll be late to show up. All my friends are going to the park because it's the first perfect day of summer, and the pool is about to open. Everybody's going to be there, and I'm going to be late because I had to take out the trash and clean my room first. Parents! I'm flying down the sidewalk now, my feet going a hundred miles an hour. I can hear the wind in my ears roaring like a hurricane. Maybe I will make it on time, if I keep going like this.
Except: I still have to go down Creedy Hill.
I brake hard at the top of the hill, breathing hard. The hill seemed to go down forever, and down there, at the bottom, was the park. Down there, the pool and the creek and the playground waited. Down there, kids were lining up to jump in the pool, to zoom down the slide, to scream and slip and swim. Up here, I had only Creedy Hill between me and paradise, and Creedy Hill was a killer. One time, I heard about a kid who tried to ride a skateboard down it and ended up in the hospital because he went through a wall at the bottom. The last time I went down the hill, I walked my bike. In fact, I have walked down the hill every time I ever come to it. But I'm late--the only way to get to the pool in time is to ride down the hill on my bike. So I take a couple deep breaths and push off.
Already, I'm going too fast, and I pull on the brakes, but it doesn't slow me down as much as I want. I start to see the houses as a blur and the road races under me like I'm riding a rocket. I'm trying my best to steer straight down the sidewalk and not fall over, and the whole time my ears are full of such a huge woosh that I can't hear myself yelling. All of a sudden, I'm on the ground. WHACK. I can hear my bike crashing down the hill, and I'm gasping for breath. I stand up and check that my arms and legs are still attached, and when I do, whack! I hit my head again! Right above me, there's a huge, low-hanging tree branch that must have caught the top of my helmet and knocked me right off the bike. I pull the helmet off and I can see an enormous crunch in the top. Man, if I hadn't worn that helmet, the branch would have taken my head right off. I run to grab my bike and jump back on the bike, not afraid of anything. I'm super excited to tell my friends how I survived Creedy Hill.
Saturday, November 21, 2015
11.21b
I'm really angry at my mom this time. She's forcing me to do what she wants. Right now, I'm doing dishes. I pick up the plates and I slap them down. I throw the silverware into the sink so hard a couple of forks bounce out and clatter to the ground. I kick one, and it slides under the sink, way out of sight. "Ha!" I shout. "Stupid fork!" I squeeze the soap into the sink way too hard. There's way too much soap, but I don't care. I'm mad. I turn on the water and watch as the soap bubbles start to climb their way up the sides of the sink.
This is dumb, I think to myself. Mom won't let me go to the park today because I have chores and homework. I really wanted to play outside with my friends. The sink is filling up slowly with water, but the bubbles are climbing lots faster than the water level. The bubbles are piling on top of each other, taller and taller. This is dumb. I don't want to do the stupid dishes. I realize I don't know where that fork went. I bend down to find it, but it's shoved way under the sink in the dark. I reach in there and my heart starts to beat faster and faster as my arm goes further and further. I've found some kind of hole under the sink. I open the drawer next to me and grab the flash light. I get down on my hands and knees and I aim the flashlight right down the hole. It is a hole! I can see all the way back inside to the wall. On the right, I can see the pipes of the sink. On the left, I can see the fork, but further back, I see something strange. There's a small, dark furball. Suddenly, it turns and looks at me: a mouse! I shout "Woah!" and I jump back, crashing into the table behind me. A couple glasses fall off the table and the chair gets knocked to the floor. I was just surprised, is all. I look up and see the sink start overflowing with soap bubbles. They're falling all over the floor. Mom walks in and sees the mess.
"What are you doing!?" she shouts.
I start laughing as the soap bubbles drift down and land on the floor. Mom runs over and turns off the water. She gives me a look.
"Okay," I say. "I'll do the dishes."
