"Heaven is a Wishing Well," Final Draft

Caldo: Wishing Well

A temple in the valley stops
The flow of water to the crops
That feed the builders on the platform
Sinewy and glassy black

By the night the moonlight teasing
As the temple guards lay freezing.
At the dawn they’ll take to wheezing
Begging God to send them back.

With leprosy the old priest rots
He, watching as the guards draw lots
Cries Caldo! Gelo! Fear ye Hell!
For heaven is a wishing well!

Your money won’t your wheezing quell
For heaven is a wishing well.

As builders mix the temple plaster,
Praying makes the work go faster.
Sunset brings the earthly master
Shouting from his dinner tent,

God! bless the ashen stones of which we
Build this house of thine so quickly
Toil ‘til He sounds the bell,
But heaven is a wishing well!

Toil ‘til he sounds the bell,
But heaven is a wishing well!

With hands and lungs and hearts of stone
And chisels wrought of camel bone
You earn your passage to the throne
Along my pious parallel!

The priest’s afflicted temple wilts
Both cavernous and filled with guilt
Still goes he forth with tithes to sell
But heaven is a wishing well.

Caldo! Gelo! Fear ye Hell!
But heaven is a wishing well.

*

Caldo I

Priest, before your tongue has spoken
Take your crucifix and cloak him
Underneath your foreign raiment
And your motive then proclaim.

Your majesty benevolent!
I bear a message heaven-sent
For your damnation to prevent
And life eternal to reclaim!

I ask you, priest, to spare me sermons
Here your dictums need determine
What my court can hope to gain
By joining ranks in your campaign.

Sovereignty will I retain
By joining ranks in your campaign?

My liege, you’ve guessed my origin
I represent the realm wherein
The faith is deep invested in
Taxation of the indigent;

The lords and wellborn there contrive
To have the masses paying tithes
For their salvation to attain
By joining ranks in our campaign,

And you can tax your whole domain
By joining ranks in our campaign!

Taxation is your first decree
And we collect a modest fee
For payment of a company
Of guards the order to maintain,

Then you will stand upon our wings
Of power, wrought of sovereign kings,
The lucre richening your reign
By joining ranks with our campaign.

Collection plates and creed ordained
By joining ranks with our campaign!

*

Caldo II

Then, with his purpose met, the priest
Commands his tired horses east,
To regions ripe to follow suit
And rulers not yet resolute.

One hand it takes to strike accords,
And make of nations willful wards.
One hand outstretched will see its pay,
But two hands does it take to pray.

The priest is paid a vast commission
From each sovereign land’s addition.
In his sleep he spies the gates,
But money cannot pay the fates

In dreams his vindication waits
But money cannot pay the fates.

One hand it takes to hold the fee
In specie for delivery,
But he who holds will rue the day,
For two hands does it take to pray.

One day the sun beats just for him,
And pangs of conscience burn his skin.
His guilt arises much too late,
For money cannot pay the fates.

A scanty storm won’t irrigate,
And money cannot pay the fates.

The priest falls into deep malaise,
And by the road his body lays
For hours turning into days,
No faith his ailment to abate.

A fever clutches at his head
While boils make his palms burn red.
He staggers to the city gates,
But money cannot pay the fates.

So heavy his collection plates,
But money cannot pay the fates.

*

Gelo I

Tell me while your father sleeps
From whom your marriage hand he keeps,
And at the risk of his indictment,
Show me favor in the night!

The eyes of barons, dukes and dons
And all we lowborn peasant pawns
Have found milady, shackles on
And wanting passion to requite.

The king, your father, makes us sweat
Upon his land, but he can bet
On rebels being made of men
For all can change by summer’s end.

On rebels being made of men
But all can change by summer’s end

But over you the rebels sigh
And bring their flutes and lyres nigh
To play until their cups run dry,
For you their anger circumvents.

I among them was beseechéd:
Climb until your walls I reachéd.
Find if you are foe or friend,
For all can change by summer’s end.

Find if you are foe or friend,
For all can change by summer’s end.

So to our sun I knelt and prayed,
And gen’rous sacrifice I made,
And with my bovine homage paid,
I climbed among the highland wind.

That wind inside the trees was stirred,
And in its whispering I heard
Of rebels being made of men,
That all will change by summer’s end.

Of rebels being made of men,
That all will change by summer’s end.

*

Gelo II

Your father feigns epiphany,
And cries unanswered litany,
And sends out his uncompromising
Servants for to proselytize.

A sacrilege has he asserted,
Having none of us converted:
Have our rightful gods deserted
For this heathen enterprise!

Abandoned we’d be by their power!
Given not the rain to flower
Or the sun to call our lord,
The darkness would be our reward.

Without the sun to call our lord,
The darkness would be our reward.

I was charged a war to render,
But mine eyes knew not your splendor!
Beauty’s made this rebel tender,
Apt my aim to reinvent.

So what, my splendid maid, pray speak
Thinks you of what your father seeks?
Do you believe the sun’s our lord,
And darkness will be our reward?

Do you believe the sun’s our lord,
And darkness will be our reward?

Dear rebel, I am faithful to
The gods and goddesses we knew,
And if I’m queen we’ll always do
The sacrifice the sun’s implored,

But if my father wills me wed
A nobleman of heathen head,
The heir will be a half-sin ward,
And darkness will be our reward!

The sun will cease to be our lord,
And darkness will be our reward!

*

Gelo III

I fear as well this bloodline fate,
Starvation of the pious state,
So I propose my rebel lady
That you not remain a maid.

If, in rebellion, love we shared
To bring into the world an heir
And raised him in the temple where
This sacrilege he could evade,

Then we could slay this growing beast,
Your predecessor and his priest,
And bounteous would be the land
For generations by your hand.

And bounteous would be the land
For generation by your hand.

Oh shocking infidelity!
The politics of cruelty!
Good rebel can you swear to me
That virtuous is your intent?

My oath is but a word to thee,
But swear I do on righteous knee
That bounteous will be the land
For generations by your hand.

That bounteous will be the land
For generations by your hand.

Then take me in insurgent sheets
And to your work I thou entreat:
To place upon my father’s seat
The produce of our parlous plan,

But always let me see your face
To show the truth in your embrace,
And bounteous will be the land
For generations by your hand.

And bounteous will be the land
For generations by your hand.

*

Gelo IV

Standing silent and abreast
The temple guards are not to rest
Amidst this storm of unrelenting
Indignation and dissent,

For now, unsanctioned by the king
The people form a battle ring,
And sacrifices do they bring
To stimulate the pyre’s scent.

For on the temple balcony,
A cross now on his livery,
While on his face a smile cracks,
The king sits counting up the tax.

The devil covering his tracks,
The king sits counting up the tax.

But with his daughter’s door neglected,
Bolted not and unprotected,
Scandal slips in undetected
With an ardor quite unbent.

Counting out his ample ration,
Knowing nothing of the passion,
Ignorant of zealous acts,
The king sits counting up the tax.

The devil covering his tracks,
The king sits counting up the tax.

How deeply past and future cleave
When rebel bodies interweave!
The lovers pushing to conceive
The future on their nail-scratched backs!

And with her chamber all but vacant
She, to fill the oath they’d taken
Shows him to the armor racks
The king still counting up the tax...

And he, unflinching, picks an axe
The king still counting up the tax.

*

Gelo: The Dawn

Nightjars bellow through the trees
Their predatory reveries
For those that toil in the twisting
Reeds that wade in morning mist,

Another summer night the guards
Have sung the verses of the bards
While thinking of the softly starred
Horizon and the maids they’ve kissed

But day invades to show the act!
They wake to find the temple sacked
And natives on the outer lawn
In eerie reverence for the dawn.

And scores of natives on the lawn
In eerie reverence for the dawn.

The sky was painted o’er with clouds
And through his gagging and his shroud
One guard invokes his faith aloud
But finds his hope and voice are spent.

The other cries in sharp disdain,
Rebellion does not bring the rain!
But all continued looking on
In eerie reverence for the dawn.

The silent natives looking on
In eerie reverence for the dawn.

Then unannounced the arrows arced
And with their vision growing dark,
The guardsmen spied a mighty barque
To sail them forth to Avalon.

