always farewell

last night i had one of those dreams where i didn't want to wake up - i remember the complete absence of memory i had about reality (the real one), and for all intents and purposes the dream was all i had known or will ever know. to be woken up from such an experience is surely tragic. a loss occurred, and in its wake i find myself desperately grasping at threads with which i may weave myself back into the dream. here is my attempt at the reconstruction of that universe.

i will be back someday. perhaps even in wakefulness.

the sea lover (1897) - pompeo mariani

there were many people that i knew. people whose interests echoed mine, people who weren't so distant after all. i felt a kinship with them, a bond i do not usually feel. ideas were being taught, shared, and passed around. the atmosphere was one of joviality, like at a party, but it was the imparting of knowledge and the making of music that was keeping our spirits alive; not substances or drink.

feeling unusually content, i remember the paradise as one i wanted to never dissipate. however, before the dream ended, i was led on another journey, as though passing from one room to another in a house larger than can be known.

led onto a boat by someone else i knew, someone i trusted. they were concerned for me and for the knowledge i was receiving from the groups. they had fashioned for their personal use a boat out of wood that was dark and aged, yet strong - it also served as a house and, strangely enough, a makeshift library. small books, worn and faded yet once brightly-colored, lined the shelves located at the very center of what could also have been just a raft with a tiny roof. the books were primarily of western and european origin, but their contents dated back to ancient times. i remember scanning the titles, hoping to find an author with a name i could not pronounce or did not recognize. the one who had led me to their boat had begun to set sail, and along with them i was drifting away from that land of familiarity, a place i thought i would be able to grow and learn and thrive as an individual.

still, in my heart, i felt a thrill at being swept away by the promise of true knowledge, knowledge pre-selected for me...

it was soon after this that i woke up and, though i felt resentment at not being allowed to see where the boat would end up, i began to wonder what motivations were driving the one who led me away. what did they not want me to find out? what sorts of exclusive ideas did they want to fill my head? probably the exact ones which had led them in their particular journey to end up as they did - making rafts and sailing, independently, on waters in between foreign lands.

/

i realize that i cannot travel along the same path as another. i could spend enormous amounts of energy imitating the life of another by reading all of the same books or adopting the same beliefs but, alas, i may never be but me. i may never attain the spirit which resides inside another and only them, which instead of books is what actually extends from a person's life onto their surroundings, and this is how it absolutely must be and is. how could i have wanted anything different? how could i have believed that i would be happy being anything but myself?

like björk says, 

how could i be so immature?
to think he could replace
the missing elements in me,
how extremely lazy of me

lately i have been craving soft sounds, and the circular guitar found on this aerial m record, aerial m (1997), perfectly suits these desires.

this is the solo project of guitarist david pajo, famously from slint...




the dance

"the sun seemingly falls only to rise again. music, the laughter of children, intellectual conversation, is but the rising and falling of sound waves we interpret as vibration. ocean waves rise only to fall, withdraw, and rise again.

we fall, to the absolute bottom, only to pick ourselves back up.

it is the ebb and flow of life in its pure form.

but this motion is joined by one thing. my fingers are attached to hands attached to arms attached to my body which is governed by my brain, in the center. my fingers mirror each other on opposite sides of the body, but they are connected by a single source.

it is that which joins the polarity of rising and falling that gives us meaning. we give it names like God or consciousness or particles or life. vague words whose definition we debate, but are only arrows that point towards something that can never be articulated by language and mathematics.

rising and falling is the dance of something unlimited, microcosmic and macrocosmic, that we struggle to comprehend.

we dance while we search. without realizing we are searching, without realizing we are dancing. without realizing we are that which we are searching for."