i can't say you guys missed much. we're waiting to move into a new place come Monday - where i'll finally have my lil recording studio all set up, where beth will have room to paint, and where in general i'm hoping we'll be a bit more upbeat and creative as opposed to this dimly lit lil' cube we're in now.
the past year has pretty much been a holding pattern. i hate to feel like i'm wasting time, but if there was a time that it happened in, this was it. maybe i learned to relax a bit again though. i think i have a few things to say again., but i still feel like there's a lot of unresolved elements to the currently running story arc in life as i'm knowing it at present.
my favorite movies are ones where the protagonist starts off jaded, comfortable. sure of his/her surroundings and elements, and is ultimately disrupted - not always clearly for the better - in sweeping, almost apocalyptic ways. yeah yeah, that's plot writing 101, but i like my change in quarters, screw the penny thoughts.
pride and prejudice (a&e / bbc version) is great along those lines. colin firth has it set up so you just can't possibly imagine d'arcy deviating in any way from the man he is in the beginning. the thing that strikes me the oddest is in the end when he's smiling for the first time at the wedding. other than a few light grins during the secomd proposal, i think that's the first time he does it. a lesser film, it wouldn't work - you couldn't imagine these guys having any chemistry other than hating each others guts. the change is so drastic, so ultimate, but ultimately believable.
homo faber - here it's a bit less resolved, but we're left feeling like this guy's been altered right to the core. he'll never go back to being so all assuming and proud. he's completely taken apart, and we're only left to sort of wonder who he'll become.
rushmore - max is entirely in command of his environment, as is ed bloom to some degree in terms of his work life. miss cross is right in a way that they're both children, but she leaves herself out of the mix. any true adult wouldn't entertain max as much as she does. they'd probably cut ties with the student after any one of the events such as the aquarium or the post-play dinner. she's play-acting through her adult life a bit - complete with imaginary friend / knight in shining armour ghost husband. she isn't ultimately what changes max and bloom though i don't think - it's more like an epic of gilgamesh sort of thing, where she's just the vehicle that brings them out of the forest. i suppose that sounds a tad misogynistic, to imply who she is doesn't really matter here, but i think ultimately that's the point - max and bloom both have "everything" in their own respects except romantic love. it's a symbolic first love for both of them in a way, like children they're master of their worlds until that first person comes along, and they completely demolish their surroundings to attain it. not because they even understand the person or necessarially need them, but more than likely it's simply because the domain they're master of was ready to be taken down.
the sandman - dream sets himself up for the falls, which is even better. the fact that he even conciously does it at times is brilliant. like all of the above, he's in complete control, has seemingly everything he could want and is ultimately bored. the one thing i love about this perhaps more than the others, is that it has nothing to do with love, it's more of a personal thing.
so now, this is kind of where i'm stuck. i think my ability to be drastically changed by love has slowed to some degree. i've taken my epic rises and falls. i've met the person i'm supposed to be with. love has changed me into who i needed to be and made me what it could. but it's more difficult now because i've always relied on that to change me. love is an ultimate, and i have this nasty habit of only believing in extremes and ultimates. i tend to believe the only things that truely change people - or at least make for a good story - are matters of life (love) and death (religion).
considering i'm not ready for death or biblical apocalypse or going door-to-door with bibles for at least another 40 or 50 years, i'm concerned i'm settling into that general "where'd the time go" malaise that seems to start in the late twenties and lasts till you're about 50 and ready for retirement and move into the phase where you're developing this relationship with death more intimately. are we just not supposed to live this long? am i just on hold until it's time for the second half of life?
that can't be how it works - life is a series of births and rebirths and deaths and sidebirths and redeaths and such. perhaps it's a figurative death i'm in store for - i lose something but that frees me to do something else. this kind of scares me a bit as well since whenever i think about that, i tend to look at my artistic sensebillities, and how they've seldom gotten me anywhere. i am so enamoured with life and it's complexities that i'm sort of trapped and caught up in it. it's hard to hold a job or work on a career other than freelancing or doing my own thing. i can't bear the thought of fulfilling someone else's dream. i know it's overdramatic to think so, but it just still really gets to me. i'm getting older, but that creative and juvenile desire to be singular, to live one's own ultimate, limits me dramatically.
i guess one could argue that perhaps business will kill me. that ultimately i'll fail to make a living artistically and will borg out. or maybe i become like one of orwell's animal farm pigs in my quest to be self-employed, and you can't tell the difference between me and some cutthroat with a briefcase.