The clouds that circled overhead
The dawn had softly tinted red.
They set to work with sickles drawn
In eerie reverence for the dawn.

Down to their fields with sickles drawn
In eerie reverence for the dawn.


* * *

Hey folks. I am up really early today. I'm starting this entry at 6:45AM. On a Saturday. I have things to do, but I think it will be nice for me to write a little before getting down to tass bracks.

A lot has come to pass since I last updated this sucka. (I wonder if the phrase "come to pass" has ever been used in the same sentence as the word "sucka" ...)

For those of you who don't know, which is probably very few of you at this point, I have recently acquired Adobe Audition and a new microphone. I have been spending a lot of time recently experimenting with the mic and discovering what different effects do to my vocal tracks. It's been satisfying to say the least, especially when I finished my arrangement of "The Freshman" by The Verve Pipe. I've had that arrangement in my head for a long while, but it's not really right for Acappology. It's stayed mostly in my head until now. I'm proud of how the arrangement turned out, but it is also clear to me when I listen to it that I have a lot of work to do to improve my arrangements. Also, a careful listen makes it very clear that I am not very experienced with mixing yet. These are among the reasons that I bought the mic in the first place.

A tangential result of all of this has been this realization: It is simply ridiculous that I haven't learned music theory. I worked on that a lot this week by plucking out chords on guitar and keyboard and by arranging songs one chord at a time. I guess I've known in my heart all along that it was more apathy than anything else that kept me from really moving forward in music theory. This week has been very productive in that way.

I'm beginning to think that I should be making music more than a hobby. It is clear to everyone around me and to myself that music is the only thing I'm truly passionate about. The question is am I willing to stop dead in my tracks and change my life's focus. I feel like I'm way behind in music, but I feel that if I truly focused on it I could catch up and begin to make some serious headway. As always, there are all sorts of different directions I could move in from where I am now.


Aca persists.

I have made a serious effort to be part of the solution in Acappology lately. The group is accomplishing more than I could ever have imagined (mostly toward the goal of recording), but in general people are more stressed out than in past semesters. I feel like next semester will be the semester during which Amy and I come into our own as co-directors. I hope everyone is willing to stick it out with us.

I still love Acappology. I love my Co-D, I love the music...

...and I love Kat Hale. I know Kat will read this at some point, and I want her to know that no matter how hard this semester has been in Acappology; watching Amy and I struggle and misdirect our frustration at times, I can't think of any friend I would rather be going through it with. Acappology will be cavernously empty without you, Kat, but I hope you will still hear and feel the echoes. I'm not sure if I have ever had a friend as true as you, and I don't think you need me to tell you that I refuse to exist without you in my life. Te adore.


Speaking of Acappology, our concert is tonight. When we sang "Hallelujah" this past rehearsal I was almost in tears. It took me an extra second to turn back around and face the group. It sounded the way we've always known it could, and I finally felt the emotion of the song just seeping out of every pore of every person. It is the kind of moment that validates the whole process. It is often hard to find moments like that during live performances because only in rehearsal can we really be equally secure about ourselves as individuals and about the group as a whole. Perhaps there are moments like that coming tonight. I hope so.

And now, the lyrics to "Gronlandic Edit" by Of Montreal...and the lyrics are almost as splendid as the music they're sung to:
(The surrealists were just)Nihilists with good imaginations/I am satisfied/Hiding in our friend's apartment/Only leaving once a day/To buy some groceries/Daylight, I'm so absent minded Nighttime meeting new anxieties/So am I erasing myself?/Hope I'm not erasing myself/I guess it would be nice to give my heart to a god/But which one, which one do I choose?/All the churches fill with losers, psycho or confused/I just want to hold the divine in mind/And forget all of the beauty's wasted/Let's fall back to earth and do something pleasant/We fell back to earth like gravity's bitches(Physics makes us all its bitches)/I guess it would be nice to help in your escape/From patterns your parents designed/All the party people dancing for the indie star/But he's the worst faker by far/But in the set, I forget all of the beauty's wasted/I guess it would be nice/Show me that things can be nice/I guess it would be nice/Show me that things can be nice/You've got my back in the city/You've got my back, 'cause I don't want to panic/You've got my back in the city/You've got my back, 'cause I don't want to panic

Yawp! F*cking YAWP!

I can't sleep right now. My throat hurts to bad that I can't really think about anything else.

I just need to write something, even if it is disjointed and makes no difference. It makes me feel human, I guess.

I'm thinking a lot about my future and how I seem to be moving away from all of the creative parts of my personality toward the mundane. I hate the idea that I could go through life without ever producing something truly remarkable, but I've set myself up for that very struggle. It's not too late, but man I've made it a lot harder.

I grew up in a town that seems to cling to inspiration and creativity as the ultimate purpose of humanity. I was taught that being innovative is more important than being popular, and this lesson became a part of me.

In the movie "Almost Famous," the character Lester Bangs refers to life as our "long journey to the middle." I thought a lot about this idea today as I wallowed in my sickness and watched old episodes of South Park online, and I will make it the working thesis for this entry.

I am having radical thoughts about my life right now. I am weighing options such as dropping out of school, joining the Peace Corps, learning to be a creative writer, joining a band, becoming part of an underground political movement, moving to Europe for good, and so on. I think apathy is what keeps me from doing these things more than logistics, along with a sense of duty to my parents and other people who have invested a good amount of energy into my current situation. As much as I hate being told I'm part of a group and that my dilemmas aren't unique, I know that there are lots of other students my age that are weighing these and other radical options with varying degrees of excitement.

The central theme of these thoughts is really nothing more than finding a way to stand on the rooftops of the world and sound off a cry: "I AM ME. I AM NOT CERTAIN OF WHO I AM, BUT I AM CERTAIN THAT I AM NOT YOU AND I AM NOT WHO YOU THINK I AM."

I just don't know what I want to be. It's eating at me every day and I can't figure it out. I am unremarkable and generally disinterested in all of my current options. Something needs to change soon.

Rain, Suckaz

UMMMM it's raining. I'm in the library again, but this time I'm soaked to the skin. I got caught in the deluge between my 8AM and 10:15 class. Sweet.

My dad sent me an email the other day with this John Adams quote in it:

• We think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact! There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny or doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations. In most countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or the rack, or the wheel. In England itself it is punished by boring through the tongue with a poker. In America it is not better; even in our own Massachusetts, which I believe, upon the whole, is as temperate and moderate in religious zeal as most of the States, a law was made in the latter end of the last century, repealing the cruel punishments of the former laws, but substituting fine and imprisonment upon all those blasphemers upon any book of the Old Testament or New. Now, what free inquiry, when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or imprisonment for adducing any argument for investigating into the divine authority of those books? Who would run the risk of translating Dupuis? But I cannot enlarge upon this subject, though I have it much at heart. I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human mind. Books that cannot bear examination, certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws. It is true, few persons appear desirous to put such laws in execution, and it is also true that some few persons are hardy enough to venture to depart from them. But as long as they continue in force as laws, the human mind must make an awkward and clumsy progress in its investigations. I wish they were repealed. The substance and essence of Christianity, as I understand it, is eternal and unchangeable, and will bear examination forever, but it has been mixed with extraneous ingredients, which I think will not bear examination, and they ought to be separated.
• Letter to Thomas Jefferson (1825-01-23), published in Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams (UNC Press, 1988), p. 607.

Thought I'd share that. Way to go John Adams.

I've had a really good week. I'm so proud of Acappology and our performance at Unity and I think Amy and I have a rock-solid plan for getting ready for our concert on November 17. There is a lot to be done but now that I've seen what our group can do when we're focused I'm really looking forward to it.

If you get a chance, pick up this week's copy of the Independent. It has an article in it about the end of the newspaper as a medium. It is interesting to say the least that the citizen journalist (blogger) is on the verge of usurping the attention of the masses. My favorite part of the article is the graphic on the fourth page that shows a cloud of blogs floating around (but not quite capturing) the truth. The idea that the internet is giving us the means to subscribe only to the opinions that we agree with is scary in its inevitability. The article comes across as somewhat left-leaning (in the INDY??? Say it ain't so!), blaming Rupert Murdoch and Fox News for the downfall of television news and predicting the inevitable downfall of The Wall Street Journal now that Murdoch is running it. I can't say I entirely disagree, but I do think that it's out of bounds to say that Fox News is the only sensationalist station on the air. I can't bear to watch CNN anymore because they are so much more focused on entertaining with shock and fluff than they are in actually reporting the pertinent news. Maybe if I ignore television news it will go away.

