21.12.10

Whiskey Bottle

I had an odd relization that came from me quitting pot.

you see, it wasn't working for me. it wasn't. though I quite enjoy it, it just doesn't effect me the way it seems to do for the people who can function with it. I like movies less high, I like music less high. I Like Music Less high. thats something. on top of that it gives me heavy lithargic hangovers and made it harder to concentrait in my sober life, made me less productive, less ambitious, more content. the worst think is it seems to have stifled my emotions. I don't go crazy when I'm somking even semi regularly. I need to go crazy. I need to feel.

All this is not the point though, because you can't say pot is a bad thing. so many people I know, primary of which is Jackie and Mike Martinez, smoke every day as much as they can and don't suffer from ANY of this. any of it. in fact they like everything more when their high, they can function, they can feel, they can pay attention.

so many people I know hate pot because they don't believe this. They think jackie or mike are lying, that pot always has these heavy negative side effects.

so many stoners I know hate these straight laced people, they think pot is harmless and largly without these bad results.

and it all comes from the assumption that how it affects me is how it will effect other people. HOW THEIR MIND WORKS IS THE SAME AS HOW MY MIND WORKS. how it affects me is exactly how it effects everyone.

I can think of no line of thinking that has caused more resentment or wrongdoing. I used to hate other kids becasue my mind worked in straight lines and easy logic and it was so easy I didn't understand why theres didn't aswel. other kids used to hate and look down on me because they didn't understand why I couldn't write, why I had trouble making fucking marks on paper. cultures clash because we have different deffinitons of good and bad, of scary and calm, of what good tasting food is we think "thats oviously bad to me so it must be oviously bad to everyone, why do these people like such bad things?"

we are much less alike than we think we are. we are all at a base level seperait. WE ARE NOT THE SAME you and i. basically alone. and if we realize that we will be able to better come together.

not forever but for now

5.11.10

Limit To Your Love

when was it? I guess crystal castles played here in march, josane wanted me to go with her i didn't have the money, i didn't listen to them then but i think they played since though its hard to tell as it always seems to be at terminal 5, the same venue, but lets just say it was august. August crystal castles played terminal 5 in hells kitchen and pictures went up on brooklyn vegan (a good site if you live in the city despite its obnoxious name) and alice glass wnt crazy and gave people death looks and i think hit one person and screamed bloody hell and drank jack daniels wiskey out of the bottle on stage and it was all quite violent except it was lost on the crowd of people who seemed mostly around sixteen, female, yeah i'm sexist too, high on weed maybe exticy, dancing, there for the bro-step dub-step as fuck openers and to general party.

yes i am bitter, everyones bitter, youre bitter too but all of this is not important.

I was not there. I just saw the pictures on brooklyn vegan. whats important is the internet trolls. all of them. who said 'her schtick is such a joke' they made sarcastic comments they rolled their eyes. And it got me thinking.

What is the nature of reality?

not bullshit, thats what I thought.

When is something someone does real or not?

Lets break it down. Nirvana's angst, we can all asume, was real. Why? Because as far as they were concerned there was nothing to be gained from it. The only thing they thought their violence would ern them is being kicked out home and ostracized from the comunity. for girls at clubs to look at them and say get some money and a unripped pair of pants and maybe I'll get back to you. They had everything to loose, social, politicaly, finacialy, from their violence but they did it anyway. that they were succseful from it was a fluke of couse, they never understood it themselves.

Now, Audioslave's violence we can asume to be false. They at the time had everything to gain from it. They could do it without anyone outcasting them, they could make tons of money from it, they could look cool. The could do it and look cool as all hell. So they followed the formula: distorted guitar + angsty lyrics + ripped clothes = violence. its just something they did. it took no corage.

But now, in essance, everything is ok, at least in our imploding hipster brooklyn. if you do something crazy people will asume you're more artistic than them so they will pretend its ok so they can seem more artistic than you. No one is going to get shit for anything. So anything can be faked. And we don't know whats real and whats fake anymore.

Alice Glass Could Be Fake. which is to say I could have gotten up there, yelled, and drank Jack out of a bottle, theres an easy formula. She didn't have to be angry and see the bottle sitting there and say FUCK EVERYONE and just go drink it on stage. because saying fuck everyone implys that someone wouldn't want you to do that, when its exactly what all the people in the audience and all the record exects wanted her to do.

but on the flip side it means everyones twice afraid of doing anything real, because now not only will half the world not understand and kick you out for it, the other half now will say your a phony, pandering. so now the real artistic of us, or at least the potential artistic in us, walk around with our heads down trying not to do anthing out of the orenary because if we do now we won't only hear crys of "YOUR A FUCKING WERDO" we'll aslo hear crys from our piers of "OH THATS SO FUCKING OUT OF THE ORDINARY ISN'T IT? YOU MUST BE SO FUCKING PROUD OF YOURSELF. I GUESS YOUR SO FUCKING ARTISTIC/BADDASS."

for the record I think Alice Glass is telling the truth. And as much as we can say that authenticity shouldn't matter in music, that its a rockist sentiment, it does matter. It does. It matters in music because it matters in real life, more than anything I can think of right now. tell the truth. don't sell yourself short. fuck them all. they can fucking die.

so carelessly there

22.9.10

Oh

In regard to many aspects of my life, my point of view and plan of attack seems to stem from that fact that my mother is a hack at what she does. That is, I think she's a hack, and have always thought that shes a hack. Don't get me wrong, she's an amazing person and the best mother a kid could ask for a great at a lot of things and all that, but at her chosen profession she is really not very good at all. And yet. And yet for a huge number of years she was employed in this field, and not only employed but making serious money, for a while over 100k a year. Now she hasn't been able to find a job around that since the dot com bubble burst in 2001, but still, that's ridiculous. But I always knew she was a hack and its always bugged me. And she has always urged me to learn to self-promote, to pitch myself and so on in order to get ahead.