This is dumb, I think to myself. Mom won't let me go to the park today because I have chores and homework. I really wanted to play outside with my friends. The sink is filling up slowly with water, but the bubbles are climbing lots faster than the water level. The bubbles are piling on top of each other, taller and taller. This is dumb. I don't want to do the stupid dishes. I realize I don't know where that fork went. I bend down to find it, but it's shoved way under the sink in the dark. I reach in there and my heart starts to beat faster and faster as my arm goes further and further. I've found some kind of hole under the sink. I open the drawer next to me and grab the flash light. I get down on my hands and knees and I aim the flashlight right down the hole. It is a hole! I can see all the way back inside to the wall. On the right, I can see the pipes of the sink. On the left, I can see the fork, but further back, I see something strange. There's a small, dark furball. Suddenly, it turns and looks at me: a mouse! I shout "Woah!" and I jump back, crashing into the table behind me. A couple glasses fall off the table and the chair gets knocked to the floor. I was just surprised, is all. I look up and see the sink start overflowing with soap bubbles. They're falling all over the floor. Mom walks in and sees the mess.
"What are you doing!?" she shouts.
I start laughing as the soap bubbles drift down and land on the floor. Mom runs over and turns off the water. She gives me a look.
"Okay," I say. "I'll do the dishes."
11.21
Snatch the orbs from their sockets. Immolate them. Flay the soft flesh and grind the bones! Listen to their lovers screaming—the air torn from their thin frame, racked with a frail and tintinnabulate, membranous death-terror, the screams a shattering, reverberant paean to the artistry of death. Revel, friends. The destruction entire of a human soul is delicate art made not of pigments and tonal assonance but art of a more methodic kind. Invest time, build belief, mythologize the future that seems all but inevitable, and as the mind bends its construction under the weight of the old narrative, dynamite the foundations and watch the integument burst, pressure released, motes remaining, as the old story of an animal heart evaporates as the cognitive brain betrays itself a thousand fold with each new contortion, battling to fit itself into a shattered mirror. Better to be ripped into two main halves, the blood only falling out as the heart seizes and shakes, the mind still sensate, than to have the soul desiccated, silicate, wind-blown, barren, dead. Better to die in pain than live without it.
Thursday, November 19, 2015
11.19
I'm making baked potatoes in the oven. I remember the first time I did this for you; you were so amazed that such a thing was possible. This time, you're not here. I am growing to hate all my memories of you because they are all individual notes of a dirge that started long ago and only now has built to its pernicious climax. No emotional swell of orchestra and organ can go on for this long. I can't stand it! My heart will stop! And yet I listen on, because I must. I've bought a ticket to this concert and I will stay. My potatoes will probably be exquisite, but they'll turn to ash in my mouth as the terrible chords crash around me, shaking me, drowning me.
I miss you.
I miss you.
Monday, November 9, 2015
My Acolyte Journey: 2014.4
Harbinger.
Anberlin. This song is absolutely full to the gills with things that people want to hear. We'll live forever. We'll be together. These are the myths that people love to tell themselves. Heaven is just this extreme level of wish fulfillment. Reincarnation promises eternal life. Collectivism promises togetherness. Success will make your legacy last an eternity. Love will keep you from drifting apart.
The song is a dream state, though. The musical intro drifts, disconnected and out of time, finally picking up urgency with the singer, but never losing the underbeat of the dream. We're told that people are paid to feel free, bribed to be content. We're told to fall asleep. We're told that life isn't all perfection: we need who we would bleed for, a sacrifice unnecessary in a true dream.
This song's words and sound echo the dissatisfaction I feel today, and perhaps have felt for a very long time. I was exhausted and the dog rolled up on me and whined at the edge of my bed at 6:30. I've been awake for two and a half hours doing nothing, fervidly wishing that I would crash, exhausted, back to sleep. I'm afraid I'll never sleep in again. And in my current angry mood, I'm pissed at everything: God, Feminism, Ben Carson, Moberly Middle School, and Watson. [Brief aside: I wrote that on Sunday morning, became disaffected by the blog itself, and then stayed up until the small hours doing Lord only knows what.] Maybe it's the perfect time for a disaffected song that reflects my generic brand of disgust, or maybe it's absolutely the incorrect time to be wallowing in self-constructed misanthropy, further echoing in on my psychosis in an increasingly torpid stupor in which even the intrusion of minutiae is unbearable.
Yet.
I would love for someone to find a private moment and pull me into a hug with a grip that communicates the immediacy and the passion of the truth of it: some relationships last forever. Because right now things are hard here, now.