It is bloody freezing in here. I'm not drying fast enough.

My World Series predictions: if the Red Sox win two in Boston, they'll win the series. In fact, the only scenario in which I can see the Rockies coming out on top is if they win both games in Boston. At that point I think the momentum shifts significantly to Colorado when the Red Sox have no choice but to put their b-list pitchers on the mound for Games 3 and 4.

So, I'll say Boston in 6 games.

.....WAIT did I just predict that Boston would win the WS? FUCK that. Colorado in 5 games. That's my final answer, Regis.

A personal note to Travis Smith:
I don't know if you read my blog, but I miss you buddy. I hope you're doing well in Ireland and I can't tell you how jealous I am that you saw the Arcade Fire. Come back soon, we have a lot to talk about.

I guess that's all. I still have a long time until my 10:15 class.

Monday Morning

I'm sitting in the library between classes again and I think I am more awake than I've felt in a while. I slept hard last night after studying the Oedipus Cycle for an hour after rehearsal. My English 220 class is the most silent and unresponsive class I've ever been a part of. When the professor poses a question I often feel bad answering it because it is clear that some of the students are trying to sleep. I would rather it just be me and the two or three other people who care sitting in the corner with the professor while the other people sleep off their hangovers. Perhaps I'll pose this solution.

Basically, when it comes to English, I'm the shit.

Aaaand when it comes to having three BANGIN new arrangements done in time to melt some faces at the annual Unity Concert (Tonight, Monday, October 22, 7:00PM in Stewart Theatre), Acappology is the shit.

I know what you're all wondering. I can hear the question on the wind, "Sean, what do you think of Joe Torre's decision to leave the Yankees." Well, friends, it upsets me, but from Joe's perspective I can't say I disagree. The Yankees are making a big mistake not taking Joe back for another year. I have already made my reasons for this clear to a point in my last entry, but perhaps now I can lay out exactly how ridiculous the logic of this is. I promise to be brief (but I'm also a filthy liar).

Joe Torre managed the Yankees for 12 seasons. He reached the World Series 6 times. He won the World Series 4 times. He reached the postseason 12 times. That alone should be enough to get him whatever he wants in a contract. Joe Torre should have been able to leave on his own terms and go straight into retirement. Regardless of Joe's feelings and his boggling managerial success, however, there are factors here that make the Yankees' lackadaisical attempt at rehiring him more of a tragedy. Free agents Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera both said that they would likely leave the team if Joe Torre wasn't rehired. Let's think about this. In Jorge Posada you've got one of the most consistent defensive catchers in the league who, by the way, had the best offensive year of his career this season. In Mariano Rivera you have an absolute first-ballot Hall-of-Famer who still has three or four solid seasons in him. When these two players stated their position on the issue of Torre being rehired, that should have been all that the Steinbrenner family needed to keep Torre on. Instead, like Bernie Williams before them, Posada and Rivera are being told indirectly that they aren't worth the effort. That is disrespectful, and it makes me ashamed of my team. Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, Joe Torre...these are Yankees you should be building monuments to.

Another aspect of the debate is that Alex Rodriguez now has a reason to say "I want out." Even if he was already planning to opt out of his contract and pursue unprecedented riches from some other team, he can now say that he doesn't want to sign with a team that hasn't hired a manager. It's giving him an excuse to leave.

The solution: hire Joe Girardi. He was Posada's mentor when he was still a player, so Posada would play for him and he was Rivera's catcher in 1995 and '96 when he was just beginning to find his role as a short reliever. Oh yeah, and he also brought the Florida Marlins out of their role as the doormat of the NL East two years ago, making a collection of young individuals into a solid team in playoff contention. I think Girardi is the best candidate.

Bottom Line: Next year is the Yankees' last year in Yankee Stadium before they move next door into the new temple that George Steinbrenner and Co. have built for them. It is absolutely disgusting that Joe Torre will not be given the option of ushering in that new era of Yankee baseball. It is the same logic that got Yogi Berra fired in 1964 after losing the seventh game of the World Series, and it's the same logic that made Don Zimmer leave his role as Torre's first mate several years ago. It's the Steinbrenner code of conduct that makes the Yankees the most hated franchise in baseball, and it's sad that Yankee fans have to cling to the good to keep from being consumed by the bad.

Not brief. I care a lot about my Yankees.

Fuck the Red Sox. It's not fair for them to have the Patriots and the Red Sox. At least my NY Giants are winning.

Missing My Yankees

I'm not a perfect baseball fan. A perfect baseball fan never leaves their seat early, whether that seat is in a stadium or in their house. A perfect baseball fan watches games until the very last play. I am not perfect. However, I am a true baseball fan. And on nights like these, my true colors come out.

Tonight the Yankees played Game 4 of a series against the Cleveland Indians. They haven't lost yet as I'm writing this, but they just look awful. It has me reminiscing instead of watching.

There was a time when I was closer to a perfect fan. In 1996, I watched the New York Yankees win the World Series after losing the first two games at home against the defending champion Atlanta Braves. I watched in utter contempt as Andruw Jones became the youngest player ever to hit a home run in a World Series. I watched the Braves manhandle the Yankees, Yankees who I had just begun to call my Yankees. Then I watched my Yankees claw back in Atlanta, beating the team that every kid around me in school pulled for on their home field, including Jim Leyritz's home run in game 5 that may have been the best moment of my young baseball life.

That series was pure victory. That was a team with no superstars. The final ball wasn't caught by $250 million Alex Rodriguez, but Charlie Hayes. The final pitch wasn't thrown by $4 million per month Roger Clemens but by John Wetteland. The catcher that jumped into his arms wasn't Yogi Berra but Joe Girardi. This is the stuff that championships are made of. Those were my Yankees.

Several of my Yankees are still around. Jorge Posada is my Yankee. Mariano Rivera is my Yankee. Derek Jeter is every Yankee fan's Yankee. He represents not only the skill and talent of my Yankees but the class and poise as well. Two of the moments when I felt proudest to be a Yankee fan involved Derek Jeter's. The first was during the regular season last year in a June classic against Boston when he ran down a ball in foul territory from forty yards away and went crashing head-first into the stands. My Yankees lay out to get their catches. My Yankees bleed when necessary.

My second moment however, happened off the field. This past June, when the Yankees were 12 games behind Boston in the A.L. East and it looked as if Derek Jeter was destined to spend his first October in the big leagues sitting at home, a reporter asked him in an interview, "What are you going to do? What's the solution?" He looked upset at the question. He looked frustrated. His answer was forceful and clear, "We're going to keep playing. What do you expect us to do? Do you expect us to pack it up and forfeit the rest of the season? We're going to keep on fighting every single game." That is class. Some players point fingers, some OWNERS point fingers, but Derek Jeter makes a promise he can keep. Derek Jeter was a Yankee from the moment he swung a bat. Derek Jeter is a true champion. Derek Jeter is one of my Yankees.

And guess what, folks: Joe Torre is my skipper. You can say what you want to say about the Yankees, but Joe Torre is untouchable. He has defined success in a city that will cut you down if you're not successful. He not only won 4 championships with the Yankees and has NEVER MISSED THE POSTSEASON AS A MANAGER, but he also taught some of the raw talent on the Yankees how to handle the New York press; what it means to wear pinstripes.

The '96 team. The '98 team. The '99 team. The teams that won because players like Tino Martinez became unstoppable in the postseason. The teams that would get two men on in the bottom of the 8th and leave their fates in the hands of Paul O'Neil, their sinewy and self-critical right fielder who would ALWAYS come through in the clutch. Those teams were my Yankees.

The 2007 Yankees are just...the Yankees. They are what everyone accuses them of being: bought, passionless, distracted and rich. They are not my Yankees, they are truly George Steinbrenner's Yankees. Each of these players are working for a boss who is completely inept as to the true needs of his team, but is so desperate to lay the blame elsewhere that he would fire one of the truest champions currently in pinstripes. He would fire Joe Torre despite the fact that the Yankee manager led his team to the postseason for the 11th STRAIGHT YEAR by leapfrogging 10 separate teams to win the Wild Card.