So I went the other way and determined that if I get ahead it will be because I'm the best, to work on improving my skills instead of improving my means to convince people of these skills. And to work towards this not only in myself but to demand it of all things. To buy the product that is better made, not the one with the best marketing campaign, to always try to know which one this is. To find the best movies, not the easiest ones. To work hard to know the difference between something good and something bad. This is whats important to me.

Like Adrian I have somehow been able to work harder towards my goals recently, I don't know why. In that past month I've improved at guitar at speeds which are stunning to me. I've been able to keep up an extreemeley consistant workout routine, I've been teaching myself to cook good food everyday, from ingredients bought at discount, so I don't have to choose between decent health and buying music anymore. I've watched a lot of movies, got a job, a girlfriend.

That being said, I've been able to do all this with what feels like only a marginal amount of work. I can only imagine what I can do with further effort, but whatever it is I need to do it. Now is the time to get ahead not just by being surprisingly good, but by being the best. By working the hardest. And I intend to do it.

and if there is a god he still loves you

20.8.10

Maybes

my head is in patterns that have started to get choppy, its rearranging, and I'm hoping its getting my life somewhere new.

yes no

20.7.10

Djed

I've been getting a lot of shit for my music recently and its getting to me. mostly because one of the big things I was looking forward to with being home for the summer was not having to hide my music, being able to play it loud and talk about it with out compromise. aloud to be passionate about what I'm passionate about. and yet I feel persicuted on all sides, from my family from my friends, I've been acused of pretention and of mocking other peoples tastes - things I've worked hard to avoid, I've been laughed at, eyes rolled at me, I've been not taken seriously. I feel isolated again, maybe even more so than at pratt, because at least there I knew better enough than to play anything for anyone. Here I thought people would be cooler with the stuff I like and it set me up for getting shut down much more often.

the worst part is I've been acused of not genuanly liking the music I listen to. it happened once back in new york and then again today, by someone I respect. "I mean, be honest, you don't actually like that stuff". that hurts the most, and on a base level.

and the problem is, I didn't even think my tastes are that far out, at least not much farther than at any other time to explain this suden jump in persecution. I mean, last summer I was in a blissful shock and awe over Sunn 0))), and noone seemed to get on my case. This summer I listen to dance music and loads of The National and some alternitive hip hop.

so let me level. I LIKE THIS STUFF. saying otherwise would be dishonest. its not work for me, its what I love, and if I have to hide it in order to contiue listening to it I will. I'm sorry if it sounds crappy to you but I really truly wish you would shrug it off and think "I probably just don't get it" and to each his own and all that like I've been doing with you and your music. This is killing me.

never die

14.7.10

Alice Practice

Toy Story came out when I was four. they released, of couse, toys to mimic the ones found in the movie about toys and insead of making woody as he is in the film, cheep cloth, big plasic head, pull string, five phrases, cutting edge technology cira nineteen sixty three and charging three or five bucks a peice they put out these even cheeper made rags of toys and the same for buzz lightyear and I thought, well, these are a frail reproduction of a frail reproduction of a cowboy. an imprint of an imprint. and it was the same all around me. instead of real restarants we had things mimicing some perverded fantasy of the fifties. instead of real adventure we had jeans pre faded and pre ripped. instead of musical instuments we gave our kids fake press-button guitars. instead of real fights we had fake apologies forced upon us. maybe it was just the nineties, it was the age of artifice. maybe it was the boomers not wanting anything to fade, wanting to fake it forever instead of letting anything go. maybe not. and imprint of an imprint of an imprint.

and thats the problem really everything is trying to be something else that it isn't. borrowed. instead of posters trying to look the best they try to look like something trying to look the best fifteen years ago. Instead of groups trying to get the best sound they can they try to get the sound of groups from '94 trying to get the best sound they can and not doing that well. Los Campesinos said, in that thing they do where they say something not deep at all and completely ovious that for some reason no one has the courage to say out right because of how imature it sounds, they said "they've apropriated everything we've ever loved, dressed it up in quotations and fluff".

And so it ocurs to me that nerds these days are no longer doing what they do because they're smart and rejected by the mainstreem, they're doing it because thats what they preceve nerds as doing, and they think of themselves as a nerd. Which is to say, most nerds these days aren't smart at all they just think those things are cool. most artists don't get art at all they just think its cool too. most people who listen to weird music don't get anything at all.

in high fidelity (fuck me for thinking to refreance this. fuck this.) theres a line about him feeling like the guy who shaves his head into a mohawk one day and swears that he's always been a punk. and I think - thats every punk. What do you think they were born that way? They just up and shaved their head out of the blue before you met them. Everyones a poser, those you think are the real things are just better at posing consistantly, keeping they're story straight, ridding themselves of any human incosistancy in they're chosen characer.

you see I used to use that little bit whenever someone acused another of being a poser or a fake - to defend the attacted by saying we are all posers equily so you can't be a dick to this guy in particular. but now I see it another way - we are all posers. we are all a decreped pile of phonys - too self councious and self ironic to even use the word phony based on its connotations. the world is made up of echoes of echoes. jocks pretending they're losers pretending they're the oppresed poor pretending they're glamorous millionares pretending they're rebelioius angry punks pretending they're well read anarchists. imprints of imprints of imprints.

I'm bitter tonight. some drunk adults are making noise outside my window. sometimes I need to say things extreemly childish, sometimes I need to be honest to myself and say it anyway.

scares will heal soon

10.7.10

Hajnal

so it seems to me that in many situations there are three main points of view, and these seem to be affecting a lot of things in my life so I'mma gonna dissect them.

the first one, for the sake of this, I call the General Self-Antagonizing perspective (or the depressive's perspective), which states that whenever something goes wrong it is my fault and I as a whole am bad because of it (or that I am a whole am bad, as demonstrated by this failure).

the second perspective I call the General Others-Antagonizing perspective (or the cynic's perspective), which states that whenever something goes wrong it is completely the fault of the other people involved in the situation, with little or no fault my own.

the third point of view I call the Specific Antagonizing perspective, which states when something goes wrong it's my fault and I should change it.

now to put these in better conxtext, lets say you realize that the friends you are hanging out with don't match you at all and are generally making you feel terrible:

The Self-Antagonizing person would think there must be something wrong with me that I don't fit in with these people, I must be not normal, and I should change myself to be more accepted.