maybe it's religion that kills me. maybe i go christian rock and my personality disolves in a surrendering to a deity and the carrying out of it's wishes and work.
or who knows, maybe it's culture and politics that kill me. maybe i'm so shaken by the workings of the real world that i get scared and buy some battle outpost in suburbia and stock it with guns and children to keep my dna safe.
none of these outcomes of course make for entertaining film and cinema so much as the adolecent love stories, because they don't particularly end in happy endings. or they're typical, trivial. for some reason we don't see love that way. i guess sexy never quite gets old, but honestly, getting changed emotionally at the birth of your kid or when you get that big promotion is fucking boring. i just can't see something that dull changing me too forcefully. it's one reason i won't have kids. it's also one reason i'm not still doing webdev work.
so now it's sort of like i'm a bit adrift. out to sea and there's only two boats - the ferry i've already been on that's going to pick up more kids, and the ferry i've opted not to take that brings them to the white picket fence and the dog.
(feck, i wouldn't even mind a black picket fence and a hedgehog, but i think we've all pretty much sufficiently woken up from the american dream anyway. thankfully that means one aspect of dull is now closed for business.)
maybe i'm already in my metaphorical death then? treading water or on a desert isle, like purgatory. waiting to be born into my next life, one that isn't devoid of creation, but overflowing with it, bringing meaning and color to things again.
yeah. that must be it. like all those hopeless romantics above, it's the classic case of comfort being death. familiarity being purgatory. life isn't something you finish and then sit back and enjoy the spoils of. you fight for it, wrestle it back from the things that wouldn't mind holding it for you on the walk back home. in the end of this chapter, i won't be changed by losing who i am, i'll be changed by gaining it back.
that's what i need to do now. i need to find out how to gain it back. so if you spot my life on the bus or ordering a sandwhich or something, give a call. in the meantime i'm gonna try and actually write in this thing again, for a change
the past year has pretty much been a holding pattern. i hate to feel like i'm wasting time, but if there was a time that it happened in, this was it. maybe i learned to relax a bit again though. i think i have a few things to say again., but i still feel like there's a lot of unresolved elements to the currently running story arc in life as i'm knowing it at present.
my favorite movies are ones where the protagonist starts off jaded, comfortable. sure of his/her surroundings and elements, and is ultimately disrupted - not always clearly for the better - in sweeping, almost apocalyptic ways. yeah yeah, that's plot writing 101, but i like my change in quarters, screw the penny thoughts.
pride and prejudice (a&e / bbc version) is great along those lines. colin firth has it set up so you just can't possibly imagine d'arcy deviating in any way from the man he is in the beginning. the thing that strikes me the oddest is in the end when he's smiling for the first time at the wedding. other than a few light grins during the secomd proposal, i think that's the first time he does it. a lesser film, it wouldn't work - you couldn't imagine these guys having any chemistry other than hating each others guts. the change is so drastic, so ultimate, but ultimately believable.
homo faber - here it's a bit less resolved, but we're left feeling like this guy's been altered right to the core. he'll never go back to being so all assuming and proud. he's completely taken apart, and we're only left to sort of wonder who he'll become.
rushmore - max is entirely in command of his environment, as is ed bloom to some degree in terms of his work life. miss cross is right in a way that they're both children, but she leaves herself out of the mix. any true adult wouldn't entertain max as much as she does. they'd probably cut ties with the student after any one of the events such as the aquarium or the post-play dinner. she's play-acting through her adult life a bit - complete with imaginary friend / knight in shining armour ghost husband. she isn't ultimately what changes max and bloom though i don't think - it's more like an epic of gilgamesh sort of thing, where she's just the vehicle that brings them out of the forest. i suppose that sounds a tad misogynistic, to imply who she is doesn't really matter here, but i think ultimately that's the point - max and bloom both have "everything" in their own respects except romantic love. it's a symbolic first love for both of them in a way, like children they're master of their worlds until that first person comes along, and they completely demolish their surroundings to attain it. not because they even understand the person or necessarially need them, but more than likely it's simply because the domain they're master of was ready to be taken down.
the sandman - dream sets himself up for the falls, which is even better. the fact that he even conciously does it at times is brilliant. like all of the above, he's in complete control, has seemingly everything he could want and is ultimately bored. the one thing i love about this perhaps more than the others, is that it has nothing to do with love, it's more of a personal thing.