Why can't the Yankees win? The answers are easy to come by. They have no bullpen. They have an inconsistent starting rotation. They have a player who is worth more money than some franchises that is simply unable to hit after September 30th. What the Yankees truly lack, however, and what distinguishes them from my Yankees is that they have no passion. Passion wins championships.

My father tells the story of a pair of UNC football fans that had been sitting in front of us for 5 years at the Carolina football games. At one point in a particularly futile game against Furman, the old man stood up slowly with his alumni association sweater and an almost sarcastic "Beat Furman" pin, beckoned to his white-haired wife with a Carolina blue bow in her hair and declared to the crowd "Well, we don't usually give up on them...but they have...so we will." They never came back. A true fan can sense when their team is deflated. The air feels heavy even if the team is hundreds of miles away. The anger wells inside you as your team taps lazy fly balls into the outfield. A true fan can feel it when their team is no longer playing the game.

I haven't ever truly understood that feeling until tonight. I am not ready to pack up my Yankee gear. It's too big a part of who I am, and I would feel incomplete without it. However, I am beginning to wonder if the Yankees will ever again truly be my Yankees.

Under his coat they say there are Wings

OK, let's talk about music.


Time to give Tom Waits a true listen.

I want to growl and still make music. That seems like fun. It's going to take me a long time to truly understand Tom, as I can tell already by listening to just the first two songs of Bone Machine. I'll get back to you.

October
It's supposed to be getting colder outside, and even though it isn't doing so yet, it's still time to bid goodbye to summer music for a while. This doesn't mean not listening to this music for 6 months, it just means that this music probably won't pop up in my head as good mood music in the middle of winter.

The Pixies
The Pixies were first recommended to me by my freshman-year suitemates while I was visiting them in their hometown of Wilmington, NC. I had heard of The Pixies and later discovered that I had heard a lot of their music already, but I didn't own an album. On Greg Anderson's recommendation I bought Surfer Rosa at the first record shop that we entered in downtown Wilmington. He said that it was a great album to listen to on the way to beach (and since he is from Wilmington I figured his opinion on this matter was trustworthy). Instead I listened to it on the way back from the beach, but the effect was the same. To say that I loved it right away would be useless because most of my first listening experience was spent realizing that I had heard most of it before. That being said, I loved it. Listening to Surfer Rosa is like listening to the distorted wet dream of every punk-ish group ever. Beautiful shouting, beautiful crashing. Overall, just beautiful noise. Not the way in which Yo La Tengo is beautiful noise, but an entirely different kind of organized loudness that you can turn way up and enjoy with the windows open on the highway. The songs sound like they are ten minutes old; as if the band waited for the moment when the song was ripe, snatched it off the vine and recorded it before it turned to mush. When I got back I mentioned the album to the person I consider to be my own personal music service, Will Halman. He said something along the lines of "Fuck yeah, The Pixies man!" After a moment of discussion I believe he said something along the lines of "You should listen to Doolittle. It's different, but just as satisfying if not more." He burned it for me and my summer long love affair with The Pixies was underway.

I'm listening to Tom while I'm writing all of this, and it's making me seasick.

The Flaming Lips
I can't seem to remember the exact moment when I was introduced to The Flaming Lips. If any of you would like to claim credit for introducing me to them, please feel free. Regardless, I know that there was a moment when Will Halman and Ben Sweezy and I were sitting around somewhere and they mentioned the Flaming Lips. I said I hadn't heard them and there was an outcry.

haha "Some say he once killed a man with a guitar string." nice Tom Waits.

What I do remember is that I listened to Yoshimi battles the Pink Robots before I listened to Soft Bulletin. I remember this because when I actually talked to Will and Ben about this they said that Soft Bulletin was a better album...but I couldn't see how it could get better than Yoshimi. The Flaming Lips seem to do a balancing act (probably unintentionally) between accessibility and inaccessibility. For example, if you turned on Yoshimi at a party, you probably wouldn't get through the first few tracks without someone saying, "What the hell is this?" Then there would be the inevitable request for you to "turn it down a little" during the second part of Yoshimi's battle (when bass becomes robot growling and treble becomes screaming dissonance). You probably wouldn't get as far as "Do You Realize?" This is unfortunate because "Do You Realize" is the most accessible song on the album and contains one of the moments when The Flaming Lips dive deep into your consciousness and start dancing around. "Instead of saying all of your goodbyes/ let them know you realize that life goes fast/ it's hard to make the good things last/ you realize the sun doesn't go down/ it's just an illusion caused by the world spinning 'round." KEY CHANGEEEE!!!! DOO YOUUU REALIIIIIIZE aaaaahhhhAAAHHHHHahhhhhh Fabulous. After hearing that I didn't believe that Soft Bulletin could be better. Buuuuuuut it is. In Will's words, it's a "boggling masterpiece." To a sound engineer (which I am not by any stretch), it is a stupendous adventure. To the civilian, it is dynamic, sweeping and luminous. There is a wild and twisting entrance of three-part harmony at the beginning of "Buggin'-(Remix)" that made me smile like a fool on the bus the first time I heard it.

..........

Tom is finished. I don't know all of what he's saying yet, so I can only really react on a gut level. Listening to this album I have a constant image of a bottle of hard liquor almost empty and discolored with tobacco backwash next to an ashtray full of wet cigarette butts. The lights are dim, not for atmosphere but because the darkness is less judgemental. The table is marked with aged scrawling from pocket knives and burns from the lighters of bored patrons waiting for Tom to growl them all into a stupor. Splendidly morose.

Time for class!

And the Anchorperson on TV goes La dee da de daa

I want winter. Badly. I want it to be cold so that I can wear my stylish heavy blazer(s).


Recently I have become very interested in some of the conspiracy theories that are currently gaining (or have already gained) wide popularity in the video-blogger community.

Stumbleupon.com has been my source for many of these videos (as well as a lot of other entertaining clips). This website does a fairly good job of showing what the liberal extreme is discussing through nothing more than random videos that a user has tagged as "political" in nature.

My favorite conspiracies:

1)
A government geologist by the name of Paul Schneider was videotaped in 1995 giving a lecture in which he reveals some very frightening government secrets. He very casually states that the population at large is only given approximately 5% of the truth while about 95% of what the government is engaged in is secret. He talks about the New World Order and the idea that we have for more than a century been in contact with extraterrestrial beings that have essentially been governing the world into oblivion. His discussion of aliens aside, he also makes some very interesting revelations regarding 131 underground bases in the United States (and by underground I mean a mile below the surface) that are connected by an elaborate system of tunnels. I would not have given these claims my attention at all if the video had not been introduced with a message about how Schneider had been "terminated" very soon after making this video. He also mentions in his lecture that there had been 13 attempts on his life in the months leading up to the video and that they started very soon after he began speaking openly about the work he did for the government.

Here's the video: http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=kh0xxja4nn Let me know what you think!


2)
There is more and more evidence piling up that we have not gotten the whole truth about 9/11. Now, skeptics of the Iraq War have been saying all along that 9/11 was used as a tactic to get us into the war in Iraq. However, these conspiracy theorists are taking it a step further and saying that the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon were "inside jobs" perpetrated by the U.S. government.

Their evidence is interesting, whether or not it is credible. They put a lot of focus on the manner in which the buildings fell, saying that their collapse was almost impossibly perfect and resembled a "controlled demolition." They also go into a great deal of detail about the plane that hit the South Tower (that is, the only plane we have reasonable pictures of) and how it has many of the markings of a military plane (specifically, a large protrusion on the underside that is not present on commercial airliners).

I recommend the website http://911scholars.org/ as a good jumping-off point to learn more about this.

HAVING SAID THESE THINGS, however, I want to check myself. There are aspects of these conspiracies that make perfect sense, but it is very hard for me to be objective if you consider that this is EXACTLY what I want to hear.