The Others-Antagonizing person would think people in general (or people my age, or people in this country, etc. etc.) are horrible and don't understand me and I wish the world was better.

and the Specific Antagonizing person would think how the fuck did I get here these people are terrible I need to find a new group.



so this has become a problem in my life you see. to many people I know think they're a horrible un-lovable person on the slightest criticism, and to many people I know are angry at the world for cheating them, for not allowing them to win every time. fuck this shit. you are an amazing person, and there is a lot of goddamn room for improvement.

these are love songs and grief songs

27.6.10

Iron Galaxy

so theres this thing called 30 days of music and I'm sure you've herd about it and though I don't know where it started I think I first herd about it through Kieron Gillen (just like everything else, the guy's half my mentor we've never met) and then trough the blogs of a couple of my freinds and my god I follow too many blogs at this point and I miss the time when it was just me jackie adrian parker and then travis. anyway. as my friends post I think about what my responce would be, I would post it myself but it would be one more thing for me to silently obsses over and it would end up being another incedibly self absorbed and self indulgent thing to add to my long list of self absorbed and self indulgent things that I already do including - hey! - this blog. day 15 I think was a song that describes you and I thought when it turned up, shit, no way. ran through a hundred songs in my head, I guess I don't listen to to many songs that describe people in the first place, or not many that describes guys. and I thought maybe the only living boy in new york to be compleatly romantic and self indulgent the matt sheehy cover in particular maybe (here) but no that sucks. and I couldn't think of anything else we are beautiful we are doomed, no rain, loser, abel, these kinds of things. and today I was thinking about the boxer, another simon and garfunkle song, because my mom mentined it while we were tlaking about the national and their album boxer. and I thought, the boxer.

the boxer was this song that followed me in a weird way when I was a kid, in that I had a strong affinity for it, a strong affinity but I didn't know what it was. and occationaly someone would hum it or it would come up on the radio and I would jump out and catch them and get them to tell me what the song was because for some reason this song remided me of when I was little (littler, I guess). and I would try to hold that in my mind, hold "the boxer by simon and garfunkle" but for some reason it never worked. between the ages of five and - probably - twelve i was curiously inable to remember the title of this song. between the ages of five and twelve I somewhat unknowingly chased this song. and, very unknowingly, in more than one way. you see, this song described me. or described what I thought I was, but probably was not. the quiet lost boy from new york who tryed to be stoic but had the scars from every thing he'd lost and was leaving now himself. thats who I wanted to be or thought I was. It takes a five year old of a weird demeanor to think that he's lost something significant and sad in that kind of way, I was weird.

and though I feel my personality pulled in a million differant directions these days thats still what I think of as the old stuart, the stuart I was at five. small, quite, honest, kind, fair, and stoic and intelligent. sad and lonely and trying to be strong. with a scar across his left eye. wishing he could go back to new york.

I am not the boxer anymore, nor do I want to be, at least not compleatly. now I'm trying to be a dosen other songs now I hope I am to angry to be sad in that way, to miss the past when I was 3. now I don't listen to the boxer.

new york is evil at its core

24.5.10

Ashes of American Flags

No more symbolism. i'm starting to realize that its just a tool to eschew the truth, or for people to accuse other people of eschewing the truth. no more symbolism, no more allegories. Its weak, its cowardly. If you have something to say, say it.

speaking of tomorrow - when will it ever come

18.4.10

Ape in Cage with Wire Cutters

hes a poet and hes I know in college but I can't shake the feeling, not knowing him in person, that hes sixteen because he seems to have a sixteen mindset or at least the just-finding-out-about-dada mindset I had when I was sixteen but really thats just me condesending him, i'm an asshole, and his poems are pretty alright although to be honest I didn't read much of them and the ones I did I skimed and he today writes that modern poets are shit and he talks about poetry readings where the only thing he gets from the reader is that they want people to like them that they're skreeming 'like me' through there poems pretending that thats not the case trying to be cool by delibratly trying to be differnt, the softer kind of hipsters basicly, basicly hes talking about thouse girls that live down the hall from me and lets be honest pretty much every girl at pratt and every girl back home and every girl who talks to me that I try not to talk to and then he talks about how he likes to go to the older generations poetry readings becasue they have more to offer him, and he's got that whole thing wrong of couse becasue the older generation poetry back in the day was just people trying to convince the audience that they're so cool based on snaping and stand up bass and black and that the only reason the older ones are better now is because these are the only people who stuck with it but whatever, you can't convice kids that kids are good, its too cool to hate your peirs and convince yourself that you belong with the older

THE POINT IS
in the middle of his rant he said that hes not trying to imply that his own poetry is so good or worth reading over other modern poets, hes just trying to point this all out and I think

IF THERE IS GOING TO BE A GREAT MODERN POET THE FIRST STEP WOULD BE DECLARING THAT, YES, MY OWN POEMS ARE BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSES.

ba ba ba gonna die young

4.4.10

Pursuit of Happiness

When a character I care about in a book dies, at least when I care enough that this fact upsets me, I am always angry at the author. I think, this book could have been its own transient, it could have been glorious, and now I have to go through the next hundred pages of heart wrench and watch the charecters recover, and try to recover with them. They're not real. I am. But it hurts me anyway. I wish she had survived, and its weird to think that someone could have had her survive. It is I guess good to think that I can still feel this much based off a book, esspecialy givin my deep seeded half-apothy for everyone I know and at one point cared about at Pratt. but it is only half-apathy, and in that there is another problem.