I wouldn't buy this, for whatever that's worth now. I haven't bought any music for a year or more now. I didn't even buy any at McKay's, and it's ludicrously cheap there. I don't think "I would buy this" is a good metric any more. I'll find one for the next forty, but for now just understand that I wouldn't buy this song if it were offered to me for a dollar.
Anberlin. This song is absolutely full to the gills with things that people want to hear. We'll live forever. We'll be together. These are the myths that people love to tell themselves. Heaven is just this extreme level of wish fulfillment. Reincarnation promises eternal life. Collectivism promises togetherness. Success will make your legacy last an eternity. Love will keep you from drifting apart.
The song is a dream state, though. The musical intro drifts, disconnected and out of time, finally picking up urgency with the singer, but never losing the underbeat of the dream. We're told that people are paid to feel free, bribed to be content. We're told to fall asleep. We're told that life isn't all perfection: we need who we would bleed for, a sacrifice unnecessary in a true dream.
This song's words and sound echo the dissatisfaction I feel today, and perhaps have felt for a very long time. I was exhausted and the dog rolled up on me and whined at the edge of my bed at 6:30. I've been awake for two and a half hours doing nothing, fervidly wishing that I would crash, exhausted, back to sleep. I'm afraid I'll never sleep in again. And in my current angry mood, I'm pissed at everything: God, Feminism, Ben Carson, Moberly Middle School, and Watson. [Brief aside: I wrote that on Sunday morning, became disaffected by the blog itself, and then stayed up until the small hours doing Lord only knows what.] Maybe it's the perfect time for a disaffected song that reflects my generic brand of disgust, or maybe it's absolutely the incorrect time to be wallowing in self-constructed misanthropy, further echoing in on my psychosis in an increasingly torpid stupor in which even the intrusion of minutiae is unbearable.
Yet.
I would love for someone to find a private moment and pull me into a hug with a grip that communicates the immediacy and the passion of the truth of it: some relationships last forever. Because right now things are hard here, now.
I wouldn't buy this, for whatever that's worth now. I haven't bought any music for a year or more now. I didn't even buy any at McKay's, and it's ludicrously cheap there. I don't think "I would buy this" is a good metric any more. I'll find one for the next forty, but for now just understand that I wouldn't buy this song if it were offered to me for a dollar.
Friday, November 6, 2015
My Acolyte Journey: 2014.5
Heavenly Father.
Bon Iver. This song rivals many of my favorites for being utter gibberish. The religious references are tired and useless, the imagery is confusing, and the word's message is almost banal. "It's definitely lava," the singer sighs, and we're left wondering what exactly is lava? The relationship? His father? There's no context and the pronoun leaves me empty. I didn't understand the song the third time I read through it, and lyric genius is no help. This one was annotated by a drunk sloth. I had to struggle to find what meaning there was.
So I read the song backwards.
It's better. Listen, I don't know what the songwriter was thinking when he wrote these lyrics, but either it is gibberish and I'm sane or it's genius and I'm missing something. I want to assume the writer wasn't throwing refrigerator magnets at a whiteboard and writing down what stuck. Look carefully. "A safety, in the end, is all that he offers: Heavenly Father." It makes more sense than reversed. Now we know that the Heavenly Father is nothing more than a single point of safety for the singer. Let's go forward expecting him to seek that safety and slip from it, pointlessly, because it's not complex enough for his needs. He spends forever "up here" (heaven? I don't think so?) filling his time with fear. We learn that his loved one left him and that's why he's depressed. He let her go. "You turn around now and you count to 10, but you're free now, 'cause I'm a known coward in a coward wind." He's not going to chase. "Won't you settle down baby here your love has been! And I'm free now. I was never sure how much of you I could let in, but you're free now." He gives back the love and explains why he's letting go. He gives permission for the other person to leave. "And I don't need to go where a Bible went ever since I heard the howlin' wind." He feel a need to follow a Bible when he's such a coward. That coward wind has pushed him right out of the safety of the Heavenly Father.