I don't have much to say about the Schneider lecture. I just thought it was interesting that he was killed so soon after he spoke out. As for 9/11 being an inside job: A part of me REALLY wants to believe that we are living in a country where the government values its people above all other things. However, there is also a part of me that knows that the entity we refer to as "the government" is not in any way trustworthy. It is common knowledge that it is not in the government's best interests to make their full military and scientific capabilities known to the public. Some would say that the people are safer without that knowledge because although individually we have intellect and the capacity to rationalize, collectively we are fickle and frightened.

Why would the government kill its own civilians in order to begin a war? Well, clearly there are lots of reasons why the government would consider 3000 American lives a negligible price to pay for a greater victory. Isn't that the principle that governs war in the first place? The only difference is that the people in the WTC were civilians, not enlisted soldiers.

If we go on the assumption that 9/11 was an inside job, then the parallels that Bush has drawn between himself and FDR become ironically credible. It is often theorized that FDR did not stop the attack on Pearl Harbor when he had the chance because a large-scale war was the only thing that could bring the nation out of The Great Depression. In the process, FDR unified the nation in a way that has not been seen since, creating a powerful patriotism marching against the Nazis (perhaps the only enemy to America since the end of the Civil War that was truly worth fighting).

In 2001, the Bush administration was facing a nation that was staunchly divided on almost every political issue in the wake of one of the most contentious elections in the history of democracy. Al Gore was sent packing with a dual misfortune: He was not only the last credible member of the Clinton administration, but he was to be, and is to this day, the last truly electable candidate to come out of the Democratic Party. A large percentage of the nation was skeptical and a large percentage of the nation was angry. The Bush administration was DESPERATE for something to rally the people. They needed an absolute evil to give the public something to agree on. In addition, they needed a way to justify claiming a share of Iraqi oil and they needed a way to once-and-for-all vindicate themselves for not taking Saddam Hussein out of power in the first Gulf War.

The solution: A terrorist attack on the ultimate symbols of American power. A plane hijacking thousands of feet in the air where there are no witnesses. An explosion of flame in the top third of the tallest buildings in New York City where no one can see from the windows of neighboring buildings. An explosion so big and a collapse so comprehensive that no independent investigation could possibly have been conducted. OH WAIT, we did find one of the terrorists' passports among the STEEL THAT HAD BEEN TURNED TO DUST. Boy, that was lucky that of the millions and millions of sheets of paper that were incinerated in the collapse of 500,000 tons of steel we found a passport condemning a foreigner.

Also, why would Osama Bin Laden have claimed responsibility for the attacks? It seems like a pretty major tactical error if you're a rogue terrorist organization trying to maintain control in an unstable nation to SLAP A POLITICAL GIANT IN THE FACE and then say "this is what I look like, this is why I did it, you are all infidels and should be killed, COME AND GET ME."

I think it is more likely that Osama Bin Laden was paid off to claim responsibility for the attacks and then sell out his subordinates to make it look like we were getting close to him. I'm asking you, reader, do you really think that the United States was incapable of catching Osama Bin Laden? How many people would have had to screw up in succession in our military to let the man who SENT US A VIDEO OF HIMSELF get away? We can see our fucking DOGS playing in our yards from SPACE on Google Earth, but our entire government can't locate Osama Bin Laden? I just don't believe it. It simply isn't true. Osama Bin Laden is sitting somewhere on a beach counting his American dollars and contemplating getting them exchanged for Euros or Chinese yuan.

What I'm saying is that I am willing to believe that the government is responsible for 9/11. My knowledge of history, my political persuasion, my eyes and my ears all seem to be telling me so. The only forces that are telling me otherwise are the press (which could be a) just as much in the dark as I am or b) paid off not to ask questions) and my own sense of decency (which has no place in modern public policy).

IF THERE'S ONE THING I'M SURE OF, IT IS THAT DEMOCRACY IS DRIVEN BY DISSENT AND DOUBT. GET IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT OR BE CONTENT TO LET OTHERS DETERMINE YOUR DESTINATION.

Another post for me

Things went freakin crazy since my last update.

My week's end and weekend felt like one terrible run-on sentence that just couldn't seem to find a period.

i found out i had a flat tire Wednesday night before Aca rehearsal where we met with the guy who will be helping us record our album and i got mad because i was stressed out and i snapped at one of my group members and felt really bad about it and that feeling combined with a series of dizzy spells on Thursday probably derived from pure exhaustion made me feel like this weekend was going to have to be a restful one.

ummmmm.......

that didn't happen instead i changed my flat tire to a spare and drove faster than i should have on a spare tire to work where i stayed from 4 til midnight on Friday night and came home blown out but caffeinated so i didn't get as much sleep as i needed then i worked from 10:30 til 9 on Saturday when i was only supposed to work until 4 but they asked me to do a hosting shift since they were down to only one host and i agreed to do it as long as i was out by 8 but i wasn't instead i was out around 9 and got back to Raleigh at 9:45 when i began texting people about what was happening that evening even though once again i should have simply gone to sleep but no! instead i stayed up til 5 having a good time but apparently being somewhat of a douche to my friends and making some bad choices along the way that i wasn't confronted about until the next evening after another grueling 6 hour shift at the restaurant and an Aca practice that now seems like a blur.

The results: I slept from 11PM on Sunday night until 5PM on Monday evening. I felt like shitwarmedover when I woke up, but still managed to get myself organized and take a careful look at the casualties of my debauchery. I extended apologies to people that were mad at me on Saturday night, and I think no matter how adamant I am about blaming my stupidity on booze, it's clear that I need to take a break and rethink what is important to me in my social life. That doesn't mean not partying or not drinking, it just means being more mindful of others while doing so.

Things are better now.

Let's


Go


Yankees NYNYNYNYNYNYNYNYNY

By Land, By Sea, By Dirigible

I'm sitting in the library between classes and I decided to take this opportunity to update this sucker.

I haven't written in a while because I haven't really had anything to say. This has been a wild but rewarding year thus far and I feel that a lot of it is going smoothly because of a few key people in my life who are keeping me sane.

1) My roommates. The three of us have really hit it off as roommates mostly because we are all fairly relaxed individuals when it comes to living arrangements. The communal nature of our refrigerator has been an issue of contention, mostly when it comes to Miller Highlife. Ji Wei has the unfortunate position of being the only person who is 21, so we depend on him for our beer fix. Good thing he's a party animal.

Zach has been a great source of new music as always and has also served as a great voice of reason when I get stressed out about Aca stuff. Ji Wei is a source of constant entertainment, declaring his pimphood in loud outbursts at irregular intervals. Our fourth roommate, James, although he exists, is more of a ghost than a person so far. I haven't been in the apartment at the same time as him very often, so I haven't really gotten to know him as well as Ji Wei has. He certainly hasn't been a problem.

2) Amy. I couldn't have asked for a better co-director. We are accomplishing so much in Acappology right now that I'm somewhat dumbfounded by it. We have three new arrangements already and have auditioned soloists for them. Amy is as solid as a rock when it comes to organizational matters (a quality which I do not share), so we've been helping keep one another sane through the logistical tempest that is Aca. Also, the songs sound phenomenal. I hope the group continues to be as focused and willing to work as they have been thus far.

3) The cast of ManStrokeWoman. Go to www.tv-links.co.uk. Download. Watch. You will be glad you did.

4) Sam Adams. Thank you, Sam, for your glorious Octoberfest. If only it was cheaper.


As for the state of the world, I am simply weary of the Iraq debacle. I know that I have made my arguments time and time again about this war, but now I feel that even the Democrats have been failing me. I know that the situation is not easy to solve, but I am just so tired of it. I don't want to write about that. I want to write about music.

I dig The Decemberists. Their most recent album, The Crane Wife, is simply gorgeous. I have heard it so many times now that I can feel the next song coming in the silence between tracks. After seeing them perform most of it live, I can feel the live performance when I listen to it. There's a moment in the track "The Crane Wife 1 and 2" when I can remember the audience standing up for the first time. It just lifts you out of your contemplations, out of your solemnity, and out of your seat. Imagine white lights hitting you from the stage as the cymbals announce a new movement. The band has been on stage playing for half an hour, dressed like late 19th Century bankers on their Sunday stroll. But in the transition from the first verse to the second, as the acoustic sets a stepping beat, they light the spherical lanterns hanging from the rafters to proclaim that the night has just begun. It makes my hair stand on end.