I am reading Looking For Alaska by John Green right now. If you don't want the book spoiled for you do not keep reading. I read one hundred and fourty three pages of it over the course of yesterday, I hope to read the rest today. I am reading this because that shirt that I countiue to covit and continue to be bitter about, that shirt hanging on diana's wall I found out is quoted - though used in a compleatly different context - from it. I remember her talking about it all the famous last words. so I found out, and I'm an ideot, and I checked it out right away from the library. I am mad at John Green though I understand why he killed Alaska. I understand that Alaska had to die because Alaska had to die. Because otherwise the book would be a charming tom sawyer or ryan mcginley type fantasy, and because of her death it is now a n intence powerful book that, because it seems to be aimed at fourteen year-olds, I know would have changed my life at fourteen. though, fuck it, that is prentention isn't it? saying, yeah this would have changed my life but I'm above that now. so fuck it. It'll change my life. I'll let it. I'm not above this. not ever. And I think IF ALASKA HAD TO DIE THAN EVERYONE I KNOW AT PRATT IS GOING TO DIE. and I think that her death and the neccesity was a condemnation on the life we live here. Its telling us that we are doomed. and I can imagine justice or mary or esspecialy paige or mike and so on, they are all going to die. theres no other way to read this. and I think of of belle and sebastion.

Take me away from here I'm dieing, he said. He said sing me a song to set me free. nobody writes them like they used to so it might as well be me. there on his own now after hours, on his own now on a bus. look at it one way you could either be sucsessful or be us. with our winning smiles and us. with our catchy tunes oh us. we're so photogenic you know WE DON'T STAND A CHANCE.

tell me what you know about dreamin

21.3.10

We Want War

As a disclamer, I have only read a small amount of nietzsche, which puts me in a possition of one of those ideots who attempts to inturpret and cast their ideas on something they have almost no knowledge on. I meet them all the time, hell, my older sister is the biggest one in the world, so it pains me to breifly join their camp here. but nonetheless.

I've been thinking about Nietzshe's god is dead concept. Though, again, I haven't read it from his actual text, as I understand it's stating that we as a culture, as people as a whole, have for some reason lost the ability to beilieve in god. I understand that, I've spoke about it before. in my own experience I went for years, years, trying to beileve go exists, telling other people I believed, telling my self I believed, but I could not. even though I was raised with religion, and rased with that belief, I was unable to think it true. and i REALLY wanted to, I tried so hard. I could not.

and I'm thinking about our generation, and about the two or three previous to us, and I'm thinking, they had a concept of romance. of grand gestures and intence ideals, and we do not. this came up after meeting two pairs of my friends' friends. one pair being adam's friends nick and kelly from texas, and the other being paige's friends anne and garth from richmond virginia. Both pairs, in relationships, figured themselves very alternitive, in the old kinda way. which is to say, not hipsters, more punky or grungey. comited to peircings and talk of graffitti and being drifters and drugs and rebelling against money and so on. and I couldn't buy it. and I thought, these are just pale imitations of the punks of the past. but then I thought, why do I think that? what makes punks circa 1978 more authentic than punks circa 2008? and besides, I've met people who were punks when punk was alive and they are fucking horrible. if anything they didn't believe or understnad they're ideals more than the current ones.

and really it made me come to a realization. we have lost the ability to believe in romance. romance is dead and we have killed it. and I'm not talking about romance in love, though many have argued that we can't believe in that either, I've not found any trouble finding romance there. what I'm talking about is that believe in grand gestures, and that we can change the world, and stong princeipals and so on. these punks exist in small numbers and honestly it doesn't seem to me that they even beileve it themselves. and so there are no new scenes, exept for the constantly self-mocking and contredicting hipsters, who are compleatly opposed to all grand gestures, to all romance. there are no real punks, no real hippys, no riots, no full hearted protests, no drama in that way. in a way we have become a country of reluctant nihilists. we can't believe in anything, at least not that strongly.

and I think, well, isn't this a good thing? that people have calmed down and are opposed to summing up the world in one sentance and so on? that people have become realistic? and I think YEAH, of course its a good thing. its a great thing. i truly believe that for it our generation is better than ALL of them that have come before, and that when we are older we won't come off as such compleat ideots to the young.

but of course on the other hand, the world is a different, less intence place as a result. New York is not like it was in the seventy or the nintys and this is to blame. that crazy shit is not going on. that kids are going out to become designers instead of artists. that everything gets equily insulted and degraded on the internet and on tv. because when we all supsend our truth slightly together wonderful things happen. of couse things that are bullshit and devoid of truth, but wonderful anyway. Think of when everyone used to walk around in suits and dress clothes all the time. That kind of imposed formality was useless and bull shit when informality is more honest, alows for deeper connections, but what a site it made. how brillient that everyone looked sharp all the time.

so its this crappy conflict, that wide eyed romance that doesn't lead anywhere. and so I don't know. I didn't live in a time of romance, and its so likely that it was actually much more terrible than this, so I can't really talk. I don't know.

sea breeze sea breeze

16.3.10

The Opera House

perhaps its self indulgent to say that I am going through somewhat of an identity crisis resently. but really I don't know what an identity crisis is. and really I don't like the concept of identity. I never did. I remember in eighth grade we had to write a peice on who we are with some stupid mandala theme to it and I was pissed off. I mentioned it to eva, she was too, said that truly who knows who they are at this age. that wasn't my beef. its more like when adults would tell kids there are no good and bad people just good and bad actions that people do. thats just it. at thirteen I believed that personality was more or less an ilussion, a patter people make to make their actions more predictable to others. i am not a shy person I said I act shy a lot but other times I don't. I am not a nice person I said I try to be nice as much as possible but I've done some pretty cruel things and so have you and everyone else.

