experiment

So I just downloaded the Bats for Lashes album I never got around to downloading last year and I also got a Lookbook song I've been fiending on Youtube and all this indie is giving me that weird feeling where I feel like I need to create something amazing to exist in the same world as Natasha Khan and Grant Cutler. It's strange, my best works tend to be tied to the moments in my life where something shakes me on a sensory level. I might see something happen on the street, or I might smell a scent that blooms into a story in my head in a v. Proust-like way, or in this case I receive an auditory jolt so stimulating that it's like my imagination has taken Ritalin and cannot stop wandering. It happened when I first listened to Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton, My Brightest Diamond, and it's happening now.

I remember wandering the University Bookstore one afternoon last year when I hadn't much else to do and I somehow stumbled upon the Belle Lettres section. I remember this one author popped an LSD or two and had written an autobiography of a moment as he lapsed into hysterics. It reminds me of this study conducted by the government with patients on acid and their progressive drawings:



My mind is racing like panel six. What's sad though is that days from now, after this high from this beautiful music has worn off, I will do as panel nine decrees:

"I have nothing to say about this last drawing, it is bad and uninteresting, I want to go home now."

crisis

I woke up this morning and the existentialist alter ego of mine took over as the main identity in my palette of mixed personalities. I put on my headphones and listened to a variety of thought inducing tracks while I stared out the window: Taylor Swift - Fifteen, Emily Haines - Reading in Bed, My Brightest Diamond - Golden Star, Kanye West - I Wonder, Kings of Leon - Manhattan; soundtrack of my life. I've finally achieved that state of nirvana when doing this, almost akin to when I was staring at the ocean off the coast of Peggy's Cove in Halifax. I'm able to see my thoughts stirring in a pot before me and better control how they appear to me - it's easier to understand yourself when you're omnipotent over your mind.

One thing I noticed lingering over all my thoughts was a cumulus stratus of unease. I zoomed real close to it like you would zoom in on your digital camera, and I found that this was the air of disappointment. Earl, my dissociative existentialist state (I just dubbed him that), realized that this portion of my mind is the choking smog that constantly swirls around me, hovering like the cloud of pollution above industrial countries. It is this air that continuously tells me I will never be enough, I will never be satisfied, I will always sell myself short.

So I pan out and observe my life through the lens of Earl's -5.75 and -5.25 degree glasses, and I see clearly. No ring, no surgical prowess, no semblance of artistic talent, no published works, no subscriptions to Nature Neuroscience, no understanding of social interactions and being part of social constructs, a lousy Scrabble score, an empty bank account, and a person that has never traveled anywhere he's wanted to go in his life. If I was Earl all the time, I'd kill myself.

God, if we are to be humbled, I am humbled so. I understand what it means to be at the nidus of this web of excellence yet be at the nadir of the ziggurat of achievement simultaneously, so please, I beg you, take me by the hand and show me where to go.

yes, that's the way it is, isn't it

***

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did.

***

Going to Calgary Tuesday to Thursday - no posting those days. Apologies.

Admittedly, this week's linkage is very basketball oriented. I'm the proud new owner of a Calderon jersey care of Valentine's Day, so you can understand why it's on my mind. I've been thinking a lot about the point guard position lately, and I think the three guards featured - Calderon, Paul & Stockton - are exactly what the one should be. I think there's something to be said when they want to double team your point player - in the Calderon video they mention that they'd rather Calderon be a scorer rather than a passer because if they let him distribute the ball he destroys. That's what it's about, being able to handle the ball well, dribble penetrate and kick out when necessary, yet be able to come off screens and pop off the three if they leave you open. Paul's video is just mind boggling; he's such a talented guard whose showmanship simply lies in his raw ability to play the one well.

The rest is the Oscar Brown Jr. poem I promised, which I find amazing on so many levels. The poem has so many layers it was actually a cake in its previous life. The last is Shara from My Brightest Diamond with a solo version of Golden Star. That and Freak Out are badass songs from the album.

I'm going to go to bed.