New music: Stars. Zach introduced me to these Canadian baroque pop-rockers, and they are damn good. I have plans to go to their concert on October 26. I also have plans to listen to albums other than NightSongs.

Awesome old music: Franki Valli and the Four Seasons. I went through a few months where I listened to the Jersey Boys soundtrack a lot in my car (since it was the only CD I had), and I thought the guy who played Franki Valli was impossibly good. Now, I've listened to the original songs a few times over and Franki Valli himself was simply better. A message to Coldplay: listen to Franki Valli. That's how you use falsetto.

Now, it's time for me to go to class. Perhaps I will use this hour to update more often. We'll see.

(don't tell anyone, but the Yankees are only 2.5 games out of first place. Shhhhhh.)

Rusty Blog

The summer is winding down. The last few weeks have been fairly smooth. I've met some really cool people in summer school recently (some of whom have made me wonder why I wasn't hanging out with them during first session...).

As for the world, I've been disconnected. I haven't been keeping up with the news very much at all, partially because I haven't made time to read the newspaper and partially because I am somewhat disgruntled with the constant election coverage more than a full year before we vote. This is the period in which the two parties gauge the views of the people and figure out how best to convince those people that their intentions will be executed (even though none of the candidates has any chance of being an ideal candidate). There is so much bullshit being flung around right now that I feel like I should be crawling on my hands and knees.

I've been a bit frustrated recently as several people in my life have made me promises that they've failed to keep and as summer idleness has turned into summer weight-gain. I think I can turn things around once school starts up, mostly because I'll be in a new apartment with roommates that I think will be very helpful in keeping my life fairly calm. At least my grades are still good.

I have a new tattoo! Most people's reaction so far: "Wow, that's big." I guess a first tattoo is supposed to be small and out of the way? If that's the case, then I continue to laugh in the face of convention.

Pictures are here: http://ncst.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2130277&l=7e912&id=11816779

Another long link. Crazy Internet.


So this summer has served its purpose. I have managed to not fail. I am going back into school with some good grades under my belt and with a lot of new friends that I hope will make this coming fall my best semester yet at NCSU. I'm looking forward to it. In fact, I'm itching, nay, downright aching, pining, and thirsting for it.

Aside: Does anyone want to go to the gym with me this semester around 1:00 on MWF? That seems like the best time for me to do it and I would like to get something regular going (even though that has been my intention for almost my entire life).

I plan on writing here more. We'll see.

Not much happening

Good Morning!

This month has been boring. Not much going on. Let's see if I can scrap together an entry, just to knock the rust off of this blog.

Ok, first thing's first. The Yankees. What the hell? Can we just trade our bullpen for some other team's bullpen? Like, say, the 1998 Yankees bullpen? The offense will come around, but I can't see how a team with as much money as the Yankees have can't put together a bullpen four years in a row. Maybe I'll write a letter to The Boss to that effect.

I am pretty happy with my life right now. I think I have pulled things together nicely since leaving school, and I'm pretty much aching to get back to academia. I caught up on Harry Potter, and I hate the person that told me how the 6th book ends before I read it (although I can't remember who it was that told me...). Shame on you, nameless spoiler.

I have been reading Barack Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope." So far I think he has taken the most logical stance on how to fix the American political atmosphere and make it conducive to actually governing the country, but I am still hoping for some more specific policy ideas. I like his style though, and so far he has my vote. He seems like an extremely intelligent, down-to-earth man, but I think he will have to overcome a lot to get through the primaries a year from now. I'm reluctant to throw any major support his way right now considering how easily a candidate can be felled this early in the game.

I'm glad that the Bush White house is winding down though. Bush is finally showing signs that he understands how unwilling the nation is to listen to the same story over and over again when it comes to Iraq. He hasn't actually done anything about it except subtly change his rhetoric, but at least he is no longer trying to be a superpresident. Congress is clearly distancing themselves from him, and that is a good thing. Perhaps the Republican candidate in the next election will actually make me think. I still harbor some centrist, moderate ideas in some realms of policy, so maybe someone like Giuliani could make my decision a little harder if he continues to be socially liberal and doesn't give in to the Christian Right. We've still got a year until the primaries. Things will change a lot between now and then.

I had more to write about this morning, but I can't seem to wrap my head around anything. I'm distracted by the fact that summer school is looming on the other side of this weekend. Wish me luck. I'll be abiding in 316C Bragaw, hopefully by myself. We'll see if I get a roommate assigned in the next 3 days.

Has anyone heard any good new music lately that they want to send my way? I've been listening to old stuff lately (Pet Sounds and Blood on the Tracks, mostly) and I would love to hear something new.

Boy am I up early

Let's see. What things of note happened this week?

The nation reacted in predictable ways to the Va Tech shootings. I don't think I've ever been at a loss for words the way I was on Monday at work, while Fox News repeated the same gruesome details over and over again. I'm not picking on Fox News, but network news in general. A New York Times article the next day made a really good point about the network news coverage. It's as if we have a protocol now for how to cover a school shooting. The I-Report link for CNN was lit up, every reporter and news anchor had their own thing to say about it, and even the Fox News graphics department only took about an hour to have a flashing "Campus Massacre" graphic to intro each of their various segments.

I think the main thing that haunts me about this particular act is the proximity to my own life. I have friends who know people who died, and being 2 degrees removed from this sort of tragedy is a strange feeling. It just feels so much closer than Columbine, which I was too young to grasp, and any of the mass killings around the globe since then (Baghdad, Darfur, Madrid, Chechnya, Madrid, London, etc.) that I felt no personal connection to. I don't think I really have anything else of value to say about this, so maybe I should just shut up. I hope my cynicism doesn't offend anyone.

Onward. The Supreme Court is on the move!!! The Christian Right is seeing the glory of the coming of the Roberts Court! In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court voted to outlaw partial-birth abortions. As much as I am pro-choice, I have to admit that I agree with this decision. This is a practice that should not have to persist in today's medical world. However, the implications of this vote do not sit as well with me. Naturally this is the first time that Bush's appointments in the court have been felt so directly, not to mention the absence of Sandra Day O'Connor. Read this article if you want the details:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/washington/19scotus.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&emc=th&adxnnlx=1177154533-3Tk6FHBPeNb1fy4Ov6r3uA

Wow, that's a long link. Crazy-ass internet. Anyway, I still don't think Bush will be able to keep his election promises to the Christian Right, but we may feel the reverberations of his appointments for a long time.

Hey everyone, it's baseball season! Don't you smell that freshly cut grass (not that kind of grass. 4-20 was yesterday). Baseball makes me so happy. My family has ordered MLB Extra Innings again, which means at least one TV in my house will be devoted to baseball every day until the end of October. I love it. Maaaaahhhhhh I love it so much.

Alex Rodriguez. FUCK YEAH A-ROD. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK.

Boston sure had on some ugly uniforms last night. Boston sure had on some ugly faces last night. I love to hate you, Boston. Don't ever change.

Brooks Peel and I are not giving up hope on YOUR Pittsburgh baseball Pirates. Jason Bay, keep on fighting my comrade! We shall see victory yet!

Will someone please break Barry Bonds. Just break him. Use a crowbar or a golf club or a light saber. Just break him. He represents everything that I hate about modern baseball. He's dumb as a post, beefy and self-laudatory, not to mention doped up and artificial, but he's going to hold the most coveted record in American sports. Not cool, Barry. In the words of the Philadelphia Phillies fans last year, "Ruth did it on hot dogs and beer, Aaron did it with class."

That's all for today. I have a long time before I go to work. How about some laundry?

A post for me

Those of you who know me well probably already know that I had a terrible weekend. The details aren't important nor are they appropriate for this blog, but let's just say I learned a lot about myself all at once. Chapel Hill has once again become a source of sadness for me more than it is a source of joy. My presence here is a constant reminder of what I have not accomplished that I could have.

In the end, it has given me good reason to set into motion the various changes in my life that will have to occur in order for me to be successful during the summer. For those of you that don't know, I am headed back to NCSU for summer school. I will be taking a full load in both sessions. I am currently completely mentally unprepared for this task.

That's fine. That's what Monday is for. Resolve. Discipline. Momentum. Maybe I'm really ready this time. One day at a time.

