a shaman a sham

I’m clueless. Totally. I haven’t got a clue about what I’m doing, I haven’t got a clue about what I’m going to be doing, I haven’t got a clue about what I should be doing, I haven’t got a clue about what I’m going to do with myself and my “talents,” I haven’t got a clue about how to live this thing they call “life.”

Seriously, man, sometimes I just don’t know.

No, I’m not much for planning, but most of the time I at least have some sort of clue. These days? Nothing, nothing at all. And I know that having too many expectations/plans/ideals/hopes about what I’m going to eventually be doing after I finish this degree (which, for the record, feels more and more pointless with every passing day) is bad, but, I dunno, sometimes (like during these days of utter cluelessness) I feel that at least something would be preferable to the huge blurry mess that it is now. Well, ok, I do know that I don’t want to waste the best years of my life slaving away at a pointless job hoping to be able to finally go travelling once I’m 60 and impotent, but aside from that?

No idea, man.

Story of my life: I’ve nearly always known what I don’t want to do but I’ve never been able to figure out what I do want to do. Or what to do with myself. Or what to make of myself.

Oh hey, Shikari:

Prospects of a new life, planning, cash in, cash out
Weigh every step I take
Live up to every expectation that rests on my shoulder
And now I talk to the mouth of some lost soul that never matched up to his own
And I wonder how many careers are based on true motivation.

Are mine true enough to make it through time
I’ll serve mine and already apologize for failing
I dare you to say you live the life you dreamed of
Consequences first, step out of line, severe damage for sure, think it over first.

Man I can’t recall a moment from the past two weeks that wasn’t filled with some sort of emo.

And I thought I was really sleepy. It’s 2.30 am. Really sleepy my fucking ass. The less sleep I get the less I sleep.

And somewhere, deep inside of me, I still hate myself.

press my flesh

It’s been quite a while since I updated. A week, pretty much, which is a long time by my standards.

There are a variety of reasons for the long silence, but paramount is the fact that I just haven’t been a writing mood/mode. I find writing a chore, sometimes, even. Which doesn’t bode well for my assignments and my “book” project, I think you’ll agree. Things have improved a little recently, I will admit, but I’m still on rocky waters as far as my writing—and, notably, my confidence—is concerned.

I just don’t feel good about my writing these days.

And speaking of the “book” project, I’ve been re-reading some of the stuff I’ve written for it and I can’t help but feel really… unenthused. There was a moment when I felt really good about my output, but these days most of the things I felt good about seem a bit… sub-par. This is my default mode, I guess, when it comes to how I feel about my own work. When things are going good, I think it’s good/great. When things aren’t, I start disliking stuff. Being objective is something I am totally incapable of.

It doesn’t help that I’m still totally in love with Etgar Keret either. I do seem to mine a Keret-esque vein most of the time and that fact means I often end up comparing my work to his. Always unfavourably, of course. It’s something I shouldn’t do—well, not all the time, at least—and I try not to, but a lot of the time I find myself doing exactly that. Good god.

It seems to have stopped raining so much, too. Fuck. Seems it was only a few days ago I could go to sleep with the rain falling outside my window; tonight it’s “set the fan on number 2 and throw that fucking blanket somewhere far, far away,” and I don’t like that.

You know what? Fuck keeping everything under wraps. Here’s a “new” story for you fucks, as a way of making up for the long silence. It’s still not in a state that I’d call “final,” but it’s close-ish. This is longer than most of the other stuff I’ve written for the “book.”

—

The Rock

after a couple of years being the darling of the worldwide arts scene i decided that it was time to give something back to the town in which i was born and raised. it’d been a long time since i’d left the town but i still felt a real strong connection to it, as if it was the town that had raised me and not my parents. it sounds illogical, i know, but when your parents used to spend half the day working in the paddy fields and the other half quarreling and bickering about inconsequential shit instead of raising their only child it kinda begins to make a bit of sense, yeah?

it doesn’t? oh well.

i decided to make one of those abstract, surreal sculptures art critics like so much. but instead of painting it myself, i’d let the town’s kids do it. i’d let them paint and draw and scribble and splash paint on it. i’d even provide the requisite crayons, watercolours and pencils. i could’ve done all of that myself, sure, but i wanted to get the kids in on it. i wanted them to be able to look at the sculpture in a few years’ time and say, “yeah, i was part of this.” more than that, though, i just wanted people to like me. the kids, especially.

it took me a few days to find a suitable rock to start with, but once i did, i felt an excitement that i hadn’t felt in a while. for the first time in ages, i was actually excited to begin work on an art project.

without wasting any time, i loaded it onto my rented truck and took it to the beach, humming a tune as i went along. i felt good. real good.

thankfully, there wasn’t anyone at the beach, which meant i could do my work without being distracted by onlookers or passers-by. with sand in my slippers and the sound of waves lapping on the shore in my ears, i got to work.