diana said this summer after I said something self deprecating that I act the same around everyone, which is good, and that she herself doesn't. I could have laughed. I definatly don't. but more what she ment is that I act how I feel always and don't (except ocasionaly) sell myself short or act for someone elses benefit. this is true to an extent I guess, though at pratt I do feel like I've been half living and half expressing myself and have being true, but otherwise. I have wild inconsistantcys. I act cute around Jackie a lot for the most part but this is not I think an act its more I think cutesy things around her because its fun to and because I do like thouse things i'm just not able to indulge in them around most people. and I act crazyer around adrian, and calmer around adam and more bombastic around cj and more painfuly depressive on my own, I act like humpry bogart around lilian and neil gaiman around emily and calvin from calvin and hobs around mary and in my head i am neil cassady and so on and on and in all it seems to me sometimes that I have twenty different personalitys and thats ok, or more than ok. exept right now. because I want to be so many people right now. Its not working. Its driving me mad. Its making me feel like I'm lying and selling myself short on all ocassions. its making me feel like a cheater and a crook and its causing a good deal of unceasing noise in my head. perhaps I need to settle on one personality. perhaps I need to stop being so obsessed with myself. probably. I don't know.

which is how we feel most of the time

7.3.10

Olympians

Open mindedness is killing us.

I wrote an artical last semester for english class about rockism and poptimism and how their both compleatly flawed and how sasha frere-jones is an ideot and in my conclusion I said look, music is amazing, its brillient, the most brillient form of media ever invented, probably that ever will. it can make you laugh and cry and dance and sing at the top of your lungs like noones listening, it can make you shout and break down and feel ten thoulsand emotions that you always felt but could never put your finger on, it can make you feel less alone, it can blow your mind, it can change your life. DON'T EVER THINK MUSIC IS NOT IMPORTANT. and to say it is not worth discussing and arguing about is pretty flawed aswell. I said some music is better than others. there is such thing as good music and bad music. but this cannot be locked down, it can not be catigorized, it cannot be made into a science. therefore you cannot say one genre is better than another. thats just blatent obvious bullshit. rock is not better than hip hop. some rock is better than some hip hop. some hip hop is better than some rock. some classical is better than some electronic music, some folk iss better than some jazz. this can go on forever. I said THIS CAN ONLY BE JUDGED BY EACH PERSONS SUBJECTIVE AESTHETIC AND EMOTIONAL PREFERENCES. and ofcourse it is only natural for a person to prefer one genre over another, thats ok. to say its necceceraly better that all other genres, probably not ok.

All this is important because so many people, in order to not be a rockist, in order to have an open mind, have blown open all the doors, will no longer make a distinction between good music and bad music. They'll take the 50 cents along with the Biggie Smalls, they'll take the Britney Spears along with the Lady Gagas, its all esentialy like taking the Courteeners along with Radiohead, not distinguishing between the two. And so are music becomes muddied with crap, theres no distiction, no importance put to the sounds passing through our minds in the name of keeping it open.

This goes further. Ethan, of course, has always been the prime example. In the name of an open mind he makes no disticion between what is good and what is bad. It's just the way it is, or its just the way he is, thats always his excuse. As a result he never made an effort, as me and adrian did, to curb his overly timid tendancys. Thats just who I am he said, who says its a bad thing. Nothing to curb his sloth or self delusion and now nothing to curb his excessive pot smoking. There is no good and no evil, no right and no wrong.

I can't remember what the topic was but it was something me and my older sister was talking about but she was making one of her psudo-snobby observation on some world issue and I told her thats horrible. I mean, thats horrible. she says she isn't making a judgment, just an observation, its not her call to make and i said no, this is not it, this is creating wrong, there is a judgement to be made and she said no. no judgment, no right no wrong.

Buisnessmen use elaborate reasoning and hipsters use complex forms of irony and art students use high rationilization but there is a right and a wrong. there is good music and bad music. there is a good and evil and just because its hard to pin down and just because its compleatly subjective and just because it varys, rightfully so, from person to person does not mean it doesn't exist. though unquantifyable it is still real.


of course, don't get stuck, don't be a dick, don't disregard other people's opinions, they have a right to their own subjective good and bad. keep an open mind, just not to open.

ok lets talk about magic

2.3.10

The Glow, Pt. 2

Something has gone despratly wrong in my life. I find myself compleatly apathetic to the people around me. Mostly my fault not theres. I am not myself. i am not there. I cannot figure out how to become myself again. Ontop of that I find myself continuously and increasingly detatched from my friends back home. how is it that I no longer respect emma esper? how is it that when I saw her over break all I could think about was rates of decay? how is it that my and jackie no longer seem to have anything to talk about? what happoned to ethan? in my life I am smoking too much pot drinking to much acohol, smoking occasional cigarettes, everything I used to hate and lets be honest still to an extent hates. I am not taking care of my body. I am eating crap. MY MUSIC SUCKS. i am not making films. I am listening to disorganized crap, things I probably wouldn't like on my own but friends sugested and I don't want to seem like a dick by not listening to. truly I am a dick or a hypocrite with music. i have been trying to listen to pop and hip hop becasue yes I know its an asshole thing to disrespect them i know and i know truly there is a lot a lot of good there and to ignore that would be to ignore a range of human emotions. and you see when in a social place and people ask me to put on music I don't want to put on my 'difficult indie and electronic' music becase noone wants to listen to it and so I put on music that i don't want to listen to or i put on my music and feel like I desprately have to defend it. no one wants to listen. I am not made for this. my grades are slipping. so is my sleep. I am spending my time by myself on the computer. I think mostly about girls. About girls who want to sleep with me who I want to sleep with but really don't want to sleep with and won't. about other girls who don't want to sleep with me and really I don't want to sleep with eather, but I think about them anyway. about diana who thinks I am an asshole which is probably a good thing of her to think. I hate myself. I never hated myself before, even during times where to be honest I was a rather hateable guy. now I hate myself. what the fuck an I doing? what the fuck am I doing?

my blood flows harshly

1.3.10

This Must Be The Place

Just to keep with my habbit of posting everything I've writen that I'm proud of up here, this is the second part of my aplication for tranfer to SVA.