So here I go. I'm standing on the edge of another affirmation. Another promise to myself. This may be my last chance to pull things together. Let's see what I have in me.

Listening to the thunderstorm and thinking...

I think it’s about time I write down some thoughts on my own spirituality. For years I have been saying that I am agnostic, that I am of the opinion that nothing is certain and therefore nothing is worth believing. I’m not sure if I ever put it in those words, but that’s essentially what I’ve tried to convince myself of. I suppose I am still agnostic in some respects: I don’t presume to know what will happen to me once I die nor do I presume to know the reason for my existence. I still believe that little is certain, but I am becoming more certain of aspects of my own spirituality.

First of all, I have become convinced of the existence of a higher power and my connection to it. As one might expect, no one event brought me to this conclusion, but rather a series of occurrences and a lot of sporadic contemplation of these occurrences. I simply cannot take the ineffably beautiful life that I have been given to be a cosmic accident. Many aspects of spirituality defy logic, but it also defies logic to think that the complex wonder of the human mind came from a random alignment of chemicals.

I believe that religion sprang out of the human mind when it became capable of contemplating its own existence. There is nothing less discoverable than human origin and human destination, and yet humanity has spent its entire existence trying to obtain a definitive answer. I propose a blissful neutrality. If every person on earth would accept that they do not know the meaning of life and will not ever know the meaning of life then we as a human race could get down to the aspects of the human condition that we can control. If I were to affirm my faith in a higher power, the first point of my affirmation would be that none of our beliefs about our purpose on this earth have any more substance to them than anyone else’s. The next point would be that the only way humans will achieve the spiritual peace that we all seek is to accept that life is too beautiful to be explained.


So I suppose that if I am waging a religious war, then my enemy is spiritual certainty. The human mind is not designed to find the truth and then stay put forever. The human mind is designed to walk around the edge of truth, look at it from different angles, different distances, and at different times of day to see how the shadows hit it. Just when you think you know what it's all about, that is the time when your mind should tell you that stagnation is the enemy. Think again. The people who are absolutely certain of things that cannot be proven in this world are the people I can't seem to get anywhere with. Ironically, I feel that I am simply not open-minded enough to accept "blind faith" as justification for action. When it comes to organized religion, most faith is blind. Don't kid yourself and don't tell me to play along. I can open my mind to a lot of things, but indoctrinated closed-mindedness is not one of them.

The bottom line is that I do not live in a Christian country. I live in a country where the state is separate from the church and the people are free to think what they want as long as they do not infringe upon the freedom of others. Right?

Great Gig in the Sky?

Ok Nick Drake. I get it. You were a fantastic musician with a really fucked up personal life. You were shy to the point of being dysfunctional in a profession where shyness is preyed upon. I still love your music and I still wish you could have written more. Some of the songs on "Five Leaves Left" make me want to sit down with you at a coffee shop or something and ask you how you think things are going to turn out. I want to ask you whether it's alright with you for me to play "Day is Done" at my funeral.

I want to ask you if God exists. You'd be an interesting person to hear the ultimate truth of existence from. You clearly weren't convinced about the afterlife when you wrote "Day is Done," but since then you have actually gotten the answer.

I hope that on whatever plane of existence we ascend or descend to after we die, if any, there is a concert hall where all the great musicians of history get together and play the material they've written in the years after they died, and some renewed versions of their earthly material.

Marvin Gaye would perform "God is Love" in a completely different way, slowing it down and choking and wincing a little bit every time he sings the word "father." It would make the transition into "Mercy Mercy Me" sound simultaneously labored and obvious. The ecology will reach a different level of nostalgia for the audience as they recall the world as they knew it.

Jeff Buckley could derive new meaning from every single song on "Grace." He'll climb on stage with his father and just let loose. Maybe his father will add some sweeping harmonies with his voice, filling in the massive and gorgeous chords that Jeff always left slightly open. I'm sure John Bonham will be happy to play drums if they can pull him away from his conversation with Buddy Rich. Maybe halfway through the performance Nina Simone and Leonard Cohen would join Jeff on stage so that they could do "Lilac Wine" and "Hallelujah" with unimaginable power. More likely, however, they would just let the structure crumble and call upon the communal spirit of music that connected them all in the first place until everyone in the hall couldn't help but cry. It will be a tough performance, considering that many of the questions that Jeff poses about our spiritual origins and destination on "Grace" will have been answered (sooner than he could have guessed). If that is the case, I'm sure Jeff will agree that there's no better time to ask some new questions and search the fretboard for the answers.

I could write a book about this. I had better stop before I get in too deep.

I'm sitting in Open Eye trying to think of a reason to get out of this chair.

We can think with two heads

I'd really like to hear recordings or watch videos of me singing karaoke when I'm drunk. I want to know if my sense of pitch and timing actually improves as much as I feel like it does.

My voice is back! And by that I mean that the 5-6 full notes that I had lost off of my full-voice high range have returned heartily and have brought with them about 4 notes of head voice that I am not used to having. With all the driving I do (to work, from work, to Raleigh, from Raleigh, to 503C N. Greensboro St and from 503C N. Greensboro St), it's no wonder my range is improving. I sing in the car. I mean I really really sing in the car. It's not good for my voice because it's difficult to achieve full breath support in a seated position, but that hasn't stopped me. I have gotten to the point where I really don't care about people watching me from other cars. In fact, sometimes I make eye contact with them while I am singing. This freaks them out a little and they turn away. Whatever. They all do it too, just not as conspicuously.

Is it just me, or are there a lot of cute girls coming out of the woodwork? I've met some pretty awesome ladies in the last few weeks. Thanks ladies, for being cute and awesome.


Ok, here's the issue I want to address today: at what point does a man expressing physical attraction for women (not a woman, mind you, but women in general) take the jump from playful to disrespectful?

The reason I pose this question: I work in a restaurant. A lot of pretty girls come into this restaurant to eat, and the male waiters tend to talk very openly about girls they find attractive. I am very careful not to turn the conversations dirty every time, and in fact I rarely am the catalyst of dirty conversations. I usually say something like "The girl at table 12 is cute." The word "cute" can be replaced by other words (pretty, gorgeous, smokin, bangin, etc.) showing the degree of my personal attraction to the girl in question. I personally don't think that any of these words imply any kind of disrespect for that girl. As a waiter I am not in a position to converse with every good looking girl that comes into the building, and thusly I cannot be blamed for basing my attractions entirely on looks.

All of this seems fairly obvious to me. Yet I am still chastised by some female members of the staff for being so shallow. These girls seem to think that I am incapable of seeing past looks when it comes to relationships and that I am therefore some sort of horny pig. The way I see it, judging coworkers on their behavior at work, especially at a job like waiting tables, is in itself very shallow. But beyond that, I think men are entitled to a little bit of banter about the opposite sex without being assumed to be womanizers. Being attracted to a girl physically does not speak to my willingness to pursue that girl any more than not finding a girl physically attractive speaks to my unwillingness to pursue her.

I am not ignoring, however, the double standard that plagues women in this society, especially in these situations. I may be in the minority when I say that it would take a lot more than a girl telling me what guys she's attracted to in the restaurant for me to think that she's some sort of sex addict. I guess what I'm really saying is that the ability of a man to be sensitive and respectful and the ability of a man to be lustful are not mutually exclusive. As with most such issues, the majority of men are somewhere in the middle. It's not fair to assume that each man is on one extreme or the other.

If any girls are reading this, I'd love to hear some feedback. (and I'd love to have your phone number too. We could have some chicken, maybe some sex...you know...see what happens.)

Taking off the Training Wheels

What do the Democrats want?

According to the Senate's vote yesterday, the Democrats want to bring home combat troops from Iraq by March 31, 2008. However, I'm not sure if they really want to be responsible for the results of that proposal. I sure wouldn't.

Here is this morning's BBC article about Bush's rather unsurprising and underwhelming response:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6504105.stm


The dialogue between the parties has been so frustrating lately that I can't really decide where I stand on this war. I can't believe that the Democrats have set themselves up for failure again by taking the opposite extreme from the Bush administration. When I say failure, I'm talking about the 2008 presidential election.

