i wish i had some startling news to report - i'm working on assembling a list of cliches that could be represented in a visually interesting way - i'm going to try and put together a series of photos sometime in the near future and i need some subject material...it's really just a silly little idea that is picking up steam through my sheer unwillingness to let it go - but hey, isn't that how a great many things get accomplished in life?
maybe that's my topic for the day - what persists on its own, and what do you hold on to despite all the efforts that life makes to pull it away from you? is that what makes you who you are? i heard in some movie once, and it's an awful piece of trite hollywood nonsense in the context it was delivered, but the thought behind it kind of stuck with me, that "you are what you love, not what loves you," and i really think that's true. who you are is what you're unwilling to release, to let pass. and that's for better and for worse, and it makes you who you are. all the bitterness and unhappiness that you're holding onto about the past, or even about present circumstances, or anxiety about the future (which is my fort, to be sure) is all just things that you will not allow to pass by you. it's completely been my experience that everything passes away, passes by you in time, if you allow it to. people are amazing in that sense, their infinite capacity to recover and adjust and find some way to go on.
"i mean, past a certain point, all we have are memories anyway, so what's the use in even trying to hang on to things?" that's a pretty seductive thought, you know...the idea that there's nothing worth trying to hold down and keep with you as time passes, and it's one that i subscribe to entirely too often. i have kind of become the type of person who thinks that you can't do anything great without that forced persistence, without hanging on to an idea and tossing it around again and again and again until it starts to snowball and develop into something really huge and special...and i guess i'm referring to the creative process here but it could also mean changes that you want to make in your life or really anything - casual, offhand things that you do are just that - casual and offhand and they don't often amount to much or stick, really. you need that nagging insistence of "okay, let's come back to that idea again and see what it's got for me now."
of course the flipside of that is that obsessive, overanalytical/rational/thinking in general mindset that i'm sure i'm not the only one who gets into from time to time - more frequently than i'd like to admit, i'm sure -
the phone just rang - "hi, is chuck there please?" chuck is not here, and to my knowledge chuck has never been here at any point, so either that guy knows something i don't, or his chuck radar is a little overactive today.
so i guess what this all amounts to is where do you draw the line? is it just guesswork that allows us to say "i need to hold on to this thought because it will turn out to be important and significant to me as time goes on" and then turn around and say "i need to let this go, because it's going to be either unimportant or downright hurtful to me to keep it around" and of course there's a world of room for problems in between the DECISION to hold onto something or let it go and the actual PROCESS of implementing that decision. i'd like to think that there's some sort of ordering principle in my mind or self or whatever that allows me to discern where that line is, but in my more sensible moments i guess i can imagine that maybe it's random guesswork for the most part...maybe that's how we get through life.
i watched the japanese movie that this was based on last night - not as AAAAAAAHHHHHHHh terrifying, but creepy nonetheless - no jump cuts to people with their jaws ripped off, so not quite as high on the shit-your-pants scale as the american version, which i am going to watch tonight for a real scare.
this album is also great, and you should download/buy it right away. i know, i thought they sucked too, but sometimes a shitty band will produce a quality album.
that's all for now - more pictures maybe today or later until then i bid you all a fondue.
maybe that's my topic for the day - what persists on its own, and what do you hold on to despite all the efforts that life makes to pull it away from you? is that what makes you who you are? i heard in some movie once, and it's an awful piece of trite hollywood nonsense in the context it was delivered, but the thought behind it kind of stuck with me, that "you are what you love, not what loves you," and i really think that's true. who you are is what you're unwilling to release, to let pass. and that's for better and for worse, and it makes you who you are. all the bitterness and unhappiness that you're holding onto about the past, or even about present circumstances, or anxiety about the future (which is my fort, to be sure) is all just things that you will not allow to pass by you. it's completely been my experience that everything passes away, passes by you in time, if you allow it to. people are amazing in that sense, their infinite capacity to recover and adjust and find some way to go on.
