Interesting Scenes

My rug burns are signs of youth and lying on the ground was always a revolution against the adult sofas.

I wrote and re-wrote about six drafts of my thoughts on spending your day experiencing the cacophony of outside-your-window-life.

I deleted all of them and ended up here.

This is a blog for writing. Like the passing cars speeding through puddles along the street below my apartment window, I fulfilled my purpose.

“Why do you love this book?”

How do you answer that?

“Why do you love this film?”

Does your criteria for answering that change from the previous?

I find it truly impossible to write real criticism–the kind of criticism you read in the Times. I can’t bite-size my revelations of a piece into matter-of-fact expression. But expression of other sorts I do understand.

I had a kind of epiphany reading Bob Dylan’s Modern Songs book this year: he accompanies meaningful songs with short essays, some of which seem to have nothing to do with the song itself. And that is exactly where my entire body goes when I want to tell someone how art makes me feel. I can’t explain the beautiful prose, despite recognizing it. I can’t explain the shot selections or musical swells in films, despite it moving me. I have to tell you about how Terrence Malick makes me want to climb trees. How Paul Thomas Anderson makes me want to be a professor in a non-existent utopia. How Colson Whitehead puts my shoes on for me. How Alice Munro writes about the fragility of humanity and how that makes strengthens my bones.

I associate great art with where I’m going. Which, as a critic, helps absolutely nobody understand what to think of a film. I can’t recommend anything to my friends because it is entirely possible that they do not wish to buy a new lamp after listening to FKA twigs. The lamp is the key to her music. It’s a small quantifiable change, and I am changed.

If I wrote a Christgau-sized review of Summertime (1955) which I watched this morning it would go like this:

Summertime is my feet burning on hot pavement, but I don’t feel the burn through the ideal Italian air I breathe, I feel sounds collaging; the birds, the bicycles, the people. Summertime is about two people falling in love–but it makes me wonder about falling out of love, being on foreign soil, and how if you walked in a straight line for days you could end up back where you started. The sun beats for me, for a moment, for just the right amount of time.

When I was a teenager, then young adult, art that really spoke to me would move me so deeply that I would feel invincible for days after. It always wore off, but I was a different person after experiencing whatever it was that moved me. Seeing Moonlight (2016) alone in a movie theatre and coming out to a light, silent snowfall changed my life. I drove home that night contemplating my entire existence, wondering who I was. I still think about that night often. I couldn’t tell you even now why I think it is a masterpiece of film–but I can tell you about how my world was perfect on my drive home that night.

Being a writer makes all of this quite difficult. I feel as though I’m bastardizing the experience a bit by trying to sum up the artists’ intentions and whether they worked or not on a technical level. When I see a great film I don’t want to write about the editing, or the lighting, or the screenplay’s merits. I want to write about how I am feeling.

“Throw away the light, the definitions, and say what you see in the dark.” — Wallace Stevens.

[Let me say that I didn’t have a quote ready, but quickly googled Wallace Stevens quotes because somehow I knew he would know what to say. I wasn’t let down.]

I think life exists differently for each individual. I don’t think there is a single soul who has ever reached a conclusion. Which can only mean life is yours and nothing else. As in: it is a thing to hold. It isn’t malleable, so to speak, it’s more so a shapeless field.

There are so many reasons I can’t build up the courage to change myself. None of the reasons are important… in fact, they’d all better be called excuses. So then, why, when faced with positive change and endless reasons to make a change, do we (I) stay stuck in a position that has no benefits and is intrinsically worse for our existence? Is it fear? It has to be fear. But fear of what?

Let’s take the core problem of my life (acknowledging that my current problem probably won’t exist in a year and something else will take its place with more or less urgency), which is my job. For all intents and purposes, I have an “ok” job. I’m not super well paid, but I make as much as my parents (who are not well paid themselves). The benefits are serviceable. The work-week is standard.
So, what is the problem? — I think, if I’m entirely honest: it is perception. What I do is not something to brag about. It is noteworthy in the public realm of improve improve improve and It’s not a job you mention in ice-breaking conversations. I’m expendable in my position and it gives me no joy, no fulfillment, no pride. Are these things important to a job? I don’t know. I supposed they are for me.

Let’s say: I want to do something that gives me a kind of pride. I want to be able to say, with enthusiasm, this is what I do to earn enough money to buy food, rent, and save for [insert all reasons to save money]. So I’ve already mentioned in a previous posting that I want to write. The feeling I get, sitting at my table in front of a window where the sun shines in, writing on this MacBook are indescribable. Imagining myself in a conversation with others being able to say “I write in front of this window to earn living,” feels like an electric shock of want. There is no denying this is a vain reason. I’ve concerned myself before with giving a reason to this and if I was still younger than 25 I would probably say that writing to earn money is bullshit and that doesn’t make me a real writer. I should write because I have to write!

