a void

... and you say i want to be here.

i'm sorry, but it stings.

i know what you're thinking - after all the times i've come to you from this place, these depths, you can't help but shake your head. why do i keep putting myself there, you ask? there isn't much sympathy in your voice, but i suspect it's because you've been there too.

all i have to say in response is that i'm not putting myself here. whatever is giving the official go-ahead to keep burrowing down into the tunnels of sadness is not i; at least it is not that with which i would like to identify myself most of the time, anyway. i want to be happy, as anyone does.

is our culture the antithesis of my happiness? is there a deep-rooted infection inside this thing called i which jumps at any opportunity it gets to start eating itself, and is this process involuntary?

to be honest, the sadness inside me scares me. i guess it can be called by many names: the void, nothingness, meaninglessness,  death, eternity, infinity, emptiness. none of these things are inherently good nor bad, they are merely concepts we have devised to help understand certain unknowables about existence.

i'm not entirely sure whether my sadness is a part of the existential dread many claim to have felt at one point or another, or whether it's something of my own making. it doesn't go away. and it is what gnaws at me in the moments where i have very little remaining strength to fight against it.

sometimes i feel like if i were to let it have at me i would be torn to shreds, as would my ties to everything i love. it clearly likes to try and destroy the best things about my life.

but it is no other than i, and as painful as it is to accept that, accept i must.

some people find comfort in the void. like standing in a huge clearing, a desert or field maybe, underneath a vast night sky utterly aglow with stars. how can one feel sadness staring into that void, our true home? even i feel some strange warmth thinking about the emptiness and the depth of our origination, for in that infinity all the distraction of this life we have is cleared away, and we are faced with nothing more than our being.

maybe this intense clamor we humans are constantly making - with our noise, our activities, our business - is nothing but expressions of a base fear, that of death. perhaps our desires come from this fear, too, all of our concerns with more and every and all and increasing quantities of more.

at the core of this life there is pure survival. it doesn't cost money to breathe (yet) but it does to be healthy, to be beautiful, to be what society considers successful. we have devised a game where even survival is not a given for any child - we must submit to the rat race (give time = base needs met) or find ourselves on the outskirts, in the underbelly, inside the belly.

sometimes i have to shake myself out of the self-absorbed echo chamber where i think myself to death. i can't do that to myself anymore. i won't survive if i continue on in this manner, thinking more than saying, expelling energy towards cyclical, dead-ended thought rather than towards using my talents and skills for something outside of myself.

there are ways to gently let myself breathe, to let myself stare down from a great height, as from a mountain, and feel courage. these ways give me hope, and they almost always allow trusting in the ground beneath my feet, as well as the feet themselves, as well as the hands and minds and hearts of others. erasing the barrier and staring into eyes of those not unlike myself, seeing bravery in each other and in turn ourselves we collaboratively navigate together the waters.

overcome the fear that you don't fit and just be. society is no perfect puzzle where all the pieces fit perfectly, that's just what it seems like from the outside - that everyone has a specific role that they were born knowing and they are currently living in that role, happily. most people hardly know how to motivate themselves to get out of bed in the morning; usually someone else has to do it for them. don't be envious of that which you do not know. the world needs you to be solid. you need you to be solid. you need you to be whole and concrete and real.

real, as in real. as in honest. as in vulnerable. as in flawed and broken. as in dignified in your brokennness. as in aware of your brokenness. as in proud of your brokenness.

when we try to hide our flaws is when our flaws make themselves even more apparent.

flaws worn proudly are more beautiful than the most covered-up wound.

ross bleckner, birds

-writing music- for me is a space of endless mind channels; avenues and journeys; setbacks and moments of being lost. i certainly find myself waking up, as it were, from trance-like states after listening to certain pieces, and for some reason this is one of my absolute favorite activities.

getting lost in a sound world has to be one of the most abstract forms of entertainment and yet it's what i find myself doing 99% of my free time these days. i'll give you some examples of music that lets my spirit find a place to rest...

/

to begin with, i have recently re-visited an album which was recommended to me 5 or 6 years ago, and almost am at the point of not being able to find myself wanting to listen to anything else. i might have mentioned it in this blog somewhere before, but if i haven't here is where i will give this absolutely fucking incredible work its due diligence.

bark psychosis - hex (1994)

here is the song "street scene," but you can listen to the whole album as a playlist here.

my sister described the album as "post-rock with a point," and i would have to agree on many points with that sentiment, but there is no way one could merely sum up this band, or this album rather, with just the term post-rock.

