Livin' Just To Find Emotion

Recent news: I had a near death experience. My head almost snapped off my neck completely. This was largely due to a week of where I attended four different concerts up in Salt Lake. Epic, but it had a price.By the time I was at Passion Pit (concert number 3), I was forced to sedately step-and-snap to the music, since my head was already at such a precarious state that I was a perpetual bobble head. Oh wow that just created an awesome tongue twister in my head: “At Passion Pit my pate was perpetually placed precariously.”


But in reaction to this brush with my own mortality, I feel compelled to confess to something. It’s a shameful secret, something that has been gnawing at me for some time. But even now as I’m on the brink of telling all, the Radiohead I’m listening to right now seems to be shouting me (or angstily scolding, as is more their style) into silence. But if being close to becoming a dashboard novelty has taught me anything, it’s that above all you must be true to yourself! Well, that and if you’re going to head bang, do it more with your entire back folding forward, but that is not the point we are going to focus on right now. The truth will out me one day, might as well do it myself:

I enjoy the music group known as Train. I thought it was a fluke, that “Meet Virginia” was a one-time delightful bouquet of clever nonsense lyrics and a swingin tempo, but I’m afraid it’s much worse than that. The percentage of their tunes I find myself gleefully bopping along to unfortunately confirms that Train and I have a game show love connection we can’t deny. I know, I am way too cool-hipster-obscure-groove-reverence-for-the-classics to be this person!

And yet it remains. I like Train. Which if you look at it a certain way, it’s a pretty cool demonstration of the wonders of music—how personal an individual reaction can be, and how unpredictable what chord progression is going to sing in your bones and what epic classics are going to leave you saying “meh.”

Yes, I did just try that hard to make my fanness of Train cool and philosophically significant. And if you’re judging me or considering cutting me off as an acquaintance because of this revelation, consider two things: A) ever since I informed Pandora of my Train love it has clogged my station with all sorts of sentimental twangy crap. I believe that is sufficient penance, and B) that’s insanely lame of you to not be ok with what other people like.

Other confessions that have been crawling stealthily out of the suppressed area they were supposed to stay in: I appreciate Led Zeppelin but never listen to it for pleasure, I think Zac Effron was hot in Hairspray, I’m going to see “The Jonses” even though it looks pretty crazy lame solely because it has David Duchovny in it, I still know every word and musical cue for Alanis’ album “Jagged Little Pill,” I’ve read a Nicholas Sparks book or two—although now that he’s publicly stated that he’s a better novelist than Cormac McCarthy I solemnly swear to never read another—and I cried through the first twenty minutes of “Up” and at the end of the Glee episode when she sings the Rhianna song (she’s so sad!). There. Whew. That felt good. It isn’t even close to the amount of dirt I have on myself, but at least the load has been lightened. Marginally.

To conclude, let us focus on two songs I’ve been currently obsessed with: The Door’s “Hello, I Love You” and Velvet Underground’s “Rock and Roll.”

The Doors rock, even though I have to be in the mood for their more self-indulgent nine minute songs—not that I’m against those epic recordings as a strict rule, but because even the greatest musician in the world could learn from the three-minute pop song format. There’s a reason why The Beatle’s became gods of the earth with “Help!” and “She Loves You.” You gotta earn your “Revolution No. 9.” This means you, pretentious local bands. That’s awesome that you can turn your back on the audience and rock out without hitting anything discordant. No one cares.

The key point to “Rock and Roll” is the lyric when Jenny “couldn't believe what she heard at all. She started dancin' to that fine fine music—you know her life was saved by rock 'n' roll.” Does anybody else have that moment in their life when they really listened to rock and looked upon it and found that it was good? For me it was when Royden and Jeff were rocking out to “Foxy Lady” by Jimi Hendrix. I must have been about 12 or 13. And I couldn’t have told you it was Jimi singin’ to me, but I know we played that song eight or nine times straight, taking turns spinning and jamming on the slick hardwood floor in our kitchen to the gutsy guitar riffs.

And then I’m pretty sure Randy came in and was a complete buzzkill. But still, my life was changed by rock ‘n’ roll.

Simil-aphors Taking On Their Own Lifeforce

I was walking out of my class when I crossed paths with one of the most peculiar creatures that I have yet to see out there in the wild.

