Music of my Life

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Here is something for all you brand freaks out there. The Logorama short film. It's it's nasty, it's cruel - but it is incredibly well made. I think it was a selection the Cannes Film Festival.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

New Story

I started a new story a few days ago. It's about postcards. I'm hyper-busy this coming week, but I'm going to try to write a chapter a week starting spring break (this weekend). Wish me luck.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Starry Eyed Surprise

Some stories begin "Once upon a time..." Those stories end "happily ever after" though. This is a story with a beginning, middle, and beginning. When this story ends it's truly just the start of another

In the beginning there was God. Now let me clarify, when I say beginning, I damn well mean it. No time, space, matter. Simply presence. I don't mean the white haired, white skinned God of Catholic kids growing up. Not the robust Buddha, or hailed Allah. Humankind is so vain to assume God is of human form. God is faceless, lacking physical vehicle. Now this piece of information is out of the way, let us continue our tale.

In the beginning, there was God. God is not He, She, or It. God is God. God was suspended. God Was, Is, and Will Be. God was not a floating mist, or wispy smoke. At some point in being, not time, God felt an enormous amount of energy flow through God, ebbing and flowing. The energy expanded within God. It strained against God’s presence. It swelled once, twice, and burst. All of the planets erupted into existence from God's being. No particular order to the distribution, seemingly random. God's presence Was everywhere in the universe.
God discovered happiness. It was terribly dark though.

In the lonely dark universe God was suspended once again. Vastly alone. Soon after the planets though, God felt another pulse of energy. This one more powerful and intense. It ripened within God until the entire universe shook with energy. The energy grew silent for one moment, then surged from God's being. And then there was light.

Beauty. God discovered awe. Reverence, veneration, stupefaction, admiration.

God's presence pressed into the universe. Searching the planets. They were all wonderful to God. Eventually, God came to Earth. God found the seeds of life crying for help. God nurtured the seeds until they were self-sufficient.

God discovered excitement.

God felt life grow, change, evolve. God was not watching this all from a space station view of Earth. Don't forget, God Was, Is, and Will Be. God was a part of all of this, not a third-party observer. Eventually, Humans arrived. They consumed God's presence.

God discovered love.

Humans did not know God truly. They misunderstood God. They pressed their ideals upon one another. God seeped back into suspension. Time passed, of no great concern to God. Time is not of great importance to God. Rulers, walls, rose. Rulers, walls, fell. God intervened in the affairs of the universe occasionally. Not many were able to feel God. God felt, feels, and will feel all though.

One day is not of great recollection to God. One day is less than a blip. All the same though, one day God felt another presence. The presence was foreign, almost like another entity. God Was, Is, and Will Be all, but his attention is not equally proportioned. God felt into this entity, more energy than God had ever felt since the universe sprang from God. It was a human boy, brimming with passion. God spared no attention, all of it focused on him, a part of him. The boy’s thoughts dripped into God's presence.

"If you're out there God, listen to me. I have great difficulty coming to terms with your existence. I'm sorry I'm so skeptical... I really am. I cannot help my doubt though. Of your reality there is not much tangible evidence. My real issue is how my parents, my church, the media, they all tell me what to believe. I am sorry I am not an obedient servant, but I don't really think you are a God who demands obedience. I believe you demand only life. I just wish I could have faith."

God wanted faith. It was in the nature of God's being. God's presence craved it, not greedily, but desired it still.

God discovered sadness. Inability to stop the cruel pains of Humans poison God's presence. The universe tensed with God's sadness, God's submission to emotion.

God felt energy pulse within. God felt the complex structures of a life being formed. The framework of a girl, perfect in every way for the boy. Every anatomical fabrication with detail, plus a mind filled with love, intellect, and understanding. The girl sprang forth from God's presence. Before she alighted upon Earth, God beckoned forth two stars from God’s being. These God placed, one behind each eye. And her eyes shone with light.

The girl came to be on Earth. The boy desperate for answers took one look at her. Her presence enveloped him. He looked in her eyes and saw the stars. Those eyes dragged him in. They were intoxicating to him, leaving him breathless. She was his flower, not ephemeral, but lasting. The boy was sure of God’s existence every time he looked into the Girl's eyes.

And this is just the start of another story, just beginning.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Ok Go!