after a few hours of chipping away and carving and shaping, i was finished. i stepped back to admire my work and, after a while, began to feel something odd within the pits of my empty stomach. it wasn’t gastric pain, that’s for sure, but i couldn’t figure out what it actually was. but soon i began to realise that it had something to do with the sculpture. namely, the fact that i wanted it. i wanted it very, very badly. i knew that many, many rich people with deep, deep pockets would want it as well.

i couldn’t let the town have it. i couldn’t let the kids have it. i couldn’t.

i looked around, hoping no-one had noticed me. i was in luck: it was a sweltering hot day and everyone was presumably inside their houses, trying to avoid the heat. i breathed a sigh of relief, loaded the sculpture back onto the truck and i drove off—windows up, air-conditioning on, radio turned up full blast, cheap knock-off raybans hiding my eyes—barrelling down the road at seventy-five-motherfucking-miles-per-hour.

i arranged to have the sculpture shipped to london, which was, at that time, my base of operations. the next day i boarded a flight heading in that same direction and didn’t look back. not even a goodbye. not that there was really anyone to say goodbye to.

i eventually sold the sculpture at an auction for more money than my parents ever made in their fourty years of working the paddy fields.

d, df, f + punch

Sometimes I wonder what the world and/or life would be like if everyone was forced to tell the truth and speak their minds. Maybe it’d due to some sort of divine edict or an odd mutation in the gene pool—brought about by, of course, well-meaning scientists—or due to a small kid wishing that everyone in the world was forced to do so for an entire year (while blowing out the candles on his birthday cake, of course). It doesn’t really matter why, though, does it?

But it does seem like a great life when you first look at it, no? No more being led on by heartless boys or girls who are just toying with you, no more lame excuses from your parents for missing your first rugby game, no more cheating storekeepers and so on and so forth. Not bad, eh? Not bad at all. I could probably learn to like a world like that.

But then, how many friendships and/or relationships have you had that didn’t involve some degree of mistruth? How many times have you wanted to tell a person exactly how you felt about them but held back and kept quiet for fear of ruining the entire thing? How many times have you concocted good things to say about something/someone just to avoid any sort of conflict (or, worse yet, to try and make them like you)? How many times have you sugarcoated the truth because you’re not willing to disclose the hard facts? I have a feeling that the answer’s probably “many times.” It certainly is for me.

If I couldn’t put up the various facades and tell the various lies I often tell I have a feeling I’d end up stepping on quite a few more toes in addition to the ones I’ve already stepped on even with all of my dishonesties. I can alienate quite nearly anyone, close friend or no—that much I know for sure—and I guess it’s better for everyone involved that I can indeed lie and abstain from telling the truth.

Has this made any sense at all?

Probably not.

i fucking hate beholders

I guess it’s somewhat obvious that I’m not in much of a writing mood these days, eh? This goddamn writer’s block (or something) is getting to me. I need to write—for class, mainly, but also because, well, I just like to write—and it sucks that I can’t. And all the stuff I wrote recently for that project of mine seems much worse a few weeks on. And even if it’s not bad, I can’t seem to get into that same groove once again. Everything I write these days just seems really lame in comparison. The fact that I’m out of ideas isn’t helping, of course. I could, of course, plagiarise from a handful of short stories and blend everything together into a new story, but I can’t even do that, it seems. Someone downclocked my brain or something.

I also have to get working on the design for my Creative Writing 2 group project, which is, basically, a ‘zine. Somehow I have a feeling that people don’t share my taste for dark-coloured text on plain, light-coloured backgrounds. I’m a simple man, what can I say. And one who doesn’t have much of an eye for design and/or fashion.

I also met… no, scratch that, “met” is too generous. “Hung out with?” Yeah yeah, that’s better.

*clears throat*

I also hung out with this girl (in a group, OF COURSE) the other day. I’d be lying if I said she wasn’t good-looking. I’d also be lying if I didn’t mention that I am, if only remotely, interested. I wouldn’t be lying (and might be some sort of modern-day Nostradamus), however, if I said that she’s probably another one of those girls that interests me but whom I’ll never actually do anything about. For various reasons (that I’m sure no-one: A) wants to read about and B) gives a fuck about).

Do you want me to whinge about how I’m far too negative and how I often ruin perfectly good things—and perfectly possible possibilities—with said negativity? Do you want to read a sleep-deprived, not-going-to-be-teenaged-for-long boy whinge about how much he really dislikes some—ok, many—things about himself? Do you want to read the sort of pathetic drivel I can churn out during my more emo moments (as if these previous two paragraphs weren’t pathetic enough)?

Fuck no, right?

So yeah.

sad hotel

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”

- Ernest Hemingway

The first time I read that, I couldn’t help but nod in agreement. At the risk of sounding like a huge cock, I have to say that I know exactly how that is, and that the quote makes perfect sense to me when I look at my life as a whole.