(i'm not sure what the current consensus with "post-rock" is but the term as a genre makes me cringe more often than not. i mean, slow-building and atmospheric rock textures is one thing, but for the people thinking that spiderland somehow originated post-rock i'm going to have to ask you to leave. [the song "washer" is a different story, i suppose].

/rant over)

this is a pretty prog-y album. there are tons of different sounds you'll find in here and it's a beautiful musical collage if i've ever heard one. when i talk about "waking up" from a musical trance this album is a perfect example of how that is executed to a masterful degree. nothing sounds out of place, or on accident - and that effect is so difficult to achieve, especially when the sound is most definitely improvisatory so much of the time - so while there are hidden corridors within traditional song structures where the musical mind is left to its own devices, straying from the path as it were, somehow the whole is as cohesive as the tightest and most concise pop song.

if that makes any sense, i applaud myself.

i have once mentioned in here the entrancement i find myself having with music that screams of the night, or of howling in the night, even. this album explicitly references driving at night at 3AM, which has somehow always struck me as rather indicative of what is encapsulated in the spacey, warm, and gently-fluctuating textures exhibited by a fairly wide of variety of instruments on this album.

so yeah, i can't speak highly enough about how beautiful and lovely and warm and dark and lonely and delicious the spaces and places explored on this album are, and i am grateful to the nth degree for its existence.

ross bleckner, architecture of the sky

i must also credit bark psychosis' second studio album, codename: dustsucker, released in 2004, as having some moments worthy of allie's adoration.

here is the song "400 winters"... (i also really recommend "burning the city")

it's like a mix of one of my bloody valentine's most rare tracks with some beautiful bossa nova vibes. the album is different than hex, and will require many (i repeat, many) more listens before i can adopt it as one of my close musical family (that place where i entrust my spirit almost more than any human), but is most assuredly worth love, consideration and appreciation.

felix vallotton, sunset

breathe, and remember that everything in this life is woven with impermanence.

spiderbite

i wanted to write something in honor of the spider currently living in my mailbox. i see her every time i open my mailbox (though i rarely receive any mail addressed to me at this new residence) and am thus reminded with a start of her small black-and-brown existence. as i sift through the letters, her tiny body scurries out from lying in wait and then remains still, unsure. i sense that she is assessing me - am i a threat? a friend?

and there is something in this gentle gesture of sizing me up, which i've seen in several different species of animals, that makes me smile and feel some sort of swelling in my heart. it's the most innocent thing, the desire to live, and as she is so very small in relation to me, it makes sense that she would be so still. though her defenses aren't anything to laugh at, i could easily squash her into nothingness.

but why would i?

i mean her no harm and never could. she is allowed to live just as i am. i would love for her to remain there as long as she can stay warm and dry and perhaps even mother some babies, who knows.

i'm reminded of this fear that we sometimes feel when faced with an unknown. we stop and stand still when looking into its eyes, expecting we know not what, but often believing somewhere inside us that pain awaits us. it must be some primitive defense mechanism acting up, rearing its ugly head as we navigate the world around us.

recognizing this process helps to discern what is protective and what is preventative.

the universe is capable of smiling back at me just as i smiled at my mailbox she-spider, looming over her like some sort of loony giant. i long for her to survive as long as she is able, for thriving is beautiful and miraculous. why would i expect any less of a reaction from that-which-looms-over-me?

it's a funny question, but we will be forgiven for tending to expect the worst. universe smiles aren't delivered in the way that we humans expect, which seems to more resemble a constant dopamine rush than anything else. i imagine that it is more, instead, along the lines of a tibetan buddhist monk's sand mandala, that slow-building ritual, than an endless stream of opening birthday presents.

it would appear that any warmth we might experience as we live in this roiling and ever-shifting tapestry of vibrant and electric unfolding is both an act of effort and an act of non-effort. in one sense we work to even be able to feel any sense of acceptance and belonging in the universe, but in another it's not really work. not really.

i keep thinking these words to myself, 'light feeds light.' it's strange, but ever more these days does it seem to be the only way to put it. positivity (or, whatever adds to as opposed to whatever takes away) is an all-inclusive entity which knows not our human-made divisions, even those divisions which appear to separate us as beings. positivity exists within and without, inside yourself and outside. once accessed it births itself, almost like some metaphysical cell reproduction, copying and re-affirming its existence, continuing on in its mission.