Yet I know I'm trying too hard. The author wrote "Heard about a day where it dropped the know/to go another day as we learn to close," which makes no sense forward or backward. He wrote "Heavenly Father/is whose brought to his Autumn/and love is left in end." That's corroborated by two websites. I don't think it's a spelling error. I'm trying too hard and I wanted to find meaning but it's not there. It is gibberish.
I think it's "'Heavenly Father' is who's brought to his Autumn" and "I've been up here filling holes with fears," but that's clearly wrong. It's "whose" and "hulls." I hate lyrics transcribers today. Ignore me.
I think I demand too much of my music. It's like: Heavenly Father is perfectly serviceable. It even sets a beautiful picture in my mind. It's a moodscape and it does its job. But I constantly expect the words to mean something. Am I out of my mind? Did I get hit in a soft spot as a child and I'm left wanting desperately to make connections with the random jumble of words some man I've never met is singing so passionately and so hollowly? I feel like this song may have broken me, and I don't know what to say. I've never seen the movie the song was written for (Zach Braff), and maybe a lot of the references like "lava" and "wind" would make sense if I had, but I don't want to. I want a song that holds itself up. I want a song that helps me somehow after I've listened to it. And if that's unfair because I liked the video games Dear Esther and The Graveyard. Maybe I've just been programmed so well to look for meaning in lyrics and poetry by my academic upbringing that I'm missing something elemental and foundational in this work.
Or maybe the lyricist who wrote this piece was a drunk sloth. We may never know.
Bon Iver. This song rivals many of my favorites for being utter gibberish. The religious references are tired and useless, the imagery is confusing, and the word's message is almost banal. "It's definitely lava," the singer sighs, and we're left wondering what exactly is lava? The relationship? His father? There's no context and the pronoun leaves me empty. I didn't understand the song the third time I read through it, and lyric genius is no help. This one was annotated by a drunk sloth. I had to struggle to find what meaning there was.
So I read the song backwards.
It's better. Listen, I don't know what the songwriter was thinking when he wrote these lyrics, but either it is gibberish and I'm sane or it's genius and I'm missing something. I want to assume the writer wasn't throwing refrigerator magnets at a whiteboard and writing down what stuck. Look carefully. "A safety, in the end, is all that he offers: Heavenly Father." It makes more sense than reversed. Now we know that the Heavenly Father is nothing more than a single point of safety for the singer. Let's go forward expecting him to seek that safety and slip from it, pointlessly, because it's not complex enough for his needs. He spends forever "up here" (heaven? I don't think so?) filling his time with fear. We learn that his loved one left him and that's why he's depressed. He let her go. "You turn around now and you count to 10, but you're free now, 'cause I'm a known coward in a coward wind." He's not going to chase. "Won't you settle down baby here your love has been! And I'm free now. I was never sure how much of you I could let in, but you're free now." He gives back the love and explains why he's letting go. He gives permission for the other person to leave. "And I don't need to go where a Bible went ever since I heard the howlin' wind." He feel a need to follow a Bible when he's such a coward. That coward wind has pushed him right out of the safety of the Heavenly Father.
Yet I know I'm trying too hard. The author wrote "Heard about a day where it dropped the know/to go another day as we learn to close," which makes no sense forward or backward. He wrote "Heavenly Father/is whose brought to his Autumn/and love is left in end." That's corroborated by two websites. I don't think it's a spelling error. I'm trying too hard and I wanted to find meaning but it's not there. It is gibberish.
I think it's "'Heavenly Father' is who's brought to his Autumn" and "I've been up here filling holes with fears," but that's clearly wrong. It's "whose" and "hulls." I hate lyrics transcribers today. Ignore me.
I think I demand too much of my music. It's like: Heavenly Father is perfectly serviceable. It even sets a beautiful picture in my mind. It's a moodscape and it does its job. But I constantly expect the words to mean something. Am I out of my mind? Did I get hit in a soft spot as a child and I'm left wanting desperately to make connections with the random jumble of words some man I've never met is singing so passionately and so hollowly? I feel like this song may have broken me, and I don't know what to say. I've never seen the movie the song was written for (Zach Braff), and maybe a lot of the references like "lava" and "wind" would make sense if I had, but I don't want to. I want a song that holds itself up. I want a song that helps me somehow after I've listened to it. And if that's unfair because I liked the video games Dear Esther and The Graveyard. Maybe I've just been programmed so well to look for meaning in lyrics and poetry by my academic upbringing that I'm missing something elemental and foundational in this work.