Now, I’m not saying that I’m some sort of uber-intelligent, perpetually unhappy thinker, but I can’t help but feel that if I could stop thinking, philosophising and pondering about so many goddamn things, I’d be a damn sight happier. Oh, if only I could turn my brain off for a few hours and enjoy a few blissful hours of not thinking! Distracting myself isn’t good enough, because I always end up thinking once again about whatever it is that I’ve been thinking about recently, even while doing whatever it is that I decided to do in my (misguided, most of the time) attempt to distract myself.

Sometimes I’m almost jealous of those people who know nothing and think about nothing more except their mindless daily routine(s) and classes and their next meal and what clothes to wear for the party on Saturday and so on and so on. Those people who live with their heads permanently in the clouds, unknowing and uncaring, enforcing the old cliche of ignorance being bliss: sometimes I wish I could be like them. If not happy, I’d at least be blissfully unaware of and unconcerned with many of the things that constantly vex me so.

50 bucks says that the bloke who was set free and managed to see the outside world in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave ended up much worse off in terms of his own personal happiness than the other blokes who continued watching the cave’s wall and the shadows cast on said wall, blissfully ignorant and totally oblivious to everything happening and existing outside the cave, and of the nature of their existence itself.

But, then again, I don’t have 50 bucks to put on the line.

me, a ceiling fan

You know there’s something wrong when one of the thoughts you dread most is the fact that you have to wake up the next day and see your friends and talk to people and actually live. I’m tired of waking up, of trying to get to sleep, of seeing people I know, of knowing people I see, of class, of writing. And I’m sick of myself. Sick of how pathetic I am, sick of my complete and utter inability to allow my indiscretions and stupid mistakes slide into that faceless mass of black we all call “the past,” sick of all the things that I invariably think about.

I’m supposed to be young and healthy, but I am obviously not. I’m tired, perpetually so. Physically, mentally, emotionally. Every-fucking-thing, man. I want to at least let my mind wander, let it escape this turgid boxed mess, but I can’t even do that. I can’t seem to watch any movies, can’t seem to read any books, can’t seem to get into any videogames: it’s all pretty fucked.

I generally do like my friends quite a bit, I do, but times like these I can’t help but feel like I’d rather be alone in public, surrounded by people I don’t give a flying fuck about and who don’t give a flying fuck about me, rather than be with my friends. I’d rather waste away alone rather than engage in conversation with my friends.

I want to get away from everything. This valley, this house, these star-less night skies, these people.

I know what I’m doing, but I don’t know who’s doing it. Maybe I never will. Maybe I’ll just have to settle with not knowing who the fuck I really am or what the fuck I really want.

Perhaps enduring the suffering of an overnight bus trip—alone, of course—will be worth it.

singles going steady

Older photos from an older roll of Neopan 400. Still the usual suspects, though.

I think I like my b&w negs slightly underexposed. Graaaaain!

I haven’t really been in the mood to do any proper thoughts-feelings-and-opinions blogging these past few weeks, and I’m not particularly sure why. I haven’t been writing either. I’ve been letting my grasp of words and thoughts atrophy, it would seem. Might be time to rectify that.

And if the xLumbrahx release doesn’t come out this year (either as an EP or as a split, doesn’t really matter) heads will roll. Or something of the sort. It’s one of the few things I’m really quite hoping for and looking forward to this year. If all goes as planned I’ll be heading to Meng’s sometime soon to do some final editing as well as the mixing and mastering. But, y’know, you never know. Especially with my rotten luck when it comes to plans that involve/rely on other people aside from myself.

After all, there’s a reason that they say that the best way to make god laugh is to make plans.

wanna sing?

I have to admit that I’m not a fan of god. I’m not much of a believer in his (her?) existence, nor am I one for religion either. There’s a lot of things to do with god and religion that I simply can’t accept or really agree with, and there are some things that really get my goat and piss me off to no end. Say what you want, but that’s how it is.

But that doesn’t mean I’m constantly hostile towards particularly religious folk and their respective religions. While I do have my moments of significant hostility and venom, most of the time I’m quite alright with being totally unable to agree with people and having people being totally unable to agree with me on the (thorny) topic of religion. That’s fine by me.

If 2008 has to be notable for something aside from my material achievements (and emotional tribulations), it would be the slow realisation that perhaps, just perhaps, religion isn’t for me. I don’t seem to find peace or any sort of comfort in prayer, in piety, in belief and subservience to a god. And not only do I not find any peace or satisfaction, but I also can’t even find within me the ability to agree. You know what, though? I can understand if people do. Just because something doesn’t work for me doesn’t mean it can’t work for others. If religion, god and prayer help you get through your days, then good for you. If a prayer of thanks before you go to bed at night allows you to sleep soundly, then great.

