Saturday, May 26, 2007

Trip Mckenzie and the titleless drivel

One of the convenient side-effects of the search for greatness is its diversionary power. You aim for something higher than the sky and you can pretend not to notice anything underneath it.
Your intellectually defined goal of soulful fulfillment allows you to ignore the emotions your heart begs to feel.
This is hardly transcendence, as I said, it is merely diversion. The aim is noble, but this path is not right. Greatness must encompass and be achieved through the same pains and joys which plague the mundane life. They should be felt even more keenly, with greater intensity: pain as much as joy. This greatness is an emotional state, whatever the intellects position in that state, emotions cannot be discarded - they are also it value.

Eyes are teary.
Staring blankly, eternity.
Middle finger hanging on pinky, holding me together.
Feet up, knees as if clutched.
One physical state to be replaced by another.

(this was my attempt to describe something in plain language, with the idea of telling a story in nothing but description and emotion, with no plot to speak of. I gave up straight away, creativity is not with me right now. If you listen to Springtime by Jeffrey Lewis he does it perfectly with about ten words and a guitar.)

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Monday, May 21, 2007

Trip Mckenzie and the perfect gathering.

I have been trying to imagine the perfect social occasion.
Driving in my car, returning from a show that never happened, nostalgia for days of my youth hitting me in the face as I travel along the dark tree lined roads of those days. I recall an excitement and a spirit of adventure that accompanied every such drive, no matter what the occasion I would be filled with expectation of the grand and magnificent events that might just possibly occur that evening. Or the beautiful, intimate moments that I might experience.

Now my head is constantly overflowing with jumbled ideas of great artistic achievement, human evolution, purity of experience. I question whether there is any worthwhile reason to engage in anything which is not pure experience and so I find myself doubting that there is any worth to any art or act of creativity. But without it how does the human race progress, how does it evolve into something greater than the stagnant state of society now.

I imagine an answer to be found in a collision of these ideas. Acts of wild unbounded creativity enacted purely as experience pushing its participants with every manifestation to a new and better place. In my head this collision of ideas is only possible through the collision of people - evolution of an individual is not the same as evolution of the individual.

Yet every gathering of people around creative reasons always seems to devolve into two groups: performer and audience. The former forced into effectively shouting their ideas into space, no matter how much they simply want to share and interact. The latter demanding that they be entertained, that their laziness and cowardice, unwillingness to push themselves rather than claim to be enlightened through their appreciation of other people's efforts, all be satisfied by those who they believe they validate through their presence.

This is not what I yearn for.
I yearn for social experiences, a natural product of life lived well, in which every person engages and participates. They do this for no other reason than that it is the right way for it to be done at that time. A dancer dances for themselves, but in doing so inspires a writer to put pen to paper, whose words feedback into the music played by musicians, guiding the hand of the artist and sculptor, shapes created compelling the dancer to push themselves to new places. And so on, with the linebetween all ever blurred and erased until the group and each indivudal a part of it finds themselves in a new place, filled with new ideas, concepts, imaginations and understandings. A pure experience done for no reason but its own self-worth and the self-worth of the individuals involved.

I have no idea what I am talking about.
These thoughts just run through my head day after day, never taking concrete form or shape, never showing me anything apart from frustration and confusion.
Something is lacking, but it is only out there to be grasped and embraced.
But I have no clue what it is.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Trip Mckenzie and the nuclear mirror

Face lies sideways, buried in the pillow.
Eyes closed or staring emptily into nothingness.
Fingers sitting impotently on the keyboard, elbow experiencing sensation of rough carpet.
This is all I feel right now.
In a moment I am sure my hip will being to hurt again.

Then I might cycle through the emotions of the evening, frustration and melancholy. Not a long cycle. I'm planning to be done with it in just a few minutes. Then  can start again.

The lamp is too bright, it is shining through my eyelids. How ineffectual a piece of the human body are our eyelids? IF they did their job properly we would not need curtains to sleep through the day. We do need curtains to sleep through the day. What else are we supposed to do till it gets dark?

In the mirror my own face stares back, this is not uncommon for a mirror to do. In the eyes of my reflection tiny nuclear explosions daisy chain endlessly. It is quite beautiful. I am not sure whether this makes my reflection a worse person than myself. I would quite like tiny nuclear explosions to detonate endlessly behind my eye, so I conclude that my reflection is a better person than me.

He also looks less melancholy and frustrated, but this may just be a trick. These things are hard to determine when you so busy staring at the explosions. Sometimes I wish my reflection wold say something to me, but he just looks back at me. I am sure that he manages somehow to be more impassive in his gaze than I am upon him. Which is unusual, given that he is nothing but my reflection.

Apart from the explosions in his eyes that is.

Ah, that one blew one eye out.
Now he is staring at me with a gaping white space where one eye used to be.
It is even more beautiful.
Like staring into the sun captured behind my own face.

I am jealous of my reflection more than ever now. Not only does one eye feature an endless parade of nuclear starbursts but his whole brain is a stellar event. Soon it shall go supernova and spread its essence throughout the universe, touching upon every soul that exists within it, sowing its seed in planets yet to be formed. Lighting up the darkest of dark matters and energies. Altering the frequency of essential vibratroy strings, plucking out the rhythm of the sum of his mind's life.

I hate my reflection. I hope he blows soon, at least then I won't have to stare at his impassive face any longer.