"i mean, past a certain point, all we have are memories anyway, so what's the use in even trying to hang on to things?" that's a pretty seductive thought, you know...the idea that there's nothing worth trying to hold down and keep with you as time passes, and it's one that i subscribe to entirely too often. i have kind of become the type of person who thinks that you can't do anything great without that forced persistence, without hanging on to an idea and tossing it around again and again and again until it starts to snowball and develop into something really huge and special...and i guess i'm referring to the creative process here but it could also mean changes that you want to make in your life or really anything - casual, offhand things that you do are just that - casual and offhand and they don't often amount to much or stick, really. you need that nagging insistence of "okay, let's come back to that idea again and see what it's got for me now."
of course the flipside of that is that obsessive, overanalytical/rational/thinking in general mindset that i'm sure i'm not the only one who gets into from time to time - more frequently than i'd like to admit, i'm sure -
the phone just rang - "hi, is chuck there please?" chuck is not here, and to my knowledge chuck has never been here at any point, so either that guy knows something i don't, or his chuck radar is a little overactive today.
so i guess what this all amounts to is where do you draw the line? is it just guesswork that allows us to say "i need to hold on to this thought because it will turn out to be important and significant to me as time goes on" and then turn around and say "i need to let this go, because it's going to be either unimportant or downright hurtful to me to keep it around" and of course there's a world of room for problems in between the DECISION to hold onto something or let it go and the actual PROCESS of implementing that decision. i'd like to think that there's some sort of ordering principle in my mind or self or whatever that allows me to discern where that line is, but in my more sensible moments i guess i can imagine that maybe it's random guesswork for the most part...maybe that's how we get through life.
i watched the japanese movie that this was based on last night - not as AAAAAAAHHHHHHHh terrifying, but creepy nonetheless - no jump cuts to people with their jaws ripped off, so not quite as high on the shit-your-pants scale as the american version, which i am going to watch tonight for a real scare.
this album is also great, and you should download/buy it right away. i know, i thought they sucked too, but sometimes a shitty band will produce a quality album.
that's all for now - more pictures maybe today or later until then i bid you all a fondue.
Overanalysis is a problem I seem to have, too. The problem, for me, is when it deconstruct a thought to the point where it no longer holds anything of substance; I reduce it to its smallest parts and find that I can no longer see the gestalt of it. Sometimes I wonder if Ginsberg's "First thought, best thought," was more along the right track. But that never lasts. First thought is always malformed; it needs to be molded through analysis. It's the tension of how much is too much analysis that is the most troublesome.
Never caught The Ring. And I was really put off to Nada Surf after "Popular." So, yeah.
I don't think I would've accepted the punishment. At the very least, I would've wanted it changed to something where I could fight back.
my favorite cliche is "wherever you go, there you are." it's so much deeper than it looks. really powerful. I may write a long essay on it
I just saw the trailer for LXG. eep.
Sean Connery's one of those guys that can either be really good in the right part, or completely sink a movie. Like Chuck Heston in Planet of the Apes or Soylent Green, where the ridiculous overacting somehow works("Strawberry preserves. Goddamn."). And then Chuck in other things, where it doesn't (Chuck as Moses kinda makes me giggle).
screw segues. yes, we are all fundamentally alone, in the true and purest denotative meaning of that word. no one will ever understand and experience anything in the world exactly the way you do. not so much frustrating as soul-crushing, at least when I'm depressed, but when I'm in a good mood I have this weird combination of fatalism and joy at the complete freedom of it all.
I've never had fondue, but it sounds neat.
oh, and that quote is from adaptation, which I just saw for the first time a couple of nights ago. the one about "what you love". in the context of the rest of the movie, it's a very nice example of what you can do with a cliche (or at least something that sounds like a cliche
ugh. I just said "facile". gonna have to counterbalance that with a "poop".
I'm also fascinated by silly vulgarity, just so you know. and self-deprecation combined with utter pomposity.
and also monkeys.
jesus, I really shouldn't get on the computer right after a ten hour closing shift.
and also pirates.
arrrrrrr.