It just doesn’t for me. Not one bit. Maybe I’m better off for it, maybe not; who knows?

Maybe when I’m old and grey and starting to get afraid of having to forcefully relinquish my grip on life I’ll begin feel otherwise. Maybe by then I’ll want the comfort that the prospect of an afterlife provides. Maybe. But I can’t say for sure, not until I get to that exact stage in life.

This doesn’t mean I like all of you, though. Oh no. Some—perhaps even many—types of people I simply can’t help but dislike and violently disagree with when it comes to religion. I guess some of you know who these people are, eh.

(I haven’t done any of this sort of blogging in a long time, and I make no claims that this is at all cohesive or some sort of sound argument about anything in particular. Just thoughts, commited into words at three-something in the morning while listening to Robedoor.)

the most pathetic argument

Is when you use a lack of knowledge of something as proof of the existence of something else that created that particular something.

Which is really just a roundabout way of saying that the most pathetic argument is when people try to prove that god exists (which they will never succeed at, regardless of whether ‘ol beardy exists or not) with the simple, tried-and-tested-and-never-going-to-convince-anyone argument of “how else? How else could this all have happened? How else could this all have come to pass?”

Honestly, that’s like saying Criss Angel must be some sort of occult practicioner because, yeah, how else can he do what he does?

Honestly it pains me to see people use that same argument over and over without knowing how pathetic it makes them look. I feel sorry for them, almost, since if that’s all they ever come up with then they will never, ever win an argument, or any sort of reasonable debate.

Of course, one could argue that any sort of discussion about religion will never be reasonable because everyone’s so preoccupied with whatever it is that they believe in and will never open themselves up to anyone else’s viewpoints. Which would be, of course, totally and utterly accurate. Honestly there’s often no point: the few people who will pay attention (or, at least, attempt to) to both sides’ arguments and who actually have some sort of level head on their shoulders are invariably drowned out by your hardcore religious folks and your hardcore atheists and your hardcore pornstars.

Hands up how many of you turn to god and religion just because you don’t want to face the prospect of death? Just so that there’s a higher plane, a better place to go to, once you die? Just so that you don’t have to consider the possibility of things just ending, right there and then, once the plug is pulled?

Thought so. You know what you people are, right? I don’t have to say it, do I?

And you do know how Criss Angel does what he does, right?

Camera tricks, folks. Camera tricks.

songs i like: 03

Billy Bragg – The Saturday Boy (from the album Brewing Up with Billy Bragg)

I’ll never forget the first day I met her,
That September morning was clear and fresh;
The way she spoke, and laughed at my jokes and the way she rubbed herself against the edge of my desk..
She became a magic mystery to me and we’d sit together in double history twice a week and some days we’d walk the same way home and it’s surprising how quick a little rain can clear the streets.

We dreamed of her and compared our dreams, but that was all that I ever tasted,
For she lied to me with her body, you see,
I lied to myself about the chances I wasted.

The times we were close were far and few between,
In the darkness of the dances in the school canteen – did she close her eyes as I did when we held each other tight?
And la la la la la la la la la means I love you…

She danced with me and I still hold that memory
Soft and sweet
And I stare up at her window
As I walk down her street
But I never made the first team, I just made the first team laugh
And she could never come to the phone – she was always in the bath.

In the end it took me a dictionary to find out the meaning of unrequieted,
While she was giving herself for free
At a party to which I was never invited.

I never understood my failings then,
and I hide my humble hopes now;
Thinking back, she made us want her,
A girl not old enough to shave her legs

I love this songso much that I routinely swear at Billy Bragg for writing such a wonderful song. Give it a listen and tell me you don’t feel like singing along to it. This is, frankly, one of the best songs I’ve ever heard. Maybe even one of the best songs ever written. And those lyrics… my god.

Honestly, which bloke hasn’t been there? That crush, you know? That girl, that time, that wonderfully torturous adolescent experience? I can’t speak for you girls, but I’m pretty sure nearly every bloke has gone through such an experience before. And if you haven’t, you’re either incredibly lucky or incredibly pathetic. It is, I guess, part and parcel of being a guy.

And even if the lyrics didn’t tell such a familiar story (one that I seem to know by heart and can relate to all too well), I’d still fall in love with lines like “but I never made the first team, I just made the first team laugh”. Such a wonderful line, no? Mr. Bragg is probably one of the masters of that art known as lyric writing and that just makes me love his work so much more.

This song is the epitome of “bittersweet” for me. “Sweet” because of, well, the song; how catchy it is, how wonderfully written it is, and how singalong-friendly it is. “Bitter” because of, well, the story it tells. Ok, not incredibly bitter but still… not exactly happy is it?

I couldn’t find a video with the studio version though, so no trumpet solo. I’ll probably upload the mp3 in a bit, the trumpet solos are too good to miss out on.