The specimen was male; approximately 193 cm tall, with a lean fit that clashed terribly with the blockiness of his facial features and the absence of neck. But the striking part was not his unfortunate meathead cutout, it was his body language. His lips were pursed into a smirk that I know only a male peacock could ever have the vanity to sport, if they were ever so blessed as to have lips. His head was turned so that he was looking in a direction roughly 90 degrees away from the direction his shoulders were squared, and he took long leisurely strides without once blinking or diverting his head to check what obstacles might trip him up.

Up to that point I was grinning like an idiot, amusing myself by considering how he looked like a particularly ugly ostrich, an ungainly square-headed flamingo at best.  But right as I was chortling away, he made eye contact with me and leveled me with a stare as he made his way into the science wing. Now that strange unchanging smirk made everything seem much more sinister. Sinister like a pterodactyl. Yes, thank you Jurassic Park, you made a creature that is still the epitome of things that would make me avoid industrial kitchens.

So, in case you weren't able to keep track, this was a peacock-flamingo-ostrich-pterodactyl man beast with an almost hoot-owl/exorcist twist to the head. Terrifying. Only way it could have been worse/better is if he had been French. Hope I run into him tomorrow.

Life can sometimes seem like a game of Tetris, when the game keeps on giving you only one type of block, trapping you into building a huge tower up the middle of the screen, until you crash and burn and fail out altogether because you're not adept enough at transforming the sameness you're given into a strong multi-faceted foundation.

That frustration may explain why sometimes when I'm in a semiconscious state I catch myself playing the Perfect Tetris Game in my head, obsessively conjuring up the utopian pattern of varying blocks and building up a solid base without any maddening unfilled spaces and missed opportunities.

That last paragraph wasn't a flight of fancy; I really do go through that Perfect Game constantly through my head, another borderline compulsive behavior that has cropped up in the last few years. Please, if you love me don't ask me how many penstrokes the word totalitarianism has. Cause I'll know.

I love being in an overly warm room sometimes, just so I can pop the tab on a perfectly chilled soda can and let it change my life. Rest the side of your jaw on the cool aluminum, take a sip and hold the liquid back by your molars for a minute, so that you can hear the fizz both from the outside by the can and from the inside by your ears. Close your eyes and let yourself get confused about whether you're there in the warm room or actually just full-on swimming in the cool carbonation. And then that rare huge gulp, when you can feel the coolness spread down your throat and course past your collarbone, spreading the refreshment while making you paranoid since you never pay attention to the way it feels to drink normally, so you may be worried that your esophagus is somehow leaking, but it feels good enough that you shrug your shoulders and take another sip.

Man I must never ever ever try alcohol, if I like drinking DDP this much I can only imagine the disastrous effects the stronger stuff would do to my addictive personality.

I feel like more people need to know about the band Nada Surf. I've been talking about this song a lot with various peoples of note in the last week, so indulge me as I impart some of my favorite lyrics of theirs to you:

"Watching terrible TV, it kills all thought, getting spacier than an astronaut.
Making out with people I hardly know or like--I can't believe what I do late at night.
I wanna know what it's like on the inside of love--I'm standing at the gates, I see the beauty above.
Only when we get to see the aerial view will the patterns show, we'll know what to do: I know the last page so well, I can't see the first, so I just don't start.
It's getting worse, I can't find my way in, I try again and again: I'm on the outside of love, always under or above. Must be a different view, to be a me with a you.
I wanna know what it's like on the inside of love, I'm standing at the gates, I see the beauty above.
Of course, I'll be alright. I just had a bad night."


There you have it, further proof that I can be just as sappy as everyone else. If not more so.

I got some great new CDs, featuring some live performances of artists like Cream, Janis, Jimi, high quality. And as I've adjusted to the pacing of a 16-minute live interpretation of Sunshine of Your Love, I now hypothesize that it's that specific type of improvised jam-session rocknroll that is the secret to successful deep space travel. Once I finally let myself listen to the process instead of impatiently wanting to hear the next track, I swear I felt my heartbeat slow dramatically, to a level where my vitals were barely taken care of. I could almost feel my circulation withdraw from my extremities and my brain waves slow and flatten, causing a second to take up a year of contemplation.