Or maybe the lyricist who wrote this piece was a drunk sloth. We may never know.
Thursday, November 5, 2015
My Acolyte Journey: 2014.6
Haunt (Demo)
Bastille. In an epic stretch of five months, I have left this project utterly dormant. Now I shall return, since Stephen has graced me with a 40 for 2015 and I'm now officially a failure.
I'm a storyteller. I try to hook my students with well-told stories about my childhood so they'll write stories too. I talk about when my brother beat the dog to save a bird's nest and I felt my mind carom between two conclusions as I learned what was going on. I talk about my sister pushing me from the treehouse and thinking, even for that spit second, that she had killed me, after all. I talk about canoeing down a river with Russell and losing both paddles in a swift bit of the current and throwing myself out of the boat after it. I'm a storyteller by nature and I love feeling people's energy build and tense as the story breaks open in front of them. But: to date, the most universally captivating stories I can tell are those of my past relationships. Maybe it's because I'm so candid about how I was feeling and what I concluded from the terrible things I did and felt with the girlfriends I've had, but I don't think that's all of it. I think stories of past relationships get such strong reactions not because they're enjoyable or interesting, but because they're resonant, like stepping inside an enormous bell and having the outside struck, again and again, by someone else.
I think romantic relationships--and especially sexual relationships--cause scars or change so deep and fundamental to who we are and what we want as young people that my peers will always be transfixed by a well-told heartbreak. When somebody hears a story about love lost, their first and immediate reaction will always be to connect it to some story they've thought they locked away.
That's Haunt.
I would buy it, but I haven't. I'm not buying music. I need to change my metric, since I have Amazon Music and I'm likely to have Google Music and the whole world is changing. My students don't know what a CD is. My mother can't believe I don't know how to start an LP. I like Bastille. He's great.
Bastille. In an epic stretch of five months, I have left this project utterly dormant. Now I shall return, since Stephen has graced me with a 40 for 2015 and I'm now officially a failure.
I'm a storyteller. I try to hook my students with well-told stories about my childhood so they'll write stories too. I talk about when my brother beat the dog to save a bird's nest and I felt my mind carom between two conclusions as I learned what was going on. I talk about my sister pushing me from the treehouse and thinking, even for that spit second, that she had killed me, after all. I talk about canoeing down a river with Russell and losing both paddles in a swift bit of the current and throwing myself out of the boat after it. I'm a storyteller by nature and I love feeling people's energy build and tense as the story breaks open in front of them. But: to date, the most universally captivating stories I can tell are those of my past relationships. Maybe it's because I'm so candid about how I was feeling and what I concluded from the terrible things I did and felt with the girlfriends I've had, but I don't think that's all of it. I think stories of past relationships get such strong reactions not because they're enjoyable or interesting, but because they're resonant, like stepping inside an enormous bell and having the outside struck, again and again, by someone else.
I think romantic relationships--and especially sexual relationships--cause scars or change so deep and fundamental to who we are and what we want as young people that my peers will always be transfixed by a well-told heartbreak. When somebody hears a story about love lost, their first and immediate reaction will always be to connect it to some story they've thought they locked away.
That's Haunt.
As adults will grow and maturity showsThe song makes me feel melancholy and hollow, but the song itself doesn't make me think of losing anybody. The words do. The way I relate to music is so liminal, so interstitial that I never had a chance to relate Haunt so very strongly with an emotional loss in my life. Honestly, I have a better chance to relate to Chopin at this point than to Bastille. I've just heard him so little at critical moments. I love it, though. Something in it makes me want to scream the words, even though I don't know them. Something terrible makes me want the song to crash and cry.
All the terrifying rarity of truth,
As you turn to your mind,
And your thoughts they rewind
To old happenings and things that are done
I would buy it, but I haven't. I'm not buying music. I need to change my metric, since I have Amazon Music and I'm likely to have Google Music and the whole world is changing. My students don't know what a CD is. My mother can't believe I don't know how to start an LP. I like Bastille. He's great.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