Let me go on record with my prediction right now, but let me preface it with one of Bush's quotes from the article:

"If Congress fails to pass a bill to fund our troops on the front lines, the American people will know who to hold responsible."

Congress (aka, The Democrats). The Democrats will be responsible. Bush is doing what American politicians do best; he is spinning this thing from the very beginning so that his party comes out on top. My prediction: If Congress stops funding the war and Iraq collapses, the Republicans will find a way to blame the whole disaster on the Democratic Congress, and will win the 2008 election by spinning the whole thing just as Bush did above.


My prediction, however, is nullified by the fact that this bill isn't going to pass anyway. I believe Bush will veto this one (rather than bypassing the veto process with signing statements as he has done unrelentingly so far), and there is not a chance in hell that Congress will find a 2/3 majority to overturn the veto.

So we will be back to square one. The Democrats will go back to the drawing board and try to plot their next attack, encouraged by the fact that Senate actually took formal action against the war (fruitless though it may have been). They will continue to act as if the political momentum is on their side, even though that attitude is exactly what made them lose an impossible-to-lose election in 2004. The Senate Republicans will go back to their side and argue about who they should support for their party's presidential nomination (which is another way of saying "Who among us wants to inherit this DISASTER of a war and try to justify our persistence in the Middle East to an intensely skeptical voting public?").

Meanwhile President Bush and Vice President Cheney will continue to make speeches in which they talk about Iraq as if it is a child learning to ride a bike without training wheels. "Come on Iraq, you can do it, I've got you!" But the problem is that Iraq is learning to ride a bike on a gravel road...full of potholes...filled with insurgency explosives. And as we run behind them holding onto them and keeping them stable we step in the potholes ourselves, gradually losing our will (and our limbs) while our congress...ahem...I mean our conscience keeps telling us that maybe Iraq doesn't want to learn to ride a bike, or maybe we're not qualified to teach them considering that we aren't their parents, in fact we killed their parents in 2003 (but it's ok becuase their parents were assholes). Besides, our bike hasn't worked for more than 40 years. This kid named Vietnam had just learned to ride a bike back then and said that if someone would let him borrow a bike he would be their friend forever. Too bad The Soviets beat us to it and let Vietnam borrow a funky Soviet bike. Then Vietnam said our bike was girly and couldn't go as fast, so we kicked him right in his Gulf of Tonkin. Then he stole our bike for a while and it took us ten years to get it back, but the gears were all messed up and the back wheel never seemed to be going in the same direction as the front one. Since then we haven't had the money to get it fixed, and every time we do have the money we spend it on toy tanks and guns. We can't just let Iraq go now, because they'll fall over. But if we don't let go soon all the other neighbors are going to start to notice and wonder why we think we're qualified to teach Iraq how to ride a bike.



The fourth anniversary of our invasion of Iraq came and went recently and the press didn't even make a big deal of it, as if we are already bracing ourselves for a decade-long debacle reminiscent of Vietnam. The problem is, my friends, that America is in the twilight of its time as the most powerful nation on Earth. I've been saying it for a few years now, but it's becoming a frightening reality. We can't keep acting like we are somehow qualified to dictate the world's actions, because our economic, diplomatic and military influence is waning rapidly. Audacity without influence is going to be our undoing. Mark my words. I'll write more about that next time.

Changes

As if in response to my final statement in the last entry, The New York Times published an article today in its Business section called "The Album, a Commodity in Disfavor." The article essentially outlines a trend that anyone who has been paying attention to the music industry already sees: the gradual replacement of the album as the primary unit of music sales by the single.

Here is the link to the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/26/business/media/26music.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

First of all, from a consumer's perspective, the album has been a "commodity in disfavor" for a while now, particularly in the rap and R&B arenas. Overall, the only reason that the album was ever important in pop music was as a vehicle for one or two popular songs. Powerful and influential pop albums are anomalies in the fairly steady flow of mediocre albums highlighted by one or two important singles. You can count on your fingers and toes the number of pop albums that sold millions of copies because of their power as a whole rather than because they have a lot of great individual songs on them.

Classic rock is a different story. There are great albums in classic rock, albums like "Led Zeppelin IV" and "Tommy," that are revered simultaneously as vehicles of classic anthems like "Stairway to Heaven" and "Pinball Wizard" and as needledrop masterworks that secured their creators' musical immortality. There is a reason, however, why pop artists like Simon & Garfunkel and James Taylor became demigods without writing anthems. They managed to write great songs for the radio, like "Cecelia" and "Country Road" and then surround those songs on their albums with comparable and sometimes superior pieces of music like "The Boxer" and "Fire and Rain." It is no surprise that while the singles made these artists famous, the albums are what made them rich.

From what I've seen, the average listener has been aching for a way to easily buy one or two songs by pop artists rather than buying their entire album for decades. The only thing that has changed is that Apple has suddenly facilitated that desire by creating iTunes and making it completely unnecessary to pay for Nelly Furtado's "Loose" just to hear that awesome synthesizer in "Promiscuous." (...Thank God)

Aside: Can anyone name a truly great R&B album that came after "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill?" I'm not an expert and am in some ways talking out of my ass, but I can't see any evidence that anyone in mainstream rap and R&B is trying to make that next great album. (For me, the jury is still out on John Legend, but he should keep up the good work.)

The industry is just as focused on singles as they have always been, but now artists who can't write more than one or two great hooks are going to disappear quickly. Once a single is successful, an artist has to match it almost immediately before it leaves the charts in order to convince even a small percentage of listeners to buy the album. This creates what is, to me, the most frustrating part of pop music: two singles from one artist that sound exactly the same.

Case in point: The Fray. "How to Save a Life" is a decent album, filled with fairly standard but at times poignant lyrics and a refreshingly rich piano-rock sound. The singles are "Cablecar (Over my Head)" and "How to Save a Life." Their chord progressions are, for all intents and purposes, the same. The vocals are in the same range in the lead singer's voice, the piano is less than inventive and the drum intros and outros are essentially identical in both songs. I was extremely disappointed when I heard "How to Save a Life" after absolutely loving "Cablecar." To me it feels like "How to Save a Life" was released to give the listeners who bought "Cablecar" as a single but were reluctant to buy the album a second reason to bite the bullet, but in the process it cheapened the experience of "Cablecar" by showing that The Fray aren't stupendous songwriters.

Don't even get me started on Nickelback, who wrote one song that I liked and then wrote that same song 6 more times and counting. Grrrrrr.

So I suppose my conclusion is that I agree with The New York Times' assessment of the state of the music industry (which is good because it wasn't an opinion article but a report).

However, I draw hope from artists like John Mayer, who's album "Continuum" I have been quick to recommend to anyone who will listen. He has taken a step out of the acoustic, playful, soft, raspy soul-searching that he has done so far (with great success) and has written a richer, deeper, more soulful album, with minimalist songs that speak to his generation without presuming to have everything figured out. He has already shown that he is a creative and highly skilled acoustic guitarist, but until this album he has used that skill to flirt with his female fanbase and to playfully flit around the edges of deep and real emotion. On this album the electric guitar is his means of emoting more truthfully. The guitar does not dominate or justify the songs but instead provides them with the spirit and truth that words are not exact enough to express. To you doubters who have hated him ever since you couldn't understand all of the lyrics of "Your Body is a Wonderland" because his voice was so raspy, I once was one of you! I recommend that you listen carefully to "Gravity," then listen to "Vultures," then listen to "Stop this Train," then listen to "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room." I think those will be enough at least to change your perspective on John Mayer even if it doesn't make you a fan.

I don't think the album will go extinct anytime soon as long as there are intelligent songwriters and musicians who don't want to settle for careers on the singles charts. Every time the music industry has a doomsday theory, some band or artist steps up. Examples include U2's "Joshua Tree," Jeff Buckley's "Grace," Nirvana's "Nevermind," Paul Simon's "Graceland" and R.E.M.'s "Murmur." There is still a lot of good music out there and there are still a lot of people that don't base their taste in music on what they hear on G105. If the past is any indication, all you need are smart listeners and smart musicians.

"I watch the ripples change their size/But never leave the stream/Of warm impermanence and/So the days float through my eyes/But still the days seem the same/And these children that you spit on/As they try to change their worlds/Are immune to your consultations/They're quite aware of what they're going through. Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes."