Nicholasdanger's Journals

Not everything in life can be solved with movie quotes.

Everything is mutable and shifting, words that mean one thing sliding and changing until all the meanings mean nothing and nothing means anything. In this atmosphere, the air is thin and too warm, and little things travel farther and block my neurons and I can't think straight, hence why my thoughts are crooked and unaccounted for. Still, one can try, and try again, and maybe stick to the course, but then again, I've never been one to do what's best for me. Te occidere possunt sed te edere non possunt nefas est.

Anyway, some day, I'll work it out, why things happen and how they do. I'm sure of this, as sure as I am that the future we've been promised since decades before I was born is not coming, with a distinct lack of exclamation points and absolutely no flying cars or jetpacks. Waking up, saying goodbye, touching, not touching, singing along, playing the parts, whatever. Mutatis mutandis, kids, and don't you forget it.

So, what's next? Change is in the air, and is inevitable, and is probably for the better, and summer is coming (which I am most assuredly a fan of), so to what do we owe this feeling of reluctance and dread? Oh well, "c'est la vie" say the old folks. We're getting older, getting colder, moving on, getting better, getting bitter, and giving up. Can't say that I blame myself, though I probably should. In any event, there is work to do, and not much time to do it. Exclamation points aside, the future is still there, waiting to be slapped like a newborn and made to do our bidding, and so thusly, I shall get to it. Tempus fugit, and all that jazz. (snap snap) Good night, and good luck.

Some People Have Terrible Taste In Music.

There's no blog or expanded statement to this. I just wanted to use that title. Because it is true.

Deal with it, America!

...wait, what?

ok, seriously, what the fuck just happened?

I had a successful first gig, made some money, and established that I indeed now have a significant other.

SO, why do I feel like a terrible terrible person for... well, I'm not quite sure why I do, and I'm not sure why I should. And honestly, it kind of sucks. (Specificities will be left out, because I am not an ass.)

But yeah, goddammit. I am confused as fuck right now.

The lack of sleep is probably compounding this, by the way.

Anyway, what's the Frequency, Kenneth?

buy the ticket, etc etc.

I wonder if it's possible to be in too many music projects.

I mean, I am a bass player/vocalist and of the songwriters in Robots and Racecars, I am the bass player in Take Today, I am the bass player in my drummer's sideproject Stay Sweet, I could potentially be involved in my friend's sideproject Lightsleeper, and I have my own solo project called How I Became Invisible. On top of all that, there's ANOTHER group being put together called Boom City.

I hardly sleep as it is already, and yet, I don't really do a whole lot with my time. Sitting around watching Monty Python on dvd and twittering about Watchmen, Final Crisis, and Scott Pilgrim don't really set the world on fire, y'know?

Hurm.

OH, and I forgot to mention, I will soon be the unquestioned lord and master of this planet and all reality. Be prepared for the reign of Emperor Nicholas The Fabulous.

Right.
So, yeah.

miserabilia.

"Straighten up and fly right," that's what I'm told. But with no map, and very little in the way of navigational sense, "fly right" is a loose direction to be given. I have so many things I have done, and so many things I haven't, that the pro and con columns on my "this is how I am" list are staggering in their complexity, not to mention length. And there's always the next day to wake up to, the next new beginning, the next "it's all happening." But the happening and the being are two very different concepts to me, and right now, I am neither being nor happening. I simply am. I am alive. I am breathing. I am not sleeping. I am still. I am standing. I am.

But is it enough to simply "am"? I can't imagine anything else, really, I cannot. Ingesting information and analyzing, that is what I am best at. Spitting out facts and figures to support theses and ideating randomness into order, chaos into FACT. But there is not much in the way of a field for this, without certain concessions made to existing social order and class structure, and I am far beyond wanting to kowtow to that. Which is a large section of the problem, most likely. I am not built for these societal structures, thus I deny them, thus they deny me. I am, but they do not choose to acknowledge my am. They ignore my am and declare me persona non-grata. Excepting where money and the owing of it is concerned, though that is another story.

Lack of REM is a killer, and maybe that's the problem. Too much introspection, not enough intervention. My chosen fields are, at best, non-linear, and I love the most what I do best. I abhor a vacuum, and the vacuousness of everything else I see waiting for me is disheartening, to say the least. I miss falling asleep next to you, I miss you waking up next to me. There are so many regrets and kudos built into a lifetime, and I have lived but a third of one thus far. But no worries, I suppose. Lifespans being what they are, who's to say who will outlive the best or worst of us? (I know. But I'm not telling.)

So yes, so anyway, that's my conundrum. Aside from my current state of not being able to sleep. The future, though unwritten, certainly has a certain bent, a distinct curve, that I do not approve of. And while my approval is scarce needed, and certainly ignored, it is what I wish to contribute. Drastic times call for desperate measures, and mine are certainly underwhelming thus far, but I hope to break this metaphorical chain and save this metaphorical city. Hand me a metaphorical arc welder, please, I wish to operate on this literal patient. But I suppose here's where I get off this pity train, and jump back into the deep places of today. Mind the gap. Mind the gap. Mind the gap.

project.

My life turns. It spins, it revolves. Like film on a reel, unspooling at 24 frames a second, spliced and taped together to make a simulacrum of an existence. So far, so good, I suppose. Dim the lights, roll sound, call "Action!", and away I go, on and on until my life meter is low and I need a health pack before I lose a turn. Respawn, replace, and replenish the cycle, I'm on a roll, and baby, I feel my luck could change. The sun is red over the city, a spinning circle burning down behind the skyline, all silhouetted buildings and scaffolding, and I think it deserves whatever is coming to it.

: : : : : : : :

Fight Club is most peoples' model for projection now, but it is not strictly true anymore, by the way. Film comes as separate reels still, but it's no longer shown that way. It's built into one large super reel, on a platter system. Splices are obvious too, so putting porn shots into kids movies is right out. (Like life, sex is not something you can just throw into anywhere and expect to work out how you want it to..) The film unspools from one platter, through the projector, and onto another platter, either above or below the original. And on and on, repeating ad nauseum. Light pours through the film, the images thrown onto the screen, fake peoples fake lives and fake problems displayed for the audience to cheer or reject as they will. As they want. And god forbid it be too real. The film turns and the clock winds and it's all pretty irrelevant. It's not real, so what's the point?

: : : : : : : :

The circle turns some more, the wheels spin and fail to stick, gears not catching and axles breaking, until forward momentum becomes a myth. Total Catastrophic Failure. An emergency condition that is unable to be fixed and results in a complete ending and cessation of any activity. The cycle ending, basically. A modern projectionist's worst nightmare is a blown bulb. The circles keep turning, but the shadow plays cease and an unhappy audience revolts and strings up the nearest representative of authority, burning and pillaging as they go. Total catastrophic failure. The only solution is to replace the bulb, which is a difficult and somewhat slightly dangerous task, but one that if accomplished, lights up brighter than the sun in the middle of August on a clear day at the beach. So the benefits outweigh the risk, is what I'm saying. Total catastrophic reversal. Or something like that.

: : : : : : : :

My life turns. I come back to where I've been before, watching the same circumstances play out like images in front of me. If I blink rapidly enough, it even looks like frames going by. It's recursive, and I curse it, but if it disperses I'd be left behind again, so I grab onto the nearest familiar face and hang on for dear life, through the rising action, dramatic climax, and denouement, and hope that there's an extra scene after the credits. Because why spin these platters if all I'm going to do is break the film before it resolves into a satisfying ending? Splice in any section into any other, the order doesn't matter, the audience doesn't know any better, and neither do I. So I suppose this is the part where I confess that I don't know anything about anything.

: : : : : : : :

"You're kidding yourself if you think this changes anything."

: : : : : : : :

Turn spin spin turn twist and rewind. You can catch the patterns if you look closely enough. So celebrate the repetition, revel in it, and hopefully you can get beyond the notion that movie endings never happen, and that plot twists always have to make sense. This is the part where the hero doubts himself and misinterprets situations into something else, but it all resolves for the best in the end. It does resolve, right? What sense is there in doing something if it never works out the way you want it to?

: : : : : : : :

Cut. Print. That's a wrap.

The cake is a lie.

The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
But I'm still alive.

[For those who don't speak nerd, this means I recorded a cover of "Still Alive" from PORTAL, and have posted it on my music page. Listen, download, react. The cake is a lie.]