so now, this is kind of where i'm stuck. i think my ability to be drastically changed by love has slowed to some degree. i've taken my epic rises and falls. i've met the person i'm supposed to be with. love has changed me into who i needed to be and made me what it could. but it's more difficult now because i've always relied on that to change me. love is an ultimate, and i have this nasty habit of only believing in extremes and ultimates. i tend to believe the only things that truely change people - or at least make for a good story - are matters of life (love) and death (religion).
considering i'm not ready for death or biblical apocalypse or going door-to-door with bibles for at least another 40 or 50 years, i'm concerned i'm settling into that general "where'd the time go" malaise that seems to start in the late twenties and lasts till you're about 50 and ready for retirement and move into the phase where you're developing this relationship with death more intimately. are we just not supposed to live this long? am i just on hold until it's time for the second half of life?
that can't be how it works - life is a series of births and rebirths and deaths and sidebirths and redeaths and such. perhaps it's a figurative death i'm in store for - i lose something but that frees me to do something else. this kind of scares me a bit as well since whenever i think about that, i tend to look at my artistic sensebillities, and how they've seldom gotten me anywhere. i am so enamoured with life and it's complexities that i'm sort of trapped and caught up in it. it's hard to hold a job or work on a career other than freelancing or doing my own thing. i can't bear the thought of fulfilling someone else's dream. i know it's overdramatic to think so, but it just still really gets to me. i'm getting older, but that creative and juvenile desire to be singular, to live one's own ultimate, limits me dramatically.
i guess one could argue that perhaps business will kill me. that ultimately i'll fail to make a living artistically and will borg out. or maybe i become like one of orwell's animal farm pigs in my quest to be self-employed, and you can't tell the difference between me and some cutthroat with a briefcase.
maybe it's religion that kills me. maybe i go christian rock and my personality disolves in a surrendering to a deity and the carrying out of it's wishes and work.
or who knows, maybe it's culture and politics that kill me. maybe i'm so shaken by the workings of the real world that i get scared and buy some battle outpost in suburbia and stock it with guns and children to keep my dna safe.
none of these outcomes of course make for entertaining film and cinema so much as the adolecent love stories, because they don't particularly end in happy endings. or they're typical, trivial. for some reason we don't see love that way. i guess sexy never quite gets old, but honestly, getting changed emotionally at the birth of your kid or when you get that big promotion is fucking boring. i just can't see something that dull changing me too forcefully. it's one reason i won't have kids. it's also one reason i'm not still doing webdev work.
so now it's sort of like i'm a bit adrift. out to sea and there's only two boats - the ferry i've already been on that's going to pick up more kids, and the ferry i've opted not to take that brings them to the white picket fence and the dog.
(feck, i wouldn't even mind a black picket fence and a hedgehog, but i think we've all pretty much sufficiently woken up from the american dream anyway. thankfully that means one aspect of dull is now closed for business.)
maybe i'm already in my metaphorical death then? treading water or on a desert isle, like purgatory. waiting to be born into my next life, one that isn't devoid of creation, but overflowing with it, bringing meaning and color to things again.
yeah. that must be it. like all those hopeless romantics above, it's the classic case of comfort being death. familiarity being purgatory. life isn't something you finish and then sit back and enjoy the spoils of. you fight for it, wrestle it back from the things that wouldn't mind holding it for you on the walk back home. in the end of this chapter, i won't be changed by losing who i am, i'll be changed by gaining it back.
that's what i need to do now. i need to find out how to gain it back. so if you spot my life on the bus or ordering a sandwhich or something, give a call. in the meantime i'm gonna try and actually write in this thing again, for a change
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
This is my roundabout way of saying I want to have a kid (maybe two), though I don't think the delivery room business is going to be all that life-changing. That'd be a like a marriage's high point being the wedding--why go on after that? It's the stuff that comes after the huffing and puffing and cursing and bleeding and ice chips and hot water and cigars that attract me to the endeavour of parenthood (though with all that stuff in a trunk you could probably have a good time no matter what you claimed to be doing). You know that scene in Lost in Translation where Bill Murray's talking about what it's like to be a parent? That's what I hope to get out of the experience of parenthood.
The fact is, the stupids are fertile and they're multiplying. Something must be done.
And I'd be an awesome dad.
This urge to reproduce is probably just a way to distract myself from shortcomings in other creative arenas. Viva la deception du self!
Our profile pictures were taken on the same day, over two months ago.