Ok Go's new music video is incredible. They use a gigantic Rube Goldberg machine in a two-story warehouse. Unreal.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Heaven

I once read a story about death. In this story some astronauts are exploring Venus. They venture near the surface and record video of all the past humans living in bliss upon the planet. Martin Luther King, Buddy Holly, Marilyn Monroe, they're all there. Fucking and laughing. This place is the new-age Garden of Eden. Utopia, Paradise, Heaven. Everyone's nude, drinking, having sex without actual reproduction. The best part is, God encourages it. The governments of the world sanction "mass-emigration". They don't like to call it suicide, because it's merely moving onto the next stage. Death is the new life. The rationale is if everyone dies together we can leave this painful place. Skip a step in the refinement process. Collect that $200 without passing Go, without even playing the game. Little "do-it-yourself" kits with Lemon flavored Cyanide pills.

Prepare to evacuate body in 5...4...3...2...1...

We all hope there's a life after this one, but what if there isn't? What if the only life after this is the fly larvae in your rotting carcass? What if the only "after-life" is the life your body gives when you're gone? What if that martyr who told us "we'd see him again in the next life" is just matter decomposing in a box six feet under? What if instead of worrying about the next life, people started living the life they have right now?

His Arms

I start to write
Not worried about time
My entire being
It echos in my mind
The philotes of my being
Decay
Tear
Flay
All that I have seen
It starts to fade away
I fall
And fall
Into his arms

I have searched
But have not found
My sacrificial head
Remains uncrowned
The thorns upon my head
They cut and bleed
The path to martyrdom
Is a twisted one indeed
So just fall
And fall
Into his arms

All I want is legacy
Last beyond my years
This is not prophecy
Of everlasting tears

The greeks say life
Was born of Chaos
Thought can destroy
Destruction is mayhem
And mayhem is Chaos
This swap is not fiction
Deliver us from reality
What a contradiction
That destruction equals life

It's easier to fall
And from the womb
To start to crawl
Into the tomb
And just fall
Into his arms
And fall
Fall
Into his arms

Monday, March 1, 2010

YHWH

The master of empathy
Oh he can empty me
Or rob me, if you must
Of anger, fear and lust
Miles and miles he walks
But never in his own shoes
Hours and hours he talks
And always of the truth

He told me of transcendence
It is experienced, not acquired
And spoke of independence
That which is so often desired
I mentioned to him my dreams
Those fantasies of the night
He explained what they mean
To my surprised delight

I didn't know who he was
But I'll never forget that day
In my memory it stays because
it was then I felt Yahweh

Cyclical By Nature

My mother tells me the orchard of dead and twisted apple trees used to bloom in the spring. Past the sweeping fields of canary yellow dandelions sits a cemetery of looming wooden beasts. Once a source of nourishment, now a symbol of past life. Like the dilapidated headstones to the East. Crumbling above the bodies that once bloomed as well, but with life not fruit. Predominantly the remains of former soldiers. Like my grandfather and his father, all down the line of descendants. The soil of our fields tinged red with memory of past blood spilled in battle upon the fertile earth.
Some cycles preserve unbroken. This one did not persist, for my father is a cordwainer, a shoemaker. His mind contains knowledge of stitching and soles not of rifles and formations. Every shoe is a whisper of beauty, a painting, a monument. My father is in his own right an artist. Attention to detail with greater precision than Velasquez or van Gogh. Truth of form in the ways of a Bernini sculpture. Instead of pastels and clay, fine calfskin and Chamois leather are the agents for his creation.
The place, the time of my story do not really matter. The beginnings are consistent; fear, anger, opposition, war. The patterns are like, even with differentiated passions and no replication of exact characters. The molds so near the true person, the end product fits just as well.

They say if we do now know our history we are condemned to repeat it.
Human conflict, so often mindless.


The people of my village used to recite this poem in times of terrible hardship:

Unlike Barley and Corn
Seeds of fear grow best
Without sunlight and care
But in darkness and despair

It was meant to serve as a reminder how evil finds it's beginnings. They told me how to combat fear, blinding it with sunlight.
Without seeds of fear, the roots of war have no depth. The common man may prevent war just as easily as he tends to his garden. By pulling the shallow roots of the weed that is war until they shake loose of his land. Let the seeds take deep root, forget to pick them just once and the cycle repeats.

They say if we do not know our history we are condemned to repeat it. Ironic then, that by simply forgetting some of our history we would have nothing to fight about