My heart is, my heart is, my heart is an empty room.

SO it's like this:
the older I get, the more well-adjusted I seem to be. I take things in stride, I don't stress/fret/worry. Openly anyway. When someone asks me "Is something wrong?" or "Are you upset?" or "How do you feel about that?", I, more often than not, answer with "I'm ok." Whether I really am or not is the issue I'm having at the moment. I have become, over the last year or so, entirely less cynical than I have been in the past. In fact, at this point, despite everything, I am almost a complete optimist. I believe the world as whole is something good and worth living in, and that the future, though unwritten, is something to look forward to with hope rather than fear. Still, something nags at me.

Over the past month, there's been three separate, unrelated events that, I assume, would cause consternation, worry, and issues for most people. They are, in a word, traumatic events to most. But, and this is what's giving me pause, I have had no visible reaction, internal or external. I have gotten along to get along. This worries me, in some small way. Because I have been accused in the past of being heartless, cold, and uncaring, and the above reactions seem to support this theory. But I don't think I am. I don't feel that way, anyway. I care about things, about people, about many things. But my lack of reaction to the unnamed events does not jibe with this. Someone once told me that my attitude as such meant I was more adult and well-adjusted than most. But I don't feel that way. I feel... nothing. Vague senses of regret and sadness, but nothing concrete or real.

So my question to the coterie of the internet is: what is wrong. Am I really the robot people have said I am? Or am I just... inured to catastrophe? I don't know. And the fact that I don't know what is wrong, or even if anything is, is what bothers me more than anything...

When I Decided to Get Off My Ass and Do Something Useful

Hey, just a quick note to let anyone who's interested know that I have a music page on "the my space" (as the kids like to call it), located at http://www.myspace.com/nicholasreed. As of right now, all that's up there is a home recorded cover of Jets to Brazil's "Sweet Avenue", but I just finished recording 2 new songs in the studio, and will have them up within a week (as soon as the mixing is finished). SO, check it out, add me if you have a myspace, and get in on the ground floor, so to speak.

IN RELATED NEWS, I'm considering adopting an actual band name, for the future when there's more people then just me playing these songs live. I've narrowed it down to 4 choices:
01. How I Became Invisible
02. Audio Geography
03. Lemon Yellow Black
04. One Hundred Resolutions

Which do you think is the best?

lemon yellow black

There's too much happening, and all too soon. My head feels crowded, so many people and words struggling to get out and be heard that they all get stuck in the door and none get out. Tiny Door Syndrome, but in my head rather than my lungs. I can't be specific, things are vague and unformed and quite frankly up in the air, falling slowly ("sing your melody...") to settle amongst the detritus of approximately 28 years of degrading memory and let-downs. Whatever. We all fall down eventually, it's what we do to pick ourselves up that matters.

To paraphrase: My heart is deep space and my head is mathematics.

So yeah, there it is. Small, unpinpointable, blinking in the distance to signal the ships to shore ("do you read? SOS JTB?"), but assuming the position to drown, and I'm assuming very little about any agendas put forth now. There's up, there's down, there's in, and there's my out. To the left, below the small portrait of an elder gentleman and his regimental stallion, and right above the wainscotting. ("We've been metioned on telly!") I reference for reference sake, sometimes. Others, because it's appropriate. Sometimes, because I think it's funny. And even others, because I am trying to break your heart.

To paraphrase: You are a complex structure.

I can't think of where else to take this, my dear diary ("it's just you and me"), and so I will probably decide not to take it anywhere but back in on itself. Oroborous, the snake eating it's own tail, I palindrome I. GUESS WHAT I READ BOOKS THAT ARE FULL OF BIG WORDS AND ANALYZATION. Am I being obvious enough? Is this worth it? Does my lack of a $100,000 piece of paper make my opinions/observations/thoughts any less valid then they would otherwise be? Dammit, I've gotten off-track. Back to the topic at hand... I've forgotten.

To paraphrase: Note to self: no one cares, your voice is average.

I can write myself into the story, and thus out of this predicament. Life is just that, in the end, a story. Or stories, to be exact. When you decide to write your own is when it gets interesting.

[LISTENING RECOMMENDATIONS: Jets to Brazil's album Orange Rhyming Dictionary]