No, I have not inhaled anything illegal or generally frowned upon. I just like my tunes. And Star Trek. And if NASA was as serious about making the world of Jean-Luc really happen as I am, I don't think a little Swlabr would hurt.

Abandoning The Plan But Continuing To Scheme

Roll the shoulders, rapidly and smartly smack the cheeks, quick crack of the neck, flexing of the fingers, here we go.

I simply have to make myself type something that doesn't sound remotely like a scholarly analysis of anything. Because if I keep it up with this passive voice I might soon conclude that the merits of repeatedly applying extreme force against a rough graveled surface with one's cranium might be the biggest contribution I can give to the soon-to-be-formed Society for the Selective Elimination of Useless Academia Leeches.

So in case you've been worried about my absence from the blogosphere these past two months, the answer is yes, I really did lose any will or ability for free thought. Thus the lack of lingual throwup on this aesthetically pleasing backdrop.

My pictures certainly are pretty, aren't they? I pretend it's almost the same thing, being able to create timelessness and just having timelessly good taste. Helps me sleep at night.

I just went through an intense "friend" purge on facebook, which was highly satisfying. The only people left now are a) people who I actually care to talk to/passively view their life and b) people who are too crazy and I fear the repercussions of dropping them even more than I yearn for the relief of not having to think about them ever again. And if you're having even a moment's doubt about which category you belong to, it's undoubtedly b. Don't watch me while I sleep. Again.

People have an insane--emphasis on the word choice insane, picture double italics if that's possible--way of projecting/altering what they want in a mate onto whatever is in front of them. Believe me, this judgment is being passed (and it is a judgment, let's not kid ourselves) with a lot of empathy, cause heaven knows I'm neck deep in the situation. But it's surprising how even when I've determinedly ignored all the flashing signs saying "no chance in hell are you two compatible" with equal vigor in the past, I still feel violated and get very frustrated when it happens to me.

Ah well, I always said I could even make hypocrisy look good.

Why I fell in love with the opening act for the Vampire Weekend concert I went to last week: She was strange, her music wasn't my thing, I'm never going to listen to it again, but there was a quality about her, quite separate from the rich flexibility of her voice, which was magnetic. The quality was that she was, in every category that exists out there, incredibly strange. And awkward. She stood up there with her microphone, no band, singing while doing strange jerky movements with her arms, and legs, looking like an anteater that had taken it into his head that they were born to be an exotic dancer.

But what made it all ok, what made it all alright and strangely entrancing and loveable, was her self-awareness. She wasn't awkward in the way that makes the viewer self-conscious--you know, when you're  pretty sure that that dweeb up there is trying to be cool, is miserably failing and you keep on having a strange urge to call the paramedics or their mother, trying to save them? No, that wasn't what was happening at all.

She was very aware that her style of performance was not polished into the absurd grandstanding that the audience has come to expect and require. She was aware, and she didn't care. She had the self-determination that everyone is given but so few exercise, and with that she made a performance about her own interpretation of life and what about it makes it fun. It was like watching a kid running like a maniac, all limbs akimbo, before they've watched too much TV or made too many friends that are far too ready to point out that they look ridiculous. It's magical every time I get to see that.


Ok, I'm talking in paragraphs still. Must de-structure even more. It's good for the soul. Decompile that twisted psyche. Cut it up into a pretty countdown chain, rip off a bit every once in a while for closer examination.

I've just spent the last fifteen minutes searching for a concluding image for this blog. I think I'm feeling a little stretched out right now, I'm craving clean lines and very little texture--just long horizons and wide expanses of filled-in space that I won't have to worry about.

I rediscovered the decible at which music is supposed to be played. I lost it for a while, mostly because I'm just the most thoughtful roommate ever (any roommate who wants to contest that, I welcome you to make your objections by destroying my stuff, just keep the comment off my blog). But I had some quiet alone time in an enclosed space--I'll let you draw your own conclusions on what I'm referencing--and I remembered that unless you can feel the music, you aren't hearing it. I'd rather have my teeth shaken out of my head prematurely if that means that me, Lou Reed, Joey Ramone and Jack White are all on closer terms. Besides, basically the only fond memories I have of my slightly evil great-aunt involve her whipping out her teeth and scaring small children. I could be that lady.

Someone should look into a more portable version of peanut butter, something that doesn't require utensils. I would avail myself of that product fairly frequently.