But my current job exhausts me physically beyond expression and ironically the physical exhaustion affects the mental exhaustion. I simply cannot turn my brain into a system of focus and pleasure. It becomes dormant.

Aha! Another excuse.

Why don’t I get up early to write?
I’ve tried.
Why don’t I nap when I get home?
I’ve tried–it creates a fog i’m unable to penetrate.
Why don’t I have a shower when I get home?
I’ve tried. It makes me sleepier than ever.
—but I haven’t tried a cold shower.

I guess this is my extremely long-post way of asking the void for help. I’m not entirely sure how to live this life I am holding. I don’t want to take it for granted. I don’t want to give it up. I don’t want to look back at today–10 years from now–and wonder why I sat there asking to make a change instead of just making a change. I understand on a fundamental level that right now is the youngest I’ll ever be again and the only way to change tomorrow is to change the moment you exist in.

How far behind am I?

Vibrations shake inward–outward is too much
they fight to remain in a particular stillness unobtainable
without the course of every particle shifting in unison.
It will tie your boots up.

I succeed in the inward push, though,
I might say the same about the outward pull on a good day.
When i’m struck, blindly, shoulder to shoulder with movement
I frequent out and try to remain in. I vibrate.
Stagnant vibrations of a number associated with the body.

Count my rings, count the length of my hair, count my excesses,
and all the times regret played its part in the prequel of processing:
the time I spent listening, un-remembering, un-deciding.
I bet if you were to count my vibrations, you’d find their
violent existence swarming outside the frame/rate of humans eyes.

I’ve taken years away from myself. The person I always wanted to be is somewhere within, but he’s harder to locate now. And without him I feel the struggle pushing deeper. This photo above is simple. It represents a good memory in that it is a photograph I took of a moment of happiness, but, it also represents something else: a natural scene of life; sun shining, cool breeze, what I perceive as the impression of freedom.

Five days a week I am eaten up by the insatiable need to create–to create music and to write the stories swirling around my head. Something within is asking more of me while I bear the weight of the “normal” expected life. Simply: I work a menial 9-5 (7-4, actually) that brings me no joy, fulfills me in no way, and crushes me at my instincts. It takes the first day off to refill my dreams and the second day to really feel the weight on my chest of becoming something more. Today is that day. Today I created a simple blog so I could feel my words being sent into the world. These words can be accessed in the furthest point on Earth from where I am. They can be accessed by my neighbours, and they can be accessed by the city I fantasize of inhabiting. Los Angeles. Yes, there it is. I’m one of those. Why? Probably the fallacy of eternal sunshine, hopes and dreams, community of artists, and the ideal of that photo above. The impression of freedom. To wake up, feel myself, traverse through the day as the person I told myself I would be. Then, watch the sun fall, knowing it won’t take a full week to rise again.

My fixations, my fantasies, my ideals, my dreams, they weigh me down and they make me feel infinite. But I know the passage of time makes dreams narrower–makes them a thing of the past. And for me, time slips week by week. Slowly, admittedly, but in a sort of slow-burn feeling like a melting of the spirit. The crux of it is that I am shallow and I am afraid.

But, 13 years ago I made two decisions on the a single day that changed who I saw myself as, so today I will change two things again with the hopes of re-creating the magic I felt then (and still carry). Then, I stopped eating meat and I picked up a passion for music. That’s who I was to be: the vegetarian musician (for me it was drums and guitar, which has since progressed to anything that will make noise). The passion for both decisions changed my life. It was independence and it was a soul separate from the one given to me through inheritance. So today, the day before my work-week restarts (with two new bosses starting tomorrow too), I’m deciding that the way I see myself needs a change once again. For one, I’m going full vegan. This is overdue. And it is something I think I was too lazy to do in the past. And two, I’m going to write. I’m going to write like I always said I would. The way I’ve been saying I would since 2016. I’ll start here, today. There are no parameters for this place: critical analyses, personal essays, thoughts, consumptions, even some passing poetry. But I’m also going to write in my absurd collection of notebooks. I’m going to write in the margins. I’m going to collect endnotes and footnotes. I’m going to write those stories that swirl in my head.

How do I escape this place I’ve stuck myself? I write my way out of it. With the intention of creating something meaningful and the intention of eventually being asked to write for or by someone else. Right now though, I’m writing for me.