Open with a close-up of the turntable spinning as Zach's hand places the needle on the record. A mid-sixties Coltrane song plays at an extreme volume. The camera stays on the turntable while we hear Zach return to the couch. Cut to a shot from Zach's perspective where we get a sense of the garage, packed with clutter and boxes. The garage door opens, and it's so bright outside, it blows out the camera momentarily. We're only able to see Adrian once he closes the door behind himself.

Cut to a wider angle still, from the room's back corner. We now see both characters. Zach stumbles to his feet to turn down the stereo as Adrian grabs two sodas off the dresser.

"Hey," Zach says, almost as an afterthought.

Adrian hands Zach a soda and sits down on a chair to the couch's right. The camera begins to slowly dolly around the characters, giving us, for the moment, a view of Zach's face and Adrian's back. Adrian says, "Hey, how was your flight?"

Zach collapses into the couch. "Horrible." He closes his eyes. "I'm back now, though. It's great seeing you again."

By now, the camera's in front of the characters, a medium two shot. We have a full view of Zach's face; his sunken eyes, caused by sleep deprivation. Adrian can't help but notice.

"Yeah, no joke." They sit for a minute, sipping on the sodas. Zach closes his eyes. Adrian shifts in his chair.

Adrian breaks the silence. "Look, are you alright? Should I leave?" The camera begins to hesitantly cut between two over-the-shoulder close-ups.

After a beat, Zach says "I'm good, really," he smiles, opens his eyes. "That's..."

"That's the least convincing thing you've ever said?"

Zach sinks further into his seat and stares back downwards. "Yeah. Sorry."

Adrian hesitates, then sits forward, "Hey, man, um," pause, "have you spoken to Jen?"

"Um," says Zach, "yeah, I have. She's, um-" He leans forward, rests his head on his hands, his elbows on knees, stares at his feet. "She said she'd stop by later."

Zach plays with his soda cap. Adrian looks at Zach, disapprovingly.

"Zach."

Cut to a close shot of Zach's hands, between his knees, playing with soda cap, his face off the frame. It stays there as he says, without looking up, "No. I mean, it's fine. We're over it. I mean, we're all over it."

It cuts back to the close two shot of them. "No," Adrian says. He stands up, his head now above the frame. "I mean, fuck." He turns away. "Fuck!"

After a moment, he falls to his seat. Zach looks down.

They sip their sodas and listen to the record.

"Is this Coltrane?"

Zach shrugs.

"You're always listening to Coltrane."

Zach says nothing.

Cut back to the view of the garage from the couch. The spinning record is in view on the frame's left side. The massive garage door dominates the right side. Above Coltrane's desperate screech, we hear them shifting in their seats but we cannot see them.

Eventually, the garage door opens, again blowing out half the frame. Cut to an unsteady handheld position behind Adrian and Zach, before we can see who's entering. Zach stands, leaving his soda on the ground. Jen walks into the garage wearing red, one-piece pajamas. She hugs Zach.

The handheld camera moves around the couch to get closer to the figures, the open garage door still burning a painful light in a portion of the screen.

Jen is smiling widely. "Hey!" she says, looking at Zach.

Zach smiles back, suddenly energized, "How's it going?"

Jen lifts a couple sodas off the dresser. She walks back to the couch, the camera walking with her. Jen says "Adrian," and nods at him, cheerfully. The camera pans around to see Adrian raise his soda bottle in reply.

Zach returns to the couch. Jen stands in front of the stereo. The camera, still in the unbroken handheld shot, moves far to the side so that Zach and Jen are in the foreground, Adrian seated in the background. Behind Jen, a small portion of the open garage door remains visible.

"How was your flight?" Jen asks.

Zach smiles. "It was alright." Adrian looks down, shrinks back in his chair. Zach says, "What are you wearing?"

Jen laughs, "Well, it's obviously a onesie. I just bought it."

"That's awesome!" says Zach, enthused.

"I know!" She looks into Zach's eyes, says, less cheerfully, "You look like you haven't slept in two days."

"Yeah, well-" Zach looks away. A moment passes.

"Well, I just stopped to say hi, and drink your soda. I'm heading home," She looks at Zach, "But
we definitely have to hang out this break."

"No kidding," Zach says. Jen moves towards the exit. Adrian gets up, follows her. The camera also moves to follow, staying close behind Adrian. Over his shoulder, we see her exit into the extreme light. Adrian closes the door behind her. The camera cuts back to its stationary position behind the couch. Zach is, again, sunken into the couch, playing with the cap. Adrian walks over, doesn't sit down. He just looks at Zach.

Cut to a close-up of Zach, uncomfortable, not looking up at Adrian. "Dude, I'm..." He looks up.

"What are you doing?"

Cut to a two-shot from besides the characters, they just barely fit in the frame.

"I'm waiting for her to turn the corner outside," Adrian says. No one says anything for a few bars of music.

Zach begins, "Dude, I'm really sorry, I..." Adrian punches him in the nose and walks out of the frame. Cut to a close over-the-shoulder shot of Zach, who reaches his hand to his face. He pulls it away to see a trickle of blood on his fingers. The camera cuts back to behind the couch, the door just closing behind Adrian. Coltrane blows on his saxophone like a man on fire.

"Fuck!" Zach shouts. Cut to black.

never for money, always for love

20.2.10

No Epiphany

A thought on that levi's jeans comercial "go forth".

We are probably all at this point at the concensis that it is compleatly amazing, but we can't really think of it that way. Mostly its because its an add, its selling something to us, but really up front that was ok with me. Ryan McGinley made it and I saw it as just, well, he found a way to have someone paying him to make his art. And to get mass exposure, so that was cool. On top of that levi's is a company I like. I've worn levi's jeans all my life, my favorite pair currently is a dark blue of theirs. I also associate them with a jew in the san francisco gold rush, as bay area as sour doe bread. They were the less facion centric more roughing it jeans. I also have some respect for good comercials, thinking that our world is filled with adds, they pay for free tv and cheeper subway trips and all sorts of other things, and so if they have to be there anyway they might as well be beautiful

Parker didn't like the add because he now associated levis with hipsters, as they tend to co-opt anything that was at one time working class. He saw the add as a hipster add, and its quoting from walt witman only made it worse.

But really the only one that got to me was Jackie. She said don't you understand this is marketed twards us. To US. We didn't think we were a demographic at all, we tried to exist outsie the whole corprate add audience, as independants who buy things because they are good, not cause of marketing, who cannot be targeted. And we were targeted. This is an add that apeals destinctly to us and just us. And that is truly chilling. scary really. I don't know what to think of it. I'm going to keep buying levis (well, if I can ever aford them) but it is unsettling, they have the key, they found a hole in our armor that we didn't want to be there.

And as much as I try to be understanding and openminded and inclusive I cannot deny advertisments are evil. They are manipulative lying things that make you believe you have to buy certain products to have a certain identity. Axe deoterant is a fine example, it smells good. it smells pretty great if used in moderation, girls like how it smells. Except only fratty type guys use it because its marketed to them. If your a guy with a suit or someone who likes to concider youself evolved or sensitive you wont use axe. Because you don't want to appear fratty. Thats maketing getting to you. This is true of everyting

the body spins but i stay the same

14.2.10

Angel Echoes

There was a post I did last febuary durig a bad time in my life called hours where I talked about a mid-twentys panhandeler who set up near me street preforming and saped all my buisness and was generaly a creep but a harmless one though at one point he told a passing girl "smile, you're beautiful" and instead of scoffing or whatever as was expected she did infact smile and I thought damn and thought a lot about beauty after that.

For my NYU transfer app I have to write a story of something that happened to me and how it changed my life. Last year I wrote a long winded just generaly horrible essay on my first day in new york. this year I was thinking of writing about that pan handeler. I talked to my mom about it and she thought that was wrong. "I can't think of any moment that effected me really, not anything to tell a story about." she said what about 9/11. I said what do you mean? 9/11 didn't effect me, it never really did. it was just something else that happened in the news to me when I was in fifth grade. Besides I knew more people were killed by lightning and all that. Mom said, no I mean, when I think of you I think of when we were in temple soon after and we all said the morners kadish for all the people who died i the towers and planes and I looked over at you and said, at least now we can feel the world is morning with us, we are not alone (dad having died three months previous) and you said 'why would that make me feel better?' you said 'everyone being sad just means more people sad, that makes me feel worce' you said 'i think I would rather be sad alone if it meant everyone else was happy' and thats was a major moment for you in my mind, for an eleven year old to say something like that.

I said, you have to understand, that was a non issue for me, thats how I felt. Its just how I felt, there was no relivation. I formed that idea a few years before, if you want to pinpoint the moment of transformation. we were getting in the car after going grocery shoping or somthing, I couldn't have been older than nine, probably younger. dad and joy not there because whatever, I got in the front seat, tova made a fuss. she was good at making fusses when she was younger. she said its unfair, she wanted to sit in the front. she couldn't, she had to be six or younger so she was too small. so the fuss went on until I had to sit in the back along with her. And i thought, she should have let me sit in the front, because then there would be more happyness. I'm all for fairness but not if you have to pull someone down. fairness is fine if there is, say, two chocolates and instead of one person having both they split it up, each having one. same about of happyness, split up. fairness is not alright if instead of one person having two, both people decide to have non. that ends with two less happyness. I thought of this sitting in the back of the car on the ride home wile hating my sister. by the time 9/11 came around it was a obvious de-facto beliefe for me, i didn't really think about it.

all the truning points in my life as far as how I view the world are mondain and introspective and thats fine but I have nothing to write the essay about. This is how I work I guess and I don't know.

there is love in you

6.2.10

4

Its been a long time since I thought about philosophy. I've defined myself as a Nihilist for about a year and a half now, or something like that, and that was good enough for me. I could believe in nothing, breathe easy, be free. But Adrians been bringing it up again and been getting on my case for being a solid Nihilist, it isn't what I think it is he said, that I am infact an absurdest. So I finally did some research and, of Wikipeadia, found this chart:

(Simplified) Relationship between existentialism, absurdism and nihilism
Atheistic existentialismTheistic existentialismAbsurdismNihilism
1. There is such a thing as meaning or valueYesYesYesNo
2. There is inherent meaning in the universe (either intrinsic or from God)NoMaybe, but humans must have faith to believe there isMaybe, but humans can never know itNo
3. Individuals can create meaning in life themselvesYes, it is essential that they doYes, but that meaning must incorporate GodYes, but it is not essentialNo, because there is no such meaning to create
4. The pursuit of intrinsic or extrinsic meaning in the universe is possibleNo, and the pursuit itself is meaninglessYes, and the pursuit itself may have meaningNo, but the pursuit itself may have meaningNo, and the pursuit itself is meaningless
5. The pursuit of constructed meaning is possibleYes, thus the goal of existentialismYes, thus the goal of existentialismMaybeNo
6. There is a solution to the individual's desire to seek meaningYes, the creation of one's own meaningYes, the creation of one's own meaning before GodYes, the acknowledgement and embracing of absurdityNo


If anything, I probably fall closest to Atheistic Existentialism here but there should be a fifth row called "Stuarts current thoughts". 1. would be left blank, 2. No, 3. left blank, 4. No, 5. left blank, 6. No.

In recap, I have no idea if meaning exists. I'm not even sure what "meaning" means anymore. My persuit of anger and passion and truth, does that constitute as a "meaning of life" for me? What about other cases? is an asshole who decides his goal in life is to fuck as many girls as possible creating his own meaning? I'm convinced there is no intrinsic absolute purpos to exsistance, and thats all I know. And really, I do want to go around to everybody talking about signs and portents or patterns and religion and astrology and yell at them "IT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING AT ALL" and I want to go around to girls and people I hate or want to forget and shout "YOU DON'T MEAN ANYTHING AT ALL"

And also when it comes down to it I don't believe in anything. I don't believe in anything. and I don't believe it matters that much.

there is love in you

20.1.10

Daylight

There is certainly a differance between imeediate emotion and state of mind. imediate emotion is what you are feeling right now. How are you? I am generaly content. almost always content infact unless i am in class or trying to fall asleep almost always content. neither happy nor angery nor depressed i don't really have an emotion at all. I just go. and thats alright. when I am with friends it tends to be scewed a bit towards happy. state of mind is different. its the less imediate emotion the over tones of the chords of your life. for as long as i can remember it was generaly depressed. I was a depressed kid. that defined me. in summer a lot my state of mind was happy though so theres that it wasn't I think until the end of my junior year that the needle started swinging like it does. I am no longer a depressed kid. except sometimes. I am happy a lot but it goes back and forth wildly sometimes going each way and back within a week.

that wasn't the point

the point I was trying to make is when i was depressed I thought well i'd give so much in order to be happy. I would compromise. and when I started to be happy I thought well this is great far be it from me to complain but depression is better its truer I think better thoughts when depressed I'm humbler and smarter and more artistic an more honest. And now I'm seeing so many depressed people who just wallow in themselves and think oh i am a victum oh why is life like this oh everything is falling apart. And today i think I was probably like that when depressed. not honest not humble not smart not true. And today i thought i am not happy certainly. But I am so far from depressed, depressed is at the moment descusting to me. And today i thought well what am i cause i am not emotionless, i am not content there has to be something an i realized my state of mind is angry. I AM ANGRY. and I think maybe I was wrong all along maybe angry is the way to be.

because angry lets me say stand up fuck you you are to blame for your depression you are not living before you die and it lets me say THANK GOD that everything is falling apart because I want to build it again and much better then you did and THANK GOD that i don't believe in forever because forever is boring as fuck and i don't want to die because forever is death, its giving up,its seeking confort instead of the best you do need to destroy what you have in order to create and thank god that i am angry an thank your god that i just don't care.

I love the falling apart. I love this transitory. I love the beauty in the breakdown. I love this anger.

anywhere feels like home

8.1.10

I Luv the Valley, OH!

I'm. gonna try. to nullify my life. A lyric from the song 'Heroin' by the velvet underground. Heroin is still one of my favorite songs. it still has untold impact on me. and it falls into a weird catagory of art or a weird emotion along with fight club and hemmingway and trainspotting and noise music and a few others is about the curious humman need to feel emotions more. when we are up we want to be walking on sunbeams and when we are down we want to be so down. we want to hit rock bottom and keep on going and never come up for air. we want to choke ourselves and bash our heads through walls and make other people hate us and make us hate ourselves and be cacofony and destruction for ever and ever amen. we want to nullify our lives. and I used to think, idont know, i used tothink there was something to this. taht this was pure and passionate and I still think thats true but not with the same certainty as before

i encountered a strange case. through using tumblr i found, actualy a wile before i got my own blog, a girl probably four or five years older than me maybe more and when i first found her site there were mostly posts about sonic youth and sort of depressed wanderinglost short writings about her life and some fightclub-nihilism stile other images and posts. but mostly posts about sonic youth. and so whatever i got to school and didn't have a computer and fell out and all then in october i got an acount and started folowing her and in the last month there was a shift. I don't know her so i don't know what happoned to her or if the sonic youth think was just a momentary fasination or anything at all but she delved down into superficiality. manny formsprings were posted calling her hot and she posted more and more, questions were posted and she responded in the crassest manner, as a result the questions got more and more crass. someone asked what her favorite style of porn was and she said interratial gangbang, someone asked where they could find that and i forget if she posted a link or told them just to surch the internet its not to hard. more pictures of herself and storys about cocaine and talk of boyfriend and miniscule instances in her day to day

and i realized she is trying to nullify her life. but in the oppisite way as i would imagine and it was disgusting to me. so i don't know anymore. perhaps people were right and guitar smashing waists a guitar and destroying youself is just a pointless waist of yourself but I don't know. in a way i don't like that view because it is like growing old. i am to young to grow old and i really really truly hope i die first. I don't want to lose this. this passion. i want to be crazy forever I WANT to be crazy forever but i fear i may just be crazy


all of my thoughts have been in girls for the past week and a bit mainly because seeing diana was probably or maybe not stupid of me and threw me into depression and this summer we used to argue about the difference between the sexes and i was on the position that we are alike and what people see as differences were exagerated and used as excusses and she said no we are so far apart we will never understand each other and though i still think i understand girls mostly - see where their motives are, empathise easily, dont think they're quite so crazy as other guys do - i am starting to think we are very differant. girls really do hate guys, mostly for absolutely fucked up stupid reasons, and i resent being hated. it feels like adults hate the young - how girls hate boys.

and i don't like that opinion either, i liked the summer one better. and really i just like who i was this summer and i feel all the ways i've grown away from that have been negitive though perhaps pulling me closer to the truth i don't know.


i am also just lonely. really lonely and really needing some girl to try to love for a bit. i haven't felt this way really at least not like this for a long time. maybe since the eighth grade. i keep finding new things to miss and want, new little things that drive me crazy about them. putting your arm around a girl when you sit on couches. her breath on you when you hug. her laugh with eating ice cream. how she pauses to take her glasses off when you start kissing. how its just whatever when you do something crazy and spontainious with a friend but its so easy and so amazing to do anything spontainious when your with a girl you like. these little things are going to drive me insain. i am lonely but i hate girls.

i won't rest until i break it